Grief Around the World

In my last post, Grief & Innocence, I discussed some of the ways grief shows up, and is needed, for those of us living activist and counter-cultural lifestyles. When people speak and write about grief, it may usually seem like an abstract, amorphous, overwhelming, and unworkable emotion that we have no control over and, too often, no support in.

But people are creating spaces and structures to share our despair. It may not make it much easier, but at least we have allies. Here is some of what I have turned up in the past week.

I searched for "grief activism" and most of the articles were about what I consider "mainstream activism"--taking action about an issue in a way that doesn't challenge the status quo, but works within the system on reform. The grief was usually about a personal loss, rather than about the grief for the whole world.

This gem about Dark Optimism stood out from the rest, and I am pleased to make the acquaintance of Shaun Chamberlin, who came by the blog here to say hi after I commented over there. This quote stood out to me: "Even if we are into a world of unstoppable, runaway climate change, for example. There’s still love to do, there’s still positive change to make in the world."

Yesterday, I sat by the creek where I live--a creek I have not visited in months--and cried. I've been feeling so much despair about the world (I don't need to name the things that are overwhelming for someone who dreams of a world where we nurture all life). And I broke through into more clarity. What I need to grieve is not just the tragedies that are happening now. I remembered that when I was a very young child, and my mom first told me about all the suffering in the world, I thought, "I'm gonna fix it when I grow up!" I was so sure of this. I've been trying to hold on to this image of my adult self that can save the world. But I don't think I can; it doesn't seem possible any more. I need to be honest with myself.


This is why the Dark Mountain project--something I read about in the interview above--speaks to me. The person who started this movement says that we need to be honest with ourselves. Movements like 350.org are selling us a lie--that we can stop climate change. We can't. It is already on us, and do we really think we are going to get everyone on board in time to stop it? At best we can hope to slow it down, and even more realistically, it is time to think about adapting to a world that is going to be very difficult to survive. 


On the other hand, as I was crying by the creek there and admitting how devastated I am that I cannot save the world as I wished, that I cannot save the tigers from extinction--or bring back those creatures already lost--I had another epiphany. My giving up on hope for the world is a way of prematurely breaking up with a dearly, dearly, beloved, in fear of having my heart broken when they break up with me. I hear this happens in human relationships, although I haven't practiced it myself. Yet I am doing it with the world, listening to the media telling me we are beyond hope, and withdrawing into myself, instead of listening to the creek and the birds (who were somewhat startled by my sobs). 

I apologized to the world for closing my heart in fear of the pain of seeing death of any more life that I care about. It won't protect me anyway. This beautiful practice from Joanna Macy is a healthy way to let this suffering move through in an honest way that I believe promotes resiliency in the face of a world both in the middle of a mass extinction and on the edge of another dark age. It helps me remember not to break up with this world I love so much because she is dying of cancer or whatever other metaphor we can ascribe to the transgressions of human civilization.

I also gratefully return to the tools Nonviolent Communications offers for grief work. It uses Universal Human Needs as the focal point for mourning loss of any kind. I want to share a way to do this in steps, but keep in mind that it in real life it is not always this neat and orderly. I find it helpful to journal about these things, also allowing myself to write anything that wants to come through my pen. I can always come back to the prompts when I run out of spontaneous expression.

You may want to do this exercise with an ally and share as you go along, in a place where you won't be disturbed and can express yourself with tears and other noises comfortably if you wish.

