I am white. I am a socialist. I am an American. I believe in open borders. I believe part of what Americans owe to the world is to be a place where people can lift themselves out of poverty, escape torture, and live sustainably because we stole this land, we enslaved people to become one of the richest nations in the world, and we have damaged the environment more than any other country. Based on our history we must adhere to higher standards and pay for what we have done to humanity. I believe everyone who lives in the Unites States should have access to free healthcare, to free education, to affordable housing, and to a fair wage. So based on this, people often label me as a leftist, a radical (which I don’t mind - those are lovely words), but truly what I am in an innovator and a humanitarian. I love myself and know I deserve love. I want to use that privilege to ensure that everyone on planet Earth gets to feel that way - even if I disagree with them.
Last Saturday I attended a March and rally organized by black youth in our community and the message that stuck with me was...
All the movements are the movement.
It seems simple but this statement had such a profound effect on me. In a sea full of people walking and yelling for social justice, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed over 100,000 people in our country, emotions were raw and flowing. So many different ideas of HOW to make this deeply necessary change real. So many feelings about the best way to fight for equality and take a stand for freedom. I can already see that those of us who want to see black and brown people elevated, supported, and economically healed so they can live every day with the same rights we do are arguing with each other, losing focus, draining our energy, and taking sides about the WHAT and the HOW. The truth is right now...
All the movements are the movement.
In order to take responsibility for hundreds of years of black and brown oppression, in order to forgive thousands of years of patriarchy, in order to heal the pain of thousands of years of murder, rape, starvation, emotional abuse, and self loathing we must center ourselves on the WHY. Those who want to keep people down, those who want to perpetuate racism, those who want to protect the rich, those who want to preserve a system that is toxic and no longer serves us want us to fight each other. They want us to burn out. The want us to embrace apathy. They want us to be depressed, anxious, worried about money, isolated with our own people so we forget that our power lies in acting as one. They want to us to hate each other so we forget our purpose is to dismantle their empire. Our power comes from knowing it is okay to disagree on the WHAT and the HOW. We need to refine and build systems that allow us to exercise our collective decisions in order to take action, but right now we must center around the WHY. We can not fragment if we truly want to see change. We must accept and understand that...
All the movements are the movement.
Change of this magnitude does not come easily. This moment is our alchemy. We are transforming ourselves and our world. Pressure from all sides is the only path to victory. Everyone has a role to play. We don’t have to agree on every aspect of the system break down, but we have to truly see each other’s motivation. We must be open, listening, self-reflective, flexible, strong, and know what we are here to contribute because...
All the movements are the movement.
We must be relentless my friends. We must endure.
I’ll see you on the battlefield.
Since 1999, I have been in a poly relationship with my transgender wife. During that time I have had a number of relationships, from short to long term, from a few months to a few years, from vanilla to all kinds of kinky, with a variety of genders and races. Before my wife, I was in multiple non-traditional relationships as well. It seems that from the beginning of my adult life conventional, heteronormative, monogamous, romantic partnerships were just not in the cards. At 15 years old I dreamed of growing up to be Anais Nin, obsessed with my own psyche, with two great loves, and many stories in between. In my version though, I would be in love with a man and a woman. Now at 45, I can say I am living this vision in real time and I am happier and more fulfilled than I have ever been. However, it isn’t because I have more people in my life or because I am never alone. It isn’t because poly relationships are better than other relationships. It’s because living a poly lifestyle and building a poly framework for understanding others and myself has made me a better person. Does this mean alternative relationship structures make everyone who participates a better person? Absolutely not. It is a choice; a choice you can make at any point in your journey.
