I can't get there from here.......

Tears for Fears. I loved them in high school. Even though they were mortal enemies with my other favorite group: Wham!. How to fit bubble-gum pop, with a gorgeously gay lead singer into the same musical world as the brooding, dark and existential duo from Tears for Fears? Well, my music tastes pretty much sums up my entire life and personality - diametrically opposed to each other with more facets than the most perfectly cut diamond. But there has been a song lyric in my head for the last few days that seems to sum up how I feel lately. Reality is finally settling in and making for one very unhappy woman.

"Between the searching and the need to work it out, I stopped believing everything would be alright. Broken, we are broken." Tears for Fears.

They do write a catchy and melancholy little ditty don't they? I am in that in-between place where I have to make changes in my life. But most of the changes I need to make are dependent upon other people and a bad economy and a questionable use of my many skills. I need a job that pays more than my fun teaching gig. I need to decide where to move my family - do we stay in our very expensive town or do we take our show to Broadway? Do I give away everything I own or keep it or try to sell it? And where is my personal assistant to do all of that thinking for me? And that's how I feel. I feel broken. I feel as though there are pieces of me scattered all over the place and I can see them but I can't pick them up much less fit them back together again. And I am standing right there - on the edge of that cliff wanting to jump off and say - you know what life is just one big bowl of suck. It doesn't get better - and there are no happy endings. It's just day after day of the same shit.....but you know me better than that - and I know me better than that.

So, even in the middle of this dark time I am able to see down the road. There is a little town a ways away, with sun and trees and rolling hills. But between me and it is a valley filled with rocks and spiders and dark clouds. I can see the lovely town, I know it's there and it's real. But I can't get there from here without going through the valley. And it sucks knowing that. It sucks knowing that you can't skip over the bad stuff.

I want to catch a plane or flag down a passing motorist on this road. I want a break. But nobody can do this work for me and it's no longer just me - so drowning my sorrows in booze and smokes isn't going to work either. Ahhh, my twenties! Children make you grow up in a way you don't always want to. And disaster makes you want to crawl back to a time when you were being taken care of and housed and fed - but you still snuck out on Saturday nights to do what you want. There's no sneaking out. There's no taking off. It's a 24 hour gig this mommy thing. And honestly, it sucks. But that's the part of growing up that they don't tell you about - the sacrifice and the pain and the swirling vortex of suck!

And I never want to be the person who writes wah-wah posts. But this is one of them. And I feel like I am due. It'll be okay. I can see the town. I know it's there. And I have no idea how long it is going to take me to get there. But I will get there. And I will have this post to remind me of how far I came to get there. But in the meantime, tribe, know that this thing I am in - sucks - a lot!

we are blessed - today I am missing the blessing - but it will be back soon....

Does Discipline Equal Love - bell hooks response #1

News Flash: I am black. Which means, usually, that I was raised in a black family. It just so happens that I was raised in a typical black family of the 70's. First generation northerner. My grandmother was born in the south and lived through share cropping and jim crow and then moved north to get married and have her children. But the south came with them when they migrated north as did the ancient adage and practice of children being seen but not heard. But it was more than that.

I was an inquisitive child. Always asking questions, the way children do. But that was frowned upon in my family. I was constantly being quieted and told I talk too much. I was discouraged from asking questions and seen as a nuisance if I persisted. To this day my relatives still refer to me as "the child who didn't know when to keep her mouth shut." WTF? My family showed they cared in the way I am sure they had to in the south - they verbally abused us. We were told to "stay in our place" and to "not question our elders." And I am sure that this type of training was of particular use to young black men in the south who could be found swinging from the nearest magnolia if they didn't avert their eyes in the presence of a white woman. But that wasn't the reality I was living in in the north - I mean I was a freed negro. But the elders of the family held sway and controlled how things were done and so that same type of discipline - down to picking my own switch - continued through my childhood.

Being seen and not heard, however, backfired. I was privy to all kinds of "adult" conversations. I heard things I didn't quite understand and things I understood all too well. With my mouth shut my eyes and ears were open and I, more often than not, copied the behavior rather than the words. But a few things happened to me recently that made me think about my use of language and the way I "discipline" my children.

