Because I am a woman

The first half of this post was written a couple of weeks ago. I just wrote the rest today. But I thought that they sort of went together, so I combined them. Thanks for reading.

There is so much going in the world and I am overwhelmed by it.  I sometimes think that my life would be so much easier if I just did not know about all of the atrocities that are going on.  In the past week, we learned about the nightmare in Nigeria when in April, over 200 girls were taken by a militant group from their school, their families, their community.  And I am so very happy that the story is being covered and that there is momentum around recovering those children. I have followed the story, and I have watched the social media adopt this as the cause of the week.  This is not a criticism, but it has encouraged me to think a bit more critically about where we really are.

We need a cause, and it helps if it comes in nice tidy chunks, if we can make a sound byte out of it, if we can #hashtag it, and even sometimes if we can address it at arm's length.  The experience of those children in Nigeria is heartwrenching, and watching their mothers plead for help and awareness tears me to pieces.  But what happens if they are not found?  What happens if they are found?  What happens next?  I would predict that no matter what happens, in a month we will have forgotten about it and we will have moved on.  That's just the habit that we have gotten into, and I think that we can do better.

The bottom line is that while hundreds of missing girls in one Nigerian community is an atrocity, it is only a snapshot, of a much larger problem in that country, on that continent, and around the world.  There are children abducted and abused and exploited in every corner of this planet.  Human trafficking is a business fueled by the fact that there is a demand (apparently a growing demand) for it.  Let us make no mistake, this is not something that is only happening across the ocean, it is rampant in our own country as well. But we largely ignore it.  And we ignore it not because we do not care, but because individually we feel powerless to do anything about it.

We have been lulled into complacency by news networks that focus more on the minutiae of the lives of celebrities and politicians, on petty arguments about whether or not climate change is "real", and by a complete lack of hardcore journalism.  And we could blame them and stop there, but they are certainly catering to the demand, so we are all complicit in this degradation of the information that we do get.

Continued a couple of weeks later...

Since starting to write this post, and stashing it in my drafts folder, there has been a mass shooting by a coward who felt bad for himself because for some reason women were not attracted to him, and he was jealous of the men around him who were dating women so he stabbed and shot a bunch of people. In response to that, the internet has blown up with speculation about why he did what he did, and women have rallied around an idea on twitter to get together to talk about their shared experiences. And I cannot stop watching it. I am not going to mention the hashtag because the woman who started it is receiving death and rape threats (which speaks volumes to the problem at hand), but most of you reading this will know what I am talking about.

I am continuing the blog post here because it goes right along with it.  I was leading up to the fact that we live in a world where everything is consumable, and this is especially true of women. Pornography, the sex trade, ads, rape and prostitution all exist because somewhere someone is paying for it. Young brides are the norm in other countries, and in this country children are exploited sexually in a number of ways. It's disgraceful. I have followed the hashtag, and it is heartwrenching to hear the stories of women from all walks of life, and to see the negative responses that some of them are getting. I have shared some of my own stories. Some of them personal, and some that I know from being a social worker for so many years. In fact, reading and connecting with these other women has caused me to remember some things that I think that I had forgotten on purpose.

There have been over one million tweets to date using that tag and it has been less than a week. It seems silly and useless to some, but it feels a bit different from some of the other things that people tweet about. It has been powerful to say the least. The media response has been interesting, and I have been especially intrigued by other women who are attacking women who are speaking up. Yes, we live in a country with many freedoms, and due to the women who have come before us, we have more rights than we once did. However, it is obvious that there is still a long journey ahead of us. We should not expect any less in our demand for equality due to the fact that at least we do not have it as bad as _____. It is not a contest. Every woman should have equal rights, and the right to feel safe wherever they live, but I should not feel guilty for telling my truth because someone else has it worse.

It is my hope that women can find a way to harness some of this energy and momentum to change the world. I am raising a little boy, and I want for him to grow up in a world where women are not objectified, attacked and exploited. He will learn to respect women in our home, but he at this point will be bombarded by messages that he is less than if he shows respect for and stands up for women.  And that is a shame.

Call me crazy, apparently that is still okay

So, my education is in psychology probably because understanding people is something that has always been interesting to me.  I have found that the internet is a great way for me to study my favorite subject.  Recently, I have thought a lot about conversations about acceptance and rights for all groups of people.  There is a group of marginalized people often left out of this conversation because let's be honest, we have to have some group to make fun of.  I am a part of this group, so perhaps I am hyper-vigilant about the language that gets used.  This is not a post about poor me, your words hurt me, because I generally let words just be words.  However, I hope it does serve as some food for thought.

I am a person who is living with Bipolar Disorder sprinkled with a good dab of crippling anxiety here and there.  This is not a badge I wear, it is just a fact, and I try to be as honest and vocal about it as seems appropriate because most people think that I am pretty "normal", and I want the stigma to go away.  That's where we get into trouble though.  You see, I wear the normal mask well.  I've done it most of my life, and I have good coping skills (with a healthy dose of pills), that keep me in the mainstream.  So people do not filter themselves around me.  People who know me know my story, but it is not how I introduce myself to new folks.  So I hear a lot of ignorant stuff.  