Not Everything Is about You, but Everthing Is about You
In order to become a stronger, smarter, better person and a much better partner in almost any scenario you must recognize and stop projection on to the people you love most. Projection of your feelings, beliefs, or ideas on to other people is, in my opinion, one of the top reasons relationships don’t last. Especially in the United States we are almost conditioned that love and projection are the same action, which they are not. Love another includes ‘seeing” the other person fully for who they are and and loving yourself includes “seeing” yourself as a complex human being of depth. Projection means you no longer see someone or yourself clearly because you are adding a layer of idealism or fear or judgment or expectation to the experience. Over the years I have discovered that 95% of the time that I feel defensive, argue, feel uncomfortable with someone, or get my feelings hurt it is because of my own projections. I am making my friend or lover’s response about me, but it’s not. I assign intentions to the other person, but those intentions are not theirs, they are mine. Poly has literally cleansed my emotional and mental lenses so I can see myself projecting in the moment and course correct before I fight, before I hurt, before I defend.
Practice Emotional Intelligence
One of the key ingredients of learning to truly see the people I love and stop my habit of projection is emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is defined as:
"...the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth." - Mayer & Salovey, 1997
At it’s core, emotional intelligence (according to author, academic, and educator Daniel Goleman) is a blend of self awareness, empathy, self regulation, motivation, and social skills. We often say people are naturally empathetic, social, or motivated as if these were personality traits we are born with or without. However, empathy, social confidence, and motivation are all traits we can cultivate inside. We can develop and fortify over time with a variety of methods including meditation, psychotherapy, counseling, martial arts, music, writing, and many other forms of creative expression. The goal of emotional intelligence is to realize and embrace that each one of us is having an internal and external dialogue. These dialogues reflect the depth and clarity our relationship with ourselves and with others. We must listen and learn about these exchanges and understand how they are connected and when they are occurring. Sometimes this causes a merging and revealing of our conscious and unconscious desires.
Strengthen Your Inner Pause Button
I am an emotional person constantly full of raw feeling that transfers through my emotional and mental systems with very little filter. It is intense, but it’s also thrilling. The beauty is that the emotional and mental parts of my Self are very connected and speak freely to one another. I feel things at a high decibel, but I also quickly categorize and mentally process them. It makes understanding my Self much easier and helps me avoid delusion and projection. The flip side is that I can react quickly and sometimes forget to complete my internal communications and process. In order to manage this and use my strengths to the best of my ability I have had to create and exercise my inner pause button. One regular strategy I employ is called the 72 hour rule. It means that when I have strong feelings and want to react I must sit with the feelings for at least 3 days and after that time if I still remember what bothered or excited me then I can make a plan to do something with the feelings. If I don’t remember then whatever stirred me is my responsibility and wasn’t about the other person or people. Even with my romantic partners I stick to these rules and it creates a world where we do not fight, yell, or blame, we simply discuss problems and disagreements without the burden of reactionary words or actions. Your pause button also may not materialize in just a few days or even weeks. It takes time to practice and make that muscle strong enough that you can flex it whenever you want or need to. It has taken me almost 30 years and I am still nowhere near perfect.
Trust in People’s Best Intentions
It is impossible to have a successful poly relationship with someone you do not trust and trusting a romantic partner doesn’t mean doing it once when you first meet and your brain is full of infatuation chemicals. Trust is something that given, earned, maintained, and reinforced over time. Once you have a connection with someone and the trust is built you must begin to believe in the other person’s best intentions. You must act as if you know in your heart and your mind that the person you are in love with wants what is best for both of you. This means when situations arise you can’t suddenly act as if you believe they are out to hurt you, leave you, or upset you. You must act as if you believe they care deeply for you, mean the words they say, and have their own reasons for making choices that may be different than your reasons. Every time I feel angry or jealous or disappointed I remind myself that no one I love and that truly loves me wants me to feel that way. This motivates me to listen to my lover’s intention and see her/him/them as a whole person separate from me. Also trusting others requires that you trust yourself. If you can’t trust there is something inside you need to confront and deal with, even if your lack of trust originates from your relationships with people in the past. It may take time, but you can heal yourself and learn to trust again.
