Where I Am

I've been on vacation with my girls. Sweetie tried valiently to teach Small how to skip stones, with notably poor results. We built fairy houses and fed chickens and ate lots of fried shrimp. I swam in the ocean and in a pool and rode a tube down a huge water slide. I got stung by two bees, discovered a new microbrew, paddled a canoe through a salt marsh, hiked in the woods, and explored a cool city on foot by myself.

It was perfect.

Because I’m self-employed, I also got a lot of work done. I’ve got a new post up at the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Aspire Project. It’s about an exciting new project I’m working on with my friend and colleague Amy Pybus. 

I was interviewed by Women's Running magazine for an article that got picked up by active.com.  I didn't actually write the article, though they gave me the by-line. 

I developed an exhausting comprehensive marketing program for my fall self-defense and wellness offerings with the help of designer Anne Campbell.  Very soon I will be technologically advanced enough to share them with you.

I also obtained a couple of things: a tenacious summer cold and a new laptop. The cold is giving me an excuse to slow down even though I use this part of the summer to re-up my conscious organization: clean out the cubbies, wipe down the fridge, catalog the hand-me-downs at the back of the closet. The laptop is an investment in my continued writing. I have a plan, which includes technology and childcare and a book proposal.  This, combined with the cold, is so overwhelming I feel like going back to bed. 

But I can handle it.  This little silence shouldn’t alarm anyone. I’m resting. I’m working. I’ll be back.

mind body mama: Gratitude and Abundance

Sermon delivered at Our House of Worship, Sunday August 8, 2010.

A few months ago, I was driving to Stop & Shop in the middle of one of my usual manic days “off.” I had the grocery lists—the one for the Co-op and the one for the Supermarket. I had the reusable bags. Ticking in my mind like a sports countdown, I had the mental timeline of errands I had to complete before the 3 o’clock School pick up. I was deep in my Friday morning busy-ness and low-level anxiety when I stopped at a red light.
And then suddenly a thought formed in my mind as a full sentence. If this were a cartoon instead of a sermon it would appear in one of those little cloud bubbles right over my head.

“I am not worried about how I will pay for the groceries. I am never worried how I will pay for the groceries.”

In that moment I felt—I really felt—the calm that accompanies that gift. The confidence that I can feed my child.

I am blessed. I go to the grocery store every week with enough cash—or, if I’ve planned ahead, enough grocery scrip—to buy the food my family wants and needs.

I have so much more than so many others in this world.

I have enough.

How did this insight— that I am able to pay for my groceries without worry, week in and week out— come to me , so that I could be glad for something I have? Why did I get this moment of clarity, the blessing of actually knowing and feeling one of my blessings?

***

I’ve got some ideas about how that moment of grace found me. I wanted to tackle this topic of Gratitude and Abundance because I want to tell you about a spiritual practice that I’ve undertaken. I want to tell you about a holiday that I invented, and a poster on my dining room wall. Gratitude is a piece of it. But I also wanted to tell you about the miracle I sometimes find lurking behind gratitude, which is abundance, and the even larger source of amazement—for me—which is faith.

***

I was raised in a family where there was always enough—enough food, enough clothes—though many were carefully tended hand-me-downs--, enough beds and toys and heat. It wasn’t until I grew up that I realized that “enough” was achieved by my father fixing boats during the day and cars at night, by my mother’s careful budgeting, and sometimes by making hard choices or staggering the household bills. Those strategies and the stress that accompanied them were under my radar as a kid, they happened in the night after I went to bed. But like the laugh track of their sit-coms and the light from the living room lamps, the worry that there might not be enough seeped under my bedroom door and into my dreams.

I came to believe, as many people believe, in scarcity—that the world is a mean and scroungy place, and that whatever I ache for—money, of course, but also success or love or time—is available only in finite quantities. It’s a picture of the world like the sales at Filene’s basement—all sharp elbows and grabbing. It’s a hard way to live.

But maybe it wasn’t just trickle down anxiety—from my parents and their parents before them, the bartenders, mechanics, waitresses, shop girls and farmers who are my ancestors, whose labor and thrift bought each generation a leg up in the world. Maybe humans are hard-wired to anticipate scarcity, to husband today’s bounty against tomorrow’s uncertainty.

