Six Years

Some days are easier than others. I have less harder days now, but there are still days when I just want to grab a shot glass, pour some Powers into it, and drink, one shot, one pour, after another. It’s been six years now since I had my last drink, but sobriety will always be a work in progress. Sometimes I hear a little voice in the back of my head telling me that just one won’t hurt, a little reminder of the warmth of whiskey spreading to my fingertips, but I know full well that it’s a lie. Those days have become few and far between, but they still pop up out of nowhere, and they still take me by surprise. I started a new job recently, and after an intense first day I suddenly imagined myself with a perfectly poured Guinness in one hand and a Marlboro Light in the other. I could practically feel the taste of both beer and cigarette together, hammering home how close I always am to hovering on a precipice that I know I never want to fall into again. And that is the reality of sobriety: once you get past the “hard” part most people assume it’s just smooth sailing onwards. This is completely untrue, I have to live with the same demons, the same anxiety and the same fears: I have just learnt healthier coping skills to deal with them.

Six years ago I decided that I was going to be a better person to myself in order to be the best mother I could be to my future child(ren). And I will never, ever regret that. I sometimes miss the wildness of those days where my impulsive nature took over, sweeping my responsible side to the curb, because they sometimes led to memorable and important happenings (like meeting my best friend or finding the love of my life), but I remember the bad days just as well as those memorable times. I’m too tired and too old nowadays to deal with the ups and downs of my life with booze, and too reflective on the past to even take a step back. I move forward now, and while I cannot lay the past to rest, I am making it into stories and then leaving it be. One of my strengths has always been my willpower, and it will crush temptation with the tiniest of pushes.

Up until a few years ago I could only really talk about my dad, and the pain that his death caused me when I was drunk. I needed to feel like I was talking about someone else before I found the strength to talk about myself. It’s still hard for me to talk about myself, my feelings, my worries, my childhood, my future, but I am opening up my heart to those I know I can trust more over time. And nowadays I feel like I can talk about my father without bursting into tears and/or being worried about making the other person feel bad for talking about suicide. My memories of my father are softer around the edges now, 31 years after his death, but I still remember his face so clearly, his voice at times too, and his eyes. I see him in all of my children too, while nearly everyone says how much they all look like their father, I know how much they also look like their grandfather. Both of their grandfathers, maybe. They will never meet either of their grandfathers as both committed suicide when me and their father were young children. My eldest sometimes asks me where her grandfather is, and I just say that he isn’t here anymore, but that somehow somewhere he is watching her grow. I’m not religious and I don’t particularly believe in a god, but I do believe in spirits and presences, and I know my dad is out there somewhere. But while comforting, that thought also makes me sad. Because somewhere isn’t here, now.

And then… So many of my favorite artists growing up are dead now, via suicide or because their paths were self-destructive enough to lead to early death. Kurt Cobain, Layne Stacey, Chris Cornell, Peter Steele, Scott Weiland, Dolores O’Riordan... People who were only 10 or so years older than me, whose voices touched my little big teenage heart so much, whose words lifted me up and made me feel like I belonged, because otherwise I never felt like I did anywhere. I grew up feeling displaced, never fitting in however much I tried, and that displacement grew as my brain expanded and my heart searched for understanding. Music in the early 90’s was explosive, and I clung to these bands, these musicians who effectively changed and saved my life many a time. Yes, I still have my Cure and my Cave, but I often wonder why we lost so many great talents to suicide. I always will. And I also mourn a newer but equally profound inspiration and talent, the amazing Anthony Bourdain. Amongst the array of screaming, stuck up, turn your nose up chef-judged cooking competitions and shows I miss the quiet inclusivity, knowledge and love of food that Tony gave us. His honest approach to life, love, food, and the world. Who else has taken us to Burma, West Texas, and Armenia, and so many other places? Who else has sampled the craziest of cuisines, and eaten street food all over the world, bringing it to our homes? Who else has sat at tables with everyday normal locals in so many different countries to chat about food, history, culture, and politics? Who else asked real questions without fear? Kamau Bell does an amazing job at this too (and I love his show), but I miss Tony, his half smile, his broad need to experience, and his love to educate himself and others. I don’t want to wake up to another death by suicide, but I also know that that is an impossible wish to have.

The world is often a giant cesspool of darkness, and while the optimist in me wishes I could help each and every one of us see the light in everything, I know that it just isn’t possible. Every day we make choices in order to survive, and suicide is a personal choice with different reasons that we will never understand. That also doesn’t have to mean we accept it, but it does mean that we can’t let the choice of another block us from moving ahead. I wish I had been able to tell myself that in my teens and my 20’s, because it would have changed how I looked at myself and my life, but at the same time, my personal journey has also taught me that maybe the most important part of my life is now, when I can reflect fully and raise my children away from the clutches of addiction and suicide. Who knows? All I know today is that I’m going to stick around for my family and my friends for as long as my body will let me, and in order for that to happen I must remain sober, and I must also talk about my feelings, my anger, my pain, my happiness, and my thoughts.

So I raise a cup of strong, sweet, milky coffee to my father, my dead idols, to my little family and to all of you who I love with all my heart, as nowadays my strength lies not my within my glass but within my heart.

I am participating in the annual Out of the Darkness walk here in Sacramento in September with my family and would be very grateful if you could donate towards raising suicide awareness and fighting for suicide prevention. My page is right HERE.

My Choice, Not Yours

I made my choice while standing outside my (then) apartment building, smoking a cigarette and reading through the different kinds of procedures I could opt for. I forced myself to read through them so that I could make my own, informed choice, even though I had kind of already made it. A few hours beforehand I saw two lines on a stick, and my stomach clenched in fear, but I knew that I was ready to make many choices that would change my life as I knew it. That night, after work, I sat down with the person who was going to become my life partner, and before I even had a chance to say what I had decided he told me that it was my choice and he would be with me all the way, whatever I chose. After he said that I knew we were going to be OK.

The next day I went to Planned Parenthood to confirm the pregnancy, and was also presented with a choice. A box of tissues, and a choice. I could have made an appointment for an abortion there and then if I wanted to, but after blowing my nose I told the counsellor I wanted information on prenatal care, health insurance, and any other help they could provide. Planned Parenthood in NYC does not provide prenatal care, but they do provide counselling and information on prenatal care options in the city. Luckily they had some leaflets for a low cost women’s health clinic in Brooklyn, which I took with me. While I laid down in the soft, warm grass in Washington Square Park with a close friend by my side I called and made an appointment. I had stubbed my last cigarette out hours before and knew I was going to be OK. We were going to be OK.

I mention the word “choice” a lot in this story, and that is because every decision I made was based on my own personal choice. No one told me what I could or could not do, no one tried to push me in one direction or another, and legally I was able to either move forward with the pregnancy, or request an abortion without feeling any shame in doing so. Only three other people knew I was pregnant before I made the decision to keep my child, and if I had decided to go with an abortion, only those three people would have known.

When we, people who can become pregnant, say “my body, my choice” it is because we believe our bodies belong to us, that no one has the right to force us into something we don’t want, or to shame us for our choices. Nowadays there are many forms of contraception available, but they do not always work for everyone, for many reasons, and they are not always universally available to everyone either. I personally opted for an implant in my arm which lasts about 3 years and is supposed to be more than 99% effective, and luckily I have not had to deal with too many side effects. I know that I do not want any more children, but I also know that there is a tiny chance that I could be in the less than 1%. And if that happens, I will face another choice that will be personal. I am lucky to live in a state that still believes I am allowed to make my own choices about pregnancy, birth, and abortion. This implant that I have? One of the side effects is that I don’t really have periods with it. Which also means that if it fails, I won’t know immediately, maybe not for a few months.

