From the Editor: November/December 2025

When I was a kid, each time I watched Darth Vader dying in Return of the Jedi, I’d feel a moment of tenderness for the pale, mangled face that emerged from the mask, when Vader got to truly see his son for the first and last time. Still, as a child in the 80s with just the original three films to go on, I didn’t much care to understand Vader any more than that. He was a bad guy, a villain who terrified me, with only a modicum of humanity left, with which he saved his son. And then he was gone.

In my time as a parent, Star Wars has become a household mainstay. I’ve become a full-on Star Wars nerd, happy to discuss Ahsoka Tano, Saw Guerrera, Ziro the Hutt, and whatever it is we’re calling canon. When my kid was three, we started reading the Star Wars Little Golden Books. We read them in timeline order—from the prequels through The Force Awakens. I was fascinated by my kid’s fascination with Anakin Skywalker, who would become Darth Vader. She came to understand Anakin as a precocious child whose tragic experiences and induction into the cult of the Jedi Order eventually led him toward embracing the dark side. She empathized with him; she knew that he was misunderstood, fallible, and evil all at once. The only thing she’s never understood is the romance between Anakin and Padmé, a dynamic we agree is totally gross.

For her fourth birthday, we organized “Darth Vader’s Tea Party,” inviting kids to wear their favorite costume. In our rural Kansas town, they came to the party as Iron Man, Doc McStuffins, Elsa and Anna, a Hulk or two. My kid—with her Vader mask, cape, and lightsaber—strolled in to the Imperial March. The kids were confused; the adults giggled with delight. Apple juice in teacups, cake, Darth Vader piñata, and, later, vomit confettied over the bedroom wall, which we could attribute to the stomach virus working its way through town.

My kid loved Vader because she wanted to know his deal, because she had curiosity, and because what she found and continues to find is that people are complex. Most people can be understood in some way; some make piss-poor choices and are still loving and loved; others are sociopaths, fascists, mass murderers. The continuously woven narrative of Anakin Skywalker is a persistent question about what it means to tangle with the more terrible among us.

What do we do with anti-human humans? Once I became a mother, I began to understand that I have fewer answers than ever to such questions. For a while, at least, I had Emperor Palpatine to despise until one day my kid said, “Wait. How did Palpatine get so mean? What do you think his childhood was like? I want to know his story.” 

I couldn’t tell her that I don’t super duper care about Palpatine, who’s willing to allow so much suffering for an ounce more power, a man who never sought redemption even in his final breaths. After all, I harbor shreds of understanding for Anakin Skywalker. Yet, outside the fictional universe, I can’t say I’m interested in things such as flying the flag at half-mast for a slain man who thought that women should submit to husbands or that Black Americans would be better off if still enslaved. At what point are people so lost that we need to stop trying to understand them, or to engage in whatever it is we’re defining as civility? As a mother, I feel as if I’m on a constant search for these complicating kernels of truth. They’re easy to lose.

It’s easy to lose track of anything but absolutes in the dystopic, unrelenting binary logic that’s seemingly overtaken the United States. I drafted this in October, repulsed by the brutality of ICE as I watched the governor and people of my home state oppose the invasion of Chicago. I revised this in November as 42 million people lost food assistance in a country that could easily feed every single person. I proofread this a few days after the 2025 election, with its steady glimmers of local hope. By the time you read this, I don’t know what will have happened.

Writing is always behind. We turn words this way and that; we review them for accuracy and pop. Writing is where we make sense of what has happened and what may be. Writing is a space to take accountability, to assign an agent for the mistakes and heartbreak of the world. If we learn nothing else from these times, it is the simple reminder that language and writing are more powerful than many people would like to admit. When we talk about specific groups of people as vermin, when we allow such language to permeate, we accept murder, oppression, and the screwed-up logics of eugenics and white supremacy. When we realize that none of this is hard to understand, then we must truly face the reality of shitbag humans as a part of life. 

Perhaps I’m too obsessed with the Star Wars universe and the complicated questions it’s brought to my mothering. I know the franchise is a big old moneymaker, but this space opera reminds me to bolster my values, stick to my beliefs, and stand firm against damaging shifts in language, which shapes action. Immersing myself in this universe has somehow helped me prepare for the consequences of ethical resistance with love in my heart. 

Love, not hope. On inauguration day, we interviewed National Book Award winner and Palestinian poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha on Literary Mama’s podcast. Khalaf Tuffaha critiqued kneejerk platitudes on hope, the kind that have pervaded Star Wars since Princess Leia’s classic plea to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hope is not enough, and Khalaf Tuffaha would rather we replace it with love; as she says on the podcast, “Love is an action.” And love is a commitment: it’s far grittier than hope. In “My Dungeon Shook,” James Baldwin writes that “people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” To be committed is to act with love.

As words and stories are undermined in the name of violence and oppression, I’m going to cheer on a pop culture phenomenon that reminds us that small acts of resistance matter and reverberate over time, that most people are their best selves when they have not only something worth fighting for but also allies and accomplices to collaborate with, and, most importantly, that the Empire never really wins, as long as we are prepared to hold it accountable, time and time again. 

We keep plugging on with this journal because we understand that motherhood shifts and transforms over time, generations, zeitgeists, and regimes. Motherhood is a microcosm of the complicated world, and, thus, its powerful stories are not only infinite but also hold us accountable. Mamas and mama supporters, if you’re worried but resolved to do better for everyone, you’re in the right place. And we’re right here with you. Let’s all keep writing, reading, and thinking. And let us act with love.