Love Is Worth the Risk
All of these strategies and lessons I have learned from loving deeply with my whole Self even when I knew it was a risk. I have come to believe that regardless of what kind of relationship structures you prefer, giving your heart, spirit, or body to others will always create the potential for suffering and you have to decide if it is worth it. After almost 45 years on this planet I have won in love and been wounded, but I get to decide if I believe it is worth it, so I do, and that belief, that faith can never be taken from me.
“The task of genius
is to keep the miracle alive,
to live always in the miracle,
to make the miracle more and more miraculous,
to swear allegiance to nothing,
but live only miraculously,
think only miraculously,
die miraculously.”
This quote has been near and dear to my heart since I was a teenager. The first time I read these words I felt inside as if Henry was expressing through words the power of being in the moment. Living in the now is something that did not come naturally to me as a child. I instead observed, planned, plotted, orchestrated, and manifested what I wanted and little of life was left to “the flow” or spontaneity of the universe. I envisioned, prayed for, and worked for the things I wanted inside and over time I grew stronger and more capable of extracting from life what I believed to be important, valuable, beautiful, or real.
Growing Older
As the years have passed I have explored, learned, and integrated. I have felt compelled to continuously search for experiences and practices that will allow me to be in the moment, to contact the now, to step outside linear time and and feel the oneness and wholeness of being alive. The times I have felt the fullness and freedom of knowing the now have been the closest I have come to perfection or what might also be called divinity. In this process I have been healed, soothed, inspired, and filled with peace that is hard to find anywhere in this chaotic world.
I Am Here to Simply Be Me
For many years the only thing keeping me focused and motivated was a deep belief that I can get whatever I want. I rooted myself in this faith and centered myself on the idea that I was in control and created the reality around me. My joy was linked directly to what I could accomplish, be recognized for, or build in the world. Eventually though, through the very nature of life and what it is, it was revealed that my agenda, my plans, my goals were not at the top of this pyramid I called my existence. It became clear that as we all march towards our own death the meaning we project and give to the experiences, people, and things around us are exactly that - a projection, a fabrication, a dream we hope is coming true. And from this painful perspective I was reborn and began to see that when I love it is only truly love when there is no agenda. When I give it is only truly a gift when give it without expectation. When I wake up it is only joy when I do it because I can, not because of what will come.
Bringing the Infinite to the Linear
Of course like all other humans I must function, survive, move through the three-dimensional world, which can not exist without time and the tracking of our days, hours, minutes, seconds, and so on. The question is how can I fuel my heart, mind, and spirit? How can I stay young and hungry as an intellect and soul? How can I love myself fully? I can do that by giving the infinite a place to live in my day to day. I can merge the infinite with the linear and always remember I am made of stars and dirt and water and light. We are the miracle even in our darkest forms. I live and die miraculously like all other beings who draw breath.
“Whatever happens with us, your body / will haunt mine—tender, delicate / your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond / of the fiddlehead fern in forests / just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs / between which my whole face has come and come— / the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there— / the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth— / your tongue on me, firm, protective, searching / me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers / reaching where I had been waiting years for you / in my rose-wet cave—whatever happens, this is.”
from Adrienne Rich’s ‘The Dream of a Common Language’
As a kid I was the oldest of three daughters. My father loved us, but he also used his loud voice to yell at us when he was frustrated, tired, sad, stressed, or feeling basically any other emotion. As the only man in a house with 4 women who were smaller than him it was easy for him to use intimidation to try and control everyone and everything, especially when he was afraid his control was all an illusion. So I learned how to fight anger with anger. I learned how to face force with force and to stand firm unafraid. I trained myself to not back down, because if I wasn’t going to do it who would? I learned that anger was a way of life. I learned that anger was justified. I learned that anger was easier than sadness, fear, depression, or even sometime joy. Over time I believed my anger was my own and not just a learned coping mechanism. I identified as a person with an anger problem.