These days I make my living as a personal fitness trainer. In this line of work, I read a lot about the science of weight and weight loss. It is commonly understood that there is an epidemic of obesity in our nation. What is less commonly understood is that science doesn’t have definitive explanations or prescriptions for it. Researchers are working to understand why some people gain and retain weight, and why, on the whole, our bodies are bigger than previous generations’.

One theory is that our human bodies have not yet evolved—have not adjusted to the abundance of food available in our modern lives. There is evidence that some folks are more efficient than others at storing food energy—their bodies hold on to more calories. In a world of scarcity, that would be a tremendously adaptive strength. But in a world with a MacDonald’s on every corner it works against optimal health.

I’m fond of this theory, whether or not it is ultimately proven in the halls of science. It reminds me to have compassion for the seeking, hoarding, husbanding parts of myself that are sure there is not enough to go around. These aspects of me are self-protective; they are committed to my survival in a harsh world. It also reminds me to look around, because the world might not be as harsh as I expect. It reminds me that one way to transcend my deep and terrified belief in scarcity is to acknowledge the abundance that actually surrounds me in any given moment. To see the MacDonald’s, as it were.

***

I believe we have an ethical obligation to acknowledge the abundance around us. Most of us, in this country, at this moment in history, are privileged beyond measure when our lives are compared with others on our planet and throughout human history. It is also ethical because acknowledging abundance facilitates cooperation and mutual benefit in all our human relations. As Unitarian Universalists we are called to “be kind in all we do” and to “build a fair and peaceful world.” Approaching the world as abundant, as having enough for all, is a path to this right relationship.

I was recently reminded that the practice of conflict resolution asks us to consider our interests rather than cleaving to any single position when seeking the peaceful resolution of a dispute. To consider our interests, because even when we are in conflict with another, it is more likely than not that both parties’ interests may be satisfied by a single creative solution. Whereas holding fast to a particular position—believing that the world is meager and limited and the only way to get what we want is to grab and hold it—risks polarization, disharmony.

I’ve been thinking of this lately with regard to the intense debate over immigration focused in Arizona. I have never been so proud to be a Unitarian Universalist as I am when I read reports out of the protest movement. (I’m keeping up with the news on our Director of Religious Education's Face Book page.) Through the UUA’s Standing on the Side of Love campaign, our denomination has partnered with labor and immigrant-rights groups in the response to Arizona’s anti-immigrant law.

I understand what drives people of conscience to protest in the streets, to risk arrest, for the rights of their immigrant neighbors. The UUA, like most major faith groups, has a strong policy position on immigration reform and economic justice.

In thinking about what drives the opposition—why there is such vitriol against immigrants—I am reminded that even with all our prosperity, many Americans are in hard times. Compared to other generations, this is a time of scarcity and uncertainty, of worry and reduced resources. Jobs, homes, and the opportunities our country stands for are no longer assured for many Americans. Kim Bobo of the organization Interfaith Worker Justice notes, “too many native-born Americans, especially those in economic desperation themselves, blame immigrants—instead of the country’s failed immigration and economic policies—for our economic woes.”

It seems to me that the folks who fight to the end of their breath to deny rights to immigrants have much in common with the folks who risk their lives to enter this country and labor in our fields and factories. They want what we all want: safety and security and a bright future for our children. Perhaps their efforts to deny their immigrant neighbors are an expression of doubt that there could not possibly be enough for all of us. Perhaps they cannot imagine a solution so abundant that there would be enough for all our children.

But just because it’s hard to imagine doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

***

I have a new friend—someone I don’t know well but am exceptionally fond of—who is a devout Christian. And because she has four kids and a husband and I have one kid and a business and a wife we don’t often get to actually talk to one another. So we friended each other on Facebook.

Often this friend will post a status update that says something about her faith: “What r some ways you rely on God?” she’ll ask her FB friends, or announce: “God’s word is suprising!” after a day teaching Vacation Bible School. One Monday morning she posted, “ Starting the week off balanced..fixing my eye on Jesus the Author and Perfecter of my faith.”

