Refugees and The Lessons They Teach Us

I have always been a book fanatic and buy books, both new and used, and have a house in which every shelf is swimming with novels and tomes of non-fiction. Having a home full of books that I can pluck from a shelf at will has always made me feel measurably abundant. That is, it did until the day that I met a new refugee family.

In my job as a public health nurse I work with many refugee families, helping to ease the transition from years of life in a refugee camp into the startlingly different life as a resident of the United States. Working with these families and hearing their stories of their former lives has been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

This day I walked into the tiny apartment of a new refugee family with an interpreter at my side to bridge the communication gap. I was no longer startled by the stark emptiness of the apartment, as I had been when I was new to working with those in poverty. As a direct contrast to the consumer society of America, refugees come here with nothing and are grateful for every simple pleasure- the roof over their head, food on their plate, the lack of gunshots outside their window- and often live in tiny, low-income apartments without a single piece of furniture. This apartment held only a single chair and a shelf proudly nailed into the opposite wall.

The solitary chair was immediately proffered to me, with reverence. I never fail to be humbled by the grace and kindness offered to me in these homes. I declined to sit on the chair and instead sat on the worn carpeting, the family and my interpreter and I forming a circle in which their preschool-aged daughter, born amidst gunfire in the middle of a military uprising in their home country, spun within as though we had made the circle for her joy alone.

They did not stop their daughter from her joyful dance as many American parents would have- cautioning their daughter to sit quietly and let the adults speak. Instead they grinned and laughed and we all watched her spin and giggle. The conversation came in stops and starts as it often does while communicating with an interpreter, as we discussed their health, doctor referrals, food supply and community resources. The daughter continued to spin and giggle and we smiled at her with each pause in conversation. The family seemed to light up at my apparent joy in watching their daughter and this shared joy created a kinship beyond the fragile bonds of a nurse on her first visit to their home. There was a moment of pause and the father met my eyes and gestured to his daughter, “There is nothing so beautiful as a child who has no fear, no?” he said as the interpreter scrambled to interpret into English. The world stood still for a moment as I measured the words in my heart and nodded yes, at a loss for words, imagining the life that she had lived in her first few years.

He stood on shaky legs from sitting cross-legged for so long and walked over to the solitary shelf tacked to the wall. On it sat a single book, one of the books made for toddlers learning to speak with one picture and its accompanying word on each page. He handled the book with a reverence that I had never seen someone hold a book, even though I surround myself with bibliophiles that love books with fervor.

He sat, again completing our circle, and opened the first page. On that page was a photo of a perfect apple and he pointed at the picture, saying in clumsy English, “apple”, and nodding for his daughter to do the same. She stopped her spinning for the moment and carefully annunciated the same word in beautiful English.  They completed each page of the short board book in the same way. When they were done, he replaced the lone book on the shelf and bowed to it as he walked away. I thought back to my shelves stacked with books and suddenly did not feel abundant, I felt gluttonous.

He somberly said, though the voice of the emotional interpreter, “My daughter will learn English and go to school and live the American dream. “ I watched her dancing with such joy, no longer encumbered by the violence in her homeland or the constriction of the refugee camp, and I knew that he was right, she would find her own version of the American dream.

I was humbled and inspired and reminded of the importance of literacy and vowed to stop hoarding books and share them with those who have few and to treat each and every book with the reverence that I saw that day. Even more importantly, I was reminded of the American dream and how it still lives today in the heart of every citizen, whether born on this sacred soil or across an ocean.

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Exhausted by Numbers

I'm so tired of counting.

Counting the steps that I take everyday and the calories I've eaten and measuring my worth by the sum of the numbers left at the end of the day.

I'm exhausted by measuring. Measuring my benefit to the world by the size on the label of my jeans, by the number on the scale.

I am weary of tracking. Tracking the likes on my most recent Facebook post or the number of followers on my blog to determine if I was of value today.

I'm tapped out by the shrinking. The shrinking of my soul with every calorie and step and like counted for the day. By voice in my head that mocks me when the number on my scale rises or the number on my Fitbit doesn't meet the goal for the day.

I'm overwhelmed by the numbers. Digits flying to and fro in my mind but never really amounting to anything that matters in the world. I'm living a life consumed by numbers, statistics and sums that won't matter a damn bit at the end of my life. Numbers that really don't matter a damn bit now. And, yet, still- I am consumed by them.

