Super Fullmoon

I am full
I have enough
I can let go without flying away
Like a stone skipping water
A lidless jar of pennies

Index Cards

Prompt: What do women want?

What do I want? As a woman?

I want to wake up everyday with the confidence that I find sometimes after a lot of work, a lot

of unlearning, and a ton of self reflection. I want to wake up with that knowledge, that truth that I found

without having to leave index cards taped to my nightstand. Whatever is opposite that truth, is so

ingrained into my body mind and spirit, that I cannot remember the truth with each sleep.

(Though, the more I learn, the better I sleep. That is true). But why is it so easy to get distracted from

what I know to be true; that I, a woman, a mother, a sexual being, an artist, a partner, and friend

am enough as I am?

Why do I have to talk myself into saying that I am beautiful? My body is strong and that is true-why does it also need to be small? Every day I have to remind myself that my size, intellect, potential, and talents are real and worth space on this earth.

So, what I want is all that time that it takes to remember, to remind myself, and to believe what is true. I want that time to make art, to write, to walk through the woods. I want to trust that I will be able to contribute money even though I spend so much of my time making and communing with nature. I want the time back that I have spent hating myself and other women, other people, who seem happy and productive. Who seem to have it all. I want the time I spent hating myself to love myself and move through this world with THAT feeling instead. I want that time of hate and confusion back to climb and give and laugh. I want to laugh. I want the time to laugh. I want to laugh and for everyone around me to laugh too. I want the thick air of other people’s hate and confusion to be unable to disturb my laughing and my self love. I want the anxiety of uncertainty that riddles my young daughter’s mind and body to be replaced with laughter and the all the time in her life that she will spend hating herself to be given back-times two-to love herself and move through this world with that truth instead. I want her to know that she has time to laugh and love and make and talk to trees. I want her to never ask me again is she is fat. I want women to look at each other as teammates and for our daughters to see it. So that as they grow they will never have to waste their time wondering if that girl is gonna take her down. I want to walk into a room and not beg to be there. I want to eat food and not have to talk about it or defend it to anyone-including myself.  I want to reflect on my day and see NO times that I was riddled with the anxieties and not just loving my kids. I want to live without needing permission. I want the index card industry to go bankrupt because we all just know, every morning upon waking that we are worth it. That we are worth waking up. That our work, our ideas, our strength, and our time is valuable. When we make speeches, we trust our words and speak from the heart and fuck the cards because when we make a mistake we laugh. We don't have time to worry anymore.

Monday's Girls

There was a softening at the beach this morning. The warm sun, the forgiving sand, and the wind so light that a ponytail can be messy. I watch the waves roll in for a long time thinking about the molecules rolling around one another, thinking of all the space between them. I remember the end of, “The Last Unicorn,” as the white rolling sea foam slowly becomes a toppling mass of lost unicorns. I think of how the bull pushed them out there and the motley crew that walks to the edge of the earth in order to recover the magical population. Who are these unicorns? Why hoard them? Why hide them? Isn’t the world so much better with them in it?

The waves are like melted butter pouring over fresh air-popped popcorn. I think of all the folks returned to earth on this day and the cycle of living and dying.  I squish the fine, wet sand between my toes and feel thousands of years and souls rise to mingle with hair, nails, skin-as if to dance with all that came before me. Playing with the ocean is one of my favorite pass times. I run to her and let her chase me back out. I jump in and run out. This goes on for some time. I play with her like I play with children and give no shits about being seen.

My daughter is burying herself in the sand nearby. Today, in this softening, she is comfortable. Yesterday the wind was loud, the sand was cold, and the water was a little yellow-brown at the edges. She covered her ears and curled into her sweatshirt and cried at the sheer muchness of it all. Her friend and I held her hands and pulled her past the waterline as she screamed. When her feet hit the water she smiled. And then she covered her ears again. I realize that I did not prepare her for all of the feelings that the ocean would conjure today as all I can think about when being reunited with the ocean is the feeling of free. In the softness of today’s beach, I see her touching, playing, laughing. I remind myself that she needs a break. She needs a break from feeling and a break from me. I see where I can soften too.

