Since I became a parent 5 years ago, I’ve had a lot of recurring thoughts—good God I am exhausted, am I doing any of this right, is that poop or chocolate, etc. But the one that lingers the most is this: if parenting is this hard, even with every resource at my disposal, I simply can’t imagine what it’s like to raise your babies in a space where food and stability and medical care are not a given. 

5 years ago, this firecracker made me a mom. She came into the world ready to change it. She’s the kind of kid who asks her grandparents to look around for anyone in their neighborhood “who doesn’t have food or houses or anything,” and to give those people money and she will pay them back.  

We’re celebrating her birthday this weekend in the hospital with little sister Ivy, who has pneumonia, RSV, a double ear infection, and severe dehydration. I don’t know of a better way to honor Olive than to help families who are the very ones she thinks about, the ones who—unlike me—are raising their babies in the middle of war or in a refugee camp or at a migrant shelter at the US-Mexico border, the ones whose babies would not have access to the kind of care Ivy is receiving. 

Would you help celebrate my Olive girl by donating to Preemptive Love, the organization I serve with? We’re a global community of peacemakers working to end war and care for those impacted by it, helping families in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. For a little girl whose name means “peace,” it is as fitting a gift as could be.