1. What is the loss you are grieving? A person dying, a relationship changing, an action you regret, an experience that was violating (such as assault)? Is it the extinction of a beloved species, the clear-cutting of a local grove of trees, or a conversation you had with a family member in which they re-ified racism, human supremacism, rape culture, etc?
2. What needs (see list above) were not met in this experience? If a person leaving, whether by death or break-up, what needs were met in that relationship that you fear won't be anymore? If it is an action you regret, what needs were not met by what you did? What values did you find yourself out of alignment with? What needs do you think would be met if this event stopped happening or hadn't happened? (I.e. safety for my community if a clearcut stops.)
3. As you name these needs, what emotions arise in you? Stay with these. Pause to really feel them. If doing this with a friend, share the feelings and needs, and respond simply with, "I see you, and I honor you." It's OK to feel silly, or cry, or anywhere in between. If screaming your rage in a residential area, using a pillow may help prevent neighbors from worrying that someone is in danger.
4. Writing or speaking aloud, connect the feelings to needs, if you haven't already done so yet. For example, if the grief is about a relationship de-escalating, it might be, "I am so afraid that I will never experience intimacy or shared sensuality again." For me, when I am mourning tigers and foxes going extinct, I grieve for the loss of beauty. I feel hopelessness and despair. What kind of world is it without these beings? Do I even want to live in a tiger-less world?
5. As your grief naturally runs its course, let yourself come into a more relieved, still place. It isn't over permanently, especially for the global tragedies that never seem to cease bombarding us. But for now, hopefully you have a clearer mind and can stand strong in your next actions coming from a place of a heart ready to love this tragic world. 
6. What comes to you to in this moment? Are there any actions you feel led to take from this place of clarity? When I did this kind of exercise with a group once, my next action was to go speak to a local conservative group about de-escalating the antagonism in our town between political factions! It was very clear to me that that is how I could promote an intact, whole, world in my sphere of influence. Even though it was scary--and different from what everyone else I knew was doing--I felt guided by a powerful sense of purpose and clarity. Write down your assignment(s) from your clear-hearted self, to remind you in case you forget.

 If you feel comfortable doing so in a public forum, please share any way that this process served you in the comments section. Comments about what didn't speak to you or was difficult are also, of course, welcome.

I see you, and I honor you.


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Grief & Innocence

I've been thinking about the importance of grief lately, about how we work with grief in the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) community, and about how important it is in the lives of activists. Then something timely happened. A long-distance friend who has participated in some of my teleconference NVC offerings for activists asked if I had heard what happened at the rainbow gathering in Florida (yes, I know it is debated whether or not this was a "true" rainbow gathering, but that is how I got the news).

 I quickly did a news search and discovered two people were seriously injured and one shot dead at a rainbow-inspired gathering in Florida. While these people may not be your definition of "activist," they are at least on the periphery of a wider counter-cultural group, many of whom participate in social change in some shape or form.

In the wake of this event newspapers are publishing various reports that seem fairly unbiased, but do not tell the whole story as I am hearing on rainbow list servs and from friends. All that I got from the news was the injuries, nothing about how or why the fight broke out. There was alcohol involved. But it sounds like more specifically, there was a fight over burning tires, taking pictures, and a phone thrown in a fire.

What was most interesting to me is what people were saying in the comments of these articles. The rainbow-affiliated folks are mostly saying that this gathering was not affiliated with the rainbow gathering. This is many people's first instinct: to disassociate, because they (we) don't want to suffer the consequences of a reputation as an unsafe place that locals don't want coming to their town. The regular rainbow attenders point out the differences between this gathering and the usual rainbow way of doing things: alcohol vs no alcohol, permits vs no permits. As I read these comments, I felt both distant from the situation and sad. I wrote on one news site that, regardless of the choices these folks made and the unwanted repercussions that may have on people's biases about rainbow gatherings, this is a sad time for the injured folks and their friends and families. I wished them compassion and healing in their grief.

Behind the scenes, on rainbow list servs, for example, things are a little different. Some people are asking for help fundraising for the medical expenses of one of those critically injured, and also for the costs of transporting remains of the person who died to his family. Others are critiquing the folks more specifically, having met them, saying they will not send money because this was a matter of inevitability for someone (choosing to?) live that lifestyle.

There is more than one thing to grieve in this situation. There is grief for the individual who died, for those injured, and for how this will affect all those affiliated with the rainbow gathering--for taking a big step back in any progress made towards cultivating trust with more conservative society. People are angry, which we are told is a normal part of grief.

There is a lot to be angry about in this world.  I feel anger about many things. I'm angry that someone (whom I was involved with) recently told me that the creators of my new job are taking credit for my work, when I have seen these people work hard over the past year to create an amazing way for people with my skill set to have livelihood. That person assumed it is something to write off as just more exploitative capitalism, it seems, when I see it as an alternative to the capitalist model. Their dogma seemed to be that unless you have a co-op structure, a business cannot have integrity. I am sick of dogma all around: mainstream dogma and counter-cultural dogma. No matter what, when you have dogma, someone's needs don't matter. That's what many of those conversations on all those news sites demonstrate, too.