When I went for my first ever prenatal appointment I knew I couldn’t be more than at the very most 8 weeks pregnant. My doctor took out a handheld Doppler and said she would try to find a heartbeat, but that it was most likely too early. Lo and behold there it was: a heartbeat. A week or so later I had an ultrasound to confirm my due date, and I was only 8 weeks along at that point, so my daughter’s heartbeat had actually already been detected when I was 6.5 weeks pregnant. I had only found out a week before that I was pregnant – and that was on the early side. I had a friend who was pregnant at the same time as me, and because she had irregular periods and no pregnancy side effects, didn’t find out she was pregnant until she was about 10 or 11 weeks along. If either of us were living in Alabama right now we wouldn’t have had a choice but to stay pregnant.

These heartbeat bills are just another way to control us. My personal situation is not the same as the woman standing in front of me at the store, and hers is not the same as the person standing in front of her. At that point in time I was happy to hear a heartbeat so early, but it could well have devastated me if I wasn’t ready or able to have a child. If you are so hell-bent on controlling our bodies are you also going to work on creating better opportunities, healthcare, education, etc. for all children? Yeah, I didn’t think so. These controlling laws have the aim of criminalizing abortion and are as prejudiced as many other restrictive laws in this country: they directly affect communities of color and those living below the poverty line. These laws have nothing to do with life, safety, or children, but have everything to do with control and the restriction of choice within a society.

“Pro-life” (aka pro-birth, anti-abortion) activists don’t believe in choice. They believe those of us who can get pregnant must remain pregnant no matter how the pregnancy was conceived, no matter the health of the mother or of the fetus, no matter the potential dangers to the mother or the fetus, and no matter whether the person is ready, able, or wants to be pregnant and have a child. Pro-choice activists believe it is the pregnant person’s choice, and that no one else has a say in the matter. Being responsible for the care and upbringing of a child is HARD and requires so much from a parent, for many years. Who are we to decide this for someone else? As I peruse Twitter I regularly read idiotic comments such as “well she should have kept her legs shut then!” (Why is it never “well he should have kept his dick in his pants”??), or “there are so many people waiting to adopt a child!”, or “stop using abortion as contraception!” Abstinence-only education has never been a viable option against unwanted pregnancy. And abortion is rarely used as a form of contraception, despite what “pro-lifers” want you to believe.

Every year in the US about 135,000 kids are adopted. However, only 59% of those adoptions come out of foster care.* In 2016 over 400,000 kids were in foster care in the US, so there are obviously more than enough children waiting to be adopted by loving families, many of whom will most likely age out of foster care without ever being adopted. Forcing a woman to have a child that may just end up in the system at birth doesn’t really seem like a real solution for anyone to me. And don’t even get me started on rape and incest victims… A double violation of our bodies, predators in different cloaks. I recently read a remark that said something along the lines of not punishing the child for the sins of the parents. This infuriated me, because by forcing the pregnant person to carry and birth a child conceived against their will is effectively punishing both child and parent, neither of whom asked to be violated. If an act of rape or incest results in conception, the pregnant person should never be forced to do something against their will. Trauma layered upon trauma.

Restricting and banning abortion practices is obviously not about maintaining and cherishing life, or even about birth. It is not about the existence of a child either. It is all about control. I find it interesting that so many right wing anti vax activists protest against the government forcing them to vaccinate their kids against deadly and highly infectious diseases, but are fine with the government restricting abortion rights. You can’t have it both ways, complaining on the one hand that the government needs to take their hands off our bodies for one thing but not for another. Then again both movements are filled with so much misinformation, ridiculous claims, and contradictions it would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.

Whether you believe that life starts at conception, or a heartbeat, or not, whether your religious or personal beliefs are against abortion for any reason, whether you believe abortion should be unrestricted and covered by insurance: I don’t care. These are your personal beliefs that should not be controlled or governed by another. This is what being pro-choice means: every person who can become pregnant has the right to make their own decisions about their bodies without being pressured, forced, or restricted in choice.

I chose to have my three children, but I don’t know now what I would choose now if my contraception failed. No one ever wants to have to make this choice, but for many different reasons they often do. Restricting and banning abortion just pushes it into back alleys and danger zones, it doesn’t stop it from happening. And despite what anti-abortion zealots keep proclaiming, we don’t use, or think of using, abortion as a form of contraception. For each and every one of us the choice is a difficult one that we will never forget. Then again, the reality doesn’t really fit the narrative of controlling us, does it?

Maintaining a strict divide between church and state is so important, and it works to the benefit of all. Abortion is not a political issue to be raised over and over again, it is our personal, very personal, choice and right, and belongs only to us.

Side note: The most recent season of the TV show Call The Midwife focused on abortion laws in the UK, and on illegal abortions. While it did somewhat sensationalize backstreet abortions provided by untrained professionals, and didn’t highlight the many doctors and nurses who safely performed illegal abortions at the time, it did bring up some very important points. Abortion was legalized in the UK in 1967, and most abortions are covered by the National Health Service, something that has never been the case in the US.

Side note no 2: Gosh it feels like we are constantly fighting for the rights to keep your hands off our bodies! I wrote this one in 2012, and this one in 2016. Sometimes when I reread content I wrote a few years ago I have to cringe a little, but I refuse to edit as, with anything, learning is a path. I now know to be more inclusive in my writing, something I know that I have failed to do in the past. The gist is the same though, my body, my choice, and none of your business!

*Numbers taken from the most recent AFCARS Report.

It Will Always Be Paris

It’s been a strange day, again bearing witness from afar to something I have no power to stop. A fire raging in the heart of my heart, the city that will always be the jewel in my memories. “It will always be Paris” my 18 year old hand wrote in black Indian ink in my journal, it will always be Paris. Paris was only three hours away on the train, 600 km in the car, the place where the writers and artists who crowded my teenage dreams also haunted the streets. The place where we could get lost in the streets, be free, live in a history of our own making. It was always Paris, even though in Grenoble we also had a Bastille, we also had authors, composers, and a history. It was always still Paris. Stendhal was every day, but Nerval was my desire, his spirit still roaming the streets in the dark.

One year we found the exact location where Nerval took his life in 1855, located it on an old map, and walked around and around in circles, the location lost amidst new buildings. Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, an invisible route between past and present, buried deep into Parisian history. So we went back to the side stairs of Notre Dame, smoked a few cigarettes and contemplated the trek back to the Père-Lachaise to where Nerval’s body was buried, a full pilgrimage to honor the writer of the beauty of roaming minds.*

Another time we roamed the quais de la Seine at night, plastic film camera in one hand, Gauloise Blonde in another; the only remains of that night the images in my brain, the smell of the Seine that never feels too far away, and one hazy print of Notre Dame. Every time I have wandered through Paris, Notre Dame has been under some sort of renovation, a tower covered in scaffolding one year, both another year, the side yet another year. Preserving history is an ongoing project, especially history that has made it through revolutions, wars, disregard, and neglect. If you close your eyes on the Pont Neuf at night the breeze takes you back in time for a second, a minute even. Paris feels timeless in those moments. Paris will always be immortal.