Up until recently - the last 10 years or so- I had incredibly violent language. And I didn't realize it was violent until I stopped to listen to what I was really saying. I had incorporated my upbringing into my daily living and it was an uncomfortable realization. But the other day I saw a young black mother with her two children crossing the street. She was pulling the youngest to get across before the light changed, even though I am pretty sure the cars were not going to run her over. And I saw her getting more and more frustrated with her youngest child who had at this point begun to cry. And the mother turned on her child and screamed (and I am not kidding here, she screamed) into that little face: "SHUT UP BEFORE I GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!" And there is was - my 100th angel arriving in my presence. I have heard that sentence said to me more often than I care to remember. As if being publicly humiliated and dragged across a street WASN'T something to cry about. It made me cry. And I cried for the little spirit that was crushed that day in the street. And I cried for the little me who had also gotten her spirit stamped on at an early age. And then they came: the hot angry tears of remorse when I realized that I had at some point in my life said the same thing to my children. OUCH! I am not proud of admitting this but it is true. I have told my children to shut up and I have told them I would give them something to cry about and I use threats to get results. And I am searching for a better way to raise my kids. And I realize that in times of frustration and fear we revert to our training and mine was verbally abusive.

bell hooks talked about this in her interview with my friend Nathalie. She said that in the black community we discourage inquisition by children. And when we do that we silence them and instill in them the belief that asking questions is wrong. That to question is wrong. We, as a people, cannot afford to be silent and not ask questions. Of our educators, our politicians, our government, our service providers, our food suppliers. And this type of silencing keeps us, as a people, enslaved. There is a lot of "old school" folks out there who think that talking with your kids and asking them questions is weak. That we are elevating our children to the level of "adult." That they don't know their place. Well, aren't these all the same things said about black people back in the day? We were seen as children who needed to be reminded of our place. And we cannot afford to pass that misconception on to our children. They must question - everything - including us. As uncomfortable as it may be.

So, does discipline equal love? I think it depends on what you mean by discipline. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of discipline:
1 : punishment
2 obsolete : instruction
3 : a field of study
4 : training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
5 a : control gained by enforcing obedience or order b : orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior c : self-control
6 : a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity

And I love, ironically, how the first definition is punishment. But then it is instruction and training that corrects or molds. And that is a huge responsibility - molding a young character. What kind of people do we want to create? People who are afraid to question authority and who feel disenfranchised? Or strong, compassionate, inquisitive people? I am going with the latter. And I am working every day on disciplining myself first - loving myself first so I have something of worth to give my children.

we are blessed may we recognize the blessing

photo: Leonard John Matthews

next installment in the bell hooks response: the black woman's body - stay tuned

Between here and eternity

Why do I make lists instead of getting up and doing things? I can think myself into inaction like no one else I know. I went by a good friend's blog today just to see if she had posted anything in the last year - and wonders - she had. And it reminded me of the conversation we have been having all of our adult lives. How do we make our way in the world? What do we do when our ambition and passion meet our children and commitments? How do we get it all done when there are only 24 hours in every day and we can no longer function with less than 7 hours sleep? I spend a great deal of my time running on fumes. And it does not produce my best work - but something gets done. And I have resigned myself to the fact that I cannot have everything I want when I want it. But I still want it.

I am not a feminist. And I don't know if there is a word for what I am. I.AM.SO.DISAPPOINTED.IN.FEMINISM. And I am disappointed in the women who continue to tout it's purpose and strength without acknowledging that it is built by women of privilege. Privilege of opportunity, possibly money but definitely skin color. I am not a feminist. If feels as though there was never a place for me in their number. And so I went, like all conscious-college-educated-black-women to Alice Walker. Womanist. That's what I am. It's the 90's and I am feeling my political and sexual power. I am a womanist. I identify with the woman of me while simultaneously acknowledging that my gender is socially constructed; and that the personal is political. I coalesce with white women but don't get too close because they can't really understand what I am going through. But then I grow up and have kids. And I am not angry with every man in my cypher so I choose to be married and build a family. And I am not disgusted with my biology rather marvel at what my body has the fortitude and ancient knowledge to do - completely unassisted. So what am I now?
I engage in the "mommy wars" and breastfeed my babies in public and I boycott every chain store and company that makes life harder for us mothers, even going as far as not buying ANYTHING made in China. That sucked.