I remember the great loss of today and think of all the mothers and daughters who are crying while I dance with the elements and reflect on my place in this world. I think about eating and fucking and letting go of rules and expectations. I wonder if my daughter will have the chance to grow out of her fears. I wonder if we could just let the unicorns go, let them fill the space in between, would we see the magic more often. Then there will be less space for fear. Crowding out the existential dread like dark leafy greens for a sugar addict.

I turn to my friend, the ocean, one last time before we have to go. I thank her for her beauty and her perspective. I revel in her power and her reach. I try to memorize the feeling of belonging, of play, and reverence. I try to memorize the sets, the horizon, and the endlessness. I want to imprint all of this clarity and set it as the wall paper in my mind. I want to hear this softness when I close my eyes. I want this peace to ride with the blood through my body and be the resting of my face.  

Anti-Gravity

I am strong, big, and heavy.

     I am an extremely strong person. I came this way, physically strong, of solid ilk and stature. But I have not always identified as strong. Until I developed my strength, I just felt big. I come from big, northern European people. We have lifting arms and wide shoulders, boobs to nurse armies, and sturdy, potato eating jaws. I have always been aware of this bigness and, for most of my life, have tried to escape it. In my tweens, I tried to escape my body in the same way most the other tweens in the 80's and 90's were doing it: I threw up, avoided food, and/or chronically over exercised. As a teenager, I smoked cigarettes, drank too much coffee, and became a vegetarian. In my twenties, I was a poor bartender/college student and ate what was free or easy, drank too much liquor, and danced my ass off almost every night. For the most part, all these things worked in terms of escapism and warding off the inevitable bigness pulsing through my DNA. But, even at my most “small” and unhealthy, there has always been a dense set of bones and sturdiness about me. I have always been the friend you would call to help you move.

     When I was a young girl, no one talked to me about physical strength. It was all about big or small. Those weren't even the words of choice, of course, as any teen girl can tell you, there is skinny or fat. In my youth, we worked out to be hot (skinny) not strong. I never even considered building strength to be awesome or keep myself safe. We were taught avoidance in order to stay safe: Dress in a conservative manner to avoid rape, don’t go to certain parts of town to avoid being raped, (that was long before we talked about how it was the rich white dudes at the north end parties who were doing all the raping). And it's not like our cover models were muscular at that time. Not like now. I know there were female athletes, but no one was talking to me about them. Nope. Hot and skinny was why we hit the gym at 16.

So to review:

1)    Be skinny and hot

2)    Cover your skinny, hot self and stay home so that your slutty ass doesn’t get what you asked for by being skinny and hot

But, I digress.

     The thing about the kind of big and sturdy I happen to be is that it is also heavy. I am not talking about the word that some folks use instead of fat. I am not talking about girth. I am talking about gravity and mass, weight. When the leaders of our feminist and body positive movement write about judging books by their cover, this is one of the things they are talking about. In the same way that a person’s size cannot tell you how healthy they are, you may not be able to guess someone’s weight upon seeing them. I am heavy. I am heavier than you might guess. I have carried this heaviness through many sizes and degrees of health. I have pondered the benefit of this heaviness (too heavy to drag off!) and also it’s detriment. (Doctors LOVE to tell me to start exercising and stop eating fried foods after looking at my chart. What was that? Invisible? Right). The biggest detriment by far is due to the culture of numbers on a scale dictating self worth in this country. I have tried to shed this value at exactly the same rate as the numbers on the scale, consistently, throughout my whole life.