Today I am firing my inner accountant and setting out to find a replacement that works to build me up instead of tear me apart from the inside out. I'm ready for an accountant of joy, that takes stock of the things in my life that matter: the things that will be spoken of after my death, the things that impact those around me in a positive way. There are plenty of those things to count and it is fine time that I forget about all of the other damn numbers.

I hope you will join me. Let us shuck off the numbers in favor of gathering ourselves up in love and tapping into the joy underneath the constant judgement- the joy that's been there all along and has been whispering for us to find it again.

Unraveling Our Shame Stories: What We Teach Young Girls About Sex

I know that I am not alone in the fact that shame about sex is interwoven into my childhood memories. Many of us, particularly women, were taught to feel great shame around our sexuality.

I grew up in a Catholic household. Sex was a taboo subject and was not something that we spoke about. It seemed to be a great secret and, as a curious child, anything that was kept a secret was even more interesting to me than something that we would talk about freely.

I remember as a 5th grader finding a book in the public library that had a sex scene within it. It made me more curious than ever. There was just enough detail to make me more curious but left me with more questions than answers. As sex wasn't talked about in my home, my only prospect for answers seemed to be my friends. So, I brought the book to school and, while outside at recess, opened the book(a V.C. Andrews book, if memory serves me) to the carefully marked section with the sex scene and we huddled together carefully at the edge of the playground and read it together. One of my friends tried to gently explain to me what she knew of sex(which was very little) and we all sat around rather quizzically, feeling frustrated that we didn't know the answers to this topic even though we all felt, with our budding breasts and sudden interest in boys, that we were quiet grown-up, indeed.

Unfortunately, our huddle got the attention of the teacher, who broke us up and confiscated the book. I was pulled into the principal's office by my arm while being berated the entire way and called a pervert by the sour-faced teacher. I was horrified. I was a straight A student and had been reading adult books for years. My fervent reading had always been praised by teachers-- I had taught myself to read at age 3 and by the middle of grade school, testing showed that I was reading at a college level. The librarian would order in adult books especially for me. It was a source of joy and pride for me. These adult books would occasionally mention sex in a casual way. I had always been rewarded for my curiosity and reading and now, that same curiosity made me a pervert. I didn't want to be a pervert. When my father picked me up and told me that I was an embarrassment to the family, I was so ashamed that I couldn't eat for days. I was full of shame and confusion. I was further confused when I saw the confiscated book on my mother's nightstand with a bookmark in it. Was my Mom a pervert, too or was it just me?

The next year at church, while I was volunteering, I overheard the priest talking to a young high school couple. I recognized them--they were quite popular and well-liked at church and at school. I gleaned from the bits that I overheard that they had admitted to having sex. I was shocked. My only "sex talk" had been the firm advice to "never have sex before marriage". I worried that they would go to Hell and felt my heart racing in my chest. The priest was berating only the girl as the boy sat by quietly, with his head down. I could hear him pounding on his bible as he said words such as "whore" and "beg for forgiveness" while the sounds of her weeping leaked out into the hallway. When they left, the girl walked out of the church with her parents who all were walking as though covered in shame, heads down as they walked the silent hallway. The boy, still in the office with the priest, was now getting peppered with questions about the football team. When he left, the priest clapped him on the back and wished him a good game. The boy left with his shoulders held high, quite the opposite of what I had just seen with his girlfriend. I was left with a sick realization in my stomach that if one had sex, it was the woman's fault and was shameful to the woman alone. I wondered if girls were inherently evil.

I remember a lesson that the priest once gave my Sunday school class. It was about the prostitute that was being stoned when Jesus intervened. Someone raised their hand to ask what a prostitute was. The priest replied simply that it was a woman that had sex with men. I remember us all looking around in confusion. We had recently watched the film at school that was played for all students when  puberty reared it's ugly head(a 1960's reel with video of swimming sperm that so terrified me that I couldn't eat the popcorn that the teacher had so kindly given us as though we were watching something delightful at the theater) and we had realized that our parents must have had sex(after marriage only, of course) to conceive us. I wondered then if sex was always a sin and if women were the only gender that it was a sin for. I was grateful that in the story, that the woman had not been stoned. I wondered what the punishment would be for me in modern day times. I was too frightened to ask.

