We are Reaping What We’ve Sown in the United States

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Ragesoss / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

If you have ever lived in Western Washington or Western Oregon, you know about Himalayan Blackberry – a plant that grows wild everywhere and is the bane of any homeowner’s existence. When I was a kid, I can recall Mom pulling over to the side of the road to park in July or August so that we could fill any empty container in the car with the enormous berries, often covered in road dust, and head home to make cobbler or freezer jam. The invasive, thorny vines grew at the edges of fields, sprouted out between gaps in a rock wall, could take over an entire back yard in one season. Years after they were introduced to the Pacific Northwest by a man named Luther Burbank, they are listed as one of the most invasive species in all of Washington state.

The Himalayan Blackberry is the botanical colonizer, eroding soil and crowding out native plants, thriving in rural and urban areas, in rainy and in dry climates. And yet, come July and August, the consolation prize is that we get juicy fruit, often for free, if we are willing to brave the thorns and brambles.

We are reaping what we’ve sown, in more ways than one.

When White Europeans began colonizing other parts of the globe, it was with the idea that white men deserved to own land, own women, own black and brown bodies, and use them to further their own agenda. For generations, in places from India to South Africa to the United States, we have embraced that idea and embedded it in to the psyche of white men everywhere. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are currently white men arming themselves to push their agenda in capitol buildings and public spaces across the United States. We taught them that they have the right to use whatever tactics it takes to assert their dominance, especially if the person in power is a woman, especially if she is asking them to stay home for the good of all.

In colonialism, there is no “good of all.” There is only the good of the white man, and the white women who choose to align themselves with the white men. It is no surprise that, given what these men think they stand to lose, they are furious. If you have been shown, in a myriad of ways, your entire life, that it is your birthright to own land, to take property from another by force, to use black and brown bodies and female bodies to enrich yourself, it could be hard to wrap your head around the notion that you are part of a collective that includes these other people. If you have been taught that competition is the natural state of things and that the winner deserves all the riches, I would imagine it’s difficult to believe in sharing resources or viewing the whole of the natural world as one symbiotic entity. But men are not blackberries, even if the ancestors of these white men were transplanted to a place where they didn’t belong but they somehow managed to thrive.

The only way we will emerge from this pandemic and be able to move forward without fear is together. If we use fear (and force) to emerge from it, fear will be the water we swim in for a very long time. We are reaping what we’ve sown in this country, and it is time for a different way of being. We can root ourselves in the belief that we are a collective, that we are one symbiotic entity, and that all parts of this collective can and should be cared for, none at the expense of the others. We can center the well-being of all rather than the economic prosperity of some because we have learned, time and time again, that those who become prosperous at the expense of others will not ever take care of the collective. It is counter to the purpose and process of capitalism and colonialism to care for the good of all.

But in order for this to happen, those white men who have armed themselves have to believe that they are part of the “all.” They have to see themselves as not superior to or entitled to dominion over the rest. They have to examine their fear of losing something and decide that anything you have to harm other human beings to get is not worth it. And that will require unlearning much of what they have been taught for generations was their birthright, uncoupling the idea of themselves and their place in the world from the capitalist, colonialist waters they and their fathers and their fathers’ fathers swam in from the moment they were born. That kind of work takes courage, and while courage does not exist without fear, fear can unfortunately exist without courage. Storming a public space to threaten others with an automatic weapon is not courage, it is a desperate attempt to assert dominance and an expression of fear.

Our stubborn adherence to principles of “Independence” fuel that fear more than any other country on the planet. Our lack of universal health care and paid family leave, our mistrust of anything that smacks of social services and the celebration of “private enterprise” have brought us a school-to-prison pipeline and a broken public school system and workers with two or three jobs who still can’t afford to feed themselves and their families. Americans are loathe to imagine that they are not unique and exceptional and our ways of being reinforce the (erroneous) idea that our well-being is not intertwined with that of our neighbors’ each and every day.

We are reaping what we’ve sown. The real question will be whether or not we have the courage and the intelligence to do things differently from here forward or if we are willing to continue sacrificing black and brown bodies and women and children on the altar of capitalism and colonialism because we are too afraid to ask the white men to give up their “freedoms.”

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It’s Time for Another Way

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You know that phenomenon when you notice a pattern somewhere and you can’t believe you hadn’t seen it before, and suddenly you start seeing it everywhere? It’s even more eye-opening when there was something you thought was a little ‘off,’ but you couldn’t quite figure it out and then, once you do, you realize it’s a cancer. Hindsight and all that.

I volunteered to be part of a task force for my local school district in 2018. Our job was to dig deeply in to the “highly capable” program and come up with ways to make it less elite (less white, less geared toward rich families, less racist). We spent months looking at data, examining the history of the program, the laws surrounding it, the myriad ways the district had tried to identify and serve kids with extraordinary academic prowess over the years, and how other districts were doing it. It was no secret that our system was deeply flawed from beginning to end.

We weren’t the first group of folks to ever attempt this here. Indeed, there had been a similar task force just a few years earlier that had done the same thing – volunteering hundreds of hours of their time to come up with recommendations they put forth to the district, many of which got a head nod and a sad, “we wish that were possible” before retiring to the packet of information to be passed along to the next task force – us.

We were a fairly diverse group of parents, educators, and community members – cutting across racial and ethnic lines, but not really across socioeconomic ones. I mean, if you have to be able to offer your labor for free for 18 months and show up at prescribed times in a central location, it’s not exactly feasible for many folks, is it? But we did our best to try and bring voices in to the room that may not have been represented.

