I am starting to understand and believe that holding someone accountable for their body’s size is like holding them accountable for the color of their eyes. It is absurd to connect value to something that is almost completely out of our control.  “Wow! Brown eyes! You must work really hard for those!”
 
I was born a light to middle-weight big girl. What that means is that the size of my body has always been what some people would consider big and what some people would consider smaller (than themselves, than whomever they were comparing to) but I’ve rarely been “skinny.”
 
I say “rarely” because there have been several times in my life when I’ve been able to diet down to skinny or, at least, quite skinny for me. One of my proudest skinny moments was in college when someone pulled me aside and asked me if I was terminally ill. Never mind that I was a 4.0 student at the University of Michigan or that I had recently been accepted to the Peace Corps. The thing I was MOST proud of was that I had finally starved and starimastered myself down to cancer-skinny!
 
And even though I have almost always been what most skinny women could call or consider “fat,” the only times that I have truly been Fat were right after my children were born. To me, Fat means having to seek out clothing that fits well or looking for the “Plus” sign at TJ Maxx. Fat means taking up more space than the world I live in is comfortable giving me.  Sitting on an airplane or in a classroom is mildly (for some, extremely) uncomfortable. Fellow gym-goers stare or give condescending “good for you!” encouragement. Doctors express their concern.
 
There are many women, at this point, who have reclaimed the word Fat. Fat Acceptance has been a social justice movement for years.  We live in a fat-phobic society.  Fat is a feminist issue.
 
But… so is Chubby.
 
What I’m getting at is that it is not fair for me to call myself Fat in the face of the Fat Acceptance Movement nor in the face of a woman who reclaims the word Fat. We all have those skinny friends who constantly complain about being fat – right in front of us! As if they can’t see that our body is twice their size. They call themselves names like “disgusting,” “pathetic,” “gross” and we stand by silently wondering, “what the hell must you think of ME then?” Yes, yes, we have had to compassionately understand that it’s very hard to go from a size 2 to a size 8 and the FEELING of weight on the body is relative but COME ON! I feel that – if I stood up in the middle of this movement to claim the word “Fat” – I would be, in some ways, behaving like this ignorant skinny woman. The major difference being, of course, that I would be claiming Fat to feel empowered, not to disparage fatness. But the result, I feel, would be similar. I can’t claim to truly understand what it feels like to live as a Fat woman in this world. Fat is a moniker that does not fit me. I have privilege in this situation. I have been privileged throughout most of my life to not be treated, talked to, or discriminated against as a Fat woman is.
 
I actually had a conversation with a water aerobics student – and friend – once that made this distinction quite clear to me. She is a woman who proudly uses and wears the word Fat. She was talking about Fat Acceptance one day in my water aerobics class and I said something along the lines of my belonging to that movement/ in that category. She said, “No. No. You don’t get to be in the club if you’re normal-sized. You don’t need any special treatment for being normal.” She didn’t say this in a mean way. She is a woman who speaks her mind openly and clearly and I have come to love and respect that about her. She meant what she said. I might not be skinny. But I’m also not “Fat.”
 
Now, “Chubby” on the other hand fits perfectly – and has for MOST of my life. Chubby is what I naturally am when I’m not making sure I eat between 1000 & 1400 calories per day and workout for at least 90 minutes every day. And I can absolutely tell you – with confidence – what life is like for Chubby women in this world. The fact that I’m naturally Chubby has caused me anxiety, depression, self-hatred and generalized pain my entire life.
 
And while this pain comes from many different directions, one of the places it comes from is the fact that, in our culture, body size is understood to be almost 100% within our control. The main assumption of Diet Culture is, if you are thin, you must work really really hard and “eat clean” and if you are overweight (to any degree), you must be lazy and gluttonous.
 
Until recently, I bought this lie with every fiber of my being. I believed firmly and self-righteously that my chubbiness was a clear indication that I wasn’t trying hard enough, I didn’t want a “good body” badly enough. I entered into a course of study (working to be a “Health Fitness Specialist”) that would – in almost every single way – reiterate this lie of Diet Culture to me on the daily and surround me with (mostly very young) people who are becoming devout disciples of this lie.
 
But buried in the literature, the research and the actual science of the materials for my course of study the truth is made plain. Genetically, we are who we are. We are born with our bodies. As children, the predispositions of our natural bodies are either enhanced (we get fatter or skinnier) or they are manipulated (we learn behaviors that grow us against our natural bodies – creating habits that become our nature – thin, lifelong athletes that come from families of mostly fat people are an example of this). By a certain age (that is slightly different for everyone), we have a set-point and, without herculean effort, moving a few percentage points to the right or left of that set-point is all that is possible. But, health-wise, moving a few percentage points to the right or left might be all anyone really “needs” to do, if they NEED to do anything at all.
 
In my course of study, we are taught the additional lie that this herculean effort is absolutely worth the health benefits that arise from weight loss. But further science explains that the stress of that effort could be more damaging than our original, NATURAL, weight was. Further science explains that “weight cycling” (losing a large amount of weight just to gain it back again and again) is actually worse for your heart health than simply carrying around that NATURAL weight your whole life. And further – utterly undeniable – science demonstrates that almost ALWAYS (as in… 95% of the time) that herculean effort is NOT sustainable and, ultimately, leads to FURTHER weight gain.
 
This is just the tip of the iceberg I’m currently discovering. And the presence of this iceberg in the vast sea of health myths and diet culture we swim in every day has massive implications on every facet of my life and work. I am learning. But the first thing I must do is learn to be chill with being Chubby.
 
Be chill, Teamies!
Namaste.

When I was in third or fourth grade, I would hole myself up in our basement with the record player and dance my ass off. I would make up elaborate dances that were one part really bad ballet impression, one part modern jazz, one part interpretive dance and another part weirdo. I LOVED to dance. I loved getting sweaty. I loved moving my body.
 
Around that same time and in a rare occurrence of joiner-hood, my mother agreed to buy me some ballet lessons. I didn’t necessarily want to do ballet exactly but I wanted to dance and that seemed to be the only kind of dance on offer to a little girl at the time. The first day in class, I noticed that my belly stuck out MUCH farther than anyone else’s. In fact, it was the second time in my life I felt fat (the first is a story for another time).
 
It was a painful feeling. I don’t particularly remember any of the girl’s teasing me exactly but for some reason, I have a memory of my instructor’s face being disapproving. No words. Just a look. I remember too, looking around at all of these whisps of girls with their flat – in some cases, concave! -- bellies and their long necks and their toothpick legs with thigh gaps a mile wide and knowing that everything about me was wrong. I did not belong. One of these things was not like the other.
 
I’m not sure how I came up with the greatest lie I’ve ever told but I do remember that it came to me suddenly and felt absolutely right. When my mother picked me up after the second or third lesson, I sat in the back of the car and told her what seemed to me like a hilarious story: The instructor – in front of everyone – had laughed out loud and told me that my belly looked as if I had swallowed a basketball then the whole class laughed at me, along with her. As I told this story – which was a complete invention of my hurting little girl brain – I laughed like it was the greatest joke I’d ever heard. My mother laughed too. It made her angry with my instructor but, for whatever reason, she thought it was hysterically funny. And, I KNEW that she would. I knew that was the reaction I would get. That’s why I told it. I remember over the next several weeks and months, I got to retell that “joke” a million times. My mother would remind me of it from time to time even into my early adulthood. She would laugh and laugh. Whoever else was hearing the story would laugh and laugh.
 
And every single time, it hurt.
 
It’s weird and you probably don’t get it. If I was hurting, why would I joke? If I was a child, why would I have to tell a made-up story instead of just telling my mother the truth about how uncomfortable I was?
 
In my little girl’s brain, the shame of being “the big girl” in what seemed like a sea of waifs didn’t stop at size, it was compounded by the fact that I felt shame at all. It felt like feeling sorry for myself which I was not allowed to do. It felt like caring too much about myself which I was not allowed to do. My size – particularly at that age – felt like it was something I had absolutely no control over. I had no control over the other girls’ sizes. I had no control over the disapproving look on the skinny dance instructor’s face. But SOMEHOW I had gained enough sophisticated language use and understanding of my mother’s psyche to know that if I turned my horrible discomfort and self-hatred into a JOKE that made my instructor look like a raging bitch and me like an ugly, little fat girl that I’d never have to go back to that class again, no matter how much my mother paid for it. And I didn’t. I just had to endure telling the I-swallowed-a-basketball-whole joke about a hundred bazillion times. I wasn’t allowed to share my real feelings but I was allowed to make a joke of myself and my pain.
 
I have always wanted to dance. After the basketball-in-the-belly ballet class, I didn’t much. Not until… I discovered – at too young an age – drinking and dance clubs. And both were like a portal to another world.
 
As I got older though, that behavior, was no longer sustainable. So, I found yoga trance dance videos and danced through my pregnancies in my living room. I found Zumba. I found Break the Chain – a choreographed dance for the One Billion Rising movement. I dance in my living room, my dining room, my bedroom. I mean… I put on workout clothes, I clear a space, I crank up the music and I dance my ass off – belly and all!
 
I haven’t exactly put it all together yet: The relationship between body shame and dance and liberation and my particularly intimate history of growing up in a body shaming household and family. All I can say for sure right now is despite the heaps and heaps of body shame that have been packed upon my body since I was a baby, there has been a dancer inside of me that has refused to stop moving. She seems to dance in fire and light. She refuses to believe that I am not allowed to dance. She forgives the little girl who made the joke that took her away from ballet lessons. She is beginning to convince me that my body is not a joke. And even though, for the most part, I have hidden her away from the world as much as possible, I am beginning to see that she is the wisest, deepest, most authentic piece of myself.  SHE will be the reason I survive the rest of my life… as she is probably the reason I have survived this long.
 
Whatever this fatphobic, health-obsessed, body-shaming world tells us, the shape and size of our bodies does not determine whether we get to feel the liberation of dance – or any other kind of movement. Not when we are children. Not when we are teenagers. Not when we are grown-ass adults. We are allowed to dance. We are allowed to move. We are allowed to exist without apology or shame in this world.
 
Dance your asses off, Teamies!
Namaste,

Dan Pink says: Human Beings are not like horses. We treat people like they are horses by dangling carrots and beating with sticks. That is, we live in a system of rewards and punishments. But… because people are humans, not horses… we really don’t become successful or achieve our ultimate goals by living in this system of rewards and punishments. Human beings are successful and achieve our goals when we find our ultimate purpose and connect to a meaning beyond ourselves.
 
And this made me think about learning; about how this system of rewards and punishments exists in our thinking about learning.
 
First, let me say this: Learning is NOT measurable. No one will ever convince me that it is. Learning (Not Education, with a capital “E”) – REAL Learning – happens this way: A “teacher” plants a seed inside a “student’s” head, heart and possibly even soul. The “teacher” may even water that seed, fertilize that seed but when and how and how slowly or quickly that seed germinates, matures then blossoms is entirely up to the student’s subconscious being. Every learner is unique in every context. Some people learn quickly all the time. Some people learn some things quickly and other things slowly. Some people learn slowly all the time. Some people learn some things slowly and other things quickly. The seed may bloom instantly. The seed might bloom a year later. The seed might lay dormant for 30 years then bloom when no one expected it to. All the while, the student does not consciously control when the seed blooms because this uniqueness is determined by everything the student is, has been through, and has the potential for being. Therefore, unless you hook a newborn infant to all of the brain-activity monitoring machines and have a trained psychologist performing behavioral tests on them from the day they are born until the day they die (and even then I would argue, no, that still doesn’t quite measure it), you cannot measure what that human being has learned, is learning, will learn. You can’t.
 
Within a system of “Education,” we test and we assign writing tasks to determine how much learning has taken place. At best – at the VERY best – we MIGHT be able to determine what this student learned on this one (very narrow, considering the entire canon of potential knowledge) specific topic at this one specific time in this student’s life. Even on that specific topic, the learning that they are able to demonstrate will be different on different days, depending on a host of external environmental factors and internal bodily factors.
 
The tests and writing tasks are graded. The student receives a letter. In “Education,” we tell ourselves that the letter represents how much learning was demonstrated but that is a lie. It is an absolute  lie.
 
But MUCH worse than this lie is what living in a system of rewards and punishments does to students. The bottom line reality of a rewards and punishments system is that no one has any intrinsic worth. We are all only as worthy as the last action we took. We are either good or we are bad.  We are either going to get a reward or we are going to get a punishment. We live in a constant state of seeking approval and reward so that we can feel worthy ALL THE WHILE fearing punishment which will be solid proof of our unworthiness.
 
We are caged animals. We are slaves. We are not free to be our highest selves because when we are stuck in a system of seeking reward and fearing punishment, we CAN’T discover our true purpose and we CAN’T connect to meaning beyond ourselves. We are mired in obsessive / compulsive actions CONSTANTLY begging for a sense of worthiness and fearing that we will be proven worthless.
 
The result of this enslavement in American students is that they disconnect from learning altogether. Because we tell ourselves that Education measures learning, students associate Education with their ability to learn; with how much they know. They learned very early on that they were either “worthy/good” or “worthless/bad.” Whether they were good or bad, or somewhere in between, they associated learning with a painful experience of having to constantly beg to be considered worthy AND fear a judgement of worthlessness. They came to believe that this is what learning is. They accurately realized that Education is a cage. So, whether they learned to play the game or not, they disconnected from REAL learning. They don’t learn to learn, to know their purpose, to connect to a meaning beyond themselves. They learn to feel worthy by getting rewarded for good behavior. OR they learn that the system believes they are worthless --and therefore incapable of learning. 
 
Please note: THIS does not accurately characterize every context within our education system, mainstream or otherwise. BUT… I would argue vehemently that IF a student learns to love learning for the sake of learning itself, if a student engages in REAL learning, it is because either the teacher, the student or the institution itself is engaging in some form of teaching and learning that is outside the scope of the mainstream. In other words, somewhere in that context the system is being subverted. Someone within that context is trying to open up the cages and set the students free.
 
When we are free to engage in REAL learning, we know we are intrinsically worthy. We were born worthy. We do not have to beg for the carrot. We do not have to fear the stick. We learn because it gets us closer to understanding our specific purpose on this earth. We learn in order to connect to meaning beyond ourselves. 

Open the cages with love, Teamies.
Namaste,

Or this…
 
Al Franken sets up a re-education camp for sexual predators like Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, Garrison Keillor and other men who simply thought that what they were doing all these years was just what men are supposed to be doing.
 
It’s like a conference… to educate the asshole out of these people.
 
First, they need to talk amongst themselves, with themselves and for themselves about how shocked they were to realize that they had actually offended or hurt anyone. Or how shocked they were that any of the people they had offended or hurt actually had the balls to come forward and say it out loud. Because I can’t think of a single woman who would want to hear that shit, however, they should get a compassionate man to listen to them and talk to them about how hard it is to realize that you’ve been an asshole your whole life but it’s not too late to change. Give them space to accept and understand their shame and embrace their vulnerability in this moment. Franken would be a great facilitator of a conversation like this.
 
Then, when they’re ready… I’d say on day 3 or 4 of camp… have strong, scary-intelligent, truth-speaking women like poet Mahogany Browne and psychologist Brene Brown to introduce them to what it means to be a proper human in the world. They’re going to need a couple of days, at least, to make it through this curriculum.
 
Then, as the mere beginning of their penance, require these men to go online and find a poop emoji Halloween costume (there were so many of these leftover on such a crazy discount this year that I could have bought a whole fleet of them myself). With these costumes, these men will hold the first of a long series of semiannual (we’ll need to do this at least a couple of times every year for a while) “Piece-of-Shit Parades.” The Parades will take place all over the country but the biggest ones will be in Hollywood, New York and DC. These reforming men will don the poop emoji costumes and carry signs that name their particular transgressions and say things like:

Dear Al Franken,
 
Thank you for resigning last week from the U.S. Senate. It took courage and integrity and a strong commitment to what you and I both know is right for you to do this. I wanted to recognize that.
 
Mr. Franken, I am a survivor of rape and childhood sexual abuse and assault. My stake in this current movement to call out sexual predators runs deep. For many years, I have carried so much hatred and anger in my heart. For many years I have lived in fear. For many years, I have internalized these feelings so successfully that they manifest themselves simply in a deep and abiding SELF-hatred.
 
Throughout these years, I have become a keen observer of the asinine things that men (like you) do. I have come to understand, both through observation and through study, that it is our culture that raises you to not only believe you have a RIGHT to do these things but that you have a RESPONSIBILITY to do them if you are to be considered a man.
 