While Le Chat Noir was always our lighthouse, and the uneven stones of Montmartre got used to our Doc Martens, I would search for a sign of Notre Dame from every stopping point. The steps of the Sacré Coeur at night are a beacon to city around, Notre Dame standing safe in the distance, strong, a survivor. Much of my youth was spent searching for something that would direct me to my destiny, a god, a king or queen, a feeling, religions mixing with politics with knowledge, and ultimately with deception and disappointment in mankind and higher powers. Nowadays I look back on those times as the grounds on which I built who I am now, layers of me, a journey that ultimately gave me the answers I always knew. I neither hate nor reject religion, I respect its part in our world, no matter the deity. I just cannot believe enough to belong to a religion, but I still remain in awe of religious structures. Churches and cathedrals, ancient mosques and temples, all hold pages of lives lived before us, soaked in tears and incense.

Watching the fire go from smoke to a full blaze raging through the roof of the cathedral was painful: it is only a building, but I couldn’t help shedding a tear for the gargoyles, the angels, and the secrets. As the steeple fell I gasped, and wondered if the towers were next, and what Paris would do if all that was left would be a smoldering hulk of blackened wood and limestone. Can we mourn a building? Should we mourn a building? I believe in the preservation of history, not the desecration, but nature sometimes has the last word. And the human hand can be the creator of beauty, but also the creator of mind-blowingly stupid errors.  We are lucky that the towers were preserved, more important to me personally than a crown of thorns or a torn robe.

It will always be Paris for me. I know I will most likely never live there, but Paris was always the dream, my heart, my love. Paris IS always the dream, my heart, my love.  I can still wander the streets in my mind, smell the musty smell from the Métro, and bite into an imaginary baguette with brie. Nerval still skulks around, his resting place steps from Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and Jim Morrison, his heart amongst the lost and the lonely in the hidden Parisian streets.

(While Notre Dame burned on April 15th of this year I searched through my journals for some of the many entries I wrote on Paris over the years. I immediately came upon one dated April 15th 1999. Twenty years to the day… “I think my favourite place is Notre Dame and the quais de la Seine… We’ve been to the Père-Lachaise cemetery where Oscar Wilde and Nerval are buried, to Montmartre to see the Sacré Coeur… Everywhere.”)

It will always be Paris.

*(Read Aurélia if you ever have the chance… I have only read it in the original language, but I’m sure it translates well to English in the right hands). 

A Jigsaw Puzzle In Motion

It suddenly clicked the other day: my life is a jigsaw puzzle in motion. Every day I fit pieces together as much as I can, wake up, get kids to school, shop, work, make lunch, clean, pick kids up from school, doctor appointments, dentist appointments, park time, school enrollments, laundry, paperwork, work, work, bedtime, clean, write, work. It’s a full life where everything has to go into a calendar because otherwise it is forgotten. I have to schedule everything, even my job, around the kids’ school schedule and Cesar’s double job schedule, with no outside help: it’s just Cesar and me and three small children. I still haven’t got any better at asking for help, but at the same time there aren’t really many people I can ask here, so we make it work. And it’s fine, even when the kids all get sick every other week from picking up something at school. We make it work quite well, this full life. I’m lucky to have a job that allows me to work when I can, as long as I make the hours up during the week. But it is a jigsaw puzzle, and sometimes when I have a down day I find myself at a loss: what am I supposed to do with myself right now?  Shouldn’t I be running while eating and putting toddler shoes back on for the 20th time while figuring out how on earth I am going to fit wrist surgery into all this?

Should I play with the kids? Write something? Scrub a floor or two? Watch TV? Read some more? Why do I constantly feel the need to find something to do instead of relaxing and enjoying the moment? I don’t know, it’s always been this way though, well before kids. I have so much nervous energy and constantly need to be on the move, doing two or three things at once. Sometimes I crave the quiet of a more peaceful life, and then I am flooded with ideas for the future: restaurants, new careers, places to visit, things to write, more laundry to do. But I enjoy this full life, I embrace it, even those moments when I want to stand under the shower and scream silently.

It also suddenly dawned on me the other day: there is still room to dream, there is still room to accomplish dreams. I spent so many years convinced that I didn’t have the right to dream, to do everything that I ever wanted to do. I always thought that I didn’t have the right aspirations, or the drive to succeed that others do. That something was wrong with me, because I would consistently work so hard at something just to sabotage it in the end, mainly because I worked too hard at it. It wasn’t until I started reading more about adult children of alcoholics, and read through some of the typical traits that I realized I wasn’t abnormal: my brain had just wired itself a little differently based on circumstance. I have always had dreams and aspirations, so why not actually make them come true? Life is too short, way too short, to just dream. Life has never been easy, but I am lucky because nowadays I have true love, a family, a home, a job, and a future ahead of me. I’m lucky that I can cast off the reluctance to create roots, life, a home for myself.

I can’t stop this evil administration from what they are doing, and I can’t stop wars and conflicts happening all over the world. I can only write my truth, and hope that others care as much as I do to create change. But I can learn, and I can use my overflowing well of empathy to effectively help others, here, there, everywhere, so that is what I will do. I’ve never given myself a path to follow before: everything I used to start may have had a future, but I couldn’t see it, or didn’t dare to contemplate it. But now I have children, and they have futures ahead of them that are still as clear as the summer skies of Northern California… So I have to accept that I have a future too, and one that will continue even when the children have gone off on their own journeys as adults. So now, instead of living life and experiences as if they will end abruptly at any time, I shall plan ahead. I have wasted too much time on edge, afraid to let myself enjoy something fully, I don’t have to fear that it will be ruined anymore. It isn’t my fault that I feel that way, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take control of it and throw it away. Away with you feelings of inadequacy and fear, be gone!

In the meantime, I continue to try to fit funny shaped jigsaw pieces together, and while my list never gets smaller, I have to keep telling myself that I am accomplishing tasks. My eldest is now registered in the only Kindergarten we wanted her to go to (we took a huge chance and it luckily paid off), and my middle child is luckily able to stay in the same school for her last year of preschool, even though our preschool program was cut in half. I never realized how stressful, competitive, and tedious the public school system is, how each school is different even though they are all in the same city and district, and run by the same people. How many hoops you have to jump through to make sure your child is registered correctly in the right school… But all the pieces somehow fit together this year, and while the two and a half months of summer are looming up ahead, I will find ways to make other pieces fit too. It’s just what I do.

There are days when my brain melts from the bickering, the whining, the yelling, and the constant demands, and I wonder how I am going to make it through the evening without shouting, or drowning myself in whiskey, but I do. When you have been sober for quite a while it becomes your norm, but it remains a fight, and never an easy one. Never, ever assume that someone’s sobriety is easy, even if they make it look that way. Words help, losing myself in words, my own, other peoples’ words. I block out the nagging voices, the failures of others I feel the need to soften, the past, and dive into a story, an essay, a poem. There are no excuses left anyway: I can only truly function as a person in the life I have created as a sober person. They are my personal boundaries, and the ones that I will not let anyone else attempt to distort them. I’m much stronger this way. And happier.

Being a mother is hard. Being myself is hard, the lightning bolts of ideas, questions, stories, and needs of others all colliding into each other in my brain. The formation of thunderous clouds on some days, or cleansed blue skies on other: I’m always digging for a solution, a more-than-acceptable outcome, but have to make do these days with non-answers or a Band-Aid solution. It’s not settling though, it’s navigating, accepting that life has many branches and not one simple way forward. A maze of branches. Some of us never find what we were looking for, but end up with a long line of stories with an ending that that is a lot more satisfying. An accomplishment. Each step is an accomplishment in its own right: standing up, speaking out, reaching out, listening, setting up boundaries, and pulling down borders. Some days just getting out of bed, other days walking 100 miles: I set the bar too high, but have finally stopped beating myself up when I don’t meet even the bottom rung.

