My 15 year old son is a track star. Legitimately, the thought of watching the video of #AhmaudArbery made me physically ill. So I didn’t. Cause I felt like I couldn’t. But my son did. And the conversation we had about that video broke my heart. My husband and I are so tired

of explaining it and having “the conversation.” It makes you feel vile for trying to rationalize why being black is a co morbidity on its own. I have felt tremendous guilt this past week for bringing innocence into a world this violent and for living in a nation this corrupt.

There are days when I truly just want to gather everyone I love and run. And then I realize how nonsensical that is. Why should we duck and hide? We are a part of the fabric of this country. fi am the sixth and my children make the seventh generation in the US. Why should we run?

But that’s what racism does to its victims. It’s the real disease and the symptoms present like anxiety, paranoia, stress, grief, depression, hypertension, mental illness, stroke, heart attack, obesity, cancer & trauma. You cannot fix any other broken part of the American system

until you fix racism. Racism begets additional fractured conditions and systems. Ignoring it, avoiding it, rewarding it, promoting it, marrying it, hiring it, aligning with it, being related to it, excusing it, apologizing for it and voting for it is destroying this country.

And I wonder if we will ever stop running from it and charge that demon with our final breaths, for every victim ever lost in its wake like our dearly departed #AhmadArbery.