That's how many of activists talk about the causes we care about, myself included. We turn the tables and say, OK, you people in power who have been denying others the ability to meet their needs--now it's your turn to not matter! We don't empathize with all parties (one exception to this, often, is the Quaker community, which I am grateful to be a part of). We activists had a conversion experience at some point, where we "awakened to the light" of racism or environmental degradation, or whatever it is, and we forget what it was like to be on the other side of that divide.

Take driving cars, for example. Most of my community accepts as fact that the ethical mode of transportation is bicycles, or public transit, or at least ridesharing. I remember a time, though, when cruising around in a car, blasting the radio and guessing which song would come on next, while going through a drive thru for soft tacos, was the height of excitement. I was very young when I experienced this--before nine years old I would frequently do this with my mom and aunt. I felt joy at this freedom a car could bring.

I wonder how many environmental activists were born into green families, and how many have had a similar experience to me. Who can remember a time when car driving was an innocent activity (as far as we knew)? Is this something we have ever taken the time to grieve?

I sometimes still feel that rush when I find an excuse to use a car (my roommates let me borrow theirs) and I am cruising around town. I get that high. I feel supercool. No, it isn't worth the extinction of polar bears or drowning of island nations--but wouldn't it be great if there was not a cost? If we could have both, wouldn't we want it all?

I'm not saying we should focus on tech solutions. I don't think that is the answer to our world's problems, at least not the main one.

What I'm saying is that, despite my usual hesitance to use the word "shaman" for reasons of cultural appropriation and misapplication of the term, there is one definition I often see for that word that I find applicable here: having one foot in both worlds. Can I keep one foot in that world of childhood in which cars were not the evil things they are now, but tools that could be used to access joy, and one foot in this one, where the planet is literally dying from the burning of fossil fuels, and I am willing to sacrifice--and grieve--that lost innocence, because it is necessary to care for life? Can I, by keeping one foot in each world, help others cross that emotional and perceptual boundary, help them re-orient?

Anger is part of grief. We have to roll with whatever emotions come up. There is a type of madness that wards off grief, but there is also authentic rage. Both are important; one for surviving until you have room to process, and the other one for moving on and moving forward.

I think, though, that activists get stuck in the anger portion of our grief, because we haven't created safe spaces to delve into the other feelings we have about our planet's tragedy. I have tried to create those spaces in my sphere of influence. I hope this can be one here. If you feel called to share stories of what you are grieving, please do so below. What innocence have you lost from before you were awakened to injustice? And how can remembering that help us to speak to those who aren't yet ready to give it up?




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Playtime as [Better than] Self-Love

Self-love feels like a chore to me.

Even coming up with ideas of activities I could do for myself that fall in the realm of "self-love" feels like a chore. I come up with a list of chores to be undertaken. Even going to the park for a hike sounds like a chore. There is no spontaneity in these lists, that I get assigned regularly from books and other "personal growth" sources. I keep reading such books, and participating in such workshops, ad infinitum, even though these exercises keep driving me crazy.

Self-love requires spontaneity for me. But spontaneity is not the only ingredient, it is just one. I can spontaneously check Facebook and do homework and clean dishes, and not feel like I'm nurturing myself necessarily. And it's ironic, because if I don't schedule time for "myself," as all the self-help gurus say these days, when will I ever make that time? The standard answer is that I won't.

I do want to hike on Table Mountain. I do want to do yoga. Or dance to music in my room. Or make art. It's just that setting aside time to do these things doesn't feel quite right. It feels forced, contrived. Like praying in church. It is painful to switch from one state of experience directly to another one.

Starhawk puts forth a model of the Three Selves in her classic book, The Spiral Dance. I have my Talking Self. This is my basic personality that helps me survive in lifo, my ego. My Talking Self contains my mundane interests, hobbies, pastimes, and endeavors. My personal Talking Self likes to play Forty Thieves solitaire, watch Sailor Moon, learn LOTS (and is taking about eight online classes at the moment), and "identifies" as an Activist Pagan Polyamorous Witch. She is also on multiple committees and volunteers at nonprofits, but can never manage to stay on top of most of these things. I certainly do not have a Type A Talking Self.

There is Deep Self. This is the profound part of my being, the part of me that awakens--sometimes--during rituals, intimate moments with beloveds, silence, and in wilderness. Or on mushrooms (and that can be a painful way to get in touch for sure!). I think this is the part that self-care is supposed to tend.

