a moment

I know I need to write tonight, but I just don't have anything to put out there that is at all interesting or uplifting or thoughtful. I think I'm stuck in what I call "situational muck". It isn't as if nothing is happening. Things are happening. Lots of good stuff percolating, but despite it all I'm a bit sad tonight. So rather than spew sadness here, I'll instead leave you with a poem I read tonight titled Happiness by Raymond Carver. It's a glimpse into a moment so palpable we can taste it. I witnessed one the other morning as I watched a man with his child cross the street. He put his hand up to traffic and gently shepherded her across. The adoration I witnessed in that 15 second occurrence was as pure as anything I've ever seen.

Happiness by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Perspectives of a Movement

Book Announcement

The United States Social Forum

Perspectives of a Movement

Edited by the USSF Book Committee:

Marina Karides, Walda Katz-Fishman, Rose M. Brewer,

Jerome Scott, and Alice Lovelace

This is a remarkable and full account of the first US Social Forum, held in Atlanta, Georgia in the summer of 2007. More than 12,000 people attended from across the U.S. and the world, taking part in workshops, plenaries and other gatherings. The book is both a history of the event and a how-to manual for organizing for the future.

Another World is Possible, Another US is Necessary!

Read the volume that captures the organizing process of the first US Social Forum, including strategies and reflections of the organizers, speakers, and participants that made the USSF a monumental event for grassroots organizing.

Order directly from the publisher:

http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker

Changemaker Publications

Softcover, 369 pages, $25

ISBN: 978-0-557-32373-9

that woman

I'm not sure I know how to have fun anymore, and I wonder if I've turned into that woman: super complicated with ridiculously impossible standards. A woman with a clamorous conscience and waning tolerance for casual encounters, social ignorance, and inflated egos. Or maybe I'm just cranky and tired of winter and need some damn sunshine. Some freedom. Some balance.

I want to go on a picnic. I want to spread out on a blanket of green grass or a beach of white sand. Lying there, I'd sip on a bottle of prosecco and feel the bubbles spark on my tongue and giggle like a child at the tickle of it. Unearthed from layers of winter, my bare shoulders would become pink with sun, my cheeks warm, my nose freckled. And beside me will lay a stack of poetry from Neruda or Whitman or Rilke. Or perhaps even someone reading Neruda to me (in Spanish. It is so much better in Spanish.). And for a few hours, desires outside of the now would cease. Expectations would be met. Intimacy with the world around me tangible. And I would have fun.

Sigh. Want to come?

Ted Sizer

I'm so late in writing about this, but I recently read on Deborah Meier's website that education-reform advocate and founder of the Essential Schools movement, Ted Sizer, died this past October. While I was in graduate school and encountering my first inklings of educational resistance, I hungrily inhaled anything written by Sizer. His position that schools should discard one-size-fits-all models of educating children seemed like basic common sense to me; I was always a bit surprised when someone critiqued him as "radical". I mean what is radical about collaboration, democracy, trust, and depth of understanding?

His death is an unmeasurable loss. I'll leave you with the inspiration of his words:

“Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.”

a feast

"On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath."
- Colette

Tonight, I choose to live the dream - a colorful world of good food, better friends, a safe home, love, delectable kisses from children, laughter with teenagers. Tonight, I'm feasting on it all.

landslide

I've been thinking an awful lot about landslides lately. And changing. And reflections. I heard this on my way to work this morning; it made me feel someone was listening. Enjoy it.




Stevie Nicks in Australia 2006

it's the fear

I lied a little, you know, in my last post. It does take a lot to make me happy - if a lot means truth, passion, risk, intellectual stimulation, friendship, laughter, love. I imagine those of you who know me well snorted a little when I wrote it doesn't take much to make me happy. Much indeed. I wish it were as easy as a damn Bird of Paradise.

Lately, letting go is excruciatingly hard. Just when I think I’m fully facing forward something shifts in my atmosphere, and I’m hovering again in the past. It isn’t just the guilt from drastically altering two lives in ways they’d rather not have altered – although there is that. It isn’t even the awareness of awaking alone most mornings this past year – although there is that, too. It isn’t doubt or financial ruin or residual anger or disappointment or self-judgment– I mean the fallout from those certainly nest inside but isn’t causing this latest strain. I think maybe it is the fear. Fear of being wrong again. And fear that I’ll have dragged myself and my ex and our little one through this massive, painful change only to have our lives different but not necessarily better. What if mine is the only one better? What then?

I want to believe that divorce doesn’t invalidate a decade’s worth of choices – of feelings and declarations and struggles that might have been fruitless but were waged nonetheless. I’d like to be able to believe I can move forward with lightness provided from my past rather than this heaviness that is sitting on me now. I’d like to believe I won’t repeat the same mistakes, but right now – today – I am uncertain, and the limitless future that usually excites is instead looming large. Scarily large.

they make me happy

www.flickr.com

It really doesn't take much to make me happy, and since I've been sick (hence the silence this past week), I figured a picture of my favorite flower couldn't hurt - and maybe it would make you happy, too!

the girl inside

Some days I feel more divorced than others. Some days I feel so much like a mother first and a sexy woman last that it takes everything I have in me not to succumb to a self-indulgent crawl beneath my sheets and disappear forever. And on days like that, I do two things: I welcome my warrior poses, and I pull out the poetry. This one by Lucille Clifton is rather fitting.


There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

-Lucille Clifton

tribute to Zinn at Busboys and Poets 2/15/10

Here is wonderful coverage of the memorial to Howard Zinn held at Busboys and Poets yesterday.

I miss knowing he is in the world.

she'll understand

Someday, when she once again asks "why?", I'll be able to show my daughter this poem, and she will understand:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

protecting the circle

I saw a link today on Racialicious to a collection of writings by Canadian men titled Protecting the Circle: Aboriginal Men Ending Violence Against Women. It's uplifting - and necessary - to have men commit to ending violence against women. The organizations who put the collection together have invited people to share. You can read it here.

this too shall pass

Sometimes there are nights (like tonight) after long days and tears and tantrums when instead of hot tea and irreverent literature, I'd like to spend time with an actual adult who can hold me and whom I can hold. Someone who can either make me laugh or let me cry, or if I can do neither will maybe just lie next to me so I can feel his heat. But out of my available options, there just isn't anyone good enough, so I am going to close my eyes and stuff my dream box with the words this too shall pass.

security

“Security isn’t what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection. I hunger for good sex.”

Last month, Deborah Solomon published a Q&A with Eve Ensler in the New York Times Magazine. For the record: I think Eve is brilliant. The Vagina Monologues was amazing, and I am sure her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World will be equally spectacular. I can’t wait to read it. What struck me the most about the Q&A, however, was her quote above, which is a powerfully concise example of what I think many of us are feeling but can’t necessarily articulate.

I know I’m not looking for what our society considers security (perhaps if security were defined as infallible human rights…but it isn’t in most contexts, and for the sake of this post, let’s define it differently): freedom from danger, risk, or anxiety. I have no judgment for people who are, but my question is this: if danger, risk, and anxiety are dichotomous – and I think they are – what happens to the other aspects we can’t always see? Because I know for me the hidden element in danger is exhilaration. In risk, it is the possibility. In anxiety, the catalyst. Without those, I’m not sure I’d be alive - or much use to anyone else let alone to myself. If those are absent and what is left is called security, well, no thanks.

Change. Connection.