I think it was around month 12 that I finally figured it out. And now I can’t unsee it. And I also can’t not notice it everywhere I look.

We were never going to be able to make radical, substantive change to this system because no matter what we did, the system had a way of continuing to center itself.

Supposedly, the public school system was created to benefit kids and society (well, mostly society if we’re being honest). Over time, we started thinking that the benefit to kids would work itself out if we just threw a little money and a bunch of rules at it. We kept adding layers and layers of bureaucracy (standardized testing, mandatory minimum days/hours of instruction, core class requirements, etc. etc.) without ever looking at the impact it truly had on society or the kids. And even if we recognized that some of those things were detrimental or not really serving the kids, the system had invested so much time and money in to setting up the scaffolding for those things, we weren’t about to abandon them. When we went in to that task force work, it was with the goal of increasing equity, but that has to do with the kids, what’s good for them, and the system kept saying, “how can we do that?” or “how can we pay for that?”

It’s the same with our “health care” system. We don’t center the patient – we center the system. Asking how we can afford it, or wringing our hands as we think about the logistics of dismantling the private insurance system and the administrative bureaucracy fed by it is centering the system. The system has taken over and become our driving, bedrock force in every decision. We consider the needs of the individuals only within the context of the system’s needs being met, not the other way around. We bend over backwards to try and find solutions (add layers of bureaucracy) to protect the system. That’s why Joe Biden wants to have a private insurance option and just expand Obamacare. Not for the good of the collective, the good of the individual human beings, but so we don’t disrupt the system.

That is why women and people of color and folks with disabilities and those along the gender and sexuality spectrum are the progressives – because they have historically not ever been served well by the systems we put in to place and they are willing to center the collective, the human beings. But the white men who are served really well by capitalism, indeed, who have their identities tied up so deeply with capitalism and colonialism, feel threatened.

So many of the things we take for granted – 40-hour work week, retiring at 65, the stock market as the measure of the economy – those are things that were set up to benefit the system. If we don’t question them, when we want to make things better for the people who aren’t served well by the system, we just add little appendages here and there. Overtime pay, retirement jobs at Walmart as greeters, no-fee online investing opportunities. WE ARE CENTERING THE SYSTEM.

But here’s the thing: this time in history right now is showing us that we can live outside the system, that we can find ways to center people.

Do you know how vulnerable people are getting fed right now? Not through systems – in SPITE of systems. There are collectives springing up all over the place to feed people who need it, neighbors offering to shop for other neighbors and deliver groceries to their doors, donations of gift cards to folks in need, people sending money through Venmo to people they’ve never met before. People centering people.

Do you know how people are going to survive not paying their rent? Not because of systems. The systems aren’t responding quickly enough – there are too many layers to cut through. If we suspend rent payments, we have to suspend  mortgages for the landlords and if we do that, we have to bail out the banks who hold those mortgages and then people will be mad that we bailed out the banks, etc. etc.  But local folks are banding together to form coalitions that are demanding that renters not be evicted and that rent be suspended – without penalty or interest – for now. There are millions of dollars in grant money flowing to artists and small businesses impacted by this because of individual people who centered the collective good.

Small farmers who were de-centered in favor of the system are banding together to find ways to get food to folks who want it. And in many cases, it’s working. Because we are centering people, not systems.

The huge hospitals that are cutting pay for healthcare workers because their clinics have all but shut down for elective visits? They’re centering the system. They are saying “we can’t pay for this” instead of saying “we will do what it takes to make sure that everyone is taken care of.”

The politicians who refuse to order shelter-in-place rules? They’re centering the system. They are saying “having people out buying and selling things in my community is more important than the health and well-being of the community.”

That pathetic stimulus package check you may or may not get? Centering the system. Even it doesn’t address everyone – college students who live on their own but are still claimed as dependents on their parents’ taxes get no check, social security beneficiaries whose threshold income is too low to file a tax return get no check.

The thing is, the system will tell you that it is working for the greater good, for the collective. But it isn’t. The system is working for itself. Anytime you hear “what will that cost?” or “we can’t logistically manage that,” you are witnessing a system centering itself. These systems are crumbling for a reason right now and that is because they rely on people to make them work, whether they serve the people or not. The system will try to coerce a certain number of people to stick with them by any means possible (overtime pay, threats of job loss, appealing to the needs of others), but make no mistake, your needs are not paramount.

One evening toward the end of our task force work, I walked out in to the dark parking lot alongside a teacher who works with students with special needs. We talked about our frustration and our hope that we hadn’t just been wasting hundreds of hours of our own time to come up with strong, bodacious recommendations that would simply be cast aside by the Superintendent. I talked to her about my theory of systems centering themselves and she got teary and it was then that I realized she was the inflection point and I felt overwhelmed for her. In a system that centers itself, if you are a teacher or a health care worker who truly centers the person you’re supposed to be serving, you are caught in a vise. In order to keep your job and do the work you do that you believe is so vital, you have to bow to the system. But in order to serve the children or the patients who come to you in the way they deserve to be served, you have to eschew all of the principles the system wants you to embrace – you have to be creative, find workarounds, often use your own resources to go above and beyond. The system is hurting us all if we truly want to center people and the collective good, not only the individuals being served, but those who are exhausting themselves and their resources to be the conduit between the systems and the collective.

It’s time for another way. May we use the next several weeks to dismantle the systems that center themselves. May we find the strength and courage to answer the question “how can we pay for that?” by saying “it doesn’t matter – we have to do what is right.” May we remember that if we value each other, we can look to the underground groups that are springing up to help each other outside the system and learn from them. This truly is the Matrix and we’re seeing the glitches.

