arcēology

Last week, my mother stayed the night with me. I walked through the living room after she had gone to bed, and she emerged from her room to go to the bathroom. I didn’t expect to see her, so when I caught her profile in my peripheral, I screamed and danced a manic jig. Naturally.

Owen awoke in the middle of the night a few weeks ago. I got out of bed to tend to him. He wasn’t settling down, so I pretended that changing his diaper would help and I took my post at his changing table. I felt a shadow in the doorway. Holding Owen, I turned and screamed into his ear because his dad was in the doorway. Horror of all horrors.

You might find it contradictory, then, that sometimes I feel brave.

For example, as I strolled Owen around the neighborhood recently, I imagined all the worst-case scenarios that could occur while on the walk. You know, just to be prepared. I pictured a frothy-jowled dog leaping over its suburban privacy fence to attack us. However, fearful I was not. Without hesitation, I hypothetically stood in front of Owen’s stroller ready to fend off the attack. I was brave. The mighty instincts of motherhood numbed all fear.

Now, I’m not making light of the protection of my son. Not at all. Rather, I genuinely feel very “Mother Bear” when I think of Owen’s safety. It’s very simple: I would stop at nothing to protect him.

This is why the atrocities of human nature stun me even more now that I am a parent. I don’t advocate fear as a healthy response to circumstances because I understand that fear is oftentimes crippling. Like the dog metaphor, when I am fearful of a worldly injustice, I should take action to solve the problem instead of surrendering to the immobilization of fear. After all, do I want to leave such tasks in my son’s hands by default?

Which reminds me that, while some of the globe’s worst crimes may seem a world away, the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place. What are major, prevalent, unhidden problems outside of our borders can easily become problems inside them.

One of my friends from college works for the International Princess™ Project, an organization fighting the problem of sex trafficking in India. (Which isn’t only a foreign problem. For example, see here.) Here’s some of the information that struck me:

In India, millions of women and girls work as prostitutes. Many have been trafficked, kidnapped, lured with promises of jobs, or sold by their own families into sexual slavery. Some as young as six years old have become sex workers (the actual term used in India) due to poverty or lack of opportunities. Within the huge, cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, lies the largest red-light district in the world, which is home to a myriad of injustice, abuse, and horrors.

One million children are trafficked into the sex trade each year, taken from their families and forced to work as prostitutes. In Mumbai alone, ninety cases of HIV are reported every hour. Once in the sex trade, women and girls may be forced to have intercourse with up to twenty clients per day.

You can help bring hope to women who have been rescued or escaped from forced prostitution and human trafficking! By purchasing pajamas these women have made, you help empower them to restore their lives. While living in a safe, holistic recovery home, the women learn to sew PUNJAMMIES™. PUNJAMMIES™ help the women support themselves with skill and dignity, heal in body and spirit, and live lives of freedom.

If everyone takes a small piece of responsibility in the fight against human trafficking and forced prostitution, we can overcome the dark reality these women have lived and prevent others from experiencing the same. Please purchase PUNJAMMIES™ online at www.punjammies.com. Every sale contributes to restoring hope and dignity to another life.

Purchasing from an initiative like Punjammies helps to restore in women something that I easily take for granted: self-dignity. I’m not saying that one pair of pajamas will save Owen’s future, but it reminds me how easy it is to stay focused on giving Owen a good life. I just need to remember to also show him that there is more to this world than my city, state, and country — and that buying pajamas, laying bricks, assisting a resource-poor community, serving soup, opening a door, kind words, smiles … are all things that one person, Owen Carter, can do to make this world a better, safer place.