“Fixing my eye on Jesus.” I love this phrase, taken from the Book of Hebrews. It reminds me that even a person with deep and abiding faith must choose that faith again and again, must “fix her eye” upon her inspiration, upon her God.

I chose to “fix my eye” upon abundance a few years ago. It felt awkward and artificial and pretty corny at first. For example: I cut out a whole lot of maple leaves from pretty scrapbook paper and brought them to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving so we could make a Gratitude Tree on a sheet of poster board. When I pulled out my pencil-box of Sharpies and asked them to write something for which they felt grateful onto each of the leaves, my mom’s and dad’s and sister’s eyes glazed over. They gave me the same flat fish-face of disbelief and disengagement that I often get from my teenage students.

But I perservered. Now, last year’s gratitude tree hangs in my dining room. Sometimes I notice a guest being drawn to it, standing quietly, reading and reflecting on the blessings my family named. This family craft project slash ritual will be as much a staple of our Thanksgiving from this time forward as the cranberry sauce—or I will die trying to make it so.

I didn’t leave my gratitude practice at Thanksgiving either. I reclaimed April 15 from the Internal Revenue Service, and on the day that they celebrate collecting my annual taxes, I celebrate the continued viability of my business. I send thank-you notes and gifts to people who have helped me during the year, colleagues who have given me advice or sent me referrals. I call it Gratitude and Abundance Day, and I encourage you to celebrate it too. It puts a very different spin on that annual assessment of income.

And I bought my family an ecumenical blessings book. Each Sunday night we light a chalice and Small reads an expression of simple gratitude from one of the world’s traditions. We are not to the point of a daily grace but we are trying to notice the blessing of our daily bread.

The effect of this practice—of “fixing my eye” on the abundance around me—has been that I have begun to believe in abundance even when I don’t yet see the evidence of it. I worry a little bit less about finding the things I need—clients, or babysitters, or music for a summer service. Because I give my attention to the fact that my business is thriving, and many people enjoy spending time with my child, this congregation is generous and talented, it all becomes true. My business thrives; my daughter is cared for in loving community, our service is filled with song.

This trust in something even before it becomes manifest is a new and miraculous blessing to me. It is the blessing my Christian friend knows that I had to discover for myself. It is faith.

Our blessing book quotes Albert Einstein as saying, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” An abundant world, a world of miracles, in which we have a deep and abiding faith, is a beautiful world in which to live. Let us celebrate the miracle.

mind body mama: Tell Someone You Trust

Recently in my personal fitness training practice a client disclosed that she is an abuse survivor. She told me this matter-of-factly, without many details, without crossing any professional boundaries, but with a tear sliding out of the corner of her eye. She needed me to know that the work of learning exercises was, for her, complicated by the fear and grief she carries in her body.

Once again I found myself saying words that, twenty years into feminist anti-violence practice, seem to run in my blood:

“I am so sorry that happened to you. “

It was a paradox moment. It called upon me to acknowledge the specificity of her experience: the way her history runs in her body and influences the movement of her muscles and bones. But I also had to reflect to her the commonness of this experience. “I am not surprised,” I told her. It is incredibly familiar to me to hear that a woman’s athleticism is challenged by a violent history.

It’s not unusual for women to come to martial arts or self defense practice with some awareness of this challenge. Many realize that a practice that asks them to become fully present in their bodies, while moving with strength and power, will stir things up. Add to this the fact that we talk about violence and boundaries and healing and it’s no small wonder we keep a box of tissues on the window sill.

But my personal training clients are more often surprised by the strength of emotion that accompanies our work together. “I don’t know why this is so hard,” one might say, frustrated by the way emotional obstacles are limiting her fitness progress. I am inclined to reply, “It’s hard because you brought your body with you!” The body in which resides all your hurts, going back however many years. With that one resilient, wounded, healed, strong, emotional body you are trying to learn new movements and unlearn old patterns. It’s no surprise to me that feelings sometimes overwhelm, that the present is shadowed by history.