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Rage and the Potential for Change

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Image Description: blue candle holder with lit candle sitting on a metal table top

I have been thinking a lot about rage lately. About how we hold it and offload it, about who ends up being the container for it and what it feels like and how much energy it possesses.

Rage is the product of anger and fear suppressed. It is borne of a feeling of powerlessness. In my own life, it has shown up as the result of childhood molestation, gaslighting, and a lack of agency or ability to change my circumstances. It multiplies in dark places, building on itself until it can no longer be contained, and it is this aspect of rage that I find the most compelling. It is also where I see the most possibility.

Men like Harvey Weinstein who have massive quantities of rage seek to dispel that energy at some point. No being can walk around and function while they hold that storm within them. And as women (or those with feminine qualities) are seen as the containers for emotion in our society, it follows that men like him would seek to literally insert their rage in to the women around them, the women they see as the perfect vessels to hold their rage. These kind of men tend to hold their rage as long as they can and then expel it outward in violent acts, often toward women.

We have even, in many cases, normalized that response. The Australian ex-rugby player who killed his wife and children last week prompted an outpouring of grief and shock, but also comments from men like “he must have been pushed over the edge” or “she took his children away from him” as though it was somehow understandable that a man would discharge his feelings in a way that destroys the lives of people he purported to love.

If I think about the archetypal feminine and masculine (not gender, but the qualities we have ascribed to the Feminine and the Masculine), so much of how we address our rage is in line with those energies. Masculine energy is associated with linear thinking, decisive action, control and competition. Feminine energy is about nurturing, creativity, emotions and collaboration. Our culture has embraced those notions along gender lines and it is killing us.

The problem with rage (and energy, in general) is that you can’t let it go or give it over to someone else entirely. If you don’t transform it in some way, the seeds of it will continue to live within you and grow again. It is why men who assault others don’t often stop – the issue hasn’t resolved itself. It is why some men choose suicide – often after they’ve killed others. It is why most men choose methods of suicide that are loud and outrageous. These men have embraced the notion that transforming their rage by processing it, feeling it, talking about it, examining it is unacceptable, not masculine. And if you don’t know how to morph it in to something else, but you don’t want to feel it anymore, you have to try and get rid of it. And if our culture has told us that it is acceptable for men to be outwardly expressive and show their anger, and that women are the nurturers, the carers, the containers, it somehow feels ok for men to offload their rage on to women.

The human body is not designed to hold emotion or energy. If it were, we wouldn’t have to continue breathing or eating to sustain ourselves. We wouldn’t have to find a bathroom every few hours in order to eliminate the things that aren’t necessary. When we hold on to rage, trying to contain its energy within us is destructive. It continues to ping around in our bodies and brains, wreaking havoc. Even if we think we can wall it off, it sits inside us like a coiled cobra, muscles quivering, senses alert, ready to strike.

Rage makes us hyper-focus on control – the masculine energy seeks to control others, and the feminine energy seeks to control itself. Female rage often turns to depression, anxiety, dissociation. Male rage often turns to violence. And when that energy is offloaded, it multiplies like one candle lighting another. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. But it can be transformed, and until we begin recognizing the rage we carry and learn how to transform it, we will all continue to swim in it. It is and will continue to be the legacy of toxic masculinity, perpetuating physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, shame and isolation. Excavating rage, examining it, owning it, and alchemizing it in to something that can be used to build rather than destroy is freeing. When I have taken the time and done the hard work it takes, I feel free, light, strong. The space that rage used to inhabit becomes a place for hope and optimism, and the energy builds connections that end up serving the collective. It is on each of us to do our own work, but we can create a culture where the work is important and necessary and normalized for all of us if we begin to recognize the power of rage and just how much of it we are all carrying.

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My Open Letter to All Elizabeth Warren Supporters Who Are Afraid

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Elizabeth Warren, official portrait, 114th Congress.jpg
“I want her, too, but she will never get the nomination.”
“She’s not electable.”
“I don’t think this country is ready for a woman president.”
I could go on, but I’m certain I don’t have to. I’m certain many of you have either heard and/or uttered similar phrases. 
This is absurd. 
This is us staying small and playing within the confines of the system that was set up without us and not for us. 
This is how we give away our power and agency. 
Can we stop? 
Please? 
It is not only a lack of imagination that leads us to this place, but it is also fear. Which makes it understandable and also incredibly difficult to break free from. 
Many of us have spent years minding the levies.
Many of us have been groomed to hold fast, take baby steps, think about the ones who are coming behind us. 
But it is important to recognize that the levies are man-made. They weren’t created to keep us safe, but to keep us small, to keep us compliant, to make us believe that venturing beyond the boundaries will surely destroy us. 
The overwhelm is real. 
Once we begin to think about what might be possible if we look up and out, peer over the walls we’ve been told are impenetrable, or at least can’t be breached right now, we can be flooded with confusion, and we are much more susceptible to the cries of
“Not yet!”
“Be realistic!”
“You’re going to ruin it for all of us!”
It is true that change can be made one tiny step at a time. We have seen it happen with everything from women’s suffrage to same-sex marriage.
But how many years did we wait for the ERA to be ratified? 
And what happened in the interim?
How many women’s voices and talents were hidden and squashed?
We are at a tipping point, and we’ve gotten here with baby steps – this adherence to Capitalism at all costs, Individuality above all else – it has gotten us a health care system that is quite literally killing people. It has gotten us an overwhelming population of people living in cars and tents and sleeping on the street. It has forsaken education and locked up children and made a world where people who aren’t white, non-disabled, cis-gendered, heterosexual, English-speaking, non-mentally ill have to work harder and harder to simply stay alive.