Now I am here. Almost 40. In the process of a divorce. Unemployed and raising three children. What am I now? Well, according to the census, because I am the head of the household, black and female and a mother - I am a statistic.

In the black community it is considered the ultimate insult to call somebody out of their name. And lately I have been thinking about what it is I want to be called. Who am I? I know, that sounds like the beginning of some really bad beat poem from the 60's. But I am not going anywhere to find myself. I am just reflecting on the fact that I am quite possibly all of those things. And none of them at the same time. And I am trying to figure out how to be in the world. How to present myself in the world. I am writing lists and journal entries all in an effort to figure out who to present on a daily basis. And wondering what would happen if I just got up and let the day happen. If I did some things that made me happy, and some things that need to get done and a few things I hate doing but are my responsibility. Then go to bed and get up and do it all over again. When I was little I always thought I was destined for greatness. And as I aged and made my choices and greatness did not appear, I began to get disappointed in myself. Not able to see the brilliance in the choices I had made and the people I had helped. Not valuing the little things. Always searching, always making lists. There is greatness in every step we take. And we can have it all - and when we look back at our lives just before our exit we will see each of those moments. Why wait for that day?

My sista-friend Minkgirl had this to say:
I am saying a prayer for myself and for all the other super-charged women I know that we can balance not just work and family, but joy and despair. There is much that is overwhelming, distracting, disturbing, and downright depressing about the lives we are living. And there is much that is joyful, beautiful, sweet, hopeful, and hysterically funny.

Amen.

Pimping the Jewish Hood

I got this email yesterday from a friend:
"Dearest Keisha, I loved your latest blog post and I know how you feel. Much the same way when I see myself in my mid-thirties unable to find a Jewish husband. I look at non-Jewish women married to Jewish men and it makes me shake all over. I think about how my ancestry is being erased in a single moment..."

Oh my. Did I mention my husband is Jewish? She was kind enough not to call me out specifically as someone responsible for erasing her ancestry. But I felt that sting too. I am reminded of that quote from Bulworth (yea, I watched it): "All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep ****in' everybody 'til they're all the same color."

I don't think I like that idea. This is an uncomfortable thing to admit but I think about my kids and who their partners will be. And it would bother me if my sons chose a woman who did not resemble me. It would bother me if my grandchildren looked less and less like me until there was no distinction in race. And I know that that is the ideal for some people. But not for me. Our differences need to be seen and acknowledged before they can go away. And turning everyone into beige would not solve that problem.

But back to my friend. I get her point completely. Judaism is carried through the mother. And when you turn away from a Jewish woman you turn away from having Jewish children and a Jewish home. That hurts her. And even more it hurts, in her opinion, the continuation of her people. She ended her email with this line: "I just wish they would stop pimping the Jews." Woah, I suddenly felt like J-Lo when she finished dating P-Diddy or Puffy or whatever the hell his name was at the time. She got accused of Pimping the Black Hood to advance her career.

I wrote her back: "I got you. And I thank you for not calling me out in particular, although your email relates to me directly. And I acknowledge your pain and I get feeling erased." That's all I could say. Much the same way no one can say anything to me to make things better, just air it out and acknowledge it's there. The work is just beginning tribe, get your boots on!

photo: naranjalady

My Colored Contradictions

I said I wasn't going to respond to Jill Scott's op-ed in Essence magazine this week. I said it and I meant it. But then I did what I try so hard not to do, I got caught up in it and allowed my empathic self to get immersed in my feelings of hurt, anger and betrayal from my own past. Now I have no intentions of this blog being one big confessional but what I have learned from the comments here and on Facebook, and the private emails, is that I often dare to say some of the things we all think and feel but don't write about. And that is a confession I am willing to make publicly. For the truly intense and personal things I can always go around the corner to the Catholic church if I feel the need to have my soul cleansed, nine years in Catholic school I know how to do it - "Bless me father, for I have sinned, it's been five minutes since my last confession."

