Persist, the signs say.
You remember how my office used to be, don't you? Someone in the chair across from me, possibly weeping, someone right outside the office, resting her weight on one foot and then the other, and then there was likely someone else doing repeated drive-bys, walking the inner circle of hallway and looking through the glass wall, hoping I would free up. Emails were flying into my inbox and I was late for a call. And I loved it. I loved problem solving, and the listening, and it wasn't necessarily a healthy way to live, but I was surrounded by people all day long. I would talk on the phone for the hour ride home, and walk in to a house full of kids, people clamoring for attention here, too. The busyness was an opiate, it was how I knew I was in the world. I didn't save lives but I felt alive. Needed.
Sometimes it's so quiet around here, you could drop that pin. I hear from a couple people every single day--but the number of people seeking me out particularly has dropped precipitously. I am no longer a person people seek out for advice, unless that person also has cancer--somehow that evens the playing field. My inbox is fine, I don't owe anyone an answer. Some days I exchange a few words with Kim, and nary another adult has a thing to say to me all day. I can always count on certain friends and relatives for meals and walks, and I dearly, dearly appreciate it. But I am incredibly alone most days, which is strange medicine for that woman who thrived on busyness. I feel at loose ends, if you will. There's nothing to be done for it, but lately, I have come to realize that my fears of dying have somehow tripped up my ability to live fully. I'm scared and it has frozen me in place a bit. So, I'm trying to step back and take a clear look at what I'm doing with my days. I need to reset.
One thing I've tried is yoga, and it is clearly not the answer to loneliness. I mean, oh, sigh. I guess I'm going to die and just not be good at yoga, and I know, I know, the point isn't to be good at all the poses, but I'm so bad at all the poses that I often seem to be having my own kind of class, over in the corner. I'm three moves behind, and I don't see how to ease from one position to another gracefully, and you can be damn sure I'm not breathing right, which I hear is is critical.
I also cry in yoga. A lot. I'm not alone in this--I have taken an informal poll and other women cry in yoga class, too. Not all yoga classes--I rarely cry during the class I sometimes take at the cancer center, but I'm good at that one. Some of the people in that class are doing chair yoga and the instruction is tilted to compromise, to bodies with ports, and bodies with irradiated bones, and bodies tipped full of fatigue. But in classes at regular gyms, where I feel hemmed in by an abundance of health, of lithe bodies pushing to their limits, of women clad in yoga gear who don't seem to be contemplating mortality, much anyhow, I cry at my own inadequacy, at my own fundamental aloneness. In those classes, I feel the same lonely ache I feel at the baseball field, watching the boys play baseball, surrounded by the younger, healthier parents of the boys' peers, with their Patagonia shells, and their wealthy dishelveledness.
Oh, God, I can hardly bear when I am this sad and self-centered. What I wanted to tell you was that there is something about yoga, the low lights and the dark room, the murmur of the instructor, the deep breathing, that leaves me vulnerable and weepy. As I said, I'm not the only one who feels permission to cry or perhaps the quiet time at the end of class allows for an opening of floodgates we are used to keeping closed tight. Sometimes, when I am laying on the floor, tired, silent, alone (even though there are the other women on their mats, in their own heads), I think this kind of quiet nothingness might be something like dying. Which of course makes me cry all the more, because I am dying, we are all dying, and I didn't know that as a child. I didn't see the endpoint of the journey as I do, in spades, now.
It's been really something else, the last couple of weeks, has it not? There is crying in baseball and all other national pastimes, including Senate judiciary hearings.
We are so ill-equipped to talk about sexuality, gender, our bodies, assault, the violence of non-consensual sex to our psyches and our bodies, in private, and so to see it take place in a public sphere almost designed to bring out the worst kind of posturing, the complete absence of listening that was the judiciary hearings was so painful. These kinds of inquiries, these kinds of revelations are so oppositional to the tenor and practice of the made for television Senate--what we want is carefulness, is care, is fullness of attention, is gratitude for the privilege of being told. When a woman dear to my heart tells me she has been assaulted, she has been raped, it has either been at a remove, often of years, and it is a secret, to be honored, an invitation to carefully respond in a way that invites disclosure and trust and leads to some kind of reckoning in which I pray the sharer is made better for having shared, or, it has been in the moment, in the white hot shame moment after when the young woman, for it has been, in the main, young women, comes to me for actual help. Shall I do something with this violation, is the question then, shall I submit to questioning, to the hardly discussed trauma of the rape kit, with its layers of questions and procedures, its tweezers and inquisition? shall I call the hotline? speak to the HR representative? knock at the door of the police station and introduce paperwork, in triplicate, to my equation? Or shall I shower, hot shower after hot shower, and retreat to my cocoon, and start the work of sublimation which will allow me to go back out into the world and smile, though, as the song goes, my heart is aching?