The week before last I participated in the opening session of a class series which offers people an opportunity to, as best I can tell, try to drop in to Deep Self, and share and witness this with others. I actually took this class series five years ago, and had some fun. I do remember a niggling background feeling of discomfort though, which I have felt in other "personal growth" (I keep putting that phrase in quotation marks because I am not 100% sure what I mean by it) settings. This discomfort relates to a sense of having to "perform" deep spiritual experience or transformation. I'm sure that this has been a component of all of the personal growth (there, it lost its quote marks!) modalities I've been involved with--Emotional Freedom Technique, Tantra, Ecstatic Dance (that one more than others), and a Healing the FatherWound workshop at Harbin Hot Springs.

This is ironic, too, considering that most of these modalities are supposedly about liberating ourselves from our masks and performances for others sake. And yet, when I show up with my authentic self, I find myself being shut down by facilitators of these kinds of work. I find no authentic way to get into the material. This is painful, because I am receiving a contradictory message: Be yourself, but do it within the parameters of *my* exercise (which may or may not have room for the real Meagan).

I experienced this recently in the class mentioned above. I was in so much pain for most of the session. I had very little sense of trust with most of the people there, and yet I was being asked to be vulnerable with them in a way that I did not trust they knew how to hold space for. This was not a safe container for me, and I wanted to run out. I felt like crying the whole time. I said at the beginning that my intention was to break free of any obligation to "perform personal growth," but this was extremely difficult, and I did not feel that the environment supported me in doing this. This painful experience was partly because of a mismatch for my presence there in the first place--I was attending by personal invite for connection with two of the participants, not because of any strong desire on my part to explore the modality further.

This is how I sometimes feel when I try to do something that is "good for me" when I don't really feel like it, such as yoga or going on a hike. The past few months have been a time of liberating myself from obligations to dogmatic ideas I internalized from various countercultural ideologies. Most of my life I have rebelled against mainstream society (for many good reasons I hope I don't need to iterate here), but at times I have also replaced that with finding an alternative voice to be the guru, the guide, the signpost to the good life. I then feel guilty if I don't live up to those standards, whether the standards are to meditate for such-and-such amount of time daily, or to make sure I celebrate all the Sabbats and Esbats.

In liberating myself from countercultural dogma, I don't want to fall back on mainstream cultural values and assumptions. It is a fine and risky line to tread. There are some ways in which I am not even sure if I am maintaining my balance on that line, or falling back onto the easier side, the side with social momentum. Here is an example. I was part of a program for a number of years that encouraged a considerable amount of time in nature on a regular basis. I never lived up to the goals of this program in terms of how much time I spent 'communing.' I realized a few months ago how damaging it was for me to turn time in nature into a chore, with required times! I had a moment of liberation, where I was standing on the Vallombrosa bridge over the creek with my bike, and remembered that ALL of Planet Earth is Nature. I then wandered through the city with the same attentiveness I try to bring to hikes in Upper Bidwell. Was this me selling out, giving up, and becoming domesticated by civilization? Maybe, but what do you know? I found a cute little square of wilderness behind a shopping center, complete with logs, trees, tall grass, moss, etc. When I gave in to spontaneity, I found something beautiful.

I think Spontaneity is the province governed by the Third Self I haven't mentioned yet: Younger Self. This playful part of me and everyone is, according to Starhawk, the part that links and communicates between Talking Self and Deep Self. This could be seen as our inner child, or past self. This is the little kid that did voice-overs for elaborate stuffed animal conversations, had fights with my imaginary invisible friend, chalked all over the sidewalk, and, nowadays, wants to play Muggle Quidditch or dress up as Sailor Venus. I think that this was the piece missing from the class I dropped out of--there was no intermediary step. And I think that this is the part of me that I need to curate if I want to authentically drop in to my Deep Self and experience Oneness with Existence. So my ideas for self-care are no longer pretentious otherworldly grown-up activities. They are the games my playful child wants to do for fun, rather than for spiritual transcendence or even to recuperate from a stressful week of work. Kids don't play to de-stress or center and ground; we play to PLAY!

I fear there is a risk of triviality in embracing this philosophy, yet I wonder what is worse: being trivial and loving it, or being deep and meaningful and important but in an inauthentic way? I value depth, for sure, and genuine play seems like a plastic playground slide down into that depth of being hidden in the wood chips below. Watch out for splinters!