The old saw about whether the glass is half full or half empty? That’s us keeping ourselves small. That is Capitalism and patriarchy giving us the parameters within which we are allowed to live. That is the way we are told what our reality should be. 
But the truth is, we don’t have to just have one glass. 
And it doesn’t have to be filled with water. 
We can cup our hands and drink from an ever-flowing stream.
We can fill a mug with tea.
We can squeeze juice from an orange in to one glass and sip it alongside a mug of coffee.
During this presidential primary, maybe it would work for you to set aside what you’ve been told by fear or the media or your trusted Uncle Joe. 
Maybe gathering the courage to vote for the woman who shows up to listen, who has proven herself capable of learning and growth, who comes with a plan and a history of getting shit done is a way for you to stand tall and peek over the levy to imagine what might be possible if we do this in a big way. 
Maybe marking the circle next to Elizabeth Warren’s name would feel like you’ve just entered a bigger room where there is more air to breathe.
It could be that that simple act of courage, taken by all of you who say she is your preferred candidate, is a powerful counteraction to the shrinking, the resignation, the acceptance of the boundaries we’ve been told are unbreachable. 
And if there are enough of us who are willing to vote with hope and agency and clarity of purpose, we can begin to untangle ourselves from the Gordian Knot we’ve been told we have to live with. Join me? 
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Musings on a New Way to Live

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We know about biorhythms – the idea that human beings have certain cycles they go through that affect wellness and health. Circadian rhythms dictate when our bodies release hormones to help us sleep (melatonin) and wake up (cortisol). Other cycles include menstrual cycles and control fertility and reproduction. We know that our biology and physiology are affected by the rhythms of nature as well – mood and energy are affected by the number of hours of sunlight in the day, and for people who live in the extreme parts of the planet where there are endless days of light and then later, endless days of darkness, it is well-documented how their moods and productivity are affected. Similarly, people who work the “night shift” or graveyard shifts often have a difficult time synchronizing their sleep/wake patterns and can suffer from depression or anxiety and develop sleep disorders.

School-aged children have rhythms for their school “year,” at least in the United States, where they can expect to be in classes nine months of the year and then have summers off. We have decided that a work week ought to be five days on, two days off (if you’re lucky – many people with more than one job or who are engaging in work that requires overnight or weekend shifts don’t often get that cycle). In the case of summer, it is widely acknowledged that this began because of the agrarian cycle – that is, that families needed children home during the biggest growth and harvesting time of the year so that they could pitch in and get the work done. Now that our society is increasingly not driven by agriculture, there is a push to eliminate this and have school run throughout the year, and I have to say, conceptually, that seems to make sense, but when I think about cycles and rhythms and nature, I wonder if it’s a really bad idea.

If human beings have biological cycles that are influenced by the natural world, such as circadian rhythms, and if when we push past or ignore those influences we tend to struggle, I think it makes sense that there are additional, natural cycles that make sense to adhere to as well.

As we are in Fall in the Northern Hemisphere right now, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to watch the plant life around me ready itself for a hibernation of sorts. I remember learning in my Plant Systematics class in college that it’s best to plant new trees in the early fall so that they will take root and then rest during the winter before “waking up” again in the Spring and starting to grow. It seemed counterintuitive to me, given that soon after planting, the leaves would fall away and the ground would become hard and cold. Wouldn’t it make more sense to plant them in the Spring when they are beginning to really burst forth with new growth? My professor said no way. Fall is the time when trees focus their energy on developing roots – just because we can’t see it happening doesn’t mean it isn’t. In the Spring, the tree’s energy is directed toward flowers and leaves and new branch growth, which doesn’t leave much for roots, and since roots are what the tree really needs to thrive, Fall is the time.

Several years ago, I became aware of a similar phenomenon in my own life. I have the privilege to work on my own schedule, and I noticed that there were distinct times when I would become less productive as a writer. I do much of my “writing” in my head, and that part was definitely still happening, the deep thinking and rumination, but as far as putting actual words on paper that resulted in coherent essays or book chapters, it wasn’t showing up. I got frustrated with myself and tried to disrupt my normal practices, forcing myself to sit in a chair and type words, figuring that I was being “lazy” or just not trying hard enough. Everything I wrote during those times was garbage.

Generally, about halfway through February, I found myself on fire with ideas – writing writing writing and producing pitches and essays and making headway on manuscripts. Whew! I was back. Until about October – when things died again. It took me a few cycles to figure this out – I wasn’t *not* working during this time, I was simply not producing visible results. Everything I thought about, scribbled little notes about, chewed on in my mind, during this fallow time somehow made its way in to my finished products in the late winter or following spring, like buds on a tree. Beating myself up during the time when I was working on roots wouldn’t change anything about the end result.

Our culture is so obsessed with progress. Goals. Continual growth. But the truth is, there is no such thing as constant growth where you surpass old milestones over and over again. Yes, trees get larger and larger, but they do that with a built-in fallow period, where they rest. We know that much of brain growth in humans occurs during sleep. To expect ourselves to be continually setting goals, working toward them, setting new ones, working toward those, setting more, working toward those, and only expect rest to happen at the end of our lives (retirement, for the folks lucky enough to afford it) is making us sick. The natural world knows that we need rest on a regular basis – that there are times when resting is actually in our own best interest if we want to stay healthy and keep growing. Education researchers know that giving kids time to sit with new ideas and incorporate them on their own after they’re introduced is important. Instead of packing class time full of content from beginning to end, kids process information better if they’re given opportunities to ruminate on new content, turn it over with classmates in discussion, let it rest.