Mr. Franken, I know you. In my undergrad days, at the University of Michigan, I was the girl who hung out with guys like you at parties. You made me laugh. You were clever and quick and relentlessly liberal and desperately flirtatious in your nerdiness, with a tiny edge of sweetness. For an angry, young feminist in the early 90s, these were an intoxicating combination.
 
While I was in the Peace Corps from 1997-1999, I was assaulted by a man just like you (survivors are often re-victimized throughout their lifetime, Mr. Franken—until we can fully accept that our victimizations were NEVER anything like “our fault”). When he got drunk, he’d say and do inappropriate things. Many of the women in my Peace Corps group knew this already but, they said nothing and did nothing about the behavior because, ultimately, they felt bad for him. He was a nerd. He was a smart, witty, nerd who was desperate for our attention. And because women have been socialized to eat up every ounce of male attention they get – however inappropriate it is – the women in my Peace Corps group thought of his desperate, nerdy inappropriateness as “a little sweet.” But after he assaulted me, I told on him. Because I was a survivor, I recognized his ridiculous behavior for what it was: dangerous. As soon as I told our medical officer what he had done to me, the alpha male of our pack – a handsome, strapping young man from Jersey – was sent to me to tell me that I was a “bitch” and that “friends don’t tell on each other.” I guess he didn’t realize that I do not consider people who assault me, “friends.” I was ostracized from my group for the rest of my Peace Corps stint. There were two women in the group who would still talk to me after that. They were both survivors.

My first husband was like you too. JUST like you. Oh, I know you.

But Mr. Franken, the reasons this fellow Peace Corps volunteer and you, and my ex-husband, and all of these poor, nerdy boys get into trouble is that our culture has not taught you how to be a proper human. Indeed, it has pushed you – forcefully – to turn your back on what it means to be a proper human and instead, “BE A MAN!”
 
The message you get from our culture is to pursue, to push, to grab, to get, to take, to overpower, to destroy if necessary. The message you get from our culture is that we are no more than objects for you to play with. The message you get from our culture is that emotional maturity, intuition, intelligence and responsibility are weak. Communication is weak. Expressing desires – in a way that is not creepy – is weak. You can’t possibly be a “real man” if you have to ask for it.
 
And this is particularly hard for the nerdy boy or the dorky boy. Possessing few of the natural qualities that make aggression and objectification easy, the nerdy boy learns to pervert his intelligence, emotional intuition, propensity towards compassion into something unnatural indeed. Our culture forces you all to twist your innate “feminine” qualities in on themselves until you all implode. Usually, this happens in the form of some inappropriate behavior – whether that’s unwanted touching, stalking, or rape. Meanwhile, the girls you grow up with learn to accept your inappropriateness as a form of flattery or even love. So, this leaves you stuck in a pretty hard place – having no actual idea that what you are doing is so absurdly wrong.
 
But this is changing, Mr. Franken. We won’t have it anymore. Obviously, you know this now.
 
So, you are caught in an interesting time – both historically and personally. You could do what so many men like you have done before. You could retreat into the shadows of obscurity or small local offices or the pages of memoirs and go down with your ship. You could defend your predatory behavior until the day you die and stick to the story that men like you are the REAL victims. So far, Mr. Franken, you don’t seem like that type, so I’m writing to urge you to continue to take a different approach.

And let me say, in order to set you on the right path, that it is not a turning away from masculinity that we, as a culture, need. I am not asking you to berate men for wanting to be strong, powerful, and in control. Indeed, the qualities of the masculine protector are necessary for all of our survival – and in many ways, are the foundation of a healthy emotional life. More of us – of all genders – should seek these qualities. BUT… these qualities are only useful so long as they are tempered by those typically feminine characteristics of compassion, emotional intelligence, vulnerability, patience and empathy.
 
We all possessed all of these qualities as babies. We all had the capacity for strength AND vulnerability as children. We NEED to get to work on repairing the fissure our culture created in each of us between these two sides of ourselves– but particularly in those nerdy boys who wanted to inherently be everything they were told they should/could not be. 
 
This is not an unimportant point: This fissure will not be mended by shaming sexual desire out of everyone. This fissure will not be repaired if we tell people to simply become more prude-ish and suppress their natural sexual desire. This will only continue to rip us further apart. A vulnerable acceptance of and openness to natural sexual desire is essential to move this conversation forward. Nerdy boys are not inappropriate because they have sexual desires. They become inappropriate when they are not taught the proper way to manage and express these sexual desires. Until we can put away our shame surrounding sexual desire, we will never be able to teach boys how to behave appropriately and we will keep producing sexual predators.
 
Mr. Franken, what I’m asking you to do is to take this opportunity to become a champion for Survivors. A TRUE champion. Take this opportunity to become a role-model and teacher to those men – especially the nerdy boys and young men – who are LOST in this wilderness of take-or-be-considered-weak. This movement to end sexual predation has long needed truly courageous, truly STRONG men who are willing to stand up and tell other men the exact nature of their wrongs and the exact way that they can fix it. Take the time. Gather your strength. Study. Write. Make the connections. Then, Mr. Franken, please, be that man.

Thank you for your time,
JodiAnn Stevenson

AKA:

​I get it now.
 
A blog is supposed to be a bite-sized thought. A small meal, at most. Most of my former blog posts were like an entire year of meal plans rather than a small meal or a bite.
 
See… I thought that I had to tell you EVERYTHING. I thought I had to give you as much background and as much context as I possibly could so that you could read that one post and understand everything.
 
I’m a forest person. I’m not a tree person. I can’t see the trees. When I look at the trees, all I ever see is the whole forest. I thought I needed to write the whole forest.
 
But you don’t need to know the whole forest.  You don’t need to know everything or be told everything right now, in this one post. You don’t want everything. And if you DO, you can read the archives. You can read them all day long if you want. Get lost in the forest! And little by little, post by post, you will come to know as much of everything as I have been willing and able to share to date.
 
And THAT is how it works.  THAT is actually the beauty of a blog. One post is just an invitation. The whole blog is my house. And you get to decide how far you want to come inside. Take the invitation and continue reading one or two more posts – you’ve made it to the foyer. How many posts do you need to read to make it to the living room... or the kitchen? It’s kind of like asking how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop.
 
For now, I show you the one tree, I send you the invitation, I just offer you this bite. If you want more, you know where to find it.
 
Nom Nom Nom with Love, Teamies!

​I can’t sleep.
 
The first time I checked the clock, it was 1:50am.  I finally got out of bed around 2:30am. I’ve learned it’s just no use laying there, hoping. I won’t go back to sleep until I feel tired again, which should be sometime around 8am when I’ll be expected to get the day going.
 
I think it’s the moon’s fault. Have you seen it tonight? My god! It’s enormous and so bright that it’s almost like daytime outside. It forced me to step outside, onto my porch, in my pajamas, to see where all the light was coming from.
 
I think I’m a creature of the moon like that. I think I need, from time to time, to bathe in it.
 
Ancient cosmos-based medicine says moon bathing is cooling. It says the full moon brings out unresolved emotions in us then calms them.
 
Have you noticed how scary the world is right now? I have friends who are worried about the end. I have friends who are worrying about how to protect themselves from what seems to be coming – friends that can’t just hide – friends that will be hunted if and when the hunting happens. I have friends who shake their heads and throw up their hands. I have friends who have given up.
 
Then, I have friends – well, one friend – who insists the sky is NOT falling. We’ve been here before. Many times. She says.
 
I like the sound of that – that the sky will remain intact. And it will.
 
But… it’s hard not to think that, because of this one friend’s race/ethnicity, orientation, and socioeconomic class, she just doesn’t realize that for many people, the sky actually HAS fallen before. She probably doesn’t realize the extent to which it might FEEL like the sky is ACTUALLY falling when everyone you love dearest is under attack, is hunted, is poisoned, is murdered, is raped, is left for dead. Will it happen to everyone? Does it happen to everyone? Has it happened to everyone? No. But for those it does happen to and for their kin, for their survivors – the sky falls, the sky fell, the sky will fall.
 
Except not entirely. The ACTUAL sky will not fall. The ACTUAL sky is a reminder that we are so small; so miniscule.
 
“Not people die but worlds die in them” says the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Human worlds die. Yes. The Universe remains.
 
It’s not REALLY a comfort at all. It’s just what is. After the dramas of our lives – our individual and our collective lives – play out, the sky will still hold the stars (dying themselves, all the time) and the moon will still bathe the earth, until, eventually, the sky swallows them up too.
 
This isn’t to say that human destruction does not matter. It’s to say that human destruction matters all the more. The sky, the moon, the stars, the cosmos, the UNIVERSE is constantly asking us: “Why are you wasting it all? WHY? LOOK AROUND YOU! HAVEN’T I GIVEN YOU ENOUGH? WHY MUST YOU TRY TO TAKE MORE BY DESTROYING EACH OTHER?”
 
“and every time again and again/ I make my lament against destruction (Yevtushenko).”
 
The moon is so beautiful tonight. Beautiful. Behind the black silhouette of the pine and the naked elm's arms, set in deep violet-blue, tiny glints of starlight gleam in scattered glitter fashion upon the sky.
 
I am accepting my smallness. I am listening to the Universe. I will continue to make my lament against destruction.
 
Howl, Teamies.
Howl, Howl, Howl
And keep Howling,
With Love.
 
Please.

Yep -- still talking about shame.  And it's probably going to be a bit before I stop so... please bear with me.

See...

I’m good at the shine: the big ideas, the showing up, the flash, and the working of a room. It’s the follow-through I know I need help with.
 
I used to think it was just because the follow-through was boring. The shiny night of an event moved people, touched people, motivated and inspired people. The day after the event? The emails that need to be sent? The papers that need to be filed? The thank you cards that should probably be written? The phone calls that need to be made? The checks that need to be written? BORING! Tedious! All of it. Blech.
 
But uncovering more layers of shame, I’ve also recently realized, I’m not so good at the follow-through because after the big shine, I ache with shame.
 
If I talk to you at a dinner party – even if we talk all night long and have a grand time – the next day, I will play our conversation over and over and over in my head, I will see your face again and again – a slight wince when I said this, a looking away as I was talking about that. What did all of that mean? Did you secretly hate me? Find me awful? Wish I would shut up? Are you someone I can really trust? Should I have spoken to you all night? Are you one of those people that seem one way one night and then act a different way on a different day? Do you like me? Are you somewhere thinking about how stupid I am?
 
You probably are.
 
And that’s it.  ESPECIALLY if there has been vulnerability. We connected deeply over something or other. It wasn’t a dinner party, but an open mic poetry reading I MC’ed where an incredibly diverse group of people bared their souls to one another and promised to keep the light of poetry burning together.  Or it was... a group discussion about sexual assault on campus where many of us divulged the nature of our survivorship. Or it was... a sermon I delivered in a Unitarian Universalist church in front of ALL THOSE PEOPLE. Or it was... a particularly surprising teachable moment that arose in my classroom where we broke through the BS and actually connected on an important level.  Or it was... a reading of my own poetry where I left it all on the stage (something I have only done once or twice in my entire life because I can't handle the aftershocks of all of that vulnerability).  ALL of these moments shine BECAUSE of the vulnerability. But the day after, I have what Brene Brown, calls a “Shame Hangover.”
 
When I used to drink alcohol, especially before I had children, shame hangovers were often accompanied by regular hangovers.  The first thought I’d wake up with was, “what did I do?” and a deep sense of shame would overwhelm me until I had called every single person I had seen the night before to see if I needed to apologize or not (This, kids, is what they call “a problem.”) Even though the Shame Hangover after a shining event is a better – more righteous – one than the kind of shame hangover that came with an alcohol-induced hangover, it still sucks. It still prevents me from the follow-through.
 
Every email I have to send, every form I have to file, every phone call that needs to be made is a reminder that during that shining event, I made myself vulnerable. I showed everyone a side of myself, a piece of myself I don’t always leave out in full view. And I come from a world (we all do, really) that tells me I have no right to do that… I should be ashamed of myself.
 
Fuck that.
 
The annoying AF thing about all of this is that the inability to follow through has hampered my professional life. I mean, I do okay. I’ve done alright. But if I could get over this shit, I could freakin’ SOAR. I could be a seriously amazing badass… whatever it is that I am.  This lack of follow-through has also hampered some of my relationships. I mean… we connected but remember… you’re probably just somewhere thinking I’m stupid now, right? So… no follow through.  Again. I’ve done okay. I’ve got some friends. I think it’s possible that SOME people don’t mind having me around. But, could those connections be more solid? Could I be a better friend to the people I’m “friends” with? Um… yep! If I wasn’t embarrassed of the follow-through, that’s for certain.
 
It’s good.  It’s good to know what you’re doing wrong. It’s good to know why. And it’s also very good to know how to fix it. So, that’s what I’m going to do now.
 
Follow Through with Love, Teamies.

I’m good at throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Graduate programs. Relationships. Projects. I might love 99% about them but if 1% rubs me the wrong way, it’s over.
 
Here are some of the ways that this behavior has been interpreted:
Scatter-brained
Non-committal
Bitchy
Reactionary
Childish
 
Though it’s most fun to blame it on being a Scorpio: Quick to Love. Quick to Hate.
 
What I’ve recently learned is… I want to avoid Shame (Thanks Brene Brown).
 
I cut and run.
I slash and burn.
 
Ironically, I consider myself a fighter. I consider myself a hard worker. I like to believe I stand and deliver. And sometimes I do.
 
But when I don’t – when I throw the baby out with the bathwater – I’m now realizing – I miss big opportunities. Opportunities like:

• Completing that dream graduate program with the full ride scholarship (ugh! The second biggest regret of my life!)
• Being a part of the last three years of my mother’s life (the first biggest regret).
• Seeing what healing might happen or what relationships can be nurtured or how my career might be effected by hosting a long-standing community Poetry Slam (a project I quit after a relatively successful first two years).

 
I miss these opportunities because the 1% that rubs me the wrong way makes me feel vulnerable, brings me shame. The only safe option in that moment seems to be running, seems to be throwing it all out – even the baby.
 
But when the baby gets tossed, the most essentially useful and potentially healing piece is lost. What is lost is vital to my well-being.
 
So,okay… now I know better, now I should do better. Maybe Brene Brown’s notion of Shame Resiliency is just where I need to start. Maybe I can learn how to save the baby.
 
Save YOUR babies, Teamies, with love!

Honestly, I’m only about ¾ of the way through the second one but it’s already changed my life enough to make it on this very short list.
 
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. It’s the book that might save you from a lifetime of doing mildly fucked up things to the people you love. Because, eventually, in my experience, even the people you love – who REALLY WANT TO LOVE YOU BACK – get really really sick of those constantly mildly fucked up things and eventually won’t have it anymore. Those people you love? They aren’t replaceable. Learn to love them right, right now. Read this book.
 
Daring Greatly is also the book you might find in the middle of your life, after you thought you had fully healed from all of the trauma of your past, only to realize that… NOPE, you still have quite a ways to go. And, ultimately, isn’t that a good thing? Because learning only stops – if you’re lucky and smart – when you’re dead. So, you aint dead yet, kid.  Read this book. It’s not too late.

 
​First of all, it could’ve been the perimenopause.  My husband refers to it as “The Pause.”
 
For example, if I’m having a particularly rough day and I scream my head off at what turns out to be nothing then start bawling and talking about what a horrible person I am and how awful my life is… then, 5 minutes later when I’ve regained semi-sane consciousness, I have to apologize for my bizarre actions of the past twenty or so minutes…
 
he will say, “That’s okay, honey.  I know it’s just The Pause.”
 
So, it could’ve been that, mostly. 
 
But… it was also… damn! It was also the way she marches straight toward the danger, the enemy.  It was the way she is unstoppable.  It was the way she is fearless.  It was the way she is fierce.  It was the way she is deadly.  It was the way she will not be told what to do.  It was the way she loves ice cream. It was the way she is fundamentally good.  It was the way she kicks ass.  It was the way she drinks beer. It was the way that she is the strongest ever.  It was the way she is a god.  It was the way she is ALL of these things but she is also 150% feminine.
 
I was going to say, “woman.” But not all women-identifying people are, or consider themselves, feminine.  Wonder Woman is FEMININE.  She has sculpted eyebrows; lithe muscles; a great rack (oh, don’t act like you didn’t notice – that’s impossible, they are sculpted into her silicone uniform); ridiculously long legs; long flowing hair; big pouty lips; (apparently) permanent perfectly-styled make-up; big doe-like eyes; and… OF COURSE… she wants to save the world with love.
 
