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A Book Tour about Communities, Listening, Sexual Violence, and Rape

Published on by Lisa

The past month has been a blur of dreams.  Hard dreams coming true.  Pain blossoming into sweet petals of healing.

Conceptualizing the idea of this anthology began 13 years ago.  Call for submission, editing, book proposal, negotiating, waiting, galley reviews, begging for blurbs, outreaching on the branches of favors from good hearted writers and journalists and feminist-hearted media makers — all that took four years.

I’m going on a journey and I hope you come with me.  I’m going to promote the anthology all over the country.  I’m going to have discussions and workshops about why sexual violence is the global epidemic that it is.  I’m going to ask communities if they understand how to listen and heal themselves so they can help survivors heal as well.

I’m going on a journey to listen to and learn and offer the anthology as a tool to understand rape and sexual abuse from the eyes of the contributors.

Come with me.  Let’s do this together.

The Great Irony of 2014

Published on by Lisa

New Year’s Eve is the microcosm of life.

I love New Year’s Eve.  It’s this holiday that I think perfectly sums up how life is perceived by most people: expectations are high, expectations rest on others to make it exceptional, and when things turn out mediocre, the conclusion is that New Year’s Eve is anti-climatic.  Folks miss the part that New Year’s Eve is all about what YOU put into it, how you make the night what you want it to be, putting in the energy and time to make it exceptional, and then deciding to BE what you want as the change happens.

I’ve been thinking about NYE for weeks.  Every year for the past decade I’ve always chosen a theme, a word to think about throughout the year.  Last year it was “Relationships” which reminded me to constantly put it in first in my life.  To show up.  Make others know how important they are to me.  What I learned about that theme in 2013 is this: you can’t decide to make a relationship better or deeper if you don’t tell the other person that that is your objective.  Relationships are two way streets.  One person deciding something doesn’t necessarily make it different.  I learned that after the disappointment set in after I did go out of my way to be an extraordinary friend, daughter, sister, mother, partner, employee to someone else and then walked away with a feeling that something was lopsided.

For the first time, I don’t really have a word that’s resonating.  I just have the feeling and even the handful of words that come to mind land around, not on, what I’m thinking about.

The best that I can do is this: 2014’s theme is COMMITTED.

Not to be confused with COMMIT.

The latter assumes a certain level of indecision, as if I have not yet done so and sounds more like a memo to change a behavior.  “Committed” is somewhat of a salute to 2013, the arguably most difficult year I’ve ever lived thus far.  2013 was the year that I was forced to really think about who I want to be, what I want to do, where I want to go, and then wait until the time was right for it to happen.  2013 was the year that trained my mind and spirit to go after what I want, but physically had to wait until 2014 to make it happen.  It was excruciating like that.  Like consciously being alive and exuberant but physically being in a coma.  That’s what 2013 was like

So I know what I’m about and I have 2013 to thank for that.  Which makes 2014 the year of The Doing, The Actualizing, The Making It Happen, The Going For It.

2014 Committed to the 2013 decisions:

1. I’m a writer. This means I have to write.

That might sound crazy but fellow writers understand.  There are infinite ways to not write and believe that you actually are writing.  And what an excuse I’ve had in 2013 not to write: my boook is coming out.  I have turned into a project manager and publicityhound preparing for the launch.  Writing moved to the back burner.  2013 was all like, “Go write. Go write. Go write.” while my body was like, “I can’t. I have to revise the introduction.”  “I can’t.  I have a block.” Or the realities of raising a child, needing to exercise or sleep or eat won over the decision to write.  Screw it.  I’m turning 35 this year.  I once heard you need to spend 10,000 hours before you’re really good at something.  I need to focus on what I truly want and what I truly want is to be an extraordinary writer.

2.  There is enough time as long as you spend it wisely.

The CRAZE of appointments, parties, work, children, obligations is normalized like life is supposed to be nothing but a series of things you attend or do, instead of BE.  Why do folks live like there’s a social apocalypse right around the corner? I’m organizing better, committed to the things that I know sustain a healthy existence.

3. Clean eating.

I love food and I’m really tired of people obsessing about diets, restricting, and treating food like it’s this alluring siren with irresistible temptation.   We project our problems and frustrations on food.  We personify it as if has it’s own intention and personality to justify the often powerlessness people experience with eating.  But I don’t think we were created to be miserable about flavor and taste.  Food is so beautiful and celebratory.  Sacred even.  Cooking is an therapeutic art and what we consume either heals us or harms us.  I’m choosing healing.