In high school, I spent a year at a Catholic school. I sat through a dress code orientation led by a nun whose entire body was covered head-to-toe. As she explained that we should wear skirts that "swept the floor" and that "no part of your bosom should ever show", I felt scared. I felt as though she was looking straight at me for much of the presentation and I wanted to hide under a rock. As a naturally very busty and curvy person, I showed some cleavage in nearly every shirt that I wore short of a turtleneck. I imagined my curves disappearing and turning into a tall, lithe woman that could easily cover her curves and her sexuality. The nun completed the presentation by reminding us that "boys will be boys" and it was our job as good Catholic girls to "not encourage them". I had no idea what she meant. When we went to the pep rallies(which were mandatory) and to the football games(football was this school's second God) and cheered for the boys, weren't we encouraging them? Which encouragement was right and which was wrong? Again, I was far too terrified to ask these questions, so I instead gazed at the altar of Mary, the virgin mother.

When I was seventeen, I was raped. Everything that I had learned about sexuality had taught me that I had asked for this and I, not the man who raped me, should repent. I was dripping in shame so heavy that I could no longer put one foot in front of the other. I was certain that I was evil and was deserving of this Hell on Earth and the Hell that surely awaited me in the afterlife. When the symptoms of PTSD began to emerge, I believed that I was going crazy(this was far before PTSD was known to the public). I believed that the vivid flashbacks that I was having of the rape were a punishment from God. I could not bear it. I decided that it was best to take my own life and tried desperately to kill myself. I did not succeed. I lived on and so did the shame.

When I became engaged in my early twenties, I couldn't wait to plan all of the details of the wedding.  When I went dress shopping, the saleswoman at one store asked me if I was a virgin. I was horrified and froze there, standing next to my mother and sister. In response to my silence, the elderly woman pursed her lips and gestured to the rack of gowns that were not bright white, but instead were more buttery, yellow shades of white. She referred to that rack as the "dirty white" gowns and nodded her head with fervency as she told me that only virgins could wear "pure white" on their wedding day. I allowed her to help me as I tried on the "dirty white" gowns, feeling quite dirty myself. At a different shop I later found the perfect gown, which happened to be bright white. As I pulled it on the morning of my wedding, I wondered if just the wearing of it was a sin and if I would be standing in front of my family and friends as an impostor of purity, when underneath I was so dirty.

When I became a mother, I remember watching other mothers with a fervency to fit in. I noticed that most of the stay at home moms were very conservative and wore twin sets and khaki pants many days. I rushed out and bought two piece sweater sets in bland colors and khaki pants that hid every one of my curves. It seemed that hiding my sexuality was the key to being a good mother. The key seemed to be to look like people that would never, ever have sex(which belied the fact that, as mothers, of course we had experienced sex).

It was when the first of my two daughters were born that truly began to unravel my shame around sex. I knew as soon as I held my beautiful daughter in my arms that I would teach her of her beauty and how deserving she is of love and acceptance, not shame for who she inherently is, not shame for the gender of which she was born. I will not embed within my daughters shame of who they are. It is intensely toxic. I will teach them about what a beautiful thing sexuality can be. I will teach them that no action, no outfit could ever entice someone to rape them- that rape is never the fault of the victim. I will teach my son the same lessons and teach him to honor women. I am pushing the pause button on the shame tape that's played itself out since the beginning of time.

I am nearing the end of my thirties. My shame around sex and my sexuality continue to unravel. Old memories sometimes pop up in my mind and, with the clarity of age, I am putting together more pieces of how this shame was built and how it has colored my life. In hundreds of tiny ways, I was taught that my body is shameful, that sex is shameful and that women are dirty. It is one of the most toxic beliefs that one can hold.

I am pushing back the shame in the most powerful way that I can imagine-- by raising daughters that are proud of their bodies, that will learn about sex in a kind and gentle way(with NO shame) and will, hopefully, not carry the weight of this burden. I am releasing the burden of this shame and I feel so much Goddamned lighter without it. It was never my true story, it was simply the fictional story that others felt to smother me with.

