From the archives, in honor of Lorrie’s birthday and her battle.
On Being an Aging Carbon-Based Wonder
Posted: 25th March 2018 by admin in BlogTags: aging, energy, growing older, humor
When last we parted company, starfish supporters, we were chatting about my dubious status as an athletic carbon-based wonder and my adventures in the marine world that left me with seaweed down my Tweedle Dum pants and arguing with the control panel of a nervy lap pool that had just blown my board shorts off. My aquatic prowess is impressive. I move like a manatee with a hangover. The fact that I also move like that on land is worthy of its own post sometime later. In the meantime, there was another topic that occurred to me to explore with y’all.
Today’s post won’t apply to all readers. Please take what you wish and leave the rest here.
This whole aging process is a kick, turning into an adventure in and of itself, wondering what my body will (or won’t) do next. I’m fascinated by the fact that no one really tells us what to expect as we move up in age. I think we’re supposed to absorb that information by observing folks around us who lead the way.
I became suspicious that aging was sneaking up on me one morning when I peeked in the mirror and noticed that the lines I’d seen on my sister’s neck had mysteriously crept into my house overnight and attached themselves to MY neck. Alarmed, I called her to ask if hers were missing and did she want these back. Always the colorful character, she responded with, “Up yours!” and hung up on me.
The day I glanced down at the steering wheel and saw my father’s hands instead of my own almost caused a five car pile-up. At first, I thought I was stuck in A Tale from the Crypt, but then realized A) I probably read way too much Stephen King and B) it was just my new friend, the aging process, making itself known in another way.
Now, gardening season is almost upon us. There’s nothing I like better than gardening season. I’m ready. Tiny green things? Put me in, Coach! Oh wait. I’m going to need a nap first. Until August. That should do it. It will also make for the shortest gardening season in history. But true to my South Philly roots, if I have to participate in this whole aging thing, I plan to channel the old Italian man who lived down the street from me as a kid. It will require growing roses and then yelling Italian swear words at anyone who gets close to them. “Youse bleeping kids! Get away from my bleeping roses! Bleeping move! Now, bleep it! BLEEEEEEP!”
This messes with your hearing, for sure. People I used to speak to regularly now mumble. To get even with them, I’ve just stopped speaking to them. That’ll learn ‘em. My sister used to accuse ME of mumbling. Now I know what she meant. Now that we really can’t hear each other, we talk much more often! No, I have no idea about what. Was that a requirement?
It messes with your sleep too. I have all the energy in the world at 3 am and then look and feel like something the dogs dragged in out of the rain at 3 pm. I noticed that as my sleep changed, everything got on my nerves. On my last nerve. In fact, my last nerve was writing advance directives, it was so bad.
A couple of years ago during a conversation with one of the Youth Outlook staff, I found myself thinking, “Go ahead. Keep talking to me and I’ll rip your lips off your face.” I didn’t SAY it. Just the fact that I was thinking it, though, struck me as odd. Who talks that way to that staff person? She’s one the kindest people on the planet. Wow, that sleep disturbance thing can wreck your whole decade. I mean, day. Day. Yeah. Day!
I did eventually mention these odd occurrences to my doc. She laughed. I was not in a laughing mood, given that last nerve writing its advance directives mess. When she stopped laughing…and I do wonder about so many of my health providers having to stop what they’re doing because they’re laughing too hard to continue…she announced, “Oh honey, you don’t have to put up with THAT. I can help you.” That was when I started taking a sleep aid which has created a subplot of adventures all by itself. In the truest sense, yes, it does help me sleep. It’s what I do WHILE I’m sleeping that is of some concern.
Last summer, I went to bed one night and awoke about two hours later. Or at least I thought I was awake. Apparently I also thought it was a good idea to go on Facebook. I don’t know exactly what I was trying to do but I ended up going on to the page of a new acquaintance, capturing one of her photos, reposting it on my page and giving it a status update of “Feeling Fabulous!” Mind you, we were not Facebook friends at the time and I have never in my life used the words “Feeling Fabulous!” as a complete sentence. The next morning, my phone blew up with texts from friends all over the country. “Who is that?” “Why have you been holding out on us?” “Who’s the chick?” I had no idea what they were talking about. Who is who? Holding out on what? What chick? Because knowing the photos I normally post on Facebook, we were probably talking about an actual chick. Yellow. Fuzzy. Cheep cheep. You get the picture.
When I went on Facebook to find out what people were talking about, my hair caught fire. Aaaaagggghhhhhh!!! No! No! No! Abort! Abort! I couldn’t message the acquaintance fast enough and fall over myself trying to explain that I was asleep when I did it. Thankfully, the new acquaintance had a good sense of humor and no harm, no foul. The phone needed to sleep in the kitchen after that.
I can’t say the same for that morning at the conference. Last fall, a group of Youth Outlook folks went to a training that was to last two days. Halfway through the first day, the facilitators informed us that there would be a meeting for all executive directors at 7:30 am on Day 2. Oh no. No no no. That’s not do-able. My job is mostly afternoons and evenings and has been for twenty years. I don’t do 7:30 am meetings. No coherently, anyway. I looked around the room and all of the other EDs were nodding yes, of course they’d be there. It seemed a normal request for them.
Not wanting to be the odd man out and very much wanting to do what I could to support my team in this training, I decided I’d have to take the hit and go to the morning meeting. I’d have to time when to ingest my sleep aid so that it would be cleared out and I would be coherent. Coherent is so encouraged in these jobs. Go figure.
So I did. I timed it, got in bed early enough for it to wear off before I needed to get to that meeting. The next morning, I woke up early, knowing I need at least one hour with my feet on the floor before I feel fully alert. I showered, made some in-room coffee, and got dressed. I even managed to dress myself like an executive director. I was on target to get to that meeting on time. The last stop was to pop into the bathroom and brush my teeth before exiting the room. And I promptly brushed my teeth with the estrogen cream in my shower kit.
I guarantee you, it does not taste like mint.
I did still get to the meeting on time, but the entire time I sat there, I wanted to turn to the man from Ohio sitting next to me and drag my tongue up his sleeve to get the estrogen cream taste out of my mouth.
I’ll have you know that at NO time did my doc call that day and tell me, “Oh honey, you don’t have to put up with THAT!”
