Very unlikely that any girl child born in the eastern Caribbean will be named Irma or Maria, not for a long time to come. No way! Not after those two hurricanes flattened so many islands in the eastern Caribbean.

What about the Jamaican mother who was recorded beating her girl-child with a machete? She was her own hurricane, doing equally as much damage.

We have heard beware the wrath of a woman, but seldom is the rage contextualized, analyzed through female lens, interpreted as patriarchal aberration, filtered through gender equity and justice.

Global warming is real, and we have been told for years to be mindful, to live with, and on mother earth with more regard for her welfare, what we use, how we use resources, and, more importantly, how we care for her, the homage and respect we pay to her.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria devasted much of the eastern Caribbean and the Jamaica mother stripped to only her under-pant, slapping her child with the machete, that was recorded and not a single voice of protest was heard from those observing in the tenament compound in which she resides. This silence speaks volumes to how far removed we are from our pain and anguish, how separated we are from nature, how dormant is our intutive knowing of rightness, and how unflinching and raging we are like Irma and Maria.

While we can see and bemoan the destruction that hurri-canes Irma and Maria left behind, all too often we cannot readily see the obliteration and emotional and psychological scar that was that mother before she began beating her daughter, and that is now the daughter’s and that the daughter will inevitable pass on to her chidlren, unless she is educated out of her pain, and stops to be reflective and mindful that all violence does is destroy; it never corrects and it certainly does not lead to healing or peaceful resolution.

This issue invites us to look at how gender justice, which is human justice can help to heal all of us, as well as our relation-ship with the environment, which just might make the future a little safer for all of us.

I ask for collective healing for all of us from hurricanes Irma and Maria, and I ask for healing for that Jamaican mother and daughter and the entire community that was witness to such cruel rage.