Let me start this post with a story. I was standing outside one beautiful Spring afternoon with three phenomenal women. Smart, beautiful, progressive and all white. One of them showed a picture of her boyfriend, prefacing the display of his visage by saying, "He's 45 but could pass for 30 ALL DAY," I was eager to see this man. And then I saw the picture - he was black. I winced. I did. Me standing there, married, at that time for 7 years to a white man. I winced. I felt that the wince was an internal one - one not visible to the eyes outside the "race," but she immediately turned to me and said, "Do you hate me?" This caught me off guard. Her honesty, her awareness that this relationship might actually affect me, me who had NO chance of dating that man. And I turned to her and said, "I smarted for a second, but no I don't hate you. Love who you will." And I meant that. And I would love for my wince to have come immediately from a history lesson of black women as mammies and work-horses and single black women blamed for emasculating our men when in actuality it was the white power structure that cut their balls off and pimped out our uterus while killing our seed. I have that - firmly in my DNA. But I winced because I had a more personal response. I thought of the all the black men in my personal history who I loved who did not love me back. I thought of all the black men who stepped over me: an able, beautiful and brilliant woman, to get to the blonde on my left. That was the pain behind that wince. And that was not a pain I wanted to hold onto, nor a pain I wanted to have hold me back.
And I admit - it seems ridiculous for me, a black woman who has been in interracial relationships, married outside my ethnicity and have multiracial children, to wince. But I did. I don't anymore. I feel the pain, often of not belonging fully in any community because of my relationship choices, but I don't wince.

I think of how my best friend, years ago, had a bit of trepidation in her voice when telling me that she was dating a black man. I felt, then, that I had the right to be righteously indignant about her choice. She was far more sensitive than another white friend who told me that the black man she was dating was about as "black as I was." I knew that wasn't going to last - her relationship or our friendship and neither did. But my BFF knows me, she knows my soul and she knew how I felt even though it wasn't a fight she ever had with me, because I think she also knew it was not a fight worth having. Does it still sting when I see a black man with a white woman in particular, yea it does. And not because I think they don't have the right to be together - of course they do. In this world take love where you can find it. It just brings back to the front of my eyes my personal pain and my love/hate affair with the black men from my past. And it is one of my 100 angels showing up to tell me to get my own affairs in order. To clean up my own house first. Is this topic so much bigger than I could ever fully address here? Of course it is but I felt I would not be honest if I didn't tell you these stories. They are the makings of me. A beautiful, brilliant and flawed sister of the yam - working on my self recovery.

in peace,
keisha

Over the Hills and Far Away.......

This is where I am when I am staring off into space. It happens less now then when I was a girl. But I believe in daydreaming. I think it's healthy and gives our ideas wings. But this is also the title of my favorite Led Zeppelin song (#7 on the playlist). And I have been thinking about it a lot lately. Playing it over and over again and being transported to a different time in my life - high school. Ahhh, high school. The most awkward and emotionally painful time of my life. And I have learned, of most people's lives. That is the time when we develop our sense of personal currency. What are we worth in the world? And what must we do/use to get what we want in the world?

I went to boarding school for high school. And I think adding "predominantly white" in front of boarding school is redundant for the 80's and probably for now as well. And I know I have written how going there saved my life in so many ways. But that revelation came with time. What I most starkly remember about high school is feeling invisible. I wasn't used to this because I had come from a place where I was quite visible and felt capable. And then I went somewhere where I felt I was not seen - as either a person or a girl. It was a weird, kind of out of body experience. Leaving high school and going to college was a huge shock because once there, even though I was in Appleton, Wisconsin I was immediately visible and quite aware that I had somehow, despite my best efforts, transformed from a girl into a woman. A transition I am not sure I was ready for.

The other day I was visiting with a Mama-friend and we were talking about the girls of today. She joked that her idea of risque was wearing a white shirt so her bra strap would show through the shirt! And that she learned this particular move in college. I had to laugh. I totally understood what she was talking about. I learned my best moves in college and some of them I am just now perfecting! And I am raising a young woman. She has a fearless fashion sense. The original inquiring mind and she is bold and adventurous and poetic and beautiful. She has also disengaged from her body - at the age of nine. I know the look, I did the same thing. But there are marked differences between me and my daughter and I am highly conscious of not projecting my childhood issues onto her. Of speaking with her and asking questions and encouraging open dialogue. But just like me when I was her age she has decided that below her neck does not serve her purposes in the world. She has decided that her currency is her mind and her voice (she sings - like I did).

