The Children No One Posts Pictures of On Facebook

I love that we live in a world where people take time and finances to nurse a baby gremlin bat, dropped by its mother, back to health. I love that when a lost dog wanders through my neighborhood, traffic can get congested from the number of cars stopped to see if they can help. I love that so many people care so deeply about the plight of overpopulated cats and dogs that my Facebook feed is chock full, on a daily basis, of pictures of adorable animal faces that need homes, with earnest and passionate pleas written above asking how people could abuse animals, how people could abandon them. Those are good things to wonder. Those are good hearts to have.


I'd like for you to do something. Could you open a new tab and type in Google? Then in the white ease of that search box, please type in 

22 month old beaten to death

I picked this age because my daughter, Ever Elizabeth, is 22 months old. After you type those words in, and hit search, please look at the first page of responses. And the next page, and the next. That is enough. After that, I'd appreciate it if you'd come back here, and read on:

You are back. I would like to posit a question: Why aren't these children's faces on our Facebook feeds, when the faces of homeless animals are?

The children in foster care. The children in prison. The children in the homes of relatives, children in hospitals. The children in the news, the pages and pages and pages of children in the news who have been beaten to death. The cute ones, the ugly ones, the black ones, the brown ones, the white ones, the adorable ones, the awkward ones, the toddler ones, the teenage ones.

The ones who could have been. Who never will be. The ones who know tragedy from the moment they are pulled into this world to the moment they are hurled out. The ones who never know love.
I'd like you to truly let the horror of that statement sink in, for in my estimation it is one of the deepest horrors of human life:

A child who has never been loved.

I know this subject is awful. I know it is deeply uncomfortable, sickening, and I know that there is never a good time to stop and read about this, think about this. Before I take the kids to school? Late at night when I'm alone and need to sleep? During my alone time? After a great day? After a horrible day? No. There is no good time to read about abused children. And children who are being abused know deeply in their bones how uncomfortable they make people, how other they are. This is one reason they are silent.

Still I am asking you to read, and to ask yourself one more question:

What can I do to help?

That is what I have been asking myself since I was a child myself. I have helped. As I look over Facebook, and blogs, and Pinterest, and Tumblr and see the enormous amount of space taken up with the faces and plights of animals, I wonder why there is not at least as much room for the faces of our children.

Those are good things to wonder. Yours is a good heart to have. Let's help our kids. What can we do?
I'm starting again here, my home online, with this, a message to you.

This is Darisabel Baez. She was beaten to death.