Unruly neck lines. Tales from the Crypt hands on the steering wheel. Sleep Facebooking. Estrogen toothpaste. There is a LOT to put up with as we age and so few of us see it coming.
What did I come in this room for? BLEEEP!
Probably the most unfortunate thing of all is what my new friend, the aging process, has done to my hair. No, I don’t mean just that it has gone grey. I can live with that. My brother, The Major, had gone entirely white in his late 40s and he looked like a testy Santa Claus. (And he never had the chance to brush his teeth with estrogen cream, dammit!) It’s the OTHER things that this has done to my hair that I hadn’t counted on. For instance, I’ve always had the father’s hairline. Too bad I got the mother’s hair to fill it in, but there’s nothing to do about THAT now. His hairline shifted as he aged, invading lower on his temples until it started to fill in, which is the reverse of how I’ve understood that hair is supposed to behave. I’ve noticed mine doing the same thing, but sadly, it’s doing that at the same time that my eyebrows are greying out and getting harder to see, while the lowering hairline is more pronounced. Yes. It is unusual. It looks like a small stampede of confused fuzzy brown caterpillars fleeing up my temples with one albino caterpillar with alopecia bringing up the rear on either side.
A friend introduced me to one of those neat “color in your eyebrows” magic sticks last year. I think I got it right. I had to blend the whole front of my head, and that took about two hours so I missed the engagement I was getting ready for, but when it was done, my caterpillars were even and in the right places and I looked smashing…as I spent what was left of the evening feeding popcorn to the dogs and watching Netflix. But my eyebrows were fabulous.
Older friends have teased me for a while about if I was to grow a beard or not. I waited for this alleged beard to arrive and finally came to the conclusion that it might be the only factor of my new friend, the aging process, that I might not have to deal with. Until that memorable night I was driving home from work and a tractor trailer fell in behind me with its blare-y white lights. I happened to look in the mirror at him but where HE was suddenly was of no interest. I had never had a reason to have such glaring light behind me. Now that it was there, I realized I wasn’t growing a beard—I was growing fine, blonde muttonchops, and when backlit, I could pass for Ambrose Bernside. Or a bleeping Founding Father.
There are a lot of things I’ve aspired to in life. A Founding Father hair-do was never on the list. Actually that’s more like a hair-don’t. For now I will just marvel at it. I have to. I am an aging carbon-based wonder.
In the Presence of Great Spirit
Posted: 26th February 2018 by admin in BlogTags: #LGBT youth, family, healing, leadership, love
A chapter from Urban Tidepool
2008
I wasn’t looking for a new site to set up another drop-in center. I already had enough to do without adding one more program. But when I was asked to apply for a foundation grant that would allow us to do just that and hire a program manager, I couldn’t get the paperwork submitted fast enough.
It was when the new Geneva site opened that we all met Michael Fairbanks, a sophomore from St. Charles. One meeting with Michael was all it took to know that he would advance through our youth leadership program without breaking a sweat. Already involved with his school’s Gay Straight Alliance, active in community theater and taking a list of AP classes, he shared his plan to go to law school to become a corporate lawyer to work on inclusion policies for Fortune 500 companies. Michael invited all of his friends to attend the new Geneva drop-in center, bringing new kids with him almost every week. The energy he put into the drop-in center reminded me of working with Blake a few years earlier. He would make this place his own, as Blake had done.
“Michael, there’s a house party that some of our donors are holding for us, and I’d like you to join me to talk about the drop-in center and what’s going on at your school. Interested?”
He nodded. “Can I tell them about the anti-bullying training I’ve been working on and the panel presentation?”
“That’s perfect. Plan on it.”
When Michael took the floor at the party, the lights glinting off his glasses, and started to describe being bullied in his locker room, silence descended on the group. It is so striking that so many adults who grew up being bullied think that our kids are not experiencing similar situations, as if being bullied somehow stopped after the Stonewall movement. Then they hear stories like Michael’s and realize the world hasn’t changed all that much.
“I had to go to my principal and he took me out of gym,” Michael explained. “It wasn’t safe for me to be there. Because of that, we started planning some training with the faculty at their meetings. I did a presentation on gay students’ right to have a safe environment. No one is talking to the teachers about this.”
2009
Michael kicked off his junior year with a bang. He served as president of his GSA and president of his French club, balancing his commitments against his youth leadership role with Youth Outlook. We honored Michael at the October gala, presenting him with the first youth leadership award. As an agency, we decided to begin offering that award based on our experience since last year and Michael’s performance as a youth leader. At one end of the room stood several pieces of artwork he submitted for the silent auction. At the other end of the room, a PowerPoint presentation ran, highlighting Michael’s contributions to the agency and noting his semi-finalist’s award for the national GLSEN award for student advocacy on behalf of LGBT high school students.
2010
“I wrote a letter to Oprah!” Michael announced.
I looked up, startled. “What for?” I asked.
“For Youth Outlook!” he said proudly. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his backpack and handed it to me.
I thought he might be joking until I opened it and it started, “Dear Oprah Winfrey.” I scanned the letter. It explained what Youth Outlook was, who Michael was, and why he thought it was important for Oprah to be supportive of Youth Outlook. It was polite, it was genuine, and it brought tears to my eyes. “Did you send this to her?”
“I sent it to the newspaper. It’s an open letter.”
“An open letter!”
Basically, he dared one of the most revered celebrities in the history of television to get to know us. I looked at the letter again. His reasoning was solid. He pointed out that while things were changing, things were still difficult and dangerous and places like Youth Outlook were saving the lives of gay teenagers. He was right. It seemed like something she would talk about on her show.
Michael grinned. “I thought she’d pay attention more.”
09 June 2010
Oprah Winfrey
Harpo Studios, Inc.
1058 West Washington Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60607
Dear Ms.Winfrey;
My name is Michael Fairbanks. I am 16 years old and I will be a junior at St. Charles East High School in the Fall of 2010; in St. Charles, Illinois. I am the President of my school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and French club; I am the Executive Director of the Gay-Straight Alliance of St. Charles, IL; I am a member of the French National Honors Society, and I am involved in my school’s music department. I am in the Chorale, Vocal Jazz Ensemble and the Chamber orchestra; the most advanced choirs and orchestra in my school. I am an openly gay young man, and as you may know, anything pertaining to GLBTIQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer/Questioning) issues does not go over well in today’s society.
