Gratitude to My Ancestors

I'm here, but barely. My ancestors have all been the victims of injustice and even extermination as a result of being themselves; Jewish, Black, or Native American. When my grandparents were my age, they were in concentration camps. Their whole family - brothers, sisters, and parents - had been destroyed. The only way my grandmother survived was by risking her life to steal potato peels. My grandmother on my father's side marched in the civil rights movement to gain basic rights and moved to New Jersey where my father was the first one in his family to graduate college.

Today, for the first time in my life, I realized at a core level the sacrifice my ancestors have made to survive and to ultimately give me the opportunities I have today. They succeeded so much, that for my entire life I've felt disconnected from their struggles. My mom's beckonings for me to remember my past have fallen on deaf ears as I wanted to look only to the future. I've never felt the need to fight for basic rights or money to survive, because I haven't had to, having grown up in a middle-class, predominantly white, suburban community.

I hope that someday, after I've passed on, my grandchildren will tell their children how their grandparents struggled not against an external oppressor, but against themselves - their fears, their disappointments, their feelings of inadequacy - to make a large, lasting positive difference not only for their family, but for the world as a whole.

I hope.