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A Homework Assignment Doubling as Personal Missive

Last Spring I heard of a website that offered free online college courses on a number of topics, Coursera.com. As soon as I checked it out, I was hooked. One of my strongest character strengths is a love of learning. I signed up for a basicchemistry class and a class about systems biology, which I dropped when I realized how far over my head it was. The cool thing is there is no "drop by" date or penalties for dropping or even getting a low grade. It can only work for you--high grades can be used on resumes, for example, or in my case, mostly for personal satisfaction.

I was both stressed out over the summer from a household crisis, and traveling a lot, so I took a break from online classes. I started up again at the end of August, and got a little carried away. I now have eight active classes in subjects as diverse as biology, music, and philosophy. All the start and stop dates overlap with each other, so there is a continual cycle of new classes opening as old ones wrap up.

One of the shorter classes, which I thought would be easy, was called "Learning How to Learn." It claimed it could help me improve in subjects I have difficulty with. I thought it would be interesting and simple, only four weeks long. It was fairly simple, but it was a class that definitely took itself seriously, with actual quizzes and a final assignment to share what we have learned and how we are applying it to our lives with the wider world in some format. Hence, this blog.

I suffer from chronic procrastination, and need continual reminders to stay focused on my actual priorities. Nothing ever seems to stick. While I think there is a half life to any anti-procrastination skill I learn, I appreciate them for as long as they last. One thing they mentioned in this class is called the Pomodoro technique, which is a fancy way of saying "set a timer and work for 25 minutes" that someone patented. I had been introduced to this practice before when I was taking NVC business classes with Francois Beausoleil He called it "chunking time." (This was actually a bit confusing because in this class 'chunking' referred to something else, a way of remembering information.)

I also read an inspiring article encouraging inspired people to procrastinate on the unimportant things, and focus on our passions. It asked the questions, "What is the most important thing you could be working on, and if you aren't, why not?" I started asking myself what the most important thing I could be working on was, and what kept coming to mind was an article I'd been dreaming of writing for months. With this clarity and the focus of the 25 minute sessions, I managed to finish and submit my article in a matter of days. (I will be sure to share links if and when it is accepted and published!) The full article can be found at http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

Pretty quickly into my college career, I gave up on taking notes. I noticed that it just wasted paper, distracted my attention from listening to everything the professor said as I tried to finish the previous sentence, and didn't impact my test scores at all when I stopped, because I'd never reviewed them anyway. I could always review the book if needed. I think this worked because of a number of factors, mainly that I was at a less-than-rigorous community college that did not challenge me to expand on my natural giftedness in the social sciences, which is what I was studying (psychology, anthropology, religion). I became contemptuous of fellow students who filled up notebooks and did laborious review sessions. I scoffed at them, saying that, "If you stop wasting your time in class taking notes and just pay attention in class, you'll do fine on tests without studying." My approach to learning was to be a very effective sponge, but only in certain areas. Other subjects I didn't seem to absorb so easily.

The Learning How to Learn class has encouraged me to be more of an active participant to incorporate subjects I do not naturally excel at--for example, music. I am taking a musicianship class that involves learning and practicing scales, intervals, triads, and chord progressions (so far). There is a big focus in the learning class on which types of studying techniques foster long-term memory. Highlighting, re-reading, and concept mapping are shown to be ineffective. Simply closing your eyes and trying to recall what you've read, however, works really well.

A more nuanced version of recall is called memory palace, which involved associating what you are trying to learn with physical spaces. I applied this by going for a walk in my neighborhood. I worked out what notes are in a C chord, moving my fingers in front of me as if on a piano. They are CEG. I then attached them to a pinwheel in someone's yard, and made up a story about why--the letters C and G are rounded like a pinwheel, and the E is like the pinwheel's spokes. I continued to do this with the notes for F and G chords, attaching them to other yard accessories, such as a flag and a windchime. Later, on another walk, I went in the other direction, and associated the G notes (GBD) with a large oak tree, the F notes (FAC) with a loquat tree, and the C notes (CEG) with some roses. This made sense because in the C chord progression, G is the dominant chord, F is subdominant (these both correlate to sizes of the trees), and C is the tonic--and you can make a tonic from rosebuds! I learned this kind of technique as a kid under the term 'mneumonic device," so it comes somewhat naturally to make these associations now. They seem random and weird, but they really stick in my mind--and give me the added benefit of getting to know my neighborhood better. I know where to find loquats next June!