My daughter and I share a house with my best friend and her teenage daughters. One of them is fifteen - an age that is also dichotomous. An age when what lies ahead are endless chances to change the world yet also filled with angst from just as many absent connections. It's an age when taking the risks necessary to follow dreams means exposing oneself without the safety net and perspective of maturity and experience. And for many young women like my friend's daughter, it is a time of freedom but one with much isolation and few allies. As I observe her struggling to develop an identity, to define her wants and needs, and to set her personal limits, I'm frequently reminded that for anyone for whom developing a consciousness matters, the process is universal and cyclical. The questions she asks at fifteen are the same I ask over and over at thirty-four and the same ones my friends in their sixties still ponder. And yes, it might be risky to ask them. Yes, the answers at one stage may come easily only to prove painfully inadequate at another. Yes, at times, we may find ourselves without them - without even hope we'll ever know them or imagine knowing them again. But what does a life look like without them? Safe? Serene? Still? Empty... Shallow...

For me, I can't do it. As uncomfortably complicated as my world is when I question and challenge and push to make things different, it isn't shallow. If anything, the depth taunts me. It threatens to drown me when I get tired of trying to stay afloat. But perhaps drowning in it isn't as dangerous as it is scary - isn't as detrimental as it is unfamiliar. Perhaps surrendering to the process could bring ease or respite. Isn't it that ease that loosens everything just enough to allow in a connection? To welcome change?

Security? No, thanks. I hunger for more.

What about you?

leaving behind

A sense that there is something you forgot, something missing that used to make you happy and has somehow been left behind. That often happens when you move on to the latest promises and developments and inadvertently leave the reasons you used to have fun in cold storage.

This is the beginning of my horoscope today, and oh how true it is. Even in the thick of the exciting possibilities surrounding me, a slight unease invades and that inescapable grief lurks in the background. Even while meeting new people - people who might someday be important to me - I feel an emptiness at a fundamental level.

Moving on to new promises and opportunities is beautiful. It is the only way to move forward, to seek a new life. It is cleansing and vibrant and fresh - much like a bracing breath of outside air after leaving a hospital sickroom. But in order for something to cleanse, something or someone - or someones - must be left behind. And it is the leaving behind that stings.

crystallizing

After meeting w/Chicago community organizers today in a brainstorming session for the US Social Forum in Detroit this summer, I'm left with the spoken word of resistance, the community of revolution. Everything I'm hearing is poetry: global, collective consciousness convergence, active analysis, movement, justice.
 
I feel like I'm home, and I know why I'm here - in Chicago - now.

It's beautiful.

Get involved. Wherever you are.

because

it's grey, snowing, and cold as hell outside, and I need a reminder that springtime and sunshine aren't going to desert us:

filled up

I fell madly in love with the twenty 6-8 year olds I taught in hip-hop yoga tonight. The implicit, immediate trust they laid at my feet left me breathless. Their joy in movement, their ability to embrace every second I gave them with pure, honest love leaves me wondering when does all that makes us whole as a child leave us? At precisely what point in our children's lives do the absences and inequities begin to splinter their existence? And if we know moments like today exist all day in different schools all over the world, why can't we provide? Why can't we stop labeling "special needs" and "at-risk" and "under-performing" and just capture the potential they exude out of every pore in their little bodies. Why can't we stop blaming the parents and the neighborhoods and the communities cradling those neighborhoods and instead take collective responsibility for our children? They are there. They are here. waiting for us.

disequilibrium

It's happened again. And my insides are shifting and tumbling over themselves trying to make sense of it. The problem with intellectual growth is the disequilibrium that makes you question everything you've done, everything you've been till now. Someone once used the metaphor of a underground garage: just when you think you can see the bottom, you discover another level.

I'm there.

I went to a conference a few months ago and attended a session facilitated by the author of the blog Race Has Nothing to do with You, a brilliant academic with the voice of a poet. Only another accustomed to wandering alone in this educational desert we've created could fathom the joy in finding a companion somewhere along the journey. And even though I don't know him personally, I am quite intimate with his anger, the derision, the sadness, the hope, the urge to get it all out there in poetry or prose, the danger, the desire.

It's bubbling, my mind. My heart, it's bleeding. I'm thinking about how one stays without staying the same. how one leaves without retreating. how one helps when every inauthentic voice tries to smother the flames of hope. how one lends space for creation instead of reiteration. how one loves through loss. how one learns through trauma. I'm thinking about my students and my child and me. I'm thinking about connection and recognition and value and hope and wondering how it all fits together - how it can't fit together in isolation, and how I don't want to be in isolation anymore.

a dream

I want to go here.

americans who tell the truth

One of my favorite (and recently rediscovered) websites/projects is Americans Who Tell the Truth. The project includes collections of portraits, quotes, and a traveling exhibit. The website includes a curriculum and education blog. Seriously - the lessongasms I had after reading them were quite intense.

Someday I hope to have a personal library/study with overstuffed chairs bathed in sunlight streaming through tall windows. On the walls will be portraits of these amazing people - and some blank spaces for those who come next.

Howard Zinn

The news that Howard Zinn died today saddens me beyond belief. Yes, he was 87, but he wasn't finished. His teaching was/is never finished. I just saw him a few months ago, and he was sharp and alive and smart...god, he was smart. I'll treasure the memory of sitting in the balcony overlooking him on the stage below...in the limelight, for sure, but seeking no power, no accolades. Interested only in the stories - of the people.

Here is the link to the article in the NY Times.

Update:

Here are a few more links of folks paying tribute to Zinn:

Socialist Worker
The Free Press
Democracy Now

These words (also quoted in Socialist Worker's tribute) are particularly meaningful to me as we struggle to determine our course in the face of such national and global destruction. We could always look to Zinn for inspiration - for tips on how to maintain hope and persevere through the darkness. We still can with these words:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of the world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

a writer's heart is always breaking

Writer Alice Walker recently wrote this on her blog:

A writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart, is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world; more mysterious, beloved, insane and precious for the sparkling and jagged edges of the smaller enclosure we have escaped.

 It speaks to me. You?

a break from wading

My fairly new laptop crashed, and as such my blogging time has been sliced to pieces. Here are a few things I'm doing while I'm temporarily unplugged:

1. Reading Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. So timely. And, it is making me relish the warmth (and innate goodness) of the human spirit - of our collective human spirit.

2. Cultivating as much joy as I can. Through yoga. In motherhood. In friendship. Lately, I'm trying to feel the sun rather than the dampness of the clouds. The sun is so much more powerful.

3. Making plans. Surprised, I'm sure. Not. The future is mine. It is all mine. It does not depend on a man - or on my relationship with a man - or on money or even circumstance. I am taking back my future, and I won't take no for an answer.

4. Liking and learning from myself. I have a lot to offer the people in my life. I am open to receiving what others have to give. For the first time in a long time, I am not stymied by my idealism and seeing only what I want to see but instead motivated by reality. It is sometimes murky on the surface, but the clarity once I wade through is astounding. I've been wading. Now I'm taking a break to just be in it.

Happy Friday, people. I hope you, too, have waded through the murk and can enjoy your peace.

we need a new sense of self

I just discovered Drew Dellinger and planetize the movement, and all I have to say initially is wow.

Here is a short clip titled A New Sense of Identity.

Thoughts?

Oh - he has a blog, too.

anew

Single moms. This past year, I've commented on their blogs, read their stories, and rallied around their causes all without feeling like one. From my insulated perch, I murmured in solidarity when someone broke their heart. I nodded at their tales of financial strain. I imaginary high-fived them on the rare days when everything, from parenting to dating to career, fell into place. But if I were urged to choose a group to join - an identity to own - the single mama moniker would not necessarily be the first one that entered my mind. Until maybe now.

