The abduction of Jacob Wetterling from a gas station in small town Minnesota in the late 80s and the story of Adam Walsh’s abduction and subsequent murder in Florida in the early 80s color my childhood. Images from tv movies about Adam are burned into the fabric of my youth. News coverage about Jacob is in the permanent register of my then burgeoning adolescence — he and I are the same age. Time is quickly marching toward the 25th anniversary of the Wetterling abduction, which occured on October 22nd, 1989. Unlike the Walshes, the Wetterlings have no closure, no knowledge of what happened to their child (for those who aren’t aware, Adam Walsh’s decapitated head was found but never his body, and his father John, a victim’s rights advocate since his son’s murder, went on to host America’s Most Wanted). I cannot imagine the pain that the Wetterling (and Walsh) family feels, every day, and I hope that they have been able to find joy despite what’s happened to them.

In addition to this, particularly in light of several instances of parents being arrested and/or having their children taken away for allowing their children to play “unsupervised” in parks while they are at work, or sit in cars alone while they go to a job interview or do a little grocery shopping, I think about what effect these high-profile, horrible abductions had on my life. That is to say, they had almost no effect on my life at all, outside of empathy.

My parents didn’t raise me to be fearful. My parents didn’t ply their likely fear after these stories onto my upbringing. I had free run of the neighborhood, with boundaries. I was allowed to take my sister on walks to the Mister Donut down the street, six blocks or so away from our home. I was left home alone with my sister for 2–3 hours at a time by the time I was 9 years old. I was allowed to go with a gaggle of my friends to the pool for the whole day on my bike around the same age. I was babysitting two children half my age and a baby not much more than an infant most days of the summer when I was 13. I was left home alone for whole weekends, sometimes with my sister, by age 14. I was taught to ask questions, to be aware of my surroundings, to use my instincts and critical thinking to assess a situation. I was trained in CPR and what to do if a stranger or bad situation arose. But I was never taught to be afraid, and I was never taught that I wasn’t responsible enough to take care of myself, and my sister who is seven years my junior.

As a result, I am a pretty tough cookie. I am 36 years old, confident, assertive, and autonomous. I have lived in three metropolitan cities, and I travel regularly via Greyhound, alone. If someone hassles me in any avenue of my life, I am perfectly capable of dealing with the situation. The other night, I was leaving the bar nearly two miles from my home just shy of 3 a.m. and as I hugged my two male friends, who are loving, protective men, I told them I was walking home, so they would know. They didn’t tell me that I shouldn’t be walking alone, they didn’t tell me that I wasn’t strong enough to handle myself. They told me to be careful, knowing I would be.

I made it home safe, walking through areas that are both considered “safe” and “sketchy.” I bypassed people, I made eye contact with them, I smiled, I said hello. I made them aware of me as a human being. One of these people took my friendliness to mean I might be open to a little prostitution, “wanna make some money tonight?” but that was easy to dismiss with a glare and firm communication that that was not on the menu. I was never for a second worried that I was in any danger.

Most people are not out to get me, and they’re not out to get you, or your children. Most, and I mean, the great, vast majority, to the point that it is almost 100% of people. Yes, you always have to be on your toes, looking out for that .5% that does wanna assault you, rape you, slash your throat, lock you up in a basement, or just treat you with depraved indifference, but to be fearful is to not be a part of the world, and being fearful means you treat everyone as a threat, which is no way to live. The only people who have ever hurt me in a lasting, damaging way, 100% of the time, were people who were entrusted with my care, or whom I had come to trust. Not once has it been some random on the street. It happens, of course it happens, but it is statistically incredibly unlikely.

So I worry. I worry very, very much about people who do not trust their children to take care of themselves and I worry about a society that increasingly says they shouldn’t be trusted to do so, punishing their parents who DO trust them, with incarceration and the removal of their kids. The assertion that a child playing in a park, where there are adults present, or nearby, is “unsupervised,” is false. If I, or the great majority of the adults I know, are in a park, at a beach, in a mall, or in any other place where there are young people about, no matter if those children are already supervised by some kind of caretaker, if I am in charge of one of these children, two, or none of them, if I’m by myself, with a group of friends, my family, those kids are being supervised. By me, by us. That any adult would shriek at the irresponsibility of another adult in this situation makes me sick.

It takes a village. We are all responsible. If I was spending the day at the pool with my sister and three friends, there were always adults present, I was not for a second “unsupervised.” If my parents were out of town for the weekend, the neighbors knew, my friends’ parents knew. I was never less than 100 feet from an adult I could go to, and never less than a phone call away from help. Any child in a park is supervised, by you. Acting as if it’s not your responsibility to care for those who are vulnerable in your midst, as an adult human taking part in a civilized society, is what’s negligent. Raising your children to believe they do not have the agency to care for themselves, or be fallible, and figure out the safest course of action is a really good way to fulfill your fear of all those “bad people” out there that are out to get your kids — if you never teach them to trust themselves or to take care of themselves, they are vulnerable to precisely that which you are “protecting” them from.

Again, my heart goes out to the Walsh and Wetterling family, and all the families who have missing children, everywhere. There is nothing those families could have done to prevent what happened to them, and I hope they realize that.

If you think you have seen a missing child, dial 1–800-THE LOST. For more information, visit http://www.missingkids.com/home