     Despite my big and sturdy, heavy self, I have always been drawn to physical activity. In my youth it was extracurricular sports and the teen skinny craze as explained above. I never excelled at sports due to what I thought was my size and weight. It wasn’t until my college years that I realized I was bad at sports because I was afraid to fall down. As a person who perceived themselves to be big and heavy, I had spent my whole life trying to avoid EVER falling down. I did not bomb hills on foot or bike. I walked carefully and did not take physical risks that may embarrass me. I had no interest in the extra attention of falling down or of the pain that the heaviness of my body would inflict as my solid, sturdy bones crashed to the earth.
     However, in college after a hard break up, I moved across town to a heavily wooded area and started wandering along the interurban trail by myself. I fancied myself a real woodsman though the trails started in the center of town. I was terrified alone on the trails (stay out of the woods to avoid being raped!) but needed to be on them to smell trees, dirt, and water and to walk as far away from my feelings as possible. My adventures steadily increased and I soon started challenging myself to walk further into the forest, take unknown turns, and, oddly, to run, really run, down the hills. This was the first time in my life that I felt ready to fall down. Though I cannot recall ever falling, I remember the moment when I felt ready for it if it happened.
   In my thirties I began my short-lived roller derby career. Needless to say, I was able to get deeply in touch with falling down during this time. My derby years were short-lived due to babies, multiple big city moves, and time commitments which was devastating as roller derby was the first time in my life where my heavy, sturdy body was looked at with eyes that saw potential and benefit. At about year two, I was doing a hitting drill with a new skater and through her exhaustion she spit, “It’s like hitting a brick wall over and over.”  I smiled proudly. “I know.” Little girl me cannot believe that I took that complaint as a compliment and even remembering it now I am a little misty eyed at how far I have come with regards to my body image. Now, as a full time yoga instructor and a hobby runner I look at the strength of my body as a tool. In my yoga practice, it allows me to move my body slowly through time and space and create beauty with the forms. As a runner, I am also slow but can run for a long time and can confidently climb hills and navigate technical trails.

    What I have found is that practicing yoga and running through the woods is my church. In recent months, I have been doing a great deal of both and started chanting with the goddesses some as well. I, like many folks, have been trying to make sense of what has happened, what has been happening, what it means for me, my children, and for the targeted communities in which many folks I love are a part. I run and I chant, and I open my heart to the sky. But I am cautious. I work hard not to fall.
     Yesterday as I ran through Pt Defiance, I sped up down a hill. I normally slow down. I sped up and hit a dirt mound in the center of the trail. I hit the mound with my foot, my knee bent, and the back of my leg flexed hard. For a reason unknown to me I pushed off instead of trying to steady myself. My jump was not awesome. I caught very little air. But, it was the first time that I realized that my strength is what could make me fly. That it is not the weight of my strength that keeps me so close to the ground, but the weight of my fear. This fucking fear that I carry around with me everywhere, all the time like a wet sand bag. The fear of being laughed at, misunderstood, blamed for suffering, of taking up space, of making mistakes, of being different, of being the same. The fear that I can do nothing, will say the wrong things, cannot and do not affect change. And so I am heavy and grounded but not, as it turns out, because of my body mass, but because I am scared. 

     I would like to thank the recent election for making me come to and look closer at my fear; the abundance of it, the privilege that it is rooted in, the sheer uselessness of it. I am committed to shedding it and replacing it with more strength as I train for the revolution (oh yes, I have started). I will let the strength of my body hold me and ground me still. I will remember that falling down isn't so bad and also that it could mean more from greater heights. I will try to push off more than land. And I invite anyone who would like to use my strength to let me know, as I have plenty, and I am just coming to realize what it is for. 

Ghoul Talk

It is of relatively little surprise that I would have some opinions about the television programming being aimed at little girls these days. There are, of course, some shows that are working really hard to neutralize the gender pushing and to portray female characters as something more than catty or compliant. And then there are the shows that my daughter likes to watch; the shows where all the female characters are about high school age, have legs for days, wear butt cheek grazing skirts and high heels, and talk with a valley girl stab.

Plots to these shows hardly stray from the formula where a group of girl friends work together to solve problems in their greater community. Along the way, there are staples in the conflict:

• ·      The villainous leader girl whose valley girl accent is thick and mean, as opposed to just present, and generally leads at least two dumb minions who are not intentionally as mean as much as they are sheep.
• ·      The unbalancing of harmony or spirit as a prized possession is lost, stolen or destroyed.
• ·      The confrontation of tradition and the pushback from older or male characters.