As I grew older I began to question who I was. I began to peel back the layers and see which parts of me were natural, original, and real. I also discovered some parts of me were learned, crafted, molded - one of those parts was my anger. So I pulled down all the curtains inside, I opened all the doors. I decided to take a look at all the nooks and crannies inside myself no matter how dirty with the ultimate goal of knowing myself. Knowing it all! The good, the bad, the right, the wrong, the sick, the healthy - ALL OF IT. This lead me to a new relationship with my anger - not one of avoidance or bullying, not one of confusion or avoidance, but one of power and balance.
The question of whether or not anger is a tool or a weapon comes down to one simple concept - just like many other things in life it is both.
The anger we all feel when someone hurts us or someone we love, the anger we turn on ourselves when we make mistakes or get embarrassed, the anger we experience when the world is unjust and cruel can tear us apart or lift us up. It can motivate us to enact change or to root ourselves in stubbornness and stay the same. It can lead us to the deepest place of forgiveness and compassion or it can drive us to take revenge and exact payback.
Anger becomes whatever we intend.
Anger does not control us, we lead it, direct it, manifest with it, focus it. We turn it into a tool or a weapon. It is our choice.
Anger is not bad or wrong - it is fuel for the fire of our hearts, minds, and spirits.
“Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something is wrong. He’s not right in the brain.” -Dalai Lama
Self-esteem
“a confidence and satisfaction in oneself : self-respect.”
Merriam-Webster
Being the Real Me
I am in my early 40’s and I have always been overweight. Not just a little, but probably by 100 pounds. I have oily skin that breaks out frequently. I have a slightly crooked smile and lots of body hair for a woman. I have stretch marks and laugh lines. I talk too much. My hearing is not that great so sometimes I talk too loud. I snore and I am not very photogenic. I know what I want and I can be impatient. I speak my mind without apology and I don’t always have the energy to put another person’s needs above my own. I am very aware of my faults and shortcomings. I take ownership of them and I build relationships with people who call me out when I have hurt or offended them.
The question is, despite my awareness of all of this, from a young age I have had self-esteem, so where did it come from? Of course I was teased and rejected in my younger years. Of course my body has changed as I have aged and things aren’t the same as they used to be. Somehow though I have always and continue to love myself, walk with confidence, and make decisions based on my natural and inherent worth. So where does this natural love of my own person come from? Was it learned? Is it just part of my personality? Have I done something special to become more confident and in love with who I am over time? I have been asked this a question many times and the truth is I don’t know the answer.
Is Love the Answer?
Since I was a child I have always felt loved. Did I get spanked and yelled at as a kid? Yes. Was I told there were things wrong with me? Yes. I grew up a Baptist minister’s child, the oldest of three, and I was taught love equaled suffering and sacrifice. I grew up as a queer person, which made me different than everyone else and someone who was unnatural, an abomination, and most likely going to hell. However, my mom and I have been more than mother and daughter to each other, we’ve been friends. My father, who I thought for sure would disown his oldest and only queer child, told me it didn’t matter to him because he knew I was a good person, he raised me. My sisters always accepted me the way that I am and I adore them both as we’ve become adults. My grandparents were 4 of the kindest people I have ever known and they believed I should always be myself. I was lucky enough to grow up around a family who liked my big personality and even when it was frustrating they never withheld hugs, sweet words, and having fun.
I was also teased in school and I was never one of the popular kids, but I always had a few close friends that were funny and strange. People who appreciated me, spent time with me, and showed up for me when I needed it the most.
Essentially I am lucky. I didn’t have to look for love early in life, it found me. I’ve always had it and so as I became a grown woman it seemed impossible to live without it, even if I had to find it on my own inside.
Is Selfishness the Answer?
