We All Win

Posted: 12th February 2017 by admin in Blog
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I’m not much of a morning person. There may have been hypothetical occasions, even, when there may have been hypothetical house rules about talking to me in the morning. Maybe. But let’s be real. I don’t make much sense in the morning, so how much of a conversationalist could I be?

Today was a bit different. This morning, I voluntarily got up early on a Sunday to join my neighbors at our first neighborhood coffee gathering. I even got up a little earlier than I needed to, just to make sure that I DID make sense, should anyone feel like conversing with me.

It’s been such a weird couple of months. It feels like we are often all walking on eggshells with each other. I have experienced fear for the first time living on my street when my neighborhood was menaced this fall by a young guy driving a pick up truck with the word REDNECK emblazoned across the rear window and flying a confederate flag over the bed. I live in a diverse neighborhood. It feels like the entire country has become a dog fight, with minority populations being used to bait people into statements and acts that used to horrify us and now have become common.

It is not okay to live in fear. It is not even a place I wish to visit.

I have walked in my neighborhood every day for almost fourteen years, most days twice, with 2 dogs pulling in different directions on the ends of their extendable leashes. I know lots of my neighbors by sight, and some even by name well enough to stop and chat on warm summer mornings. People know me. There are waves and calls to say hi, or to wish me a good holiday in the Christmas season.

There was talk, even before the eggshell-walking started, that we were all quite attached to our neighborhood. People ask after each other. “Have you seen…”  and  “We should have them over…” Someone put up a Facebook page named after our neighborhood so we can communicate with each other.  Last year, some practical joker stacked my recyclable bin on top of the garbage bin and left them that way, ensuring the waste management people would just drive by. I was recovering from knee surgery and navigating the house on crutches. There was no way I could go move the recycle bin, which stands almost as tall as I do, into its correct position. So I posted on our neighborhood Facebook page—“Hey, if anyone is home this morning, can you give me a hand?”  It took less than a minute, and a neighbor popped over, put the bins in their proper locations and popped back into their own house.

On that afternoon when I first saw the pick up truck with the flag slowly cruising my street…no, he was not driving, he was cruising, looking for someone or something… it immediately worried me. There’s an elementary school on the corner, attended primarily by brown and black skinned children. There’s a Muslim family up the next block and the mom walks her daughters to and from school every day. My next door neighbors are Latino. The new neighbors in the corner house are an African American couple. I wondered who would not be safe—who was being looked for.

At first, I was concerned about posting anything to the neighborhood Facebook page. What if some of my neighbors supported the guy in the pick up truck with his flag? Was I going to draw attention or perhaps hostility for speaking up? As the only genderqueer person on this street, I did have to wonder about my safety, too. I can’t imagine that my neighbors don’t already know who I am…but was I crossing a line by speaking up and saying that the pick up truck and the message of the flag were making me uncomfortable?

When I heard that the pick up truck had been spotted on a couple of other nearby streets, I realized I couldn’t let it go. Was I ready to defend my space? Was I ready to speak up for my neighbors? For the little kids walking back and forth to school? I had to.

I posted to the Facebook page: Just want to make you aware…I know many of you have kids…we need to keep our neighborhood safe.  I waited, apprehensive. The comments that followed were warm and appreciative. Everyone who answered understood my point about neighborhood safety and agreed.

A few days later, I was out walking the dogs and the neighbor who wears a burqa passed by to go pick up her girls. Ordinarily, I smile and wave but I don’t go close enough for conversation to anyone with the dogs on their strings. I don’t assume everyone will like my dogs as much I do.  That day, I reeled the dogs all the way in and approached her.

“Have you seen the pick up truck?”

“Yes—and there’s another one just like it further up the street.”

“I don’t know what he’s doing…”

She nodded. “I’m not sure why anyone with those beliefs would move into a neighborhood like ours.”

“You know if anyone bothers you while you’re walking by, you can turn up my driveway—just come right to the house and ring the bell.”  I didn’t need to tell her where I lived. She’s been walking by while I mow the grass for at least two years.

“Thank you. I will remember that.”

“Let your girls know, too. We can’t have this in our neighborhood.”

She continued down the street.

So enough with the eggshells. This morning, I got up early and took my slightly incoherent, gender neutral self over to my neighbors’ house and we gathered with several other families to have coffee and danishes. I don’t know what the political stances of most of those people might be. I don’t know what religious affiliations most of them have. It didn’t matter. We had coffee and talked about spring, and gardening, and house projects, and our pets. I learned about growing mushrooms and that alligators and crocodiles have different temperaments and that most of my neighbors want to keep chickens and bees. Who knew?

We reclaimed our neighborhood and celebrated each other simply by having coffee. Our differences were minor in comparison to the myriad of things we wanted to talk about, standing around on a Sunday morning as kids ran through the kitchen and the dog wanted his belly scratched. In the words of my neighbor Greg, who is a math teacher (something I will never be able to relate to!), “Let’s keep this street and city full of love.”

Indeed, Greg. We all win with that outlook. I’ll get up early for that any day.

diversity_and_unity

 

Stretching for Words Like It’s a Yoga Pose

Posted: 13th November 2016 by admin in Blog
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Last night, my agency held its annual gala, four days after much of the LGBT world was shot through with a bolt of fear that brought some of us to the verge of physical illness. On Wednesday, I was in meetings marked by stunned silence, abject fear, and immutable grief. The questions everywhere I turned were, “How do we do this?” and “How do we keep our kids safe?” which were valid questions while sitting in meetings where we were exploring trauma informed care for LGBT youth. Now we were also concerned about the trauma that we, as adults, might experience or be exposed to.