In other words, she’s basically me.
 
Bahahahahahahahaha!
 
A few moments ago, as my husband and I had roughly 3 minutes to spend together at the end of a busy day, when our children were finally sleeping, we briefly discussed our reactions to the film.  I said, NOT in all seriousness, “didn’t she remind you of me?”
 
We BOTH busted up and LOLed. But really…
 
I think the reason she strikes such a strong chord in me is that she represents – on a grand, theatrical, metaphoric scale – what all women who refuse to have their asses kicked by the patriarchy actually go through every single day. We forge ahead. We push right through the bullshit. We have to move head-on into a world that has no idea how powerful we are.  When we get knocked down, we have to get back up, every single time. We do not quit. And, despite all the bullshit we go through, and that we witness every person we love go through, we still love.  We still have to believe in love. And we still fight for everything that we believe in because of love. And we have to believe that love can save the world.

And mostly, why I sobbed, like a tiny baby, as that insanely badass feminine superest of superheroes plowed across a field of bullets and grenades and straight-up missiles being hurled at her, is that being unapologetically weird, looks like this.  Doing what is right -- or authentic to yourself -- instead of doing what you are told to do or being who you are told to be, looks like (and often feels like) walking into battle. 

Keep walking into that battle, with love, Teamies.  And, for goodness' sake, GO SEE WONDER WOMAN!!
Namaste

p.s. Just in case, you cared AT ALL (and I seriously would not blame you if you did not – because it’s a hella-boring topic) Pinky Tuscadero will be back in my possession this weekend and I’ve got all kinds of fun plans to release the bad juju out of her so that we can get on with our plan of kicking a certain kind of ass ourselves. Woot. Woot. Now, if I can just manage NOT to fall off of her again…
 
p.p.s. My husband narrowly convinced me NOT to go back and see Wonder Woman for a second time in a row TONIGHT but I don’t think I’m going to make it through tomorrow without going again.  Yep.  THAT is the level of obsession we are talking about here people [it’s ALMOST better that Maleficent – I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m saying it – but, DAMMIT! It REALLY is!].
 

4 or 5 years ago, I had a bike accident during a sprint-distance triathlon in Lansing, MI.  My front wheel got stuck in a groove in the street and I went over my handlebars.  It wasn’t as big a deal as it sounds.  I hit my head last and least hard so there was no need for medical attention, and no concussion or anything.  I did mess up my right thumb though and had to be in a cast for several weeks.  The damage done wasn’t too bad, in the end, but being in an accident was really scary.
 
That accident in Lansing happened before I started riding in clip-in pedals.  If you’re really serious about triathlon, you HAVE TO ride with clip-in pedals eventually.  So, I got some pedals, I got some shoes and I clipped in.  The first several months I rode with clip-ins, you could routinely see me at corners just falling straight over onto my side, like a domino.  Some days were better than others but I never quite got the hang of those clip-ins. And eventually I became too scared to really ride with them so I stopped riding completely – so much for being serious about triathlon!
 
My first ride out last year, I had a great time.  I went about 15 miles or so.  It was a gorgeous day and I sailed along the Betsie River Trail with ease and confidence.  I was so looking forward to an entire summer of kicking ass on my tri-bike.  Then… right before I pulled in my driveway, I hit some sand and turned abruptly, I fell so quick onto the concrete that I didn’t even have time to process what was happening and THIS time, I hit my head first and hard.  So hard, in fact, that my helmet cracked right open.  Ouch.
 
Luckily, I have a good friend who used to be an amateur MMA cage-fighter.  We talked at length about how to handle a concussion and warning signs that mean I should seek medical attention immediately.  I never needed medical attention but damn! I definitely dealt with the consequences of some level of concussion for at least a solid month.
 
A couple weeks after my undiagnosed concussion started to feel better, I bought an old used cruiser for 50 bucks.  It squeaked and whistled when I rode it and maxed out at about five miles per hour but it felt so good to sit straight up for a change and I wasn’t afraid to ride it.  I named that old cruiser, Babe, and fell deeply in love. 
 
Unfortunately, I REALLY wanted to keep doing triathlons. All winter I joked that I was going to do every triathlon this summer on Babe.  Well, at first I was joking and then I was serious.  I mean, sure… I would definitely be The Last Triathlete, but who cares? I could still finish within the cut-off time and I would have fun doing it!
 
So, a couple weeks ago, I took Babe in to be spiffed up and I made a plan to sell my road bikes through the shop that did the work.  Just yesterday, I dropped off my Tri-bike and walked out the door. 
 
Then, as you might know (if you read yesterday’s post) I picked up the July issue of Triathlete magazine that I’ve been anxiously awaiting for several months and the guilt, remorse and horror of what I had done kicked in HARD.  WHAT HAVE I DONE??? How could I just let her go like that without a second thought? How could I give up on my triathlon dreams?
 
Listen:. I will never be a good triathlete. I will never be a fast triathlete. But, dammit, I LOVE that sport. I LOVE it! And I don’t love any other sport in all the vast choices of sports in this world. I just LOVE triathlon. And while it is TOTALLY true that I could complete a super-sprint or a sprint-distance tri and MAYBE even an Olympic distance on Babe, there is NO WAY I could go any farther. And, the truth is, when I turned 40, I promised myself that by the time I was 50, I would complete an ironman-distance.
 
Dudes – I know you’re out there laughing your asses off at me, saying, “Girrrrrrlll, how in the HELL do you think YOU are going to complete an Ironman?”  Well, friends, I have no clue just yet but I’ll tell you this: when I first saw how much I would have to do in a sprint-distance triathlon, I thought NO FUCKING WAY! How can ANYONE move like that for that long.  500 meter swim (which is actually short for a sprint-distance), 12 mile bike and then a 3.1 mile run?  What? That sounded like an endless amount of miles to me – like an impossible amount of miles.  And then I did it – a lot.  So, then, I started training for an Olympic-distance which is double all of those lengths:  1000 meter swim, 24 mile bike, 6.2 mile run.  I couldn’t just do this again tomorrow without training and I definitely came in last last last BUT… I DID IT! And that mileage doesn’t seem crazy at all to me anymore.  When I had gotten through several sprint-distance tris, I started to think, “hmmmm…. That Olympic distance doesn’t seem TOOOOO impossible.”  And as soon as I did the Olympic, I thought, “hmmmmm…. That half-ironman-distance doesn’t seem TOOOOO impossible.”  And even though RIGHT NOW it seems a little more impossible than it did right after I finished that Olympic-distance tri, I know that when I really start training again,  I can get it back into the realm of possibility in my mind. 
 
And if completing a half iron or a full ironman isn’t unapologetically weird as all hell, I do not know what is.  (Oh, wait! Yes, I do!  Swimming in a mermaid tail! Bahahahaha)
 
But how can I train with no tri-bike? I adore Babe.  I wish all my rides could always be on Babe.  But, I have to accept that, at some point, I’m going to need a little bit of speed.  Babe likes to watch the scenery as we ride by.  Pinky Tuscadero (that’s my Tri-Bike’s name) ain’t got no time for any of that nonsense. 
 
So… duh! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before but rather than shun riding a tri-bike completely, I’m going to shun the notion that serious triathletes HAVE TO ride in clip-ins.  Not me baby.  I’m going back to my cages and I’m going to be happy as a clam about it. That is, I’m going back to my cages tomorrow morning at 10am when the bike shop opens and I can tell them I simply cannot sell my sweet little Pinky Tuscadero.
 
It’s funny, I’ve been thinking over this past year that my bikes are like a little family. And giving Pinky Tuscadero away and knowing she’s not here tonight – it definitely feels awkward – like when my daughter goes over to someone else’s house for a sleepover.  I just keep constantly thinking, somewhere in my mind, “I hope she’s alright!” But Pinky Tuscadero’s a bike! I mean, you get how weird THAT is, right?
 
Don’t give your little dreams away, Teamies – even if they seem hella ridiculous to the rest of the world! And even if they scare the absolute crap out of you!
 
& please keep your fingers crossed that I can get Pinky Tuscadero back without a hitch!
Namaste,

​​I want to tell you my triathlon story. I want to talk to you (again) about self-hatred and self-love. I want to talk about how so many of us trip and fall right into that maze of self-loathing at some point in our young lives and how we can stay there for so many years. Sometimes we see a light.  Sometimes we almost find the path out.  Then something kicks us back in.  Something drags us back down. We get lost again.  I want to tell you how triathlon and racing and finding fitness has been a part of all of that for me.
 
But I have been waiting impatiently for this month’s issue of triathlete magazine and Instead: I’m going to tell you to buy it and read it.  Now. Right now.
 
Turn to page 30.  Read stuff like this: 

Then go to page 74.  Read stuff like this:

Then go back to page 24.  Read stuff like this:

​Instead, I’m going to ask you to consider some of the things that our society considers normal: 

• self-hatred
• staying within safe, easy limits and taking the path of least resistance
• the “FACT” that thinness equals health

 
and then I’m going to ask you to consider these women: Kelly O’Mara, badass professional triathlete and writer; America Ferrera, badass actress; and Louise Green, badass triathlete, trainer, and author of Big, Fit Girl. Consider the fact that each one of these women is Unapologetically Weird because here’s what they are saying:

• I will not hate myself just because it’s what you’ve told me to do
• I will not stay within safe limits because I know my most extraordinary self exists somewhere beyond them
• & I will not believe in, put up with, or stand for your limited, misogynistic, counter-intuitive definition of health

 
…AAAAAANNNND… ALL of them have found these truths through TRIATHLON. To engage in the kind of training anyone has to do for triathlon – even those of us who only race recreationally—you HAVE TO BE an unapologetic weirdo. Seriously. You might have to swim in lakes no one else will even let their babies swim in. You might have to learn to pee on your bike.  You might have to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a special helmet that makes your head look like a space-age, praying mantis. And on this journey through/ to/ deeper into weirdness, you will know yourself better and you will learn to love yourself better and you might finally understand that you never had anything to apologize for in the FIRST place!
 
No more apologizing, Teamies! Sink deeper into your weirdness!
Namaste

Just a few weeks after I watched my brother die from a disease that I had watched his body degenerate from over the course of 10 years, I was trying to write at my desk. Then, suddenly, I was crying, uncontrollably.  My husband walked in to our office.  He put his hands on my shoulders, warmly.  In an empathetic and sincere voice, he said, “everything is going to be okay.”  And, I wanted to hit him.  I said, “You are wrong.  Nothing is going to be okay ever again.” 
 
“Okay” and “happy” are considered "normal" emotions in our culture.  “Sadness” is weird.  Sad people (even when they are generally happy people that are only occasionally sad) are weirdos.
 
When you lose someone you love strongly, that loss changes the world as you know it. So, in a big way, I was right when I said nothing was going to be okay ever again.  Nothing is the same as it was before my brother died.  That loss still cuts me.  That loss still hurts and it still shadows so many moments in my daily life. 
 
Last weekend, I wanted my mother.  I just wanted her.  And, out of the blue, I fell on my bed and started sobbing for my want of her – and the impossibility now, of having her. It was not “normal behavior.” It was weird.  But if I had spent even a moment reprimanding myself or apologizing for this weird behavior, that grief storm wouldn’t have passed through me so quickly because I only would’ve made myself feel worse.
 
Sometimes we are sad and there is nothing that can be done for that sadness.  And despite the fact that “sadness” is deemed weird in our culture, we have to be unapologetic about our sadness in those times. 
 
Sexual abuse.  Divorce.  The death of those close to us.  How screwed up some aspects of our world seem to be – especially at this geo-social-political moment. These are appropriate occasions for sadness.  And there are many others. A falling out with a friend.  A lack of friends. Feeling lonely.  Being seriously ill. 
 
I often share this npr interview with Eric G. Wilson, the author of Against Happiness with my students.  Mostly, I try to get my students thinking about cultivating happiness and how each of us has the ability to do so in our own lives, despite our life experiences and circumstances.  But… what is the point of cultivating happiness if that happiness is, ultimately, a lie – just a façade you wear so that you can “appear” happy when really you are dying inside?  Wilson argues firmly that there are appropriate occasions for sadness and to force oneself to “don’t worry be happy” at a time when they are actually really sad, is totally inappropriate. 
 
I have written a lot about cultivating happiness.  I believe in it.  I believe it is our RESPONSIBILITY to not stay in that “dying inside” place too too long – for the sake of our loved ones and the world – because NOTHING will get accomplished in this world with a bunch of sad sacks who can’t get over their shit.  HOWEVER… there is a time and a place to not see sadness as someone being a “sad sack” but rather expressing the healthy emotions that make them human.  I can’t name that time or that place specifically because it is different for each person, each situation, each moment.  We each make that decision every day in how we choose to offer compassion to people or not offer compassion to people.
 
On the other hand, I can offer you a couple of hard-and-fast rules: 

1. it is not your job EVER to tell someone else to “get over” ANYTHING.  At first I was going to say this about the loss of a loved one or a break-up or an incident of sexual abuse BUT REALLY, this is as true for those situations as it is for a paper-cut.  If your co-worker is in pain because of a stupid little papercut and they want your compassion about it, why withhold from them? What’s it going to take from you to give them a little bit of compassion? People voice their sadness and their pain because they seek your compassion. It is simply NOT our job to decide whether they “deserve” it or not.  Even in the case of a friend, family member or lover not letting something go that we did wrong after weeks, months, years… GOD! THAT’S ANNOYING AS HELL, RIGHT? … but, if we care about that person, we have to understand that they are only bringing it up because they are STILL hurting and the only way they will probably ever get over it is if you KEEP offering your compassion and your apologies forever.  Yes, forever.  And if you love them, forever won’t be too harsh of a sentence for you.  [P.S. you probably shouldn’t let them “punish” you forever either – but that’s a different blog post]
   
   
2. Similarly, it is not your job to tell someone to “stop crying.”  My father’s favorite saying aside from “people in hell want ice water” was “I’ll give you something to cry about.”  My God, People! THAT’S parenting at its very best, right? Because the obvious assumption there is that whatever you’re crying about is ridiculous – you have no right to cry.  Tell you what: I’ll cry anytime, anyplace, and for any reason I damn well please – and if that makes YOU uncomfortable, perhaps you should check in with yourself and see where that callousness and inability to process emotions comes from.
   
   
3. I know this is very hard for those of us who have that tendency of feeling like we have to give people advice but DO NOT OFFER YOUR ADVICE unless someone asks for it! If they don’t ask for it, all they want to do is talk.  All they want you to do is listen.  And often – especially in the case of old, intermittently aching hurts – that is all that is required.  Talking & listening.  No advice.  I’ve had to get used to saying, “Are you looking for advice here?” in as kind a tone as possible.  Good lord, do I ALWAYS want to be giving advice (obviously, THIS BLOG right here, people!)! But often, I just need to stop myself and I’ve even started stopping my friends who are also inclined to be advice-givers.  “I’m not looking for advice here,” has become another conversation staple.

 
 
More importantly, don’t let anyone do these things TO you.  If someone tells you to “get over” something, “stop crying,” or offers advice you didn’t ask for, immediately file that away as their inability to process difficult emotions and accept their own humanity.  DO NOT allow this lack of compassion to make you feel like there is anything “wrong” with your sadness. You're sad because you are human. You are part of a very large club! Congratulations!
 
If you need to and want to, Teamies, be unapologetically sad, and once that storm has passed through you (however long that might take), open up all your windows and find the sun.
 
Namaste,

​Mormons came to the door last week.  Today it was Jehovah Witnesses.  All pleasant people but ain’t nobody got time for that, folks. 
 
Listen:  I get it.  Most people feel like they need some kind of organized religion to wrap their minds and hearts around the impossibly huge idea/feeling/presence of God/Universe.  An organized religion, indeed, ORGANIZES all of those huge ideas/feelings and THAT presence into beautiful poetry, song, services, sermons, rituals and events that keep God/Universe close to us in a way that we can handle – in a way that doesn’t make our hearts explode or our eyes catch on fire.  I get it.
 
