I remember the way she stared. Bound tightly in a double leg cast, her eyes begged for freedom. She had only been in this world for three months. She didn’t understand. I held her and winced as her broken ribs popped with each breath. I was only 8-years-old. I didn’t understand.

I remember the way he cried. Born addicted to drugs, his crying never stopped. His body was tense. He went through withdrawals from a substance never designed to be in the body of an infant. The effect this would have on his life was astronomical. I failed to understand.

I remember the way she gorged herself with food. She was left at the scene of a crime. Neglected. It was her first birthday, but her guardian left her. She had the most beautiful smile. She knew that food was comfort. I was 9-years-old. I could never identify with that level of abandonment.

I remember the way he struggled to suck on a bottle. Fresh from the hospital, the drugs had significantly manipulated his reflexes. I watched my mom meticulously and persistently care for him. Each day he swallowed a little bit more. He became strong, and for 11 months he was my brother. I felt pride in his achievements.

I remember the way her skin turned red. Trapped in a spicca cast, it repeatedly rubbed against her once-soft baby skin. The hardest bone to break in a human had been broken in an 8-week-old. Her dad had been mad that day. I was angry.

I remember the way she talked about getting to ride in a police car. Her mom was going to jail, but she learned that day that police are there to help. She loved her mom deeply. Her loyalty was both admirable and heartbreaking. Her loss was too deep for me to understand.

I feel lucky that I called these babies my foster siblings. They were, without a doubt, the most courageous little human beings I ever had the privilege of loving. These kids, plus many more, are a vivid part of my childhood. Their stories are real and their faces appear in my mind often. I wonder about them and sometimes even worry about them. They were astonishingly resilient, but I wish they had never been forced to know the depth of that human resilience.

National Child Abuse Prevention Month. It’s a month where we, as a nation, stand up and say ‘no more’. It’s too easy to remain quiet, to pretend like it doesn’t exist, and to push away the faces and names behind the statistics. But in doing so, we inadvertently are minimizing the hurt of 686,000 children who experienced abuse and neglect in 2012 (source). We’re saying that hurt and that pain and those experiences aren’t big enough to bother us.

On the other hand,  I see my generation treating philanthropic work as a fad. Come to my college campus, and you’ll see that short term non-profit volunteering and instagramming photos with at-risk kids is all the rage. These kids deserve to be advocated for, cherished, loved, heard, protected, and wanted. That’s not a fad. That’s life-long pursuit and deeply-rooted intentionality, friends. I want my generation to hear that. There’s a longevity associated with this cause. We need to be in it for the long-haul.

For the past seven months I have been completing an internship at an emergency shelter for foster children. I often times sit in the office reading through endless case files filled with some of the most horrific stories I’ve ever heard. Tears frequently fill my eyes as I further grapple with the reality that children in my own community face. I complete intakes and hear things from 6-year-olds I pray I never will grow accustomed to hearing. God, it’s awful.

Then, I go inside the shelter right as the van pulls up from school, and I am met by kids who choose to be so much more then their horrific pasts. They sit at the table and work on multiplication tables, talk to me about art class, eat chicken fingers, watch movies, and sing along to the latest Katy Perry song.

It’s not that they live care-free lives. Their needs are deep, please hear me say that. The reality of their abuse has devastating repercussions. The calendar is full of psychological appointments and counseling appointments because healing is hard. Their situation, living in an emergency shelter, is not the normative, and it is far from ideal. Even still, many of them choose to be more than what life has given to them. That’s admirable.

I want to be like that. 

The image for National Child Abuse Prevention Month is a pinwheel. It is childlike and playful, but represents the many different people and disciplines actively involved in ending a nationwide tragedy. It takes teachers, social workers, nurses, first responders, investigators, health-care professionals, social and family service workers, and educated citizens to get the wheel turning. It truly takes a village, friends. 

The statistics are deafening, but necessary to understand. (These were taken from the Child Maltreatment 2012 Children’s Bureau Report produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

In 2012, There were 678,810 unique reported accounts of child abuse and neglect (meaning that each child was only counted once, regardless of the number of times he or she was a victim during the reporting year). The total number of reports of roughly 686,000, broke down into 78.3% neglect, 18.3% physical abuse, and 9.3% sexual abuse.

In 2012, there were 1,593 recorded fatalities due to child maltreatment. What that means is that every day we have upwards of 4 children dying in this country due to abuse or neglect. 

Tears fill my eyes just typing that.

I think of my foster siblings and the kids I see every day at my internship. Their lives matter so deeply. They have personalities and passion and value. They matter. We cannot have four kids dying every day. It is unacceptable.

Prevention is hard, we know that. But I have to choose to believe that this number can decrease. Our kids are worth it. It has to decrease. We tell our kids they are important all the time, but I want to show it to them. I have so much to say about this topic, but for now, know this:

Awareness is important. It is so, so vital that we are not only aware of the magnitude of child abuse, but that we are also aware of our surroundings. As citizens, we have a responsibility. All of us come into contact with kids in some form in our daily lives, and that means that if we see something, we are held responsible to report it. If you don’t have your state’s abuse hotline number saved to your phone, do it. A phone call could save a child. Calling a hotline does not mean automatic removal of a child. Please know that. If you report what you see, and leave it to investigators to do the rest, you will never, ever, ever be responsible for “ripping apart” a family. Let that one go. The result of not calling for a sighted abuse case could be devastating.

I plead with you today to educate yourself on the signs of abuse and neglect, and to not grow idyll in protecting the kids that walk through our school halls and play in the neighborhood park, alongside your child.

There is no separation. The hand of abuse is everywhere. This has become your cause, too.

In honor of the foster siblings I so fiercely loved as a child. Because, friends, I whispered in their ears that I loved them, that I wanted to take away their pain. As a child, I held them close to me and cried many, many tears over them. They deserve this. They were lovely. In honor of their courage and fight, and my promise to them, I ask that you understand the importance of this topic.

Stand with me this month, friends. May our words and gained awareness be moved into diligent, life-changing action. May fierce, protective love be our heartbeat this month, and every month.

“They deserve a voice. Not a quiet, meek, timid, and reserved voice, but a resounding and reverberating cry for justice, for unconditional love and the right to live in safety and peace. Granted, that voice may not be their own, but they deserve to have someone embrace their cause and make sure it is heard. They deserve to be valued, to know that value and have it instilled in them. They deserve to internalize the truth that they are worth fighting for.” -Christine Erwin, The Middle Mom

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Kylee is a college student who is passionately pursuing a degree in Social Work while simultaneously learning what it means to be a big sister to kids from “hard places”.  Her parents jumped into the crazy world of foster care just days before her 8th birthday for numerous infants and toddlers over a ten year time span;  four of those children became permanent family members through adoption.  Kylee loves sharing about foster care and adoption and is passionate about advocating on behalf of vulnerable children on her blog Learning to Abandon.