I often wonder if my natural self-esteem comes from an inherent desire to have and cultivate my own happiness, joy, fun, etc. Does my motivation to get what I want compel me to love myself even though the world kicks most of us when we feel down; even though many people have put me down? Is it love that gives me self-esteem or selfishness? Maybe it is a combination of both. My desire to be independent is a big driver in my life so generating self love from within helps me reach that goal. The synonyms associated with the word self-esteem seem to prove this point:
The real and most important question for most people is can a person who lacks self-esteem create it? I believe you can, but I admit my bias since I have always had it. I think it is about seeing the opportunities you have in life to manifest love for yourself and making self love a practice you are dedicated to every day. In some ways making self love from nothing is a form of alchemy — you transform your own heart, mind, and body from base metals into gold. It takes time, energy, faith, and repetition.
In order to wield your own true, personal power and build an empire of self-esteem inside you must remember what Rumi said…
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Why do we all live like the planet isn’t dying? Will our avoidance lead to our extinction?
As someone who cares deeply for the environment and makes many small choices in my working class life to support and promote environmental responsibility I am often astounded at how little people want to talk about climate change, the pollution of our water, the extinction of so many species, and the possible extinction of our own.
Whether you agree or disagree with climate change, whether you are left or right of the political spectrum, it’s hard to deny that the Earth is having problems, considering we have not only trashed our oceans, air, and land, but even the space around our planet. Piles of shit left by humans even orbits us every day, a disturbing reminder of the fact that we, and our home in the universe, are circling the drain.
I Suck Just Like Everyone Else
Although people’s lack of interest in talking about this makes me sad some days and pisses me off others I can’t really judge since I know as an American there is so much more I could do to be eco-friendly. I could ride my bike to work, of course it would add between one and two hours to my day and I don’t want to be “working” for 12 hours. I could shower every other day, but I feel gross when I do that and I am self-conscious about having greasy hair as a professional. I could stop buying products packaged in plastic, but that means I would give up some of my favorite organic, fair trade drinks, foods, and personal care items. Just like anyone else living in one of the richest nations on Earth I find it difficult to sacrifice the conveniences of this world when I will wake up tomorrow and still have to live in it.
Weekend Update Nailed It
I think a recent Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live nailed it when Colin Jost stated, “We don’t really worry about climate change because it’s too overwhelming and we’re already in too deep.” “I just keep asking myself why don’t I care about this,” Michael Che continued. “I mean don’t get me wrong I 100% believe in climate change yet I am willing to do absolutely nothing about it.”
It’s Hard Not To Give Up
I wanted to laugh and cry at this bit. Laugh because comedy often makes profoundly insightful commentaries on reality and cry because I am Michael Che. The truth is even if climate change wasn’t on track to destroy life as we know it our inability to do the most basic thing we ask a 2 year old to do — clean up after yourself — will be our end. I wish sometimes I could make everyone prioritize the health of the planet and change our society, but we need to be more than eco-friendly, we need to be eco-radical. The time for friendliness is over. But the idea that I could convince everyone in the US or across the globe to rethink our modern lifestyles and make a radical shift seems impossible, when I can’t even get myself to do it.
So, What Can We Do? I Don’t Fucking Know!
I know for myself I can’t just stop caring all together and not give a shit. I have to continue with the small changes I have made and set a goal to change more every year, no matter how small the change appears to be. If I can make more money in the future I want to make bigger and bolder choices to support, heal, and even love the Earth. Maybe that means an electric vehicle or solar panels or no longer buying drinks in plastic bottles (even if they’re recycled).
I know I can’t blame other people and I have to confront my own privileged behavior every day. As a white woman, an American, an single adult without children, a working class person living above the poverty line, and a business owners there is a lot to unpack there. I personally believe I have to vote for people who will hold corporations accountable and make saving the planet and the life that exists on it a top focus of our financial and political efforts in the coming years.
Most of all I know I have to keep thinking about this stuff and talking about it. I can’t just pretend it isn’t happening. If during my lifetime we see the last tiger, dolphin, elephant, coral reef or honey bee I don’t want these incredible beings to go “gentle into that dark night.” I want to know I raged for them, and for myself, against the dying of the light.
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