But, SADLY, I also get that organized religion perpetuates THE single most evil idea in our Universe: the feeling/thought that one person is better than another.  In fact, when you come to my door and tell me that I should be part of your shiny, awesome religion because otherwise I’m going to spend eternity in hell… um… ya, you are saying to me, “I am better than you.”  Not only are you saying you are better than me but you are also saying your children are better than my children, your mothers are better than my mother, your families are better than my family, and so on. I believe this is the single most evil thought in the world because it is the beginning of all other evil.  If you’re better than me, I am not as valuable as you are, I don’t deserve as much from this life as you do, my pain is somehow less important than yours.  Hurting me is justifiable.  Ignoring me or abandoning me when I’m sick or hurting is justifiable. War against me – and all of my people -- is justifiable.  Genocide is justifiable.  And, friends, this can’t be true.  This is not true.  It is the least true thing in the world.
 
I know Ayn Rand and all of her disciples would adamantly disagree, but people are equal.  All people everywhere are equal.
 
I may have mentioned before that I knew a yogini once who claimed to cultivate an addiction to mountain dew just so she could empathize with people who had flaws. 
 
I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.
 
… Because… otherwise… she was…. What…. Perfect?
 
THIS is the offensiveness of organized religion – and yes, I would ABSOLUTELY include yoga in the realm of organized religion because of the way SOME people practice it as a method of justifiably putting themselves above others.  That particular yogini was not the first and certainly not the last I’ll ever meet that acted as though their “practice” gave them a direct line to The Light (no matter how many bullshit “namastes” they uttered) – and, according to them, ALL any of us have to do to have that direct line as well is do EXACTLY what they do.  Sound familiar? It’s fanatic.  It’s religious fanaticism. 
 
No one is perfect.  No one is perfect.  No one is perfect.  We are all flawed.  And yet, all of us have value.  All of us have value.  All of us have value.  We ALL deserve love and respect and equality.
 
For several years, I attended a UU church.  When I am pushed, I do have to admit that my views toward the Great Ineffable, most closely align with that of UU’s seven principles SO if I was able to fully embrace an organized religion, THAT would be the one – because it’s the least like an organized religion in the way that I’m describing above.  Everyone has their own right to seek their own truth.  And yet, it’s still a building, there are still humans running everything, and they still tell me when to sit and stand and how to pray and what to do – and if I don’t do those things the way they want me to, I’m not one of them.  UU is very much LEAST like this – BUT even a disorganized religion HAS TO HAVE ORGANIZATION.  I do not fault them for this.  I just think, it’s very easy in our culture to tend toward the fanaticism and mental illness of superiority.  If I’m the one who tells you when to sit and stand and how to pray and what to do I have some power that MUST mean that I’m better than you.
 
Uuuummm… Nope.
 
And, it’s hard to be the weirdo.  I LOVE Episcopalian and Catholic church services because when I attend them, I feel very close to my mother.  It’s nostalgic for me.  And it is comfortable and sweet.  When I started experimenting with attending a Quaker church, and then later UU churches, it felt HELLA WEIRD.  And when I meditate on the beach or snuggle with my daughter all morning or go for a hike to be close to that SOMETHING about the Universe that I often, in my day-to-day, avoid or blow right past – it doesn’t feel “normal.”  It feels like I should be doing something else.  I feel weird.  And the way I “worship” (though I would not call it that) IS weird when considering the norm of organized religion.  It’s hard to be that weirdo – because the weirdo – more than anyone – is made to feel less-than within a culture that worships (and that word is quite fitting here) conformity, and power, and people who behave as though they are superior to others. It is easier to just DO organized religion – to NOT be weird and question it.
 
Because ultimately, the way that MOST people do organized religion (the way that makes them feel like their religion, their people, their church makes them BETTER than others) is just the easy way out.  You don’t actually have to develop your thoughts, feelings, relationship with God/Universe/Light/Ineffable.  You just do what those higher-ups in that organization tell you to do and it will automatically be there for you.  Easy-Peasy.  Just follow all the rules, baby.  And, honestly, I get that.  That’s cool.  There are many things for which I prefer the easy way out.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting your god in an easily digestible package.  But there’s really nothing wrong – at all – with the way I’m doing things either.  I am equal to you.  You are not better than me. You are not worse than me.  I am as valuable as you are. You are as valuable as I am.  If we could all just live in THAT knowledge, there would be more peace and love – and much less bullshit -- in the world. 
 
Know that you are equal, Teamies – not better, not worse – just equal.  And be unapologetic about your equality.

Namaste (and I really mean it),

p.s. I have several friends who are part of an organized religion and who are faithful members of their churches.  All of them would agree with me that people are equal and all of them live their lives around this principle and work to preserve it.  My beef -- as I have tried to make clear here -- is allowing an organized religion to become GREATER than this one, simple truth. THAT is the mistake -- and one I think organized religion allows complacent individuals to make all too easily.  

I wrote this on June 13, 2016 before the horrific reality of a Trump Nomination and then actual Presidency came to pass and after the two back-to-back horrors of Brock Turner and the Orlando Shooting occurred. Ultimately, I decided not to post it... because, ultimately, I was too afraid. 

I found it in my saved drafts today (June, 2017), a year later.  Trump is President.  I'm also no longer "on" facebook. The horrors have been compounding and it is the least safe it has been in years to openly discuss such things as these.  Also, I have recently re-dedicated myself to this blog and have re-focused it on the theme of "unapologetic weirdness."  

So for the sake of my theme --which is the theme of my entire life -- and the sake of not being afraid and for the sake of my soul, I'm posting it now -- a year late -- but hopefully not TOO late.  


Before I was molested by males, as a young girl, I was in love with another young girl. I continued to fall for other girls as I grew older, eventually being raped, again by males, as a young woman. Through these...let's call them...mishaps, and others, I learned that I was SUPPOSED to want men, my role in life was to please men & so I played the heterosexual game, trying to fall for boys, finding a couple here & there and eventually marrying a relatively nice one (though, not in the end, nice for me). The ENTIRE time I knew I loved girls, I fell for girls, I tried so so so hard NOT to fall for girls. I hated myself for loving girls. I was so confused about my love for girls. 

Two weeks after I met my current husband (yes, I married again), I told him that I was Bisexual. This is a label I wore for a long time after my first marriage because the description of it felt right to me. I was attracted to both men and women. Period. Easy-Peasy. But this world is not so Easy-Peasy for bisexual people (nor is it so for gay, lesbian, transgendered, questioning, asexual, intersex people and anyone else who doesn't fall right in line with the hetero-patriarchal norms of our society). He accepted this about me (as I accepted that HE was a registered Republican at the time-- please forgive him, he's learned so much in the last fourteen years) though neither of us knew what it meant for the long-term potential of our relationship. 

When we moved back to MI, after I had been away --and running running running-- for nearly ten years, it was time for me to face the sexual abuse I'd been through as a child. I sought counseling. I was taught that my normal sexual development had been arrested by the abuse and that it was possible that if I had grown up in a 100% welcoming and loving world, I might have simply grown up to just love women. Period. Easy-Peasy. 

But it is not so Easy-Peasy to hear this news when you have grown into an adult with two children and a husband you love and respect at your side. It's confusing as all hell. For everyone. So, we talked divorce, we separated, and then we got back together because neither of us could live without our kids 100% of the time AND as it turns out, we were really in love. Like, REALLY.  

So, these days, I privately consider myself Queer. This label means more to me, encompasses so much more for me than the label "bisexual" and it leaves room for me to love my husband enormously but in a way that doesn't diminish all that I am. 

I have gotten about as far "over" being sexually abused as anyone can. I choose to speak about my abuse openly because I want other people who have been through that hell to know they are not alone, they can feel safe again, and it can and will get better. 

I also choose to speak openly about my abuse because I don't think silence helps anyone. In fact, I believe silence is part of what perpetuates the problem. AND...I have been told so many rape and molestation stories that I am supposed to keep secret, it hurts. Anyone who has heard my story doesn't have to feel like they are carrying it around inside of them. My abuse is not a secret. Carrying someone else's secret is a painful burden. One I am willing to bear for those I love dearest but still, painful. 

So...this college woman gets raped by this college guy and it becomes an international headline because he feels no remorse and doesn't even acknowledge that what he did was wrong AND his slimy judge gives him no more than a slap on the wrist for his "actions."  And this -- like all widely circulated rape stories -- triggers my trauma/ my diagnosed PTSD but I deal. I deal loudly and without apologies but I deal. I deal in a way I wasn't able to deal ten years ago. The wound gets cut back open but it heals quickly. I don't forget but I go back to living my joyful life because "Joy is an act of resistance" as the great poet, Toi Dericotte says. 
Then 50 people get killed in a nightclub for being gay... because my country's government  is being held hostage by the fucking NRA and any fucking crackpot idiot madman can get a semi-automatic weapon any time, any day for any reason they want to. 

And Facebook constantly asks me what's on my mind. 

My gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, questioning, asexual, transitioning, intersex, curious, and even just those who are still confused friends, students, colleagues, loved ones, family members, and former partners are on my mind. They are SO on my mind. Their fear, their anger, their sorrow, their grief, their feelings of helplessness, their courage, their strength, their love, their perseverance, their spirit. That's what is on my mind and heavy heavy heavy on my heart. 

During my very first group therapy session in 2000, a young woman identified herself as "bisexual" to the room. I said nothing. As she and I struck up a conversation after the session, I came out to her. She was shocked and offended. "Why didn't you say something?" She said. "Why did you allow everyone to think I was alone in there?" I had no good answer for this. 

Seven years later, a colleague was standing at my office door and we were talking about our families, our personal histories. She learned that my grandmother was Mexican. She learned that I considered myself "bisexual." She said, "So, you've been passing." And I learned that "passing" meant pretending to be part of the majority group when you're really a part of a minority group. You're Mexican but you live White. You're Queer but you live Heterosexual. In my defense, when I try to claim either of these identities, I am often quickly dismissed by people who don't know any better, because I look like a straight-up white girl AND I'm married to a big old man. And because I automatically "pass" by most people, I can't claim to suffer any persecution or discrimination due to these identities at all. So, I have always felt like a fraud either way. I'm not totally white but I'm not really Mexican. I'm not straight but I'm not gay either. It also hasn't helped that when I've tried to discuss this with some of my closest friends, they all have their personal opinion about what I "really" am.  Straight friends who insist I'm straight.  Gay friends who insist I'm gay.  Straight friends who insist I'm gay.  Gay friends who insist I'm straight.  So, it's just easiest to pass and let people assume what they assume; know what they know; get to know me, as is fitting to the relationship. Sometimes it comes up. Sometimes it doesn't. Easy-Peasy. 

But Mahatma Gandhi says: "silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly."

And I have always been haunted by MLK's words: "there comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."

I am a sexual abuse survivor and I stand with the victim in the Stanford rape case and all fellow-survivors, everywhere, always.

And I am a Queer woman and I don't stand with Orlando as an ally, I stand with Orlando as an accomplice.
A hateful gunman sentenced those victims to death.  Whatever their crime was is my crime too. 

I'll admit that I have been afraid to open this door. I have been afraid to be so clear and so obvious about who I am. I'll admit that I fear the repercussions of this declaration. I don't fear that I'll be in physical danger though perhaps I should be. I fear people's social reactions to me; consequences like being shunned or shut out of certain relationships. It's a risk. I am making sure my husband and my son are okay with this statement before I post it anywhere because I am also afraid for whatever consequences they might face from this (my daughter is just a bit too young to understand just yet). 

But this occasion demands that I speak the whole truth and I am much much more afraid of the world my children will inherit if more of us who feel these fears don't have the courage to speak up. And I shouldn't have to be afraid to say who I am. No one should. 

And there are those dear to me who have been keeping this secret for me (or whispering about it quietly behind my back-- haha) and they don't have to do that anymore. 
I'm here. I'm Queer. Get used to it. 
-The Q.P.
​
P.S. My husband has only one concern about me posting this. He wants you to understand that he is no longer a registered republican and was so only, as he says, "by default because I was a cop in the 80s & 90s." In the past fifteen years he has turned away from the dark side and found his inner-socialist, his inner-feminist, and his emotional intelligence. I think he should start a reform school for former political conservatives defecting to our rebel alliance.

So, if you’ve been too busy to worry or really pay attention to what I’m doing with this blog, let me recap. First, it was a way to heal myself with food, with the cooking that my mother taught me to do – or, at least, a healthier version of the cooking my mother taught me to do.  I healed by losing weight (AGAIN), I thought.  But this helped me grieve and heal from the loss of my mother but, as it turns out, the fat lady (pun VERY MUCH intended) is never gonna sing about that one – there will be no end to the grieving or the healing from THAT loss.  I suppose my acceptance of this is its own solace, to a degree.  Well, then… the blog was about triathlons, mermaids and fitness and becoming myself. Then, it was about losing my brothers, my father.  It was about other family stuff. Then, it was about finding my home.  Then, it was… well… it was about… nothing, really, I guess.  I’ve used this platform to spout off on my own, weird political/ social and spiritual ideals – you know… that we should love each other, and be kind to everyone, and embrace our differences, and embrace our experiences, and tell the right kind of stories. I’ve used this blog to speak for survivors.  I’ve used this blog to talk about shame.  I’ve used this blog to chronicle the mundane goings-on of my life, including my subsequent weight re-gain (AGAIN) and my hysterectomy and my penchant for buying cheap, used clothing. I’ve used this blog to talk about the/my addiction of compulsive overeating.  And, mostly, as you know, I’ve used this blog to write things that are way way way too long to be blog posts. 
 
And ultimately, I always come back to the idea that I just need to cut this baby’s cord and LET IT GO. “No one will care or even notice that your blog is gone, JodiAnn,” I tell myself, oh so kindly. Yet, I can’t give it up.  I love keeping this blog.  Keeping this blog is as good for me as swimming, as eating broccoli, as cuddling with my kids. Every single time I write in this blog, I feel healthier. I would love to write this blog every single day.  And, I think I’m supposed to.  I mean, that IS what a blogger is supposed to do – blog… frequently.  And, as you know, I don’t do that correctly either. 
 
Two years ago, I actually started a business called QueenPrincess Industries.  I can hear you laughing… stop that!  And I’m starting to feel a funneling, a bottle-necking, a focusing down in on not just what that “business” is but how it will serve the woman I have been becoming and the life I have been creating for myself these past several years.  I’ve just thought of this brief tagline/ description/ cool-thing-to-write-under-“QueenPrincess Industries”-that-might-explain-what-the-business-DOES:  “Fun Fitness Experiences for The Unapologetically Weird.”  One of the first “fun fitness experiences” I designed was The Mermaid Workout ™ for which I then built the business, “Mermaid Fitness ™” (which is a subsidiary of QueenPrincess Industries, because I’m basically a mogul).  Then, I created “MerKids ™.” And now I’ve got some pretty sweet other ideas for fun fitness experiences that I am not at liberty to reveal just yet. So, the “fun fitness” stuff is being dealt with.  What about the “unapologetically weird” part? 
 
And here I get to my point – so much sooner than I usually do, right? (I’m trying!): “ The QueenPrincess Says,” The Blog… IS the “unapologetically weird” part.  This is the place where I chronicle the unapologetic weirdness of both the QueenPrincess herself (moi) and everyone and everything that the QueenPrincess (that’s me, again) loves.  That’s it! That’s all! That’s everything!
 
I’m envisioning blog posts about my favorite unapologetically weird people. I’m envisioning blog posts about my unapologetically weird ideas, expectations, hopes, beliefs.  I’m envisioning blog posts about unapologetically weird movements. I’m envisioning blog posts about unapologetically weird modes of inspiration, of being, of coping, of healing, of getting up out of bed every day and continuing despite despite despite despite despite every damn thing that conspires to tell you to stay in bed, it’s not worth it, just keep sleeping. I’m envisioning blog posts about the unapologetic weirdness of being a woman over 40 who continues to WANT MORE in a world that tells women over 40, they better want NOTHING and LIKE IT. YA, I’m envisioning maybe several blog posts like that.
 
In other words, I’m envisioning that this blog will continue on almost exactly as it has.  But, perhaps with a SLIGHTLY more narrowed and focused focus, I will be able to write less each time and more often.  I don’t know.  Let’s see!
 
Be unapologetically weird (frequently and in under 1000 words), with love, Teamies,

​I recently wrote about how my weight fluctuating was likely just the natural way my body wanted to behave.  But, here’s what I really meant:  my weight fluctuation is due to the natural seasons of my mind.  That is, there are days and weeks that sometimes turn into months and even years when I focus on what I need, what I deserve, what I require and what most sustains me.  Then… there are days and weeks that turn into months and years when I put myself completely on the back burner in order to take care of seemingly everyone else’s needs BUT my own.  And while I’m just simmering there – slamming store-bought chocolate chip cookies one-after-another to survive the news that there’s been a rape on my campus or taking my kids out for potato chips and root beer floats so that I can shove a bag of potato chips and a glass of beer into my face because that helps me survive the busy life of a working mom who’s constantly doing things for everyone else – I gain weight. 
 