I continue to love learning, but am trying to give myself a break and not sign up for anymore classes right now unless they are extremely compelling. I'm also limiting myself to classes not taught by white men, again unless they are on extremely compelling subjects. I want to learn from people with perspectives of less privilege. However, I would love for you to join me for any of the classes I'm taking in the future--I'm starting two in January: "Buddhist Meditation in the Modern World" and  "Beauty, Form, and Function: An Exploration of Symmestry." It would be great to have you in class with me and compare (nonexistent) notes!

Trans...cending Gender

I present myself in the world, and am easily perceived, as a female person, which is who I was socialized to be.  I face many challenges as a female in this world, but for the most part, do not struggle with the challenges transgender and genderqueer folk face. As I start to unravel what gender construction means to me, I want to be clear that in this facet of oppression, I am on the privileged end of things. I find it tolerable, even enjoyable sometimes, and in harmony with my essence, to embody some of the expectations put on me by social gender constructs. As someone who has considered what gender means to me, I think I bring a unique perspective to the conversation about breaking down the gender binary, especially why this radical project is beneficial to those of us who didn't really think to question it until someone else brought the subject up.

This story could start in two places: in a teepee at the rainbow gathering in Utah this July, or with my newly acquired habit of introducing myself as, "My name is Meagan, and I like 'she' pronouns." I'll come back to the teepee. To most folks, saying what pronoun I prefer lands like a foreign language. Some people ignore it completely, even though it is an implicit (maybe passive-aggressive?) invitation for them to tell me their preferred pronoun as well--though I haven't been asking.

Not long ago, I would not have started a conversation in this way. I'm pretty sure I would have thought that it was an inauthentic act of solidarity intended to a) help transgendered persons in a group feel safe, and b) encourage trans-awareness, with the cost of alienating me from the large majority of binaried people in the world. As someone who facilitates workshops and leads groups, I feared that using those spaces to advocate for trans-awareness would be seen as a distraction from the intention of the meeting (often to learn and practice Nonviolent Communication), and negatively affect my reputation as a teacher/facilitator.

Now, I think that saying I like she pronouns enhances my contrbution to any group I am in. I see the whole pronoun thing completely differently now, no longer as something that is only relevant to a minority of people. I have realized the power of saying that I prefer she pronouns. The power is that I chose. I continue to choose. I am not just accepting on blind faith what was handed down to me from the doctor's check mark on a birth certificate. If and when a different pronoun resonates more strongly with my soul, I can choose that too. I want everyone to feel the power of this intentionality, whether the conclusion they come to fits with social expectations or not.

What if this were a normal part of growing up? What if every adolescent were invited to question whether the pronoun given to them at birth really fits them, just as some people change their names? It would accomplish the two goals stated above in a) and b), as well as c): Give all people a chance to truly explore our most basic assumptions about who we are, delving deeply into our psyches and coming out wiser for the self-knowledge, whether or not we can accept and live with the binary gender system. (I imagine if we all did this kind of inner searching, a lot of binaries would break down--not just gender.)

Coming back to the teepee I mentioned earlier, it was a workshop/ritual called Sister Circle, Brother Circle. The idea is this: the women all sit in an inner circle, with the men in an outer circle. The women go around and share about "the beauty and struggle of being a woman" while the men listen silently. Then we switch and do the same thing, with women listening to the beauty and struggle of being a man. 

I want to be clear that I think this process was invaluable, and I am eternally grateful for the elders who held this space and have been doing so for almost 30 years. Genderqueer activists may think of it as an oppressive/unwelcoming approach, but I feel strongly that there is an immense amount of healing that longs to happen in and across the gender binary, even as we also transcend it. In fact what I came away from the teepee with is a much clearer understanding of how harmful binary gender construction is. In that space, when the women spoke about our beauty and struggles, the only things that rang true for me were the struggles--and I felt them deeply. It isn't that I didn't resonate with some of the beauty named, but all of those things seemed like human characteristics, rather than uniquely female.

The focus on our capacity to create life was a particular turn off for me, for two main and equally significant reasons: One is that I do not plan to ever be a biological mother, and in this day and age of overpopulation, I dislike the glorification of procreation and pregnancy as a reclaiming of Goddess power. It gives me the sense that women in the New Age community will never respect me as an adult if I don't have biological children, and that they aren't holding other species and our ecosphere with the care I long for. I am positive there are ways to call in Goddess energy that respect choice and reverence for other forms of life, which brings me to the other point: by claiming nurturing a creation as a female characteristic, we deny men and other nonfemale genders access to the exact qualities they need to cultivate to restore peace on the planet.

