My time at Santa Rita & the Move-In Day Occupy Oakland Protest
Posted: April 25, 2012 Filed under: Marxist Feminist Theory & Analysis, Personal is Political | Tags: care work, occupy, prison industrial complex, protests, race, reflection, santa rita 5 CommentsI attended Occupy Oakland’s Move-in Day and ended up spending four days in Santa Rita prison. I want to tell this story the best way I can. This is not a perfect account, and I don’t have a ton of political points to make. I just want to share my own experience and the reflections I wrote down about it. I want to emphasize that this is mostly a personal reflection, and not really a political assessment of the move-in day or occupy in general. This is just my experience, my recollection of the day of January 28th and the days that followed. I don’t purport to tell the truth, just my truth. If I waited til I told it perfectly, I’d never tell it. So I am just going to do my best, here it is.
The Move-In Day Protest
We started off the march with about a thousand people, and a few rousing speeches from Gerald and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. I felt good, it was a sunny day and there was a pretty diverse crowd of people. Old and young, white, brown and black. It was remarkably diverse and our spirits were high despite the sobering and practical speech Gerald had given us: “We might not succeed today but no matter what, we haven’t failed. Occupy has already changed the entire political discussion in this country, had altered profoundly the political landscape. If they shut us down, its because they recognize how powerful we are.” True and practical words of wisdom.
The whole day the OPD attempted to kettle us. Wherever we marched they used any opportunity they could to try to close us off. But, I have to say, this time was different. I really felt that we started off with a defiant air to us.
Throughout the day we marched and the police tried various ways of shutting us down. But they couldn’t. I have to say there was this celebratory mood in the air. We were all together for the first time in a while, marching around and it felt really good. What also felt good to me was standing up to them. On two particular instances we had confrontations with the police and none of us ran. We didn’t run, we had begun to see that they could fire teargas and flash grenades at us but that they couldn’t break our spirit. We were there and we weren’t afraid. I felt the way that that defiance made me feel stronger, stronger in facing them and it felt fucking good. To be honest, it felt so good I stuck around way later than I should have. That was my mistake.
At the same time, I could tell that the fact that we weren’t reacting to their attempts to scare us with their violence, was emboldening us, while also enraging them. It wasn’t just the young rambunctious bunch that were standing strong to the police attempts to scare us; I saw all kinds of people, young and old, all races and colors; who continued to stay despite the cops getting really angry. And the fact was, though there was a little mayhem, there was very little overall property destruction going down throughout the day. That is why I think, we retained a lot of our moral high ground throughout the whole day.
Maybe that moral high ground is what helped us to stand strong to the police violence, we had this sense that it was not us who was wrong it was them and we were not afraid of them anymore. Our fearlessness, our defiance, our refusal to react to their violence made them angry. I could feel it.
This is I suppose why by the end of the night, I should not have been surprised by the viciousness I saw displayed by the OPD. They had been playing a cat and mouse game with us all day and they had been losing. But the night was not over yet.
Arrests at the YMCA
After most of the day’s marches had winded down and people had ended up at Oscar Grant plaza, some people decided to go back out on a march in the evening and try to take a building still. Again, I think the reason people felt that this was a good idea was because for the most part there was a defiant feeling in the air, a sense that we had not let them win. That’s what I felt like at least.
We were kettled pretty harshly in the field by 19th and telegraph. People triumphantly broke through the fence to escape the kettle and continued down telegraph. Once we were by broadway and telegraph, that’s where shit got real. We got kettled again right across the street from the YMCA and a panic really set in once we saw that we were surrounded by every angle by riot cops and they were moving in and waving their batons at us. People were rightly terrified of the batons and the violence of the police (who had been openly using violence throughout the day; flash grenades were thrown at people, people had been hit by rubber bullets, etc.) People started running towards the YMCA in a desperate attempt to escape the riot police. This is a pretty normal instinct to being confronted by people who look like robocops and who are charging at you. It was a pretty terrifying scene.
I like everyone else ran towards the YMCA and ran up the stairs to the top. As I ran I made a mistake, I stopped and looked back/down the stairs/balcony. I saw the cops grabbing people as they were running up the stairs. One woman was grabbed by her bookbag and she fell backwards down the stairs, her arms flailing. I looked down and saw people being beaten by police with batons. It was pretty horrifying.
Suddenly as we were all crowded at the entrance of the YMCA, someone yelled: “they’re opening the doors!” and the doors magically seemed to open. We all rushed in running trying to escape the violence of the police. Unfortunately they followed us, and I got trapped inside the YMCA. I wasn’t able to find an exit. I was handcuffed and made to sit down in the lobby and wait to be taken to Santa Rita.
While in the lobby, I was informed by my arresting officer that I was being charged with a felony offense: burglary.
“You really think I am trying to burglarize this place? Do you believe your own lies?” I asked the officer. He chuckled and fingered the hankerchief around my neck. ‘Oh and she has a hankerchief around her neck, make sure you charge her with wearing an unlawful mask too” he told his partner. At one point I heard this same officer say to a man of color that was also being arrested “i would snap your neck if we were civilians”. He was really gross and abusive.
My heart sank as I thought about my dog, my job, etc. Felony charges meant I would spend at least a few days in Rita and be transferred to general population (not just cited and released). Everyone who was caught in the YMCA that night was charged with felony burglary, a bogus and political charge meant to be punitive. We were held extra days for no reason because those charges of burglary would never ever hold up in court. They weren’t. We were held in Rita and the DA decided not to pursue any of the charges against us. Ultimately after this entire ordeal I was set free with no charges pursued against me. There was not a basis for any of them. My first charge was 1) failure to disperse from the scene of a riot. I was never given a dispersal order, I was kettled during a peaceful march. 2) Wearing an unlawful mask and 3) Burglary (obvious bullshit. I was running for my life not trying to BURGLARIZE THE DAMN YMCA!) Anyway…
Off to Rita & The Tank
I spent 25 hours in that tank. That 25 hours was the worst. I was cramped in a 10×10 cell with 25 people and no way of sleeping due to how cold it was (AC on full blast), hard cement benches, ice cold floor, too little clothing, balogna sandwiches, hot fountain stanky water, surrounded by filth, guards answering no questions, giving no information about what time it was, when we’d be transferred, let out, fed, etc. I tried to meditate but couldn’t. It was too cold, too uncomfortable, too noisy, etc. That frustrated me a lot.
I went into it with the memory of the last time I’d been in jail. The last time I had suffered because I had been internally fighting the fact that I was in there to begin with. This time I had the intention of surrendering to the experience. Of course actually surrendering is much harder than it sounds.
I kept feeling panicky. It calmed me momentarily to have the purpose of comforting other cell mates. All along though I had little solace because I kept thinking about the fact that they were all about to be cited and released but I was going to be kept because I was being charged with a felony. That made the holding cell more unbearable. I also frequently felt irritation and even some contempt towards my cell mates that were complaining in specific ways I saw as white and privileged.