On that wave of wild emotion, I needed to prep comments to welcome our guests to our fundraiser, Dare to Dream. Just a week prior, we might well have exploded into the room still celebrating the World Series win. Suddenly, our annual affair was daunting like never before. One hundred and fifty people were going to gather for their first LGBT event, just four days after our country elected a new administration that includes a rabidly anti-LGBT vice president, who has referred to same sex couples as a sign of societal collapse. It’s a formal event. It opens with a welcome. I sat with that challenge for three of the first four days, wondering how I’d even sound coherent, let alone encouraging, to a group of people worried down to their socks about our newly acquired rights.

It was humbling. As I pulled some new facts together, it was also frightening. I wrote the welcome four times before the spirit of my former mentor welled up in me and my thoughts shifted from, “Oh, how the hell?” to “Oh, hell no.”

Tonight, I offer you this—my only welcome address to our annual gala fueled by the attitude, “Oh, hell no.” I wish you were there with us!

Good evening. Welcome to Dare to Dream 2016. Thank you for being here with us, especially this week.

I thought we’d be having a different conversation tonight, one that might touch on our expansion and our new opportunities.  While all of those things are still true, still important and still worthy of discussion, another topic has become even more worthy of our focus. In light of this week’s outcome, with the knowledge that in just 24 hours, hotline calls from suicidal LGBT kids across the country spiked to the point that the Trevor Project could field only about a third of them, we can and we MUST talk about community tonight. 

Youth Outlook, out here in the shadows of a large urban area with thriving LGBT culture, is known for its ability to create community where none previously existed. In meetings that I attended and conference calls in which I participated this week, nothing spoke more urgently than fear and the primal drive LGBT people and other marginalized people are experiencing to find a sense of safety.  I cannot stand here and promise that all will be well over the next few years. No one could. What I can promise you is that Youth Outlook will NOT stop. We will NOT surrender our rights to safety and connection. We will NOT slink away or look elsewhere when the emotional and physical safety of our kids is threatened, or when our kids are again at risk of being forced through conversion therapy to “fix” them. They are not broken. THAT is not what we came together to do. It brings to mind my favorite line from my favorite movie, Jurassic Park, “Creation is an act of sheer will.” 

We will NOT stand by while walls are built. We have been doing this almost twenty years. Youth Outlook has already raised an entire generation of young people who will dismantle that wall, repurpose into a place where we can go for brunch, and fly a rainbow flag off the top of it!

We.

Create.

Community.

Say that with me.

WE. Create. Community.

After last evening, I am convinced that we can continue to hope. The true leaders aren’t sitting in D.C. They were sitting in that room with me, laughing, crying, cheering, and loving, as I went through mental social work yoga poses from Upward Facing Executive Director pose, to the Do More with Less Bend Over Backwards pose known to most fundraising teams, and finally into the Not For Profit Warrior pose. There was an awful lot of love and compassion showing for people reputed to be the indicator of societal collapse.

Oh, hell no. C’mon. I’ll see you on the mat.

yoga

 

 

Daring Crustaceans and Other Adventurers

Posted: 2nd November 2016 by admin in Blog
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November 2, 2016

Five years ago this afternoon, I was at a local middle school speaking about LGBT youth and their developmental process. Earlier in the day, I’d learned that a former intern, my very first intern at Youth Outlook—Brian– had died, only 24 hours after learning about the death of one of the drop-in center youth. I struggled with my decision to go do the presentation, regardless. I’d been crying on and off most of the day. My eyes were bloodshot, my concentration temporarily misplaced. I debated. Finally, I put on my big boi Executive Director pants…and I went with every intention of giving those faculty members a hell of a show.

Brene Brown tells us we grow in our vulnerable moments. Three decades ago, Gail Sheehy wrote about it in Passages–like crustaceans shedding old then forming new shells, we must go through times of vulnerability and risk our most sensitive selves if we are to grow.

Don’t you love it when the universe just messes with you?

Sigh. Fine! Okay. I’m going. Suit. Briefcase. Powerpoint. I looked the part—a consultant saying the same thing that in-house people were saying but it meant something different coming from me because I worked somewhere else. My delivery that afternoon was spot on for about 80 minutes. The end of the presentation was in sight. The attendees were talking to me. They were laughing. We were there.

That’s when it happened. In the final lap of the Powerpoint presentation, the last couple of days edged their way back in and edged my focus out. First, I lost my train of thought, and as always happens when I get distracted, I became acutely aware of the attendees’ attention and just how quiet it was in the room now that I had stopped speaking. I wanted to resume, but the only images I held in my mind were an empty chair at the drop-in center group left by a child’s death, followed quickly by a heartwarming smile and a sense of the gentle energy that Brian possessed. My throat constricted.

Oh. My. God. I could not cry here in the middle of a presentation. How unprofessional could I be? This was about to crash and burn. I tried to speak, tried to force the next sentence from a series of slides that I can almost do in my sleep these days. My voice first went high, then cracked, and I stopped.

The attendees waited. They may have been puzzled. They were certainly patient.

I couldn’t do it. Another sentence failed to launch. I could feel my panic growing, sure I was about to blow whatever reputation Youth Outlook had. I held my hand up to the person sitting closest to me and whispered, “Will you excuse me for just a moment?” She nodded.

Standing just on the other side of a divider wall, I yanked my glasses off and pressed fingertips to my eyes roughly. It probably took less than a minute to compose myself and then, feeling like an absolute failure, I stepped back into place at the front of the room. The attendees returned attention to me.

I had no idea what to do. Play it down? Ignore it completely?  I had never heard of Brene Brown at that point and Gail Sheehy couldn’t have been further from my memory. Still, I thought I should offer them a real reason.

“I’m sorry,” I said, making eye contact slowly around the room. “I wanted to come here and give you a good presentation and I thought I could pull it off. Youth Outlook has had two deaths in the last 24 hours and it caught up to me.”

I couldn’t have felt more exposed than if I’d handed over my ED suit and presented in my underroos. I didn’t wait for a response. I turned back to the slides and gave the last ten minutes my full attention. If Gail Sheehy was right, I was going to grow a new shell by the time we were finished, while hoping that the agency wouldn’t suffer any longterm setback.