You see – it is only on those days, during those weeks, throughout those months and years when I put my needs above everyone else’s that I can maintain a healthy homeostasis for my body and my mind. 
 
But do you know how hard it is for most women and some men to put their needs above everyone else’s? Do you? It’s SO SO SO SO SO SO hard.  It’s excruciatingly hard.  It’s monumentally hard.  We are afraid it makes us selfish and self-centered and horrible people.  We’re afraid that if we put ourselves first, that means we are letting everyone else down.  But it’s interesting how, in reality, things tend to work the other way.
 
When I’ve YET AGAIN taken too much on, overextended my human self, expected myself to take care of everyone else’s needs but have completely let go of taking care of MY SELF, that’s when I’m most useless to all of those people I’m attempting to serve. And, the exact opposite is also true:  when I place my needs first – above everything and everyone else’s, I am able to serve the people I love so much better, so much more completely, so much more effectively.
 
If you’re having trouble understanding what I’m saying, consider this.  A person with a severe allergy or illness has NO CHOICE but to put themselves first.  My husband, for example, CAN NOT eat gluten.  His reaction – due to Celiac Disease – is severe enough to send him to the hospital.  If he eats gluten, we all suffer, because he really is the primary caretaker in our family.  If he eats gluten and has to go to the hospital, me and my children are left to take care of everything ourselves and that sucks for us.  We like it better when he’s taking care of things (of course, we also love him very much and don’t want him to suffer – sure sure sure). This means HIS needs for gluten free food – and a gluten free kitchen – completely dictate our family’s eating habits and strategies.  But… this is my point… he can’t take care of US, unless he is taking care of HIMSELF.  THIS is the natural way his body works.
 
Which brings me to MY disease, my addiction.  My addiction/disease IS, in fact, the habit of my mind that makes my weight naturally fluctuate.  I say “naturally” because this happens without my consciously willing it one way or another.  I go through these periods where the disease/addiction loses its hold on me.  It lets go.  And it lets go through the monumental strength of something inside of me that knows there is something better waiting for me (and maybe by the grace of a perfect storm of other factors I have yet to identify).  During these periods where my addiction lets go of me, I can breathe and see clearly and I can put myself first.  I can recognize that I have a disease – and if I don’t pay attention to this disease, if I don’t take care of this disease FIRST, I cannot take care of anything else effectively.
 
THIS is the nature of compulsive overeating, my addiction, MY disease.
 
When I used to attend 12 step meetings that helped me deal with my addiction, I frequently heard the phrase that compulsive overeating is a “cunning disease.”  The much older ladies in my groups would have long conversations about how no matter how they thought they had conquered their addiction to compulsive overeating throughout their lives, eventually it would sneak up on them and take over the show again, if they were not vigilantly watching over it. Of course, at the time, I did not fully understand their discussions.  I was younger.  And smarter, of course (she says, sarcastically).  And these ladies clearly just hadn’t worked hard enough or wanted recovery bad enough.  My god! My arrogance!
 
I believe this is just what happens in the slopes up to and the peaks of my weight fluctuations.  The addiction begins whispering to me that the time I’m giving myself to work out, to plan meals, to journal, to write, to sleep, to meditate, to dance, to simply sit and think is “selfish,” and “self-centered” and detrimental to my family’s needs and my friends’ needs.  So, little by little I stop giving myself this time.  I stop sleeping.  I stop planning meals.  I stop journaling and writing.  I stop meditating.  I stop exercising.  I stop taking my dogs for walks.  I stop thinking.  I stop dancing. 
 
And dammit… I love to dance.
 
And eventually when I haven’t been dancing enough or taking any of the time to do any of this enough, I lose my grip on my emotions and my calm and my happiness.  And… even though my last post might have made it seem like my weight was the star of the show actually… my increasing weight is just one small outward manifestation of the “bad place” I find myself in mentally and emotionally.  And the mental and emotional thing is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR worse.   The mental and emotional piece is what wreaks havoc on my relationships and my ability to do my life. 
 
And this is the really weird thing – the most “cunning” thing about the disease – it speaks to me from the craziest, most unexpected venues.  Recently, for example, I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of body positivity authors -- hearing the voices of all of these young women writing about body positivity and empowerment through “not-giving-a-fuck” about what we eat, basically.  And the easily riled, bra-burning feminist inside of me who wants to take the patriarchy down with one wild swing of my enormous, patriarchy-hating sledgehammer nods her head vigorously then takes the advice to pound a boston crème donut if she so chooses. 
But, for me, a compulsive overeater, this is not sound advice.  And, in fact, it is detrimental advice because it encourages me to engage in a behavior that, ultimately, is self-hating and self-destructive.  For my husband this would look like indulging in a giant plate of whole-wheat spaghetti followed by a giant glass of Guinness.  These are both things he would LOVE to be able to have – just like I would LOVE to be able to have a boston crème donut.  HOWEVER, eating those things would trigger his disease to take hold.  And though my indulging in a boston crème donut does not land me in the ER, it allows my disease to take hold.  It certainly does.
 
For those of you who simply can’t understand compulsive overeating as a disease or an addiction, I can imagine I sound just as ridiculous and weak as those older women at my 12-step meetings sounded to me back in the day. I can only ask for your grace and acceptance that perhaps things are true for others that are not true for you.  Perhaps this REALLY is an addiction and a disease for ME, when indulging occasionally in lovely rich foods is only a pleasure, however guilty, for you.
 
The bottom line on the delicious combination of Fitness and Feminism is that no one has a right to tell you what is right or good for YOUR BODY – but this includes NOT telling me that I should give myself permission to pound boston crème donuts.  No I shouldn’t.  No.  I really shouldn’t.  If I happen to pound a dozen boston crème donuts, should I forgive myself? Should I not make a federal freakin’ case of it and act like the world is going to end? ABSOLUTELY! If the pounding of say… a few dozen boston crème donuts DOES happen to occur once or twice, no one is going to die, nothing is going to explode, BUT that does not make it the “right” thing to do, especially for me.  For me, this would not be the “right” thing to do, not because of the weight or fat it would put on my body but for the chaos that it would unleash in my mind.  FOR ME, this would be an act of self-hatred, an act of self-destruction.  For me, THIS would be my disease finding a chink in the pavement so that it can spread its quickening vines around my heart and once again, take control.  So, I’m really looking for more and more ways to be done with self-hatred and self-destruction not more and more permission to behave in self-hating and self-destructive ways.  FOR someone else, maybe pounding donuts would be an awesome thing to do – a method of empowerment.  So, do it.  By all means, PLEASE do it – and have one for me too while you’re at it!
 
For me – I have to remember, despite however loudly my disease whispers into my ear and promises me otherwise -- body positivity and empowerment comes from giving a fuck about what I eat, about CARING for myself enough to manage my addiction to compulsive overeating.  That’s what works for me.  And it doesn’t “work” for me because it leads to the side effect of fat loss, though that IS usually one, not unwelcomed, side effect.  It works for me because it makes me more patient, calmer, more able to listen to others, less self-centered (ironically), less of a Tasmanian devil in the lives of my immediate family, and on and on. 
 
One of my work-friends always uses that line – I think it’s from one of the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings Tolkien books – that when he has overextended himself too far he feels like “too little butter spread too thin over too much toast.”  Something like that (but with all those “toos” that can’t be quite right for Tolkien… anyway…). This year, I’ve spread myself too thin again.  It happens more often than not, actually.  It’s one of the hazards of a job like mine for a person like me.  There are endless opportunities to DO things when one teaches on a college campus (probably teaching anywhere is like this, actually).  If one is a person who cares about students and wants to DO fun, great, empowering, awesome things that students can take part in, these opportunities begin to feel like requirements. 
 
Last semester was a disaster.  Not only had I taken too much on but I had taken on the politics of my school.  And I’m one of THOSE people who should really stay as far away from politics as possible.  I do not have good enough manners.  I do not know how to keep my mouth shut.  I do not know how to play the popularity game or work people’s egos effectively or efficiently.  I’m terrible at ALL of it.  And I suffered last semester.  In fact, there were several moments when I thought my heart was going to give out on me – the stress of the semester was so intense.  My husband helped me through it.  My sister helped me through it.  A couple of colleagues hesitantly gave me the advice to step away from what felt like it was killing me – but they followed that advice up quickly with explanations of the social and political and career-level repercussions that stepping away from the politics would have.  Oh well.  In the end, I stepped away and I promised my husband, “never again.” 
 
Then, this semester.  And instead of “never again,” my family got “this time is different” because rather than being insanely – I mean INSANELY – busy with things that I hate, I am INSANELY – TRULY TRULY INSANELY busy with things that I love.  Starting a Poetry Center.  Hosting Poetry Readings.  Creating a faculty group and a student group to raise awareness of sexual violence.  Co-directing the Vagina Monologues.  Hosting 10 different events in one week.  INSANE.  Teaching 19 credits.  Teaching 4 fitness classes on top of my regular teaching.  Taking 10 credits of classes of my own, mostly, in Chemistry and Exercise Physiology to work toward finishing my Health Fitness Specialist Degree (that’s a bit of a longish story).  Coaching one of our local Girls on the Run teams.  I’m on a couple different smallish committees – one of which I’m late to a meeting for right now -- INSANITY.
 
But I LOVE every single thing that I do every single day --or at least I did, at the beginning of the semester.  At the BEGINNING of the semester, I felt full of energy and excitement and eagerness for every new task I ran to, all day long.  Still, even now, as I feel like that very thin and melted butter, I love the things I get to do all day long.  With the exception of grading student essays (which is a special kind of intellectual hell that you simply cannot appreciate if you haven’t had to do it), I sincerely feel lucky to do everything I get to do this semester.  And, this is unlikely to change going forward because I have learned ONE lesson about choosing my activities in life – I am happiest when I CHOOSE activities that I love and NOT activities that I feel I “should” do for the sake of someone/ anyone else. Only my children are afforded the privilege of “forcing” me to do something I would rather not do, something I feel I “should” do even if I don’t WANT to do, from now on. 
 
So, back to the addiction. It’s the addiction’s seething little whisper that told me to get involved in the politics of my school.  It’s that whisper that told me I had to prove myself by doing something I felt I should do rather than something I truly wanted to do.  So, I got smart and I stopped listening to that whisper.  THEN, guess what the whisper became? A whisper about how I’m such a failure because I couldn’t stick it out doing something that was difficult for me.  You’re never good enough, JodiAnn.  You’ll never ever ever be good enough, JodiAnn.  But, what I didn’t realize until just a few weeks ago is that it was ALSO the addiction that whispered to me:  if you take on A LOT of activities this semester, and behave as though you are a superwoman, you will prove your worth again.  I will love you again.  Everyone will love you again.
 
But as a dear friend & colleague pointed out to me during the highest peak of stress so far this semester:  Haters gonna hate. 
 
I can’t be worried about impressing anyone else.  The voice that tells me I need to impress others, that I need to prove my worth, that I need to do this by sacrificing my own needs, my own self-care, my own love for myself is the voice of my disease, my addiction.  And this voice eventually always wins for a period of time because it is CUNNING.  It shows up in all different forms and when I least expect it and if I am not vigilant, it takes over my life.  This is a natural process because this disease is a part of me, it is something I was born with or developed so early in life, I might as well have been born with it.  It is not something that is EVER going to go away.  It is only something that can be MANAGED.  And like many other basic lessons in my life, I have had to learn this, accept this, surrender to this truth OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER. 
 
I have not been vigilant over my disease since I started teaching fitness classes in the fall of 2015.  There’s probably a lot to explore there but the MAJOR lesson I’m now learning is that no matter whether I am busy doing things I hate or busy doing things that I love, being too busy is just what my addiction wants.  So, something’s gotta give.  And I’m working on that.
 
Unfortunately, unlike Celiac Disease, the triggers of MY disease are not as clear and easily recognizable.  One trigger, I now fully understand, is being too busy.  And again, I’m working on that.  I am surrendering to the idea that being too busy (for whatever reason) is something I MUST avoid for the sake of my health.  I am becoming vigilant over my time so that I can avoid that cunning voice of my addiction.
 
It is in only in these moments– or days or weeks or months or years – of vigilance and surrender that I am most peaceful, most useful to others, most connected spiritually to the Universe, most grateful.  I am my happiest in these moments of surrender.  And it just so happens that I am ALSO, usually, reaping the healthy side effect of carrying around less fat on my body. 
 
Reap ALL the healthy side effects of making yourselves your priority, Teamies, with love

​At the age of 43, it is impossible to deny that a simple fact of my life is that my weight fluctuates on pretty much a sine wave which reaches its extremes just about every three years.  I've always blamed every weight gain on something that was happening in my life at the time. Puberty. Starting to work and leaving sports involvement behind. College and the “freshmen 15,” which stands for "really cheap pizza and boone’s farm." Getting married and trying to be a good “wife” who cooked three square meals every day, like my mama.  Taking a break from college and working at a cookie store in a mall (true story).  Adjusting to life overseas.  Adjusting to life back in the states.  Pregnancy.  First full-time, tenure-track, career-job.  Another pregnancy, and on…. But it was this last dip in the wave, where I reached an all-time post-30-year-old low, that I thought the wave would flatten out and I could just coast on my sweet size 6.  I hadn’t been below double digits since I was in the 10th grade so there was pretty much a constant party taking place in my mind for the entire time I could still wear a 6.  That lasted ALMOST two years.  Oh 6, I miss you. 
 
But, I’m beginning to think that my weight fluctuating has less to do with what is happening in my life and more to do with sort of the natural way my body enjoys behaving.  I’m investigating why that would be but in the meantime, there’s a practical issue that arises from such weight fluctuation that I think is a bit interesting.  And here it is:  Pants. 
 
There’s a surprising amount of give in women’s tops.  When my weight is on the up-swing, my tops just appear slightly tighter, which I don’t mind since my mother always told me, “if you got it, flaunt it” and baby, I got it, especially when there's more fat on my body. When my weight is on the down-swing, my tops are roomier but still appear to “fit,” just differently.  But the pants… there’s no getting around the need for different sized pants.  And there’s just only so much a girl can do with leggings, I’m sorry.   
 
I have divested myself of and bought whole wardrobes of so many different sizes of pants, so many times, that I’m beginning to think of all my old pants as a little pants army out there in the world.  When I’m done with pants, or rather, when my body tells me it is done with a pair of pants by those pants no longer even fitting over my knees OR by those pants no longer staying up around my hips, I give them to goodwill or the salvation army.  I always give my old clothes to goodwill or the salvation army.  Everybody does this, right? I mean, nobody throws clothes away do they? Cause that’s stupid.  We need your pants, people!  So, what I mean by the pants army is that if you’re wearing a pair of pants, between the sizes of 6 and 14, in Michigan and happen to have bought those pants at a goodwill or salvation army, it’s entirely possible you are wearing a pair of pants that I once wore. 
 
Now, don’t be grossed out.  What I’m saying is, it’s kind of cool, isn’t it? It’s like 6 degrees of separation, the pants episode.  There’s a little army of women out in the world who don’t know that they are MY pants army. 
 
This remarkably odd thought occurred to me today as I was pulling my entirely new wardrobe of pants from the dryer.  I bought this new wardrobe from the Women’s Resource Center in Traverse City.  5 pairs of pants, 4 sweaters and a really pretty scarf that I decided to splurge the $1 for on a whim – all for just $25.  That’s right, folks.  $25.  Because you know what?  When a girl needs an entirely new wardrobe just about every six months – remember there are huge slopes on either side of those peaks and valleys in a sine wave – a girl (like me) would quickly find herself in the poorest of poor houses if she did not shop VERY frugally.  [Now, mind you, I spent TWICE this amount on ONE bra – because when it comes to the important stuff people, there IS such a thing as being TOO frugal.]
 
And here was the other side of this remarkably odd thought about my army of pants in Michigan:  I was wearing all of these other women’s pants.  And I wondered, how many of them are on their own sine wave?  How many of them let these pants go because they needed smaller sizes? How many because they needed bigger sizes? And how many of them were getting to the smaller sizes through wildly unhealthy means and a lot of heartache and a lot of beating themselves up or just because they were letting go of trying to “make gains” and were just embracing their naturally tiny self? And how many of them were getting to their bigger sizes because they were compulsively overeating or because they refused to not eat chocolate anymore (A SOLID REASON, BY THE WAY) or because they were at a point in their lives when finding time to exercise just didn’t seem possible or because they were simply embracing the natural weight their body wanted to be despite the patriarchal bullshit that tells them they should be smaller and smaller and smaller?
 