Someday, I will be free of this shame. I hope that my girls will fly high without every having to carry it. For, shame is not their birthright-- freedom is.

The Woman Beneath the Mother

In the years after my three children were born, I lost myself. Slowly and then all at once, the parts of me that I had always held sacred began to slip away.

We aren’t supposed to talk about this loss though, are we? Mothers are to be blissed out in Motherhood, sacrificing all willingly in order to serve our brethren. And, I am blissed out, sometimes. I am grateful to be a mother to the best children on the planet. However, underneath the love and gratitude, aside the constant stream of needs of my three children and husband, and beneath the expectations of what a modern-day mother should be, I was losing myself piece-by-piece. Losing myself so slowly that I did not realize it until the woman that I once was inside was completely gone.

A few years ago I found myself inside a deep depression and was lost for hours each day inside the darkness of contemplation of my life. I realized that I had slowly let go of all of my friendships, so shamed to spend any time away from my children to maintain any semblance of even a solid acquaintanceship with anyone other than those whose circles intersected with my children’s school or other activities. I had stopped writing a decade before and the words that used to spill out of my fingers without heed were now stoppered up somewhere out of my reach. Every moment of my day was about my children, my husband, my patients in my work as a nurse. I was lost inside the rote and rusty movements of service of others, in a pattern so familiar that I no longer had to think much about anything. I felt much like an empty vessel and did not know how to fill myself up again.

At the same time that I was realizing how deeply I was immersed in a sadness and emptiness beyond my own help, a co-worker noted my writing in a presentation that I had given. She asked if I wrote professionally. I had not written more than a professional document in more than ten years. The poetry, short stories and essays that used to spill from my hands unto the page had stopped so long ago that I no longer considered writing to be one of my strengths- my strengths now were all tied up into helping others in a non-creative way. That simple question, however, made me wonder if the words—the words that I used to string together that brought me untold joy—were still somewhere deep inside.

I began to write again, the words rusty and unwieldy at first but slowly coming out of my fingers again like the constant, easy stream that I once remembered. I found myself again on the page. I found that the more I wrote, the freer I felt—unburdened, lighter. I was redeemed slowly, letter-by-letter. With this newfound freedom, I found myself reconnecting with others and burgeoning friendships abounded in my writer’s group and with those that reached out after reading my published work.

My greatest worry—that I would be less of a mother if I spent time away from my children doing things that I love but that did not involve them—were greatly unfounded. On the contrary, I now connect with my children in a more authentic way then ever. I now communicate with them as myself, not the shell of a woman intent on martyrdom of motherhood.

I’m certainly not saying that writing regularly has made motherhood or life simpler in any way. In fact, it is another item that I must find a way to cram into my already frantic schedule. It has not made life perfect in anyway. My children sometimes grumble about me typing away desperately on my computer instead of spending those minutes with them. They also know that Mommy has a passion for writing, a passion for something outside of them.

I am whole again. I no longer feel empty and void of any purpose outside of my work as a nurse and my work as a mother. I am more that any one title that society has slapped on me. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a nurse. I am a writer. I am so many more things than just these labels.

In my actions—in the late night tapping of my keyboard that lulls them to sleep after I have tucked them in, in following my heart, my passions and my dreams—I am reminding myself with each keystroke of who I am and am, hopefully, inspiring my children to live their lives as who they are not as the one dimensional being that society may expect them to be if they choose to be parents themselves. I will always be Mommy first—always. However, I choose be everything else that I am too. I choose to be me.

I am an Unattractive Mother Raising Beautiful Daughters

I'm not society's idea of beautiful. I own that. I'm not seeking compliments or for anyone to disagree, I just know that a perpetually chubby, often disheveled woman with strong features and a large nose isn't society's idea of beauty. As I get older, I'm becoming much more okay with this fact, even as there is lingering pain over such memories as no one telling me that I was beautiful on my wedding day.  I have so many other things about me that are beautiful and, frankly, I have better things to worry my mind about. 