41 is already upon me, and spring has firmly settled its roots for 2019. I love the feeling of the sun on my skin, on my newly shaved head, and I feel hopeful. No need to hide, to secretly hope, or to wish on distant stars anymore: it is all in reach, as long as I continue to fight for myself, for us. I’m not a fan of odd numbered years, but nowadays I am a fan of looking ahead rather than behind me.

Empathy, Hope, Unity, Acceptance, and Self-Education

My writing is very disjointed at the moment, fragments jotted down here and there, slowly becoming a page, two, three, and then more. Each fragment is being built into another piece until they come together into something much bigger over time. Over the next few months there will be “essays” composed of fragments, all stemming from a project I started this time last year that took on a world of it’s own. My views, my observations, my memories. For me, for you, for no one in particular, for everyone. Today’s piece is a disjointed essay on how narrow-minded we are in general.

I started writing this piece earlier in December, while pondering on the lack of empathy, and the lack of memory in the general population around me. Maybe this is a result of having born witness to events from afar (through a TV or computer screen) but never having had to actually live through them? The latter has a huge effect on how a population views life in general I think, but it doesn’t excuse the apathy and disinterest in others’ well being. It’s easy to imagine what someone else, another group of people, or a population in general is going through, but can we really understand it if we only witness through a small, media-driven lens? When a lack of interest in seeking out more information is coupled to a lack of basic empathy, the ground beneath us starts to erode, revealing the filth of buried secrets. Then comes the sudden need to throw blankets over everything before we have to admit that nothing is the way we have made it seem for so long. 2018 should have been a year of great change, but it really just feels like a game of same old, same old.

I was reading through some Bush Sr. related coverage for work when I suddenly realized that Gorbachev was still alive. I don’t know why it surprised me, but it did. It certainly made me recognize, amongst all this sudden praise for a president who so many hated back then, that the world was such a different place when I was a kid than it is now. I was born in 1978, and was very aware of what was going on in the world from a very young age.  My family always listened to the news on the radio, and I was always encouraged to read anything I wanted to, to explore information, and to ask questions. There was also the fact that my stepfather came from a family of Polish immigrants, who had been displaced by Stalin at the beginning of WW2, and had no home to go back to at the end of the war. We talked, read about, and listened to, a lot of history, both recorded, and orally through individuals who had lived it.

I vividly remember being at the tail end of the Cold War, of the wall (Berlin Wall of course) and of Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, John Major, and of course, Mikhaïl Gorbachev. We were stuck between the US and the USSR, always wondering what was next. The 80’s still have a bleak feeling to them in my head. Cold, gray, threatening. My sister still shivers when she remembers our cousin telling us that there was a button that could be pressed by Reagan or Thatcher and once they did missiles would destroy the world, and we would be gone, burnt to a crisp. (Obviously we realized after a while that it wasn’t as simple as that, but yes, nuclear war was a threat).

These words still have deep meaning to me: Glasnost, Solidarnosc, the Iron Curtain, the Wall, the Cold War. We studied things like the Bay of Pigs and the Cuba missile crisis in depth, assuming that we had actually made some steps towards a better, more positive world. Do I see the world differently now because I know more, or because it just felt more simpler back then, the good and the bad, separated by a river?

Do you remember Ceaușescu? His name was such a household name he was always on the news and I constantly wondered why he appeared to be so evil. I lived in peaceful, plentiful (as opposed to the East) countries, but I was always intrigued about what went on behind the Iron Curtain. When I was very young I imagined a real curtain made of iron, descending with a crash like the gate of a storefront. I often wondered about my counterparts just a few countries away, children just like me growing up, going to school, falling in and out of love. What was it like to grow up under Communism? Was it the evil we were supposed to think it was? Years later we had a visiting professor from Berkeley at my French University, whose specialty was teaching US foreign policy from 1945. His lessons were designed to shock, to have us look at the USSR, even at Stalin in a different light, but we were confused by his tactics. We already knew how to think for ourselves, we didn’t need someone to tell us what to think. Still, he aimed to teach us that Stalin’s Communism wasn’t as bad as we were taught. I suppose none of his family members died in the gulags or in the pogroms…

My stepfather still had family members in Poland, and others in the Soviet Union; communication was only available via letters that could take forever, opened and read by censors (with random black lines through content), or scheduled phone calls that might or might not go through. We didn’t have a home phone when we lived in The Netherlands in 1988, a rarity, and we would use the pay phone down the street if we needed to call someone. My stepfather’s family members did the same, although their phones were usually the actual only phones in the area, and it was obvious all calls were listened to. I remember waiting and waiting for one of his cousins and their son to arrive from the USSR (now Belarus). The process to obtain visas and travel permits and back and forth was drawn out for months, and the day they finally were supposed to arrive came and went without a sign of them. And then suddenly there they were. We smiled a lot, as we did not speak Russian, and they did not speak English or Dutch.

There is an art to communicating when you don’t speak a common language, and I learnt it a long time ago. Most likely from moving to different countries and being thrown in the deep end so to speak: we had to immerse ourselves into everyday life, school, and friends immediately. You learn to communicate through gestures, looks, smiles. I suppose it’s one of the main reasons why my other half and I transcended regular communication even though we didn’t speak each other’s language very well (at all). Most people couldn’t understand it, but to me language has never been a border.

I also remember other family members arriving, these ones from Poland, and assuming we would be giving them a truck full of jeans and electronics to take back with them. They soon discovered that our roads were not paved in gold, and nothing was handed to us on a plate, but the abundance of everything was still overwhelming. When bread, milk, chocolate and eggs are available whenever you need them you don’t really wonder what it’s like to have to line up for basic necessities, ration book in hand, and hope that when you make it to the front of the queue there will still be something left to buy.

(My recollections of our trips to Poland before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall can be found here).

I fully believe we are too comfortable in our abundance, we often take it for granted. It drives me mad to see apathy in the face of possible change, where people watch a government chipping away at their rights and they are too comfortable in their abundance and apathy to feel frightened. Freedom is never a given, and there is always someone who wants to regulate it, take a larger part of the pie for themselves. Can you imagine the state breathing down your back, observing your every move? Having to skip through twenty hoops to get a visa to visit Canada or Mexico, or any other country for that matter? Can you imagine not seeing your family for years, speaking sporadically on the phone, not being able to get through when an emergency strikes, waiting in limbo for hours to hear some (good) news? It’s bloody hard, I can tell you. We take our guaranteed ease of communication and freedom for granted. We take too many things for granted, too much of the individual and not enough of the collective.

I think we all believe in stereotypes of some sort, but as individuals and as a society in general; we have to do the hard work of destroying them. How many times do you hear Africa referred to as one country rather than a massive continent composed of many countries, climates, people, customs, cultures, languages, and governments? How many times do you hear the US referred to as “America” when America is actually a continent comprised of many countries, cultures, people, languages, governments, etc.? What do you think of when I say “USSR”? When the current president spouts out stereotype after stereotype what do you do to erase the harm that it causes? When we refer to a group of people as a stereotype, and generalize them, we are just a step away from dehumanizing them. By generalizing and stereotyping people we are actually saying that they are “not like us”, which immediately has the pejorative effect of “us” being “better, easier, normal”. “Them” is not “us”. It’s a constant learning process, this push to “uneducate” ourselves from so much of the crap that we have been taught, to use our eyes, ears, and minds differently, with acceptance and empathy rather than fear and unfounded misgivings. Obviously we will make mistakes, most likely awful ones at times, but learning is what we must do in order to evolve into a better human race in general.

