Safe spaces for tiny people

I'm thinking about what it is to introduce a young child to people who don't treat you well, who you do not like or would prefer not to work with.

Introducing a kid to an adult, to me, suggests that you are giving this person your blessing. That you're saying it's okay, to go to or with this person, identifying them as a friend, someone that Mama knows. I'm thinking about this mostly in the context of queer and activist space, spaces that have been fraught, hard and hurtful to me, and also important, core.

I've had the experience of feeling like having a child improved my cred, amped up my experience of struggle in the eyes of others; that my doing it in a way that was readable as queer, alternative, non-conformist made me more exciting to people. Ultimately, it's the experience of feeling like people think I've redeemed myself somehow, which implies that I've been waiting for them to accept me and to be forgiven for the sins of high school, mental health, shitty dating scenarios, having feelings and expressing them. It doesn't make the past any longer ago for me, and I haven't been waiting for that. It's certainly easier to have pleasant interactions than unpleasant ones, to know that parents around me in certain spaces hold some version of similar social justice and anti-oppression values-- but as was the case in creating communities and support networks, in fucking and organizing-- we likely have different ways of teaching and expressing those values still.

While I don't want to build my child into my past trauma, put my grudges on her to carry, have her ignore the people around us, there are also times when I don't want to introduce her, don't want her to have an experience of people who hurt my heart or my head to be around or remember. There's an amount I'm willing to let go of, but there are ways our shared past is still with us, and micro versions of those pasts that reoccur in new relationships and dynamics now. It's not all other people, I'm guilty of recreating these patterns too. How I am in a space affects my daughter and I know that.

I used to joke that she had early gaydar, could attatch to the visible queer on any public transit. Truth is, of course she knows those are our people-- they look like the people closest to us, the ones we trust. Now that she is older, that she holds her own memories of our experiences out in the world, I'm even more conscious of who we connect with, who we establish memories or habits with.