On Sunday I sent Small out to play with her rhythm gymnastics ribbon before she took out the living room chandelier. I intended to follow her—you know, supervise—but before the screen door slammed I was snoring. The yard is fenced, she’s a very sensible kid, and the bears don’t come around here that often. So she probably would have been fine.
Nevertheless, when I wiped the drool off the sofa forty minutes later, I was delighted to discover that Sweetiebabyhoneylicious had intuited a parenting gap and stepped in seamlessly. She was camped on the back stoop with the Sunday paper, watching the show. Because that’s the kind of couple we are: modern, multi-tasking, non-gender-defined, egalitarian. We’ve got each other’s backs on the motherhood thing.
This is good because if it were up to me, Small would not ever be washed. Perhaps I exaggerate. I did hose her down after each of those ten swimming lessons we took when she was three. I thought they were a necessary prerequisite to our vacation in Jamaica, although that might have been my Protestant upbringing: a measure of abnegation and hard work as a precursor to Paradise. There had to be a payoff; swimming (and moreover, sharing a locker room) with toddlers demands an effort far beyond any reasonable earthly exertion, in my estimation. It’s more like the ninth circle of hell.
For such small people, toddlers are remarkably strong and yet completely uncoordinated. At least mine was. Maybe your kid was a physical phenom, and if so, bully for you. Small taught herself to read when she was four. She still has trouble walking sometimes—walked right into a sign a few weeks ago—but I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it by the time she heads across the quad at Harvard. Or I could buy her a golf cart.
Muscle strength without skill, legendary stubbornness plus a soupcon of fearlessness. It’s a great combination for high-risk situations, such as slippery tile floors and large bodies of water. Strong enough to break away from mama’s loving care, clueless enough to get themselves killed.
I can think of nothing worse than having to make small talk with strangers, except having to make small talk with strangers in a room as noisy as a nightclub while wearing a swimsuit and trying to keep my kid from drowning. But the other mamas seemed to love their quality kid time in the pool. They cooed and cajoled with sparkly smiles that lit up their eyes; they joked and chatted with one another. Their frilly voices combined with the ambient crying and the camp counselor chants of our smooth skinned, French manicured, twenty something instructor. The sound bounced off the aquatic center walls in a brilliant cacophony. I couldn’t wear my glasses in the pool so I was essentially out two senses. I held onto Small for dear life.
Because I attended public junior high school, I live in mortal fear of being singled out as “the weird one” in most situations. Being a lesbian mom I’m often the top candidate for the spot, so I do make an effort in the playground universe. I pasted on a twitchy smile even though Small demonstrated no discernable skill development in the class. I tried not to show my increasingly frenzied belief that she would drown in Jamaica, if we didn’t all perish on the plane trying to get there. When my kid hung on my body like an anchor and refused to practice her T-float, when the goldfish crackers got spilled all over the sloppy chlorinated floor and when someone else’s toddler peed in her mama’s shoe, I took a deep breath and kept myself from screaming at the Stepford swimming mamas, “What kind of drugs are you people on that you don’t realize that this is hell, hell, hell, hell, hell? And where can I get some?”
But it didn’t take a swim lesson or a dozen screaming toddlers to put me off the washing routine. I’ve recalcitrated from the start. When Small was just an infant—without great muscle strength or the inclination to push away from me, just a squirmy little bundle of Id—I resisted the obligation to bathe her. I’d get to the end of a long, stay-at-home mama day on three or four hours of sleep; one of those endless days of nursing, changing diapers, nursing, washing diapers, nursing, trying to cook some food, nursing, choosing between a shower and a nap, and nursing some more. The sun would go down and Sweetie would suggest a bath. I’d look at my little slug bundle and think, “I kept her alive all day long—now you want me to put her in water?”
If I had thought to bathe her in the morning, when I had a little more presence of mind, perhaps the slippery soap and the hard porcelain tub would not have seemed so threatening. In that first year when she absolutely had to be cleaned, as often as not I’d climb into the tub with her and turn my limbs into a fleshy bumper for her fragile little self. It felt so much friendlier and deeply right to shield her from the harshness of the world with my body. This gets to my original objection to the bath.
The day after Small was born a nurse came in to give the baby her first bath. If I was tired those days that Small kept me up at night nursing, it was nothing compared to the day following the night I spent in labor. Plus I was on Percocet because—in case no one’s ever told you—giving birth hurts. Not just the parts you expected to hurt, either, but every part. My arms and legs were as heavy and sore as if I’d just climbed a mountain. And another thing they don’t tell you—your uterus keeps contracting for a few days, just to stay in the game. Great spasmsy cramps to remind you of what you’ve just been through for the past twelve hours.
I had been thrilled when another nurse had helped me take a shower. I didn’t anticipate needing help showering; I certainly never expected to enjoy the help. But I hadn’t really expected ever needing a cheering section to help me to pee either, and that worked out OK (no catheter!) It was delightful to have someone help me heave my newly soft, suddenly smaller, deeply sore self into the shower stall; to hand me the soap and shampoo, to stand at the ready with a soft, fluffy towel. Because I was filthy with sweat and shit, blood and amniotic fluid. I was the endurance athlete after the finish line ready to clean up and move on.