All the signs point to the importance of rest and fallow states, both for physical and mental health, but our culture isn’t set up for that. We revere the folks who can survive on four hours of sleep, praise the kid who goes to school, plays sports, and has a part time job, and expect parents to work full time and then come home and help kids with homework, prepare meals, do laundry, drive to extracurricular activities, and volunteer for the PTA. The failure has come for us humans because we’ve centered the system and not the collective good. Centering the system is what leads us to ask questions about where we can impact “the economy” or why it’s dangerous to let our kids have the summer to play instead of looking for jobs that will look good on a college application or going abroad on a service trip (that will also look good on a college application). It means that the families who see their kids burning out and falling to pieces feel as though they have to find a way to help their kid do the “personal work” of assimilating to the system as opposed to listening to their own inner guidance that will tell them what they need (often, rest and a recalibration of their energy toward their passions and values).

But this centering of the system, where has it gotten us? Centering the system is also centering those who benefit from the system (often, white, male, capitalist, Western-ideals, individualism-as-paramount) and sacrificing the rest of the people to that system. This is how we end up with an increased suicide rate among adolescents, college sophomores declaring majors because they have to, not because they actually have spent the time cultivating their own ideas about what is important to them and what their true passions are. This is how we end up with mid-life crises where people who believed in and followed the system suddenly come to realize that their own satisfaction and well-being are not important in this schema.

So why center the system? Why buy in to it? Because we’ve been told that it will keep us safe. But we’re learning on a large scale that that was nonsense. Actively disrupting our own biological rhythms and imperatives, cycles of work and rest, the phenomenon of belonging and cooperation, has meant that we are divided and miserable, and burning our own planet. Our blind faith in the system (or desperate clinging to it as a life raft in the middle of a burning sea) leads us to ask questions like “how will we pay for universal health care” (centering the system) instead of asking ourselves whether or not we truly believe that each and every person deserves to be cared for (centering the collective).

When we as parents and educators of kids shut down conversations about disrupting the public education system for the good of all by saying “it’s too expensive” or “that is too hard” we are acknowledging our allegiance to the system and not to our children. Many of my personal heroes have been people who didn’t follow the “traditional” pathways, but who recognized their own worth and the value of connection to others and forged ahead. Those who followed them often did so because that message stirred something inside them – a longing to be like that, to find themselves rooted in and cared for by the community, not isolated by a competitive, capitalist, lone wolf system.

Our world is literally burning and flooding right now because we’ve centered the system (and the folks who benefit from it in the short term). We have some choices to make and I, for one, feel like listening to the kids. If we haven’t completely crushed their sense of wonder and curiosity and passion and desire to belong to something bigger than themselves, they will lead us.

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The Power and Promise of Story

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We know the power of story to motivate and connect people, to convince and add color. But I am increasingly aware of how storytelling has become co-opted over time, bent and twisted to be used as a power tactic or a marketing tool.

Story is a tool – it used to be a tool to educate; elders would tell fables and parables to illustrate concepts. It is used to entertain, to take us out of ourselves, and it is an incredible way to build empathy. Telling our stories helps us release them from our bodies and, in the right setting, reminds us that we aren’t alone.

In the last several decades, story has also become a way to ask for validation, acceptance, consideration. And while that might not seem like a bad thing on its face, in the context of people without power telling their stories to people in power as a plea for empathy or understanding, it feels heavy in my gut. It feels more and more like justifying our existence, defending our choices, hoping to be considered equally human and deserving of care.

Many years ago, I began interviewing women about their stories. Specifically, their stories around being pregnant and having to choose whether or not to stay pregnant. I was increasingly frustrated that the political tug-of-war around abortion rights seemed never ending and I was certain that the conversation was all wrong. My hope was that centering the stories I wrote on the issue of choice would shift the spotlight a bit and add depth – open people’s eyes to the notion that the issue wasn’t two sides of the same coin, but far more complicated than that.

I had fully bought in to this new notion of what story was for. I was using these stories to not only educate people, but to convince them that these women deserved their consideration.

Sharing our stories is an enormous act of vulnerability. Opening ourselves up and shining a light on the parts of us that feel different, look different, are different is incredibly courageous, especially if the listener is not simply a vessel, but a judge. And while story is known for building empathy, it shouldn’t be the key that opens the gate to empathy. If, in telling our stories, we are hoping to gain acceptance and validation of our worth, and the listener is the one who gets to grant that (or not), story has become twisted and co-opted.

The notion of needing to tell our stories so that people in power will acknowledge us and tap us on the shoulder with their scepters, allowing us entry in to the world of Worthy Humans is abhorrent to me. We need to start with the belief that we are all worthy and cherished. People with disabilities, people of color, transgender or non-binary people, women, elders, childless folks, immigrants – nobody should have to tell their story in order to be regarded as worthy of respect. Nobody should have to show their scars and bare their souls so that they can be deemed worthy of care and honor.

Our stories are reminders that we are not alone. They teach us about the depth and the breadth of human experience, but they should not be a pre-requisite for civil rights, for love, for worthiness. The power of our stories is that they help us connect to others, and to use them as currency for equality and humane treatment is wrong.

I admit that when I started my interview project, it was with the intent to use the stories as political capital. I hoped that they would be published in a book that would reach the ears of people in power, that the stories would shift something inside them fundamentally and convince them once and for all that reproductive rights are vital, foundational, human rights. The women who spoke with me trusted me and, in some cases, had never told their story to anyone else but me. I was powerfully moved and believed that it would make a difference. These days, I resent the fact that I should have to tell my story in order to gain agency over my own body, in order to maintain or regain my civil rights and be seen worthy of that by people in power.