I had another awareness as I spoke with this brave, sad client. I understood that I was not injured by holding the space within which she made her disclosure. I enjoy this client and I am not shocked by the intersection of her movement practice and her healing work. So it was just a different texture within our pleasant training session. I meant what I said when I told her, “I wish that had not happened to you,” but I did not wish that she wasn’t telling me. I am a safe person to tell. We were both safe in that moment.

It reminded me of the conversation I had with the amazing Katy Mattingly at the NWMAF Self Defense Instructors’ Conference. When the planners assembled an emotional support team for the conference I was proud to extend this care to our attendees. I never imagined that a session would push my buttons, would collapse my emotional world in that telescoping experience we call a trigger. I knew that I was sitting in the meeting room listening to Katy’s brilliant presentation, but in my feeling body I travelled over years and miles and found myself in a single instant trapped in a terrible and painful memory as if it were happening all over again.

So I found a time to sit with Katy a while later on the wide lawn of Swarthmore College and tell her my story. It was a paradox moment. Katy gave me what I most needed: she witnessed the specifics of my hurt. “You did the very best you could,” she said, and with those words reminded me that it was not my fault. And also she reflected, with wry humor and and an unruffled demeanor, the commonness of my experience. “I am not surprised,” she said more than once, shattering my illusion that the Gothic horror of my memory was uniquely terrible.

Katy also let me know that she was not hurt or diminished by witnessing me. “It didn’t happen to me,” she said. “I am just spending a nice half hour talking with you.”

It was the oddest sensation, having all of these words spoken to me in a moment of need. I thought, this must be what it’s like for a skilled body worker to receive an outstanding massage. I know to how to do this. And also, she is doing this really, really well. It is not something I can do for myself. I need this gift she is giving me.

I live in a rarified world in which we do this for one another. One moment I am witnessed and supported by a friend or colleague; the next, I offer the same words and presence to another woman. We have some skills to hold another’s hurt. We are not diminished by sharing space with sorrow and survival.

I imagine a world free of violence. I imagine a world free of abuse of women and children. And on our way to that world I commit to the moment of witness, to looking each other in the eye and saying,

“I am so sorry that happened to you.”

“You did not deserve that.”

“It was not your fault.”

“You did the very best you could.”

I think it’s how we get from here to there. I think it’s how we come to know that each hurt, though privately and uniquely held, happens to all of us. It’s how we come to see the invisible tide of violence that runs silently through our communities, our nation, our world. It’s how we access the compassion and resistance and rage and determination we will need to see this movement through.

Pass it on.

Self defense finger #5: Tell someone you trust.

Bad Mom

Did you hear the one about the mom who had a bookworm kid who just wanted to sit home all summer and read? So the mom enrolled the kid in fascist educational nature camp requiring a butt-load of camping gear every day and an environmentally friendly lunch and a rigorous application of bug spray and sunscreen applied in accordance with nature camp guiding principles.

And on the day of the camp's forced march expedition through the woods (requiring extra gear and food and water bottles to be carried by the tiny children) the poor child asked to be kept home, but NO, mom thought it would be a good idea to go through with the whole camp experience.

And while the kid was hiking through the woods she stepped on a yellow jacket nest and got stung five times and seven other kids got stung too and all the moms in the Quirky Mill Town are talking about it, even the ones who had the presence of mind not to register their kids in nature camp. And the poor counselors needed valium to get over the adrenolin rush of wondering which kid would go into anaphylaxis.

Boy, that is one bad mom.

Language Matters

On the train home from the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation Self Defense Instructors’ Conference, Jender and I were given to reflect on the incomparable Barrett Wilkenson’s workshop “Halting Hate and Harassment.”

We had planned to hit the bar car on the homeward trip—or abscond with a few of the beers thoughtfully left in my dorm room by the preceding occupant (most likely the Resident Advisor of a youth sport camp). In fact sheer exhaustion—and in my case an overwhelming sense of relief to be speeding away from the site of my largest commitment of the past six months—proved to be intoxicating enough. We laughed uncontrollably all the way home, falling into our own inside jokes like teenagers. I feel sure that other passengers moved away from us, and had I been less tired and hysterical I might even have noticed and settled down.