But I never thought Small was dirty. Those first hours, streaked with my blood and saturated with the fluid she swam in for nine long months, she smelled like the ocean. She smelled like someplace inside me that was her first home, someplace she would never return, a space that I would never hold again. That nurse came too soon with her efficient cheer and her floral soap to show me how to wrap the baby and keep her warm while she wiped away the traces of our first connection. The sweet aroma she left behind made my heart heavy and, knowing I would not birth again, I grieved for something I’d never know again. Something taken from us too soon. She smelled like the ocean.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Mind Body Mama: Dispatch from the School of Love
Just before I left for karate camp, the School of Love promoted our very first teenage black belt. It is impossible to describe the grace and dignity of this young woman, or her enormous martial skill, or what this test meant for our school. But I must try to record the gift she gave me—a gift of healing and of hope.
I have reminded women preparing to test for rank at the School of Love, “It’s not as if we’ve never seen you do karate before.” I mean to say, "Do not be afraid to stand up in front of us. Your teachers love you and we have watched your progress. No one is trying to catch you in a mistake or set you up for failure." Quite the opposite: our leader, Janet Superhero, is consummate at creating tests that set students up for success beyond their imaginations. It is thrilling to train and prepare for an event both athletic and spiritual, both physical and emotional, both solitary and communal, and to triumph at it in ways that you never anticipated.
But I’m lying to my students. Because a test—especially a black belt test—is exactly like we’ve never seen them do karate before. What comes forth from students on tests is so consistently surprising and amazing that it’s as if the art is created anew. We watch each other practice every day but on every test we see something we have never seen before.
Karate is an art that exists only in the minds and bodies of its practitioners. It is a sculpture manifested in the bodies of its players. Our bodies are instruments of rhythms that sing only so long as we move in our forms. “Karate is a folk art,” one of my early teachers said. “We are the folk.” In an empty dojo, there is no thing that describes the art: no book, no picture, no video can capture the practice and the teachings. The only way that it is passed along is by teacher to student, in the teaching and the doing, and the art is both maintained and transformed through the heart and mind and body of each practitioner.
Karate is a giant game of telephone, spread over centuries and cultures and language, where the essence of the message miraculously endures even as the individual expression varies.
I have not even mentioned the nuances of karate style. Like dance, there are hundreds of styles and genres of martial arts. It is wonderful to see someone dancing, someone practicing martial arts. But to see someone doing your dance—replicating the style of your art—is to see your people, your history, and perhaps your legacy. You think, we move our arms to strike like that, we hold our hands in those positions, we stand in those stances, we put that sequence of moves together into that combination. I have seen people from other countries practicing forms I know, and though we could not speak to each other, we have moved together in a common language.
So we promoted this girl on the cusp of womanhood. And those of us who have been in the art for ten or twenty or thirty years got to see it reinvented in a young and flawless body. We got to see our teachings move through her, we got to see her hold and move her body in the ways that mark her as one of us: we move our arms like that, we stand in those stances. We got to see her mastery of the basics as she broke forth into brilliant improvisation, making poetry of the simple alphabet of our style.
But that was not the most remarkable part of the test.
It has been a hard year at the School of Love. Last August, we lost one of our own, a black belt twenty years in our community, beloved by all. Over the winter we faced a new challenge—the sudden departure of another beloved student in circumstances of rage and regret—made more difficult by our grief. We asked each other for help, and we showed up with our whole hearts, but our hearts were broken and our best efforts could not always make everything right. Our black belts developed wanderlust and travelled to Germany, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, and China.
Someone was always leaving. Someone was always angry. Someone was always crying.
We tried not to put too much onto the narrow shoulders of the young black belt candidate, but at the end of that winter, we were desperate for hope and light. It was time to come together without recrimination or regret, to let down our pall of sadness. It was time to love each other, to laugh. It was time to live again.
I have felt especially broken this year, caught in one of those folds of time that had me wandering the saddest parts of my own history. Small went off to Kindergarten days before my 40th birthday, and I felt five again: scared and lonely and smart and stressed out. Over and over I had to remind myself that her story is not my story, that she is resilient in ways I was not. But motherhood has been described as letting your heart go walking outside of your body, and Small’s vulnerability was nearly unbearable to me, bent as I was with grief.
Somehow, I also got snagged on another moment in my history: when I was seventeen, in the throes of clinical depression, trying to come to terms with my lesbianism, in a coercive relationship with an older woman. Perhaps it was because the student who left the School of Love was of a similar age; perhaps it was because depression folds in on itself like an accordion so that no single episode stands alone, but is magnified by every sorrow that has come before. I felt that moment of my life a lot this year, a moment when I should have been on the cusp of my life, but I was so sad and broken that I could not reach for the gold ring. Some days I could not get out of bed.
There were days this year when I was consumed with regret for the opportunities that passed me by that adolescent year and in the years that followed, when my best energies were devoted to figuring out how to live. Not how to build a successful career or make a great life, but simply how to stay alive: how to keep from getting shipwrecked by sadness, how to choose people and actions that would nourish rather than deplete me. I felt cheated for having to give my youth to this endeavor. I felt ashamed that I had not applied my intellect earlier to professional or financial concerns.
And then: the test.
I did my black belt duty for the first hours, observing and writing comments about the student’s technical strengths and weaknesses. But eventually, the poise and joy and ease and trust of the young woman who was testing overwhelmed me. I was crying more than commenting, and I closed my feedback with a final observation:
“This is a girl who is not broken.”
Too many women I know were terribly broken at that tender age: depressed or suicidal or being sexually abused. So many of us were unable to come into our lives with clear hearts and open spirits. There was a time in my life that witnessing a bold, beautiful, strong young woman would have roused my adolescent envy: why does she get to live in the light? What about me?
But I am a mama now. And the hope that a girl child could grow up confident and capable with her spirit unbroken is all that I want from this life.