I wonder if one cannot truly be a member of the single mama posse until her heart is ...well, shattered. Until the pieces that started splitting into fragments when that dream first died- whatever the dream might have been - become so broken themselves that all that remains is dust. I wonder if perhaps, for me, my heart splintered only partially when I was divorced last year, and over the course of this last year - through loss after loss -  it has finally cracked completely. And while that may sound alarming to one reading this, it needn't, because my hope now that I have little left is to (finally) build anew.

It was while I was on my little writing retreat (where I accomplished little writing) a few weeks ago that I crashed. For two days, battling high and chilly winds, I sat wrapped in a blanket and stared at the sea through a curtain of salty tears. In utter solitude, I sobbed with grief. Grief over the chasm between me and my big brother, and as an extension, my sweet little niece, for losing my uncle to cancer much too early, and over a man who turned out to be a sliver of a shadow of the man my idealism had created. And yes, daunting grief over being on my own. Alone with my daughter. Daunting grief indeed.

I left Florida wrung out - feeling physically waifish and emotionally depleted. I boarded the plane slowly but without looking back; honoring and releasing that which caused such distress was grueling, but ultimately it had to be less painful than harboring hope for something different - than believing in something or someone that doesn't exist. Acute pain rather than chronic destruction.

And now, here I am, back home waiting for the spring. And the sun. Hoping that out of all of the tears that fell, maybe a few are feeding new growth, building anew.

(stock photography from Dreamstime)

skinless

"You were skinless. There was nothing between you and the world - you let everything in and you let everything show."

from, The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall

Sometimes I feel skinless. It's exhausting. And exhilarating. And everything in between. 

recess

I'm here for a little cottage-sitting, dog-watching while writing long weekend. Away from the freezing temperatures and blanket of snow covering the Midwest, I am instead submerged in sunshine with a sparkling ocean steps away. It feels decadent and naughty, and I intend to enjoy it.

Every.single.minute.

I have some writing I need to do: non-blog, people-may-actually-pay-for-it- writing (how exciting is THAT?!). So, I'll see you in a few days.

Here's to a sunny start of the year for you, too.

Noam Chomsky on Gaza

Democracy Now's video of Noam Chomsky " Gaza: One Year Later" is here. Disturbing doesn't even begin to describe it.

It worries me to think of the world without intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Who will take their places when they are gone? Perhaps these foks? Or her? Other ideas, people?

worth it

I'm visiting my family this week in my hometown. Everywhere I go are reminders of the life I've left behind. And while they aren't as fresh as they once were, they are here causing me to pause more than I expected. Being here- being with my siblings and my friends- has me thinking about trajectories and fate and choice. It has me thinking about why some people make choices that work and others make the same choices with drastically different results. It has me wondering why the life I chose a decade ago didn't work for me, yet it works so well for them. It has me asking if I'll ever be able to have a simple homecoming without the baggage of the past, or if returning will always be a reflection of the path I traveled only to stop midway facing the wrong direction.

One day, I'd like a simple homecoming.

My daughter, though, is smiling. She is giggling and playing with her cousins and has loosened her grip on my sleeve for a few days.  And her happiness - her obvious gleeful settling into the arms of our family who loves us and welcomes us is worth all of the thinking. It's worth all of the questioning.

long cab ride home

I find it both ironic and typical that after an evening out drinking and schmoozing at bars, the most enlightening conversation I had was with the cab driver on the way home. A youngish man who moved here from Egypt to attend college twenty years ago, he drives a cab when he isn't working...as a mechanical engineer consultant. He brought his sick mother to the United States and has devoted his life to her. "She worked three jobs to support my brother and me", he said. "She was a home economics teacher, a tailor, and she trained young women how to sew. I remember waking up at 3 a.m. and she would have the dining room table full of buttons and would be sewing small detail onto cloth. I brought her here because it is my turn to take care of her".

Later (it is a long drive) , we talked about how so many have so much and even more have so little. He chuckled and said, "you know, sometimes I felt more free in Egypt, but some parts aren't that different. Chicago has snow; Egypt has sand. It is all a game." When I commented that we would probably find very few American-born mechanical engineers moonlighting as cab drivers, he chuckled again and said, "eh - perhaps they are lazy? hahaha". Yes, sir, indeed. We are most definitely lazy.

shining in the darkness

A few bloggers I follow (Maria Niles, Rita Arens, and Blondie) have each posted lists of five things they meant to do in 2009. They inspired me to do the same, but instead of focusing on what I didn't do (because really, let's be honest: it could fill a year's worth of posts), I'm going to concentrate on five things I did in 2009. It was a rough year, but because so much of it was spent in darkness, the shining moments were all the brighter.


1. I demolished one home and built another.

Ok. Demolishing sounds harsh, but divorce is essentially just that. It's knocking down a termite-ridden structure and from the wreckage building something stronger and more sustainable. I've done that. Together with my good friend who has also been going through a divorce, we've swept away the splinters and the mess and joined households to create a new, different kind of home for our three girls. A home where at any given moment it is okay to feel whatever we are feeling.  A home where there are people to cry with if we need to cry or dance with if we need to dance (or drink with if we need to drink). A home where the children - and their mothers - are loved for who they are and what they offer the world, and where they are told they are loved...over and over and over again until they believe it. It's a refuge against the cold. An anchor in choppy waters. It's a home.

2. I made my physical and emotional health a priority.

I recently wrote about yoga and how it saved me from the brink of insanity. Making my health a priority was as much for me as it was for my daughter. This past year especially, I needed to have enough energy to be present for her - to raise her the way I want to raise her. I also needed to feel that something about me wasn't a failure. If I looked and felt sexy, centered and energetic, I had a natural armor against some of the unhappiness that pervaded my life. Now that I'm on more stable ground, I am even more committed to continuing my practice of yoga and eating more healthfully. I'm hoping this next year I can deepen the commitment even more.

3. I created options for the future.

Some days I know I was born to work with teenagers, and I sit in my office in my current school after talking with them and can't imagine doing anything else. Other days, I strain against the confines of the structure of our educational system, and I want to run...to anywhere but schools in a country that rewards wealth and power, test scores and "data" rather than honoring community, culture, and learning. I sheepishly admit my school is a haven from much of this, but only for 200 girls. There are hundreds of thousands of others who aren't so lucky, and there are days when attempting to change the system for them -for all of us - is mired in quicksand. 

I've used this year to think about what I want from my career. From my life. And honestly, I still don't know - especially when I weigh in reality vs. idealism. Images run through my mind, though - beautiful images of freedom and flexibility, of awaking in the morning energized by the projects awaiting me. Pictures of leisurely morning walks with my daughter to her school, of reading and writing in coffee shops and sun-filled libraries. Images of creating.

We'll see what happens, but this spring I'll know what the next school year brings. I've created options for myself - options I can't discuss in detail here - and whichever I end up embracing could make this time next year look very different. And I'm excited. It's been a long time since the open road was winding for me.

4. I fell in love again with my daughter.

She sleeps, and my eyes travel over her. Her eyelashes are long and dark against the paleness of her upper cheeks; the roundness of her face curves into her naturally ruby lips. When I brush the hair back that has fallen across her forehead, she stirs and snuggles deeper into her blankets, her fingers clutching her green stuffed monkey close.  My chest is so full it hurts. I have to physically hold back from squeezing her too tightly. I recognize her yet I don't. This little one - suspended still between my baby and a girl - is no longer mine. She belongs to the world and to herself, and her desires and needs and future will be filled with people, places, and experiences that are of her life, not mine. She came from me only to leave me - as all children do.