There was that brief moment, in between Christine Blasey Ford's testimony and Brent Kavanaugh's testimony, when the nation shuddered, when the pundits declared her sympathetic and it seemed that she was so credible, by which we mean that she struck some exact note of intelligent, expressed, undeniable pain that it seemed as if the world could be remade into a world where her words, her truthful words were, in fact, enough, and then, that moment was lost. And patriarchy roared back into the void, so that mere days passed before the President, the actual President of the nation, mocked her, mocked all of us who dared to believe in some other outcome, as if the judiciary hearings could have ever resembled an actual moment of intimacy where a truth about a violation was told and the sharer came out the better for sharing. What fools we are.
Persist, the signs say. Vote on November 6th.
Here in Massachusetts we have many reasons to vote, not the least being we have a ballot question which threatens to unwind the state law, passed in 2016, which prohibits discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations, including public restrooms and locker rooms. I don't know what the absolute latest polls show, but the last I heard, there is only a slim majority of voters who want to preserve the law. The group backing the repeal is called Keep MA Safe, and they say that whole segments of the population feel unsafe and that the law exploits their privacy and security. Ironically, the last two weeks have made many of us feel unsafe and unsure about the boundaries of privacy and security, although those feelings have nothing to do with transgender people using the bathroom.
Discrimination has no place in Massachusetts, says Freedom for All Massachusetts, the group that leads opposition to the ballot question. I cannot underscore how important it is that this ballot question pass, that we vote yes. We must aspire to treat everyone in the way we want to be treated ourselves, no matter the Senate spectacle and the President at his rallies. Transgender people should have the same basic protections as all of us ideally do--to be able to live our lives with safety, privacy and dignity. And I recognize these are ideals. It is commonplace to say we live in what people call a bubble here in Massachusetts, but the very fact that this is a ballot question, with the potential to undo the hard fought for law, suggests bubble is the wrong descriptor.
I think about bathrooms a lot, being a women with my own body post-six children, and of course, having lived through potty training of those same six children, and I also know what it is like to feel unsafe in a bathroom: it happens, occasionally, on the road, or in a poorly lit corridor in a mall. Alone in the bathroom, in a stall, the lights flickering--the fear that the person who has just entered the room is not another woman but a man, someone who could attack. What I never, ever, worry about is that the person who just came in is transgendered. Imagine being a transgendered person, forced of necessity, to use the wrong bathroom for this most intimate of moments. Imagine the fear. We are not afraid of transgender people. But transgender people have plenty to fear from us. There is an epidemic of violence against this community. Many transgender Americans--especially trans women of color--face transgender phobia, misogyny and racism in their daily lives. Let's please vote to be sure that the non-discrimination law in this state is not unraveled.
Since the election of Trump and Pence, there has been a notable increase in the vitriol and anti-transgender rhetoric, in addition to an overall rise in hate crimes since 2016, including a rise in bias-motivated violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation. This can't be a surprise to anyone, and it is part and parcel of the aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings. Only hate-fueled ignorance could lead to Trump mocking Blasey's memory to the cheers of his people at the rally. It is a kind of permission to act on racism and sexism that seems like inevitable punishment for the me too movement. We can't simply be a culture that listens carefully to women. When women get angry, their anger is incredibly threatening to the world order, the ordering of things into what matters, and what is, quite literally, trashed. Where do transgender people even begin to fit into this order? Let us please let Massachusetts be a place where the rule of law is ethical and moral.