At some point in the tank I fell asleep. When I woke up I had a monstrous headache. I was experiencing the withdrawal from my prescription medication. I felt incredibly queasy and wanted to throw up. That made the entire situation more intense. I tried to sleep, tried to meditate, close my eyes, massage my temples, nothing worked. I felt really on the verge of throwing up but did not want to subject the cell to the smell of my vomit on top of the stench of 25 women’s urine. Mind you, all of us had been deprived of good drinking water and this was making all of our urine smell really bad. Everytime we’d pee we’d break up orange peels to help create a natural air freshener but the smell of oranges and pee mixed together was really sending intense waves of nausea through my body. I was shivering.
The water and bologna also started wearing on my physical feelings of withdrawal, the nausea and intense migraine I felt intensified. I felt so sensitive to everything, I could no longer stomach anything. I felt desperate to escape, and felt such despair knowing no one in that place gave a fuck (no one with any power to do anything about it, anyway).
One really bright moment though, not fully felt or appreciated in that moment, was when one woman offered to massage my temples to help with my migraine. I don’t even know her name But she was so sweet and she looked so concerned. She took my hands and massaged my pressure points. I think it helped but more than that the human touch she provided was so freaking comforting, and it helped distract me from focusing on the unpleasant head and belly aches I was feeling.
L also massaged me and that helped a lot. The woman who massaged my pressure points kept giving me expressions of sympathy and offering various remedies because I am sure I looked pretty miserable. I’d look at her, somewhat numb to my own empathy, and tell her flatly “no, thank you”.
It is interesting to me now, in retrospect, to observe just how emotionally dead I had been in those moments. Ordinary gestures like the massage from the stranger woman would have normally provoked a lot of warmth and affection inside of me. But I felt emotionless and numb throughout, though there was this detached part of me that was observing with interest the empathy people were showing towards me, and empathy between comrades in general. I observed these interactions like some kind of internally dead alien, I was curious about how other people were still managing to feel compassion towards one another. I felt only anger, extreme sickness, and blinding migraine. The insight I get from this experience is that I have learned one instinctive survival reaction in myself: when I feel helpless, afraid or overwhelmed with discomfort, it is often hard for me to access empathy, or emotions other than frustration and rage.
At some point we escaped the tank and made it to the dressing room where we put on our prison outfits so that we could be transferred to general population. I felt ecstatic and relieved to get out of the tank. I remember it felt still surreal to walk down this long fluorescent hallway that was so empty. I won’t ever forget that moment. I won’t forget being lead with two other women walking in single file behind the guard outside in the darkness to the general population building. It was dark outside except for the bright prison lights around us. I looked at the yard with some exercise equipment and imagined it filled with inmates working out. We all hurried along in the dark, me shivering and not knowing what to expect. I felt really aware of my powerlessness but I also felt so relieved to be out of the tank. I also felt really physically aware that I was wearing prison clothes, prison slippers and I felt quite conscious of my own mortality. I was kind of awestruck at the entire situation.
The Strip Search
We finally got to our destination: 24 West. There we were stripped searched by an aggressive and snarky guard who emerged to greet us once we entered our unit.
She barked at us to remove our clothes and show them to her, piece by piece. I’d kept on my own drawers, because I didn’t want to wear the used (but ostensibly washed) pair the had provided me. She yelled at me to take them off and she threw them away. ‘Lift your breasts’ she told us. I awkwardly palmed my small breasts under which there could not possibly be hidden anything.
“Bend over and spread your ass cheeks and labia and cough” she told us. I felt so utterly powerless over my own body and person in that moment. She chuckled and yelled loudly “I can’t see whats in your vagina!” she said, in a mocking voice, making a very grossly disgusted face. She quickly retrieved a roll of toilet paper and instructed me to wipe my vagina and cough again.
“WIPE YOUR VAGINA AND COUGH AGAIN!” She screamed loudly.
I felt aware in that moment that my life and body was in the hands of the state and more specifically, in the hands of someone who felt utter contempt towards me.
“PUT YOUR CLOTHES BACK ON!” She barked at me. The strip search ended.
24 West
I got to my cell around 2 am, but there were still quite a few inmates who were still awake when I got there. It was a cell broken up into corridors filled with bunk beds. Each “corridor” was called a pod. My pod probably had about two dozen bunk beds and was the top layer of two corridors stacked on top of each other. In front of us was a gate overlooking a round large area that looked kind of like an indoor gym or baseball area. On the right it had tables with benches, like a cafeteria. To the left, were some benches and a television that inmates could watch TV. There was a small cart with some books on wheels, which the inmates called “the library”.
The general population cell kind of looked like this but there were gates instead of white walls, and the part in the middle was circular and divided into an eating area and an area for watching tv.
I came into the pod holding my mattress, blanket, and a small plastic bag of belongings given to me by the jail: a razor (surprising that that is seen as a priority), soap, a small tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush and an orange spork that I was quickly told I would need to bring to every meal.
When I got in there, one really nice and young woman with two long braids immediately came over to me to ask if I wanted help bringing my mattress up to the top bunk. I said thank you and felt awash with gratitude for her warmth and helpfulness. The woman next to me immediately sprung into action as well. She was Latina and in her mid 50’s, early 60’s. She helped me make my bed with the sheets they gave me, showing me how to tie the sheets underneath the mattress and make sure that it doesn’t keep coming off.
The woman with the long braids was very pretty and very sweet. She looked like Jennifer Lopez. I could tell she was respected in the pod, she was very likable. She got to work telling me all about the pod from the moment I got in there, what was expected of me, what time the meals were, how to shower, etc. I was again so thankful for the welcoming attitude she had at a time when I was still feeling pretty sick and vulnerable and in a new and scary environment.
I went to bed and passed out until 12pm the next day. I woke up and the woman next to me told me I had missed breakfast, which in Rita is served at 4am. She handed me a cornbread and told me she had saved it for me. I hungrily scarfed it down, thankful it was not a bologna sandwich. Soon it was lunchtime.
A voice boomed out of the loudspeakers, “LINE UP LADIES!” The guards were hidden in a watch tower that had double-sided mirrors. We all rushed to get out of bed and out of the gate that had opened automatically. We lined up outside the gate and awaited instruction.
The watchtower the guard hid in looked out onto the pods through the gates. The guard barked that everyone needed to be lined up perfectly before we were allowed to go downstairs and get out food.
Food time was also time that we had free. When food was served we were allowed an hour out of our pod to hang out in that large area in the center with benches and television. People could make phone calls and get books from the “library”.