We don’t have much time left. We have learnt from history, especially very recent history, that walls, persecution, isolation, internment, and censorship are never a solution to any kind of issue we think we may have. We are not protecting ourselves when we shut out, censor and destroy the “other”. Today’s cages and walls, a death here a death there, are tomorrow’s failure to anticipate discrimination, mass murder and hell, and the following day’s frantic whitewashing of the crimes we committed the day before.

We can choose to say no more. This doesn’t mean waiting for the next election to save you, because by then it will be too late. We have to say no more right now.

Two children recently died in US Border Patrol custody, their names were Jakelin Caal Maquin and Felipe Alonzo-Gomez.

There is a conservative effort that at least 85,000 children have died of starvation in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia is hiring Sudanese child soldiers to fight for them in Yemen.

A 7 year old child named Jazmine Barnes was shot and killed while in her car with her mother in a completely senseless and horrific drive-by shooting. This will never be normal, so why did it happen?

Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered three months ago and the US has not put any pressure on Saudi Arabia for real answers. Are we slowly forgetting about this?

And people in the US are so afraid of the “other” that they have started their own fund to build the wall. It has reached over $18 million dollars… Racist bigots and their money, always going towards something completely dumb and unhelpful to the country they say they love.

And so on.

No More.

You Don't Have To See Me

I walked through Times Square wearing a real British red, a slim pillar box of a woman, standing out amongst the dim greys and browns of winter. Or so I thought until one person after another jostled me, tourists pushing through me towards the bright lights, red not enough to shine a light on my existence. You don’t have to see me, but why can’t you acknowledge my existence? If a stranger walks through me and you don’t even notice, how can I even expect you to be the beacon I always assumed you were? I ask too much, I know.

First it was Kurt. No wait, go back. First it was my father, dangling into dust with Joy Division playing in the background. Then it was him, the one who cloaked himself with the role of father, and moved his family around like chess pieces on a board, simultaneously playing you against one another and most often against yourself. A few weeks after his departure Kurt blasted himself into oblivion, leaving me clutching my cassette tapes and crying into my diary, abandoned. Alone. Invisible. Then the boy I was in love with, but had never spoken to, moved away, and my diary talks of broken hearts and depression, of sadness and also of longing. Longing to be seen, growing steadily up, a flower in need of light, gasping for air, breaking free from the Girl Guide knots in the ropes that were containing her.

Freedom is an ocean that swells unexpectedly, dragging you off to places that nourish you, but sometimes also break you. It’s a learning curve, freedom is.

Walking against the crowds in Times Square, invisible in my red coat, brought me back to that year, 1994, when everything was either amazing, or the end of the world. I had yet to learn to temper my emotions, let them trickle down the slide rather than cascade down the mountain, avalanche or ball of fire. 1994 was a year of turning heels and turning backs, and of wandering down the soft slopes at the base of the mountain, wishing I could just fall right off the face of the earth. I hid beneath ripped jean, long hair, and oversized sweaters and music that tempered my wild thoughts. I still listen to that same music, the lead singers long gone into voids of drugs and depression and events they didn’t manage to control, but the music still speaks to me. I would walk home from school, shaking off the dank grimness of the monotonous and constant taxing demands on my brain, my Walkman carrying songs that spoke to me alone, that made me stand out and stand up. Music gave me visibility; music gave me purpose. I could be me, all of me, without all of the boxes and the cloaks and the expectations.

I took steps to solidify my existence amongst others, choosing to weave in and out of the path ahead, rather than plod along, unseen and unheard.

But there is always something that suddenly makes me even more conscious of the space I take up... So I pack myself into a smaller box, hide in the shadows, and revel in this ease of traveling through time in low visibility. There is something safe about walking through people, knowing they don’t see you, passing you by without even an acknowledgement of your presence. This invisibility serves me well, I don’t leave a visible trace, but you know I have stopped by. I think... Do you? Have I left an invisible mark on your life? Do you remember my face? I remember yours. I always remember yours.

I used to sit in class and look ahead stoically, willing the teacher to pass me by. It worked most of the time, my will forcing my body to become invisible, folding myself into a tiny space where no one would notice me, where no spotlight reached. I walk through the streets and wonder why I am always the one who has to move out of the way, but I never stand my ground, so used to moving, creating space between myself and the other, space being a protective cover, space meaning I don’t have to interact. I battle with this need for space, for cover, and the same need to be heard and seen: and as neither ever wins I hide behind my words. This, my voice; these, my words. They are strong and powerful like me, but often indirect, metaphor, for what the reality is. Words have longevity. You may forget my face in an instant, and forget how my fingers felt on you face, my voice in the wind now, but my words will stay with you.

I’m still 1994, but I’m also 2018, still hovering between the space and the spotlight, finding a place that is me. Do we ever find our real place? Are we meant to have a place? I do not accept my place amongst you, I do not accept the role, the cloak, or even the mold that you play upon my being. For that I will always stand strong and teach the same to my children, for that I will never back down.

I’m not transparent: I’m hued. Each flicker sends ripples of effervescent sparks your way, each shake a wave of golden, yellow, warm orange rays. One turn may block the light, another may be a beacon. I vow to not hide behind myself anymore, and I pledge to stand taller, to not move out of the way when I’m on my path. You don’t have to see me, but you must acknowledge my presence, and the presence of all of us around you, all of us so used to fitting into smaller boxes, hiding behind the light, moving out of your path. We all belong, we all have light to share.

I walk through the city gardens, eyes straight ahead, pushing my children, scanning the surroundings for invisible dangers. I tell my eldest to run with the butterflies, to enjoy the freedom that comes with space and youth, and I whisper to myself to hold my head high.

No more boxes for me, and only space for my offspring: space to run, and space to hold hands with others. We all hold our heads high, searching the sunlight rather than the cracks in the pavement.

Can't Stop Now...

I’ve been spending more time on Twitter recently, keeping up on midterm election news, finding out who the person who spat on me is (I told you in my last post I would never forget his face), and just in general looking for some hope in the pile of stink that this country keeps digging up and throwing all over itself.

First of all, an update on the spitter: apparently he is just another Nazi boy who thinks it’s OK to harass people and spew hatred everywhere. I saw that look I have encountered in others in his eyes when he walked past, so I wasn’t that surprised really…  Despite what the city tries to tell us, Sacramento is full of racist cops, Neo Nazis who are consistently called “Conservatives” by the press (who then always go on to vilify Antifa and anyone who appears to protest against Nazis), and people who pretend to be all “peace and love” until you accidentally step on their lawn, at which point they will call the racist cops to come and flush you out. In any case, let me just say that it wasn’t the police who helped me find the spitter’s identity, I actually found out via Twitter, and I am grateful to the groups of people who are actually really looking out for the community. They are also the ones who made me aware of the Nazi, sorry I mean “Conservative” rally this weekend at the Capitol, so I didn’t take the kids there as I would normally do.

I also came across a tweet written by a man who had been brought up in the UK by one British parent and one Dutch parent, and who had suffered so much abuse growing up because his peers didn’t consider him “British” enough. He detailed some really horrid bullying and more, so much so that he felt as an adult that part of his identity was missing, and that he was unable to find it again. It reminded me of something that had happened to my sister and me during our first year or so living in The Netherlands. We had moved away from England, away from our extended family that we had always lived very close to, and were getting used to living in another country where everything was different, including the language. We learnt to speak Dutch very fast, but the first year was a lot of trial and error, and a lot of learning by ourselves. I was 10 when we moved there, and my sister 8, and we had also been through some very recent trauma. We would often be sent out on our bikes to the local supermarket by our stepfather who was home with our baby brother and who spoke less Dutch than we did.