In the chaos that is now life as a single parent, one can get lost in the rush - in the sprint of a typical day. The hours cycle from morning drop-off to evening pick-up to dinner to bath to books to bedtime, and then it starts all over again. It's too easy - much too easy - to lose sight of my daughter's transformation from dependent to self-reliant. Sometimes the fatigue - so great some nights I fall asleep lying next to her before she does - shades the good stuff. When I was so miserably unhappy all I wished for was a way out, I forgot to look at her. I didn't hold her as closely as I should have. I didn't enjoy her as I could have. But being on our own has made me a better parent. In the midst of the whirlwind of raising a five year old, I've learned I must stop, breathe, and look at her. Be with her. And I've fallen in love all over again with this smart, funny, sassy, and kind (above all else, she is kind) little girl of whom I am so proud.

5. I learned I don't want a partnership without intimacy and authenticity.

My marriage eventually held neither - for me, anyway. It was companionable, comfortable. But I felt no desire to expose myself. To challenge myself. And a life without exposure and challenge is not one I want to live. So this past year, first through a divorce and then through confusing and complicated feelings in a situation fleeting yet important in its lessons,  I've learned essentially I want it all. I want a partner with whom I can talk and feel heard. I want a partner with whom I can cry and who can cry with me. I need  a partner intelligent enough to challenge me with piercing questions - and one who will appreciate my responses. A partner who sees me. I need to connect in the head and heart as strongly as I connect to the the butterflies his presence creates. And lastly (and this is a big one), I need a partner who wants me -and my child- enough to stand up regardless of his own fears and vulnerabilities. To trust us. To show up for us. Over and over again. I don't know when it will happen or with whom, but I think I can say I'll finally be able to recognize it when it does.

And those, my friends, are just a few things I did in 2009. How about you?

dreaming

A good friend brought me a dream box from her trip to New Mexico. It is a small, round box in which I'm to place a written wish or desire or something on which I need resolution. I'm to hold it in my hands before bed, think about what I've written, and the energy is supposed to mix in my dreams and help make it possible.

I love it. I love the smallness that encompasses the largest of cravings. I love the smooth wood that slides between my fingers when I rub it like a worry stone. I love the idea that there is something out there paying attention.

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I can't stop dreaming about a friend who is no longer in my life. Colorful dreams full of aches and tenderness and twists and fullness. Dreams that, upon awaking, muddle and hurt in their aftermath. These aren't cauterizing dreams. And the friend whom I call a friend for lack of a better definition - even though he really isn't a friend, hasn't acted like a friend. What do you call someone who has a piece of you whether he wants it or not? Who, even after your efforts to physically disconnect you can't emotionally sever? Maybe what I call the attempt to shift from lovers to...something else was never really friendship at all. Maybe instead it was me denying the signs I wasn't ready to see. Maybe instead it was me acquiescing to hope, despite what it lacked.  Denying signs that extinguish hope; perhaps, I couldn't have survived another round of extinguished hope.

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But now what? Do dreams have an expiration date? Or is this my dream box working through its magic but telling me the journey isn't pain-free? It isn't all easy wishing before bed and waking up the next morning with that life you hoped for sitting pretty on your pillow tied up with a bright, red satin bow.

broken until

For a while a little over a year ago, I was broken inside. Mangled. I couldn't envision being whole again; I didn't even know what it meant to be whole again. It was the beginning to the legal end of my marriage, and I was unhappy, overweight, and certainly overwrought. I was grasping for something to ground me.

And then I found yoga.

My life changed. All the moving fragments I floated through in the course of a day seemed to diverge into stillness when I practiced. For 90 minutes 3-4x/week, I became someone else - a someone else I liked. And slowly, through continued practice I've changed. My life has changed.

My  body has changed, too. I can't thank yoga alone for losing forty pounds, but it certainly helped. And it has helped me maintain the weight loss because once I started practicing, I naturally began paying close attention to what I was using to fuel my body. I started eating more grains and less refined carbohydrates. I began to love root vegetables and spinach and squash - all foods I could tolerate before but never ones I could declare loving. I drank more tea and less coffee. I pretty much gave up bagels and muffins for breakfast and instead boiled eggs. And I ate only when I was hungry. This, in particular, was new for me. I've always been an emotional eater, but my first instinct when stressed was no longer to eat - it was to breathe.

After several years of high cholesterol, I recently had a physical, and for the first time in years, I am a healthy weight. I have normal cholesterol levels. And it feels damn good. And honestly, I feel pretty damn good in my body. Certainly, a part of me would like to have the trim, smooth tummy I had before I had my daughter. No matter how many muscles I build in my core, there will always be the mommy marks and slight rounding. And having just celebrated another birthday this weekend, I have to admit I have my moments of fantasizing about having my 24 year old physique back. But most of the time, I recognize the ridiculousness of that time-sink. I am a mother after all, and there is beauty and immense strength in that, too. And the fact that I can now contort my body in positions I could never do - at 14 or 24 - more than makes up for it!

Discovering yoga has helped me become a more patient person. Having goals and reaching them are two very different things. I never took the time to mull over the difference before. I would set a goal and immediately consider myself a failure if I didn't reach it right away. Moving through my asana, I have no choice but to set goals and gradually work towards achieving them. My body simply won't bend a certain way on will alone. Last night in class, I balanced in crane and popped into a headstand, and I stayed in both longer than I ever have. My handstand, though, wasn't working. I couldn't kick up securely, and eventually I had to stop trying. A year ago, I would have been disgusted with my body's limitations, but instead I rejoiced in its capabilities.

Yoga has given me another outlet for my relentless thoughts. I can't stop thinking. I need to know the why, the who, the what...always. It can be draining. Saddening. Maddening. I imagine for those with whom I share my thoughts, it is rather exhausting at times to listen without always having the answers I seek (lucky for me they stick around anyway). My blog used to be my only outlet, and then I lost my words. Yoga took over; it cleansed me, cleared the cobwebs. And with the familiarity of a long-time lover, I know my body - and my mind - better than I know anything.

I'm sure yoga isn't for everyone, but it saved me. The studio is the one place I feel the sense of belonging that has been missing for so many years. Stretching my body - testing my strength-  is a physical metaphor for all the other moments when I'm in the struggle with reality...except reality isn't quite as much of a struggle anymore.

Namaste.

recognition

I saw this today online, and something in it made me all achy and breathless with recognition.

A taste of it is below, but here is a link to the full poem:

without context

some days it seems many
lifetimes have passed since
you held firm to my hand
whispering secrets in my ear.
days flow by, like sands

-Leonie

swirling, whirling thoughts and hope

I'm on a writing deadline and absolutely should not be writing on my blog right now. Bad, bad girl. I have so much on my mind, though, and I feel like I've turned the corner into so many critical moments lately. And honestly, my writing process has been so much more grueling since I took a break this past year that I don't feel I have the same luxury to ignore the flashing light that reads "WRITE! WRITE!"; it just doesn't show up as insistently anymore.

So here I am trying to process it all. Trying to stop the whirling of it all so it slows down enough to communicate here.

I whirled my way to a yoga class tonight seeking the stillness only the practice can provide for me. A year ago, I went to class three or four times a week, and now I'm lucky if I make it twice a week. I try to practice at home, but it's difficult to carve out time and space. So I was looking forward to tonight.  And while my body might not have been as strong as I wanted it to be in certain poses, I relaxed enough to let go, and finally in shavasana, the final relaxation pose, I realized how unkind I've been to myself - how willing I've been to believe the doubts that whisper to me in my weak moments and how callous I've been in denying myself those that counter them. And I did something I haven't done during class for a long time: I cried. The tears pooled beneath my closed eyelids and rolled down my cheeks. I didn't rush to wipe them away or hide them. I welcomed them. With every deep breath, I willed more to appear - opening myself as they cleansed. When class was over, my mat was wet. I felt a bit battered, but I also felt purified.