And something else. I hold an image of forgiveness from an essay by Anne Lamott in which she is angry at a child who unintentionally hurts her son. For a while Lamott seethed at the kid, and then suddenly she “made the radical decision to let him off the hook.” She says, “I imagined gently lifting him off the hook of my judgment and setting him back on the ground.”
Sitting in the promotion circle, I jolted into understanding that it is not my fault that it took me this long to find the wholeness that some girls wear like a birthright. It’s a shame that I did not have it in my youth, but it’s not my shame. I thought of all the people who might have helped me back then and the ways that they fell short of what I really needed. And I thought, what if they were doing the best they could? I thought of our long clumsy year of grief and leaving and getting in one another’s way and I thought, what if we were all doing the best we could?
I felt myself lifting us all—but most of all myself—off the hook of my judgment. A judgment born of misguided belief that I could have and should have made things turn out any differently than they did. Katy Mattingly told us at the self defense instructors’ conference that when survivors of violence blame themselves, they are often seeking control. “If only I knew exactly what I did wrong,” the logic goes, “I’ll make sure to never do it again.”
If only vigilance could keep me from slipping down the rabbit hole of depression or having conflict with people I love. If only it could keep my friends from dying or ever being hurt. If I could take away a fraction of the pain that is carried by the women I love, I would never close my eyes again.
But we can’t be one another’s wholeness. We can only be each other’s students and teachers and sisters on the journey. We can only act as if we love each other. We can only do the very best we can and have hope—the shining hope of a brave girl becoming a triumphant woman—that it will be enough.
Source: Anne Lamott, “Why I Make Sam Go to Church.” From Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Anchor Books, 1999.
I have reminded women preparing to test for rank at the School of Love, “It’s not as if we’ve never seen you do karate before.” I mean to say, "Do not be afraid to stand up in front of us. Your teachers love you and we have watched your progress. No one is trying to catch you in a mistake or set you up for failure." Quite the opposite: our leader, Janet Superhero, is consummate at creating tests that set students up for success beyond their imaginations. It is thrilling to train and prepare for an event both athletic and spiritual, both physical and emotional, both solitary and communal, and to triumph at it in ways that you never anticipated.
But I’m lying to my students. Because a test—especially a black belt test—is exactly like we’ve never seen them do karate before. What comes forth from students on tests is so consistently surprising and amazing that it’s as if the art is created anew. We watch each other practice every day but on every test we see something we have never seen before.
Karate is an art that exists only in the minds and bodies of its practitioners. It is a sculpture manifested in the bodies of its players. Our bodies are instruments of rhythms that sing only so long as we move in our forms. “Karate is a folk art,” one of my early teachers said. “We are the folk.” In an empty dojo, there is no thing that describes the art: no book, no picture, no video can capture the practice and the teachings. The only way that it is passed along is by teacher to student, in the teaching and the doing, and the art is both maintained and transformed through the heart and mind and body of each practitioner.
Karate is a giant game of telephone, spread over centuries and cultures and language, where the essence of the message miraculously endures even as the individual expression varies.
I have not even mentioned the nuances of karate style. Like dance, there are hundreds of styles and genres of martial arts. It is wonderful to see someone dancing, someone practicing martial arts. But to see someone doing your dance—replicating the style of your art—is to see your people, your history, and perhaps your legacy. You think, we move our arms to strike like that, we hold our hands in those positions, we stand in those stances, we put that sequence of moves together into that combination. I have seen people from other countries practicing forms I know, and though we could not speak to each other, we have moved together in a common language.
So we promoted this girl on the cusp of womanhood. And those of us who have been in the art for ten or twenty or thirty years got to see it reinvented in a young and flawless body. We got to see our teachings move through her, we got to see her hold and move her body in the ways that mark her as one of us: we move our arms like that, we stand in those stances. We got to see her mastery of the basics as she broke forth into brilliant improvisation, making poetry of the simple alphabet of our style.
But that was not the most remarkable part of the test.
It has been a hard year at the School of Love. Last August, we lost one of our own, a black belt twenty years in our community, beloved by all. Over the winter we faced a new challenge—the sudden departure of another beloved student in circumstances of rage and regret—made more difficult by our grief. We asked each other for help, and we showed up with our whole hearts, but our hearts were broken and our best efforts could not always make everything right. Our black belts developed wanderlust and travelled to Germany, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, and China.
Someone was always leaving. Someone was always angry. Someone was always crying.
We tried not to put too much onto the narrow shoulders of the young black belt candidate, but at the end of that winter, we were desperate for hope and light. It was time to come together without recrimination or regret, to let down our pall of sadness. It was time to love each other, to laugh. It was time to live again.
I have felt especially broken this year, caught in one of those folds of time that had me wandering the saddest parts of my own history. Small went off to Kindergarten days before my 40th birthday, and I felt five again: scared and lonely and smart and stressed out. Over and over I had to remind myself that her story is not my story, that she is resilient in ways I was not. But motherhood has been described as letting your heart go walking outside of your body, and Small’s vulnerability was nearly unbearable to me, bent as I was with grief.
Somehow, I also got snagged on another moment in my history: when I was seventeen, in the throes of clinical depression, trying to come to terms with my lesbianism, in a coercive relationship with an older woman. Perhaps it was because the student who left the School of Love was of a similar age; perhaps it was because depression folds in on itself like an accordion so that no single episode stands alone, but is magnified by every sorrow that has come before. I felt that moment of my life a lot this year, a moment when I should have been on the cusp of my life, but I was so sad and broken that I could not reach for the gold ring. Some days I could not get out of bed.