I have an ongoing contention with my 6 year-old-daughter about these shows. I call them “sassy girl” shows and otherwise judge them in front of her, in a poor attempt to create dialogue around concerning issues. She only hears the judgment part (she’s pretty intuitive…) and then blocks out the other parts (…and stubborn).

Recently, as summer is winding down and camps are running out but I still have the same amount of work to do, my daughter has been watching these shows with greater abundance. Because of my intolerance for her attitude after having watched a “sassy girl” show, I have started banning certain shows like Barbie and Brats (the obvious sassy factors), and I teeter on Monster High (more on that later). So, she decides to revisit My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.  (Now, this show I stand with. I was an avid My Little Pony collector as a child. I still have ALL of them and am just waiting for a clear weekend to clean them up, comb their hair and display them in a china hutch we recently inherited). The ponies are great! They are headed for gender neutral, none of them has a valley lisp, they all WORK, and their whole purpose is to build community. However, my little teenager trapped inside a young girl gets tired of all this practical entertainment and switches to Equestria Girls, which is basically an elongated sassy-fied pony girl with legs for days, a short skirt, and chunky boots. (HASBRO! Why did you need to do that!?!? The ponies were just fine as they were!) For the most part, the main characters maintain their character but as teenage girls, they all now have boy crushes, human female insecurities, and rely a little more heavily on the guidance of a leader (Twilight Sparkle) instead of working together as a group. And the skirts! What is with that?!

A couple days later, I hear my daughter sneaking an episode of Monster High and wander around the corner to start being contentious when I am frozen by the high degree of sexism that is taking place before my eyes. I realize that I am walking in mid-show and that there is context missing, however, no amount of context could make what I was seeing okay. I decide that I need to sit down and watch this episode start to finish, whilst taking notes, so that I can more confidently bring the hammer down on this once and for all.

I had been waffling on Monster High for months and would not allow her to watch it at the house. She was watching it at her grandmother’s house and playing with her friend’s MH dolls at school. My waffling was due to the fact, solely I think, that they are monsters. They still have waif waists, SUPER short skirts and Carrie Bradshaw heels, but they are also monsters and so I was trying to be a little more open to them. I mean, monsters are a step in the right direction, yes?

Truth be told, I was unaware whether or not they were “sassy girls” as I never watch the show with her. The only reason my kids watch TV is because I need to work, cook, clean, breathe, hide, internet shop, or otherwise be unengaged with them. But the other day I said to my daughter, “Hey will you watch the roller skate episode of Monster High with me later today?”  Her face lit up like an octogenarian birthday cake. Her smile wrapped clear around to the back of her head. She couldn’t believe it. She agreed with all the happiness and excitement I have ever seen her respond with and she set out to find the right episode and get it ready.

At that point, seeing her sheer and pure joy that I would want to watch a “sassy girl” show in its entirety, without doing anything else at the same time, WITH HER, took all the air out of my need to assess and deconstruct what I might see. We watched it and I have another essay prepared about what I saw (Roller derby being an all boy sport? Boyfriends putting their paws down about stuff? Team support coming with the slinky costume change? Egh!) but I also have to say that I had made some assumptions about the show that weren’t true. The monster girls are kind, they overcome a pretty big sexist conflict, and many of the characters are two and half dimensional.

Mostly what happened though, was that after watching the show together, my daughter was newly open to talking about what we saw. She asked me, over pizza, what I had written about the show. I said I hadn’t written anything yet and then I asked her if she wanted to know what I learned. She did. We had a really cool conversation about the team uniforms and how I thought it was weird that no one supported the team when they wore big clunky uniforms. But after the monster girl team decided they needed to play “more like themselves” instead of playing “like the boys” and changed into short dresses and high heel skates, the whole school showed up to cheer them on.

She thought hard about this. I could tell as her chewing slowed and her eyes looked up into her brain searching for clarity. She responded, “Ya, mommy, that’s because they trained SO HARD in those big armor suits that they earned their fashion.” She repeated, “They EARNED their fashion.”