There are some other conclusions at which I've arrived lately:

 1. Friendship for me - real friendship - can't be transient. It can't be based on convenience. And like a marriage, it takes work. And mutual honesty. And mutual respect. In order for me to share my life with someone I consider a friend, that someone needs to communicate he/she wants me to share in his/her life, too. I see friendship as much - if not more - intimate than a romantic relationship. It is what is left when the layers of  romance are peeled away - if they peel away.  To say I'm here. I'm your person, no matter what happens takes a commitment. It takes intimacy. I realized I don't take this commitment lightly, and a friendship without intimacy is about as interesting to me as attending the Republican National Convention or swimming in Lake Michigan in January - one can stop breathing from emotional hypothermia, too.

2. I have work to do in the classroom. In order to be the kind of teacher I want to be - a teacher in solidarity with my students and one who encourages resistance and critical analysis of our world - I need to plan better. I need to create space in a different way than I've been creating it. Hell, it shouldn't be mine to create at all; it should be a collaborative, democratic effort. I want to be that teacher. I want to inspire because everyday I'm inspired by my students.

3. I have two plans for the future: two different, bold visions. And like my sweet, wonderful friend, Adele, told me, I hope the plan that is wrong for me is removed from my path somehow so I don't have to make the wrong choice. I'm ready to embrace the right ones.

Back to my deadline now.  And then a rest filled with hope and energy. I think it's gonna be a mighty good winter.

THE PEOPLE SPEAK

I received the following email today. I already sent my DVR and CANNOT wait to watch this!

Special Announcement

Dear HowardZinn.org friends, On Sunday, December 13, at 8 PM Eastern and Pacific / 7 PM Central, THE PEOPLE SPEAK -- the long awaited documentary film inspired by Howard Zinn's books A People's History of the United States and, with Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People's History -- will air on History. Tune in! Details at http://www.history.com/peoplespeak or text peoplespeak to HISTRY (447879) for tune in info. You can also catch the final stop of the People Speak College Tour at UCLA -- with Josh Brolin and Chris Moore -- Friday, December 2, at 2 pm. http://www.history.com/content/people-speak/the-people-speak-college-tour ABOUT THE PEOPLE SPEAK Using dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans, the documentary feature film THE PEOPLE SPEAK gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice. Narrated by acclaimed historian Howard Zinn and based on his best-selling books, A People's History of the United States and, with Anthony Arnove, Voices of a People's History, THE PEOPLE SPEAK illustrates the relevance of these passionate historical moments to our society today and reminds us never to take liberty for granted. THE PEOPLE SPEAK is produced by Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Chris Moore, Anthony Arnove, and Howard Zinn, co-directed by Moore, Arnove and Zinn, and features dramatic and musical performances by Allison Moorer, Benjamin Bratt, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Chris Robinson, Christina Kirk, Danny Glover, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, David Strathairn, Don Cheadle, Eddie Vedder, Harris Yulin, Jasmine Guy, John Legend, Josh Brolin, Kathleen Chalfant, Kerry Washington, Lupe Fiasco, Marisa Tomei, Martín Espada, Matt Damon, Michael Ealy, Mike O'Malley, Morgan Freeman, Q'orianka Kilcher, Reg E. Cathey, Rich Robinson, Rosario Dawson, Sandra Oh, Staceyann Chin, and Viggo Mortensen. Buy the SOUNTRACK, featuring new songs from THE PEOPLE SPEAK by Allison Moorer, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Exene Cervenka, Jackson Browne, John Doe, John Legend, Lupe Fiasco, P!nk, Randy Newman, Rich Robinson, and Taj Mahal. http://www.peopleshistory.us/news/people-speak-soundtrack-CD-on-Verve A two-disc special DVD set of THE PEOPLE SPEAK will be out in January! More details soon at: http://www.thepeoplespeak.com NEW AND UPDATED edition of the source books for THE PEOPLE SPEAK just released: Voices of a People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove http://www.sevenstories.com/book/?GCOI=58322100808900 Sign up at http://www.thepeoplespeak.com Join The People Speak on History on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/thepeoplespeakonhistory Follow us on Twitter @vph and @HISTORY_Daily MORE INFORMATION http://www.PeoplesHistory.us http://www.facebook.com/Voices.Live http://www.HowardZinn.org http://www.facebook.com/HowardZinn

Thanks for reading... For more information on Howard Zinn, visit http://www.howardzinn.org.

if you want to know

I read a poem today that so precisely captures how I felt about my marriage. If you want to know how I felt, go here to read it (thanks, Jennifer, for posting it!).

united anti-war movement says "NO!"

Go here for the open letter to President Obama signed by 34 anti-war groups.

This part, especially, expresses my own thoughts quite well:

Polls indicate that a majority of those who labored with so much hope to elect you as president now fear that you will make a wrong decision -- a tragic decision that will destroy their dreams for America. More tragic is the price of your decision. It will be paid with the blood, suffering and broken hearts of our young troops, their loved ones and an even greater number of Afghan men, women and children.

want to sleep better? feel better? live healthier? Have sex!

One of my favorite new online sites, Sex and the 405 , has a great article today titled 12 Reasons to Have Sex Right Now. I already had my own list started to post one day, but this one gives statistics and stuff!

Here's to many happy O's.

i'm hoping i can really do this

I've been on my own for a year now. Partner-less but child-full, and the changes ebb and flow. Some days I recognize and greet the woman I've become like the long lost friend she is; other days, I weep at the emptiness when my reflection is a stranger. My mind is over-saturated, seeping with hope and fear, with love and loneliness. My mother warned me about the loneliness. You can't anticipate it, she said. She was right; when it hits, its acuity is piercing.  And with the holidays upon us, it is hitting a bit too frequently.

Last year, I expected the holidays to be difficult. After all, the split from my ex was so fresh I could taste the acidity of its newness. I hadn't even had a chance to break the news to all of my family, and those who did know were struggling mightily to understand my decision. So, instead of navigating the potential landmines in a family Thanksgiving out of town, I chose to stay home.  My ex had taken our daughter to visit his family, and I used the quiet to practice yoga, sleep, and connect with friends. And although the scents of Thanksgiving and the friendly chaos of family were absent, I remember thinking "it's different, but I think I can do this".

Fast forward a year later, and here I am pondering how exactly to do this. Thanksgiving is in two days, and for the last week I've been lost in the fairytale of where I thought I might be by now. It's tinged in flames of red and orange, honey and cinnamon. In it, I'm warm. Full. There is laughter and peace, children and love. There is a sanctuary with a shoulder on which I can rest my head and arms to hold me. How tired my head has become this year...and how abandoned my body. It's no wonder I am fleeing to a fantasy.

It isn't that I'm wishing for the "old days" because I'm not. Holiday gatherings were never ideal while married either. They were never mine. I was always participating on the peripheral rather than creating in the center. And I want to create. It isn't that I want a certain someone either. In fact, I'm losing my grip on the hope that there will even be someone who can give me what I need anytime soon. I suppose what I'm missing most about this holiday is the sense of belonging - that feeling that I'll be exactly where I belong. I remember having it as a child, and I want it back.

I'm headed back to my hometown to spend a couple of days with my parents and some of my siblings and their families. I'm traveling without my little one, and even though there are days when I'm so tired I count the hours until she is with her father, I ache knowing she won't be with me. I miss her already. And I'm worried that my family still won't know what to say to me. That they'll still tiptoe around the topic of my divorce and forget how to talk to me about everything else. That still I'll be on the peripheral looking in. But at least I'm going. I'm trying to figure how to do this.

