On Privilege and Choices

Some months ago, when you were still content to kick me from inside, your papa and I were out for dinner with friends.  We started talking about my old job, and some of the people I had worked with and the situations that they survived in (or didn't) around the world.  We talked about aid work, and reporters, and the choices people make in those lines of work when they are from comfy and privileged worlds like ours.

Someone remarked 'It must be so hard for people to leave that field and come back home.  I wonder how they do it.'

It was like, for just a moment, they had forgotten I was there.  Not that I was easy to miss as I was nearly nine months pregnant and huge.  When I commented on the fact that, indeed, I had left the field and come back home, they remarked 'Well, I hadn't really thought about you, you had to come back to have your family.  I think it would be harder for the men to leave than the women.'

To be clear, I adore the woman who said this, and I understand why she did.  She had met me when I was already pregnant, and to her, it was an innate aspect of Who I Was, Woman With Family. It was strange, because from my perspective, I was still a childless, free, woman who could up and go any time she wanted regardless of the airline restrictions on third trimester travel. But my identity was about to change, and I would likely notice all future meetings with people started with different labels than I was used to.

But the question of 'why?' or 'how?' can you leave the work when you've seen what you have seen.  Knowing that so much goes on in this world, and that I could be working directly to change it - and yet I have stopped. I am now here in Canada.  I live in a decent home with clean water and doors that won't be broken into.  I buy my little girl expensive car seats and invest in an educational fund.  How can I be here when I know the world that exists outside of this.

And until I decided to come home, I didn't really know the answer either.  Even now, there are times that I revert to the old standbys of 'I know I am still doing good', and 'You can make change by how you live your life'.  I believe both of these statements, but they aren't what resonates with me.  I remember in Papua New Guinea, walking through our clinic, the walls lined with benches filled with women and their children.  This is when what everyone had been telling me, in every place that I worked, finally sunk in.  All people want is to live their life in peace.  To live with their loved ones without violence. To pursue their dreams without persecution. I had so many conversations where I talked to people who did not understand why I had come to their part of the world, when I could be safely at home. And never was this more true than in PNG.

It was in that clinic, surrounded by women who had been beaten or raped, and children who had seen it, or been victims themselves, and who were all looking to find peace, if only in their own bodies and minds from that violence, that I realised I needed to honour my loved ones and take advantage of all that I had.  I have grown up believing that when you are privileged, you are responsible to use that privilege to fight injustice.  I've also realised though, that the gift of peace, which is so rare in our species and on this planet, must also be respected.  Very few people in this world get to have what I have.  And that is why I came home to my friends, my family, and your father. That is why we brought you here.  And I know your life will not always be peaceful, but I hope you can take advantage of the privilege that you do have to both fight for justice, as well as relax in the arms of your loved ones.