“Let Them Breathe” — And Other Things Strangers Have Said To Me That Were Absolutely None Of Their Business

Immigrant. Stay-at-home mom of four. Former member of the rice-with-everything survival diet. I write about travel, family, and the beautiful chaos of living between two very different worlds — including the moments nobody talks about but everybody who looks like me already knows.

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This was 2021. COVID was still very much a thing and we were being careful — especially with my youngest who was barely a year old at the time.

We’re not Christian but there was an event at a local church and the whole family decided to go. One of those rare moments where everybody’s out of the house, dressed, and actually in a good mood at the same time. If you have four kids you know how often that happens.

We wore masks. We wore masks everywhere at that point. Not because someone forced us. Because we had a baby, because we were careful, because that’s what responsible people do when there’s a global pandemic and a one year old in the house who can’t advocate for himself.

We parked in front of the church. I’m doing what I always do — managing four kids getting out of a van simultaneously, which if you’ve never done it is basically like herding cats except the cats have opinions and somebody always loses a shoe.

My kids stepped out onto the sidewalk. Masks on. Minding their business.

And this woman walking by — with her husband, pushing their own kid in a stroller — looked at my children and said it.

“Let them breathe.”

here are the masks we used and yes I still have them in stock just in case I wonder how she feels about it if she knew not that I give a hoot lol.

Just like that. Casual. Tossed out while walking past like she was commenting on the weather.

I stood there for a second. Genuinely could not process what I just heard.

Then I turned to her and said “Excuse me? What did you just say? Mind your own business.”

She kept walking.

Of course she did.

And I stood there holding it — the anger, the disbelief, the mental list of everything I wanted to say but didn’t because I had four kids watching me and a baby on my hip and a church event we were supposed to be enjoying.

Here’s what I wish I could have said calmly and clearly in that moment:

You don’t know me. You don’t know my children. You don’t know if one of my kids has a compromised immune system. You don’t know if someone in our family is immunocompromised. You don’t know what we’ve been through or what we’re protecting against. You know absolutely nothing about us except what you saw in a two second glance — and what you saw was a mom taking care of her kids.

That’s it. That’s all you saw.

And you decided that was enough information to offer your opinion out loud to a complete stranger.

The part that gets me most isn’t even the comment itself. It’s the confidence. The complete and total confidence that her opinion about my children’s masks was something I needed to hear. That she was doing me a favor. That I would benefit from her two word assessment of my parenting choices.

Let them breathe.

My kids were breathing just fine, thank you.

It’s the entitlement that lives in that moment. The assumption that she had the right to say it, that I would receive it, and that there would be no consequence for saying it to a stranger’s face in front of a church.

And the wildest part? We were standing in front of a church.

I’m not going to make assumptions about who she voted for or what she believed. I don’t actually know that. What I do know is what she said, how she said it, and the fact that she felt completely comfortable saying it.

I think about all the things I could have said back. All the calm, articulate, devastating responses that only come to you an hour later in the shower.

But in the moment I had four kids, a baby, and approximately zero patience left.

So I said what I said. She kept walking. And I stood there on the sidewalk in front of a church carrying the weight of a comment that cost her absolutely nothing to make.

That’s the part nobody talks about. It’s not just the comment. It’s the weight you carry after. The replaying. The second guessing. The wondering if you handled it right, if you should have said more, if saying anything at all made it worse.

She doesn’t carry any of that. She walked away and probably forgot about it before she reached the parking lot.

I’m writing about it four years later.