I mean, I guess you’re right… maybe they weren’t getting rid of the pants because they needed a different size pants.  Maybe they just got rid of their pants ‘cause they didn’t like them anymore or something.  But these are all really cool pants so I refuse to believe.  They still liked them they just couldn’t wear them.  That’s the story I’m telling myself because…
 
Whoah! That really suddenly made me feel connected to all of these medium-ish size women in Michigan – and the world.  Because… I’m part of many other women’s pants armies.  We’re all one big pants army!  All of us, an army of pants-sisters, just trading back and forth when we have need of what the other one has; all engaging in some bizarre inflation and deflation, inflation and deflation, inflation and deflation that happens according to the amount of respect and self-love we afford ourselves and the amount of time we allow ourselves FOR ourselves. 
 
Now, there’s some shame in this inflation-deflation game, this sine wave.  There’s a fair amount of shame, actually.  It makes me think of the musical Hairspray when Edna admits to Tracy, her daughter, that she hasn’t left the house in 20 years (or something) because the neighbors haven’t seen her since she was a size 10.  And then… cue “Welcome to the sixties!” which is just one of the best… but I digress.  It is an actual fact that we (at least some of us) fret when we have to see people who knew us when we were tiny.  We fret when we have to see people who knew us when we were bigger.  Either way, they’re going to say something, “god! You look amazing!” “Wow! You skinny bitch! What are you doing… starving yourself?” “Wow! You must do nothing but workout!” OR… they’re not going to say anything at all and we know they’re all thinking, “jesus! You’ve really let yourself go!” “I guess she’s back on those donuts!” “I guess that skinny thing was just a phase.”  Whatever.  Whatever it is people are thinking – and if they’re NOT thinking any of that, it hardly even matters because we convince ourselves that they are, in fact, thinking that.
 
It’s total madness, really.
 
Last night, when I brought my pants home and I was getting them ready to wash, I actually cut the tags that showed the size off of some of them.  Here’s the thing.  Right now I’m on a major weight up-swing, most likely even at the top of a peak.  Depending on the brand and the fabric (good lord, I love a good stretch denim, my friends), I wear between a size 10 and 12 (and there’s ONE pair of express 8s that I refuse to let go of, because my husband loves them too much, that I can JUST BARELY squeeze my ass into).  I don’t mind my husband seeing the size 10 (See, my husband does most of the laundry)  but I immediately cringe at the thought of him seeing the 12 so I did what any sensible, weight-obsessed woman does, I cut those 12s right off, like they didn’t matter or exist.  And then I laughed my ass off at myself.  How ridiculous!

Now, I realize that my range is different from other people's ranges.  I have a friend who absolutely hates herself -- openly and abundantly -- at a size 8 because she can remember being and still feel (like a phantom limb) a size 0.  I have a friend who probably wears a size 23 and would give anything to be back down to her size 14, which is closer to her lowest valley.  The exact numbers in the range are irrelevant, I promise you, because whether your valley is a size 0 or a size 14, it's still your valley -- the place you tell yourself is acceptable and makes you lovable.  Whether your peak is a size 40 or a size 8, it's still the peak where you convince yourself you are worthless and unlovable.  
 
You may be thinking to yourself, oh my god, with everything happening in the world, how in the hell is this relevant or even something worth reading about? Who the hell cares about your stupid pants and your stupid weight and your dumb 12s and your shame and your husband who loves the express jeans you squeeze into.  Who cares about the size of someone's pants!?!  But, friends, you have missed the incredibly radical thing that I have done two paragraphs above -- the incredibly radical thing I encourage you strongly to do.  In that next to last paragraph, I walked straight through a thick fog of shame – one that has enshrouded me my entire life – to tell you – OPENLY -- what size I’m wearing NOW even when the size I’m wearing now is about three sizes higher (that’s 6 whole numbers) than the one I feel I “should” be wearing, the size I’ve worn in recent memory, the size I love wearing because it means I’ve finally “made it” back down to the valley in the sine wave – that heretofore I was pretending was a final destination and not just a valley, surrounded by, more-or-less, inevitable peaks. I accepted myself -- my weight, my body -- out loud.  I want you to do this too.
 
I’ll grant you, I could be a complete freak.  I could be totally alone in this inflation-deflation game. I could be the only one, weird-ass woman in the world who shames herself when she’s on the up-swing then celebrates like a kind-of mad woman when she’s approaching ground zero.  But, friends, judging by the number of books written on the subject and the fact that the weight loss industry is a $20 Billion/ per year business in this country alone, and my friends who hate themselves and despair at their peaks, I’m guessing my pants are in pretty good company.  I’m guessing we are an army. 
 
And there’s my point, I guess.  We’re more in this together than some of us maybe realize.  And we’re more fucked up than some of us care to admit.  And we’re more capable of stripping away all of the layers of useless self-judgement that go into the up-swings and down-swings to get to a pure acceptance of our bodies than maybe we have previously thought.  And if anyone cares whether I’ve lost weight or gained weight, it is a moment in their (obviously dull) lives that they recover from quickly and probably don’t EVER revisit because I am not the center of the Universe.  I know, I’ll wait while you recover from that shocking declaration.  And you know what? Neither are you the center of the Universe so probably no one much cares whether you’ve lost or gained weight either. 
 
And this brings me to my second important point:  YOU can care about whether you’ve lost or gained weight while not allowing that loss or gain to determine how you feel about yourself, if you’ll play on the beach this summer, if you’ll go to that picnic, or if, like Edna, you’ll even leave the house.  Because, ultimately, without self-love, we’ve got nothing.  If you’re at your heaviest weight in years and you give in to shame and self-hatred, doing anything with that weight will be impossible.  And if you’re at your thinnest in years and you give in to believing you are only worth something because you’ve been able to get your weight that low, what’s going to happen when Cousin Lisa’s wedding reception – with all that amazing food and free booze – leads to a three pound weight gain?  I’ll tell you what will happen, depression and binging and more depression and, ultimately, a “fuck it” attitude toward your health and happiness.
 
You are beautiful.  At any size.  You were beautiful then.  You are beautiful now.  You will be beautiful as you move towards the next peak or valley too.  Your beauty lies in your humanity, your being, your words, your amazing brain, your soul, your strength, your energy, your kindness, your resilience, your dreams, your love for others.  It DOES NOT COME FROM ANYWHERE ELSE – certainly NOT, your weight or the size of your pants!  Your body is beautiful because it can move, it can dance, it can get out of bed in the morning and keep you going all day long and then take you to bed every night.  Your body is beautiful because it can embrace other bodies.  Your body is beautiful because it exists everyday despite… everything.  Your body was beautiful before.  Your body was beautiful after.  Your body is beautiful now.  Your body will always be beautiful as long as it continues to be a body that exists in this world. 
 
This army of pants that we pass around to one another is NOT a symbol of our failure or our victory.  This army of pants that we pass around to one another is a symbol of acceptance and cooperation and a self-love big enough for all of us to get inside.  Thank you for sharing your beautiful self and pants with me.  Thank you for allowing me to share my beautiful self and pants with you.  Let’s keep sharing because… 1) people, I really – like really really really really -- LOVE a four dollar pair of pants and 2) what the hell else are we going to do?
 
What does our army of pants have to do with the state of the world? Loving harder? The resistance? I’m not sure if you noticed but a woman who hates herself because of her weight and feels so much shame that it keeps her from doing anything is EXACTLY what this current administration – and those evildoers (yeah, I said it) in the world who support such administrations FEED on.  Self-hate and shame feed competition and debt and hatred of others and jealousy and anger.  Self-hate and shame can’t run a resistance.  If we’re serious about rebellion, we first need to get serious about our pants.
 
Get Serious About Your Pants, Army, With Love.

​I want to talk about a miracle that occurs constantly every single day but that we never seem to really notice.  We disregard this miracle as commonplace, as expected even, and we do not appreciate its magnificent presence.  Here it is:  that women continue to talk to, befriend, engage with, date, marry, have children with, and generally exist with men. 
 
Please consider what I am saying fully before you throw up your hands and stop reading.  Every woman on this planet – IF she has ever truly spoken with her sisters or her friends in confidence – or if she has ever read the news or even a book – has heard the stories.  Horror stories.  True horror stories.  The true horrific stories of what men do to women. I will not detail these stories here because you know them already.  And if you don’t (I don’t know how that’s possible but…if you TRULY don’t…) feel free to visit any one of the following reputable websites to read the stories I’m referring to:
 
https://www.rainn.org/statistics
http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/violence/sexual_violence/en/
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/technical-packages/infographic/sv.html
 
And these are just three reputable websites that deal with sexual violence.  There are many others.  And then there is other violence.  Domestic violence.  Child abuse.  Killings.  Female Genital Mutilation.  Mass Rape as a weapon of war.  Some of these violences, like the last I mention, are carried out on a grand, sweeping scale.  They are easily seen.  It is easy to notice how they destroy lives, communities, families, our humanity.  But many of these violences are carried out so privately that they are not even a whisper.  They are carried out so secretly that the women and girl-children they are carried out on, don’t even know what to call them or what to do with them or how to tell anyone or that they even should tell anyone.  These violences are the shards of shame that hide at the back of this girl or woman’s heart; buried so deeply, they turn to stunning diamonds of self-hatred and self-mutilation.
 
And YES – YES YES YES YES YES – I KNOW “it happens to men too.”  Yes, I know it happens to men too.  Men can be victims too.  Boys are victims too.  I KNOOOOOOOOW!!!!!  And, GUESS WHAT? STATISTICALLY it is FACT that when boys and men are victims of similar violences, they are the victims of OTHER MEN! ALSO… YES some women are violent, become violent, toward their children, their husbands, their families, the world-at-large.  YES. 
 
And that brings me back to my miracle:  that more of us are not. 
 
Do you know why we get our wisdom teeth taken out as a matter of normal mainstream dental hygiene these days?… why we are put through a minor to major (depending on your age), sedated, “surgery” as just a FACT OF LIFE? Because there’s a less than 30% chance that those wisdom teeth will cause you trouble in later life.  THIRTY PERCENT!!!
 
Rainn.org estimates that over 90% of rape and sexual assault is carried out by men.
The world health organization estimates that over 75% of ALL violent crime – the world over-- is carried out by men.
These are the percentages we are talking about.  75%.  90%.  These are HUGE percentages.  These are SIGNIFICANT percentages.  If men were wisdom teeth, they’d be taken out at birth – not allowed to roam the streets for decades, while we all cross our fingers and hope for the best.
 
NOW… what I just said is ABSURD.  I DO NOT want men to be “taken out” any more than Jonathan Swift actually wanted the rich to eat poor people’s babies like chicken.  Like Swift, I propose such an absurd and horrid idea simply to make my point.  That if we are going purely by statistics, men are dangerous – particularly to women.
 
I have never been more in love with a man than I am at this moment.  My husband is perhaps the greatest man that I have ever known.  He has made his mistakes.  I have made mine.  We are not perfect.  But we have learned to love one another, wholly, in our imperfections.  And I hope, very much, that this love lasts until my very last breath on this planet – and, if such a thing really exists, even into whatever adventure comes next.  None of this is an exaggeration.
 
I also adore my boy-child who is quickly becoming a young man.  I think he is a stunning creature. I love his mind.  I love his wildness.  I love his sweetness.  I love his incessant talking.  I love his passion.  I love that he is so obviously part of a NEW generation of young men who will even perhaps change the very problem I am trying to talk to you about right now.
 
And I think… I have a suspicion… that there are many many men in the world like my two men.  I think some of those men like my two men are readers of this blog.  I think they are men who, like any good human being, work to process their anger when it comes rather than doing something stupid with it.  I think they are men who allow themselves to love HUGE and STRONG and limitless – the way only women have been allowed to do by our culture since forever.  I think they are men who disregard – and perhaps even have to work ACTIVELY to disregard – the suggestions they receive from our society about what a “real” man is; hard-hearted, too-tough for cuddling, incapable of feeling deeply, etc…. I think these are good men.  They are men that I (despite everything in my cellular memory and life experience that tells me to behave to the contrary) TRUST. 
 
There is simply no way, without going into ridiculous detail and spending some time with you over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, friends, that I can impress upon you how much MY TRUST is worth and how very very very very very very very very very very very very very hard it is to come by.  If I give it, it is a particularly rare gift.  If someone breaks it, they have broken something precious and something I am not likely to give – EVER -- again.
 
But then… I am a woman, after all.  And forgiveness and acceptance of people’s (particularly men’s) rough handling of me and my emotions is probably one of the emotional gymnastics that I do best.  And this – yes, finally – brings me back to this miracle.
 
Yesterday, thousands – THOUSANDS – of women came to the campus where I teach.  They walked on campus in the morning.  They parked in the J-wing parking lot.  They walked to their classes.  They sat next to their male classmates.  They walked the halls with their male peers.  They talked, pleasantly, with their male colleagues.  They smiled.  They… SMILED!  They laughed.  They did the work that was expected of them.  They left school late.  They walked to their cars alone.  In the dark.  In parking lots that do not have cameras – in parking lots that do not even have the cameras that the cheapest company in the world has for their customers’ safety. They went home to their families; their little boys, their husbands, their fathers.  They were sweet.  They were kind.  They were stronger than most men can comprehend on a level that most men can’t comprehend. 
 
Why is any of this miraculous? Because the night before, every student from my college received a notice that a woman had been raped in the J-wing parking lot.  And then every woman that came to my campus the next day had to hear how it was probably a lie.  And every woman on my campus had to deal with whatever their own issues are surrounding sexual assault or rape and many many many more women on my campus have their own issues surrounding sexual assault or rape than ANY of us know. 
 
Recently, an education specialist from a local woman’s shelter came to my campus and gave a small number of faculty a presentation that included this statistic:  about 3% of all sexual assault accusations end up being fabrications.  3% -- maybe they wouldn’t take our wisdom teeth out if the percentage was THAT small because that number is SO SMALL as to not even be STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT people! And yet, that was the FIRST line of defense I heard when I came to campus the next day:  “She was probably lying.”   “She seemed crazy.” 
 
Yes.  Yes.  She probably did seem crazy.
 
Because guess what? Being raped is actually a pretty fucked-up, crazy thing and it doesn’t make you calm or collected or cool-headed.  It doesn’t make you sound “normal,” or even that you know what you’re talking about.  It is not that kind of scene, baby.
 
And yet, it’s on her, isn’t it?  SHE has to prove it’s true.  SHE has to convince you to give a fuck about her, to believe her, to care that this happens to anyone ever. 
 
And what does the man who did it have to do? 
 
 
NOTHING.  Hang out.  Enjoy the beautiful smiles and the peeling laughter and the polite banter of his (tough as nails, pushing through the pain of all the shit of their lives) female classmates until he finds another victim.  That’s all.  Lucky him.
 
The miracle is we let him exist – and he could be any man.  He could be any man. Because guess what? We can’t tell you guys apart… not really.  Sometimes we think you’re a good one and you end up being a bad one.  Sometimes we’re sure you’re a bad one but then you end up being a good one.  So, it’s all the same.  You could be a threat.  You could be a friend.  Instead of treating you all as a threat, the miracle is, we walk around every single day, with kindness, with love, with respect (your species, as a whole, probably doesn’t deserve), with forgiveness – forgiveness, endless forgiveness for the deeds done by YOUR brethren.  THAT is how badass women are.  Every. Single.  Day.  We open our hearts to you, our minds to you, we give you the gift of our trust. EVERY. DAY. 
 
Now, it’s important to note that SOME women are only able to do accomplish this miracle by buying into the hatred of other women.  And this is not really that shocking.  When a child is abused – sexually or otherwise – do you know who they blame?  Themselves.  They don’t know who else TO blame.  They CAN’T possibly blame the adult they depend on for everything – if they told themselves they couldn’t trust THAT adult, their world would crumble.  They have to blame themselves.  And so this hatred of ourselves, of other women, is really common among women.  Some of us just aren’t strong enough to face the truth – that these horror stories are real.  When women can’t handle the truth of these horror stories, they simply blame other women for being liars or sluts or dumbasses who walk at night alone.  In order to be able to smile at men, laugh with men, politely banter with men, they have to turn their back on women (on themselves) because it’s the only method of garnering enough strength to be able to make that miracle occur.  And those of us who know better, we have to forgive these self-hating women too.  That’s how big our hearts have to be.
 
