O: I tooted, mom, and that's a fact.

K: Well, kiddo, sometimes you just have to speak your truth.

Truth? I have been writing. I just haven't been sharing. The post below was written on May 15th. It only took me eight months to share it. Here's to that fortifying glass of wine and more sharing in 2018.

I've had a hard time with writing lately. Some combination of personal circumstances and the sheer force of the injustice of the world, have left me with big, heavy thoughts, thoughts with consequences, thoughts that demand actions, and could hurt feelings, things that are hard to write down and even harder to share, especially without a courage building glass of wine before I click publish. I try to sit down to write about how much fun first grade has been, or how much O, P, and Q have grown, or our seemingly impossible Los Angeles house hunt, but I find myself stuck, stuck on so many things. So, I'm on the fence: remain silent, try to fake some lighthearted optimism, or speak my truth.

I miss writing here. I miss reaching out and connecting to other people, and this space was always intended to be a glimpse into our lives, an optimistic insight into raising tiny people in a big city, but while optimism was always the goal, honesty was never intended to be the trade-off. I don't want to stop writing, but I also don't want to sweep under the rug the tremendous shift that has occurred in my world view over the past year. The problem is, at this point, I can't share insights into our day-to-day life and remain apolitical. Politics has inserted itself into our daily life in a way I never would have imagined before. I want to write about P and the challenges of diabetes. How do I do that without talking about preexisting conditions, the rising cost of insulin, and the ACA? I want to share with you about our housing search here in Los Angeles, but how do I do that without engaging in the issues of gentrification and the shifting demographics of the city that we love so much? I want to write funny, silly things about parenting tiny people, but how do I avoid touching on gender politics or how the privilege they have been born with will affect their lives in profound ways? I think the answer is that I don't. I can't. It won't be all politics, but when politics touches our lives, as it inevitably does, I can't edit it away, or rather, I won't. So hang around, or don't, but I'm only going to edit for typos and grammar from here on out.