There were days this year when I was consumed with regret for the opportunities that passed me by that adolescent year and in the years that followed, when my best energies were devoted to figuring out how to live. Not how to build a successful career or make a great life, but simply how to stay alive: how to keep from getting shipwrecked by sadness, how to choose people and actions that would nourish rather than deplete me. I felt cheated for having to give my youth to this endeavor. I felt ashamed that I had not applied my intellect earlier to professional or financial concerns.
And then: the test.
I did my black belt duty for the first hours, observing and writing comments about the student’s technical strengths and weaknesses. But eventually, the poise and joy and ease and trust of the young woman who was testing overwhelmed me. I was crying more than commenting, and I closed my feedback with a final observation:
“This is a girl who is not broken.”
Too many women I know were terribly broken at that tender age: depressed or suicidal or being sexually abused. So many of us were unable to come into our lives with clear hearts and open spirits. There was a time in my life that witnessing a bold, beautiful, strong young woman would have roused my adolescent envy: why does she get to live in the light? What about me?
But I am a mama now. And the hope that a girl child could grow up confident and capable with her spirit unbroken is all that I want from this life.
And something else. I hold an image of forgiveness from an essay by Anne Lamott in which she is angry at a child who unintentionally hurts her son. For a while Lamott seethed at the kid, and then suddenly she “made the radical decision to let him off the hook.” She says, “I imagined gently lifting him off the hook of my judgment and setting him back on the ground.”
Sitting in the promotion circle, I jolted into understanding that it is not my fault that it took me this long to find the wholeness that some girls wear like a birthright. It’s a shame that I did not have it in my youth, but it’s not my shame. I thought of all the people who might have helped me back then and the ways that they fell short of what I really needed. And I thought, what if they were doing the best they could? I thought of our long clumsy year of grief and leaving and getting in one another’s way and I thought, what if we were all doing the best we could?
I felt myself lifting us all—but most of all myself—off the hook of my judgment. A judgment born of misguided belief that I could have and should have made things turn out any differently than they did. Katy Mattingly told us at the self defense instructors’ conference that when survivors of violence blame themselves, they are often seeking control. “If only I knew exactly what I did wrong,” the logic goes, “I’ll make sure to never do it again.”
If only vigilance could keep me from slipping down the rabbit hole of depression or having conflict with people I love. If only it could keep my friends from dying or ever being hurt. If I could take away a fraction of the pain that is carried by the women I love, I would never close my eyes again.
But we can’t be one another’s wholeness. We can only be each other’s students and teachers and sisters on the journey. We can only act as if we love each other. We can only do the very best we can and have hope—the shining hope of a brave girl becoming a triumphant woman—that it will be enough.
Source: Anne Lamott, “Why I Make Sam Go to Church.” From Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. Anchor Books, 1999.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Publication: Cycleogial Health
The August edition of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun--The Magazine is out. Click on the title of this item to check out my interview with Dorothy Bauman of Trailside Bicycles in Hadley, MA. An unexpurgated version of the interview will appear on my fitness blog.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Mind Body Mama: Unity Strengthens, Diversity Transforms
I did just re-enter the world from a feminist idyll of sorts.
It was not a purely separatist feminist idyll, but it was six days of being surrounded by powerful, committed and delightful women and girls in my residence, conference sessions, meals, and workouts.
Unfortunately, it was not the kind of feminist idyll where no one was triggered by her memories of violence, objectification or harassment. But it was a place where, when a woman was triggered, she was able to ask for help from someone who had the skills to gently reground her in the present moment.
It was not a post-racial idyll where no one need attend to issues of race and racism. But it was a setting where teachers were interested in the challenge of teaching across race, language and culture and discussed concrete strategies for doing so effectively.
It wasn’t a conference where instructors and volunteers would not benefit from diversity training. It was a conference where top notch diversity training was provided and participants talked about what they learned all weekend.
It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where the founding mothers establish a succession and power sharing plan from the organization’s inception. (If you know of a women’s organization like this, please let me know—I want to join RIGHT NOW!) But it was a week within which the elders came to the next generation of leaders in direct and indirect ways and said, “We are getting tired, and you are enormously skilled. We have raised you well and it is time for you to help us lead this thing.” And we made plans to do so.
It wasn’t the kind of a feminist idyll where we felt confident that the larger world shared our vision and concerns. But it was a feminist, anti-racist gathering on the campus of Oberlin College, renowned for its early admission of women and African Americans, in a city where pride in its abolitionist and civil rights heritage runs deep.
It wasn't the kind of paradise where no one ever said or did anything racist. But it was the kind of place where at least one white woman took responsibility for saying something ignorant and hurtful by making a public apology to the entire gathering.
It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where a young girl was never struck still by anxiety, panic and grief. But it was a place where, at the moment that happened, the girl was partnered with a mama whose own daughter struggles with anxiety every day. And the girl was passed seamlessly, within seconds, to a skilled practitioner of Trauma First Aid.
It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where all the white women know that anti-racism is their cause too. But it was a place where, when the word went out through the grassroots that “the women of color want more white allies,” a few more of us got over our racist selves and showed up at the Anti-Racism Council meeting.
It wasn’t a feminist paradise far-reaching enough to carry us through the airport without Homeland Security catching up one of our group--a middle aged African American woman with a few too many (beautiful, wooden, handcrafted) martial arts weapons in her carry-on. But it might have had some kind of halo effect. Because the young, white, male officer who held her at security for a long, long time finally spoke in a tone of genuine respect and regret. “You have several choices: You can surrender them. I’m sorry I can’t offer to mail them for you; they are too large for the mailers. You can give them to someone who is not flying today. Or you can go back and check your bags, and we will escort you through the lines.”