Wrapping up the computer cord afterward, someone touched my arm and I looked up. It was one of the teachers who’d been sitting front row for the last 90 minutes.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “This must have been so hard. Thank you for being with us.”

As she moved past, another teacher replaced her, with a similar message. Then another.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for letting us know. I’m sorry.”

Lightning bolt. These folks weren’t judging me. They were empathizing. The expectation that I keep it together and not let on that anything was wrong was my own. Their reaction to the fact that two people associated with Youth Outlook had just died was to support, to understand, to hold space—even when the consultant carrying a message and a Powerpoint presentation is a crab moving around on the ocean floor without their gender neutral shell.

It was that choking moment that most of us have had nightmares about, standing in front of crowd of strangers, exposed. I had every intention of giving them a great professional that day. I don’t actually know WHAT I gave them that day, because I’m mostly aware of what they gave me. Permission. To grieve. To be honest. To be human in that sense of loss. To be connected.

Grief is hard work. Pain is exhausting. No matter, sometimes my job isn’t about being a flawless professional. Sometimes it’s much more about being a flawed human whose voice can break in the middle of a presentation. Am I a better professional if I don’t love enough to feel loss? I have come to think not. As difficult as some of the days have been, I prefer experiencing those events that make us burst out of our confining shells, defenseless and frightened beings just waiting our next shell to form. If we’re really lucky, we’re surrounded by strangers holding space in a middle school classroom who will take our hands, see our grief and pain, and thank us when it happens. Those days make us better people, better professionals, and let’s face it–better crabs.

lead_courageobevulnerable

Corporal Works of Bumper Stickers

Posted: 6th September 2016 by admin in Blog
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I used to consider myself a recovering Catholic. When I first discovered her writing, I got quite a chuckle out of Anne Lamott’s reference to recovering Catholics as “incense survivors”.  I still have a favorite saint—St. Francis. I think Frank was probably a cool guy. Who wouldn’t want to hang out in the garden with all the critters coming to visit? I still have a favorite prayer—the prayer of St. Francis, of course.  Make me an instrument of peace.  (And on some days, that thought is followed by Now, please! Before I smack this person with a dead trout!)

Years later, there’s probably too much Eastern philosophy and new age-y concepts wrapped up in my spiritual beliefs  to even consider myself recovering.  The Dalai Lama quote resonates deeply:  “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”  Most days, I dismiss the early teachings from my Catholic school history but there are some pieces that still make too much sense to dismiss.

It would have been early grade school when the nuns taught us about the Works of Mercy.  We had to memorize them, write them down, regurgitate them on a religion test later. It was all work and no mercy. All thirty of us in our blue uniform shirts to the habit-ed IHM nun who oversaw our religious training: “Yes, Sister.”

“Class, name the Corporal Works of Mercy.”

Some struggling because they didn’t remember, some two words ahead, some two words behind, the Corporal Works of Mercy were sketched out in stark classrooms with cinderblock walls painted institutional yellow and asbestos floor tiles, where tendrils of chalk dust flared out from everything we touched at the front of the room. I can still almost do it from memory:

“Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Shelter the homeless. Visit the sick. Visit the imprisoned. Bury the dead.”

I wouldn’t have known to think of it as such forty-some years ago but those can function like a Pay It Forward system.  In the 80s, everyone I knew got behind the Big Bumper Sticker Idea to practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. And since it was the 80s, they were doing that practice between making their hair bigger and cutting the sleeves and necks off their sweatshirts. Come on. You remember! Now I look back and think the Big Bumper Sticker Idea wasn’t so far removed from what we were taught in…what was that…second grade?…about the Corporal Works of Mercy.

It’s different now though.  Now, it’s not just about being able to repeat it to Sister Mary Margaret Ernest Borgnine or write it all down on the Friday morning religion quiz. Now it plays out in real life and sometimes we get opportunities to do things to enact the Big Bumper Sticker Idea. I don’t think you have to look for those opportunities. I think they find us.

Last summer, I had knee surgery to repair an injury. I worked with an orthopaedic clinic and had to go back several times post-surgery for follow up. It was the kind of place where patients called weeks in advance for their appointments.  My follow up appointments went well into the fall months, and on one particularly grey, gloomy day, I arrived for my scheduled visit. As I checked in at the front desk and paid the requisite copay, I overheard the conversation unfolding in the next line.

“I’m sorry. Unless you can pay the copay, you cannot see the doctor today.”

There was a soft response that I couldn’t make out.

“Yes. I’m sorry. If you can’t pay the copay, you will have to reschedule.”

I looked up from my checkbook. A few feet away stood an elderly African American woman with a cane. Tiny. Stooped. White hair. She looked like someone’s grandma.

It was an ah-ha moment. This woman, who had probably already waited weeks for her appointment, as I had, was being turned away from medical care. This woman who looked like someone’s grandma, who was already in pain (because let’s face it, no one goes to the orthopaedic clinic if they feel well) was being denied a visit to a doctor by the front desk, because hey—that’s policy!

Your policy sucks.

I gripped the pen so tightly my fingertips went white. Through gritted teeth, I asked the reception worker who was processing my copay what the copay was for the woman being turned away. She whispered to me, “It’s $50.”

I flipped to the next blank check and wrote out the amount and quickly headed back to the “pod” where my surgeon’s office was, without speaking. When I came out, the woman had been escorted to her doctor’s pod. She had no idea who paid her copay. I will probably never see her again. No one’s grandma should be turned away from seeing her doctor. We learned this in second grade. Well, wait. SOME of us learned this in second grade. Apparently, the people who set policy at the ortho clinic –who probably make six times what I make in a year–missed that day of class with Sister Mary Margaret Kathleen Patrick Ryan Connor O’Riley.

