The importance of children

I'm not a mother, and this is a very good thing for unsuspecting embryos everywhere. I would, by every known metric of motherhood, absolutely blow at it. ("Sweet pea? Mommy's writing a poem. If you're going to bongo-drum the hot plate, please do it quietly.") It is not my intention ever to inflict my matrimonial shitshow on another human being. I am daily grateful to live at a time in history where I have that choice.

At the same time, the greatest influence throughout my life has been my mother, and nothing I have ever done, nor will ever do, is more important than the various times I have taught children to read. To support and inspire a child is to see light carried into the future.

I recently learned of a particularly sweaty and high-stakes day in 1965 for the late Richard N. Goodwin, a speechwriter to President Lyndon B. Johnson. As recalled by Goodwin's wife, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, President Johnson's intention was to push for a voting rights bill only in 1966, after some time had passed since the landmark accomplishment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Johnson's politically pragmatic thinking was that changes were more likely to be accepted if they were administered piecemeal, over time. Then came March 7th, 1965, and the brutal attack by Alabama state troopers on the Selma civil rights march led by Martin Luther King. TV footage of the violence was beamed into the nation's living rooms and prompted widespread outrage. Johnson recognized this was a moment to meet political necessity with political audacity. He gave Goodwin one day to write a speech calling for a voting rights bill – not sometime in the future but now. Cue: that particularly sweaty and high-stakes day in 1965 for speechwriter Goodwin.

With a hard 6pm deadline, Goodwin put his watch in a drawer, and got to work on the speech that we now know as Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" speech. The eponymous refrain - "We shall overcome" - did not come to Goodwin until he took a cigar break outside and faintly heard children singing. The song was "We Shall Overcome", a gospel song from African American folk tradition that had, in the prior twenty years, been popularized as a civil rights anthem. Stirred by the childsong, Goodwin carried those words back into his office and rounded out his speech with them.

Now considered one of the greatest Presidential speeches of all time, Johnson's "We Shall Overcome" speech of March 15, 1965 is also popularly regarded as the apogee of the bloody and punishing African-American-led campaign for a voting rights bill. On August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in the presence of Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders.

I love this story because of the truth it captures. Children, whether singing in the distance or simply looking at us with the steadfast moral logic of their innocence, summon the best in us.

My next marathon, I run for children.

Marine Corps Marathon 2026

On October 25th, 2026, I'll be heading to Arlington, Virginia, for the Marine Corps Marathon 2026, the third largest marathon in the United States.

Fittingly for the country's 250th birthday, the course (map here) passes many of the DC landmarks you've likely seen in Presidential kidnapping/alien invasion movies.

Here's the route as described by the Marine Corps itself: "Runners begin between the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery, continue through Rosslyn, and cross into the District to tour Georgetown and the National Mall before 'beating the bridge.' The course then returns to Arlington, passing the Pentagon, winding through Crystal City, and finishing uphill (yes—uphill!) at the Marine Corps War Memorial."

The CHLA (Children's Hospital Los Angeles)

I'll be raising money for The Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).

Located in East Hollywood, the CHLA is a nation-leading provider of acute care for children and a frontline institution in pediatric research. It's a premier teaching hospital too, affiliated with the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC).

The hospital is striking for its open and vibrant facade, with its initials mounted on enormous toy bricks at the threshold. The primary colors of its logo are splashed everywhere, and an oversized plushie bear towers in hug stance by the welcome canopy.

I have known of the CHLA for many years, but the hospital came most vividly to my attention last March, when I was heading on foot along Sunset toward Silver Lake. I heard the melange of laughter of kids at play, the kind you hear during recess, and I was confused because I didn't think there was an elementary school along here. Then I realized that the joy was bubbling over from the concealed play area near the hospital entrance, topped for shade with giant flowers and butterflies in those logo primary colors. This was kids at play in a hospital.

That was the moment I fell in love with the CHLA. I loved it for overturning the idea that a hospital is a place of suffering; that to be in pain, as so many of the kids here must surely be, precludes all other emotions. Here was a hospital rejecting the tyranny of pain, and demonstrating that a place of recovery can be a place of everyday abandon too. When sickness invades childhood, the CHLA will fight back and keep as much of that childhood as uncorrupted as possible. That's what standing on Sunset, in the wash of that hospital laughter, said to me.

Read the CHLA's full mission statement here.

Images of the hospital facade, captured by Zoe Marie Bel in June 2026.

Some of the children you'll be helping

To see examples of faces whose renewed glow has been made possible by donations before yours, visit the CHLA's patient stories feature.

Reading these stories, I am reminded that to choose to endure pain for a few hours, then receive a medal for it, is in fact a position of enormous privilege. For these kids, the pain is not a choice, and there is no medal. There's simply the chance to live with the freedom and opportunity that other children, including the child I was myself, take for granted.

Please consider giving whatever you can spare, so that kids like Catalina, Beckett and Ella can someday too run 26.2 miles around the nation's capital. For them, it will be far from the hardest thing they have ever done.

Sincerely,

Zoe Marie Bel