I’m still not sure what to make of that. But I like it. I like that we can talk about it. And I’ll call this one a tie: Monster High-1/ Mommy-1.

 

Knitting

9/20/11

So this thing happened the other day at school where I ruined someone's day with mindless, android life skills.  I came into a classroom where there was a young student doing something I thought they shouldn't be doing. I immediately, and without stopping to survey the situation, started in on him, "I don't think you should be blah blah blah." And followed that with, "Wha wha wha wha wha wha wha wha," like a Charlie Brown grown up.  I was met with much resistance, was called some names, had a meeting called on me, and then finally was told that I had ruined everything (This all happened before 8:45 a.m.).  Naturally, I was pretty bummed out. I had RUINED EVERYTHING.  My mind was racing and I retreated into thought as I licked my wounds. How is this my fault? I was the one who was called those nasty things!  I was just trying to-I was just trying to-Oh shit, what was I trying to do?  That is precisely it. I don't know what I was doing or why whatever that student was doing caught my eye. I didn't stop to think and then I ruined everything. 

The phrase, "didn't you stop to think?" usually means, "Why did you do that?" or "You should know better." We ask this of young people, employees, or anyone that we think we have more answers than. But really, we should take that phrase more seriously.  "Stopping to think" entails stopping and assessing the situation and having a bevy of solutions of which to choose correctly from. As it turns out, there is a reason there are so many books on the same topics (Read any consistent child rearing books lately?)  It's not because you are supposed to pick one and do what it says.  It's so you can have many solutions to choose from. (Duh, I know, but no one told me). Very few people actually do this. But, I want to be one of them.
My challenge lies in the fact that I am a person whose brain is always seeking patterns (and I'll add that I love, LOVE repetitive tasks. The more monotonous the better). I can see it in all aspects of my life.  My hobbies: sewing, puzzles, cards, untangling things, doing math, organizing, sorting, and, my church, sifting through endless racks of clothes at gigantic thrift stores. I pride myself on my rhythm and have always learned to play songs on instruments by memorizing the pattern of my hands. I also see it in my academic and/or professional approaches as well. I am always trying to figure out how to DO things.  I look for the way, the path, the guarantee. It's not that I always want things to be the same, it's just that I like to be able arrive at an outcome or know I can solve the problem.  It makes me terrible at following politics and encourages a training of the self that relies on automatic responses.
For Mother's Day, my husband took me to buy a new bike. This was awesome because my last bike, which I was in love with, was a Schwinn 10 speed from the 80's that I bought for a hundred bucks about five years ago. It weighed as much as me. It was like riding myself to work everyday. It only had a half of a working brake and I never shifted the gears because of the rust and the noise and the chain. But I had it all figured out. I could ride that bike thirty plus miles a day because I knew how to safely slow down and stop with that half brake, I built great muscle from the weight of it, and it was such a P.O.S. that I knew no one would ever try to steal it (confirmed as I gave it to a friend who locked it up outside her house til she could fix it up and it still sits there today). Then the new bike came and I couldn't remember which brake does what. It was scary because I had to think every time I wanted to stop. It was a real eye opener for me about how I train myself to do things without thinking about them. That I ride to work everyday without thinking about stopping. (I remember talking to a student about it when it happened. He was looking at me with a look that either approved of my deep thought or disproved of my unsafe bike riding. It was hard to tell). This is how I ruined everything for an 8 year old the other morning.  Because I was in the half-a-brake mode and just f***ed up my chance to turn his morning around. Both of our chances really.

Anywho, I wonder where drinking fits into all this (socially awkward drinking control anyone? Yes).  And religion (Which way? Which way?).  And I wonder why I never took to knitting-it seems right up my alley. 
My goal is to live up to some feedback I got from a colleague a few years back.  She said I was responsive and not reactive. She said it like it was true. Hmm. I want her to be right.