Ever since I have been in middle school, I have always been bullied and harassed due to my sexual orientation. Up until this current school year, the harassment was over the roof; mainly taking place during my physical education class. I have been called a “faggot,” “fag,” “homo,” the “gay boy,” “queer,” and many more. Not only have I been called these very mean and offensive names, but I have also received threats, just because I am gay. This was causing me a lot of stress. It would cause me so much stress that at points I didn’t even want to go to school. Over the summer of 2009, my mother and I met with my school’s administration to talk about making my school a safer place for myself, and students alike. We decided that the best and most safe way for me to get away from the bullying and harassment would to get a doctors note, and have a medical excuse. Currently, I continue making my school a safer place for all students regardless of one’s sexual orientation, or gender identity/expression. I worked with my school’s administration to edit our districts policy on bullying and harassment, by adding “sexual orientation, and gender.” Those terms will be added to the handbook for the 2010-2011 school year. I have also been working on a sign that I have created called the “St. Charles East GLBTIQ Safe Zone,” and I have already spoken at a lead teachers meeting discussing how important it is that teachers are always showing support for the students, and that the students know they can trust their teachers to have a safe classroom and someone to talk to. At the Lead teachers meeting I also talked about dealing with diversity, specifically towards the GLBTIQ community. In the fall, I plan to speak to the entire administration to address the importance of the sign. I am also on the Suicide Prevention/Awareness panel that was presented March 25. I spoke about the risk factors of the GLBTIQ community and how they are four times more likely to attempt/commit suicide than the straight community. The panel was presented in front of a live audience and was also broadcasted through every TV in the school. On July 9, 2010, the Gay-Straight Alliance of St. Charles will be hosting a GLBTIQ”Unity Day,” a day that I created for the community to celebrate diversity in the GLBTIQ community.
Outside of School, I am a youth leader, and the president of the youth advisory board for the non-profit organization, Youth Outlook. Youth Outlook is the reason I am writing you this letter. Youth Outlook is committed to providing a safe, supportive, and respectful environment for adolescents, whether they identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or queer/questioning (GLBTIQ). It is also the only agency in the DuPage, Kane, and DeKalb counties of Illinois dedicated to solely serving GLBTIQ youth. All drop-in centers are open between 6:30-9:00 p.m.. There is group on Monday (DeKalb), Tuesday (Naperville), and Thursday (Geneva and Aurora) of every week. The DeKalb and Geneva groups serve youth who are 14 through 18 years old, or until they graduate high school. The Naperville and Aurora groups serve young adults ages 16 through 20. Youth Outlook provides leadership development, a social space, and wellness education on a variety of different subjects. Some of the subjects include, but not limited to; GLBTIQ issues (Harassment/Assault, Bisexualty/Biphobia, Coming out, Homophobia/Heterosexism, GLBTIQ Culture and History, and Transgender Issues), Health (Anxiety or depression, Drugs/Alcohol, STI Prevention/Treatment, sexual assault, self-esteem, and sex and sexuality), Relationships (Abusive relationships, boundaries, conflict resolution, dating issues, family issues, and negotiation skills), and other miscellaneous social activities. Youth Outlook is what I look forward to every week. When I go to the drop-in centers, the volunteers and staff members are always fun to be around, and I always know I can trust them. I have attended all the drop-in centers (Geneva, DeKalb, Naperville, and Aurora) and I enjoy them all! Recently, in the end of January 2010, Youth Outlook had to let go of their program manager, who was very loved by all the youth and myself, because Youth Outlook lost the funding for his position. Youth Outlook is facing many financial problems right now, and we really need your help. All the money donated goes to the organization, which goes to the youth. Without any money Youth Outlook would not be able to afford certain programs and activities, and Youth Outlook, if it doesn’t have enough money, might not be able to run anymore. I don’t know what I would be able to do without my weekly Youth Outlook. And that is why we need your help. Any amount of donation would be great, and any check should be made out to “Youth Outlook.” Youth Outlook is Youth Transforming the Future.
Thank you for your time, and if you have any questions and/or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Michael D. Fairbanks
2013
I booted up my computer and sat back to wait. The dinosaur would take at least twenty minutes before it was ready to work. I opened my calendar and punched the message button on my desk phone to retrieve the waiting messages, scribbling phone numbers down to return calls.
“Hi, Nancy, this is Ashley Rhodebeck from the Kane County Chronicle. I’m calling to get your input on a story I’m doing on the death of Michael Fairbanks.”
What?
I snapped upright, hands flat on the desktop. Michael? No, that couldn’t be right. Michael?! No! I reached for the phone, then dropped it. As soon as my computer cooperated, I logged on and immediately did a search for Michael’s name. Nothing.
I opened a new tab and launched Facebook. I’d been Facebook friends with Michael’s mother since 2009, when we’d honored him at Dare to Dream. On her page, I read the chilling words that confirmed the reporter’s statement. Michael had died the night before.
My cell phone rang. I snatched it up with shaking hands, thinking I needed to call the Youth Leadership Coordinator before she heard this news in the heartless way I had. I didn’t even say hello.
“Tony, I just got some awful news—can I call you back in a few minutes?”
Tony’s voice cracked. “About Michael.”
I stilled. “You know?”
“One of the kids that used to come to group with him all the time sent me a message.”
He wouldn’t kill himself…He wouldn’t. Not Michael.
He didn’t. Michael’s death was accidental.
When I think about what we, as a staff, as an agency, as a community, have lost, I don’t know if it helps at all that it was an accident. It didn’t stop my tears when one of his friends approached his casket and sang “Amazing Grace” to him a capella at his funeral service. He gave everyone around him permission to be exactly who they are, and he wanted nothing more than to be loved for exactly who he was. Michael changed lives, and we are all cheated by this loss. In my heart, Michael will always be sixteen, challenging his school administrators to keep LGBT kids safe and writing to Oprah to ask her to help, this superhero boy whose talents we will never fully know.
I wish Oprah had responded. I think she would have loved Michael.
On Being an Athletic Carbon-Based Wonder
Posted: 30th January 2018 by admin in BlogTags: athletic, exercise, humor, lesbian stereotypes, sports
I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I am clear on the fact that I will never impress anyone with my athletic ability. That’s been the case throughout my life, even as a young person when I was actively playing softball and racquetball. It’s fun. It moves me around.