It wasn’t a feminist idyll strong enough from keeping our acquaintance from getting stressed out through the long delay and intense scrutiny. But it was a community strong enough to stand with her. So that she finally emerged literally into the arms of black women and white women standing together—some friends and some merely colleagues—bearing witness, keeping an eye out for trouble, and practicing relaxed readiness.
Suffice it to say, it was hard to re-enter the world to hear Judge Sonia Sotomayor being grilled in tones condescension by a bunch of white male yahoos whose names I perhaps should recall, but I prefer not to.
It was a delight to hear Sotomayor’s own voice—gravelly and measured, with the distinctive tones of Puerto Rico and the Bronx. But her staid and steady answers to the most obnoxious of questions left me restless and frustrated. I’m glad NPR’s Ari Shapiro explained it to me: Sotomayor’s strategy for these hearings is to be as boring as possible. If that’s what it takes to get a brilliant, ambitious Nuyorican Latina onto the Supreme Court, I can handle snoozing through her confirmation hearings.
But if Sotomayor cannot say it herself, I wish that an analyst somewhere—someone with the same gravitas and power in her voice— would put things this baldly:
“On the subject of Sotomayor’s remarks about the unique perspective and strengths of a ‘wise, Latina’ jurist:
The fiction that one’s identity—including such things as race, class, gender, religion, national origin, ability status, and sexual preference—do not influence the sum total of one’s experience, and thus come to bear on one’s perspective and judgment, is an illusion which is not only more easily maintained by those in positions of power, but which directly and concretely benefits those who have traditionally controlled access to political power: namely white, male, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North Americans.
You may choose to believe that your identities as white, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North American men do not influence your ability to have compassion, empathy and deep understanding of the broadest diversity of Americans influenced by your law making and justice. I say “choose,” because I do not believe that good judgment and self awareness accrue disproportionately to any specific race or gender. I believe that you have the capacity to recognize your own biases, to look into your own experience and understand how it may limit your comprehension of the law and its effects. I believe you have the capacity, and I believe that some of you choose not to exercise it.
So you may choose to believe that you are “neutral.” But those of us who you define as other: women, people of color, immigrants, non-Christians—know better. We know that our intellects are forged within our experiences, and we know that yours are as well.
We know that your judgments are exercised through the prism of your privilege and that your choice to deny this is a handicap that limits your ability to fairly and effectively govern.
Our legal system is a triumph of civilization. Our pledge as jurists to be as impartial as possible, to treat all who come before us fairly, and to maintain systems that ensure equity, are a hallmark of the unity of our great nation.
But our citizenry is not—and has never been—a homogeneous monolith. And the extent to which our leadership in the judicial, legislative and executive branches can reflect the diverse experiences of our people, the stronger, more effective, more compassionate and more equitable our government will be.
Unity strengthens. Diversity transforms.”
It was not a purely separatist feminist idyll, but it was six days of being surrounded by powerful, committed and delightful women and girls in my residence, conference sessions, meals, and workouts.
Unfortunately, it was not the kind of feminist idyll where no one was triggered by her memories of violence, objectification or harassment. But it was a place where, when a woman was triggered, she was able to ask for help from someone who had the skills to gently reground her in the present moment.
It was not a post-racial idyll where no one need attend to issues of race and racism. But it was a setting where teachers were interested in the challenge of teaching across race, language and culture and discussed concrete strategies for doing so effectively.
It wasn’t a conference where instructors and volunteers would not benefit from diversity training. It was a conference where top notch diversity training was provided and participants talked about what they learned all weekend.
It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where the founding mothers establish a succession and power sharing plan from the organization’s inception. (If you know of a women’s organization like this, please let me know—I want to join RIGHT NOW!) But it was a week within which the elders came to the next generation of leaders in direct and indirect ways and said, “We are getting tired, and you are enormously skilled. We have raised you well and it is time for you to help us lead this thing.” And we made plans to do so.
It wasn’t the kind of a feminist idyll where we felt confident that the larger world shared our vision and concerns. But it was a feminist, anti-racist gathering on the campus of Oberlin College, renowned for its early admission of women and African Americans, in a city where pride in its abolitionist and civil rights heritage runs deep.
It wasn't the kind of paradise where no one ever said or did anything racist. But it was the kind of place where at least one white woman took responsibility for saying something ignorant and hurtful by making a public apology to the entire gathering.
It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where a young girl was never struck still by anxiety, panic and grief. But it was a place where, at the moment that happened, the girl was partnered with a mama whose own daughter struggles with anxiety every day. And the girl was passed seamlessly, within seconds, to a skilled practitioner of Trauma First Aid.
It wasn’t the kind of feminist idyll where all the white women know that anti-racism is their cause too. But it was a place where, when the word went out through the grassroots that “the women of color want more white allies,” a few more of us got over our racist selves and showed up at the Anti-Racism Council meeting.
It wasn’t a feminist paradise far-reaching enough to carry us through the airport without Homeland Security catching up one of our group--a middle aged African American woman with a few too many (beautiful, wooden, handcrafted) martial arts weapons in her carry-on. But it might have had some kind of halo effect. Because the young, white, male officer who held her at security for a long, long time finally spoke in a tone of genuine respect and regret. “You have several choices: You can surrender them. I’m sorry I can’t offer to mail them for you; they are too large for the mailers. You can give them to someone who is not flying today. Or you can go back and check your bags, and we will escort you through the lines.”