Things I think are Awesome:
Writing instead of watching new prime-time. (It's on RIGHT NOW)
Making journals with elementary schoolers.
Playing dress up (wink wink)
Capital letters instead of exclamation points.
Admitting I'm wrong. (Though I hardly ever am)
Salami
Leopard Print

Heros:
The roller hockey guys who let me share the rink with them.
People on buses and trains who let women with children sit down.
People who really listen

Stew

So it's back to school and my brain is on kids, learning, mentoring, and facilitation.  At my school, we do this awesome thing the weeks before and after school is in session called "staff week" where as a staff we prepare for the first few weeks of school, try to organize our organization, and learn about education together.  Each year it gets better and stronger and this year was no exception.  Needless to say, my head is deep in philosophy of what we try to do.  I guess now would be a good time to clarify that I work at a democratic free school which is a growing movement in alternative education.  The philosophy is complex and includes components such as self-direction, non-coersion, democratic school governance, community building, and above all, the freedom to learn in the best way for each individual.  It is a beautiful goal and like most philosophies that are beautiful and include a goal, it is not perfect and is in constant flux and evolution.  There are many blogs and websites that explore these ideals in detail with much room for debate and inquiry which I will include at the end of this post, for, I do not want this to be a platform, just a muse.

Anywho, sometime this summer I jokingly (mostly seriously) started calling Progressive Education passive-aggressive education (mostly where administrations are concerned) because "allowing kids/ teachers to make choices and educational decisions" can sometimes feel like no one will make a decision and/ or they want you to feel like you've made a decision but really want you to do something a specific way.  Passive Aggression.  No one likes it.  Almost everyone does it.  It really doesn't work and it can make simple things very confusing.  I've seen it it organizations and in students.  It comes up a lot in families. But no matter where it rears its ugly (but trying to by nice) head, it causes resentment, doubt, and generally leaves real work unfinished.

 This is where we arrive at a realization I recently had.  It happened yesterday as I played my first recreational Roller Derby scrimmage. An awesome thing about playing roller derby is that if you are not in the right spot, are making a bad decision, or are missing a good opportunity, a girl on your team will physically move you to where you should be.  We push each other through the pack, to block, to get the jammer to the top, or to knock someone over.  It works because the first thing they teach you in derby is to have a strong foundation in case someone pushes or hits whether you're expectiung it or not.  And you know, if you are steady and strong, that the girl who moves you has your best interest in mind.  On my ride home, I was replaying how many times this happened to me during the scrimmage and was feeling so grateful because I learned something every time it happened.  Being relatively new to the sport, I have a lot of rules and strategy to learn and, for me, the best way to learn is to live it.  You can tell me a million times, but I am a person who learns more through action and experience and from clear direction.  As a teacher as well as a parent, I think about this sort of thing often and while I observe the way my kids learn, I wonder if and when to put them in the"right spot". Particularly in the environment in which I teach, I spend a great deal of time hoping that I am offering the right information, projects, and exposure to ideas the students have expressed interest in without being vague or pushy (as all parents and teacher do, right?).  Regardless, what I really love about this derby idea of education is how proactive it is.  It is exciting to me as a strategy that you can be overt and aggressive in a positive way.  In the way that you keep a kid from being "knocked down" or missing the play entirely.  It relies, also, upon building a solid foundation, so that if you go to "move" them they don't end up on their face.
As a theory, and especially as a practice, this thought needs much more stewing time.  Food for thought nonetheless.

Until next time-be patient, grateful, and loving.





 Free School Resources:
AERO-www.educationrevolution.org
IDEA-www.democraticeducation.com
Bruce Zeines Blog-http://bzeines.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/back-to-school-labor-day-special/
If you really want to hit the source-A.S Neill's "Summerhill"
Anything by Chris Mercogliano

Things that are awesome:
Colored and patterned duct tape.
Pegging/ Hemming old pants and feeling like you have new pants
Kindle or e-readers (Sigh-it's true-I didn't want to believe it.  But now buying more books  than I read take sup a lot less space.)
Craftster.org
Ready Made Magazine

Heros:
My husband recently became my soup hero