AN OPEN LETTER TO TAYLOR SWIFT

Taylor –

Your Swifties need you. You’ve said it best yourself: Words matter. No one seems to know that more than you. “Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together.”

You have a voice, a huge platform, a gazillion adoring fans who hang on your every word. And yet, in a time of deep pain, it’s crickets...

At a time when there is so much confusion and sadness in schools and universities across the world, you don’t speak out. You don’t speak up. Your silence, when the world is in turmoil, is deafening.

As a mother, who has happily travelled across multiple state lines to see you perform, who knows first-hand the joy and glee your presence and existence inspires, who has witnessed great unity and experienced vast feelings of connection in your stands, who has made all the bracelets, dressed all the eras, and most of all, supported my kids' obsessive and expensive habits of adoring you and finding strength through your music, I am frustrated.

Your words have power; they have lit up the world.

But now, I am very disappointed. The kids might not see the forest through the trees, but we, the moms, do. The kids might not know that they need to hear your voice, but we, the moms, do.

You are not a child yourself – you are a 34-year-old woman with one of the largest platforms in the world, who has already rallied millions of people to connect in the face of heartbreak, cruelty and injustice, but you cannot speak up against hate; you remain silent on a heinous terrorist attack that took place at a music festival where reveling teenagers were raped, kidnapped and murdered.

It’s time for a minute to stop acting like a Barbie girl living in Barbie world and make a statement about the real world. The kids are always listening, even if they are only hearing your loud silence.

Your demographic is impressionable. You know they don’t want answers, you’ve always known that – but they want to feel understood and validated, like they aren't alone in the overwhelming confusion.

Say something. It’s the responsible thing to do.

Now, more than ever, is the time to use your voice, to model empathy and not indifference.

Please, Taylor, be fearless.