It wasn’t a feminist idyll strong enough from keeping our acquaintance from getting stressed out through the long delay and intense scrutiny. But it was a community strong enough to stand with her. So that she finally emerged literally into the arms of black women and white women standing together—some friends and some merely colleagues—bearing witness, keeping an eye out for trouble, and practicing relaxed readiness.
Suffice it to say, it was hard to re-enter the world to hear Judge Sonia Sotomayor being grilled in tones condescension by a bunch of white male yahoos whose names I perhaps should recall, but I prefer not to.
It was a delight to hear Sotomayor’s own voice—gravelly and measured, with the distinctive tones of Puerto Rico and the Bronx. But her staid and steady answers to the most obnoxious of questions left me restless and frustrated. I’m glad NPR’s Ari Shapiro explained it to me: Sotomayor’s strategy for these hearings is to be as boring as possible. If that’s what it takes to get a brilliant, ambitious Nuyorican Latina onto the Supreme Court, I can handle snoozing through her confirmation hearings.
But if Sotomayor cannot say it herself, I wish that an analyst somewhere—someone with the same gravitas and power in her voice— would put things this baldly:
“On the subject of Sotomayor’s remarks about the unique perspective and strengths of a ‘wise, Latina’ jurist:
The fiction that one’s identity—including such things as race, class, gender, religion, national origin, ability status, and sexual preference—do not influence the sum total of one’s experience, and thus come to bear on one’s perspective and judgment, is an illusion which is not only more easily maintained by those in positions of power, but which directly and concretely benefits those who have traditionally controlled access to political power: namely white, male, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North Americans.
You may choose to believe that your identities as white, upper class, apparently heterosexual, Christian North American men do not influence your ability to have compassion, empathy and deep understanding of the broadest diversity of Americans influenced by your law making and justice. I say “choose,” because I do not believe that good judgment and self awareness accrue disproportionately to any specific race or gender. I believe that you have the capacity to recognize your own biases, to look into your own experience and understand how it may limit your comprehension of the law and its effects. I believe you have the capacity, and I believe that some of you choose not to exercise it.
So you may choose to believe that you are “neutral.” But those of us who you define as other: women, people of color, immigrants, non-Christians—know better. We know that our intellects are forged within our experiences, and we know that yours are as well.
We know that your judgments are exercised through the prism of your privilege and that your choice to deny this is a handicap that limits your ability to fairly and effectively govern.
Our legal system is a triumph of civilization. Our pledge as jurists to be as impartial as possible, to treat all who come before us fairly, and to maintain systems that ensure equity, are a hallmark of the unity of our great nation.
But our citizenry is not—and has never been—a homogeneous monolith. And the extent to which our leadership in the judicial, legislative and executive branches can reflect the diverse experiences of our people, the stronger, more effective, more compassionate and more equitable our government will be.
Unity strengthens. Diversity transforms.”
Friday, July 17, 2009
Mind Body Mama: Raising a Strong Voiced Girl, How To
Last week, I ventured forth from the School of Love to our National Women’s Martial Arts Federation for a week of teaching and learning. The theme of our camp this year was Unity Strengthens, Diversity Transforms, and it came true for me during the two day self defense instructors’ conference and subsequent four day martial arts camp. Over the next weeks I’ll be unpacking what I learned and discovered from working in this diverse and intensely skilled community around issues of women’s empowerment, violence prevention, anti-racism, and support for survivors of violence. Not to mention the jolt of inspiration and energy I received from sweating and laughing with my friends from near and far. My clients and friends at home are saying things like, “I’ve never seen you so happy.”
In a perfect world, I would have left you this column to peruse in my absence. But since I channeled most of my pre-travel anxiety into trying to determine how many pairs of panties I needed to bring (two per day—Birth Pie knew the answer all along, but she didn’t tell me until she got to Ohio) and fighting with my computer, I was not able to build an effective alliance with technology and schedule the post to appear on the right day. Therefore, I bring it to you now.
I’ve been in a self-defense state of mind lately.
A good portion is the inspiration I’m drawing from the work of my colleagues in the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation (NWMAF) and beyond. This year Janet Superhero travelled to South Africa on an arts exchange spreading her message of healing and violence prevention through words and movement; Lee Sinclair and Carol Middleton taught women in refugee camps in Kenya that they’re worth defending; Joanne Factor created more safety in Seattle; and Erin Weed taught girls to fight back on campuses all over the country.
The other portion is the warm reception Raising a Strong Voiced Girl received from colleagues and other mamas. It validates my intuition that this parenting work is a vital element of our self defense movement. But I don’t see many mamas writing to the experience of modeling and teaching self protection skills to girl (or boy) children. It’s hard work—one of the hardest pieces of parenting for me, and indivisible from the other really hard stuff, like walking a spiritual path and teaching about death and god and ethics.
At the School of Love and among the NWMAF-certified self defense instructors we understand self defense to be holistic, complex and far-reaching. Yehudit Sidikman says it well: “Women's self defense is not just about punching and kicking. It's about knowing that you are worth defending."
So just how do you raise a girl who knows she’s worth defending? I’ve started cataloging some of the principles Sweetiebabyhoneyliciuos and I use around our house. It’s a partial list, I’m sure, but it’s a snapshot of our philosophy in action.
