It always confounds me: people who need a vacation after they come home after their vacation.

Not me. Uh – uh. Not ever.

I always take vacation for exactly what it’s for: rejuvenation.

Sometimes vacation can have its moments of busy-ness, as stress can be found anywhere when you deal with life, people, and events. But, I don’t stress myself out trying to make a vacation perfect. I try to make it worthwhile. Vacation serves its purpose when you can spend a day doing precisely what you want to be doing and have a bit more energy at the end of the day than you normally would. Vacation means taking time to feel things, learn things, know things that you normally wouldn’t have time for in the bustle of everyday life.

Which is why it astounds me when people conflate a jam-packed trip with VACATION. Disney land, tourist buses, schedules, alarm clocks, etc. They are all fine and good in and of themselves, but when it’s all smooshed together so you spend your days running around and cramming, that’s not vacation, that’s just more of regular life with more sunshine and unhealthy food.

In these last weeks of summer, take time to embrace time itself. Time with family, time for a nap, time for a healthy fruit smoothie. Rejuvenate your soul.

It’s a gift only you can give yourself.

Vacation as a mother means

taking the nap I’ve been meaning to take for nearly 2 years
walking on someone else’s cleaned carpet
letting my arms linger a few moments longer on Nick’s shoulders

Vacation as a mother means
having a roomful of excited people watch Isaiah so I can sit by the lake
letting the shower drip off me at its leisure
sipping, not gulping, a cupful of water

Vacation as a mother means
having time to walk without a stroller in front of me
watching an old man ride his bike down the empty road
hearing Isaiah giggle from another room

Vacation as a mother means
softer pillows and even breathing
updated windows and newer fixtures
someone else running the vaccuum

Vacation as a mother also means
realizing how blessed my life truly is
and finally having time
to be grateful for it

You are a sip of port wine.

A faceful of August breeze.
The only soprano in a world of alto thinkers.

You are love to me.





If you don’t know the video “Dancing,” you probably haven’t spent much time with me. Roughly three years ago, someone sent this link to me a of a random guy – Matt – who ended up going around the world (42 countries) and dancing with strangers while capturing it on video. The music, “Praan” is sung in Bengali and is an adaption of a poem, “The Rhythm of Life.”

All in all, it’s my all-time favorite video and one of YouTube’s most watched videos in internet history.

The video makes me giggle, it makes me cry, and I’ve introduced nearly everyone I know to its power of watching the globe dance badly to a beautiful song sung by a teen girl with the voice of a angel.

I love it so much that I signed up to be in the next video if one was ever going to be made and in driving distance to Cleveland.
I got the email 3 days ago that Matt was coming to Cleveland and dancing downtown in front of Cleveland landmark.

On one of the hottest days of the year, I drove downtown and danced badly with a group of 30 or so. Participants will get a heads up if and when the Cleveland video is used when the final edit is finished and released on the internet. To date, the dancing vid above has over 37 million views.

Afterward, I hung around, bought a tshirt that reads: I Danced with Matt, World Tour 2011 and then talked with Matt afterward. I thanked him for dancing badly with the world and I used the video as a joyous link to encourage my friends and family to get up and dance as I announced that I was pregnant over 2 years ago. He told me that he is now a dad and travels with his 3 month old. we swapped infant stories and snapped a picture. I didn’t want to be a draping dance groupie so I kept it brief but thanked him for the dance.

So, world, wait for the next video. If there’s one thing I believe in it’s dancing, and if there’s something I believe in even more, it’s dancing badly.

I think about forgiveness a lot. I even took a class in graduate school about it. “Violence and Forgiveness” was one of the most compelling and challenging courses of my life. It wasn’t the texts, or the papers. Or listening to how one Rwandan took it upon himself to try and forgive the Hutu militia who murdered his entire family.

Forgiveness. What is it?

That was the question that led every class – twice a week for 13 weeks – down a twisting, controversial path of exploration and examination.

Is it the same as letting go? Turning the other cheek, even offering the other cheek? Is forgiveness when you forget? Does it happen with time? Is it always necessary? Is it divine grace? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How do you ask for it? How/When/If do you give it to those who seek it from you?

Within the field of sexual violence, it’s often the word “forgive” is associated with the survivor contemplating forgiving the perpetrator. Some have claimed it’s a healthy part of the process. Others have adamantly stated it’s purely optional and not a mandate for moving on with one’s life post-trauma.

About half the time, though, that I see survivors struggling, it’s often not over whether or not to forgive the perpetrator (if that’s even possible or necessary is always in question), it’s more that the survivor needs to find a pathway to forgive oneself. For whatever reason, survivors – with two hands – take a large chunk of responsibility for their trauma, as if somehow they were in control of the violators’ actions. It’s probably one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking elements of healing: self-forgiveness and acceptance.

When survivors accept that what happened was not their fault (this is especially difficult of adult survivors of child abuse), they are free to rightfully channel that anger and energy toward the person who committed the act: the perpetrator, and thus begin a two footed walk toward healing. It’s awfully scary to accept that we are only in control of so much and we have minimal control (if any) over the universe, people, and other people’s actions.

When we do self-forgive, it opens up a wonderful door to a greater depth of freedom and understanding of what true power is. We have ultimate and pure power over who and what we are in response to the experiences life hands us. Nothing more, nothing less. What we ingest might be sewage, but what agree to internalize is entirely up to us. Choosing to forgive or choosing to stay in the grey of the unknown is a radical act of self-actualization, one that most dare not confront. To own up to our power, we must first face ourselves. To do that we must, paradoxically, see that we actually have very little control, but what we do have control over is quite monumental: ourselves.

Via Colorlines, I found this beautiful video about colorism, particularly focusing on the African American community

Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

Many survivors do not have the luxury of using the phrase, “time flies” because oftentimes survivors find each day is slower than the last.  Each hour, sometimes minute, seems to pass at an excruciatingly tedious pace.  Pain simply does not make time go faster.  Trauma puts survivors in worlds where the clocks’ hands do funny things.  Clocks’ arms tend to be heavy and lazy, taking minutes to move one minute and hours to move one hour.  Sometimes it even appears that the clocks’ arms have stopped moving altogether.  Survivors live in timeless worlds because the focus is more on getting through the nightmares at night and triggered memories during the day.

Friends and families of survivors have often asked me how to be a better friend, sister, mother, father, confidant, partner, person to a survivor.  Allies want concrete strategies to help their loved ones “get through this time” and want to boost their spirits in any way possible.

My advice for loving friends and families, for concerned activists and advocates, for anyone who finds themselves in a position to truly witness the healing of a survivor is to try and walk in their world of timelessness.  Healing has no clocks, no magic, no pills, no quick fix.  Look at the process of a deeply cut wound.  Even when the bleeding has stopped, a slight tap to the wound can prompt a gush of new blood.  Even as the days pass, it is raw, sensitive, and needs intense care and vigilance.  And isn’t it true that those deep wounds, the ones that we think will heal on their own and “in no time,” are the ones we end up looking at even weeks later and finding ourselves surprised that it’s still healing and not yet ready to be a scar?

Take that process and multiply it by a thousand.

There are some wounds that will surprise you with its need for timelessness.  Step into that world with a survivor.  Put away your expectations, your ready and practiced sayings and understand that violation, at this level, cannot be put back together according to your timeline or an expert’s approximation.

If you want to be a true companion, a true advocate, a true friend, the best thing to do is to put away your clock.  Sit.  Be flexible to what s/he needs.

Love without time restrictions.