People talk about exercise all the time. Parents talk to kids. Teachers talk to students. Doctors to patients. And Michelle Obama to the entire world. Awesome. I enjoy it when I engage. Plus this is the time of life when doing these big feats (as opposed to big feet, which will end up in a later post) rate some attention. I am told swimming is also a good option for aging parts and reducing wear and tear but I can admit to some reluctance about swimming.
I have friends who do triathlons. I have friends who used to lifeguard at the beach. Let’s be clear. I marvel at these people. Confidentially, I have also wanted to ask if their toes are webbed, but I haven’t worked up the nerve. I know, I know. I break all the stereotypes about lesbians and being athletically inclined. Or at least having webbed toes. But I digress.
Would now be a good time to describe my last couple of adventures with swimming? Although, I am aware that many folks would not consider the first adventure to be swimming as much as it was… lying around…on the ocean floor. It happened while I was surf casting in North Carolina. I had the requisite casting rod and the requisite chest-high rubber pants that made me look like Tweedle Dum. In other words, I looked great! Very sporty! Like I knew what the hell I was doing! So, with rod in hand, I waded out into the water and commenced my adventure.
I was quite comfy in my Tweedle Dum pants and feeling distinctly sorry for those fish I was on a mission to land. My feet sunk a little into the sand, the heavy rubber boots settling and the sand filling around them, creating a vacuum. When the random big wave began to build, I did see it coming, but far too late. It built both speed and height too quickly for me to pull my feet out of that sand vacuum.
I couldn’t do it, and when that wave slammed over me, it hit with enough force topple me backwards, taking me underwater.
There was a problem with that whole underwater thing. Several problems, really. My chest-high Tweedle Dum pants filled up with water immediately. The second problem was it was the beginning of March in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of North Carolina. That water was COLD. All of me was COLD. And the third problem, piling on the recognition of the other two problems was that with my Tweedle Dum pants filled up and the pressure of the water on top of me, I was pinned to the ocean floor, and I could not sit or stand up. Nor did I have gills. It occurred to me very quickly that I was going to drown in about three feet of very cold water. I blinked at the absurdity of it and wiggled in the weighted pants to see where there might be a weak spot as I breathed out a stream of bubbles to ascend to the surface.
A burb-bly approach heralded two of my friends who’d been standing on the beach rushing into the surf and disembodied hands grabbed my arms and the Tweedle Dum shoulder straps, dragging me—fishing rod still in hand– upwards and onto the sand. Earlier that day when I’d proposed going out fishing, they both offered to come. I thought they might get bored standing around talking and watching me fish. Let’s pause to consider how this would have gone on that otherwise deserted beach, had they not opted to chat outside that morning so that they saw when I went down.
I knew it was all going to be okay when the one friend, an Episcopal priest, shoved me into a hot shower rather than offer me last rites. Not that I would have heard her giving me last rites–I had ocean water in both ears and I was distracted by a slight seaweed-y smell.
Yeah. I’m not sure you’d call that swimming. Or fishing! I’d call it a near-death experience but I think that detracts from the near-life experiences that I have most days.
My second adventure with swimming in more recent years was much more domestic. Friends had a lap pool built and invited us over to check it out. I am now rather cautious about outdoor water, but indoor water still feels safe enough to navigate, so I was looking forward to this. I got all suited up and, following the directions of my host, I approached the front control panel that could have been designed by NASA.
“It’s really powerful, so be ready for it.”
Okay, this I was ready for. I touched the buttons in the sequence he recommended. The jets kicked on with a force that swept my feet out from under me and blew my board shorts right off. I clung to the Oh Dear bar for stability at the front of the pool in just my tank and my shorts bobbed peacefully at the far end.
After shooing my gracious host out of the room, I let the jets carry me to the other end to retrieve my shorts and redressed myself. Then I got out of the pool while the gittin’ was good. That was two for two. Obviously I am not engineered to be off dry land for any length of time.
Yeah. I know. That didn’t qualify as swimming either. But it flattened my spikes and isn’t that one of the evaluating criteria for any kind of exercise?
I get it. You don’t have to compliment me. I am an athletic carbon-based wonder. The wonder is usually about how I get into these situations in non-contact sports!
You Were Always My Favorite
Posted: 20th January 2018 by admin in BlogTags: appreciation, Brene Brown, John Maxwell, leadership, team, vulnerable, Youth Outlook
I make lots of references to the folks I work with on both my personal and my work Facebook pages, often talking about them in terms of being “the dream team” and how proud I am of them and of our work together. I make jokes about how we’re never the team where the boss is trying to catch someone doing something wrong, because I know as sure as I’m standing here that when I see them, I will catch them all doing something right. Being the team leader, I appreciate some moments to consider how I can better do my job, to make them as proud of being involved in our work as I am.
As I pondered approaching holidays last month, I was feeling particularly pleased to be associated with our team. I’m sure some holiday sentimentality figured in there, but I wanted them to know they aren’t JUST the Youth Outlook senior staff. They are unique individuals who bring their own talents and interests to our table, building a powerful team with diverse skills. So…in good Brene Brown and John Maxwell fashion, I decided to let my appreciation of them as people, not employees, show and I shared my thoughts, putting Vulnerable Boss right out there on the line.
I don’t know if you’ll ever meet all of the team. Some of my blog readers live on other continents. But maybe after you read, you’ll know them just a little bit better the next time I talk about them.
A Christmas Note to Youth Outlook Dream Team
Do you know the story about “You were always my favorite?”
The way it was told to me, a mom leaves her children a note to read after she dies. Each note starts with the line, “You were always my favorite because…” and she goes on to tell them why each was her favorite. At the end, the note specifies that they should not tell their siblings what they just read, thereby ensuring that each child went through life believing that they were their mom’s favorite.
On the way back from Orlando, I started thinking about our dream team and how important the role is that each of you plays in elevating Youth Outlook (youth-outlook.org) to being this exceptional organization. I think I was reading something about how, in some organizations, ridicule is used to control people and keep them in line. And I thought, wow, how horrible…how do people live with that? And I was feeling most fortunate to have our dream team. I was going to send you all a Christmas card but then the story about “You’re always my favorite because…” occurred to me. As I reflected on it, here’s what it turned into.
Yes, of course you’re my favorite.