I felt like a child throughout most of this experience. It was not very uncomfortable most of the time, as I said, my defensive reaction left me mostly numb, though I could see how it would deaden your soul to have your life confined to being in the pod, and hanging out by the benches and watching tv, or reading from the tiny selection of the library. The trauma of this experience came mostly in the days after I got out of prison, as I felt haunted by the treatment I experienced, the humiliation I felt and saw my friends and other human beings experience. In the nights after I got out of prison I also experienced nightmares where my body felt like it was having seizures.
There was a ton I learned in my four days altogether that I was at Rita. Too many things to type out, I don’t have the energy to. But there were a few moments that really stood out to me.
“Miss ‘Have-a-Nice-Day”
The first full day I spent at Rita, around mid-day I saw the woman with the braids who had helped me the night before, looking really upset and gathering up her stuff.
I came down from my bunk to see what was going on and heard her describe how she had been called into see the guard. The guard had accused this incredibly sweet and helpful woman of being obnoxious. The woman, lets call her Jen, explained how the guard informed her she’d be pulling Jen out of all the classes she’d been taking in Rita. There were a few classes there, I think one was a GED and the other was for Mothers, or new Mothers. Jen looked really upset and frustrated. She explained to the women how after the guard told her she’d be pulled out of her classes, she’d finally said to the guard: “okay, fine. Well you have a nice day.”
“That made the guard loose it though. She went crazy. She started yelling at me and cursing at me for saying ‘have a nice day’. I had meant it though. What else was there to say? I was just telling her to have a nice rest of her day.”
As a result of Jen telling the guard “have a nice day” the guard had ordered Jen moved to a different pod. Jen continued to gather up her things into a large plastic bag when the offending guard entered our pod.
“WHERE’S MISSES HAVE-A-NICE-DAY?” the guard barked. She was a white guard, with blond hair and glasses. She was a beefy woman with a pony tail neatly pulled back and twisted in the back of her head.
I watched in horror as this guard came up to Jen and kicked her remaining possessions so that they scattered all over the floor. I felt so sick watching this abuse, I felt so helpless. I was shocked and frozen.
“PICK UP YOUR SHIT NOW!” She screamed in Jen’s face, almost seeming like she wanted to provoke Jen to fight her. I know I would have felt tempted to throw a punch if someone did that to me. I felt incredibly triggered watching this interaction.
Jen scrambled to pick up her things all over the floor. “FASTER!!!” The guard demanded, though it seemed Jen was going as fast as she could.
“DOES ANYONE ELSE WANT TO KNOW HOW TO FUCK UP IN HERE? BE LIKE MISSES ‘HAVE-A-NICE-DAY’, THIS SMART ASS. THAT’S HOW YOU FUCK UP. FOLLOW MISSES ‘HAVE-A-NICE-DAY!’” Over and over again she berated Jen in front of us, and Jen kept her head down. There was silence in the pod after Jen and the guard left.
The shocking part though was that after Jen left I asked the other inmates what they thought. I felt traumatized having watched that interaction and I was agitating them about how fucked up it was.
“Yeah she a bitch [referring to the guard], but Jen know better than to be talking back to the guard.”
I was really shocked and distressed to see the inmates identifying with the guard and placing blame for what was clearly an extremely fucked up situation of abuse, squarely on the shoulders of Jen who seemed to be a clear victim of it.
Later I talked about this with some friends (once we were out of Rita) and we talked about the ways in which people in the jail both hated the guards and were well aware of how fucked up the place was, but how many people really seemed to focus on policing one another to follow rules and get by within the jail. My friends and I remarked about how when one is in a powerless situation, it seems to give you a sense of control to identify with power and to regulate your own behavior.
We also remarked about how we had felt a mix of contempt towards guards but also a desperate desire to be shown some humanity by them. You feel so powerless and you want so bad to feel some semblance of safety and security that you almost wish that the guards would like you, or see some kind of worth in you. This probably also contributed to people identifying with guards and the rules of the prison. The need for safety can cause people to really identify with their abusers
Last thoughts
As I said there was a lot more I saw in Rita that was interesting and that I could write about but I don’t want to get too into it. Here are some bullet pointed thoughts though:
– Though my experience was pretty horrifying in Rita, I have to be honest there was a part of me that kind of fantasized about people “salting” in prison. I know in the past that communists and organizers would purposely go work in factories to agitate workers. I wonder if people have ever done that in prison. There are so many people in prison, and there is such a potential to agitate people. I had a lot of political conversations with people in prison and people were really receptive and thoughtful and it got me thinking. These days with de-industrialization, there are no longer large workforces, or the “armies of workers” that Marx wrote about in the Manifesto and in Capital. However, prison is an area where there remains a large number of proletarians or “lumpen” all together, concentrated in great numbers, a disproportionate amount of people of color. It seems like a ripe place for struggle and that is probably why all the hunger strikes have been happening the past year in jails across California. Prison struggle seems like an incredibly key focal point for political work.
– The food in Rita is so disgusting and so lacking in nutrients I would be surprised if it didn’t make people go crazy. There is a connection between nutrition and mental health and it seems designed to make people go insane and be sick, to be honest. It was not edible food.
– Activists when they get arrested, like in this case for occupy, really need to be self-aware about the populations they are mixing with. I include myself in this category. I feel thankful for this experience because I feel like I definitely have a better understanding of the monstrosity of the Prison Industrial Complex. I felt humbled realizing that this abusive situation I experienced, was not just there because I myself, an activist experienced it, but is in fact the everyday reality of prison, period. However, there were a few times in prison I felt mad triggered by Occupy activists who were with me, who I felt could have gained something by realizing that the prison experience is not just fucked for them, but for the populations who are routinely fucked with in society. This injustice we experienced is just a small taste of what communities of color experience all the time. For example, one white middle-aged woman I was in the pod with kept exclaiming that she “was being held there involuntarily” and “whatever happened to innocent before proven guilty?!”. On the one hand, I can understand this woman’s anger at the injustice of our situation, but on the other I can’t help but feel triggered by her naivety and sense of specialness. Many times I felt compelled to yell at her: HONEY EVERYONE HERE IS BEING HELD INVOLUNTARILY AND GIVEN THE STRUCTURE OF VIOLENCE AND RACIST INJUSTICE WE ALL LIVE UNDER, THEY ARE ABOUT AS INNOCENT AS YOU, I DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
I didn’t yell that, but I thought it, and I felt it, and it added layers of complexity to my experience in jail. Overall though, I felt pretty inspired by the solidarity between people in jail, the kindness of inmates despite the gross abuse they were experiencing, and the solidarity from comrades outside of prison who worked tirelessly to take care of our lives while we were in Rita.
Thank you to all of you who took care of my life while I was in prison. I really understand the value of mutual aid as a political principle while I was in prison, and I really gained a newfound and profound appreciation for how important yet prison solidarity work is, as a kind of care work that holds together our small community of activists and comrades.
Risks and Rewards
Posted: March 16, 2012 Filed under: Personal is Political | Tags: gender, gender socialization, personal is political, race, school, self-care, teaching 4 CommentsI am a fear-based person.