We covenant with our kid that:
All feelings are OK. We swear by the teachings of Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. When I first read it I almost cried remembering myself as a little girl who faced exasperation, mockery, and dismissal in response to her feelings—and this from really great and committed parents who were unfortunately illiterate in the language of emotion. We follow Faber and Mazlish’s advice to name feelings (“Sounds like you feel angry/sad/disappointed/etc.”) and then address them accordingly. Because despite the fact that all feelings are ok,
Feelings can’t make you do things. We always have more choices than we think. Small learned that we can feel sad and still have fun when a beloved friend died but life went on. She learned that she could feel anxious but calm herself down with yoga when the cat got badly injured and her mamas had to take care of him in a hurry. And I hope she learned that her parents could be out of their minds with frustration and anger, but she could still be safe and loved, when she cut her hair (and lied about it!) three times in one week. A mama at the end of her rope said in a strangled voice, “Go to your room” before yelling or worse ensued. Because we believe:
Anger is not a justification for hurting yourself or others. I work with a lot of teens who say they “had to” physically assault someone because she or he “made me so mad.” It’s hard for them to understand that you can be mad and still have volition over your actions. I don’t work in law enforcement but I imagine that prisons are full of young people learning that distinction in the harshest possible way. It’s hard for me to understand that anger doesn’t justify action, and I’ve been practicing mindfulness and anti-violence for two decades. Raising Small to be a peaceful warrior is my greatest inspiration for continuing my spiritual work around anger.
Everyone has things they are “good at” and things they are “working on.” Small is working on speaking up in class; Mama is working on calming down when she’s angry. There’s no shame in not being good at something. We are all perfect exactly the way we are and we are always striving to be better. This is how we live the Unitarian Universalist affirmation of the dignity and worth of all people.
Deep breaths are a great way to calm down. Small was able to handle blood draws early on by practicing deep breaths. She’s gotten more resistant to my advice of late—part of the contrarian nature of six, I suppose—but I’m thrilled to see her bow her little head to practice seiza mokuso (seated meditation) at the dojo. Connection to breath is a centerpiece of spiritual practice and the first step of practical self defense. If you’re breathing you’re thinking, and if you’re thinking you’re exploring your choices of how to respond.
Your body is your own. Small toilet trained late which gave us an opportunity to talk about who was allowed to touch her under her diaper—a short list—and why—to clean her up. She knows now that all the parts covered by her bathing suit are private. But moreover, she knows her whole body is her own; she has her say about all manner of physical contact and she can expect the grown-ups to listen. If a grown-up outside our immediate family swings her into a surprise embrace or plants a kiss on her silky cheek she hears a mama asking right away, “Is that OK with you, Small?” It’s my hope that will translate into an internal voice that helps her check in with herself; I hope she knows much sooner than I did to ask, “Is this OK with me?”
Call your body parts by their names. It’s my understanding that predators are put off by children who know the anatomical names of their body parts. Even if that weren’t true I’d believe that women should know the proper name for their genitals. Small has wielded the word “vulva” since she was very tiny.
Surprises are OK, secrets are not. It’s fine to have surprises but Small knows that she can tell us anything. We don’t have secrets from each other. We’ve role-played a situation in which another kid had a big problem and told Small but asked her to keep it a secret. Without prompting or hesitation Small responded, “I’m sorry, but you need help and I’m going to tell somebody.” That’s the friend I’d want to have if I was dealing with abuse, harassment, or bullying.
We expect you to stand up for yourself. In kindergarten, Small struggled with unwanted attention from a bossy but well-meaning special needs student who could not fathom that Small does not want to play her game at recess. As heartbreaking as it was to see my kid challenged in this way, I’m secretly glad that she had this benign opportunity to practice what we call Strong Voice. Every day she had to tell this girl that she didn’t want to play her game, she wants to play “Dog Pound” instead.
We expect you to stand up for others. At the School of Love and the NWMAF we subscribe to a feminist empowerment model of self defense which understands a complex framework of violence. I’ll talk more about this in coming columns, but our bottom line is a shared belief that racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ablism, and other systemic inequalities conspire to put people at different risk for violence dependent upon their privilege and position in society.
But even that explanation is not simple enough for a six year old. So we talk about the Unitarian principles that “Each person is important,” and “Build a fair and peaceful world,” and we role-play interrupting racism. “I’m not going to play with her, she has brown skin.” I said in the role of a playground bully. “People with brown skin are just as good as people with our color skin, and we’re not going away until you play with us,” said Small. The role of white ally is one that I did not even know existed until I was in my twenties. That my daughter might have this skill from childhood gives me incredible hope for our future.
What about you, gentle readers and lurkers? What competencies do you value for your girls’ and boys’ safety? How do you nurture and support those skills?
In a perfect world, I would have left you this column to peruse in my absence. But since I channeled most of my pre-travel anxiety into trying to determine how many pairs of panties I needed to bring (two per day—Birth Pie knew the answer all along, but she didn’t tell me until she got to Ohio) and fighting with my computer, I was not able to build an effective alliance with technology and schedule the post to appear on the right day. Therefore, I bring it to you now.
I’ve been in a self-defense state of mind lately.
A good portion is the inspiration I’m drawing from the work of my colleagues in the National Women’s Martial Arts Federation (NWMAF) and beyond. This year Janet Superhero travelled to South Africa on an arts exchange spreading her message of healing and violence prevention through words and movement; Lee Sinclair and Carol Middleton taught women in refugee camps in Kenya that they’re worth defending; Joanne Factor created more safety in Seattle; and Erin Weed taught girls to fight back on campuses all over the country.
