Goldie Hawn has shared the heartbreaking moment she watched a nuclear war film as an 11-year-old to share the importance of making sure today's generation of children are getting help with the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The award-winning actress has been left discouraged over mental health statistics among children, particularly teenage boys, and has called on the US government to do more to help "children understand the chemical reactions that occur in their mind when they scroll through TikTok or listen to the latest horrifying statistic or headline on the evening news gives them the patience and confidence to put things in perspective".
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"My eyes were riveted to the screen, but I can remember only a few of the horrors that flashed before us: blaring sirens, cities reduced to rubble, screaming mothers with babies crying in their arms, splattered blood and camera pans over endless fields of destruction," she wrote of her memories in 1956 as a child in school watching a training film about the dangers of nuclear war.
"Generations of children have had to face this dread in many forms: The kids who watched the Challenger space shuttle disaster on live television in the 1980s; young people who saw America come under attack on 9/11; and particularly in the COVID-19 era, where children, their parents and their grandparents are all under real and immediate threat from a plague that has killed millions and isolated so many from the friends, family and support structures that all humans depend on for perspective, encouragement and love."
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Goldie, who in 2003 founded Mind UP, the signature program of The Goldie Hawn Foundation, helping children develop the mental fitness needed to thrive, suggested in the opinion editorial for USA Today that "we are in the midst of a national trauma that could very well surpass 9/11 and approach the heightened terror of the Cold War years," with the pandemic leaving kids "afraid of people, spaces, even the air around them – a level of constant fear not seen in decades."
"When I saw those images of nuclear holocaust, I didn’t need a hospital visit. I needed someone to talk to, someone who could help me reason and harness the emotions that had almost immobilized me," she concluded.
Goldie was praised for her piece
"We will survive the COVID-19 pandemic, but I’m not sure we can survive an entire generation whose collective trauma sends them hobbling into adulthood. We need more research, more preventative care and more early intervention."
Mom-of-two Goldie was praised by many for the piece, including Meghan McCain who shared the story with her followers.
"Thank you for speaking up on behalf of our children, I have 3 teenagers that have been through the last 2 years and it’s evident the toll this has taken. Thank you," tweeted one fan as another shared: "Thank you for using your power of persuasion to advocate for our children."
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