I have two lives that I have lived.  The first is pre-diagnosis, the second is post-diagnosis.  So in theory I am five years old in this second existence.  And being in a group of THEM is interesting.  I get ouchy about these words, attitudes, and general misunderstanding not for myself, but for my fellow mental health sufferers who do not have support systems in place, are homeless, are embarrassed, feel worthless, and do not know that it is okay for us to advocate for ourselves.  There are millions of people with mental health issues who are not managing as well as I am.  Perhaps my education in Psychology has helped me, perhaps I am more resilient, I do not know, and I guess that it is not all that important.  So I sometimes feel compelled to speak for the ones without a voice.  And so here is what all you "normal" folks should know.

• Referring to someone as nuts or crazy or schizophrenic or bipolar is really not okay.  I mean you could call me Bipolar I guess because that is part of who I am.  But your boss having a mood swing does not make her bipolar.  Stop it.
• If you are going to throw out a diagnosis for someone because of their behavior and because your degree in physics clearly makes you that type of expert, at least have a basic understanding of the diagnosis.  Schizophrenia does not really mean what you think it means.  Do some research.
• You do not want anyone to use the word gay or retard or any of the words that we use to disparage another on racial identity, but crazy?  Go for it.  
• Remember that mental illness is largely a silent disease.  Most people do not go around advertising it, so watch what you say to anyone in this regard.  You know not to tell a racist joke in certain circles because a person's skin color is usually pretty obvious.  Mental illness is trickier than that.  And the truth is, your boss may really be bipolar, and when she hears that you were joking about it, it could get uncomfortable.
• Know that there are 10 million people in this country struggling with what the National Institute of Mental Health calls "serious mental illness".  I would argue that most MI is pretty serious, but I will not get into an argument of semantics here.  In any case, this designation means that the mental illness causes a severe impairment in the ability to "do life" the way that others expect us to get it done.
• The above statistic refers to those cases that are known.  My experience would lead me to believe that is a lower number than the realily. Probably because so many people are scared to get help or seek treatment because it really does change the way the world looks at us.

Oh hell, I could go on and on, but I want to make sure that you finish reading this and you get the gist.  In January of 2009, my entire world turned on its ear.  I had a job that I rocked at most of the time, I had a one year old baby boy, I had a great relationship.  And then it all changed in the matter of a 24 hour period.  Everyone wants to know when I first suspected that I was crazy...can I steal the LGBTQ answer that I was born this way?  Because here is the thing.  If mental illness was due to life experiences like abuse or drug use, or any of the other ways the uninformed seem to think that mental illness happens, then I would not have one.  Now we could argue all day about genetics and why am I sick and my brother is not, but no one really knows.  I like to think of it as a time bomb.  Like it was always there...I was always a little nervous, I always worried more than most kids.  But when I track my symptoms, I generally think of my college years.  I went to an academically rigorous institution.  It was really stressful.  Sometimes I think that I had the stuff needed in my brain to make it happen, and stress was the lighter of the fuse.

I did lots of self medicating over the years to deal with all of the stuff my brain was doing to me.  And I learned to wear the mask. I worked in the field for crying out loud...allowing myself to admit a problem would have been calamitous both internally and externally.  Because the truth is that admitting to yourself or to others openly that you have a mental health issue makes a difference.  People lose jobs, lose respect, are questioned about their parenting ability, and so on.  I am not trying to argue that MI is in some way comparable or as bad as being in some other marginalized group.  But it still totally sucks.  And it sucks a lot worse for people who are not hooked up with quality treatment.

Mental illness often looks like drug addiction, or homelessness, wrecklessness and a host of other behaviors that make our friends and family mad.  We get told all sorts of ridiculous stuff about exercising more, thinking happy thoughts, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps etc.  Yeah that's helpful.  I get that people do not know the "right" thing to say when I mention my illness.  So just judiciously keep your mouth shut, hug me, love me, offer to babysit my kid for a few hours.  But do not tell me oh yeah, my great uncle on my mother's side committed suicide.  That's horrible for you, but has nothing to do with my experience.  

I am asking you to do your part to change the culture so that it becomes okay for mentally ill folks to ask for help.  Educate yourself some so that you might be able to recognize when a friend or family member are screaming silently for help.  According to the website here there is a death by suicide somewhere on the globe every 40 seconds.  Almost 2% of deaths internationally are suicides.  That's some sobering shit.  My guess is that there are many reading this who know someone no matter how distantly who has committed suicide.  And the terrible thing is that it is 100% preventable.  

It is a systematic problem that is not going to be solved quickly, I get that.  But when we consciously change our language, we begin to think about individuals and when we think about individuals we think about their problems.  When we think about their problems, some of us feel compelled to do something about it.  That's all I am going for here.  Educate yourself.  Choose reliable websites.  I find that .org and .edu are good places to start.  I cannot be explained on Wikipedia.  Don't look there.  