About a month later, as I sat in my car entering info into the GPS, there was a light tap on my side window.  A woman about my age stood in the street by the side of my car. Her hair was unkept, her clothing wrinkled and it looked like she had had a very rough day, or maybe even series of days. I opened the window and asked if I could help her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just came from my case worker’s office and I need two dollars to get the bus.” She gestured at the building behind us where one of the social services agencies is housed.

I nodded and started to pat my pockets. Of course I had two dollars. It took a moment to realize that whatever cash I had, I had put into one of my back pockets. I asked the woman to back up a step so I could get up and out of the car. I stood, reaching into my left pocket and produced one single and one twenty dollar bill. Well, that wasn’t going to help.

I didn’t even think about it. I gave her the twenty. She burst into tears there on the curb and threw her arms around me. “God bless you! God bless you! Oh my God—God bless you!” I held her hand for a moment, feeling the wave of raw emotion, raw overwhelmed-ness pour off of her.  She turned away and headed for the bus stop down the block. When I passed her a few minutes later, she was still crying. She waved to me and called out again, “God bless you!”

I had a dollar in my pocket the rest of the day. I didn’t care. On the drive home, I found myself contemplating the Corporal Works of Mercy and the privilege of my world. I can’t get behind so much of Catholic teachings, even with the more humane statements coming from Pope Francis’ office, but this piece still resonates so many years later.  Eastern philosophy, new age-y concepts, Catholic school religion classes, Big Bumper Sticker Idea…Mix it up and find the similar message. Practice Random Acts of Corporal Mercy and Senseless Acts of Spiritual Mercy. These opportunities present themselves to us. What change could we affect if we all enacted the Big Bumper Sticker Idea and DID actually feed the hungry and shelter the homeless? What if we all had a chance to make sure that elderly women who were in pain got to see their doctors? Okay, maybe the Catholic Church had this one thing right. It might work better, though, if they put it on a bumper sticker.

mother-theresa

 

 

 

An Open Letter to Some Grown Ups at the Start of the School Year

Posted: 24th August 2016 by admin in Blog, Uncategorized
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Dear School Administrators,

I’m about to share with you an idea that is so radical, it might make your hair catch fire when you read it. Ready?  Here goes.

It is not the responsibility of the teenagers with whom you cross paths  to educate you about their gender identity. I know this is a crazy idea, but there are adults in the world who would be glad to have those conversations with you–other real adults who are also school administrators, lawyers and docs, who have spent a great deal of time learning about sexual orientation and gender identity development. Some of the Youth Outlook kids like speaking up but (I know you’ll find this hard to believe) there are some 13 and 14 year old kids who feel sorta….you know…put on the spot when called upon to educate grown people whose motivations and goals are not quite clear and the kids don’t feel quite supported.

Okay, now put out the fire on your head and consider this. There are agencies that focus their work on supporting LGBT children and youth. They have attorneys on staff that have tracked the legal issues across the country and can give you the most up to date information available.  First, check in with Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (www.illinoissafeschools.org).  They do amazing work with school policy and gender issues.

I know this is hard work. Here. Put a little aloe on that burn. Now consider this. There is a growing number of school administrators who have already undertaken some education on the topic of gender identity, bathroom and locker room issues and have arranged for training for all of their staff. At this point, schools are even arranging education for parents who want to understand more. How do I know this? Because I’ve met them in person. They’ve come to trainings offered by Youth Outlook (www.youth-outlook.org), or they’ve scheduled Youth Outlook to come to their school for a presentation. Talk to them. They are a wealth of information about how they did policy changes, guidelines and training.

Back in the late 90s when Youth Outlook was just getting launched, school representatives told me ALL THE TIME that there were no gay kids in the suburban schools. I half expected it from the admin folks but I’ll admit I found it embarrassing from other social workers. Then, time went by and I kept bringing the topic up and more kids came out and GSAs took root. High school representatives stopped arguing about whether or not they had gay kids. They KNEW they had them. Those wild and rascally gay kids were everywhere!

About 5 years ago, I started pointing out that we weren’t talking about only gay kids any more and we weren’t talking about just high schools. By then, we were talking about middle school kids coming out and many, many more issues related to gender identity. And over the last few years, trans, non-binary and gender fluid kids have been coming out in droves.

Guess what our next challenge is going to be?  Can you connect the dots? Right.  Here. You need a little more aloe on that. The next trend is going to be elementary aged kids coming out as the whole range of L, G, B, P and T/non-binary.  The middle schools are still doing what the high schools did back in the 90s. “Oh, we don’t have kids like that here!” Imagine, if you will, what the response is going to be when the elementary aged kids start coming out in the same droves that the middle schoolers are right now.

So, back to my original point.  It’s not the responsibility of those kids to educate you, no more than it is the responsibility of trans teenagers to educate their doctors about trans health needs. There are trainings all over the country now. There are local organizations specializing in supporting LGBT+ kids. I encourage you to find us. We can help you, because it’s our mission to help them. Inviting a 14 year old to meet with the school attorney to explain gender…strikes me as a power play and the first thought that comes to mind, “Hey, pick on someone your own size.”

Really? Is this the first time someone has said that to you?

I know, I know! But don’t worry, I think your eyebrows will grow back. Take this aloe plant with you.  We’ll talk again soon.

aloe-vera-plant

Pride 2016: Whiplash

Posted: 13th June 2016 by admin in Blog, Uncategorized
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Pride 2016: Whiplash

Last week, I left home on a sunny Thursday morning to go to the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference. I got a little turned around near the airport with all of the construction and had a hard time finding the economy parking lot, which I thought was kind of funny given the number of times I’ve been to the airport. It was a nice day. I was looking forward to my trip—2 ½ days of conferencing and new ideas and meeting fun, new people, followed by 2 days visiting my sister, whom I have described in previous blog posts as “a colorful character”.