I believe in the power of story. When someone trusts me with their truest, deepest truth, it is a gift I do not take lightly. As receivers of story, we have an opportunity to be deliberate and generous with our listening, to recognize that we are being given a gift. I have felt the significant difference between telling my story to someone who is willing to hear it, contain it, hold it and reflect back to me that I am not alone in my difference, in my pain, in my perspective and telling my story to someone in an effort to get them to recognize my humanity. The first instance feels healing and fuels connection – the second feels defensive and frantic and defiant. Sharing something profound in an effort to find community is expansive. Sharing something profound as a way to justify my existence or worth or right to have agency over my body is like always being a step behind, and it reinforces the power differential between me and the receiver.

I appreciate the people who gather the courage to speak for themselves and others – the ones who testify in public hearings in support of accommodations or policy shifts or funding sources. I simultaneously lament that movements like #shoutyourabortion  or #youknowme have to exist, that we have been forced to use our stories as justification for our choices, to plead for help from those in power. It isn’t as though there is some tipping point, some critical number of stories that are told that will shift the narrative in favor of acceptance and compassion, in favor of the foundational belief that we are all human and, as such, equally deserving of the right to live freely, move through the world without obstacles in our way or a target on our back.

Until we can start at a baseline of humanity for all, equal rights, and acknowledgment of the historical systemic ways we oppress women and people of color and folks with disabilities and non-binary gender expression, etc. etc. we will not be able to truly hear the stories of our fellow humans. We will always be looking for the “hook,” the seminal difference, the spark that makes us say, “Oh, ok, you’re not like those other __________.” But in my heart, that’s not what story is about. Story is about bringing us together, reminding us of our connections, and reinforcing the power of being acknowledged.

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Where is God?

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I spent the first eight years of my life as a Catholic. Went to church, learned the hymns and the responses and the stories. Longed to have my first real Communion, marveled at the beautiful robes and pomp and circumstance. Learned about God.

When my parents divorced, even though I didn’t understand the circumstances of it at the time, I was told that we were no longer welcome in the church. My parents had been married in the Catholic church and a divorce was not allowed. I went through a period of being unmoored – for a variety of reasons related to my parents’ split – and I remember wondering, Where is God?


This morning, as I drove Lola to class, I turned on NPR and heard a rabbi ask that same question. In the wake of the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue, so many are trying to fit the events in to some understanding of their framework of faith. So many times over the years, I’ve done the same. I would get angry with God and turn away, thinking that no real God could ignore me simply because my parents made mistakes. I fought against the notion of any omniscient being, took a comparative religion class in college and learned about the different ideas and iterations of this being throughout the ages, in different cultures. I have called myself an atheist, a “recovering Catholic,” agnostic. All of those labels were in reaction to what I absorbed from my years in church and from my mom, who held on to her faith in God with a fierceness and tenacity I never understood.

When I finally stopped reacting and thinking about God intellectually, I was able to recognize what I know as spirit, connection. I don’t feel a vertical connection with some other being that exists above all of us. I don’t think I ever have. Intellectually, I believed in that for years – relied on it, even. But I don’t recall ever feeling it within me. What I do feel is a horizontal connection, a link to each and every other sentient being that reminds me I am part of something bigger, that I am not alone, that I am held and I hold others. I don’t have a name for it, and I don’t frankly feel the need to.

I understand deeply the question, Where is God. The need to find some meaning or framework for processing the horrific acts we humans perpetrate is visceral and the idea that there is some being out there that can hold us in our grief and pain and provide answers is often central to our ability to move forward in the face of such trauma. For now, I believe that we are it, we are the ones, and it is that connection between us that allows us to continue on. When Jewish people are targeted, those of us who are not Jewish are called upon to hold those who are, we are called upon to acknowledge the pain, feel grief profoundly, and hold tight. We are necessary to lift those who cannot walk on their own right now and carry them with us as we do the work to rebuild, affirm love, create peace. When Muslims or Native Americans or black and brown people or people with disabilities are targeted, we are called to do the same work. My connection with you is not dependent on your religious beliefs or the color of your skin, the language you speak or where you were born or whether you can hear or see or walk. My connection with you is much deeper and is rooted in something that goes beyond physical form, and that connection goes both ways, if I let it. That means that when you are in pain, I can feel it if I choose to, and in doing so, I can help relieve some of your burden. It also means that when I act with love in my heart, it raises me and you, and reaffirms that tie. When I offer to speak on your behalf when you’re in pain and you can’t, that is “God”. When you listen to me with love and care, that is “God”. When we come together to spread peace and acknowledge the worth of every sentient being as equal, that is “God”.

If the question, Where is God is in service to preventing future massacres like the one that happened in Pittsburgh or the killing of two black people in Kentucky, the only answer I have to offer is this connection, this affirmation of our link to each other. When we turn away and refuse to feel each others’ suffering, we deny the existence of this thing that ties us to each other, and we also deny ourselves the support we gain from others around us. We are supposed to live in community with each other, we are supposed to rely on each other, we are supposed to offer each other our unique gifts when we can and draw on the gifts of others as well. Call it what you will, but I think this is what will save us.

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Burn. It. Down.

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I have felt nauseous for two days, a feeling that’s pretty unusual for me since I stopped eating gluten over ten years ago. It’s pretty rare that I have any stomach issues, to be honest, and when I first started feeling off, i instantly began running through what I’d eaten in the last 24 hours in an effort to figure it out.