There were two boys who would follow us on their bikes, trying to knock us off, yelling things at us, basically being mean kids. They couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than me, and they just acted like real bullies. The type you are always on the lookout for once they have harassed you once or twice. One day they cornered us down by the canal where the bike path navigated its way on the embankment, above the water but slightly below the main road. One of the kids spat on us, and they called us names, pushing us around, mentioning the word “taal”. In Dutch the word “taal” means language, but it is also the name of the subject of Dutch language at school. At that time the only way I had seen it used was in terms of it being a school subject so I had no idea what they were talking about. It was only later that it dawned on me that they were bullying us because we didn’t speak the same language as them. Kids get these things from their parents. The only way an 11 or 12 year old would have been pushed to bully two younger girls because they didn’t speak the same language would have been because they heard their parents or siblings talk about other people in a derogative manner.

In any case, my sister and I ended up having enough of it one day when they actually followed us home, and we raced into the house as fast as we could and our stepfather came out and yelled at them in English. They never came near us again.

All my sister remembers of those guys is that they kept spitting and spitting at us, huge wads of spit. I remember the mix of fear and incomprehension: what had I done to deserve this? Thing is, when I think about it now I know that this was one experience of xenophobia in my life; there have been others but I am able to pinpoint them to a time and/or a place for the most part. I have not had to live day in day out with being treated like a lesser being because of my skin color. But having experienced it like that at such a young age helped my resolve to fight all the harder against injustice, racism, bigotry, and white supremacism in general.  

These past few years have in general been terrifyingly triggering in many aspects for me. It’s hard to feel 100% when every day you wonder what current event is going to unearth a ton of old shit that you spent so long trying to bury far away in the ground…

The election results were better than I hoped for (not as good as my wildest dreams, but still, better than what I thought would happen). It has been wonderful to see so many women elected, so many immigrants of children of immigrants, people of color, LGBTQIA people, representing all of us, not just a small percentage of white USA. That is huge, and I think a great overview of how hard people have been working to create a better world for everyone. I just worry so much that all of the people who have done the bare minimum these past few years (i.e. vote) will assume they don’t need to do anything else because we are OK again. We are NOT OK. And a large amount of the population will tell you that they have never been OK. My kids will never be OK in this country the way it is now. We can protect them as much as we can but it’s impossible to avoid the hate that is so rampant around us.

One tweet I read last week that has stuck with me said “Voting doesn’t get rid of white supremacy”. Another tweet (I’m sorry, I can’t remember the name of the person who compiled it) listed every single person in office who was openly a white supremacist and who had ties to white supremacy, and that list was scary. Scary because these people are considered normal, these people were elected to supposedly look after this country in the way the people want them to look after it. Scary because these people don’t represent a majority, but for some reason they still manage to get a majority. So, no, voting doesn’t get rid of white supremacy, (and somehow it seems to allow white supremacists to be legitimatized over and over again), but it does however help to make a difference, as we can see from Tuesday’s elections. The only way to get rid of white supremacy is to fight it from the core, and those protecting that rotten core (a large amount of white men and women) are currently hanging on strong. I don’t understand how a person can pertain to have certain values and standards, and then go on to vote for people like Steve King or Ted Cruz, or back people like Brett Kavanaugh. Is it fear of standing on their own two feet and looking at the world the way it really is rather than the one they have always lived it? The easy way out? Just not giving a shit? Reluctance to relinquish power? Greed? All of the above and more? I don’t understand it. But white women (and that includes myself): we need to step it up and get these ridiculous percentages of other white women to stop voting for people who will never have their backs. Honestly, how could 50% of white women have voted for that disgusting Ted Cruz?!

This means that we can’t stop fighting, not today, not tomorrow, not even when the first woman becomes president. The core is so very deep, and it resides under all of us. It’s OK to feel uncomfortable now and again… Many of us live with that feeling. These past two years have been a huge wake up call to so many people, an eye opener to what we have let slide, what we endure, what we sit on and hide. Now is the time to step it up and really go for it. This means denouncing the spitter who thinks he got away with degrading a woman, it means voting in every election you can vote in, it means standing up whenever you see injustice or prejudice or violence against another person, and it means unearthing your own prejudices and getting rid of them too.

I’m already dreading the next restrictions that are heading our way, the next immigration hammer to fall this week. More gaslighting, lies, hatred, and doctored videos coming from the White House. We aren’t OK. But we can continue to fight to be OK.

No More Minimizing (This Is NOT Normal)

Some random asshole spat on me today.

I wanted to shake people and yell about how violating it felt, this man walking towards me, and spitting in my direction, making me feel so helpless. Then I started to think that I was probably overreacting. In the grand scheme of the world , a man, coming in the opposite direction, who deliberately walked as close as possible to me when he passed and then, also deliberately, spat at me, is not the end of the world. It’s disgusting and made me feel like a worthless piece of shit, but he technically didn’t hurt me, so I shouldn’t really complain, should I? I mean, I should, and I am, but at that moment I just felt so small. Just seconds before I had been walking home with so much confidence, my two eldest at school, and a day full of activities with my baby and partner laid out in front of me. And then suddenly I was shaking, tears welling up in my eyes, and that cold fear rising in my stomach, the one I recognize from my childhood. I hesitated, wanting to yell and show my anger, but apart from that person there was no one around, and I was afraid he would turn around and punch me in the face. I had caught a glance of his eyes in the second that he passed me, and his look was enough to tell me he would have no qualms punching me in the face.

I should have trusted my instincts when I saw him approach half a block away. I know I should always trust my instincts. They don’t usually fail me, but I sometimes fail them.

Years ago, I must have been about 20 or 21, I was walking to a friend’s home, just a few minutes down the street from mine. I still remember the scene vividly, playing out in slow motion in front of me. I could see a man approaching from the opposite direction, amongst other people, and for some reason my gut told me something was off. He was walking fast, and the moment he was about to pass me by he punched me in the face, so hard that my head snapped back and smashed into the lamppost that was right behind me. I turned around, stunned, as he ran off, turning round and cackling at me. He obviously had some kind of mental illness, not that I am qualified to name what, or maybe he was just an asshole with violent impulses, who knows. But I ended up with a black eye and a bump on the back of my head. No one even stopped to help me, and I just stumbled to my friend’s house and burst into tears trying to explain what had just happened to me on a busy street in broad daylight. She asked me if I wanted to go and report it but by that time I was just overwhelmed and for some reason had already minimized the assault, and stupidly never did report it. I don’t know why I minimize things like that. Fear of being in the way? Fear of being seen as stupid, silly for making a mountain out of a molehill? Fear of actually having to explain how I felt and how this person made me feel?

I don’t trust many people. I may come across as kind and caring, and that is absolutely genuine. I may share stories about my life with you, listen to your stories, and you can trust me with your secrets. But unless you are one of very few I don’t trust you. It’s not personal, my trust was violated when I was very young and when these types of things happen they reinforce why I don’t trust. And they happen too frequently. We walk the streets on the defensive, a natural cloak that we don every time we leave the house. Our eyes constantly look, judge for danger levels, and move on to the next, crossing the street or turning back whenever our instincts through up a flag. It can’t be just me can it? I’m sure we all do it. I doubt I’m the only woman walking these streets who has been punched in the face and spat on by random men. I’m sure for every woman who reports being spat on or harassed there are dozens who just go home and live with it in silence.