I finally figured out the entrance to the economy parking lot and ditched my car in favor of the railcar to the terminal.  American Airlines buzzed at noon. I went right to the little machine and plugged in my flight number.  The machine couldn’t find me. Rut ro, Raggy.  Just to my right, two American Airlines reps chatted at the counter and one glanced over and asked if she could help.

“The machine can’t seem to find me,” I said. “Here’s my reservation info.”

Dutifully, she began to plug the information into her computer. As she was typing, I happened to scroll down a bit on my phone screen and saw that my reservation was just fine—AND with another airline. I started to laugh and she looked up at me.

“Oh geez! My flight is actually on United! I’m in the wrong terminal.”  The more I thought about it, the harder I laughed. She joined me. Then her counter-mate joined us and we all giggled together.  They wished me a great flight and a nice day and I headed over to the correct terminal.

Lines. Identification. Shoes off. If you fly, you know the drill.

“Step in, feet on the marks, raise your hands.”

The scan machines are so much faster.

“You moved. Can you step back in and we’ll do it again? It’s blurry.”

I stepped back in, put my feet on the Arthur Murray footprints and raised my paws above my head. The machine whirred in a half-circle and they waved me out.

“Please wait here until the scan comes up.”

I waited, idly glancing sideways to see if my belongings were coming through the x-ray machine. Not that I fly a lot, but same old, same old.

An angular, hard-looking TSA agent leaned toward me. “Do you have anything in your pockets?”

I shook my head. I know the drill. Nothing in your pockets when you get scanned.  I voluntarily turned my pockets inside out for her.

She looked back at the screen. “Do you have something in your groin area?”

I didn’t think I’d heard her right.  “I’m sorry. What?”

“The scan is showing a suspicious bulge in your groin area. Do you have anything there?”

Confused, I stared at her for a moment. “No. There’s nothing there.”

“What about your right ankle?”

“What about it?”

“The scan shows something there too. Look.” She pointed at the monitor positioned behind me, over my left shoulder.  I turned around. The admirably gender neutral stick figure on the screen had a bright box drawn around both its right stick figure ankle and its y-shaped, stick figure groin area.

What the actual fuck?

“So do you have anything on your ankle?”

“My sock,” I offered dryly.

“I’m going to have to pat it down.”

“Of course,” I agreed, not putting the whole picture together yet.

She reached down, running her fingers around the cuff of my jeans.  As I’d said, there was nothing there but my sock. When she straightened up, she said, “We’re going to have to pat you down.” She started to rattle off the procedure which involved a female TSA agent searching my body, placing hands in some very private areas.

That’s when it clicked.

It flashed through my mind and was gone in a nanosecond. I wonder how many other trans and gender queer people have come through this airport in the last two days to get to this conference? Are you trying to make a point? See if I’m packing? See if I have a penis and my ID doesn’t match my body? Do you want to make sure I’m using the right bathroom?

I didn’t look any different than I have and I wasn’t wearing anything I haven’t flown in for the last 20 years. I wear one kind of jeans. They’re my favorite. I wear one kind of underroos, also my favorite.  What an odd coincidence that we, as a country, are losing our collective minds over trans people and their right to dignity, not to mention bodily privacy, and the only person getting pulled out of line at that moment  was the only visible gender queer. Maybe it happened to people who weren’t gender queer. I don’t know that for a fact. What I do know for a fact was that I was on my way to work, and all of a sudden, I was required to allow a TSA agent to touch my groin.

I took a step back from her and sweat broke out on my forehead and the scruff of my neck. I felt my head jerk side to side convulsively, accompanied by a reaction of please don’t touch me. My breathing constricted and I couldn’t get a deep breath in.

The agent took a step closer to me. “Would you like to be screened in a private area?”

Yes.

NO! Please don’t take me somewhere and touch my body against my will!

I backed up another half step. Maybe I could just leave. I could collect my belongings and just go home. I could skip the conference. Another female TSA rep appeared at the first one’s elbow. Then a male agent called out something about needing a female to do a private screening and a third one appeared. All three of them faced me, as I stood with my back against the edge of the scan machine, sweat leaking down my temples.

“You’ll need to come with us.”

Could I? Couldn’t I just leave?  It wasn’t too far from the feeling of being with the father when he was arrested for DWI when I was eight and I was told I needed to get in the squad car with him, which was the equivalent of being arrested with him. I could have run then, too, but I had been concerned that I’d be the only fugitive in my third grade class. What if I turned around and walked out now?

A vision of being tackled and cuffed invaded my thoughts.  Was that what happened? Was declining a search and leaving ever an option? What were my rights in this situation? Cold, I realized I had no idea if they’d take me down or what my legal rights were.

The private screening area looked like an overgrown cubicle with a lid on it. I was directed in first, and the three agents followed me, lining up along the inside of the only door, barring my exit.

The young African American woman addressed me.  “Is there anything you want to tell us?”

What could I say? Please don’t touch me? I have nothing in my pants except myself? I don’t know why you’re doing this?  Except I did, because the machine told them there was something there…and this was their jobs.

What came out was, “I… I… this will be hard for me. I will try to stand still.”

Her eyebrows furrowed, then she nodded. “I understand. I’ll tell you everything I’m about to do.”  She held her arms out from her sides, palms up. “Please extend your arms like this.”

I stretched my paws out, also palms up. Cold helplessness sank to the bottom of my stomach like a heavy ball as I tensed all over. I realized my heart was racing.

“I’m going to start here with a pinching motion and work my way around.” She took hold of the band of my jeans.

Okay. Okay, I can do this. Just stand still. I can do this.

She finished searching the band of my jeans. “Please move your feet further apart. I’m going to move my hand up your legs. I have to touch your groin. I’ll use the back of my hand.”

My gag reflex caught. I closed my eyes, my entire body constricted now, and tears ran from corners of my closed eyes.

“Are you okay?” the first agent asked.  “Do you need a break?”

I shook my head.

“You want us to keep going and just get it over with?”