Men may not carry babies in a physical womb, but they definitely contribute to the physical process, and are a necessary element without high tech, expensive technology. Beyond sperm, men can support a partner by holding an energetic womb of care during pregnancy and beyond. And all people, regardless of their bodies, have a metaphysical womb--the ability to conceive of an idea, vision, project, and, sometimes, nurture it to fruition. This is the type of creation and motherhood I intend to participate in in my life, and I would like to be seen that this contribution is as sacred and in many instances more responsible than making yet another homo sapien. 

In the teepee, when we switched to the men speaking, it was as bad as when the women spoke. None of them even knew what it meant to be a man, despite having been told to be one their whole lives. The few positive qualities listed--strength, resourcefulness, protection, making things happen--again seemed contrived and are actually human qualities available to all people to cultivate and develop. So here's what I walked away from the teepee convinced of, because my consciousness had been so altered by that experience:

     If we didn't have gender construction, all humans could have free and equal access to any quality and characteristic they are naturally called to embody, leaving our individual lives and collective culture much richer.

When I have shared this with friends, they usually assume it means I want to abolish all reference to differences between men, women, and anyone else. I don't. There are physical differences between people that can be divided into imprecise categories. And, there are many real psychological differences between people rooted in gender socialization. These are not going to disappear overnight, and I want to acknowledge them and work with them, including inside the binary.

I am not interested in debating which specific things are innate versus socialized, because most of them we can't know for sure. But I bet that a large majority of gendered qualities are based extensively in socialization, and that by focusing on embodying the full range of humanity--or at least the parts we are naturally drawn to--we can blow away the chaff of arbitrary, obligatory social behaviors (such as limiting how we dress), getting closer to expressing our individual essences more truthfully, which will make our society more mature and beautiful.

A Deficit of Life-Enrichment

A while back I was co-teaching a Nonviolent Communication Foundations class, and I drew a diagram on the board of "positive feelings" and "negative feelings." A participant said that she didn't like to think of some feelings as negative because she wants to embrace all her feelings. This statement was challenging for me to respond to because I found myself in complete and joyful agreement with her in principle, but not in application.

Using the term "negative feelings" seems clear to me, and doesn't have the connotation of something bad. How I understand it myself is mathematical. Unfortunately the participant didn't connect with this explanation--maybe I didn't fully give her a sense of being understood for how much she wants to value and honor all feelings first. Maybe you will connect to it though and find some use for it outside of the traditional "negative=bad' framework of thinking.

In math, a positive number means you have something, while a negative number means you "owe" something. If my bank account statement says $64, than I can celebrate that I have enough to pay my utilities and internet this month! Similarly in NVC, "positive" feelings indicate the presence of something--a need, such as love. We then say that we can celebrate that need being met.

On the other hand, if my bank account says -$8.64, the bank wants that amount from me. Although I might not be happy to see that number on the screen of my online banking, it does tell me important information. It tells me where there is an emptiness of something. With the bank account, the emptiness is money, but when it comes to feelings, they tell us about other kinds of emptiness. Hunger tells us about our empty bellies, while depression may tell us that about an emptiness related to belonging or meaning.

Another way to look at this is that of the photographic negative. When we are full, we experience one aspect of food. When we hunger, we experience the shadow side--food inverted. When we are connected, we experience one side of relationships, while when we are lonely, we experience the shadow of friendship.

Emptiness is not always bad. There can be a sweetness to the sorrow of being with emptiness. Sometimes when I have been lonely (the emptiness of companionship), I have simultaneously felt sad and also more attuned to the cosmos, more present to my experience because of this emptiness. I think this is an example of what that participant was referring to when she said she didn't think of any feelings as negative--she was thinking of negative as bad.

For me negative in the context of feelings means emptiness of needs. It is neither good nor bad. It may be painful, and it may be bittersweet. It is always informative. At times it is inspiring, as many of us go to artistic or literary expression when we encounter this emptiness.