(I’m tempted to say I hadn’t laughed like that in a very long time, but to be honest I laughed just as hard on Tuesday night when a member of the NWMAF Board of Directors offered me a ride back to my dorm and instead took me—and three esteemed conference presenters—on a variation of Toad’s wild ride in a college-issue golf cart. There was a commuter rail platform, and a sheer drop above a two-lane highway with one of my martial arts foremothers muttering “Don’t look down, don’t look down,” and not a few onlookers surprised to discover the perpetrators of the golf-cart getaway joy-ride were, to all appearances, a collection of nice grown-up ladies. So much for appearances.)

Jender confided, “I’ve divested my vocabulary of a lot of biased language, but I have trouble not using the word ‘lame.’”

I had to admit that I have the same difficulty and it’s not only because the disabled member of my household endorses some measure of ablest speech, as when she drives through a parking lot ranting about the absence of “crip spots.” That’s insider talk and, according to Barrett, it’s pretty much ok. It’s not the same as a word synonymous with impaired mobility entering general usage to mean something diminished, unworthy, ineffectual or contemptible.

“John Stewart says ‘lame,’” said Jender. “Rachel Maddow says ‘lame’—a lot.” I know it cost her considerably to admit a flaw in her idol, Dr. Maddow.

Jender and I tried valiantly—in our depleted state—to find a substitution for ‘lame’ that we could both wholeheartedly endorse. We agreed that ‘lame’ is widely considered the unbiased upgrade to ‘queer,’ adopted by those of us who repudiate the equation queer=pathetic. Feminists now use ‘fail’ in the same way but I was a double-major in English and Women’s Studies and I can’t get behind incorrect usage. We’re looking for an adjective here.

Jender and I weren’t able to find a word we liked. For the remainder of our trip we settled for cracking each other up by declaring ourselves, our inability to communicate without the biased term in question, and anyone or thing uncool, pathetic or ineffectual that crossed our minds, “that thing formerly known as lame.” It was riotous in the way your own stupidity always is when you are tired and safe and with someone you really love.

A train ride through a dark night sets the scene for intimate confessions. I let Jender in on my deepest fear around letting go the word. “Maybe the answer is just to be a nicer person, someone who doesn’t need such a disparaging and dismissive term,” I told her. “I’m just not sure I’m ready to be that nice. I really think I still need a word like that.”

A good friend doesn’t let you wallow in such self-doubt for long, and Jender was on-the-spot. “There’s no need to be that nice,” she countered. Plenty of people still deserve the sentiment inaccurately attached to the word ‘lame.’ Us for example. Or people who persist in saying ‘lame.’

In the days since we’ve been home I’ve been astonished to notice the prevalence of ‘lame’ in common parlance. I’ve heard it used by a writer and social justice activist and by an academic and lay-preacher. I’ve seen it in print and heard it in song lyrics. It’s under the radar and in regular usage by nice, smart people who wouldn’t dream of using other biased language.

It seems relevant that one of things I overlooked in planning the SDIC conference was access for persons of different abilities. Despite the fact that I move with a differently-abled partner I have not come to expect that the world—or I, when I’m in charge of setting up some aspect of the world—should plan for differences in ability. Throughout my conference I saw auditory, visual and mobility challenges addressed through the patience and generosity of both the women affected and their companions, in much the same way that Sweetie and I adjust to whatever obstacles appear in her journeys. But their experience would have been so much better if I had planned for folks who hear, see or move differently than I can.

It proved Barrett’s point that language matters. A word carries with it history and all of its meanings. If one is able to use the word ‘lame’ without remembering that it first meant “disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible” then it becomes easy not to remember that some people are disabled so that movement, especially walking, is difficult or impossible. In speech and action, we acclimate to overlooking some portion of our community. We diminish our collective humanity.

We can do better than this. Settling for ableism in our language and in our world is not at all cool, in fact it’s quite—well, I haven’t found a word for it yet. But I’m looking.

Radio Silence

Hi all--I'm on my way to the National Women's Martial Arts Federation Self Defense Instructors' Conference to hang with my peeps for a while.  Lots to tell you about when I get back and a big writing project in the works. 

My Peeps

A few weeks ago the Nectarine called and left me a message that said, “Call me. Call anytime. Call now.”