There are lots of women out there thinking complicated thoughts. They, too, are trying to make it work - even though the it is different for each. I read their blogs and for a few minutes, I feel understood. Maybe you will, too.

Jen at Au Revoir, Goodbye, So Long: life after divorce has too much on her mind. I can relate.

Another Jen at Jenn Lee writes about friendship and neuroses and other things that are too complex to fit on a t-shirt.

Alaina at Single Mom, Ms Single Mama  shares an unreal but very true story that captures the tremendous lengths we will go for people we love. 

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

spare a purse; create a smile

Here's a link to a great post by Kelly of Mocha Momma who has started a small purse drive for the young women in her high school. Take five minutes, read the post, and if you or someone in your household has an extra small purse on hand, please consider taking part.

As a high school counselor, I witness every day how much a seemingly small gift can mean to a girl with very little. We often lament there is not enough goodness in this world. We grumble about obligations and responsibilities and not having enough time to change the world. Kelly is giving us an opportunity to change the world of a young person. Take it. I know I am.

activism and allies

I awake some mornings to the chill of guilt and the draft of inadequacy. And no matter how many layers I wear, I can't get completely warm. Like icy toes in boots that aren't weatherproofed, there are pieces of me frozen. Pieces of me that, depending on the elements, freeze over and over again. Seeing the ex lonely and unhappy: freeze. Battling with my daughter while she is transitioning back to my home, to my rules: freeze. Making a student cry: freeze. Disappointing my mother: freeze. Witnessing an injustice: freeze. Some days I wonder when these frozen fragments will simply snap off of me like icicles and leave me bare.

Other mornings I am less anguished. I say less because I'm never totally free of that emotion. Can any of us truly be free of it when considering the world in which we live? I know I carry responsibility around like a Dowager's hump. The pain, the suffering, the unfairness: they all settle, bulging into their own crevices. And those like me will recognize the "less". You will know what it feels like to be happy but aware of the moment's transience. You will sense the urgency in embracing the highs, and you, too, hold them close before they slip away. You see me.

Sometimes, though, I think we fall short in our ability to do this. We hyper-focus on the freeze and forget to feel the thaw. And we forget just how good the thaw feels.

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As you know, I try to be an ally in the battle to help rid our world of systems of oppression - of the isms. Some days I'm more present in this battle than others. I try to be kind and forgiving to myself when I recognize I'm using my privilege to rest, but mostly I just hate myself when I do. I struggle not with being an ally, but in the practice of being a consistent ally - an ally whose entire being permeates with the struggle. I don't know how to do this. I'm not even sure I know what it means to be this kind of person and still maintain enough sanity so I don't give in to the temptation to juggle knives (I don't juggle) or play chicken on Lakeshore Drive.

So it was timely that I read two blog posts today about activism and allies;they absolutely blew my mind. Mai'a (aka guerrilla mama), posting at flip flopping joy, explores lifestyle activism and ultimately concludes her choices (and those of many who make lifestyle choices rooted in the principles of a cause) have more to do with the relationships in her life than with the issue itself (go here. I can't possible do it justice):

...and then i started to add up all the hours and dollars and energy that i put into my lifestyle choices.  i thought about how i could have actually been using that time to build relationships with people and ideas.  how much more time i  could have spent studying history so i had a better grasp of the present.  learning from my elders.  and mentoring.

 in other words working toward liberation, rather than trying to buy my way out of it.

Powerful. And somehow it loosens the band of guilt that wraps around me when I think of my lifestyle choices and see the inherent contradiction between them and my principles. I wear sexy and expensive shoes and eschew capitalism. I protect animals, yet I love a good steak. I wear make-up and shave my legs even though I strongly believe women are too often judged on their exterior and not on what is fermenting inside their brains. The incongruity is enough to make me crazy. Mai'a makes me consider what other ways might I liberate as an activist, as an ally.

Tami, at What Tami Said, began a 2-part post today titled when allies fail. Because we do. All the fucking time. And in our own depression and stupor, we often forget that our depression and stupor is a luxury, a privilege. When our partners in a cause call us out on something, we often get defensive. We shut down. We stop listening. We blame others. In this post, Tami starts to build a framework for allies - a "How To Respond" so maintaining alliances that withstand struggle and dissension is a possibility.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I feel like I fail all the time. At relationships, at teaching, at parenting, at writing, at activism. I'm never good enough. I never quite reach that finish line. In fact, when I start to get close, the tape moves further away - far enough so new distractions have room to prod me off course. Finishing what I start is often grueling.

Perhaps failing, though, is what allows us to recognize progress. Maybe each time we let ourselves or someone else down we inch towards honesty by facing our own human frailties. In light of that, what if, like Mai'a suggests in her post, we spend time building relationships with people and ideas? And like Tami suggests, we listen, own our mistakes, and try to make them right? Would we be better allies? Better activists? Better humans?

Would we hold onto the moment, feel the heat of each other in our circle and instead of freezing, enjoy the thaw?

Sex and love and owning ourselves

This weekend, Lisa Guest wrote a "makes you go hmmm..." article published at Huffington Post. And since this blog is all about identity - yes, sexual identity, too- well, I thought I'd link it. My favorite line?

We lose ourselves when we don't pay attention to ourselves.

Amen, sister.  

Shades of Gray

Last week, I attended the keynote speech at the annual conference for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Howard Zinn answered a series of questions asked by the moderator, Dave Zirin, an activist and author in his own right. It was an evening of laughter and tears, hope and discouraging truths. It was an evening I spent alternatively wishing it would end so I could escape and cry and leaning over the balcony ledge in front of me absorbed in Zinn and Zirin's conversation. I walked away sad and a bit muddled. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about the shades of gray that obscure everything I thought I knew about my world.

Marvin Reeves was at the conference. He spent 21 years in prison on Death Row after being wrongfully convicted of murder. He, along with Ronnie Kitchen, was exonerated when the State's Attorneys office couldn't meet its burden of proof in presenting the case after a judge granted both men new trials. The men were tortured into a confession by Jon Burge, a Chicago police commander fired from the department in 1993 for using torture to force confessions from prisoners.  That it took sixteen years for Reeves's and Kitchen's case  to make its way through the legal system after Burge's dismissal is a travesty - a travesty that exposes our flawed criminal justice system for what is: a system designed to maintain the power of the privileged. That it even happened in the first place exposes it as a system that sustains white supremacy and perpetuates the pervasive inequalities in a society that profits from putting disadvantaged men and women behind bars.

I sat in that balcony and listened to Marvin Reeves tell his story. I listened to him thank the campaign for assisting his release. He thanked all us, complete strangers, for not giving up. For fighting for him. He shook with emotion, and watching him, never have I felt smaller or more ineffective. See, I didn't write letters or march in a protest for Mr. Reeves. To be honest, I didn't even know he existed before last week. I was only at the keynote to see Howard Zinn speak. While Marvin Reeves was in prison being tortured by terrorists in uniform, I have been uncomfortably silent. And confused. I have been meandering in the shades of gray.