Yes. By all means. Please continue invading my body while I stand here with my arms out until you decide it’s “over with”. I have nothing on my being that you are going to find, so exactly how long is this going to take? The sound that came out was sort of a cracked croak which the agent, now kneeling on the floor, took to be an affirmation.

Hands. Stranger’s hands in places that no one gets to touch …except for those with consent or those who did not bother to get consent.

Focus. Focus. It’s almost done.

The agent on the floor finished running her hands between my legs and got up. “She doesn’t have anything.”

NO SHIT.

To me, she said, “You’re doing great. I just have to swab your hands and we’ll be done.”

When she stepped out of the room to get the swab, the first agent offered me a ragged paper towel and asked me quietly, “Are you traveling with someone?”

I shook my head, unable to look at her, tears still blinding me. Silly me. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring emotional support to get through having some stranger’s hands in my groin at the airport so I could get to work. I glanced around the overgrown cubicle, wondering how many other gender queer people had been rubbed down in this space over the past 24 hours. And how many other sexual assault survivors were systematically reduced to trembling idiots, blinded by their own tears?

The swab was clean, mostly because I so rarely need to handle physical explosives at my job as a social worker. Dealing with emotional explosion is much more our realm. Numbly, I wondered if I had somehow missed some headlines about a run of pudgy, middle aged queers smuggling explosives in their underroos.

The agent who had searched me opened the door. “Thank you,” she said softly, a 180 turn from her approach when she thought I had groin-related contraband.

I stumbled away, one sneaker still untied. Or untied again. I didn’t know. The gate seemed an inordinate distance away; the conference might well have been on the other side of the planet.  I could still feel echoes of strange hands. Someone bumped into me—or I bumped into someone—and I crawled further inside my skin seeking the off switch to my over-extended antennae. I fought the urge to keep repeating, “I’m sorry, please stop!”, as if that had been expected me the entire time and as if that might have had any effect.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be sorry about. Sorry for being at O’Hare? Sorry for having booked a flight that took me through THAT security gate with those particular TSA agents? Sorry for being comfortable in my gender queerness and having the nerve to show up at the airport that way? Sorry that I wasn’t actually packing and there was nothing between the agent’s hand and my groin except my clothing? Sorry that I had the gall to be looking forward to a 3 day conference of open queer-ity in a city celebrating Pride weekend? Sorry… just for being?

The fall from the high of looking forward to the conference ended with a tooth-rattling jolt in an overgrown cubicle with a lid. I’ve been a public queer for almost twenty years. I’ve been helping little queerlings celebrate who they are for almost half the time I’ve been alive. How dare I? How dare I show up at the airport wearing my favorite jeans and my favorite underroos, sporting my gender neutrality? As if this were Pride month… In 2016.

The conference was barely tolerable and I couldn’t wait to find quiet space. Focus. Breathe. Keep breathing. Find pride. I know it’s here somewhere.

My chest eventually opened up and I was able to start breathing deeply again until the news reports of Orlando and LA began. I hadn’t realized that my breathing space was merely the act of climbing the next incline, this time with a drop right off the edge as if the tracks simply ended. When the plunge began, and my antennae shot out so far I could no longer sense where they were in space or time, I had one comfort left.

I texted the Youth Outlook staff whose numbers I had with me. “Watching this story get worse and worse as the day goes one, thinking of my dream team and loving you guys from PA.”

Their responses to me and to each other lightened the day, lifted it, warmed the cold stone in my stomach. Love. Kindness. Support. Honor.

And pride.

Sometimes, our antennae shoot out. Sometimes, the bottom drops out or the tracks end and we drop several emotional stories. Sadly, maddeningly, it isn’t uncommon in queer worlds. It still gives us whiplash. But in the end, we have each other. There is love. Kindness. Support. Honor. And pride.

Grab a hand. We have such work to do in Orlando, in LA, in Chicago, across the country, in this Pride 2016 season, whiplash and all.

strength

 

 

Emotional Styptic Pencil Needed on Aisle 3

Posted: 11th May 2016 by admin in Blog
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Over the weekend, I read some of Brene Brown’s older book, Daring Greatly. It’s always a toss up as to which lens her words will register through first for me, personally or professionally. Sometimes, it’s both. During this reading, I found myself hooked on her ideas about shame being gender based, and both sets of wheels went into motion.

First, she lays out the reasons around which women are shamed: body shape/weight, parenting, and their ability to be perfect without making it look like they’re trying too hard. Or as she sums it up, how we look, what we should be, and how we should be. She notes a US study that rates “being nice” and “pursuing a thin body ideal” as the leading attributes for being feminine.

Next, she takes on the topic of shame for men: vulnerability/weakness is never an option. The consequence of being perceived as weak can range from the loss of a gift (artistic or creative expression that is seen as less than masculine) to the ultimate, as we see in the LGBT field on too regular a basis, loss of life. The outcome for many men is simply to shut down, thereby not allowing themselves to be seen as weak, but also not allowing themselves a depth of expression that other people want from them. What a tightrope to walk!

I sat with that information for a couple of days, percolating on how many trans and gender expansive kids are moving through schools across the country.  I poked at it with a stick and stirred it around. Do gender shaming messages have to been viewed as a binary? What about those kids who have found the binary doesn’t fit them?

Are we growing a generation of kids who, as they throw off the restrictions of the binary male/female constructs at younger and younger ages and live somewhere in the middle, may inadvertently set themselves up to carry both the shame messages for the gender they were assigned and the gender they identify as? Or will it serve as an armor, effectively repelling shame messages from both, because they identify as neither? Do there have to be shame messages at all?