Andrea, you’re my favorite because you embody self-care. What you have done in your commitment to derby right down to the leg you broke in what…97 places???… and the demands that I know your Big Girl job has tossed your way, our new vision for youth leadership, and your more recent adventures in getting into kick-boxing inspire me every time we talk and make me want to take care of myself too.
Carolyn, you’re my favorite because you embody welcoming change and challenges in both your professional and your personal world. You are shaking up structures and systems across the state, and I predict that soon it will be across the country. Your welcoming change and challenge is rivaled only by your ability to make those around you feel incredibly cared about. I admire your courage and your willingness to think and then rethink and then think some more, and then act on those convictions with kindness.
Kim, you’re my favorite because you embody diplomacy and objectivity, approaching all situations with a calmness and a thoughtfulness that is uplifting. I’ve seen you reframe questions and concerns in staff meetings and trainings to introduce new possibilities without judgment, and when at all possible, with a mix of humor that often leaves me in a heap on the floor. Sometimes, even when you don’t mean to. Sometimes, because you don’t mean to. That I can say to you, “Oh my—we’re having a Brene Brown conversation!” and you know exactly what I mean and both us dissolve into laughter, that’s an awesome connection.
Carrie, you’re my favorite because you embody fearlessness. You walked into a brand new job with a brand new agency in a strange city, then carried the main role for an event you’d never attended, and then led our charge into our new model without hesitation. Your adventures in running, your role play persona at volunteer training and your “mom stories” about your boys further prove it—there is nothing you won’t challenge yourself with, no job too tough. Your ability to dream goes hand in hand with your ability to risk wisely and you are a leader in every sense of the word.
Peter, you’re my favorite because you embody creativity. You bring color and energy to your work and apparently even when we’re talking about life handing us lemons, they’re fabulous lemons and we should all keep that in mind. I look forward to your posts about which project happened at group, or over the weekend, or at the summer art shows because your work just brightens our Youth Outlook world in so many ways.
Karol, you’re my favorite because you embody survival. You served in our military at a time it could not have been easy to be yourself. You started a drop in center in the middle of a cornfield where it also could not—and at times is STILL not—easy. You put yourself way out there in places and times where it might be more convenient and (perhaps?) less hurtful to do something else—but you don’t let yourself be ruled by that. You share yourself not just through Youth Outlook but other LGBT arenas too, and you never speak of yourself as a role model for survivors but you are and I want you to know I think of you that way.
Nancy Carlson, you’re my favorite because you embody lifelong commitment to social justice and the spirit of giving. When I think of the thousands of people whose lives you have changed by your work through Rape Crisis and now through Youth Outlook…many of those people who will never meet you in person but whose lives are changed because of you…I marvel at being able to work with such a powerful activist.
Heather, you’re my favorite because you embody the spirit of adventure. From stripping paint to tie dying tee shirts to recruiting new volunteers, you approach everything as if it is the most magical thing ever, and we’re all going to have a good time doing it. I know that a year ago you couldn’t have imagined what 2017 would bring, and I hope it has impacted your life as wonderfully as you’ve impacted mine and Youth Outlook’s.
Denise, you’re my favorite because you embody persistence. It is never easy to get a new suburban program up off the ground. You’ve already determined that whatever it takes, you’re going to give and that shows through every time we talk. You’re always looking for the next opportunity to share us, the next place to get word about Youth Outlook out, the kid who just needs a friendly shoulder. Your heart is huge and I’m glad it’s on the dream team.
Marcus, you’re my favorite because you embody living authentically. From your stories about being a minister’s kid to your flip-flops in February to walking into the Sikh temple last year and saying out loud, “I needed to see you, can I hug you?”, you show us every day how to be the best versions of ourselves by being real, open, and loving and I so appreciate you.
I am surrounded by heroes every day because you’re here doing this job with me. As I said, I thought about sending you Christmas cards, but it’s my 20th Christmas at Youth Outlook so I thought something a little different was in order.
Just so you know, you’ve always been my favorite.
With warmest regard and gratitude,
Nando
PS Don’t tell the others.
PPS I wish you amazing holidays. As I signed off a recent blog post: whatever your holiday, whatever your traditions, whatever your holiday traditions, may you celebrate in peace and kindness and may the people whom you love light up your path for our coming new year.
Twenty Years After a Comic, An Airport, and a Hot Mic
Posted: 26th December 2017 by admin in BlogTags: #coming out, #LGBT youth, community, Ellen coming out episode, friends, LGBT history
I just watched a very poignant clip of Ellen interviewing Oprah about the 1997 coming out episode (The Puppy) on the Ellen Show. That episode aired in April 1997 and I started work at Youth Outlook in October 1998. I found it difficult not to tear up while Ellen and Oprah talked about both the episode and the backlash following. Ellen’s show was canceled. Laura Dern couldn’t get work for a year after playing her role. Oprah got hundreds of messages telling her to go back to Africa.
As a community, our fight is far from over and some of these messages have made an ugly reappearance recently. While listening to Ellen and Oprah, though, I was reminded of one thing—one primary feeling—of “the old days” that I rarely speak about to anyone, and at THAT time, I never spoke of.
I was afraid. I had reason to be.
When I moved to IL in 1998, I had been out for several years, sported a crew cut and Harry Potter glasses, and had a rainbow in the back window of my car. I was settling into my gender neutrality, having fun with my “boi” playfulness, and I was accustomed to a different atmosphere after living for twelve years in Seneca Falls, the birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement, and around Syracuse, hovering in or near academic circles of radical feminism. It was a great place to live and a great place to come out.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from IL. I hoped for Chicago overflow, similar to NY overflow, to which I attributed much of the free thinking I encountered in Syracuse. That’s not what I found.
In past blogs, I have mentioned the resistance I met in my efforts to form connections to some of the high schools. That was rough. I was both irritated and embarrassed to meet other social workers who denied the existence of LGBT kids. Countering the belief that kids were too young to know who they were (although most of the folks who maintained that could handily tell me at what age they’d had their first heterosexual crush or when they knew for sure that they were cisgender) was an uphill challenge, but it did not compare to the covert and cowardly threats I endured as the first employee of the first not for profit that specialized in working with queerlings in the western suburbs.
The timing of this was important. By 1998, services had existed within the Chicago city limits for years. There were potlucks, a sports association, bars, youth groups, churches, and medical clinics specific to LGBT people in Chicago. In the western suburbs, there were only the daring PFLAG groups.
