No single person has had a greater impact on my life than my Grandmother. Although she passed over ten years ago, to this day I still feel her by my side, guiding me. Protecting me.
Almost every day before I turned 8, my Grandmother would peek into my room when it was time for me to wake up and quietly say, "Good morning." She would then walk into the room, sit down next to me, and repeat, "Good morning," until I became fully conscious. These words are some of the few in my memory I can still hear her say to me.
My Grandmother was my third parent, who instilled in me the values and morals that still guide me today. She also mended my wounds when they appeared -- under her care, my wounds always closed, even if she had to stitch me back together.
Yet my Grandmother's life story is centered around insecurity, uncertainty, and risk. No sense of security protected her -- or her family -- until her later years.
This is why I know I felt so safe growing up, feeling protected by those words of "Good morning." Safety is a privilege -- a privilege endowed with a certainty of yesterday, a certainty of tomorrow, and a certainty of now that is not afforded to all of us.
I didn't recognize the depth of this privilege until my own sense of safety was shattered completely for the first time, as a college student interning in DC. But this time, I had to stitch my wounds back together myself.
