You don’t always know you’ve been poisoned. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt. Sometimes it just slows you down, clouds your thinking, and makes you believe the problem is you.

That’s what lead does.

It doesn’t scream. It seeps. It settles in your bones and by the time it’s found, it’s already been passed on. It’s in the bloodstream of your children, in the rules of your neighborhood, in the fear you feel when you imagine doing things differently.

We’ve been poisoned.

Not just our bodies but our belief systems. We were told this is just how it is…

That some neighborhoods stay neglected.

That some voices never get heard.

That certain kinds of people don’t belong at the table.

That change is dangerous.

That hope is naive.

And we drank that up.

From childhood. From church. From city hall. From cable news. From school boards and homeowners’ associations and interstate billboards reminding us who’s really in charge.

All that poison in our policies, our paperwork, our polite smiles.

But here’s the thing about lead…

It doesn’t belong.

It’s not part of who we are.

It’s a contaminant.

An invader.

A lie, embedded in the plumbing of our lives.

So maybe it’s time we treat it that way.

Not with panic.

But with replacement.

We dig up the old lines. We hold the ones who installed them accountable. We protect the next generation from the poison we tolerated.

And we stop calling that poison tradition and start flushing out that poison.

We believe better isn’t a fantasy; it’s a choice.

Lead poisoning taught us how quiet harm can be. How long injustice can live in the walls before anyone notices. But it also taught us how strong we are when we finally stop pretending everything’s fine.

check the lines.

notice the symptoms.

tell the truth.

say; no, that’s the way it was, not the way it is.

make believe better.