Then I arrived. It was my job to make connections within our communities, to be a visible face of this new agency. To be publicly queer.
That part I had no problem with. I’d been publicly queer for a while.
Just pause for moment and think about the things Ellen describes and picture how that would have gone in towns and cities in DuPage County, IL. Name calling? I certainly got the name calling. I got the slurs hurled from passing cars, most often “Faggot” which I have always found odd. I usually want to refer people to Urban Dictionary for the correct slur to hurl, if one is going to hurl slurs at all. Female bodied queer people are not generally called faggots, but I may have to re-evaluate that based on the frequency with which it was used at that time.
As the agency’s single employee and being who I was, I was particularly aware of the hostile environment. It’s a safe assessment that the early board members were also aware and to some extent, felt compelled to keep the kids hidden for their protection (except the kids weren’t interested in being hidden). Many of them had lived here for years. They knew what to expect.
It was a bit of a surprise on the day a board member asked me to attend a county meeting and afterward, she called me to ask one question. “Do you have to look so….butch?”
At first, I was confused. I had sat next to her in the meeting. I had worn a blue silk shirt and black pants. She had also been wearing a shirt and black pants. I cast around for an answer, feeling vaguely insulted, when I realized she was referring less to WHAT I was wearing and more to HOW I was wearing it. My clothing was not that much different from hers. But I have a stance, a presence, that leaves little to imagination about what my orientation might be. She had already told me that she could not come out.
We ironed out that she didn’t actually have a problem with the clothing I’d been wearing. She had a bigger issue with the fact that it was 1998 in suburban Illinois and I was identifiable as queer. When I pointed out that being identifiable as queer wasn’t really a bad thing for someone who was running an LGBT focused agency, the conversation came to an awkward stop and never arose again.
I could manage the questions about being out. On the other hand, the death threats put me on edge. It was the anonymous voicemails left about how the building we were using would be set fire to because we were all going to hell anyway. It was the creepy demands to “make sure you tell all those kids the truth—that they’re all going to hell for being disgusting little perverts” and the parents who cried and shouted at me that I could not tell their kids that they were good human beings that left my sleep ragged.
Those were the days of Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps picketing churches that were becoming open and affirming and the funeral of Matthew Shepard, carrying signs that declared “Matt Shepard Burns in Hell” in front of his already traumatized and horrified family. As an agency, we had to be ready for anything that might be leveled at us, any day of any week. We learned to live with the fear. We wrote guidelines for how we’d handle if we ever needed to evacuate our borrowed spaces on short notice and we coached the kids on what to do if they ever found themselves confronted with a line of protestors carrying vile signs.
Verbal harassment. Death threats. Protestors. I was afraid. I had reason to be.
I did my job anyway, sometimes watching over my shoulder in dark parking lots and often enduring strangers’ comments that if I would just be open (to people of the opposite sex, to someone’s god, to psychiatric help, etc.), that perhaps someday I, too, could be as normal as they were. Oh, and by the way, which church did I belong to? I learned to fend off married women’s passes in public restrooms and to allow the slurs from passing cars and people in crowds to roll off me like water off a duck’s back.
I couldn’t exactly reach out to Ellen in those early days but I do owe many thanks to the Chicago women who supported me, those who understood that you live with the fear and you do it anyway. I just entered year 20 of my job and some of those early memories don’t get trotted out into sunlight very often. The Ellen interview sparked quite a few of them. (http://www.upworthy.com/in-1997-being-gay-on-tv-was-not-ok-ellen-and-oprah-look-back-in-this-emotional-clip?c=ufb3) These days, I’m more likely to be focused on what’s coming next week or next month, and less on what it was like to be a public queer in 1998. Wow. We really have made history.
And yes, thank you for asking–I did have to look this…butch…while I was doing it. (And can you believe it–she hadn’t even seen me wearing a tux!)
Dedicated to my colleague and friend, Jessica Halem, who will probably never know how much of a sanity saver she was.
The Un-Spirit of Christmas
Posted: 17th December 2017 by admin in BlogTags: Christmas, family, family of choice, grief work, healing, holiday traditions, holidays
There is no time of the year that I am as aware of my shortage of family of origin as I am at the holidays. This is what some of us were raised with, right? Holidays are about family. Old songs extoll traveling long miles over snowy roads to be with family for that special holiday dinner and go to great lengths to depict our innate drive to avoid going back out on those snowy roads and sit with the love of our lives in front of a roaring fire. Churches plan elaborate services at different times to celebrate with congregation members. This is the message repeated through the years. This is how we handle holidays.
This expectation has evolved a bit since my coming out days. At that time, family of choice was key. It had to be. Many of us had been thrown out of our homes, cut off from the families that brought us into the world. We survived by creating other family structures of mentors and dear friends, those people who could and would nurture us, gentle us, soothe the scorching loss so many of us experienced while parents and siblings wrestled with their own demons related to our orientation or gender identity.
Evolved, yes, but certainly not gone. And unfortunately, seeming to ramp up in ways I haven’t seen in twenty years, making me question what our new generation of young queerlings will do to build in their own structures of support.
In terms of my own structure of support, I’ve said numerous times over the past few years that I “family” differently than most people. I have found that a lot of folks don’t quite understand what that means. Sadly, I’ve also found that a lot of folks whom I thought would understand because they’d come to know me well actually had no idea what it meant. That may end up being a post on another day.
I sat with a copy of Urban Tidepool on the table between a friend and myself this week and observed it again. “I family differently than most people.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I tapped the cover of the coil bound book. “I don’t think it is possible to have these experiences and go on to family in a typical sense.” I poked at the small child figure in the graphic. “Look at this. I was this big when my mother died. Like…two inches tall.” I held my fingers two inches apart in front of my eye for emphasis and peeked at her between them. “Speaking developmentally, because you know I love all that developmental stuff, it’s not possible that THAT person could understand the changes that were about to happen and what it would mean to how I relate to family.”
She nodded, taking my point. “No, a kid that young isn’t able to do that.”
“All that kid is capable of is missing their mommy.”
There. I’d said it. I’ve never put it into that context. Even when I wrote the chapters about the mother’s death and the three ring circus that followed, I’ve never spoken in plain words about being that kid, especially being that kid who missed their mommy. As a family, we never acknowledged it to each other that I recall. The game plan was always to keep acting as if everything was fine.