A move I did learn before adulthood is that parents lead by example. I remember far more about my parents' deeds than anything they ever said to me. And I have been working on reclaiming my body not just for myself but for my daughter. I don't trust my body. I don't trust she is going to be there for me when I need her. And I don't fully believe that she can, at this point in her existence and with all she's been through, bounce back. But what I believe really doesn't matter. There is evidence to the contrary. And what I say really doesn't matter. It's all about what I do. So, all of the work I do getting myself together, loving and trusting myself is about so much more than how it makes me feel. And since I chose not to die but to live for my kids, better to make it some really great living! Little eyes are watching....

Existential Crisis

Don't worry that is just a fancy word for the fact that being a human sucks sometimes, especially when we realize that being a human sucks sometimes. I have to say that I am so much better at processing difficulties in my life. And sometimes I just need to stop speaking and go underground to really work through some issues and pains that are surfacing - and I will be coming back to this point again later when I start my response to bell hook's interview with my friend Nathalie. bell spoke about how she wanted to be silent six days ago when her mother died. And people were pissed off about that. People didn't like the fact that they did not have immediate access to her. And then she said: I am sure people don't expect to get in touch with Cornell West immediately. Amen, bell. I bet they don't.

March is a difficult month for me. It always has been. And sometimes I can catch myself ahead of time and get prepared for it and this year I tried to do that but it didn't work completely. I was unkind and abrupt with those in my cipher and with established relationships you can do that occasionally, but with seedling relationships, you may have to deal with the fall-out of not being trusted again. Or having to earn back your trust. Okay. I take that.

The beginning of March is all about death and loss for me. My father died 19 years ago, March 3rd. My friend Leah's birthday, who died from leukemia, is March 15th and the anniversary of the death of a dear friend is also March 15th (yea, I know - The Ides of March. F-ing Romans!). And also at the beginning of March I received news that my Hierophant was ending treatment for his pancreatic cancer. All around me was loss - of people, of relationships, of intimacy, of feeling loved in the world. And I am one of those people who values her virtual tribe but really needs live people close to her. And I was missing my far-flung friends and the intimacy you can only get from actually seeing someone's eyes when you speak to them. Life sucked last week. And the thought of it now still makes me cry.

And my spirit needed to make it's annual trek to the underworld to excavate those feelings and to harrow my personal hell. I find it highly un-coincidental that I go through this purging during Lent - right before Passover and Easter. My own personal desert (Merriam's secondary and tertiary definitions of desert: 2 archaic : a wild uninhabited and uncultivated tract 3 : a desolate or forbidding area ).
And I am considering putting this time on my calender, not so it can be avoided but so I can better prepare for it next year. I think I need this time to renew myself and get ready for Spring.

What was the hardest part of this time was when I looked at myself and actually felt guilty for being alive. I felt guilty for surviving cancer. I wasn't supposed to survive. I had lost so much to cancer and I didn't understand why me? Because I have 3 children? Because I am young? Because there are still things I haven't done with my life? All of these things are true of those I've lost and so many more. It doesn't make sense. And it's not supposed to. These are the moments when I long for and desire to cling to a religious ideology because then I don't have to figure this out for myself - it is prescribed for me. But luckily this time is short-lived. Usually a week or so. And then I come out on the other side with relationship tending to do. Lesson learned. Next year the first two weeks of March will be spirit-tending time. And time to be more gentle with myself and those around me. I don't think, however, that I want to give up this time. I don't want to avoid experiencing this pain. It makes me more alive on the other side of it. It also feels like what butterflies do before they emerge from their cocoon. They slough off the old and emerge beautiful and ready to take flight. And over time the pain will erode until there is just me.

I accept my existential crisis and am grateful to have figured out that it is real. Grateful to be here to feel the pain.

in peace and past the sky
keisha

photo: MG Bolts