That’s right, I said it, (and I am pretty sure I’ve discussed it at length in random other posts.)
Fear! Growing up in a home where there was so much chaos and unpredictability molded me into a fear-driven person. Fear-driven people, tend to be controlling. I am pretty controlling. I like to control all things: how people think, how people think of me, how people perceive me, how I perceive me, how I live my life, how people live their lives, etc. But through this process of 12-step recovery I am learning to let go of controlling others. I am learning acceptance and surrender.
For me, surrender can sometimes mean surrendering to my fear and sitting in it. It can mean doing nothing. I have learned through self reflection, meditation and all manner of journal-ing, that my patterns in the past indicate a tendency in myself to feel fear and ACT on it. Adrenaline would get pumping and I’d take that as an immediate signal to ACT, or REACT, rather. I always wanted to DO something, FIX something, go, run, correct! Control!
However, the other side of a fear-based reactive life, is paralysis (fight, flight or FREEZE) remember? One thing I like about the 12-step programs is that they really encourage us to take risks. For me, avoidance of risk is connected to fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the different, fear of change, fear of discomfort, intolerance of difficult emotions. These feelings of fear have prevented me from growing throughout my life. Fear tells me to turn around, to run, to change my mind and go back, to doubt myself, my ability, to believe that people will hurt me, not like me, disrespect me. I’m afraid I won’t be okay.
But lately in my life I have been experimenting with taking risks. Fear prevents growth because it conditions us to crave the familiar and fear the unknown. (After all, a bad situation can always get worse, right?) At a certain point in my recovery I was presented with the realization that the situations that feel most comfortable for me, are often situations that are not quite that healthy for me. After all, I grew up in a pretty unhealthy family, acting in really unhealthy ways. Those ways of being I saw as a kid, those are the ways of being I feel most comfortable with. Environments of low-nurturance, relationships with people who are not in touch with their own feelings (where I must do a disproportionate amount of care work or feeling others feelings FOR them), activities where I am not validated or appreciated, all of these dynamics feel pretty familiar and comfortable to me.
To grow, I am going to have to become uncomfortable. Someone wise said to me recently: sometimes self care doesn’t mean taking a bubble bath. Sometimes self-care means intentionally enduring discomfort in the pursuit of change, of transformation and growth.
Right now, in this moment, I am celebrating the rewards of taking RISKS. I am facing my fears and moving through them. I feel brave every time I take a risk and feel myself rise to meet the task (with plenty of support, of course).
Recent Risks Taken: A List (In Chronological Order, of Course)
Risk: Substitute Teaching
Substitute teaching is scary. I got hired as a sub a while ago, but it was only today that I had my first real full-length sub job! It went so great!
I got to class late (cursing myself the whole ride over for trusting my obviously faulty alarm, which had me waking up at 7:45AM today instead of 6:00AM when I was supposed to). I was super nervous, but was met with a really nice and friendly science teacher. I told him that I was a recent grad from San Francisco State with an MA in Women’s Studies. He was super nice, told me he was a graduate from a UC from an Ethnic Studies program, and that he’d been teaching the kids about race and class! He told me he’d love for me to come in in the future and teach a class on gender. Then he added:
“Hey, if you feel reaaaaaally comfortable, you could experiment today and teach a class on gender or anything else you want.”
Hmm…. A lightbulb went off. I had a thought: I could do it! I had a free period before my next class because the kids were on a field trip, and I used that free period to jot down some notes about sex/gender on the board. Then I figured I’d give the kids a choice to do the work that the teacher left for them, or to have a class on sex/gender. The kids unanimously voted to have the class on sex/gender.
Now, I basically did not think of a lesson plan at all, I totally winged it! I had the preliminary definitions on the board, and then I had the idea that I’d make the kids write reflections on ways in which they have experienced social conditioning around gender in their lives, growing up. I figured while they were writing, I’d use that time to think of what to do next. I also hoped that having them read out loud what they wrote that I’d be able to generate discussion.
Off the 'cuff notes on Sex/Gender for impromptu lesson!
But a lot of kids were shy to share what they wrote. So I lectured them instead, on race and gender, and the ways that gendered stereotypes have been used to push forward racist laws and structures in society. I talked about colonialism, about equality in indigenous and native communities, I talked about stereotypes of East Asian women being used by investors moving their businesses to China. I talked about a LOT. At one point I looked up and I saw the kids had all become completely quiet and all eyes were on me. HOORAY. 🙂
When I stopped, they applauded! It was sooo cute. I felt so happy. One girl gave me a cell phone charm for my phone for being a “chill sub”!
Also, when I read the paragraphs they handed in, I was so inspired and blown away by what the kids wrote! Check out a few…
Q: How has gender shaped you and your personality.
"I'm not strong because I'm told that its unattractive to be very strong and I don't do muscle building sports. I don't wear certain clothes or talk a certain way, its weird to people I don't like pink. "
Q: What expectations shaped your gender identity?
"That I'm going to like pink and be girly and nurturing and loving. I'm going to try to look clean, be prim, proper, quiet, etc."
This paper made me so happy!
"In this world the stereotypes of gender roles is rampant and always appearing in the voices of closeminded people and some that are enough to believe it. I was told never to cry and to always be strong. I still cryed regardless because I can't hide my feelings. An I think im mentally stronger because I show my emotions and express myself and shape myself however i want. I don't know many gender roles because I don't follow them... I am my own role model."
This made me smile so hard. I wanted to give that kid a high-five. I have faith in the youth, and the amazing work critical teachers and conscious parents are doing to help impart the next generation with a radical understanding of the world! 😀
The rest of the day I was walking on air, as I thought about the ways that putting ourselves in situations where we risk failure can be the moments that are the most rewarding.
Risk: Decision to become Celibate
I was not single when I decided to do celibacy. I was dating someone I really cared about, actually. I felt really afraid to lose that person. But you know what? There was a voice inside me, and voices all around me (those of my sponsor and people in recovery) urging me to try living single, and celibate. ‘You will be a different person once you are done with the steps,’ they told me, ‘you need to give yourself emotional room to grow’.
‘If you lose that person’, they told me, ‘it wasn’t meant to be, and ultimately, who is more important, you or them?’ I heard that. But truth was, it is scary being alone. Its even more scary being alone when you are facing the person you are hidden behind the layers of shame and guilt that you’ve built up after years of using drugs and alcohol to numb yourself.
But I did it. And I realize these days, that I lost that person after all. But you know what, it was worth it. It was worth it because for the first time I can say I chose me, and I know I meant it. Not just because there was nothing else going on, not just because I was bitter because of the last relationship, not because I didn’t really like the person I was seeing, not because of anything else but the one conviction that I need to take this time for me. There’s the sting of ego that accompanies loss, but there’s also this strong glowing warmth towards myself– this affection for my own being, I’ve given myself a sacred gift: tenderness and time. 🙂
What a reward!