That's it for my unasked for advice for the day. I no longer measure my life in busyness, but in solitude, with a healthy dose of twins at the beginning and the end of a quiet day. I'm no longer that woman in the busy office anymore, but I'm also not not her. She is another version of me, pre-cancer, or at least pre-cancer awareness, and naive as all get out. I thought I would live to be over one hundred, I really did, and I couldn't imagine that life would stop me in my tracks and force this reckoning. But here I sit, in my silent office, railing against the machine and hoping you will join me, at least at the ballot box if, fair reader, you live in Massachusetts with me. If not, you go out and fight your good fight where you are. I miss you.
Sometimes it's so quiet around here, you could drop that pin. I hear from a couple people every single day--but the number of people seeking me out particularly has dropped precipitously. I am no longer a person people seek out for advice, unless that person also has cancer--somehow that evens the playing field. My inbox is fine, I don't owe anyone an answer. Some days I exchange a few words with Kim, and nary another adult has a thing to say to me all day. I can always count on certain friends and relatives for meals and walks, and I dearly, dearly appreciate it. But I am incredibly alone most days, which is strange medicine for that woman who thrived on busyness. I feel at loose ends, if you will. There's nothing to be done for it, but lately, I have come to realize that my fears of dying have somehow tripped up my ability to live fully. I'm scared and it has frozen me in place a bit. So, I'm trying to step back and take a clear look at what I'm doing with my days. I need to reset.
One thing I've tried is yoga, and it is clearly not the answer to loneliness. I mean, oh, sigh. I guess I'm going to die and just not be good at yoga, and I know, I know, the point isn't to be good at all the poses, but I'm so bad at all the poses that I often seem to be having my own kind of class, over in the corner. I'm three moves behind, and I don't see how to ease from one position to another gracefully, and you can be damn sure I'm not breathing right, which I hear is is critical.
I also cry in yoga. A lot. I'm not alone in this--I have taken an informal poll and other women cry in yoga class, too. Not all yoga classes--I rarely cry during the class I sometimes take at the cancer center, but I'm good at that one. Some of the people in that class are doing chair yoga and the instruction is tilted to compromise, to bodies with ports, and bodies with irradiated bones, and bodies tipped full of fatigue. But in classes at regular gyms, where I feel hemmed in by an abundance of health, of lithe bodies pushing to their limits, of women clad in yoga gear who don't seem to be contemplating mortality, much anyhow, I cry at my own inadequacy, at my own fundamental aloneness. In those classes, I feel the same lonely ache I feel at the baseball field, watching the boys play baseball, surrounded by the younger, healthier parents of the boys' peers, with their Patagonia shells, and their wealthy dishelveledness.
Oh, God, I can hardly bear when I am this sad and self-centered. What I wanted to tell you was that there is something about yoga, the low lights and the dark room, the murmur of the instructor, the deep breathing, that leaves me vulnerable and weepy. As I said, I'm not the only one who feels permission to cry or perhaps the quiet time at the end of class allows for an opening of floodgates we are used to keeping closed tight. Sometimes, when I am laying on the floor, tired, silent, alone (even though there are the other women on their mats, in their own heads), I think this kind of quiet nothingness might be something like dying. Which of course makes me cry all the more, because I am dying, we are all dying, and I didn't know that as a child. I didn't see the endpoint of the journey as I do, in spades, now.
It's been really something else, the last couple of weeks, has it not? There is crying in baseball and all other national pastimes, including Senate judiciary hearings.
We are so ill-equipped to talk about sexuality, gender, our bodies, assault, the violence of non-consensual sex to our psyches and our bodies, in private, and so to see it take place in a public sphere almost designed to bring out the worst kind of posturing, the complete absence of listening that was the judiciary hearings was so painful. These kinds of inquiries, these kinds of revelations are so oppositional to the tenor and practice of the made for television Senate--what we want is carefulness, is care, is fullness of attention, is gratitude for the privilege of being told. When a woman dear to my heart tells me she has been assaulted, she has been raped, it has either been at a remove, often of years, and it is a secret, to be honored, an invitation to carefully respond in a way that invites disclosure and trust and leads to some kind of reckoning in which I pray the sharer is made better for having shared, or, it has been in the moment, in the white hot shame moment after when the young woman, for it has been, in the main, young women, comes to me for actual help. Shall I do something with this violation, is the question then, shall I submit to questioning, to the hardly discussed trauma of the rape kit, with its layers of questions and procedures, its tweezers and inquisition? shall I call the hotline? speak to the HR representative? knock at the door of the police station and introduce paperwork, in triplicate, to my equation? Or shall I shower, hot shower after hot shower, and retreat to my cocoon, and start the work of sublimation which will allow me to go back out into the world and smile, though, as the song goes, my heart is aching?