The other portion is the warm reception Raising a Strong Voiced Girl received from colleagues and other mamas. It validates my intuition that this parenting work is a vital element of our self defense movement. But I don’t see many mamas writing to the experience of modeling and teaching self protection skills to girl (or boy) children. It’s hard work—one of the hardest pieces of parenting for me, and indivisible from the other really hard stuff, like walking a spiritual path and teaching about death and god and ethics.
At the School of Love and among the NWMAF-certified self defense instructors we understand self defense to be holistic, complex and far-reaching. Yehudit Sidikman says it well: “Women's self defense is not just about punching and kicking. It's about knowing that you are worth defending."
So just how do you raise a girl who knows she’s worth defending? I’ve started cataloging some of the principles Sweetiebabyhoneyliciuos and I use around our house. It’s a partial list, I’m sure, but it’s a snapshot of our philosophy in action.
We covenant with our kid that:
All feelings are OK. We swear by the teachings of Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. When I first read it I almost cried remembering myself as a little girl who faced exasperation, mockery, and dismissal in response to her feelings—and this from really great and committed parents who were unfortunately illiterate in the language of emotion. We follow Faber and Mazlish’s advice to name feelings (“Sounds like you feel angry/sad/disappointed/etc.”) and then address them accordingly. Because despite the fact that all feelings are ok,
Feelings can’t make you do things. We always have more choices than we think. Small learned that we can feel sad and still have fun when a beloved friend died but life went on. She learned that she could feel anxious but calm herself down with yoga when the cat got badly injured and her mamas had to take care of him in a hurry. And I hope she learned that her parents could be out of their minds with frustration and anger, but she could still be safe and loved, when she cut her hair (and lied about it!) three times in one week. A mama at the end of her rope said in a strangled voice, “Go to your room” before yelling or worse ensued. Because we believe:
Anger is not a justification for hurting yourself or others. I work with a lot of teens who say they “had to” physically assault someone because she or he “made me so mad.” It’s hard for them to understand that you can be mad and still have volition over your actions. I don’t work in law enforcement but I imagine that prisons are full of young people learning that distinction in the harshest possible way. It’s hard for me to understand that anger doesn’t justify action, and I’ve been practicing mindfulness and anti-violence for two decades. Raising Small to be a peaceful warrior is my greatest inspiration for continuing my spiritual work around anger.
Everyone has things they are “good at” and things they are “working on.” Small is working on speaking up in class; Mama is working on calming down when she’s angry. There’s no shame in not being good at something. We are all perfect exactly the way we are and we are always striving to be better. This is how we live the Unitarian Universalist affirmation of the dignity and worth of all people.
Deep breaths are a great way to calm down. Small was able to handle blood draws early on by practicing deep breaths. She’s gotten more resistant to my advice of late—part of the contrarian nature of six, I suppose—but I’m thrilled to see her bow her little head to practice seiza mokuso (seated meditation) at the dojo. Connection to breath is a centerpiece of spiritual practice and the first step of practical self defense. If you’re breathing you’re thinking, and if you’re thinking you’re exploring your choices of how to respond.
Your body is your own. Small toilet trained late which gave us an opportunity to talk about who was allowed to touch her under her diaper—a short list—and why—to clean her up. She knows now that all the parts covered by her bathing suit are private. But moreover, she knows her whole body is her own; she has her say about all manner of physical contact and she can expect the grown-ups to listen. If a grown-up outside our immediate family swings her into a surprise embrace or plants a kiss on her silky cheek she hears a mama asking right away, “Is that OK with you, Small?” It’s my hope that will translate into an internal voice that helps her check in with herself; I hope she knows much sooner than I did to ask, “Is this OK with me?”
Call your body parts by their names. It’s my understanding that predators are put off by children who know the anatomical names of their body parts. Even if that weren’t true I’d believe that women should know the proper name for their genitals. Small has wielded the word “vulva” since she was very tiny.
Surprises are OK, secrets are not. It’s fine to have surprises but Small knows that she can tell us anything. We don’t have secrets from each other. We’ve role-played a situation in which another kid had a big problem and told Small but asked her to keep it a secret. Without prompting or hesitation Small responded, “I’m sorry, but you need help and I’m going to tell somebody.” That’s the friend I’d want to have if I was dealing with abuse, harassment, or bullying.
We expect you to stand up for yourself. In kindergarten, Small struggled with unwanted attention from a bossy but well-meaning special needs student who could not fathom that Small does not want to play her game at recess. As heartbreaking as it was to see my kid challenged in this way, I’m secretly glad that she had this benign opportunity to practice what we call Strong Voice. Every day she had to tell this girl that she didn’t want to play her game, she wants to play “Dog Pound” instead.
We expect you to stand up for others. At the School of Love and the NWMAF we subscribe to a feminist empowerment model of self defense which understands a complex framework of violence. I’ll talk more about this in coming columns, but our bottom line is a shared belief that racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ablism, and other systemic inequalities conspire to put people at different risk for violence dependent upon their privilege and position in society.
But even that explanation is not simple enough for a six year old. So we talk about the Unitarian principles that “Each person is important,” and “Build a fair and peaceful world,” and we role-play interrupting racism. “I’m not going to play with her, she has brown skin.” I said in the role of a playground bully. “People with brown skin are just as good as people with our color skin, and we’re not going away until you play with us,” said Small. The role of white ally is one that I did not even know existed until I was in my twenties. That my daughter might have this skill from childhood gives me incredible hope for our future.
What about you, gentle readers and lurkers? What competencies do you value for your girls’ and boys’ safety? How do you nurture and support those skills?
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