I ran it through the filter of my own experiences, pre-historic though they may be. Urban Tidepool tells the story of being raised as a female child in a household with a widowed, alcoholic father and an unstable, drug addicted brother. Shame messages were not just an every day occurrence, but many, many times a day. From a parent whom I’ve described in previous blog posts as, himself, emotionally limited (when he was sad, he was angry; when he was hurt, he was angry; when he was angry, he was angry), the message was an unrelenting, “Tough guys don’t cry.” This was a non-negotiable standard, applied to both my brother and to me, and probably to my two oldest siblings who were grown and gone by the time I was born. That’s how he understood the world.  Do NOT show weakness. In Brown’s terms, it was a male message.

From my unpredictable and explosive brother, the message was quite different. “You fat bitch.” “You’re a pig.” “You fat whore.”  In Brown’s terms, those could clearly be considered female shaming messages about how I appeared and who I was. Whether or not I was, in reality, THOSE things was never in question. And frankly, looking back it from age 50, I envy that size 12 that I wore until I went away to college because I haven’t seen it since! I was not a significantly overweight teenager. But THAT was never the issue.

I joke now about who I was as “a little boi”, having learned about gender fluidity as an adult, and now having a career based on LGBT issues. As a kid, either way I looked at those messages, the take home was the same: You are not enough. You will NEVER be enough. And do not dare be anything less than a male ideal AND a female ideal—in a household led by an active alcoholic and missing any kind of female role model.

Wow. Okay. Let me get right on that! THAT just sounds totally do-able, guys!

So as I read and percolated and ran things through the filter of my experience, I couldn’t help but wonder about the kids with whom my agency works. What might they feel? What experiences were they having around how to be healthy people in the world? Where are their messages coming from and what were those messages? I got a glimpse into the answer this week.

My heart breaks.

In reviewing stats for one drop-in center, I saw that 40% of the kids at that site reported being verbally abused. At home. By their parents. Primarily by dads and stepdads. 40%.  I almost cried while I wrote the report for which I was organizing that information.  40% of our kids getting daily—and some cases multiple times a day—messages about being less than, not enough, and under continual pressure never to DARE be anything less than an ideal that most of us cannot live up to. Think about that. They are being shamed for not living up to an ideal about a gender that they don’t even identify as! From here, it was an easy step to also wonder if those kids are also carrying shame messages related to the gender they identify as, as they find it necessary to shut down, shut out, shut off…simply to survive living in their own homes.

I suspect Brene Brown would want to look at this generationally and dig at the shame messages that those dads and stepdads are carrying. When I look back at some of the messages my dad put out, I certainly have to question the shame he may have been carrying about feeling anything–ever– and expecting me to live up to that standard. From the angle of being 50, I can afford to make jokes about my gender shame-receptors being slightly off-kilter. I can laugh about being both the woman who doesn’t feel AND the man who is never going to be thin enough. I have the luxury of developed cognitive skills and a wonderful circle of friends who welcome me as a gender blend. But the other question remains. How fast can we stop the emotional hemorrhage of the children and teenagers being verbally battered in their homes for being themselves? And if we can’t stop it, what are our plans to help heal it after the damage is done?

shame-quote

Lights Don’t Go Out. They Just Flicker.

Posted: 26th March 2016 by admin in Blog, Uncategorized
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“You can blow out the candle, but you can’t blow out the fire. Once the flames begin to catch, the wind will blow it higher.”  ~ Playing for Change, Biko, 2009

I spend my days with lightworkers. I think you might know the kinds of people I mean—those folks whose very presence brings your day up, makes you feel cared about, makes you want to be around them. It’s one of the reasons I love my job so much. The opportunity to share days with people whose existence makes the world a better place is a gift.

From my friend David, I am reminded of the role of being an advocate for people’s rights, especially culturally competent healthcare. I am reminded that not everyone has access to healthcare  (culturally competent or otherwise) and I have always admired his stance on that topic.  “I want everyone to feel safe here. They should know they can get what they need here.”

When the topic first came up, we were talking about people who are living with HIV. The next time the topic came up, we were talking about people who are LGBT+. The third time, it was in reference to people who are living with chronic mental illness, who may or may not have a home, who may or may not choose to be medicated for their mental illness. The answer didn’t change, though, which speaks to the underlying value driving his words. “I want everyone to feel safe here.”

From another good friend, Lorrie, I am reminded of the courage that it takes to overcome the shame that accompanies family violence. She helped run Youth Outlook’s healthy relationships program for over a decade, teaching youth how to speak up for themselves and how to hold themselves in a place of esteem from which they could make strong choices about how they would allow themselves to be treated. She would speak of strength and renewal with reverence, calling to mind that everyone has the chance to be reborn, to be loved, to be respected within the context of every relationship.

Such friends not only bring light, as I have mentioned in other posts, but they raise the vibration around them, inviting everyone who crosses paths with them to lift themselves to match that vibration. This is what I mean when I talk about leading with your light. Last summer, I went to a conference with David, and I am now struck by the images of him walking with me on the streets of Tulsa. He radiated joy at being there, at being with me, and the prospect of what we were attempting to do in a joint project. It was impossible to spend time with him and not feel the lift. I watched the employees at his work place respond. I watched wait staff respond as well as other conference attendees who were meeting him for the first time, surrounded and (probably inexplicably to some of them) elevated.

“David, I’ve heard that there are two kinds of people in relationships,” I have told him.  “Kites and rocks. Every relationship has one of each. You’re such a kite!”

On two occasions, he put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me and said, “Good. You be the rock. We’re going to grow old together, you and me!”

When I told him I wanted my first tattoo to celebrate turning 50, he shared my excitement and asked me what I wanted for a design. So far, he has been the only person who knew without needing it explained what “Ohana” meant and what it meant to me.

“Oh my God, that’s beautiful!” He beamed.

Surrounded. Lifted.

I noticed early on that it wasn’t just me. Other people could feel it too, evidenced by smiles, gestures, shoulders that straightened and heads that tilted upward. Sometimes just by walking into a room, lightworkers shift the energy and it catches…and spreads. People do sense that joy and they want to be close to it.