And trust me, I am not scared of much. I had no issues closing at bar on the Lower East Side in NYC by myself at 4am, or jumping over the bar to drag drunk idiots out by myself. But it’s been 20 years and I haven’t forgotten the face of the man who punched me. I won’t forget spitting guy’s face either. The imprint is marked permanently into my memory, which is quite insane if you think about it, as I literally only saw their faces for a few seconds. I’ve been through a lot worse too, which makes it all the more strange to me why these type of incidents still stand out so strong in my mind. Maybe because they are just so random? Difficult to categorize as assault?

I keep imagining if the kids had been in the stroller and he had spat on them. What if the spit had actually landed in my face where he had directed it? Does this person go around assaulting women on his daily walk? Does he live in my neighborhood and is he just one other thing I now have to be worried about on my often rollercoaster-like school runs and grocery shops? Does he actually live in my building?!

As is the case for many women I have been verbally abused, harassed, assaulted, and just treated like excrement more times than I can even count or remember. We minimalize it and internalize it because it is so normalized in our society that we feel guilty even talking about it. But we must. Yes, I feel completely humiliated by the fact that a man spat on me and I just stood there shaking, but if I don’t talk about it I will make it into something less than it was. I shouldn’t have to walk around being worried that someone is going to spit on me! No one should.

(I posted about this on Nextdoor and forwarded the information on to the police department. If it happens to someone else and they report it too hopefully they will apprehend the man and make sure he doesn’t do it again. But for me it is just another thing to be on the lookout for when I go out by myself with the kids, on top of everything else).

Fragments (You Are Not Alone)

Last Wednesday, October 10th, was World Mental Health Day, and this year I only really had time to mark it online in passing by reposting an essay I had written a while ago. But mental health awareness and the ramifications of untreated mental health issues are always on my mind. I don’t really have a choice in the matter. Mental health conditions, suicide, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety have all been part of my life from a very early age, through close family members, myself, intergenerational trauma, and usually a bit of all of that mixed together. Everything is boxed off separately, a contained “issue” that we deal with, and seal away. But in reality it is all linked, interconnected, and if we don’t talk about it, and seek some kind of help, it leaks out at some point.  

Leaks out, combusts, explodes. I’ve been through all of that, and it’s never very pretty. Most of time it just gets boxed back away again, because dealing with the layers trauma creates means you have to actually start peeling them back again. That’s scary. And trauma has this way of making you feel like you are all alone, no matter how silly that may sound. You can read so many similar stories to your own, but still you are alone, throwing the same battered ball against your box of hidden memories. My methods of “dealing” with events has either been to drink copious amounts of alcohol, or withdrawal. As the latter is no longer possible, I resort to withdrawing myself, which in itself is actually not always unhealthy; it is a method of self-protection that has served me very well all my life.

At the beginning of this year I started to withdraw myself from everything that was causing my anxiety to skyrocket. One area at a time, I began to refocus on what matters the most to me, and to take myself out of the race that people everywhere seem to think we should be in. I spent the summer reading and writing, and spending quality time with my children, especially as two of them started school just recently. I also “quit” one job, and started another, allowing myself to go back to focusing my writing on what matters to me, and not what matters to businesses, which is often soul sucking and tremendously boring. I also ended up deleting most of my social media channels, and kind of just going back to basics. I haven’t been writing too much online recently but have more than made up for that offline with about 10 projects in the works. I don’t know where they are going, or what I am going to end up doing with them, but they are all cathartic, as I have found the more I reduce my online presence, the more I feel ready to expand my offline work. Next week I will post a story about being visible/invisible that many of you may relate to, and it is one of many short stories I have written this year.

Circling back to the subject of mental health, the importance of consolidating trauma and pain, as well as sharing it in a way that will help you as well as others: this is something that has been on my mind a lot this past year. The growing emergence of the #MeToo movement, the suicides and accidental overdoses of some of my favorite artists from my teens, as well as my beloved Anthony Bourdain, and then the triggering current events where again and again abuse and assault victims are picked apart and vilified are absolute proof that we need to start listening. And when I mean listen, I mean really listen. Not every survivor is able to talk about what happened to them, and we need to listen to that too. Listening, sharing, and moving on doesn’t always mean providing graphic details. Sometimes we may just be able to share that something terrible happened to us and that we may need help. Listening means hearing between the lines and holding out a hand.

At the end of September I participated in the Out of the Darkness walk here in Sacramento. It was the first time that I joined one of the AFSP’s (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) walks, and it solidified the points I have been trying to make to myself for so long now: there is no reason to hide away anymore. You are not alone. Over 1,000 people gathered together for the walk in Sacramento, and I’m sure hundreds if not thousands participate in the walks all over the country. There are different honor beads available at each walk, each color representing a person you may have lost or someone who is struggling. I found that it was a great way to see why people were walking without having to ask any questions. And it made me feel like I was less alone: there were other people wearing gold beads too, and other people wearing purple, and green, and teal. It felt like everyone was holding your hand, because they understood your pain, and you understood theirs.

I may have passed some of these people on the street or in the grocery store before, and never would have known how they had also suffered due to the suicide of a loved one, or because of their own struggle. Mental illness and trauma are often invisible, and when they are visible we shy away out of fear or disgust, unable to reach out and provide some kind of help.

A few weeks ago I was helping my eldest navigate the public toilets in the Capitol Gardens when the homeless lady who had been washing her face there started yelling and shouting obscenities. I had no idea whether it was directed at us, at a voice in her head, or at someone she thought she heard outside, but my first thought was to hold my daughter close and to tell her not to worry. She is extremely sensitive to these type of things and I could see that she was on the verge of having one of her own panicky moments. My next thought was to grab my phone and wonder if I should call someone, but nixed the idea immediately because Sac PD have a tendency to shoot before they think, and the woman wasn’t actually harming anyone. She suddenly stopped shouting and left the space as if nothing had happened. We saw her sleeping on the grass the next day, her belongings next to her. How can a country treat people this way? How can we, as individuals, let this happen? Who knows what this woman is going through, forced to live on the streets, possible voices going through her head constantly, and then also having to face the physical dangers of being a woman alone on the streets. There are so many people like her, victims of a society that refuses to acknowledge that mental health is a real thing, and not a stigma, or something to shove under the carpet. (This one story is part of a much larger issue in this country, one that I have written about before, and am currently writing about again).

I know that what I can do is continue to talk about all of this, whether it be for myself and/or for others. Depression is one of the leading causes of suicide and suicide attempts in the US, and there are approximately 12 people who perform some kind of self-harm with or without suicide intention for every death by suicide. If we don’t shatter the glass every time someone puts a new pane in, these numbers will only continue to climb. My children will never know their grandfathers, and both my partner’s and my father will never get to hold their grandchildren or hug their adult children. But I know for sure that there will be no holding back when we talk about mental health, pain, and trauma in our household.

It took me a long time to learn that there is no shame in sharing the mental load of life with others, and I’m still very much a work in progress. But I have come to the conclusion that the more we share, the more we help ourselves. No one should have to live with pain, trauma, sadness, anger, mental illness, illness, or anything for that matter, alone. It doesn’t matter how we communicate, but it does matter how the message is received and what the receiver does with it. Put the phone down, look into someone’s eyes and ask them sincerely how they are today. Listen to the response, and hold out your hand. It may be a simple gesture, but it’s a gesture in the right direction.