Being a white middle-class female, I've never had to fear the police. I would even venture so far as to say, as a whole, they've protected me well. From what or from whom is a question I never spent much time asking. When I was young and one of my family members was victimized, for weeks the police held a stake-out in our apartment. They camped out on the couch, ate sunflower seeds, maybe even played games with me on their breaks. I slept better knowing they were there keeping an eye on the neighborhood, knowing the attacker wouldn't come back for me this time. I trusted them. I even dated a police officer for several years (although ultimately, in the end, his behavior kept me far from safe). And I have friends who were police officers. Good, honest people devoted to maintaining the peace, to serving the public. Yet again, that the definition of peace and the public means something different for me as a middle-class white woman is not a distinction I have ever been too willing to explore in this context. Until recently, it only made me twitchy and vague, and I abhor both of those sensations. Until recently, when the dissonance took up residence on my walkway, I'd nudge it aside or gently step over it. It was easier that way. It was easier for me. But it didn't help the Marvin Reeves and Ronnie Kitchens and hundreds of other Death Row inmates whose lives are wasting away behind bars.


Right. Wrong. Innocent. Guilty. Justice. Jury. What do these words mean? These crumbling and deteriorating words?

Marvin Reeves reinforced for me last week that I know a lot about very little. That I've lived very little. But, wading in the muck can be cleansing in its own paradoxical way. It can tear off the bandages of ignorance and birthright so the truth, if ever visible, might someday cauterize. In the meantime, we drift through the shades of gray. They might continue to obscure, but perhaps they might also emancipate.

Dripping with the drippies

If the past couple months are any indication, it’s going to be a long, cold winter. And I’m not talking about Chicago's weather.

One would think this vibrant, beautiful city bustling with the energy of smart, cultured singles would be dripping with available men. From my perch on the singles branch, however, it appears instead only to have available drippy men. And a lot of them.  Men who, in their thirties, still talk about the Ninja Turtles. Men who play video games...every night. Men whose response to "what do you do for fun?" is regaling me with stories of the gym. Men who patronize me by professing how "noble" it is to be an educator - how brave I am to teach at a school with such a diverse population (in case you didn't know, that is code for...gasp...black kids). Men who, one day after they get rich and retire, might, too, become a teacher. You know, "give back" and all. Drippy...drippy...super. duper. drippy.

Perhaps, as a friend told me after listening to me whining about waking alone again in cold sheets, I need to adjust my standards. “Sure, you want to ____,” she said. “But you want to meet someone and be attracted to him immediately. You want him to be sexy, intellectual, and witty. You want him to make you laugh, make you think, be emotionally available, and be good in bed. (snort) Yeah, good luck with that”.

Sigh.

She’s right. I demand all of those things. Are they really standards that are that high? Too high? And, in the words (and pitch) of Jon Lovitz from Saturday Night Live, is that sooooo wrooooong? Look, I have a child at home. A small child. I have a job and have another 150 children there. I'm busy. And a lot of the time, I'm tired of being the glue that holds it together. When those moments hit, a bottle of wine, a book, and my bed seem a helluva lot more appealing than an evening of drinks and cavorting with strangers followed by a long, late cab ride home. And frankly, I have enough friends. Not interested in shallow conversations -or sex- that may lead to inauthentic friendships. Been there. Done that. Got the friends and the t-shirt...not.i repeat.not interested.

So I'll pull out my heating pad, stick it between my sheets, and awake in the mornings alone but warm. I'll whittle down the stack of Russian literature on my nightstand  and maybe start penning the book of short stories that wake me in the early hours of the morning. And even if the winter is long and cold and filled with solitude, at least it will be rich and deep instead of shallow and oh so drippy.

I know you've got a lot of strength left

I don't know about you, but when I'm wallowing in the wake of choices I've made -choices that may have been both wrong and very right - I like to listen to music that makes me ache. Because even when I'm aching, I'm alive. And alive is good.

Love and loss. It's all here in Maxwell's version of This Woman's Work.

It's Better To Speak

As the amazing Audre Lorde said:

"When we speak, we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak".

Yesterday was Be Bold Be Red Day, a day for women of color and allies to speak out against violence against women. My friend, Adele, writes more about it on her blog, A Book Without a Cover. I wrote about this day last year when I participated, and as I said then, none of us can afford to be silent.

Discovery

The space between is midnight and dawn is a hushed one. Dark, yet luminous. Isolated, yet intimate. Welcomed, at times, yet dreaded at others. Much of my time is spent in this space where I think and cry and some parts of me die and others grow.

Just this morning, as I tossed and sought a still space in my bed, I kept coming back to an awareness of how fleeting it all is - this life here. How despite knowing that, in relationships, over and over again we make choices based on some elusive principle or relentless fear or ill-perceived notion of our own limitations. Choices that leave us distracted, unconnected, abandoned. Choices that abandon others. 

I've always thought I didn't like pain, yet I often beckon it into my world. And I know the moments when I've truly felt alive were ecstatically charged with joy but equally burdened with pain. There was the birth of my daughter when the physical pain of induced labor paired with the emotional pain of saying goodbye to the woman I had been were crippling. Yet, the indissoluble joy that settled in my heart immediately upon touching  her more than balanced the grief. And there are those moments of discovery in the classroom that are overflowing with wonder but rooted in topics deep with sadness and inequity. Those moments when muddling through the darkness together might hurt each other but might ultimately liberate, too.

And it is with these examples in mind that I twisted and turned and tucked and untucked my sheets to get comfortable all the while asking myself why I willingly embrace the ratio of joy and pain in those aspects of my life, but discard it in my relationships. Bell Hooks, an author and social activist says "that from childhood into adulthood we are often taught misguided and false assumptions about the nature of love. Perhaps the most common false assumption about love is that love means we will not be challenged or changed." I wonder if that is what I have been assuming? And if so, perhaps I'm full of shit when I think I have it figured out  -when I demand an end to something because it hurts "too much" or allow someone to walk away without fighting for someone - fighting with someone - to stay in my life because it's too hard and I have this notion it isn't supposed to be that hard. Who am I to say it isn't supposed to be that hard? Who am I to say choosing to nurture another through the entrenched fears of intimacy and exposure and trust, even if sometimes at my expense, instead of letting him/her go can't also liberate? Especially if the other moments outside of the "hard" are filled with a certain kind of easiness, of joy, of understanding each other in an elemental and maybe even unparalleled way. Who am I to say that? To live that?

And yet, I do. I say goodbye by assuring myself I deserve better, by listening to my friends tell me I deserve better - even though I'm not sure what better means. After all, I spent a decade with someone who didn't cause me pain, and I felt dead inside for much of it. Is that "better"? I know instinctively that this space inside of me isn't supposed to be empty. It's not. Yet, still I let my doubts or anger or discomfort from hurt make the choice for me.

And at the end of the day, instead of empowered, I just feel abandoned. I feel like I've abandoned. And that's not really "better" after all, is it?

Pelosi's Healthcare Reform Bill

Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive has published his reaction to Nancy Pelosi's healthcare reform bill that briefly touches on  pros and cons of the package. In it he shares Dennis Kucinich's comments, which are particularly compelling and all too rare in our political discourse.

This is the statement Kucinich made today:

“Is this the best we can do? Forcing people to buy private health insurance, guaranteeing at least $50 billion in new business for the insurance companies? 

“Is this the best we can do? Government negotiates rates which will drive up insurance costs, but the government won’t negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies which will drive up pharmaceutical costs.  

“Is this the best we can do? Only 3% of Americans will go to a new public plan, while currently 33% of Americans are either uninsured or underinsured? 

“Is this the best we can do? Eliminating the state single payer option, while forcing most people to buy private insurance. 

“If this is the best we can do, then our best isn’t good enough and we have to ask some hard questions about our political system: such as Health Care or Insurance Care? Government of the people or a government of the corporations.”

I think it's past time we start asking some hard questions about our political system. Don't you?