4.  Uplift others.

The world is drowning in hate, scorn, sarcasm, cheap thoughts, and a quiet undercurrent of menace.  Who needs another person pretending they have all the answers, or another sarcastic tweeter, or another reckless and lazy writer, or another coward in the rat race?  The high road has always been there.  That’s my ride.

5.  Write about God.

About every other day in 2013 I felt the urge to write about God.  I’m a spiritual person, I know what it means if a reoccurring thought won’t leave you alone for a year.  It’s kind of obvious that’s what you should do.  But in 2013 I just let the thoughts come. I observed the frequency and what feeling accompanied the thought.  It was fear.  I hesitate to write about God because I don’t really like reading other people’s thoughts or theories about God.  Maybe that’s connected to my desire to write about God since I am so dissatisfied by what is being currently written.  I don’t have an agenda, just the commitment to write.

6.  Be where you are.  Right now.

2013 was spent in either the future, the past, or a place that was rarely reflected in that very moment.  Maybe it was a coping mechanism.  Maybe I was just that busy.  Maybe I was too afraid to face my everyday.  I’m not sure, but I do know that life is about deciding to forego what you don’t want and simply taking another path.  This is so hard for me to do because I struggle with perfectionism, expectations of life, and when things don’t happen the way they are “supposed to happen,” my conclusion is that it’s not good enough, or I’m not good enough, or the person in front of me isn’t good enough.  Judgement leads to callous behaviors.  That’s the last place I want to be.

7.  Choose what you really, REALLY want. Not what you want.

I want a billion things.  But what I really, REALLY want is probably about 18.  Prioritize.  No more excuses.  Shed what is unnecessary and holds you back: ghosts, mishaps, expectations, missed boats, grudges, need for “closure” (as if life is a neat and orderly chronicle of sensible stories).

8. Unceasingly, express the truth.

I spent too much time in 2013 opting for a watered down version of the truth or what made another person feel more comfortable.  I don’t think I need to hide what I genuinely believe, even if it’s unfavorable or difficult, as long as I can deliver it respectfully.  The rest is up to them.

9.  Have faith in people.

I lost my faith in people last year.  Shortcomings and flaws were more prominent than their inherent goodness and effort.  It was too easy to be jaded and although I tried “to be positive,” it only led me to feel like a phony because I didn’t FEEL positive on the inside.  Perceived forgetfulness, selfishness, and self-consumption ate away at me.  I know it will continue to do so in 2014, but my energy will be directed on putting out in the world whatever remedies the ills that I find so disheartening.

10. Pray anyway.

Something shifted last year.  I’ve always experienced spiritual connection in the same way until 2013.  I had moments of great connection but something happened in my spiritual life.  I’m not hearing or experiencing in the same way.  I’m searching for its replacement but have come up empty.  Rather than drawing the conclusion that God doesn’t exist or that I must have done something to piss God off, I’m going to assume that I’ve changed and my communication patterns need to updated as well.  It’s like God and I have dead cell phones and I keep screaming into mine, “ARE YOU THERE OR WHAT?”  Maybe it’s time for a face to face visit.  Or letter writing.  Or service.  Something different to pray my way back into a regular conversation with my inner Power.

11.  Enjoy life for its full sensuality.

The tiny burst of a grape.  The sound of four in Isaiah’s voice.  Waiting for the right moment before I snap the shutter on my camera.  Taking time to look up words that I don’t understand.  Being affectionate.  Sitting with a new poet.

And after all this, last night when Nick and I got home from my sister’s place, we plopped in front of the couch at 11:10pm, wondering, again for the umpteenth time, what are our true feelings for Ryan Seacrest when Nick got a headache closed his eyes and I, still wrapped in my long winter coat , decided to watch GirlCode on MTV.