I also happen to have two beautiful daughters(and one handsome son). Watching the world react to my daughters has been an education in itself for me. The world at large treats attractive females differently, in both ways good and bad. I have a unique vantage point as their mother, who tends in her plainness to blend into the woodwork and not be noticed(a plus, actually, for this introvert Mama). My daughters, unlike me, are noticed everywhere we go. They are complimented on their hair, their fashion sense, their bright blue eyes. Yet, no one asks them about the books they are reading or their school work or what things they might love outside of their own appearance. They are so much more than their pretty faces but the older woman at the grocery store, the mailman dropping off packages and the secretary at the doctor's office don't know that my daughters are talented dancers, love reading and have a wicked sense of humor among many other things. What they do know is that my daughters are beautiful and that fact sometimes seems to overshadow everything else. 

 When I was growing up the attention always went first to my little sister. She was a petite blond-haired beauty. The compliments would go to her first- "so pretty!", "what a cute dress!" and so on. Then they would stumble onto me, stammering over what to say.  They would ask about school(straight a's), what book I was reading(I carried books with me everywhere) or something similar. My lack of beauty in many ways allowed me to pursue my intellectual pursuits and receive positive attention over the things that I loved to do, not the way my exterior looked. In that way, it was a great blessing and made me who I am today. 

I want my daughters to be encouraged in the same ways. I want them to embrace their physical beauty but I want so much more for them. I want them to know that beauty fades but the time that they spend on what is inside will never leave them. I want them to have a chance to be whatever they were meant to be without society pigeonholing them into tiny beautiful pegs.

 I am coming to terms with my own looks, in part as I see myself reflected in their beautiful faces- my nose(yes, the large one!) on my youngest daughter's gorgeous face, my hair and eyes on my middle daughter. The features that I once loathed now seem so lovely on their precious faces. I am also recognizing that my appearance, the mediocrity of it, was just as much a gift as my daughters' beauty is to them. My plainness gave me wings to fly beyond those mired in outwardness. Now I must be sure that my daughters are given the chance to own their beauty AND fly towards their forever purpose. Now that, my friends, would be truly beautiful.

 

We Cannot Always Choose Happy

I’m one of those people that always have positive quotes posted around me. I struggle with anxiety and depression and having inspiration posted around me helps me to keep my mind straight. My cubicle at work, my car, my home, my coffee mugs-- they are all covered in positive quotes, memes and photos. Yes—I’m THAT person.

Recently, however, I have been struggling with a bout of sadness. I have found myself raw with feeling as I navigate working through the mourning of being a victim of a violent crime twenty years ago and finally working through the mess of my feelings that comes with that. I’ve found myself struck with tears at the most inopportune of times and suffering through the nervousness and jumpiness that comes with having my fight or flight system ‘on’ twenty-four hours per day. I am a bundle of uncomfortable emotions, just barely held together enough to continue with my day-to-day life.

I’ve found that in this raw state that I cannot tolerate the false cheerfulness of quotes pasted over a bright sunshine or motivational talks to let go of my sadness and smile. It just doesn’t ring true to me where I am right now, in this place of darkness. I am exhausted by false cheer. There are some days that I must sink into the melancholy of life. 

I have a friend on social media that is always posting the words ‘Choose happy’. She is a lovely person that lives her life trying to help others. However, I had to temporarily hide her posts. I believe that there are times that we can, indeed, choose happy. There are also times that we must feel the shitty emotions-- the pain, the sadness, the grieving-- and not doing so is detrimental to our souls. I cannot at this time in my life deny these emotions that I have denied for twenty years.

This time has been a great lesson to me. In my personal life and in my work as a nurse I have spent many hours cheering people up. I hope to continue to do so. However, I must also allow those suffering to truly feel their emotions and not encourage them to paste a false smile over their raw emotions-- doing so is a toxic mistake.

We have become a society that has forgotten the value of our ‘negative’ emotions. We hide behind pretty selfies and cheerful social media posts when inside we are reeling. We have forgotten how to allow ourselves permission to have bad days and to experience the heavy emotions that can come with life.

I will choose happy another day. However, for today I will feel the crushing sadness, the grief and the anger. I will ignore the cheerful quotes and pretty pictures and instead immerse myself inside the pain. I will allow myself to burn inside the fire that been kindling in my heart for twenty years and has been denied the chance to flame. I will emerge from the fire stronger than ever before. I will be lighter without this burden and instead of pasting on a false smile over my pain; my smile on the other side of this will be true and real.