I Am Me...a reminder

From psychologist, Virginia Satir:

I am me.
In all the world, there is no one exactly like me.
There are persons who have some parts like me,
but no one adds up exactly like me.
Therefore, everything that comes out of me
is authentically mine because I alone choose it.
I own everything about me
My body including everything it does;
My mind including all its thoughts and ideas;
My eyes including the images of all they behold;
My feelings whatever they may be…
anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement
My Mouth and all the words that come out of it
polite, sweet or rough, correct or incorrect;
My Voice loud or soft.
And all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself.
I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me I can become intimately acquainted with me.
By doing so I can love me and be friendly with me in all parts.
I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me,
and other aspects that I do not know.
But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully, look for solutions to the puzzles
and for ways to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think
and feel at a given moment in time is me.
This is authentic and represents where I am in that moment in time.
When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how
I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting.
I can discard that which is unfitting, and keep that which proved fitting,
And invent something new for that which I discarded.
I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do.
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive,
and to make sense and order out of the world of people
and things outside of me.
I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.
I am me and I am okay

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You Can Help 15 year old Who Was Gang-Raped

The gruesome story is here of the 15 year old who was brutally gang-raped after a school dance in Richmond, CA this past weekend. I wrote to the Richmond Police Chief to see if there is a fund set up for the victim, and his reply is at the bottom of this email.

This has sparked fascinating dialogue on websites around the world -and hopefully teachable moments - about how we as adults aide a desensitized, misogynistic society where atrocities such as this occur. I'm not in a place where I can process this any more today, but I encourage you to read about it. Talk about it with YOUR YOUNG PEOPLE.

 

BlogHer also has a lengthy post w/many pages of comments.

I particularly like the comment Lovebabz made on the blog, Whose Shoes Are These Anyway? (there are additional links in this article).

She wrote:

"We stand by because we have been trained to stand by. Everything in our culture devalues women. Everything in our culture says women are not human...but objects toys, pleasure. Even women are pimps to the selling of ourselves as objects. These children that did this exists because we created them. We allow children to run amuck, because we have run amuck. All our social ills are connected. You can't talk about after school programming, without talking about job readiness, you can't talk about health care if we don't also discuss how and where people live...poverty and hunger. You can't talk about saving children and not talk about the prison complex system. We can't talk about foster care and not talk about poor schools and underpaid teachers. We have become spectators to our lives and the lives of our children. We are all too busy for our communities, churches, synogogues, after-school programs, our lives.

This act of almost unspeakable violence was crafted by Us collectively and until WE have had ENOUGH then things will not change."

The email from Richmond PD:

Thank you for your concern for the young woman who was the victim of a brutal assault in our community. You will be glad to know that as of this time, five suspects have been arrested and are in the process of being charged with a number of serious felonies. The victim has been discharged from the hospital, but obviously has a long recovery process ahead of her.

If you would like to donate to the fund specifically set up to benefit this young woman and her family, you may send a check to Richmond High School, 1250 23rd St., Richmond, CA 94804. Checks should be made out to "Richmond High School Student Fund" with "Sex assault victim" on the memo line.


You may also want to consider a contribution to your local rape crisis center since rapes take place every day in communities—both big and small—all over our country.


Thank you for your concern.

Chris Magnus

Richmond Chief of Police

Anger

I've been angry lately. The throw-fine-china-at-concrete-floors kind of angry. In fact, I'd say I am angrier these days than I can ever remember being at any other time of my life. Angry at my ex for not being who I needed him to be. Angry at myself for needing him to be more. Angry at my siblings and the friends who didn't have time to be there for me as I struggled - who still don't. Angry at myself for not knowing how to better ask of them. Angry at men who rape women and a world of onlookers who tolerate it. Angry at myself for not doing more to stop it. Angry at white people who dehumanize black and brown people - and themselves in the process. Angry at myself for the uncomfortable yet immobile stasis I'm in that only perpetuates the inequalities. Angry at our government for playing politics with our health. Angry at myself for my limited sphere of influence.

And the list goes on and on...

My Buddhist buddies would tell me my high expectations are at the root of my anger and only breed discontent. They would encourage me to embrace simplicity, meditation and mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and scholar, wrote the following in one of his texts:

“In a time of anger or despair, even if we feel
overwhelmed, our love is still there. Our capacity to
communicate, to forgive, to be compassionate is
still there. You have to believe this. We are more
than our anger, we are more than our suffering.
We must recognize that we do have within
us the capacity to love, to understand,
to be compassionate, always.”

 I love Thich Nhat Hanh. Love him. Adore him. But tonight, not even his teachings of peace and compassion help alleviate this weighty discomfort in my chest. I ache to be able to cradle this anger in acknowledgment and offer it up to the Universe to do with as she pleases. I crave simplicity. And silence in my mind. I seek settling. And stillness.  And yet I can't let go of it.

I breathe deeply and hope that soon I can let go.

Get You Some Warm Fuzzies, Too.

Karen of Chookooloonks has the most amazing list of 24 simple ways to show love in the next 24 hours. Just reading it and thinking about doing some of them gave me warm fuzzies all over.

Healthcare is a RIGHT...and anyone who wants to argue can kiss my a**

I'm not usually so crass, but the inaccuracy in reporting of the proposed healthcare reform has me in a bit of a tizzy. This is great information on the healthcare reform being discussed, beaten and battered about by our politicians and fellow citizens. I found it on Momocrats, written by Stefania Pomponi Butler, and I want to share it. This isn't a partisan issue. It's pretty basic when you look at it through glasses that aren't tinted with bull manure.

1. Healthcare is a human right.

2. We are not starting from scratch--we are taking an existing program, Medicare, and expanding it.

3. Medicare is a single payer program for those 65 and older. (We know what it is.)

4. Single payer means expanding Medicare to cover all. (Take something we are already doing and make it cover all Americans, not just those 65 and older.)

5. 5% overhead instead of 30% (Think about how much insurance and pharamaceutical companies spend on advertising. I never saw ads for erectile dysfuction, eyelash lengtheners, overactive bladder, or hyperactive leg syndrome on TV 10 or 15 years ago.)

6. It will cost less.

7. Everyone is covered, no denials, no preexisting conditions.

8. It is NOT free.

9. Employees and Employers pay into the system. Look at your pay stub, we already know how to do it.

10. Business will be paying 4.75% payroll instead of 16%.

11. A rich benefit package will be available to all.

12. All will have long term care, vision and dental covered (individual state plans right now may not, but federal will).

13. No more bankruptcies due to health care bills.

14. It is NOT socialized medicine. Socialized medicine is where government owns the hospitals, doctors, and everything in it. There are only a handful of truly socialist medicine systems in the world and guess what? One of them is in the United States: it's called the VA.

15. Health care delivery remains private. Under HR676 patients continue to see private doctors in private hospitals. Government claims will be processed by private insurance companies not government agencies. See #14: It is NOT socialized medicine.

16. Total choice of health care provider. Under single payer you can go to any doctor, not just the ones in your plan. HMOs are more restrictive NOW.

17. More money will go to health care.

18. No more middle man between doctor and patient, contrary to what opponents say. The middle men are the insurance companies who currently tell doctors what tests and medications they will and will not allow.

19. Doctors will regain control of healthcare--which is why 60% of doctors support single payer.

20. No more deaths due to uninsurance or denial of care. Twenty thousand people a year die yearly because they are not insured, are under insured, or have been denied care. That is an outrage.

21. No more obscene salaries for insurance CEOs.

22. No more inhumane waits in ERs for primary care.

23 We will join all the other industrialized nations in covering EVERYONE.