I started 2016 with a text from David on New Year’s Eve telling me that he couldn’t wait to dig further into the project that we shared and he was ready for next steps. I reminded him that we would grow old together. I, too, wanted to be part of that joy.

I left a meeting with him a couple of weeks ago and realized in the parking lot, as I was pulling away, that I hadn’t told him something very important. I paused and dug my phone out.  “I love you, David!”

“I love you back!”

From cold October evenings in a park in Naperville for Take Back the Night rallies to warm, relaxed afternoons over coffee, Lorrie poured energy into her work with LGBT kids, with rape survivors, with new volunteers seeking to give back to their communities. She could sail into a volunteer training and bring the room up with her announcement, “Of all the places I volunteer, Youth Outlook is my favorite. I cannot wait to be here on Tuesday nights!”  Bodies would shift, heads raise, shoulders straighten.

Surrounded. Lifted.

Our texts shortened over the last few months from “Driving by your house and waving!” to simply, “Loving you!”, and her response, “Loving you too.”

Had you asked me twenty years ago if I’d ever tell a coworker or colleague that I loved him or her or them, I’d have thought the question pure madness. This is what lightworkers inspire. You can’t stop it. No one can. Energy can’t be destroyed, just transformed. And spread–through our friendships, and our engagement with consumers of our agency services, and in our intentions and our wishes and our dreams.

David died last Sunday. Lorrie died on Tuesday. As far as I know, they never met each other, but the light they both brought has illuminated the path for me for more than a decade. The challenge of last week, and of weeks to come, is to recall that their light has not been extinguished. I carry it. You carry it. It doesn’t go out. It transformed and it will continue to glow in the work we do and the passion we feel. “I love you, David,” and “Loving you” would be my final words to David and Lorrie. That, alone, stands as testament that their light will not fade. It merely flickered. Advocacy, safety, rebirth, love, respect…we all get to carry it from here.

“And the eyes of the world are watching us.” ~Playing for Change, Biko, 2009

flickering candle

 

2015 in review

Posted: 9th January 2016 by admin in Uncategorized
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Zapped Through Our Feet

Posted: 12th October 2015 by admin in Blog
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I live in a town that experienced a college campus shooting. In 2008, five NIU students were killed, plus the gunman. I moved here from a city that experienced the trauma of Pan Am flight 103, carrying thirty five Syracuse University students home from a semester abroad, exploding over Lockerbie, Scotland. All two hundred and fifty nine people on board were killed and later news reports described people picking body parts up out of their backyards.

In the days that followed each incident, the cities grew eerily quiet. Businesses opened for operation, but clerks spoke in whispers. After the NIU shooting, I could stand at my back door and watch the helicopters circling above campus.  The screams of the witnesses and family members fade over those first few days and turn into mournful keening at funerals and memorial services, sounds I don’t always remember that humans are capable of making until I hear them again. And the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Last week, in the middle of a meeting with my board of directors, a board member checked her phone and said, “NIU received a bomb threat. Everyone’s being evacuated.”

The room felt suddenly airless and I turned to the board chair and said, “Please excuse me. I need to call home.”

I texted first, not sure (if she were someplace loud) that she’d hear it ring.

“Where r u?”

No answer.

Okay, forget that. I dialed. As the number connected, I remembered the waves of disbelief after the shooting in 2008, followed by the indescribable horror as the events pieced together to form the whole picture.  Were we heading down that path? Again? But wait—I thought lightning never struck twice. Could we have both a shooting AND a bombing? What would it take to survive THAT?

Everything at home was fine. My family and most of my friends employed by NIU were not on campus at the time, and the few who were, went home when the evacuation started.

Later news stories focused on multiple bomb threats on numerous campuses around IL. It was time to breathe. Perhaps it was simply the work of a distraught student entering midterms.  As the town of DeKalb took its first deep inhalation and classes resumed less than twenty four hours later, reports came out of both Texas and Arizona about campus shootings.  That inhalation suddenly didn’t feel as smooth.

In February, 2008, I attended the funeral service of one of the young women murdered during the NIU shooting. It was bitterly cold that day, single digit temps  (if that), and I stood elbow to elbow with other supporters to form a line across the front of the church to block the view of some demonstrators who had come to “celebrate” the ending of that student’s life. My nose and ears went numb. My fingertips, even inside gloves, burned. I lost feeling in my feet. On the walk back to my car, I hoped to a god I hadn’t believed in for a long time that I’d never have to do this again.

It won’t be that cold in either Arizona or Texas. But it might be as eerie. There might be those same sounds of parents and siblings and friends who have been cheated out of sharing a life. Maybe hearts will go numb and tears will freeze up on the inside due to this wave of destruction we can’t seem to get our hands around.

Driving back into DeKalb on the night of the bomb threat, I crested the hill on Peace Rd that is the overpass of the railroad tracks. From that spot, I could see the Holmes Student Center on campus clearly. I was looking, although I didn’t realize it at first, for the helicopters again.  The sky was clear. I dropped down the other side of the incline and continued toward home.

As I turned into my neighborhood, I thought about a book I read some twenty plus years ago on animal testing and animal rights. It may have been Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. The concept that jumped out at me was the experiment that he describes wherein if you place dogs in small, confined areas so that they cannot move, nor can they escape, and then you repeatedly shock them with electrical shocks (through their feet if I remember correctly), they will eventually give up hope that the shocks will stop and lie down and just let you continue to shock them.

Airplanes full of people carrying university students home to their families being blown out of the sky…Campus after campus of school shootings… Bomb threats that close high schools and college campuses…So far,  it appears that we cannot move out of the way. Nor can we escape this, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to predict where the next “this” is going to occur. Should we worry that all of this amounts to us constantly being shocked through our feet and that eventually, we’re all just going to lie down and let the shocks continue?

I will repeat what I said in a post a few weeks ago. Lead with your light, friends. I think it may be the only way to deal with being zapped through our feet.

dog

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