Since I was about five, I’ve never missed the Times Square ball drop and have made a vow I will see it by 2020 in New York.  But this year, at 11:40pm, I switched to ABC and snuggled into my huge coat which now felt like a warm blanket.  The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to Ryan Seacrest saying, “Isn’t this the party of the year?”  The confetti was whirling and I wildly looked for evidence that I still had time.  (It didn’t occur to me to check a clock.)  Since there was no chaos, I figured I still had time.  But I then heard Frank Sinatra, “It’s up to YOU, New York, Newww Yooooorkk!” which only plays after the new year has rung in.  I grabbed my phone and saw 12:03am with texts reading HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I yelled at sleeping Nick, “WE MISSED IT!  WE MISSED THE BALL DROP!  I’VE NEVER MISSED THE BALL DROP SINCE I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD.  I MISSED THE BALL DROP!”

Nick, in some dreamy state hears my screaming and thinks the house is on fire, jumps up and out of the couch, “What’s the matter?  What’s going on?”

“WE F***** MISSED THE BALL DROP!  WE MISSED IT!  WE MISSED IT!”

He calmly laid back down and rearranged the Ohio State blanket on his long legs, “Oh shoot!”

Shoot?  That’s all he has to say?

He looks at me, “Happy New Year!”

A bit of 2013 edginess clung in my throat and I sarcastically replied, “HAAAAAAPPPY NEW YEAR!”

And then I remembered one of my committed decisions to let things go.  Stop lingering on what cannot be fixed.  Stop wishing for the boat that has long since set sail.  Those habits do nothing for me.

The fact that this challenge came precisely at 12:03am, three minutes into 2014 caused me to laugh out loud and shake my head.  The challenge to be committed to my decisions began with my sleeping through what I had been waiting for all holiday season.  I missed it and the minutes of 2014 were moving forward.  Life continues.  Every second of the new year was happening and I couldn’t believe I slept through the first three minutes.  The champagne bottle was still corked.  My winter coat still on and hiding my sparkly shirt underneath.  I wasn’t ready.  I was late.  I missed it.

I laughed again.  Nick probably thought I was hallucinating with anger.  I shook my head and stood up, the challenging thought raised to 2014’s ironic beginning, “So, this is how it’s going to be?”

And with this writing, I let it go.

The Artistic Difference Between Selfies and Selftraits

Published on by Lisa

I’m not up in arms over Jezebel’s latest debacle calling “selfies” nothing but a degrading digital act of vanity, making people focus on beauty and nothing else.

As a writer and photographer, I woefully disagree.  The beauty about photography, and why it pairs so elegantly with writing, is it’s wordless power to share truth.  It generates engagement through image so words aren’t necessary.  For me, it’s not about waving your techie arms for attention, but a manifestation of one’s creative lens.  Why should we not document ourselves?  As a photographer, I rarely let anyone use my camera, which means I have few photos of myself.

Taking selftraits can be a meditative look into one’s soul.  It conjures emotion, memory, and documents who we were at one moment in our fleeting dust of our lives.  Categorizing “selfies” as nothing but cheap uploads may be the trend, but selftraits have been going on throughout history.  Writing one’s story, photographing one’s body or face?  These are tactics of survival, annotation, so we are remembered on our own terms.

There’s a difference between these photos.  Even without the explanation, I think it’s clear what’s what.

Post Typhoon

Published on by Lisa

I’m not able to write about the typhoon in the Philippines.  I am overwhelmed by the devastation of my homeland.

I am devastated by this calamity.

Stop. Breathe. Run In A Dress

Published on by Lisa

Last week I had a work meeting at a site away from my usual office.  The morning colors of the fall day were distracting.  It was so bright, so clear, the sunshine setting everything on fire.  Leaves, trees, and bushels seemed to be on fire from the inside out.

I made it to my meeting and afterward, although I had much work to do, decided to linger the grounds.  There was no one around except a caretaker trimming a bush.  I saw four deer ambling about in the woods.  My knee high boots had a wooden heel and clomped loudly on the paved areas.  Although I would never consider myself a fashion expert, I do have some common sense for attire.  That day, I donned my tan zip up boots with a loose cream vintage looking dress with a blue floral print.  Over the dress, I worked in a short navy blazer so the slightly casual dress was sharpened with a modern cut jacket.

I looked around to make sure no one saw me.  In my car that day I had packed my gym bag with a plan to attack the gym after work.  I grabbed my New Balance sneakers and slipped off my boots, and slid my feet into the comfortable flat shoes that had conformed to my feet.

I ran.

In my dress, I ran like the wind down a path and into a kingdom of autumn. I passed majestic trees, swishing wind by my ears, and filtered the golden sun on my skin.

