Most of my friends own guns.

You see, I live in a rural area where surviving off the land is not only en vogue but it’s also part of the mountain heritage. People live here and move here for virtually one reason: to be close to nature. For some, this involves the seasonal ritual of obtaining your deer or big game tag, waking up early for mornings on end, slingling your rifle over your shoulder, and becoming one with the hunted. I’ve grown to believe that respectfully killing an animal as a means of providing a pure form of sustenance for your family completes the evolutionary circle of life. (And I secretly wish my husband—or someone in my family—hunted.)

But this is coming from a girl who grew up in middle-class suburbia and, coincidentally, seven miles southwest of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Sure, I had a few friends whose fathers hunted deer back then. But guns were mostly reserved for law enforcement in suburban Connecticut in the 80s. And as a carefree kid, I didn’t even give them a second thought.

But then I became an adult and along came Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and the 18-plus school shootings so far this year. So here I go, hopping on a bandwagon in an attempt to protect my kids and community from violence. I don’t view it as a political quest. For me, there’s no “taking sides” in this sort of thing. But like the hunted, I see it as a survival-of-the-fittest type of journey. And in order for our race to survive, we need to start using our brains.

Just the other day I asked my daughter, Olivia—who turns 12 next month—if she’d like to participate in the National School Walkout on March 14. I explained to her that the Women’s March Youth EMPOWER group is encouraging students, teachers, administrators, and parents to walk out of school for 17 minutes—one for every person killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkwood, Florida. And even though she’s very much aware of the incident—they’ve been talking about it in their classrooms and writing opinion pieces on it for almost two weeks now—she looked at me with that typical tween scoff and said she didn’t want to participate if she “was the only one doing it.”

So I’m enlisting Emma Gonzalez.

If you haven’t heard of her, I urge you to follow the #emmagonzalez feed on Instagram. But here’s the quick self-introduction she gave to Harper’s Bazaar Magazine two days ago: “My name is Emma Gonzalez. I’m 18 years old, Cuban, and bisexual. I’m so indecisive that I can’t pick a favorite color, and I’m allergic to 12 things. I draw, paint, crochet, sew, embroider—anything productive I can do with my hands while watching Netflix … But none of this matters anymore.” What matters now is: her friends are dead … and she is their voice.

On the days following the Valentine’s Day massacre, Gonzalez addressed a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale, class notes in hand and teachers by her side. Wiping back tears, she started her talk with a moment of silence for those most recently lost and said: “it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see.” While certainly, her argument for stricter gun control laws at an anti-gun rally was, no doubt, political.

“They say that a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS!”

But it came from a different place, one that most adults fail to recognize. It came from a kid who knows that the voices of kids matter. She didn’t care that she was “the only one” speaking out. And no matter what side of the fence you see yourself on, there’s no denying her speech was honorable. In fact, I have a hard time believing that any mother or father in her worldwide audience wouldn’t have been proud if she were their kid.

It takes a pretty special 18-year-old to speak up against the adults that are supposed to have her back. It takes integrity and the audacious grit of a passionate soul to fight for her peers. And it takes adults to listen and learn, really learn, that what we put on these kids, when the going gets tough, are really just adult issues. And it has to stop.

Take, for instance, writer Glennon Doyle Melton’s (momastery.com) recent article for Reader’s Digest where she outlines the strategy her son’s teacher uses for stopping school violence before it starts. She explains this teacher is “identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life.” And then she steps in and teaches them “how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, and how to share their gifts.” Melton calls it her Love Ninja strategy because instead of sloughing off those who, at a young age, are destined to fall through the cracks, she instead takes an all-inclusive plan to redirect the natural flow of development.

Now some could look at Gonzalez’s self-summary and say that maybe she’s an outcast—someone who “fell through the cracks” at a young age. But to this, I call BS!

As adults, we need to start realizing that all lives matter. We need to step back from our ideologies and “adult stuff” and learn how to connect as people who share a common goal. If we love and redirect the child who is cast out, if we make gun laws tougher so that automatic weapons can’t fall into the hands of those with mental illness, and if we teach our kids to stand up and speak for themselves and others—just like Emma Gonzalez did—then the decisions that we make together, as humans (not Democrats, Republicans, adults, or children) will be the right ones.

My children won’t remember a day when school shootings weren’t the norm. My third grader won’t remember a time when he didn’t participate in the annual lockdown drill at school. And as a mother, I won’t recall an instance when I dropped my kids off at school, knowing they were completely and utterly safe.

But what I can do is teach my daughter kindness, compassion, and to honor different points of view. And I will let my son know that all lives matter, even the one of the kid that wrecks his snow fort every day, when all he wants is to be included in the building process. I will teach them to embrace, rather than to walk away. And to use their words to invoke change, even if they’re the only one who’s speaking. But above all, I will be sure they know that even adults make mistakes; and while rules and laws serve a purpose and we must obey them, the same rules can only speak for the community when the community actually speaks.

I would never take a gun away from my responsible friends who use them to feed their families and to teach their kids a noble way of life. But the violence has to stop. As a mom, I’ve had enough!

So to the adults, I say, “Wake the ‘eff’ up!” The children are finally speaking.