The Most Astounding Fact
Posted: March 8, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 4 Comments
This video explains the way every atom we are composed of, was actually forged in the death of a dying massive star. At the moment of its death, a massive star burned hot enough to fuse together atoms into elements that are required for life. We are built of those elements. We are literally made of stars. The video points out the way this reveals our interconnectedness with the universe and our interdependency.
Materialist Marxists cannot deny, that there is something spectacularly ‘magical’ about this human existence. In fact, I think the pursuit of communism at its heart is about the fact of our interconnectedness and interdependency as a species and as part of this universe. Capitalism is anti-social, hides our interdependency and breeds the notion that we are all discrete individuals responsible for our lot and in perfect control of our lives. Interestingly, this orientation towards life is one that is arguably aligned best with the functions of our Ego*– the part of our brain hardwired for Self preservation.
Capitalism = Ego, pursuit of one’s own well being against and apart from the interests of the larger community.
Communism = Relates to our higher self, and is aligned with the realization of our universal interconnectedness and mutuality, an injustice to one, is an injustice to all.
This does not mean that under communism, we would all be wearing gray burlap sacs with no individuality and that there would be an erosion of the self as we know it. It is quite the opposite actually. As Marx writes:
“Communism… is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution”
In other words, communism would be a situation in which the truest and most fullest development of the SELF, would not be antithetical to the health of the community. Under capitalism, self preservation is fundamentally opposed to the well being of others. For example: you get the job, and live, but only because someone else did not get the job. This is the essence of capitalist social relations. Competition makes it so that being “self-seeking” is synonymous with being antagonistic and competitive with others. In a communist society, we would want a situation where the full realization of the individual is in harmony and not opposed to the realization of the community.
That’s my communism. 🙂
* Our Egos (some say) are rooted in the reptilian part of the brain. ‘Reptilian’ refers to our evolutionary ancestry (reptiles) and it means this portion of our brain is one of the oldest and most primitive. It deals with baser instinct, as well as fight or flight responses, and is where fear and anger come from (which are both defense mechanisms that we evolved in order to protect ourselves from danger).
missing piece/peace
Posted: March 8, 2012 Filed under: Personal is Political, Poetry and Creative Writing 2 Commentsi am wondering if you ever loved me
i am wondering what self love looks like
i am wondering if the knife is still drawn inwards
i am wondering
if that tattered book of poetry
you carry around
still promises you forever
in a world that doesn’t know you
names of unforgotten you
breaking from your lips
i met you in a dream
my arms embraced you
like they did that night
when i watched you
under fluorescent white lights
sleeping an innocent sleep
in a place too far away
from where you were made
your vulnerability
gripped my heart
like a wave i tossed and turned
nightmares of broken systems
enclosing our strong beating hearts
resisting the attrition of dignity
that night i promised you
i wouldn’t leave
no matter what
we’d figure it out
we’d keep fighting
and for a while we did
we escaped the fluorescent halls
still nursing traumas
and wounds
poorly dressed and untreated
for a moment we found ourselves
found each other
friendship
time has passed.
and now my words
haunt me in the night
and i wonder
if it
all
ever
even
really
happened.
2012, Moving Towards Wholeness and Healedness
Posted: January 6, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsJanuary 5, 2012
2012, a year of spiritual growth and discovery
It is 2012. This is going to be an incredible year for me. I have decided to really continue my trip down the rabbit hole by really intensifying my commitment to my spiritual growth and personal healing. I am doing this in a few different ways –
– First, I have decided to practice celibacy for 6 months. Yup, no sex or dating. No using the excitement, drama or intrigue of a new person in order to escape or be distracted from my own feelings of loneliness. I want to learn to love myself. I know in the past I have sought an unconditional love and acceptance from partners and failed repeatedly because nobody can give that to me but me. I want love so I have to cultivate it in myself, for myself, unconditionally.
– Second, I have sworn off drinking and smoking weed for 6 months as well. No using substances to check out of my feelings. I am entering this year with a sober and serious commitment to healing myself and the wounds I have accumulated in my lifetime and the lifetimes of my ancestors.
– Third, I have decided to start off the year with a bang by attending 30 meetings in 30 days. Meetings, meaning the 12-step Al-anon meetings I attend, but other 12 step meetings as well, like AA (with the encouragement of my sponsor).*
*In my own personal philosophy, addictions of all kinds are similar in that they are all symptomatic of a deeper issue: lack of self love, an intense desire or need to control the world around us, an inability to be present with ourselves, and others, to accept the world as it is.
These issues are wounds of separation we accumulate in our lifetimes, and in many lifetimes preceding ours—in that we accumulate and are the inheritors of psychic wounds passed down to us from our ancestors and the traumas they experienced.
These wounds often fester for decades and decades in oppressed populations, and in the general population as well, passed down generation after generation. We pass these wounds down as we relate to the people around us unhealthily, projecting on them our own feelings of inferiority, of defectiveness, of unlovability. Until we learn to love ourselves and heal ourselves, we accumulate these wounds and pass them down to the children who learn to mirror these ways of relating. We see in our children and the people around us, all our worst fears about ourselves (Jungian theory!) that we believe make us defective on some profound level. Like the parent who never stops telling his kid she is too emotional and will never amount to anything, her sensitivity inspires a terror and contempt in him for a part of him that he recognizes. The judgements of him by his own parents and perhaps society weigh heavy on him as well, and he projects those judgements on her, seeing intricately every little failure and misstep as unbearable proof of his own failure. To escape that terrible shame, he must not allow her to be a failure. He must not accept her. He cannot accept himself.
Anyway. If the 30 meetings in 30 days is accomplished successfully, I may extend it to 90 days! I am five days in as I’ve said and I am already feeling a spiritual shift in myself. I have been thinking and I really want to document the insights and growth I experience over the next 6 months or so.
I want to start at the beginning.
Lead up to 2012
So I moved out of my house December 1st. That was a pretty difficult and traumatic period for me. It was incredibly hard to move into a new house with strangers. I never lived with strangers before. Home has always been a fraught concept for me. I never really experienced a positive example of Home before, not before the home I had made in Oakland prior to my move. That home had been a source of real love and acceptance and safety, unlike anything I had ever known with my birth family.
Leaving that home, broke my heart in a lot of ways. I still feel I am mourning that home and the family ties that broke when I left it. In the midst of the move I imagined that as soon as I would move out of the house I would be able to sort through the difficult feelings and have space to start resolving the issues between myself and my friends. I was in survival mode in the lead up to the move, thinking only of the day when I would be fully moved into the new place, safe and away from the drama and negativity, from the painful memories of what had just went down in that house, what it symbolized to me, everything.
But the idea that the nightmare would be over once I moved into my new place was a silly illusion. If anything, the survival mode in the lead up to the move had really helped me by numbing me to a lot of my feelings.