When we use "crazy" words to describe behaviors that we find annoying, offensive or out there, the message is sent that mental illness is still not okay.  It is a weakness, it is the fault of the ill, we chose this for ourselves.  Our brains are attacking us on a minute by minute basis.  It is exhausting.  Be gentle, be understanding, it's not like we want to be out of the ordinary, it just is.

Some Helpful Links:

Good articles and online support group for the mentally ill and their caregivers

National Alliance on mental illness

National Institutes of Mental Health

Managing Diversity

I have been wrestling with issues surrounding diversity for a while now.  I long for diversity in my life because I can see the value of it, but it is lacking in my world.  Or so I thought.  What I am finding is that diversity is not about skin color, sex, or sexual orientation solely.  Diversity is all around me in the attitudes and opinions of the people I associate with every day.  Sometimes diversity is very subtle and can easily be missed and if I want to broaden my horizons, I need to broaden the way that I look at diversity.

Yes, I want colorful people in my child's life.  I want them in my life.  But if I am willing to dig a little past appearances, I can find what I am looking for.  The subtler forms of diversity can be difficult to manage because opinions and attitudes can be tricky.  We naturally gravitate toward people who share our beliefs, values and dreams right?  But I think that life can be so much richer when we have to think deeply, debate respectfully, and open our minds to the ideas of others.  How do we do this while still sticking strongly to our own values and attitudes?  I've decided that it does not go against my values to have conversations with people I don't agree with, in fact, I am evolving into the type of person who is beginning to value this.

I don't think that we have enough opportunity in daily life for critical thinking and that is what I am talking about.  I can remain true to myself while opening myself to the ideas of others.  Some of my best friends are people who I originally was afraid of, did not understand, or really did not like.  It is hard to forge a friendship with someone when you don't have strong feelings about them one way or the other, and how boring would my life be if I only associated with people who never challenged my ideas and attitudes.

I had a good conversation with a friend the other day about voter registration laws.  I would not call it a heated discussion per se, but we were definitely coming at it from different angles.  I like to think that we both came away from it with some new knowledge or ways of thinking about it.  The conclusion seemed to be that we did not know the answers, and decided that sometimes that has to be good enough.

So I am challenging myself, and whoever else may read this to open your mind and your circle a little bit.  Identify where diversity is lacking in your life, then seek to meet and associate with those people you don't understand or agree with.  I really think that it is a step toward peace that we don't often think about.

Living in a UU world

So, I do a lot of thinking, and I get lots of ideas about things and I do not always know what to do with them.  Instead of flooding my friends and family with all of this, and because I am not a disciplined journal writer, I decided that I would write a blog as a part of my spiritual practice and journey.

I cannot guarantee that everything I write about will be about my church or the faith tradition that I love, but I guess that I figure that I am beginning to define myself in certain ways and being a UU is a big one, so I imagine it will all be related.

UU stands for Unitarian Universalist, and is the faith I have found after years of searching that works best for me.  It is a covenantal faith tradition, meaning that we do not have a text like the Bible or the Koran that we follow, or a doctrine or creed that drives us in our worship and fellowship together.  We are guided instead by promises that we make to each other and by seven principles that we hold to be true.  Unitarian Universalist Principles can be found here.  Keep reading and I will link you to the children's version which in my opinion is cooler and easier to relate to.

I have grown up as a religious person for a good part of my life, and have been raised in a number of Protestant faiths as a child.  However, as an adult, I had a lot of questions that could not be answered, and were not really appreciated in many of those religions.  So I just stopped going.  A few years ago, my dear husband decided that we should go back to church and I was terrified.  I was not sure what I believed, but was sure I did not believe the way church people believed, and I dug in my heels.

I began to search online for a non-denominational religion that I felt I could at least sit through the service without feeling like a complete hypocrite.  Somehow, I ran across the UU church.  I had never heard of it, so I did not have many of the preconceived notions that are out there about what a UU church is.  There is a lot of misunderstanding, but I am sure that is true of any religion.  I will leave that for another blog post.

We went to the church a few times, and it was such a drastic change from what we were both used to that I think we got a little scared.  There was no Bible, many religions were discussed and honored, and it just felt a little loosey goosey to two people who grew up with much more religious structure.  So we went back to be unchurched for a couple of years, but I kept thinking about and researching the church, the faith and the organization.

Along came lil man, and then we started thinking about church again.  I kept thinking of the first principle of the worth and dignity of every person and the fact that all religious and spiritual beliefs are accepted (perhaps questioned and debated) and that he would learn about all of them and then be free to choose his own path when he was older.  So when he was old enough to participate in children's religious education we went back.  We have been going every since, and are so involved in the community now that I am not sure what I would do without it.

I enjoy the challenge of having to find my own spiritual path, and to be honest, I am not sure what it is.  I cannot define who I am or what I believe spiritually with the conviction of some of my fellow congregants.  I know that I believe in being kind, I believe in acceptance, and I believe that everyone has the right to believe or not believe however they wish.  And that's what I love about the fact that I have found this religious community to which I now proudly belong.

Oh yeah, the children's principles are here.