I had never been to this place.  I had never worn sneakers with a dress.  I couldn’t believe that I went running through an unfamiliar path dressed as I did.  Whatever compelled me to race the wind was too strong in me.  I had to burst open into a run to spend the energy and endorphins that delivered a joy I couldn’t measure or explain.

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt that way.  So I took a picture to remember this particular morning, a slice of perfection to last me until I forget what it feels like to sprint in a flower dress.

Imbalance Should Never Be Normalized: On Mothers, Writing, and Choosing Your Partner Parent

Published on by Lisa

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much time I read and absorb the life advice from other writers.  It’s soft addiction.  Articles about the challenge of motherhood and writing smell like dessert, and I devour each one as if I’ll find myself in someone else’s once kept now open secrets.

Who you choose to build a family with and how they view your writing life is kind of a big deal.  So often it’s the children – how many to have, whether serious writers have children (whaaat) – who are blamed as the prime distractors to women writers.  Here’s the thing though: a billion things distract or consume a writer’s time.  But another adult in the household is capable of helping create and sustain a productive and balanced writing life.   Right now, in most heterosexual relationships with stereotypical gendered traits, the partners, spouses, or lovers of women writers can help (he drove the kids to soccer, he made dinner one night) but its still the woman who does the majority of the child lifting.  As long as that is the model, balance will not and cannot be struck.

If I could tell young writers anything it would be to cultivate as close to a sustainable writing life as early as possible so you can choose a partner well and the expectations are clear from the start.  She or he doesn’t have to completely understand the demands of writing, but gets the jist that for as long as you’re in a committed relationship with writing, the primary human relationship won’t look like other relationships that are used as a barometer for success, happiness, or even peaceful.

Nick sometimes struggles with my struggle to be fully and absolutely present to him on weekends, our sacred hours together.  My fingers begin itching for a pen or a keyboard, my mind starts forming rebuttals and imaginary characters (depending on what I’m working on), and my eyes widen or narrow in reaction to my thoughts, as if I’m having a conversation all by myself.  Which, actually, is the painful truth for partners of writers.

Who you choose to parent with, how you set up that situation is one of the most underrated areas in the debate of women writers and finding balance.  Nick gladly picks up most of the domestic duties when he is home because he knows that I need to focus on writing when I can.  He disappears with Isaiah for hours at a time so I have a quiet office in the house and only interrupts to see how I’m doing, to rub my back, look over my shoulder and make a short quip about turning out a bestseller so we can retire. (My usual reply is a laugh, “With the content I’m interested in?  Hardly going to make us rich.”)  But more than that and what usually carries me is that he gets it.  He sometimes doesn’t like it but he gets it.  He gets that writers often wonder away to love a character instead of a human being next to you.  He gets that I spend a majority of my time doing unpaid work and picks up the slack, watches our budget, and takes on more because of the understood covenant between mother writer and her work.  He gets it and the balance, the ever so fragile balance, is sustained when your partner understands the psychological, emotional, and financial sacrifices that need to be made in the name of creative work.

The community, village, partner, and family we create is just as critical to the food we put in our bodies, the amount of sleep we try to get, and the oxygen we take in for creative work.  Emotional support is amazing, but the practical resourceful help that partners give – without tricks or guilt trips – cannot be overstated in the mother writer role.

The balance of parenting, for those in partnered relationships and nuclear families, has to be shared. It must be shared.  I’m not convinced that balance can be struck without actualizing that in your family.  And I simply refuse to normalize a state of imbalance; it is not an option for me.  What turns that refusal into a lived reality is a partner who refuses gendered imbalance as well.

The Slippery Slope of Writers Using Social Media: What I Learned from Shutting Down and Going Offline

Published on by Lisa

Social media had sunk its teeth deep into my flesh.