I moved in and dove into a mess of behaviors to make sure I continued to not feel any of the heavy emotions. I did this by surrounding myself with what seemed like nonstop socializing from the moment I moved into my new place.
For the first few weeks of living in my new place I made sure I was never alone for more than a few minutes. I socialized aggressively, making sure that I never had time to be alone with my thoughts or feelings. In the lead up to the move – all of November I had been meditating every day, going to multiple 12-step meetings a week, journaling religiously, at least 3-6 pages a day.
I went from that pace of self-reflection, to almost none. I moved in and stopped meditating and journaling altogether. I even stopped making gratitude lists (a practice I have been doing consistently for months and months). I stopped going to meditation, even ran out early of a few meditation sits I tried to attend. I attended barely one 12- step meeting a week. My resentments crept up on me silently, and I was way unprepared, having abandoned all the work I had been doing diligently to deal with the situation.
To be honest for the first few weeks I felt kind of baffled at my inability to say no to any and all plans offered to me, and the complete abandonment of my self-care and spiritual practices, all of which had carried me through those difficult weeks in November. I stayed so busy I barely had a few minutes to jot down a note in my journal or to sit quietly with my eyes closed.
Then one sunny and brisk day, I managed to get away to the park by the water. My favorite reflection place. I burst into tears. The grief was so heavy and thick, it enveloped me, I struggled to catch my breath. I felt such lossss and such pain. My friend, my friends, my beloved and adored friends. My refuge, my home. I realized I still had a lot of grieving to do. I realized that moving out had been a step in the right direction—I had outgrown that home, and the drama that had prompted me to move from there was evidence of work I needed to do IN ME. The problem could not be solved by separating from people I felt hurt by, I knew in a very real way that I had serious work to continue doing – work on myself.
I had been surrounding myself, losing myself in a mess of wonderful people who I am incredibly grateful for, but the fact remains: I was trying to avoid grieving my friendships and the loss of my home. I realized what I had to do.
A poem I wrote 12/28/11:
This world is convulsing from the heart beat
Of a million souls marching towards wholeness
Wholeness has a gravitational pull
It pulls the oppressed up off the floor
And on to our feet
Like two planets
Hurtling toward one another
We are being pulled upright and toward one another by this
This–
the fight to become whole
The conditions that make us
Draw out our lives like a fantastic blueprint for revolution
Our children will spring proudly from this earth
Like sunflowers faced to the sky
To get there, we must
Stop in this very moment
This very moment, by the way,
Is alive to me, when I imagine a world
With space for all of our traumas
the human tragedies, I would hold them
all in my arms if I could. So precious
in their simplicity.
the pain of:
who we thought we’d be
how life was sposed to be
fear of being seen and desperation to be seen
wanting love so badly while not knowing the language
The things that haunt us
Like nightmares
Lucid and unreal
We experienced alone
As individuals, it all seemed too much to bear
We imagined we were alone
Not realizing the collectivity of our experience
That others were shuddering with pain alongside us
Privately
Social movements are moments
When the worlds people
As if sleepwalking in unison
Towards our nightmares and our dreams
All at once, approach the street in silent recognition
Of a shared circumstance
Suffering is revealed to be our condition
You felt this too?
I reintroduce myself to humanity
And in seeing that you too
Are dealing with the unfolding
Of a painful and incredible,
Wonderful experience…this… being human.
I see this and,
I,
I,
I am emboldened!
And cry out:
We seek in the end of our oppressions!!
As individuals
As society
An end to the nightmare–
This illusion.
This, separateness.
——-
You see, class struggle is never just about
winning demands or the overthrow
of this mode of destruction
social reproduction.
class struggle is also,
a practice:
mindfulness and awareness,
our meditation brings us
cross legged and floating
to the barricades and the street
angrily refusing to mindlessly
absorb our distracted and fragmented
pain, in the busyness of life.
We march
to bring submerged problems to the surface,
where we can notice them collectively
Movements are moments in which
we begin to take account of our shared traumas
the way they shape the containers of our souls differently
these differences embodied by weight and rhythm
the way with which our fist flies to the sky
but more than fighting
class struggle, is a declaration
we want connection
more than revenge, justice
more than apologies, recognition
peace from resentment and fearful vindiction
——
yes. something started
in Tunisia last spring
the growth of our collective being
pushed like a delicate shoot of grass
through the tough soil to the sun
a process of completion
just as humans must become aware
accept and awaken to that which they
wish not to see
society must also
become aware and awake
to those parts of itself
it is attempting to disown
and cannabalize
for “profit”
capitalism stifles growth
and as such
is a sin against humanity
against nature
our nature
capitalism
discourages you from seeing
your nightmare in mine
excels in your isolation
like a character defect,
it thrives in the dark
shame multiplying in its own misrecognition
revolution all at once explodes
the illusion of seperateness
demanding we take note
of interdependence
revolution like childbirth is
a painful process
we are attached to the old
we fear the new
we are courageous though
in the face of this fear
we are, eyes wide open
tear gas flying
and flash grenade
ringing in our ears
marching towards wholeness
we investigate the lines
and intersections
that gave birth to our ancestors
and the wounds they passed on to us
they read like maps on our bodies
gender, race, sexuality, history, colonialism, blood, shame, internalized fear and hatred, inferiority, unspeakable violence, irrepressible beauty, silent victory, unimaginable faith, unbreakable strength and love love love.
May we have love
May we travel along this journey
This process of transformation is long
And arduous
And like a dream before waking
Has no predestined end point
We are fashioning tomorrow
We are evolving! All the time.
Face forward! You must GROW.
New Years Eve 2011
This New Years Eve I returned back to the bay at sunset, to continue a tradition I had just begun last year, around the time of year when I first really embarked on this “spiritual path” (I feel corny still, I admit it!).
In the days up to this NYE, I reflected on the growth I had made in this past year. Last year, heartbroken, I had sat with a candle and incense and written a letter to the universe begging, pleading to be given the strength to let go and forgive. I asked the universe to remind me of how grateful I was for the experience I had been given. I asked to remember impermanence as the law of life. It was a beautiful ceremony and I wanted to repeat it this year.
So I wrote my reflection and returned to the bay. It was different. Of course it would be. I felt much more brave. I was returning to the water and the amazing skyline of San Francisco in the horizon. This time my heart was not awash with pain the way it had been. I did not cry out and plead, literally in tears, to be healed of the grief I felt. I read out loud a letter noting with pride and love for myself, recounting the amazing achievements I had made in the year prior—a Masters degree, a thesis I was proud of , a Marxist conference, a feminist summer camp, forgiveness, growth, QPOC, blogging, moving, so many things!
I asked the Universe to give me strength to heal myself in this coming year, to help send me to India and on my travels. I asked that this year be the year I heal my ancestral wounds and come to love myself. At the same time, I recognized that there was no guarantee that I would get any of these things. I cannot control life, I can just open myself to the possibility of these things, and admit these deep wishes inside myself. The only thing I can expect for sure is my continued growth and unfolding. That is beautiful.