Since a week ago, I’ve been careful about what I look at on social media. I needed to step back from the Kavanaugh hearings because of some difficulties in my life that were closer, more personal. And frankly, I had noticed that even seeing the ubiquitous photos of his angry, red, yelling face in every other Facebook post made my chest constrict uncomfortably.

Angry men are frightening


I don’t know if that’s something they know and use as a tool, but for most women and girls, male anger is tremendously upsetting. Men in our culture are taught to translate their anger and frustration in to physical outlets – hitting, throwing, slamming, shooting.

And yesterday, Lola and I got on a plane to fly across the country to visit Eve who is in her first year of college. I couldn’t afford to be angry or rage-filled or incapacitated by grief. I was filled with joy at the thought of being in her presence again, the presence of both of these young women who love each other and make each other laugh. We travel together well, easing in to activities and rest with comfort, somehow managing each others’ desires without fighting.

I woke up nauseous again, desperately pleading with the Universe to help me be 100%, to feel ok, to be able to enjoy my girls this weekend. Before my feet touched the floor, I took a deep breath and tried to pinpoint the feeling of unease and when it became clear that it wasn’t inside me, but surrounding me, I finally acknowledged it. I am receiving the energy of others outside me – the overwhelming despair and rage and fury of women everywhere who know they can’t stop this confirmation despite all our efforts.

Lola and Eve politely waited until I’d hugged Eve to fall in to each others’ arms and stay there for a minute. Little do they know that while I loved hugging Eve myself, witnessing the two of them resting together, holding each other up, was the biggest gift. My heart is full.

Not far in to the day, things turned. The ride to breakfast was a bumpy one and Lola felt carsick. Eve wanted to know what the plan was after breakfast. The weather forecast was horrid – humid and thunderstorms. The wait for breakfast seemed interminable. They exchanged (quiet) sarcastic words and there were tears. As we sat at the table, the girls ignoring each other on their phones, I remembered family trips where our parents were angry with us for being  “spoiled brats.”

We are spending money to bring you to this place and have a vacation, an adventure, and you repay us by bickering and complaining? Knock it off right now or you can forget about us taking you on any more trips.


I nearly laughed out loud, knowing that I could never say something like that to my girls. Not only would they think I’d been inhabited by some alien life form, but I know better. The very air is tainted right now, with anger and frustration and despair. And we are all entitled to feel overwhelmed, sad, confused, upset.

We soldiered on. And many hours later, as we sat eating lunch, our phones all pinged with the notification that Kavanaugh had been confirmed by the Senate. And I was reminded that what we are learning is valuable. We are learning, over and over again, that the solutions we can come up with within the paradigm of the current system are limited.

Had I threatened the girls, made them feel small and embarrassed, it might have made them less likely to express their frustrations outwardly, behave slightly better in public, but it wouldn’t have addressed the root of the issues. Had I dug in to the “root” of the issues, things would likely have gotten a lot worse in the short term (and they probably would have both turned on me instead of being angry with each other).  Those were tactics my parents used. My tactic shifted – I created a new system. I decided that since I’m the grownup here, I would trust my girls to let me know if they needed my help sorting out their emotions, and in the meantime, I would forge ahead, doing what I thought would make me happy. We headed to a burgeoning neighborhood and wandered through bookstores, thrift shops, stationery stores. I stopped to pet an adorable puppy, mused about birthday gifts for my nieces, begged Lola to try on an outrageously gorgeous, outrageously tiny pantsuit that she looked phenomenal wearing. By lunch time, we were doing ok. Good, even. And when I suggested we head back to the hotel so Eve could have a hot bath (there’s no tub in her dorm, so it’s been a long time since she had a therapeutic soak), Lola could chill by herself and watch TV, and I would head to the lobby and write, there were huge smiles all around.

Protesting, signing petitions, calling our representatives, those are all things we do to address the problems within the system. And I’m certainly not saying that those efforts are useless. But it’s the system itself that allows for these things to happen. The system that was created by white men for white men will always benefit white men. We need to get rid of that system. We need to dismantle (smash? burn?) the set of rules and mores that keep us small and compliant. We need to get a lot more comfortable imagining what a different paradigm would look like – one that is created for all of us – and work vigorously toward that end. Especially those of us who have benefited a great deal from this system, by playing by the rules and excusing the white men who make those rules.

It won’t be easy. And it won’t be comfortable. But we can’t make substantive changes within this system that will end up benefitting all of us. While I am still furiously angry that Kavanaugh was confirmed, there is a tiny sense of relief in that now I know that this fire will forge steel. Should we still work our asses off to get out the vote in November? Absolutely! When we take back the House, should we start impeachment proceedings on Kavanaugh and Drumpf? First. Fucking. Order. Of. Business.

And then, we should not rest. We should not think we’ve won. Small victories within this broken, broken system are not enough. We have to burn this SOB down.

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What Today Feels Like

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It is not like a rock in your shoe – rolling free in the arch where you can’t feel it until it somehow lodges beneath your heel and annoys you. It’s not like that. That is a memory from when I was seven and a neighbor kid stole my new bike. Pissing me off decades later, but really just an annoyance.


This is a virus that lives in my bones. A virus that comes roaring back to life and makes me feverish, weak, agitated like I’m covered in hives.

This is sexual assault. 

The fact that I couldn’t sleep last night from the ache in my lower back. It’s not some metaphor or literary device – it’s the seat of my shame, of my pain, of my sexual assault. This is where it lives in me, dormant until triggered. Once released, it is overwhelming.

It is why I cannot watch the hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee because that feels like drinking castor oil when you have the flu. Why would I want to make myself puke even more?