I noticed that I was spending more time reading my colleague’s work, reading articles about writing, absorbing top ten lists of famous author practices, shaking my head over the latest news about Pope Francis, and laughing over clever memes and looking over quickly written haikus more than I was doing the process of writing; that space where your hands pause, your mind lowers into a deeper spot, and lips slightly part in anticipation of a clearer word to use.  That space was filled with links, GO HERE commands to read the latest brilliant quote from Junot Diaz, a MUST READ with my name tagged in it from an activist group, and then there was my offering community support to others: dropping off a few dollars via PayPal for activists and writers whose rent and grocery bank accounts were low, reading breakthrough essays from emerging writer friends in Salon, The Paris Review, or the The Rumpus, passing on information on crowdsourcing projects for independent films and memoirs about Caribbean girlhood, access to clean water, and protecting Indigenous rights.  There are petitions to Free Marissa, animated videos to learn about Syria or the government shutdown, and applications for writers’ studio time, grants, and artistic residencies.  All opportunities, all good, all of my life swirling into one screen on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GoodReads, and Google+.  I started noticing my attention span was getting shorter and shorter and perhaps social media was contributing to that frenzied jump from link to link.

So I booted myself off social media.  It was time.  My attention span was like a connect the dots map with no lines connecting for a big picture.  It became apparent one embarrassing moment the other day when I raced up the stairs to use my computer to get directions before my family went out and when I sat down in front of the screen, found an open tab, and quickly sunk underwater in an article about postpartum depression, then about the origin of the magazine it was published under, then about its founder, then about one of the zines she had once written, then about … then… click.  click. pause to read.  click.  click. Several minutes passed and then I heard a voice from downstairs, “Did you get the directions?” Nearly 20 minutes had passed.  I glanced down and saw my scribbling: Research PPD across racial and cultural lines.  Possible legal implications in cases involving custody disputes or child endangerment?   How has women’s mental health research changed in the past 30 years?  How much of that accessible to patients with prenatal care?  How effective are ob-gyn physicians in identifying severe PPD?

Even though no one could see my face when I realized how long I had taken to get directions, I blushed. Have I no sense of time, respect, discipline to seek out one thing and close myself to all the other distractions?

As I cooked dinner that night night, I thought more about my struggle to be a balanced, modern essayist, a mother, with my fervent love of all things new, wordy, and smart.   As my hands grazed the bottles of Hoisin, sweet chili sauce, and Sririachi, and I made a new concoction for a marinade, I smirked at the culinary comparison that came to me as I prepared the marinade.  Some writers absorb and process like tofu. Splat some cubed tofu into a bowl of sauce and it will rapidly inhibit the spices and flavors of its saucy environment.  Within minutes, the soybean curd will reveal a combination of tongue-pleasing goodness that any foodie would appreciate.

But I am not like tofu.

I’m like the thick piece of poultry that needs a few days to trust and then gradually swallow the Italian spice, or the adobo seasoning, or to deeply kiss the depth of the curry.  I need time.  I’ve always been a slow reader and writer.  Slow, as in, I frequently put a book down to think about what it conjures up.  That happens quite a bit.  Somehow, though, over the past few years, that patience has left me.

If you ask me if any of the things I’ve recently read online have really moved me, I have to be honest and say with the exception of one essay, I don’t remember the others.  Out of the hundreds of things I’ve read through social media, I only remember one.  It’s a reflective essay from David Sedaris about his sister who committed suicide.  And, as only David Sedaris could, the essay brought me to audible mmhmm and hearty laughter.  Yes, the essay was about his sister’s SUICIDE.  Who can do that?

That is the work of a writer.  To take the reader into an unexpected place.  I’ve been busy, but I don’t know how much work I’ve been doing that has contributed to my own craft.

But the discovery over the past several days has not been about the writing, reading, or even the processing.  It was the renewal of self-confidence that came with being socially quiet and emotionally attuned.  Social media for writers can be the port to community, resources, networks, and community that every artist needs for creative survival, but it also comes with an alluring temptation to spend one’s time in observation rather than creating.  There is a safety in observation.  An endless excuse for learning more.  But the deepest learning a writer can do is not through reading, it is through writing.

As an extroverted writer with an insatiable addiction to intellectual stimulation, the internet is an infinite playground.  Social media is unhinged door with no threat of closing.  Even though it is a digital New York City lifestyle with its endless temptation of distraction, an endless conversation with myself that often leads me to a blank screen and endless drafts, I miss it.

I want both worlds.  I want the buzz and the quiet.  I want community support and the isolation to work.

This afternoon, as I got off the phone with my publicist about my book, she reminded me to grow comfortable in getting “out there;” in establishing my voice and testing how it sounds in public spheres.  Pitching to more places.  Writing more articles on the subject matter.  Using my voice means strengthening it for the long term.  A part of that strength training is using social media effectively AND writing more for public consumption.