I’ve known for decades that things were not really fine. How could they have been? I’m aware of the void left by her death, and then his, and the gap that exists where most people have parents, even many people my own age (which is sometimes a surprise to me that people my age still have parents). As I have aged, the gap has worn larger, what memories I do have have softened and blurred until eventually I realized I have difficulty producing an independent image of her. There is longing….the gap DID have someone standing in it at one time…but the longing is now associated with gap rather than with image. It is an odd combination, this longing for a person I barely remember, one that leaves me less enthusiastic about holidays than the average bear. The dread of Christmas begins to build immediately after Thanksgiving. It is a dark, foot-dragging time that peaks on Christmas Eve when I am so miserable I am unfit for human companionship and breaks about 2 pm Christmas afternoon, when I realize it’s done for another year and I can just go about my life again without the intense pressure, without the constant reminder that holiday time is coming and here are the things other people are doing with their families.
In 1973, getting through the first Christmas after the mother’s loss was nothing short of surreal. In the days before Christmas, it felt like we were moving through some Twilight Zone universe, going through motions that we’d always done, but we were hollow. It was supposed to be the most joyful time of year—at least that’s what all the old songs told us.
Over the years, I’ve figured out how to manage the obligation of Christmas joy that I don’t feel without bringing down everyone around me. I keep things low key to soothe that two-inch tall, gender neutral kid who feels like they’re living through a Twilight Zone episode. This year, I will call my sister, and then the day will probably include Die Hard movies, Gremlins, and maybe some Harry Potter and popcorn. Well, maybe some Harry Potter. Definitely some popcorn.
As an aside, is anyone else intrigued by the fact that the only two Christmas movies that speak to me are called Die Hard and Gremlins? I’m sure that can’t be coincidence!
Anyway…that gap does soften and blur memory of people but I haven’t found that it actually does anything to soothe the memory of being without them. That’s a curious thing to me.
An excerpt from Urban Tidepool, Downward Spiral:
On a dreary mid-December afternoon, Michael and I cleaned the living and dining room and dragged the Christmas decorations out of the old storage trunk in the cellar. The nativity scene with the clay figures that the mother had painted and glued into place was stationed at its post on top of the TV that I polished with lemon Pledge. We tried to hang things where the mother would have put them. We went through a mountain of tape sticking things to the front windows, now streaked with half-circles precisely the length of my arms, like the mother would have done. Well, maybe she wouldn’t have left so many streaks, but I was proud of the way I hung backwards out the window ten feet above the ground to get the outside clean. Across the street in Mr. Aubrey’s cellar window, his annual miniature train scene whirred on tiny tracks through a festive tiny village, weaving from one pane to the next, then back again. Almost every house on the street blinked shades of red and green. Some things were the same. But nothing was the same.
We all have some gaps. We will all reach those points where some things are the same but nothing will ever be the same again. It is a normal part of aging and families growing and changing. My goal this year is to be gentle with that gap and see if I can get through Christmas Eve while still being fit for human companionship. It will be a first for me. Just consider me the Un-Spirit of Christmas. If you’re around the neighborhood, Die Hard starts at 2 and the popcorn will be on and I’ll be hanging out with the dogs and my gap. Maybe I’ll even put the old manger out. Dress code, comfy. Bring your own gaps if you wish. We’ll be gentle with all of them.
Whatever your holiday, whatever your traditions, whatever your holiday traditions, may you celebrate in peace and kindness and may the people whom you love light up your path for our coming new year.
This week, the brother I grew up with has been dead 20 years. I wonder who he might have become. I wonder who we might have become.
Let Us Talk about Determination
Posted: 26th October 2017 by admin in BlogTags: #LGBT youth, be the change, courage, determination, LGBT, love wins, resist, safe space, step up
This past Saturday was the day of our big agency fundraiser, Dare to Dream. I joke about it being the 9th time we were running an event that we meant to offer just once. I am asked each year to provide a “state of the agency” commentary to bring our donors up to speed on new and/or fun things that have happened in the past year since we last met. Our landscape for LGBT service provision has changed. Our expectations have changed. I’ve changed. Here’s why.
From Youth Outlook state of the agency, October 21, 2017:
I promised the board members I wouldn’t get sad and sappy while I was up here so let’s pick up where we left off last year. Last year at this event, four days after the election, we talked about community, hope, persistence and determination.
Eleven and a half months later, I can tell you that determination has only grown. I’d love to be able to say we’ve been unaffected by the changes but that wouldn’t be true. A few weeks ago, I even wrote an open letter to the Youth Outlook kids which you will hear in a few minutes. (https://urbantidepool.com/2017/10/05/an-open-letter-to-the-youth-outlook-youth/) While most of the responses to it were positive, one parent did tell me I was fear mongering and then told me I was living in a fantasy because the world has never been and will never be safe.
My first thought to that was –is it fear mongering when I tell you outright what I am afraid of or I repeat what kids have said they are afraid of? I’m not sure I understand your use of that word.
My next thought to that was Wow. We will always believe in safe space. I know what we’ve done in just this past year to create safe, brave space for kids who were struggling with assault, homelessness, rape, and thoughts of suicide.
It’s not like we’re wearing blinders. We know what we are up against. Any one of the staff team can quote Southern Poverty Law Center information that anti-LGBT hate crimes have increased across the country, moving us from the number 4 spot to the number 3 spot since November, outranked only by anti-Black and anti-immigration hate crimes. Anyone of them can tell you that according to GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educators’ Network, we had seen national declines in verbal and physical harassment and sexual violence for several consecutive years, until 2015, when we saw an uptick in every one of those categories and we’re hearing stories that suggest we will probably see another increase in those stats when the 2017 report is released.
We know those things are out there. We’ve seen the Confederate flags flying in our neighborhoods and we’ve led conversations with our kids about white supremacy, privilege and violence.
You know what else is out there? One–A new, rural Youth Outlook drop in center. We put our heads together with a wonderful group of people from the Open Table United Church of Christ in Ottawa last spring and before I could blink twice, we had a drop in center running there that became the second biggest program that we offer.
So that’s out there. Two– We’ve successfully launched about one new drop in center per year. In a big year, we’ve done two, but those are the exception. This year, we’re averaging about one new request per month to come into a different community and open a another site. The need is there and people are responding to it in ways we have not seen before.