There was that brief moment, in between Christine Blasey Ford's testimony and Brent Kavanaugh's testimony, when the nation shuddered, when the pundits declared her sympathetic and it seemed that she was so credible, by which we mean that she struck some exact note of intelligent, expressed, undeniable pain that it seemed as if the world could be remade into a world where her words, her truthful words were, in fact, enough, and then, that moment was lost. And patriarchy roared back into the void, so that mere days passed before the President, the actual President of the nation, mocked her, mocked all of us who dared to believe in some other outcome, as if the judiciary hearings could have ever resembled an actual moment of intimacy where a truth about a violation was told and the sharer came out the better for sharing. What fools we are.
Persist, the signs say. Vote on November 6th.
Here in Massachusetts we have many reasons to vote, not the least being we have a ballot question which threatens to unwind the state law, passed in 2016, which prohibits discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations, including public restrooms and locker rooms. I don't know what the absolute latest polls show, but the last I heard, there is only a slim majority of voters who want to preserve the law. The group backing the repeal is called Keep MA Safe, and they say that whole segments of the population feel unsafe and that the law exploits their privacy and security. Ironically, the last two weeks have made many of us feel unsafe and unsure about the boundaries of privacy and security, although those feelings have nothing to do with transgender people using the bathroom.
Discrimination has no place in Massachusetts, says Freedom for All Massachusetts, the group that leads opposition to the ballot question. I cannot underscore how important it is that this ballot question pass, that we vote yes. We must aspire to treat everyone in the way we want to be treated ourselves, no matter the Senate spectacle and the President at his rallies. Transgender people should have the same basic protections as all of us ideally do--to be able to live our lives with safety, privacy and dignity. And I recognize these are ideals. It is commonplace to say we live in what people call a bubble here in Massachusetts, but the very fact that this is a ballot question, with the potential to undo the hard fought for law, suggests bubble is the wrong descriptor.
I think about bathrooms a lot, being a women with my own body post-six children, and of course, having lived through potty training of those same six children, and I also know what it is like to feel unsafe in a bathroom: it happens, occasionally, on the road, or in a poorly lit corridor in a mall. Alone in the bathroom, in a stall, the lights flickering--the fear that the person who has just entered the room is not another woman but a man, someone who could attack. What I never, ever, worry about is that the person who just came in is transgendered. Imagine being a transgendered person, forced of necessity, to use the wrong bathroom for this most intimate of moments. Imagine the fear. We are not afraid of transgender people. But transgender people have plenty to fear from us. There is an epidemic of violence against this community. Many transgender Americans--especially trans women of color--face transgender phobia, misogyny and racism in their daily lives. Let's please vote to be sure that the non-discrimination law in this state is not unraveled.
Since the election of Trump and Pence, there has been a notable increase in the vitriol and anti-transgender rhetoric, in addition to an overall rise in hate crimes since 2016, including a rise in bias-motivated violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation. This can't be a surprise to anyone, and it is part and parcel of the aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings. Only hate-fueled ignorance could lead to Trump mocking Blasey's memory to the cheers of his people at the rally. It is a kind of permission to act on racism and sexism that seems like inevitable punishment for the me too movement. We can't simply be a culture that listens carefully to women. When women get angry, their anger is incredibly threatening to the world order, the ordering of things into what matters, and what is, quite literally, trashed. Where do transgender people even begin to fit into this order? Let us please let Massachusetts be a place where the rule of law is ethical and moral.
That's it for my unasked for advice for the day. I no longer measure my life in busyness, but in solitude, with a healthy dose of twins at the beginning and the end of a quiet day. I'm no longer that woman in the busy office anymore, but I'm also not not her. She is another version of me, pre-cancer, or at least pre-cancer awareness, and naive as all get out. I thought I would live to be over one hundred, I really did, and I couldn't imagine that life would stop me in my tracks and force this reckoning. But here I sit, in my silent office, railing against the machine and hoping you will join me, at least at the ballot box if, fair reader, you live in Massachusetts with me. If not, you go out and fight your good fight where you are. I miss you.
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