If you would like to have more understanding and compassion for people, here is an exercise you can try. The next time you are around someone and think that they are being negative, imagine what the emptiness is inside them. What are they calling out for to fill that negative space? You can also do this for yourself, asking the same question about your own "negativity." This is embodied compassion and equanimity, moving past good and bad and into honoring of all aspects of life. With this type of compassion, perhaps all of our deficits--of love, community, food, meaning, connection, respect, and much, much more--will be a little more bearable. And when we are in the positive, together, we can celebrate!

Offended by Requests

Hitchhiking is a radical practice in living the gift economy. Asking people for a ride without offering anything in return, practicing nonattachment to whether or not someone stops, all while being present to the feelings of despair, impatience, and resentment with compassionate presence--these are the ingredients a gift economy is made of. But there is more to the practice of hitchhiking than shifting our economic transactions.

Many people I encounter while hitchhiking are uncomfortable with this request for a gifted ride. If I ask around at gas stations ("Are you going north?"), I am sometimes asked to leave by the owners, because they think their patrons are bothered. This both conflicts with my sense of entitlement to free speech, and confuses me. Why are people so uncomfortable being asked something when it's not a demand? Is it because they feel obligated?

Sometimes people lie or make up excuses, saying they aren't going a certain way when they are. Most of my fellow citizens aren't self-connected and confident enough to assertively say, "I'm not comfortable bringing you in my car," and leaving it at that. In non-consensual/rape culture it's not OK to have personal boundaries unless you have a good reason, which is why people lie. Compare this to a woman at a bar being asked to dance. If she just says, "I'm not interested," she will likely be harassed as often as not. However, if she makes an excuse, even an untrue one ("I have a boyfriend" or "I'm about to leave") she'll be left alone.

There are many other times when someone making a request stimulates discomfort. I was at a truck stop in Sparks, NV, while hitchhiking this summer. Numerous truckers indicated interest in paying me for sex, one coming up to my traveling companion and current lover and asking if we needed "spending money." We initially thought he was just offering to give us some cash out of generosity or concern, but then he admitted that what he really wanted was for me to "spend some time in [his] truck." I felt disgusted but responded with only a "No, thank you." Even as I feel disgusted still, I also am aware that this man probably has a chronic lack of intimate touch in his life.

Even though he was respectful in the since of leaving us alone as soon as I said no, I still needed a good few minutes to shake off the icky feeling I got from being asked. Why was I so offended? My companion told me to not make it about the man, but to take it as a compliment on my beauty and attractiveness. I was not receptive to this perspective at all. Sure, I'm attractive, but yuck.

Part of my discomfort stemmed from how the question was asked--always indirectly. Other than the guy who asked, most of the truckers who made propositions that night used insinuating comments like, "I'll take her for a ride without the guy." I read this as containing tones of nonconsensuality--they wanted an opportunity to assault me when he wasn't there to interfere/protect. (This also ties in to the idea that women are property of men, and that other men are more concerned about damaging someone's property than respecting any woman as an individual--but I'm trying not to digress too much.)

The man who did ask somewhat directly still did so in a roundabout way, trying to catch our interest with the idea of "spending money." It might have landed differently if he had said, "Please say no if you're uncomfortable, but I am really longing for some sexual expression right now, and am wondering if you'd like to help me with that in exchange for some cash?"  It could certainly be finetuned even more (honestly I think prostitution should be legal and we should do it like in the show Firefly with the Companion's Guild, where people apply through video shorts), but this is a step in the direction of 'speaking plainly,' as the Quakers say.

So, is there a way to hitchhike or solicit for sex that is not offensive, or less so? Assuring people that 'no' is a perfectly acceptable answer is an important component of this. One way to start any sensitive request is a pre-request that goes, "Are you open to being asked for...[a ride] [sex]?" This is hard to convey with a thumb, but could it be consolidated into a short phrase on a cardboard sign? "Stop if you're feeling generous" looks potentally guilt trippy to my eyes. Maybe, "Stop if you want to!"

Although these are uncomfortable subjects to deal with, it is exciting to explore the frontiers of human communication through such humbling experiences as being "stranded" in a truck stop or by the side of a desert highway for hours. I believe that such instances of making myself vulnerable to the forces of social behavior are a rare opportunity for transformation and connection between demographics of people who would never otherwise connect.

Coming soon: The Sequel to this post, "When Asking Is Awkward", an essay focused on the asking side more than the receiving side. What makes it so hard to ask for what we want? What happens when we are too scared or ashamed to do so? Please share any pre-post input on this topic here, as well as your response to the above content. I promise to respond to you!