So, I’ve pointed out this miracle.  I am fascinated by it.  I’m fascinated by it in myself and my relationships with men and the hetero marriages I see around me and the male-female friendships I see around me.  I am fascinated by how I handle myself when I have to pay for gas and the young male cashier at the counter jokes around with me about the weather.  It’s.  ALWAYS.  There.  Those stories.  I always know those stories.  I always have to be getting over and getting beyond and dealing with and handling and managing and overcoming THOSE stories.  And forgiving.  And forgiving.  And forgiving.
 
Last night, I ran a poetry reading at a coffee shop in Saginaw. One of my star students showed up, ready with his poems which are divine.  I am filled with pride and happiness for him when I think of how his work has grown and matured and moved into a richness I’m, quite frankly, jealous of at times! This amazing, tender, tough, tenacious student told me he was so messed up by what had happened on campus.  He said he had gone through so many emotions.  He said he was, finally, at this moment, really angry.  And it took me a few moments… maybe it even took me the whole night… to process how I went to campus thinking about this miracle, thinking about how any man could be a threat or a friend and how the hell was I supposed to tell them apart? I thought about how I stared every man down that I saw.  I DARE you to keep looking into my eyes – so maybe I can see who you really are.  Are you a friend? Or are you THE enemy? I thought about how I couldn’t even look at most of my male colleagues – about how I didn’t even want to give them a moment of my time.  For once – for ONE MINUTE – let me take care of MY SISTERS – let this world not be about YOU!!!  I wasn’t the least bit surprised when this beautiful being – this male student of mine – expressed the emotions he had felt about the rape that occurred on my campus.  But I WAS surprised by MY feeling of… I don’t’ know what it was… relief? That he talked about it openly.  That he didn’t consider – not for one second – this to be a “woman’s issue.”  He is a real human.  He spoke of this as simply, a human issue.  No need for any gender expectations or assumptions or behavior-norms.  It was okay for him to care.  And I’m grateful to him for expressing to me that he did – and so casually because it wasn’t some kind of declaration on his part.  He was not making any kind of point.  He was just engaging as any real human would/should in empathy, compassion, concern for the state we find our world in. 
 
Despite the darkness of the miracle I am convinced we constantly live with, the interaction I had with this student and knowing my own son’s feelings on these issues give me hope that the gendered way I perceive the world is quickly becoming a relic of the past.  That’s good.  And the fact is, it’s not just women who get up and take on a world every day that has tried to beat them down again and again.  I appreciate the fact that many men struggle too – for a breadth of reasons. Statistically speaking, at this moment, those reasons are not because they fear for their physical safety on many different levels.  That’s all I’m saying. 
 
I’ve been trying to talk to men that I love and know about becoming more actively outspoken against violence against women and girls.  The Vday movement started a webpage just for these men called, “V-Men” and asked men to share their stories about how they are working to end violence against women and girls and why.  Women have been at the forefront of this battle forever and for obvious reasons but we can’t continue to live with this miracle – to live in the armor of “put-on-a-stiff-upper-lip” and expect to get anywhere than where we already are.  We need men.  We need you, good men, to DO SOMETHING.  And we don’t need you to jump in, fix everything like it’s a broken-down car and take over and make all of this into the MAN SHOW. We need you to stand up with compassionate, open hearts, willing to STAND SIDE-BY-SIDE with women, to WORK – to join the conversation that has already been going on for HUNDREDS OF YEARS WITHOUT YOU – to get caught up to speed – to quietly find some way to designate yourselves to say to YOUR BRETHREN – that you will NOT accept this behavior anymore. 
 
If you – GOOD MEN-- all wore some kind of pin or some kind of t-shirt or some kind of special hat (a pussyhat perhaps—if your secure in yourself and your manhood enough to handle such a designation) to designate yourselves as our friends, our allies, our accomplices in this fight.  How very different campus would have felt yesterday if even 25% of all of the men on campus were wearing bright pink pussyhats when I arrived.  How utterly loved and heard and cared for and understood and accepted I would have felt, we (survivors) would have felt in the presence of that small demonstration of solidarity. You really can’t begin to know how that simple act would change many women’s understanding of who you are, as men.  You really can’t begin to know how much less we would have to struggle with trusting you, loving you, laughing with you, looking at you in the eye. You really can’t know – because I feel like if you really knew, you’d be doing SOMETHING already.  But maybe now that I’ve told you… maybe now…
 
 
 
 
Keep living in your daily miracles, teamies, with love – always with hard love –
-The QP

I have struggled so much with writing this blog over these past several months.  Usually if I take a long hiatus, it’s just because I’ve been too busy or too lazy or I’ve been writing other things.  This time, I’ve been trying.  I’ve really really been trying to put it all down into words – everything.  From the Orlando shooting to Brock Turner to hey… I got off facebook because, oh my god, no more pictures of king cheetoh please to… “he fucking won?” (that’s an Eddie Murphy quote, p.s. – completely out of context).  I’ve written about it all countless times.  And this post is almost as badly written  as all the other ones I’m not putting out there for anyone to read… but I’ve just got to get it out there.  I’ve got to move on and move past this – not because anything is “over” but because something new is now beginning…

This is dedicated to those brave, badass, beautiful women who performed in The Vagina Monologues at Delta College on February 14, 2017.  Take care of yourselves.  Take care of each other.  Keep loving HARD.
 
 
There is nothing meaningless here and there is nothing to be ashamed of and fear is a relentless monster and rich white boys are still getting away with rape and murder and becoming president and what the fuck is going on? But I gotta sing and I gotta dance and I gotta love harder and harder and harder.  And every single day for the last three months, I listen to that country song, “Blessed” by Martina McBride in the car on the way to work and I sing SO SO LOUD and yes, it’s a bit cheezy but it reminds me how lucky, how grateful I am for the people I have: my people.  It reminds me how much I have because the truth is, I have everything.  I have everything.  And I shouldn’t be afraid. And I shouldn’t be SO angry ALL of the time.  And I’m not.  I’m really not.  It shocks me how very little I am truly angry.  But then the anger comes and it scares me because it has never been quite so complete but then have we ever been in quite this state? I don’t know.  I don’t know.  When I was a little girl – maybe eleven – I learned that certain countries (mine included) amassed nuclear weapons in order to be able to respond to an attack of nuclear weapons from another country and I knew the notion was absurd at eleven! And it terrified me to think that I was obviously – at ELEVEN – wiser than these people who were in charge of the entire world’s fate.  It was not the first time that I thought the entire world must be crazy – that it really didn’t make much actual sense – but it was the first time I realized that fact existed outside my own family and at the level of world powers.  And so here we are. And I’ve seen other things.  I sat at a table making an escape route to Canada on the chance that George Bush Sr. brought back the draft to send my boyfriend to Iraq.  There was 9/11.  So many other hardships that little sad-sack, soft-hearted me could take personally and find difficulty in.  Every single victimization I hear about magnifies my own.  I am not one of those women who finds strength in silence and living forever as if not speaking about what happened to me somehow makes me superior to women who feel they must speak.  I must speak.  But I appreciate that we all do whatever we must to make it through.  But then, I wonder, is this “superior silence” what creates the kind of people who can turn their back on the most obviously abhorrent person becoming president? I mean, just don’t vote.  Or vote for a gorilla? Or vote for an independent even though you know the vote for the independent is just going to put more votes in that evil pocket? That feeling – that you’re superior because you don’t have what you perceive to be a “weak” heart – does that mean you can shirk your responsibility to the rest of the world?  I don’t know.  I don’t know.  There it is again, the anger.  But then the sea of pink rose up just after the (gulp) inauguration and that gave me hope.  Even though I was too chicken-shit to join it and I regret that.  I do SO regret that.  But I am so grateful to every woman and man who marched.  I am so grateful that this madness, this stupid evil tidal wave of chaos and absurdity has AT LEAST brought people together, has woken people up, has gotten people’s attention.  But still, I can’t sleep.  Still, just constantly on edge because who knows what will happen next? No one.  Which, of course, is always the case.  But… well… when my father was in the right kind of peaceful mood when I was a child and he was driving, I felt safe and comfortable in the backseat, happy and cared-for and this allowed me to color in a coloring book or look for horses out the window or any number of happy things that children do BUT… when my father was in a terrible mood (which was frequent) and he was driving, I had no idea.  I had no idea.  He could be driving somewhere to kill me, I would think.  He could intentionally get us in an accident any minute, I would think.  All I could do was gaze at the road ahead and wait for what I imagined to be my painful and imminent death.  And that’s really a good analogy because not only is that how our country feels to me right now but this current situation also triggers every little cellular memory in my body of what it felt like to be a child of such a man.  Eggshells.  Walking on eggshells – and not just – but walking on tectonic plates made of already broken eggshells and you never know when the fault-line will tremble and send you into the chaotic abyss of what… you don’t even know… just something unthinkably terrible.  It’s like that every day again now and on a much bigger scale because it’s not just MY family that could fall under, it’s my entire human family that could fall under.  And what? What? What? How do you deal with THAT? I’ve been speaking to my angels more frequently.  Oh, I don’t know I don’t know about angels or what that means exactly but when someone goes, they don’t go from everywhere.  Oh, maybe you’re a staunch atheist and you think no, really, they go from everywhere, they no longer exist.  Fine fine but they’re here in my mind, my heart, my own body, my own memory so not from there – they haven’t gone from there.  I ask my mother to hold me through this.  Which is just what she did through my childhood.  I ask my mother to give me her strength.  Which is just what she did through my childhood.  I never thought of my father as my angel before.  I’ve always thought of him as more of a demon.  His small, shrill voice still lives in my head – calling me names and telling me how pointless every single thing I do is.  But, the other day, I called on his best self.  I knew he was the only one who would understand the way my mind can’t stop, the way my desire to do and know and think runs in constant loop and can’t be stilled – maybe especially when it perceives threat (as it does under this “predator-in-chief” -- Eve Ensler's phrase).  I asked him for his guidance.  But it’s hard for me to listen to him.  It’s hard for me to take him seriously or care what even his best self might say.  Still, here it is.  I have forgiven so much.  I have opened my heart and forgiven so so much.  I am trying.  And he tells me to take care of myself. He tells me to not take the people around me for granted.  He tells me that I can’t always trust my own mind’s need for constant movement BUT that constant movement is its own reward and I can only be who I am and I can’t be anyone else and who I am is just fine -- enough.  HE tells me that? How? And what the hell am I talking about now? How is any of it connected?
 
Last week, I directed an entire week’s worth of sexual assault awareness and prevention programming on my campus.   The months of planning.  The doing.  I exhausted myself.  It was worth it.  For this programming, over the last eight weeks, I had the honor of co-directing The Vagina Monologues and our amazingly sweet and varied and feisty and wonderful group of women suffered through the intensely personal journey of embodying the spirit of that play.  And before their first performance, I told them that they were going out on that stage to say what women are told every single day that they SHOULD NOT say, they cannot say; that they were going out on the stage to speak a truth that needed to be spoken.  I believe – absolutely and unequivocally – in the healing power of art to THAT degree.
 
Tonight, someone was raped on my campus -- according to an alert I received on my phone. 
 
And I am thinking about the person hurting from what happened to them tonight on my campus.  And my prayers are with them. And may love and light surround them.  May LOVE AND LIGHT surround them. 
 
 
 
And I’m ALSO thinking about an article I read last year about “white tears.”  It was an article written by a woman of color admonishing (in the kindest way possible) white liberals for not appropriately controlling their (relatively childish) emotions when FINALLY confronting the truth about racial inequalities and injustices.  When I first read it, I was slightly offended (despite how “down” I would prefer to consider myself) – perhaps, typical white liberal that I am -- because I considered tears to be a sign of empathy.  I didn't get it.  But then a couple of months later, I found myself at a Louder Than A Bomb National Symposium and in a session about social justice in poetry listening to a panel of black speakers – mostly women – talking about their work in Chicago and while one of them spoke, I caught myself starting to cry.  But then I looked around the room and I realized no one of color was crying and melting away like I was allowing myself to do in that instant.  And these were people, for the most part, who actually lived with the struggle they were discussing, actually were out in the streets making changes and leading a revolution against racist policies and actions.  They had seen people die.  A lot of people.  They had watched their communities and families struggle in ways I couldn’t dream.  But… here I was the one crying. No.  That’s NOT okay.   I straightened myself up.  I toughened myself up and I thought about why that was…
 
And why that was, was aptly portrayed in the first skit of Saturday Night Live after the election in November.  Dave Chappell hosted.  Chris Rock cameoed in the skit.  Two black men sitting around with a bunch of white liberals who were shocked as all hell that Trump was actually elected.  White liberals who – for the first time ever—were considering the possibility that America is unjust, corrupt, racist, etc….  The fact is, we’ve been asleep at the wheel.  We’ve let plenty of evil shit pass us by but because it was dressed up JUST enough, we said nothing, we didn’t notice.  It took THIS… it took THIS shit-storm to get our sorry-ass privileged attention.
 
In that room that day in Chicago, with a bunch of badass poets and teachers and scholars and activists of color I realized, you can’t lead a revolution with tears in your eyes AND if you cried at every single struggle that sought to break your spirit down, you’d be doing nothing but crying.  White tears – the unproductive, sentimental, self-centered manifestation of privilege – just like a bunch of white liberals sitting around getting drunk on chardonnay while watching the votes role in for a man they are SHOCKED we’ve produced at all, let alone elected. 
 
I hurt for the person who was assaulted on my campus tonight.  I hurt for every woman and girl who is assaulted every few minutes in this world. 
 
But.. my hurt can’t help the movement to end sexual violence against women and girls.  My hurt – by itself – is too soft.
 
What do we strive for? What is the resistance for? Why do we feel this current fear? This current confusion? This dismay? We want freedom and peace and the chance to love our beloveds without fear for their safety.  Freedom is freedom from fear.  Peace is a safe space to create and be who we are without fear of persecution.  To create that safe space, to get that freedom it is necessary to be SO hard, so unapologetically focused toward that goal.  Let hurt come when hurt is necessary and important to allow ourselves to feel.  But let hurt make us stronger, more focused, sharper, more unwavering. 
 
Now I don’t mean “hard” as in “hard-hearted.”  To the contrary.  This kind of work requires an astonishing openness and pliability of heart.  Workers of the revolution know this already – watch them.  They care so truly and so deeply for their cause that they become it.  They don't need to say it.  They DO it.  They aren't waiting.
 
Bear with me:  Remember how I said that I feel like a child riding in a car, whose angry, out-of-control father is driving and I have no idea what is going to happen next? Yep.  EXCEPT… I am no longer a child.  And I don’t depend on my dad to drive me anywhere anymore.  I’m driving myself now.  I’m driving myself.  And if HE wants to drive his car all crazy all over the road, that’s what he’s going to do.  And what am I going to do?  I’m going to find ways to stop him, disrupt him or follow my own road far away from his crazy ass. 
 
But wait? Am I talking about little t (that’s what my son calls the “predator-in-chief”) or am I talking about rapists? Or what the hell am I talking about?
 
It’s all one, people.  It’s all the same monster.  Fear.  Hate.  Evil.  The dark side.  I don’t care what you want to call it.  It’s the thing driving the car I no longer have to ride in. 
 
And I have a secret to tell you about it.  It’s weak.  That’s why it masquerades in big badass costumes and loud noises and towers and entourages of weak-minded followers.  That’s why it hides the truth in silence.  It lies. That’s the best it has. 
 
But we have both the truth AND hard love.  We have what my man, Paulo Freire calls, “profound love” which is not that weak-ass greeting card stuff but the real deal.  We’ve got the kind of love that can keep moving after being smacked down a hundred-million times.  The kind of love that can live through millennia of cruel hurt and institutionalized subordination and still hold its head high and lead global marches.  The kind of love that knows bad things are going to continue to happen but as long as we refuse to be silent about them – or silenced about them – we are free.  The kind of strong, unwavering love that is big enough and massive enough and tough enough to stop the car being driven by the mad man. 
 
Keep Resisting, Teamies, With Hard Hard Love
(and some dancing and singing too!)
-The Q.P.