I was feeling pretty good that night until I was at a party at a friend’s house and ran into people I was not ready to see at that moment. I felt a ton of pain again, almost unbearable pain. I left the party early that night and collapsed in my bed in tears. Just after midnight. I knew that I had serious work to do, my wounds and resentments bore down upon me. I felt choked and isolated by them. To complicate matters I felt a bunch of shame and guilt and anger with myself. I thought I had outgrown resentments and blame, I thought I had outgrown silent seething with should’ves, and feelings of poor-me and entitlements. But this work is difficult and old habits die hard. I felt a lot of the same feelings I had felt following leaving a political group last year, and that hurt me. I felt defeated on some level.
The next day though, I went to a New Years Day Al-anon meeting from 12-4. In that meeting, I heard exactly what I needed to hear and I started off my year right. I realized that part of growth and self-acceptance is realizing that I am going to continue to experience difficult feelings and habitual patterns and thoughts as well. But I am holding these experiences differently. No longer baffled and terrified, I know what I have to do and I feel safe in that. I have to go deeper into myself, I have to recommit myself to the difficult work I know that lies before me, that I am being pointed towards by all the lingering resentments and negative feelings I am feeling.
I am going to have to learn to sit with my anger, with my pain and resentment. These feelings are hard for me to sit with, they are easily overwhelmed by feelings of fear and guilt. But I am rededicated and ready. I skipped out of that Al-anon meeting.
(Entries from Journal)
Day 1 – 1/1/2012
I am at an al-anon meeting new years day, filled with older women (with the exception of a couple few). They are sweet and have much wisdom to share with me.
All I can wish for in this upcoming year is the willingness to get better. I can wish for tolerance and acceptance for my life, and myself. I can hope for balance between the extremes of isolation and losing myself in socializing with other people. I wish for balance. I wish for peace.
God is in each and every person around me. God is in the sky above me and the sun that shines on my face. God is in this room. I have everything I need to face what I need to face.
Day 2 – 1/2/2012
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Change. Change what? I cannot alter the past, neither what was done to me nor what I did to others. Courage to change the things I can. I can change some things, like my fear. My self pity, resentment, and attitude. (From Al-Anon literature)
I need to look back, without staring. Experience my feelings, then move on.
Day 3 – 1/3/2012
I tried for a long time to change people in order to feel safe. I didn’t need to do this. Nobody made me. This was my own mistaken belief. I hurt people and was hurt by people when I tried to control others, save them, fix them, or get them to be anything other than who they are.
When I tried to control people in my life, my life became unmanageable. Part of my “disease” is that I become reflexively fearful and overly responsible around certain people, for reasons that are both known and unknown to me.
I feel anger and I must sit with that. I never saw anger dealt with healthily. I saw unhealthy stewing in anger and then unrealistic forgiveness. I did not see a real out. The only way out is through.
Part of what I am learning is that people are separate from me in some ways. In other ways, there is a constant interdependence that I am always embedded in, by nature of being a part of this universe. But the important lesson in all of this, is that I don’t know how a person is constituted, the million different complex ways they became who they are, and I should not assume I do know. Much of my problem has come from believing I can analyze people enough to make decisions that will keep me safe. I can keep myself safe by taking care of myself, not as a reaction to others and what they are doing, but as a natural rhythm and balance of my own life that is not dependent on anyone else.
Day 4 – 1/4/2012
Gratitude for life. Its tragedies. We are human. I just went to my 4th meeting. I went to an AA meeting in a rough part of Oakland. The meeting was filled with almost all POC, which was a first. Driving over to the meeting, I felt almost unbearably filled with happiness, peace and light. I felt so much gratitude and self love, it was amazing. Like a little doorway of heaven.
I got to the meeting, and was greeted, okay no, almost bombarded with so much love! I was hugged and someone offered immediately to buy me coffee. I said no thanks, but I looked that person in the eyes and felt such love and warmth for them. I felt so grateful for the warm welcome, I wanted to hug them and SQUEEEZE.
I sat down and heard some really painful stories of things people were dealing with. One woman talked about getting her children taken away by the state and then having the anniversary of a family member’s death passed. She walked to the liquor store twice yesterday she said. I didn’t realize it in that moment because of the strength in the tone of her voice, but in the shares that followed, I realized how serious that admission she made was. I realized it in the way that the people who shared after her, repeatedly told her that they loved her, in indirect ways. People who shared spoke of losing people, incredible guilt they felt for things they had done, unimaginable pain and trauma, and ended with such a strong and beautiful and genuine call for those who are struggling to continue to thrive, to continue to come back, to not give up.
Throughout the meeting people cracked jokes during their shares in a way that warmed my heart. The comfort and security that was in that room was infectious. So much love, like the most loving family, forreal. The woman who spoke about having almost had a drink repeatedly made fun of a guy I didn’t know, but the room burst into laughter everytime she did. A loving laughter. One man also cracked jokes and cursed as he shared about serious pain and trauma, and at one point he said he was thankful he had had this room to come into, where people crack jokes on each other and it wasn’t some sappy shit because he would have never tolerated that.
Finally the guy who everyone kept lovingly cracking jokes on spoke. He gave such a beautiful and amazing share, the woman chairing the meeting burst into tears. He said sometimes you know a member really needs a hug, because shes having a hard time. Sometimes you gotta tell that member you love her, and that you are there for her. Wow, it was so beautiful in that meeting. Multiple times I almost burst into tears, just really moved by the amount of suffering in the room and at the same time, the courage that people were showing, in their fights for their lives. One man spoke about having 30 days sober, despite being homeless and living on a bus stop bench. The others spoke so passionately about the importance of embracing and holding the newcomers. “To our homeless brother, don’t give up. Keep coming back. There is love here and support.” A desire to help, to cradle. Such emotional words and such tender support from grown men, some of whom looked pretty tough on the outside. Another man spoke about the last days of his mother’s life. She had tried to kill him when he was 5, and as a result he’d been raised by a grandmother. Don’t give up, he told the woman who had almost drank. If she hadn’t shown up to that meeting he’d have noticed. This was another kind of family I realized. I felt like I was witnessing such a precious interchange of love.
I also felt sad during this meeting. I missed my friend. I imagined my friend with me. I imagined them being amused, touched and perhaps wanting to come back. I imagined them healed and happy, and that made me sad. I miss my friend, I thought. There is so much I cannot fix. Grief. Grief. Grief.
I think a lot about my Dad in AA meetings. What kind of guilt may he feel? So many Dads in AA talk about their kids, and how they let them down. In one meeting a Dad described the look on his kids faces, the look of pity and sadness and fear and disgust. I imagine whether he’s ever read those emotions on one of his kids faces. Tears tumble down my cheeks.