I felt fearful to return to social media.  What if I waste my literary life?  What if I can’t control my attention span?  The demand for writers to produce original work requires mental space.  That sacred real estate is precisely where social media coyly conspires to set up permanent residency.  The reality for published writers is that a platform must not only be created but also sustained.  Social media is the primary and most effective tool for doing just that.  Thus continues the quandary, the tightrope walk balancing platform maintenance (which quickly can slide into general entertainment and social meandering) and producing creative work.

Over the past several days, I picked up my SLR camera more often.  I texted love poems to my partner.  I snuggled with my son without wondering if I should take an Instagram pic of how cute he looked.  For the billionth time, I started another morning prayer routine hoping I can make it sustainable.  New meals were served on the dinner table.  My mom was surprised to hear from me a few more times than normal.  I was present to others more, but what surprised me most was how much more I was able to be present to myself.  I read books with pages, turned the pages with my fingers.  It felt authentic.  I felt authentic.

That cannot be downloaded.

When I licked my lips and logged into my old friends named Twitter and Facebook, I find, not surprisingly, that the pace felt dangerously hurried and wonderful.  I could feel the tide tugging at my legs as I waded in knee deep.  It’s strong, the pull shifting the sandy ground under my feet.

I am staring out into the abyss of the ocean, afraid again.  I see a buoy ahead.  I straighten my shoulders, take breath, and wonder if I can swim with one arm.

Processing Sexuality & Spirituality: On Queer Identity, Love, and Un-Identifying

Published on by Lisa

There were two rather unexpected events that took place yesterday.  If I look closely, I see how these two seemingly different events perfectly illustrate my life and my identity right now.

At two o’clock yesterday, I went for spiritual direction.  Spiritual direction is a form of spiritual practice where you typically spend an hour or so with a trained and certified spiritual director to help you more clearly recognize grace, God, and love in your life.  The reasons and methods are varied, similar to psychotherapy, but it’s not therapy.  It’s like you become your own personal theologian over your own life.  You investigate the joys, struggles, and thoughts and process them aloud with a director.  They ask questions, dig around, and reflect back what they hear from you.  Quite a simple method, yet very few people utilize this form of practice.  The last time I went for spiritual direction was nearly a decade ago.  My director’s name was John and I still think of that relationship every few months.  It was that impactful.

I went to see Fr. Don Cozzens.  A prolific writer, a progressive thinker, a graceful challenger to the modern US church, I sat with him for an hour to talk about my relationship between writing and my faith.  Specifically, I came to him to talk about this hard stone of fear sitting in my stomach.  A fear to write about what I truly want to write about because of my identity as a Catholic.  I feel uncertain and off balance.  At times I felt unsure how to answer his questions about my identity as a Catholic, as a women of color, as a feminist, as a writer.

He spoke at length about two things: ego and courage.

On one hand the ego of the writer is always pushing. Ego is always afraid of what others think, even when in hiding – which could be mistaken for lack of confidence – but is really about ego.  (That took me a while to understand.) But it makes sense.  On the other hand, it takes the “chasm of courage” to put yourself out into the world, to open up oneself for criticism and challenge.  He remarked, “The challenges you reference – the hierarchy, clericalism, triumphalism, patriarchy of the church – these are big pieces to the block in your writing as you are describing, but I think there is something else.  Something that is not church.”

Oh.

Well, I sat with that for a while.

He was kind and smiled warmly, “Forgive my arrogance.  I’ve only known you less than an hour and am telling you what to do with your life.  But here I go: there is something much deeper than the church you are fearing.  Your friend who lost is job because of his progressive beliefs? It goes deeper than that.  Your fear of being the Catholic community not understanding you?  It goes deeper than that.  So just sit with that.”

I did.  I sat there.

He ended with what he began, “Write. Come what may.”

Four hours later, I left this priest who wrote controversial books for a living and drove to another college campus.  At Kate State, my friend, Daisy Hernandez was giving a talk.  The subject of her lecture was on feminism, women of color, sexuality, and Latina experiences.  It’s hard to not praise her presentation when she gave a shout out to my work. (Insert any gif of shameless dancing.)