It wasn’t the words that said it so much as the tone of her voice. It was different than the tone of voice Dusty had used when she left the message, “Just checking in y’all. Call me when you get a chance.” That tone told me something bad had already happened but it probably wasn’t getting worse. Dusty would be soldiering on and when I caught up with her in an hour, or a week, I would need to help.

It was a different tone than BirthPie’s email SOS one Friday morning. The fact that BirthPie was emailing and not calling said in itself, “I am hanging on to sanity by my fingernails. Every hard thing about motherhood is pressing on me this very moment. If I begin to speak of it I might start screaming and never be able to stop.”

***

I heard from BirthPie in the brief window between Small coming down with the stomach flu and her passing it to me. I came home from teaching self defense at 10 pm on a Wednesday night and Sweetie said, by way of greeting, “Small is puking.”

We were in the midst of the first summer heat-wave. I climbed into a wall of dense, unmoving heat to check on my girl. Small’s forehead burned dry under a damp cloth. Dead tired from teaching I ran to the basement for the fans, set them up all over the second floor, cooled Small’s washcloth with fresh water. I climbed into her bed to be there when she woke. An hour later the power went out, stopping the breeze mid-spin. Small continued to burn and puke. I wracked my boiled brain for the signs of dehydration but could remember none of them. I slept for brief, searing moments between bouts of her retching before heading out to my 7:00 am clients.

On Friday—power restored, girl no longer puking, the diagnostic has she peed? returned to my brain—I had little in reserve for BirthPie, my stalwart, my other wife. I delivered soup and bread from the Co-op, got take-out for my own family. Saturday the crud struck me down. When Sweetie called to check on the BirthPie family—holding steady, everyone safe—I wailed from my own sick-bed, “We can’t both be in crisis at the same time! Who will feed us?”

***

The Nectarine closed her office door before she said what she had to say. “My brother has breast cancer.” The words came out in a whoosh of air and left a vacuum all around us.

***

I have known the Nectarine since I was fifteen years old. She is not my other wife. She does not bring me soup or fold my laundry or pick my kid up from school. She is not woven into my life of every day. She is woven into my life of forever. 

I helped her by hearing her news, by telling her to tell her boss, her friends at The School of Come-the-Revolution. I recommended a meditation book for her manic sister-in-law, I sent love to her parents, I watched for her email updates and sent words of encouragement. I called more often than usual, which is pretty much never.

But it was weeks later—after the tests and the great prognosis and the treatment plan and things looking as good as they could possibly get for someone with breast cancer—that I sat at a stop sign and suddenly thought, “Oh my god, he’s got cancer. It’s the brother. It’s that boy.”

The boy on the front page of the school newspaper, Staples High School, 1984. The boy I had a crush on, and his friend the Communist too. The boy she plays catch with, flies to spring training with, lived with through college. The brother. That boy.

I wept.

The last time we talked, I told the Nectarine about my favorite quote from Anne Lamott. Facing metastasized lung cancer her friend Rich Fields said of his doctor, “He thinks he knows when I’m going to die, but he doesn’t even know when he’s going to die.”

Small has cottoned on to this recently. One night I found myself explaining that, yes, any one of us could die at any moment. She still misses her friend Dave and she knows that it’s strange and awful and unusual but not impossible for someone to be with us one moment and gone the next.

To the Nectarine I said, “How do we live with this? Why aren’t we all running screaming through the streets?”

“Maybe we are,” she said.

***

Dusty’s call was to say that her sainted mother, Mme. Lasagna, fell and broke her hip. Mme. tripped on a threshold. As she fell, Dusty caught her.

In my mind I see Dusty diving head-first like a base runner sliding safe. Her arms stretch in front of her and her mother’s tiny, heavy body lands in them. I feel the oomph of impact, the cushion of their bodies smashing together.

I see us cradling each other the same way: Sweetie, BirthPie, Dusty, Small, the Nectarine, the School of Love, Our House of WarShip. My world. My heart. It’s how we fall: a whoosh of air and a cushion of impact. We’re never unscathed, screaming and flailing through this life. We break all the time.  But we’re so much less hurt than we might have been.