All day long, I’ve been thinking of Karly. Thinking about all the life she missed out on. Thinking of the beautiful young woman she would be. The joy she’d take in celebrating her 24th birthday.

Even at three, she had goals.

She wanted to grow up and work in an office building like her daddy.

She was wise beyond her years. Delightful and impish.

Today while cleaning some files I happened across a note from a woman in Mississippi who read A Silence of Mockingbirds and wrote to me afterwards:

Oregon’s Karly’s Law was designed to protect other children from suffering the same fate as Karly. Tragically, we continue to fail children in the state of Oregon and across this nation. More than 20 children in Oregon died in 2025 as a result of child abuse/neglect.

Years ago I received a phone call from a woman who worked with the Department of Health and Human Services. She’d had a dream, or a premonition, or something. I can’t recall the exact details. This was a woman I had met only briefly before and at the time of her call, I was tending to my mother who was very ill. What I remember of the call is that she had a “message” for me from Karly. She wanted me to know that Karly was glad that her story was being read, and that people were learning about the ways in which they could help prevent child abuse.

I thanked the woman, whose name I’ve long forgotten, and returned to caring for my mother. I didn’t know what to make of the phone call or the woman’s intuition. But today as I sat at my desk, where I keep a picture of a joyful Karly, I thought of that woman and her phone call, and I prayed that more of us would pay attention to the children in our lives.

They need us to see them, to hear them, to be present with them. They need us to speak up for them. If we don’t advocate for them, who will?

And it doesn’t matter if it’s the children of Gaza or Venezuela or in our very own neighborhoods, or our very own homes.

We owe children everywhere a safer world than the one they are now living in.

Karen Spears Zacharias is author A Silence of Mockingbirds: The Story Behind Karly’s Law.