Three–About a month ago, we called together the first meeting of the leadership of the countywide networks of professionals that work with LGBT kids. The network groups are responsible for planning professional development in each of their locations. We started with one in DuPage County, then added DeKalb, then Kane, then Suburban Cook created their own modeled after ours, and now three other counties are considering joining this effort to keep putting accurate, positive information about LGBT kids out into the conversation.
Four–Last June, Youth Outlook had the busiest Pride month we’ve had in the history of the agency, as more corporations than ever asked us to speak for their events. We said yes—to everything. It was Pride month. We weren’t going to do sad and sappy.
In the background of those requests, I took a Friday afternoon off to plant some flowers in my back yard. Some of you have heard me reference my neighbors. They are a rough crowd. So here I am spending my Friday afternoon playing in the dirt, one of my favorite things, and I can hear the neighbors on the other side of my fence. It’s Dyke this, Dyke that, and hey how much fun is it to park that dyke next door into her driveway so she can’t get out past the fire hydrant and the end of my truck? Yuk, yuk, yuk.
This is, unfortunately, not anything new. I’ve been listening to these people for several years. What was new this year was that it didn’t stop there. I did what I always do—I channeled my inner Michelle Obama and when they went low, I went high. I tuned them out. I tuned them out until one of them approached the fence near where I was working, unzipped his fly and urinated on the fence so that it splashed through on me.
It took two days for it to fully register with me what had happened. I am 52 years old. I have a master’s degree and I run an agency that helps kids. And that man called me a dyke and peed on me. I have to wonder—if it took me at 52, with my social network and my professional status, two days to be able to start processing that event, what about the 12 year olds whose families do not know who they are and they can’t dare say it? How are they managing these situations without support?
Later that week, Carrie, Carolyn and I all had Pride presentations to do. We had an agency to talk about and kids in six counties to support. We can skip the sad and the sappy. But by all means, let’s talk about determination. Let’s talk about defiance and standing up for ourselves and for our kids.
Let’s talk about looking around at what’s going on and saying not just no, but HELL no? This might have gone over in 1998 when I started working here. But now? This is not going to fly. We will not stop talking about what helps LGBT young people feel safe. Part of that is acknowledging what makes them feel unsafe. We will not stop talking about it, no matter how many times I am told that we’re living in a fantasy because we’ve already been told too many times that Youth Outlook IS the only safe space that some kids experience.
I believe we are in for some giant challenges in the coming year. That’s an opportunity for us to step up or step off.
Ask any one of us about this topic, determination. Stepping up is the only option.
An Open Letter to the Youth Outlook Youth
Posted: 5th October 2017 by admin in BlogTags: #LGBT youth, heroes, LGBT, LGBT issues, Youth Outlook
This week I started my 20th year in my job running Youth Outlook where I (do my best to) support the drop-in centers and other services that we offer. That’s a long stretch of time, especially when I stop to consider that when I started working here, most of you drop-in center kids weren’t even born yet. Matthew Shepard was murdered that week. We were looking forward to a new show called Will and Grace that actually had openly gay characters. Kids were wearing bell-bottom jeans and some cell phones still flipped. Can you believe it?
We’ve done a lot of work since that time. There has been an entire generation of young queerlings who came before you and paved the way, people whose courage and persistence was—and remains– nothing short of heroic. I feel like I need to speak up this week, though, because we’ve just been hit with several positively vile things, despite all of that hard work we’ve put in.
You are coming out at a time when we thought we had made the world a little bit better, a little bit safer for you. Now I wonder if it feels like we offered you a world with an illusion of safety and now that you’re coming out, these positively vile things are dropped on your heads. I wonder if it feels like the world offered you a place to sit and the last nine months have wrenched that chair out from under you.
It is unthinkable to me that we offered you a world where we said it’s okay if you want to serve your country and a few weeks ago, our elected officials announced a ban on transgender individuals serving. That is and will be argued, and I’m confident that in the end it will be dismissed, but it does not change the fact that we are going to argue your right to serve your country. Right in front of you. Again. It does not change the fact that trans people who are serving right now have been put on notice that they are not worth being allowed to wear that uniform.
It is unthinkable to me that we offered you a world where we said you’re safe at your job and no one can discriminate against you simply for being LGBT. I’ve said that very statement to a number of Youth Outlook kids over the years. “You’re safe. You have a right to ask for a job there. Go git ’em!” Then a couple of weeks ago, our elected officials announced that they think it’s okay to fire someone simply for being LGBT. That is and will be argued, and I’m confident that in the end it will be dismissed, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to argue your right to hold a job and not be discriminated against in hiring and termination practices and in benefits administration. Right in front of you. Again. It does not change the fact that people will be fired in the interim and they have been put on notice that their skills and talents are not welcome in certain settings.
It is unthinkable to me that we offered you a world where we said you have inherent value and you are important link in our interconnectedness. Then just a few days ago, our elected officials announced that the US voted against a United Nations resolution calling for a ban on executing LGBT individuals. Truly, truly unthinkable. We stood with countries who want to kill you. We did that. That is and will be argued, and even now the White House is attempting to “clarify” what it meant by voting NO, and I’m confident that in the end it will be dismissed. But it doesn’t change the fact that we just made a huge public statement about our representatives’ profound contempt for queer lives. We did that. Right in front of you. Again.
In a year or four or six, you will leave your teenaged selves in the dust and go on with your lives in whatever is left of the world. You will be the next round of heroes because we will need you to clean this mess up. Since I’ve met you, I have no doubt you’ll do exactly that, as scarred as you will be from this viciousness.
It hardly seems fair, does it? It is a colossal universal joke. We told you the world was safe, then in almost the next breath, politicians advocated to take away your right to serve your country, to be free from discrimination, even to be a living, breathing being on the planet, while you listen to them debate your value—while you listen to them debate your right to exist. When this hateful bubble implodes, as we know it will, you’ll be here to take us to the next steps of our humanity, bearing your scars like badges.
It is unthinkable to me that we ask such a monumental task of you. If we could clap our hands over your ears or cover your spirits with our spirits, to keep you from having to absorb this vitriol, please know we would do that.
You will be the heroes. It is unthinkable to me that you wouldn’t be.
Until then, you have my hands and you have my heart~
Nancy