It is why, even though I’m not watching, I can’t stop crying.
It is why I took the dogs for a very long walk this morning; because movement makes me feel better – gives me the illusion that I am not trapped like I once was, or twice, or three times. Outside, headed for the park, at least I’m not in the car with my boss groping me – unable to get away because we’re on the highway and I’m buckled in and I need that job. At least I’m not in the dark back bedroom at the babysitter’s house, floating away in my mind while her 17-year old son does what he does to my 8-year old body.

There is a war between my bones and my mind that I cannot reconcile. 

My mind wants me to tell, to release the stories, to join the #MeToo and #WhyIDidntReport movements – to add to the ground swell. It knows the power of story. It says it will make a difference.

My bones push back. They know that telling is not a guarantee of release. That doing so is not like picking that small rock out of my shoe and flinging it away. These stories will always be with me. They are a virus.

There is another part of me, a part whose name I don’t know, that is enraged. This part of me, she is furious at the idea that more stories will get us to some tipping point – that there is some magical number of reported rapes and molestations and assaults that will flip a switch, turn the tide, change the cultural narrative. She wonders why we have to continue to rip our scars open and present them to others to be believed. SHE IS ANGRY BECAUSE WE NEED THEM TO BELIEVE US. Because it means that we are captive again – trapped until they “believe” us and release us. Because it reinforces the power differential.

The stories live within us. Always. 

It is why some of us drink too much, because numb is better sometimes.
It is why some of us cut ourselves, because the idea of release is so tempting.
It is why others deny themselves food or eat too much, because anything we can do to be in control of our own physical bodies feels like taking back power.
It is why some of us talk and talk and talk when we tell our stories, to still the questions waiting to tumble from your lips. Believe me, we’ve asked ourselves those questions over and over again and we still don’t have the answers. Because the answer lies outside us – with the perpetrators – while the pain lives inside.

And yet, no recounting of the story will matter if you’re not listening. If you are only waiting to turn this in to a philosophical debate or thought experiment, our stories will never matter, because your “What ifs” (she is lying/he was drunk/she was drunk/this is a setup/he thought he had consent/you’re not remembering right) are about you and your discomfort with our stories. Turning it in to a “conversation” means you’re not willing to listen to our lived experience. And if you’re uncomfortable with the details hitting your ears, imagine how we feel with them living in our bones.

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When Mothering is in Your Bones

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By si.robi – https://www.flickr.com/photos/sirobi/14239128799/in/photostream/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33623062

There are so many things to be struck by in the story of Serena Williams and the US Open Women’s Championship. I was pelted by many of them, both as I watched the match and afterward, reading and processing the controversy. I know there’s no way to say what I think any better than Rebecca Traister did here, but one thing that’s been rattling around in my head and heart since Serena protested the first warning won’t leave me until I do write about it.

Serena seemed to be saying that she can’t separate her tennis playing self from her mother self – she was as concerned about being accused of cheating for her own reputation as she was in regard to her role as a mother. I feel that so deeply.

I won’t generalize to other mothers or even other parents, but for me, becoming a mother didn’t just add an appendage to my Self, it added a thread that runs through every cell of it. Once I discovered I was pregnant, I was, in my mind, a mother. From that moment forward, I was never NOT a mother. In the background of every decision I made was the knowledge that I was tied to another being, responsible to that being.

When Serena told the judge that day, “I am a mother. I have a daughter,” I knew what she meant. Growing up a girl in a world dominated by men, where we are told in a million different ways who we are allowed to be, what is expected of us, and what our limitations are, we yearn to break free. Often, we don’t yearn to break free with a vengeance until we are mothers of girls, and then we positively scream to break free, to create a different dynamic, a new conversation, smash the patriarchy for our daughters. (Ok, I’m generalizing – sorry – this is how I feel, what I know in my bones).

When my daughters were little and they questioned why it was me up on the ladder changing the batteries in the smoke detector instead of Daddy, I felt empowered to offer them a different world view. When they heard me assert myself to a physician or a mechanic or a credit card company that wasn’t taking me seriously, I did it knowing that they were watching, listening, learning. I was always a mother – demonstrating that whatever the world-at-large told them, they had the right to take up space, voice their beliefs, ask for what they deserved.

Eve is in her third week of college – across the country from me – and I’m still teaching her to look at the world in a different way, to ask critical questions about how it interacts with her (albeit a lot less). When she texted me last week, nervous to go in to the advising office a second time to switch a class, she was worried that she would be characterized as whiny or wishy-washy. If I had a dime for every time a man accused me of not being able to make up my mind, or being emotional, I could pay for all four years of her private college tuition right now. I understood. And then I marshaled my mother-muscles and texted back:

Girl, you are the customer here. The only reason the people in that advising office are employed at all is to help you with things like this. To guide you as you determine what your major will be, and which classes will best fit that. You do NOT have to feel bad or embarrassed about asking for their help. If you want me to, I’ll send you a screenshot of the check I wrote them to ensure that they help you when you need it. You deserve to ask them to support you as you begin your college career (and throughout it). I love you. You got this. You’re fine. 


Whether men know it or not, every second of every day of the rest of my life I will be a mother to these two young women. I am never NOT a mother – it is part of everything I do, every decision I make. It has made me stronger, wiser, and more confident. I totally understand Serena’s fury at being accused of something she knows she is not in front of the whole world and her baby girl. When mothering is in your bones and you’ve taken up the mantle of raising the next generation of strong women, you feel every slight more profoundly. (Ok, I’m generalizing again – sorry.)

I don’t know if fathers feel this way about their sons or daughters. What I do know is that this awesome privilege and responsibility of motherhood has changed me in a way that will never be undone.

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