There is nothing wrong with honoring all of your emotions. I get to choose. You get to choose. There is no shame in not choosing happy for today. Happiness will still be waiting for you tomorrow. True happiness is not the smile pasted over your tears, it is the happiness that shines through after you’ve worked through all of the shit that weighs your heart down. It’s often not an easy journey—I hope you choose to take it anyway.

I am a White Mother Crying Out For an End to White Privilege.

White privilege. A term that I don’t even think I knew about until less than ten years ago and honestly didn’t really believe in until becoming a public health nurse six years ago. I am ashamed that I once believed, not too far into my own history, that white privilege was something that existed only generations ago and had been eradicated.

Now, in my current work, I go into the places in my community with the most desperate of poverty and people of every color.  I now see the evidence of white privilege every single day. Every.single.day. I can no longer turn away and ignore that my pale coloring keeps me safer, allows me an easier time of gaining education and employment and allows me freedom from the fear of being harmed or killed because of the color of the skin that I was born with.

I woke this morning to the news that in the past 24 hours police murdered two black men in our country. I say murdered because the evidence that we have in regard to both cases appears to show that neither man were doing anything at all wrong. I watched the Facebook Live video of the immediate aftermath of the police shooting of Philando Castile, a 32 year old black man who it appears had done nothing more wrong than have a broken tail light. Yesterday, I watched the heart-wrenching video of a 37 year-old black man, Alton Sterling, shot while pinned to the ground and then watched as his teenage son broke down and wept as his mother cried out for these shootings to end.  This trend of black men being shot down by white police officers is not a new trend—in fact it is rare for a week to go by in this country without seeing such an event.

It’s a sickening realization that my white privilege allows me many things. However, the best of these privileges may be to not fear being shot down by those that are supposed to protect me.

For many years, I have stayed relatively quiet about the things that I have seen happening around me in this country. I have felt that these losses weren’t mine and I did not have the right to mourn these black men or feel enraged at the injustice against those of color in our court and jail systems or weep with great sadness after a day of schlepping through a low-income neighborhood full of undereducated people of every color but white knowing that the bright minds of the children I serve will likely never get a college education because of many factors, one of them being their very skin color. I have felt that it was unfair of me, as a white woman, to try to use my voice over the voice of those impacted as for too many years in this country we have allowed white people to be the voice of all.

What I am realizing today is that I can no longer be silent. The ideas that have kept me silent are ideas of separation and to eradicate the horrors of what are happening today, we must all stand together.

I stand and acknowledge that I have privilege over others in this country simply because of my skin color. My children have those same privileges.  My oldest child is getting his learner’s permit and is learning to drive. Soon he will drive on his own. I will worry about him as all mothers do. I will not, however, lie awake in my bed wondering if he will be pulled over for a busted tail light and end up dying in his own blood while his girlfriend and her daughter watch the life go out of his eyes. My son’s privilege means that he will be frustrated to be pulled over but will not fear for his own life. My privilege means that my son can be pulled over and I will not fear to lose him, one of my children that I love more than myself. I will not fear that my son will be shot for selling CDs as he has done for years. I will not fear so many speechless things that mothers and fathers and sons and daughters must fear everyday. Mothers and sons all over this country do not have the simple privilege of knowing that the police are there to protect and not harm you. Even as we all acknowledge that 99% of our police force are honorable men and women in an intensely stressful job, we also must acknowledge that the 1% of racist and dishonorable men and women police officers are allowed to exist in a old boy’s club where we have been taught to look away when wrongs happen.

I can no longer look away, even safe as I am in my white skin, safe as my children are in their white skin. I cannot look away even though there is a great underbelly of racism in the white community that is deeply angered and sometimes violent if we broach the subject-- My fear does not hold a candle to the fears that so many feel everyday. If we look away, we become a part of the problem as surely as though we held the guns ourselves. Young men are being murdered by those sworn to protect them. I will not look away. I will not. Not until every mother in this country can sleep with the knowledge that their sons will not be murdered for any tiny infraction.  Not until the murders, modern day legal lynchings, have ended. Not until every child has the same rights as my own.

I am white. I am privileged in many ways including that I do not fear that police officers will take my life on a sidewalk or routine traffic stop, even if I have done nothing wrong.  I will not be silenced until everyone has those very same privileges.

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