At What Point Will You Start To Give A Shit?

I continue to look for inspiration in every corner, and for the hope that I know exists around me. It’s hard not to look at everything that is happening around us and find that hope, but without it there would be no drive to dig out the crap and plant new seeds.

August 26th, 2018, Women’s Equality Day

Today was one of those days when I felt a pit of despair open up in front of me, while I watched the world fall into it, gasping faces smashing into broken bricks, sawn off branches. We are on the brink of collapse and so many refuse to acknowledge it. I went to a rally this morning, with the kids and my camera as usual, and listened to some inspiring and remarkable women talk about their visions and what they are doing to make our lives better places in general. I listened to the passionate voice of Desiree Rojas, who I find to be one of the most inspiring and intelligent people I have heard speak in a long time (also, look up #BoycottDriscolls for an important campaign to participate in).

I listened to Magali Kincaid, whose family is similar to my own, mixed with young kids, and thought about the hard work she is doing to make sure our collective kids have a proper education without discrimination. And I looked at the crowd, saw faces that I often see at rallies and protests, and wondered why the steps weren’t packed with people listening, resisting, speaking up. Why do people turn up for the women’s march en masse but fail to show up for smaller but equally important events? Where are the banners every time the people who are courageously occupying the streets around the ICE building downtown get ticketed and harassed by the police? Why are people not calling out the increasingly violent Sacramento PD scare tactics and hate crimes that are literally happening in their streets and backyards? Is it an inability to believe, or just a purposeful blindness? If you close your eyes you don’t have to get involved kind of deal?

A politician dies and all day long people are praising the good he did, and I have to keep asking myself if this was the same guy I wrote about back in 2011, because I can’t seem to consolidate the two. Have we set the bar so low that nowadays one warmongering politician’s crimes are forgotten because he said a few good things in his later years? I don’t know, maybe people forget too fast. Or maybe I have seen too much to believe that things are going to get better with a few tweets and a couple of marches.

A few days ago my 4 year old daughter came up to me and out of the blue asked me “am I white mama?”, pointing at her skin. I sat down with her and told her that while her skin tone looks white she is half of mummy and half of daddy and therefore a mix of white and brown, of English and indigenous Mexican. I then added that all over the world people of different skin colors lived together, and that we are all different and similar at once. We are all beautiful, we are all human. While I was having this conversation with her it reinforced to me just how harmful the phrases “I don’t see color” or “kids don’t see color” are. I take my kids to political rallies and marches all the time, teaching them to always stand up for their rights and the rights of others, and we talk openly at home about all of the issues this world faces, but I guess I was taken by surprise at just how observant my eldest daughter is. I shouldn’t have been but I was. I assumed we would have to have that conversation after she started school in a few weeks, but I suppose I should have anticipated it earlier. The next day she proudly told me her full name and added “I’m white and brown half of mummy and half of daddy”. Of course I wish we didn’t need to categorize ourselves in terms of race, but unfortunately that’s a thought only white people, including myself, have the luxury to have.

Wednesday September 8th, 2018

Today was the 6 month anniversary of Stephon Clark’s death, shot in the back multiple times by two Sacramento PD officers. Nothing has changed here in Sacramento. Yesterday Sheriff Scott Jones (Mr Neo Nazi) basically asked his supporters to come out and “counter protest” the BLM protest at the convention center. We walked over there with the kids wondering why the sound of two choppers was drowning our voices and why busloads of cops in riot gear were pumping each other up behind the hall. Turns out that they decided to surround the small crowd of protestors as an intimidation tactic. The entire scene felt ominous: the sheriff’s police officers appeared as tormentors, oppressors in front of a peaceful protest. I told Cesar afterwards about how I find the words “they put their bodies on the line” overused in white feminist activism, but how black women are constantly really putting their bodies on the line for all of our rights. Every time the leaders of the BLM Sacramento movement go out into the streets they are risking their lives. We need to do better in supporting them on the ground, I know I need to do much better. One of the women from the local BLM chapter received a death threat yesterday through the sheriff’s supporters. Can you imagine continuing to fight for our collective rights every day even when you know your life is in danger? By the way this is the same sheriff who wanted to keep profiting from federal ICE money. People voted for him again, so it’s obvious where the sentiments of the majority of this city’s inhabitants lie... Sacramento will never be the “most diverse” city they keep trying to pretend it is, and I will never trust Sac PD. They aren’t even capable of enforcing bike traffic violations (it IS illegal to ride bikes on the sidewalk, apparently people here never got that memo), but they are pretty trigger happy when it comes to spraying bullets into the backs of innocent black men and women, and providing ICE with a list of detained immigrants, even if they haven’t been charged with a crime.

A few days ago I was catching up with a very old friend of mine, who is originally from Brasil but now lives in Germany. She told me how anxious she is about the upcoming elections in Brasil, specifically the neo-fascist candidate Bolsonaro, which I readily admitted to not knowing much about (we rectified that during our conversation thankfully). It reminded me of how I felt before the US elections back in 2016, and I surprised myself by still wondering how these people arrive in such powerful positions with the help of their country’s population. It shouldn’t be a surprise, I mean look at what happened here. It scares me for Brazil, a country only beginning to live with democracy, going through steep learning curves. A quote stood out to me in one of the articles my friend sent to me “Bolsonaro visited New York last fall, where he was enthusiastically received by Shannon O’Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations. O’Neil had no qualms about discussing policy with a Brazilian neofascist, but, as John Ackerman noted in an article in The Nation, she was quick to warn of the supposed danger to US interests of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will soon be sworn in as Mexico’s new president.” The fear of the left is something this country will never get rid of. My despair does not come from an irrational place, there are very real reasons for feeling like giving up sometimes.

But every time I feel on the brink of giving up I read something that shakes me back into place, I watch my children play and ask questions that I know I have to answer truthfully, because while my life hasn’t in any shape or form been easy, I was still born with privileges that they may need to fight for. Because one thing we will never lie about is where we come from, who we are, and what we are fighting for. Changing the world doesn’t mean fighting policies with lesser evil policies and hoping for the best. Changing the world means ripping the institutions from the ground and replacing them with a system that isn’t governed in majority by older white men who think they are entitled to rule over everyone else.

(I don’t even want to get started on Kavanaugh and why people continue to disregard, disbelieve and criminalize women who come forward with their sexual assault and abuse stories. My TMJ has been playing up badly again, and I have been waking up with bad headaches these past few weeks. It suddenly dawned on me, after reading the current president’s disgusting tweet on survivors and their parents (I can’t go back and reread for my own peace of mind and mental health), that it was all too triggering for me. I have never talked to anyone about the full extent of my personal experiences, and most likely never will. And the more stories I read, the more disgusting reactions I see, the more I want to hide in my corner and curl up and disappear. I have overcome too much to let disgusting predators cause more damage to my mental health, but unfortunately, whether I like it or not, they are. I was going to write a whole blog post about it, but that bar that stops me from talking about it also stops me from publishing words about this subject. This is why I am happy I still keep a private journal... Anyway, yet another reason why the rot MUST be dug out, including all areas it has touched, even slightly, and it must be destroyed. There will be no real rebirth unless we have burnt the rotten core of these systems and people to the ground.)

Main sources of inspiration these past few weeks:

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness - Austin Channing Brown

Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home

Michelle Alexander’s new NYT Opinion Column

Heart Berries: A Memoir – Terese Marie Mailhot

Book reviews are on my website right HERE.