So, I've been wanting to write about this sign outside of an outdoor sports store in Cadillac, MI for the past several months.  I drive past the sign frequently on the road from Midland to Frankfort and back. It says, "are you living the life you chose or a life that chose you?" The intention of the sign is to sell the fun things inside the store. The assumption behind the message is that if I am truly choosing my life, I must want to do fun things and that must include outdoor sports gear. The other assumption is that choosing our lives is obviously superior to allowing our lives to be chosen for us. 

I know I'm one of those weirdos that take things too seriously and think too hard about stuff other people don't bother contemplating so, I guess I'm saying, bear with me Reader. Because, see, this sign has caused me a lot of grief. I've thought and thought and thought on it for the better part of a year but I still haven't come to any ultimate conclusion, until now. 

Never mind the sly consumerist ploy to undermine my own ability to decide whether I want outdoor sports gear or not. I get that in this culture when you've got a product to sell, you might have to mess with people's heads to do it. Fair enough. But what's been more difficult for me to swallow is the suggestion that any of us really choose our lives at all. 

Did my brother and sister-in-law CHOOSE to get sick and die too young? Did my nieces and nephew CHOOSE to lose their parents? Did I CHOOSE to be born to a man with a host of mental illnesses? Did I CHOOSE to be sexually abused during my childhood? I could go on and on. None of us-- not you either, Reader, I know-- have chosen those unimaginably difficult things in our lives. 

I'm not a total non-believer in the concept that we manifest our own destinies. Despite how easy it is to make fun of, I know for sure that "The Secret" really works in some powerful ways. I even do believe that much of the negative in our lives is junk we have mostly manifested ourselves (even if we didn't intent to and even if it felt like we didn't have a choice). Notice that I did not ask if my parents both chose to die of cardiac arrest. I did not ask if I chose to have to file bankruptcy. I did not ask if I chose to gain twenty pounds this year. These things are all the manifestation of consciously-made poor choices and any alert person should realize we own those choices. But the reality of this life is that sometimes the universe just chooses for us. The reality is that life is much more like  poker than chess. In chess, everyone begins with an equal chance and it's all about making smart choices. But in poker, you get the cards you get and you do the best you can with them. You don't choose the cards you get. You can only choose what you do with them (Ya, I know that's an old metaphor but it's a good one).

This has been an especially important revelation for me because I decided early on that I simply refused to play the game. The cards I got dealt weren't nearly as shitty as a lot of folks but in some ways, they were shitty enough. For many years, I wouldn't even look at those cards. I got up from the table and simply walked-- more like ran-- away. I played all the other games instead. Until eventually some of the cards being dealt to me and other members of my family were simply too powerful to ignore. I became a mother. I started to really understand what it meant to love people (long after my divorce, mind you). My brother got sick. My mom divorced my dad in her late 60s but still refused to separate from him. These forces were too compelling and I came back to the table. I came back home. That was a choice. Even though I wasn't 100% sure why I was making that choice, I made it nonetheless. 

I spent the first nine or ten years back home still only daring to peek from time to time at those cards. Still filled with the arrogant idea that I could lay them down on the table any time I wanted and walk right back out the door, if I chose. But in that time, I also slowly discovered that I held an Ace or two. Lake Michigan. Frankfort, MI. The feeling that I am home somewhere. My family, the people I did not choose but love so fiercely anyway. My own mind. My commitment to doing work that I feel is important, is helping others. Love. So much love. More love than I am still capable of believing I deserve (but don't worry, I'm working on that!). 

I want to answer that sign succinctly: I am living the life that I choose every day by, first and foremost, accepting and embracing the life that chose me. At this point, I believe that is pretty much the major rule of this game. There is no such thing as the life you chose -- not completely.  And there is something wonderful -- even if you can't see it yet -- in the life that chose you.

But what do I mean by "embracing" all those unimaginably shitty cards the Universe tosses across the table? Certainly we shouldn't just lay down and accept that bad things just happen. Actually, ya. Ya, that's it exactly. Really shitty things happen. They happen to everybody, all the time. The only thing we can do is hold those cards until we can let them go. If we're lucky and smart, having those cards in our hand somehow makes us stronger, more resilient, wiser, more amazing people.  And while we're still holding them, we need to keep our eyes on all the other good cards -- especially the Aces-- in our hand. THOSE cards, we should hold close, always. 

Ultimately, the game is rigged. We all know the Universe is going to win in the end. That fact provides yet another opportunity for acceptance. And no amount of fun outdoor sports gear or anything else we can buy is going to change THAT rule of the game. Holding our Aces close makes facing that endpoint possible and sometimes even bearable. 

Play your cards with love, teamies!
And if you've left the table, please come back and play.  We miss you.
Namaste
​-The QP

The balance between choosing your life and loving the life that chose you

How to make a kick-ass watermelon smoothie

Why I love taking my dogs for walks on the beach

How I bought a real home in my real home and how crazy amazing it is to feel truly at home

Why "community" is actually overrated, despite the fact that I've been attempting to discover, build and nurture mine forever

How hanging out with triathletes and endurance runners made me feel like crap about myself

How my tribe is much smaller than I thought it was or thought it should be

How I learned the necessity of protecting and nurturing MY tiny tribe even if that upsets people outside my tiny tribe

How there really are levels of love and how wise my sister is

How much I hate seeing people I love go through bad times I can't change for them

Why do I have to re-learn the same lessons about diet, exercise, sleep and relaxation techniques EVERY single month? 

How I've gained twenty pounds since the last time I really felt great about my body and how this isn't the first time and how disappointed I am in myself and how am I going to face the mean girls at work who were only nice to me when I was skinny and who the hell do I think I am teaching fitness to anybody?

And I still miss my mom...a lot. 

How I can't bring my mom or my brother or my sister-in-law back to life by living in the town they lived in and knowing the people they knew

How every time I swim in Lake Michigan it feels like a baptism into the church of I-get-it-now

How it's good to always be a little hungry even though it's one of the most uncomfortable feelings for me

How I stopped riding my tri-bike after a dumb bike accident at the beginning of this summer where I cracked my head against the concrete and ruined my helmet. I got a new helmet. Sadly, I can't get a new head

How the only bike I'll ride since that accident is a cruiser that moves at about 5 miles per hour, at top speed

How I learned that cuddling is really good for my health

The art of slowing down

& why I want to start The Slow Movement Movement

Why "training" makes me gain weight instead of lose or maintain

Why casual completion of endurance races is a recipe for disaster for people who want to or need to lose weight

How scared I am of my actual, physical heart

How I still really really miss my mom

How I realize now that no one ever stops missing their mom once she's gone

Perimenopause & breast tenderness & having periods even though, without a uterus, I don't bleed anymore & what total bullshit ALL of this is & how more women need to speak openly about the gritty horrors of taking care of a female body so that we can really start to understand and deal rationally with everything we go through physically (I mean, if men had been experiencing this shit for millennia, there'd be a hundred breast massage therapists in every city by now! And their services would be 100% covered by health insurance!)

Why I stopped hanging out at internet bars like Facebook and even, eventually, Instagram (though I still do have my Instagram account @queenprincessofmojo and haven't decided to never return just yet) [which reminds me! please email me at jodianns777@gmail.com if you want to receive notifications of new posts -- since I won't be "sharing" to Facebook anymore]

My top ten favorite TED talks

How lazy I decided to be this summer

How feeling like there are ten million things I could and should be doing at any moment means I probably won't end up doing shit 

How I've discovered River-tubing and wish I could do it every single day of my life (and how that single admission might actually indicate that there is more redneck in me than I ever imagined)

Why I wear my bikini anyway (even though I did have a nervous breakdown and threw it in the trash earlier this summer)

Watching my daughter and son lay claim to Lake Michigan. Watching them settle into knowing where they are "home."

The horror show that is middle age & how eagerly I await mellowing past it (a recent book I found told me perimenopause is like a second teen stage for women-- ooooooh, goodie!!! As if the FIRST fucking teen stage wasn't horrific enough!)

Embracing my sassiness and learning whose opinion I really shouldn't give a fuck about

How even the coolest churches/ religions sometimes feel like a big stupid circle-jerk of non-thinking

How swimming in Lake Michigan is my church

How fucking arrogant I am despite constantly trying for the opposite

How Saint Anne (Lamott) says, "Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, Help me, Help me' and 'Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.'" And how I've been praying like hell all summer

How I wish I could wake up tomorrow and be Anne Lamott or Elizabeth Gilbert but then I'd actually have to write all of the time and not just pretend to be a writer in my happy land of make-believe

How our lives become whatever it is that we spend our time doing

How really quality chocolate is worth the expense and the time

How instead of blogging or writing this summer, I just lived my life...with (as much) love (as possible)

How, once again, I've had to learn the hard way that my writing is not a hobby or an occupation but rather MY anti-depressant/ anti-anxiety/ anti-inflammatory/ antioxidant / pain-relieving MEDICINE & if I don't take it, that's just totally irresponsible (& miserable for everyone around me)

How I never was, am not, and never will be the QueenPrincess of anything... nevertheless...
I'll keep being whatever I am, with love,
The QP  (I'm thinking about making a signature image -- probably not at all necessary but... could be fun)
​

I wrote a story in ninth grade that my mother typed for me because I didn't know how to type. She was a strong typist so I didn't think much of her doing it. It seemed easy for her. 

The story was a modern-day story about a guy who finds a penny on the ground and picks it up and later meets a modern-day version of Jesus, in disguise, who saves his life. It was sort of magical realism and it was probably god awful. When my mother was done typing it -- it was maybe 8 or so pages -- I asked her, with great hope, what she thought. She turned to me with this sarcastic look on her face and rolled her eyes as she said, "deep."

No other criticism of my work has ever hurt me so much. And this includes a good friend telling me a couple of years ago that she "hates" my poetry. Yikes. 

I wanted my mother to think I was smart.  I wanted her to notice that I was trying to honor the spirituality she had taught me. I wanted her to love me. Her reaction made me feel unloved. 

There were lots of other times she made me feel unloved too. Lots. Lots of times that were much worse than this that I don't feel like rehashing at the moment. Ultimately, it was, in part,  because I felt unloved by her that I stopped speaking to her three years before she died (don't get me wrong, I'm the asshole in that scenario for sure but I thought I had good enough reasons for being that asshole, is all I'm saying).

I love my own children enough to declare absolutely that I would step in front of a speeding bus for them. That is not an exaggeration. If that situation arose, actually or metaphorically, I would do it. There have been times, with my son, where I feel I already have...metaphorically. Any parent (who hasn't abandoned their child for their addiction or forcibly convinced themselves that they don't give a shit) understands this. Our children are our everything. Yet...

We make them feel unloved, from time to time. We screw up. My mother was a wonderful mother. Though it's impossible for you to believe it, she was as wonderful as your mother. She tried her hardest. She did her best. But as much as I wanted her to be god...as much as she felt like my whole universe...she was human. And so am I. And so is every parent. Your mother too. 

I live in a town full of unusually "perfect" people and parents. If they have imperfect thoughts or behaviors (and, of course, they do!), they work like hell to hide them. Or maybe that's how it feels in middle age. Or maybe that's this social-media-driven era we live in. But, I know my town is particularly like this because multiple people call it "Stepford" for this very reason.

This isn't healthy -- this hiding. It drives people to addiction. It drives people to depression. It drives people insane. It drives people to hurt themselves and others. 

My mother was raised in an era of "put on a happy face." The era my town seems to be stuck in. I remember even having a conversation with her, as a young adult, about how disgusted she was with everyone going to therapy and "blaming their parents for everything these days." I was arguing with her, explaining that it was healthy for people to figure out who they were and why they were that way. She wasn't buying it. 

My mother's mother was, from what I understand, an alcoholic and a pretty mean lady. My mother never said that to me but this is what I gathered from her and my father's stories. Of course, because she died when I was only 2 and my mother 37, she was sainted by the time I was old enough to remember hearing the stories (I think that's one of the meanest things we do to our dead, sainting them after they die, like they weren't human after all. But, that's a topic for another time). But, my Grandma Anita -- by my mother's account -- never told my mother she loved her. Ever. My mother was so affectionate and loving that this story has always stayed with me because I simply can't imagine. I don't think my grandmother ever made my mother feel very loved. 

And yet, her story about holding her mother's hand while she died is haunting to me. The way she described the light and life going out of her face. When my mother told that story to me, she brimmed with love. There was so much love between them -- and despite her mother's humanness, despite her inability to be a better mother -- my mother knew this, felt this. Just like I did and still do. Just like you do.

Of course, some mother's do unforgivable things; things that hurt to hear about, let alone experience. Physical, emotional, sexual abuse, abandonment, severe physical and emotional neglect -- these are all more real than any of us care to commonly consider. The fact is, though, that probably most of the hurt that we commonly suffer from our mother's could be tossed into one of these categories, even if it is in a very mild form. 

Here's the thing: it's a tall fucking order being someone's god and universe. It's a lot to ask of a merely human being. Fuck ups are inevitable. 

So, here's the next thing: if we can be honest about this, less fuck ups will occur. Because this is how it works BEST as a human mother: 1) you fuck up; 2) you realize it; 3) you make amends. However, IF you are trapped on the "put-on-happy-face"/ Stepford ride, it looks more like this: 1) you fuck up; 2) you can't realize it because you can't fuck up because everything you do has to be perfect and oh-my-god what will the neighbors think?; 3) so you ignore it, pretend it didn't happen, blame someone/ something else for it, or drink/ eat/ gamble/ do drugs/ whatever to numb yourself from it; 4) you fuck up worse and 5) you hate yourself more and 6) more hiding and 7) oh my god, doesn't the first option with only three steps seem so much better...

After my mother died, I developed this inner dialogue with her. Mostly, I seek her comfort and guidance. But, sometimes I talk to her about the times she fucked up. She tells me not to use that word. Then, she says, "I'm sorry" because in this dialogue, where she lives now, my mother is always her highest self. She is the self she always had it in herself to be if she weren't human. When I find myself fucking up in similar ways to how she did, I imagine what my mother's highest self would advise, and I usually change directions before it's too late. I apologize to my children a lot. I talk to them constantly. I listen fervently. I want us to KNOW one another as humans. Even though they always will anyway, I don't want them to think of me as a god or the universe. I'm not saying I'm doing it any better than my mom did. I'm saying I'm taking what I learned from my mom and putting it into practice. That's what we all do.  It's exactly what she did.  She learned she wanted more affection as a child so she poured affection on us constantly.  Now I'm giving my children what I wanted.  They will give their children what they always wished for.  That's what I mean by all mothers do the best that they can.  They do what they believe their mother's highest selves SHOULD have done.  ​

I think my mother's highest self recognized that she shouldn't have rolled her eyes and said, "deep" in response to my story. I think she would have followed that up with, "no, honey, I shouldn't have done that, of course I love it. It's interesting...what's going on with that Jesus character...?" And she would've drawn me into her and we would've had a nice long chat about my story over some tea. 

I guess what I'm saying is this: if you are a child who has been hurt by a mother -- maybe especially a mother who left you behind before you could figure out, or talk to her, about all the ways she fucked up -- the kindest thing you can do for her and for yourself is to learn to know them as their highest selves and to see that human beings can't live in a state of highest self all of the time. You can forgive her for being human. And if you can't forgive her for her sake, you can do it for your own sake, especially if you are a parent too. If you keep holding your mother to the same standard as god, she will always seem at least a little fucked up. She isn't god. But in your forgiving heart, she CAN be her highest self. And THAT's quite a gift. 

If you are a mother who fucks up (and trust me, you do), forgive yourself. Now. Right now. Accept that you are human and you are doing your best. And being somebody's god is about the hardest, most unbelievably exhausting thing ever. Forgive yourself because you are not god. You are human. Just like your children. Love yourself the same way you love them-- fiercely, protectively.  Know your highest self is in there but you can't be her all the time. When you can't be, ask for your child's forgiveness. Know that one day, you will be your highest self all of the time. In the hearts of your children, you will be. 

If you are BOTH that hurt child and that fucking up mama...oh baby...draw up a nice warm bath and soak in it until you can't possibly anymore, take a million deep breaths, day-after-day, begin to write it all down or tell it all to someone you trust, be as gentle with yourself as you would with a tiny, new baby every single day because it's going to be a long haul of forgiveness and patience and love... hold your children close to you when they want to be close to you... when they want to be free, marvel at them from afar...and when you hurt them, forgive yourself then ask them to forgive you too, think of your mother's highest self guiding you and love love love love love. 

And if you're living in Stepford, baby (mentally or physically), get the hell out!

Forgive your mothers, with love. 
Namaste, the QP