AA is something very special, maybe even ‘miraculous’. Its been 3 days and I feel quite convinced of this. The model of peer-to-peer support and love is so effective and powerful in its ability to rehabilitate that I keep thinking it must be reconfigured somehow to suit our needs as revolutionaries. The meetings are like the embodiment of anti-capitalism—instead of sepearation, competition and alienation, you have encouragement and mutual support, love and healing. This is the sewing together of what has been torn apart by the destructive social relations of our present system.
Right now I feel grateful and heartbroken, and at the same time comforted. This is life as a human being in this world right now. It is devastating but that just makes the potential for beautiful acts of lovingkindness that much more unbelievably miraculous.
I came home from this meeting and sat down on my stoop to journal. As I do, I see this very sweet and kind neighbor of mine. I usually chat with her in the morning, though I see her all the time wandering around the block, chatting in a friendly voice with neighborhood people in her jacket with the hood tied tight around her small face. This is the same woman who after the home occupation on 10th and Mandela was evicted, approached me the morning after to tell me what had happened. ‘They arrested those boys’, she’d told me. ‘They are taking all our houses’. I nodded in agreement, yes they sure are. ‘That’s why I say *#& the cops!’ she’d semi-shouted, half amused at herself for saying it, and half angry
As she walked by I called out to her – Hello! I got to my feet. Hello, she replied, sadly. ‘A man died in our building last night. They found him. He was an alcoholic’, she said quietly, through the gate surrounding my house, separating us. My heart sunk. I quickly moved to open the gate and approached her, wanting to hug her. But instead I took her hand into mine. ‘I’m sorry. How are you doing?’ ‘I’m okay’, she said. ‘My neighbor is probably going to die too. He’s smoking crack’.
So much pain in this world. I feel a lot of empathy and sadness. I miss my friends. I want to accept this moment. I sit back down on my stoop and try to meditate.
We are not alone.
Day 5 – 1/5/2012
I don’t believe in a higher power consciously directing me but it does seem odd to me recently that every meeting I go to seems to exactly address the things I am struggling with that day. Today I was thinking a lot about being mixed race and how that often frustrates and complicates my activist work.
Being mixed in general, I think has caused me a lot of suffering because of the lack of certainty. I have always had a lot of confusion about who I am. I hung with folks of color but never felt ethnic enough, hung with the whites and bristled at their racism. In political spaces I feel myself often suffering from a desire that things be other than what they are—white spaces should have more POC, POC spaces should be more Marxist, less obsessed with identity politics. Is the discomfort real, or is it me? This question can be so overwhelming to me because it sometimes feels like I’ve been living my whole life asking that question.
Interestingly enough, the speaker at tonight’s meeting talked a lot about being mixed race and not fitting in with either group of people, and how that caused a lot of discomfort with who they were. After, people shared a lot about that topic. A lot of mixed race people raised their hands and echoed similar experiences. It always so refreshing to hear other people struggling with that experience, because it is so real to me. It is almost even more of a real discussion to me than being POC. I remember I did this Hate in the Hallways youth program one time where we broke up into caucuses of our race and discussed issues we faced. I chose the mixed race caucus, and I was the facilitator for that caucus. I remember identifying so crazily strong with what every kid was struggling with, despite being all different kinds of mixes. The general dilemma of in-between-ness is very real to me, in a lot of ways. Of course, being mixed race has also been a blessing in that it has given me an incredible perspective into stuff. I have passed in both POC and white circles, and have seen the ways in which location and identity shape perspective. I think this encouraged critical thinking in me—the weighing of various viewpoints and the understanding that mine is shaped by my experience and context moment to moment.
Anyway, In this particular meeting people also shared a lot of negative emotions they were dealing with. It was a particularly negative meeting. One guy spoke really angrily about not believing in God. He used to believe in God, but he didn’t anymore. He was angry at AA for “brainwashing” him into believing in God. He said he’d lost his Dad, his best friend and his wife. He was alone with a 9 year old, and found himself on the floor crying his heart out, pleading for help and help never came. I remembered my own moments like that- one in particular, where I just layed on the floor and waileddddddddd- “why me”, and “god please help meeeeee”. Rock bottom moments.
These meetings are like dosages of empathy. Empathy for others and empathy for myself. I need empathy these days. I need an empathetic heart to face the betrayals, losses, and experiences of the past, I need empathy like a salve that will allow me to move smoothly through the experience at the right pace, neither lingering, nor rushing through. I need to look back without staring. I am doing that in these meetings.
I also had a thought that the experience of hitting rock bottom seems like a moment where you finally acknowledge your own pain because it becomes undeniable. That resonates with me because of the way that being mixed race has often caused me to question my own view of reality, of my own pain, my own issues. In addition, growing up in an alcoholic home also caused me to doubt my view of reality because there was such denial of what was going on. As a result, I often minimize my own suffering or question its validity. To be honest, I spend a good time and a good amount of energy weighing the validity of my suffering, comparing it to others, etc. This is a painful habit of delegimitizing my pain and ignoring it. I have often found that I have ignored my own pain up until the moment where I am in such disrepair that I need a triple-bypass heart surgery. Always I wonder, how did I ignore things until they got this bad? This is a product and a symptom of being out of touch with one’s own emotions.
I learned to not feel because as a kid I had to survive in a home with a lot of pain. This meant I had to leave (the experience, emotionally) while also staying. I had no choice then. I conditioned myself to learn to stay in painful experiences by blocking off my nerve endings and numbing myself to emotions. Living as an adult with damaged nerve endings has often lead me to stand with my hand on the stove, no reflex to recoil with pain from. This process of growth is helping me regrow my nerve endings.
——–
My name means resurrection. To rise again from the dead. Literal translation. Maybe that’s why I have always been incredibly inspired by stories of redemption and revival.
There is nothing that shakes me as deeply to the core of my being, than stories of people reaching deep down inside themselves for some almost supernatural courage in order to stand up for themselves, against what seems like an impossible situation. Obviously, I have come far enough to understand that stories of tremendous strength in the face of tragedy and pain speaks to me because of my own struggles, my own memories of life. There was a lot of sadness and pain in my life, in my home growing up (as I’ve mentioned countless times before).
However, my name points to the silver lining of suffering. Traumatic situations, in which we face our mortality and our powerlessness in the face of tragedy, offer us an incredible opportunity—the chance to be reborn.
The miracle of ‘resurrection’, seems to me like part of the miracle of our universe in general: the cycle of birth and death, of impermanence itself, of nonstop change. Every death is also a birth, every birth a death. My name to me, symbolizes the inevitability of that endless cycle of change. The inner pain, shame and suffering, fear and guilt I have struggled with since I was born continually offer me beautiful gifts—the chance to grow a deeper understanding of the fundamental quality of life and grow from it. That’s where I’m at.
2011 in review
Posted: January 1, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThe WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,200 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Recent Comments