One of the things that caught my attention was how many college students brought up the word “queer” which Daisy used to name her sexual identity.  I saw many college students nodding as she spoke and I saw even more wait for her after the lecture, standing there awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot waiting to ask her more about her queer identity.  It was a word I am familiar with as many of my friends who date and love and partner with men, women, and gender non conforming people.  Queer is a word to me to describe the natural continuum of loving, or being attracted to, or being in relationship, or just plain wanting another person.  It’s an everyday word for me. Like “the.”

I thought about how and why I not feel the need to name my sexuality.  I stopped identifying as anything several years ago.  It was a personal decision I came to after years of examining my life, reflecting with my partner, choosing what felt most right to me.  And what felt right was not to use any identifier at all.  I didn’t reject anything, I just didn’t find anything that encompassed my experiences.

The decision to un-identify as heterosexual and my decision to not identify with anything else came shortly after an upsetting experience with a group of friends who questioned my life choices.  Shortly after I was engaged to my partner, I made a comment that I knew I was ready to commit to one person because I realized what love meant.  I didn’t love his gender.  I didn’t love his sexuality.  I didn’t love parts of him.  I just loved him.  That totality and consumption of another human through love wasn’t blind to these parts of his identity, it just didn’t stand out that way anymore.  The more I understood how I loved him, the more I understood how to love others in general.  Gender didn’t matter.  I fell in love with a person who happened to be a man.  Even with all the socialization, the cultural and religious influences in my life, I came to understand that love, for me, was not contingent upon gender, or sexuality, or labels.  I shared with a friend that “it didn’t matter if it was a man or woman.  I knew that I could have dated or not dated anyone and I would have been fine.  I could have loved anyone.  And in realizing that, I knew I was free to love whom I choose.  And I chose him.”

In sharing this in an unsafe place, the comment was deduced to a cheap conversation about sexual attraction and dating history.  My insight was lost in the torrent of questions if I was gay, straight, queer, bi…or what?

It took a few years to tell that story and I look back and shake my head because I still feel the same way.  Why the need for label?  Why the desperate grab to smack a word on my forehead so you know how to treat me.  Why not just get to know me?  Why not get to the know the person I fell in love with?

I fell in love with this person who, at one time, when he was employed as a minister, would dress in his finest suit to attend funerals for people he didn’t even know.  Whether the service was overflowing or just a smattering of people in the pews, he put on his best clothes to pay tribute to someone who died.  He attended because he believed in the inherent worth of every human that walked the earth.  He wore his best suit because he believed that was the least he could do for the one person who came to say goodbye to their brother, father, sister, mother, or spouse.

I have these hazy memories of waking up and seeing him dressing in that black suit and knowing he was on his way to a funeral.  “You don’t have to go, you know,” I reminded him.  “No one would ever know the difference.”  He’d catch my eye in the mirror and flash me a smile that I always found made my heart thunder away, “I’d know.  I like going.  I want to be there.  Someone should, must be there.”

Someone that held that kind of perspective of human life, relationship, and wasn’t afraid to be made vulnerable by the emotionally heavy nature of a funeral is the kind of someone I continue to love to this day.  It’s why I chose and continue to choose to build my life with him and why love is the only door I leave unlabeled.

I don’t need it.  I know where I’m going.

* * * *

Fr. Donald Cozzens.  Ms. Daisy Hernandez.  The two faces of Catholic and feminist agitation yesterday.  It was quite a day.

Ecdysis: A Free Write on Snakes, Skin, and Necessary Growth

Published on by Lisa

I was 22 years old and pouring out my heart to a priest who would eventually marry me and the man who was the reason I was pouring out my heart.  But I didn’t know that then.

I poured out my heart because I didn’t know how else to deal with its leaking.  The embarrassing drops of naivety and innocence that can only be squeezed out of the heart by the cracks of first love.  I didn’t know that was what was happening.

I didn’t know a lot of things.  I still don’t know a lot of things.

Looking back at that time, when this priest listened to my yearning to move on and out of my early 20s conventional lifestyle, I see that restlessness not as a period of my life, but I identify now as a permanent marker of my identity.  The grave dissatisfaction with unfulfillment.  The sudden uptake of bravery to do whatever it takes to make transformation possible.  The tunnel vision.   That wasn’t a phase, that’s Me.

The priest commented that my restlessness was likely a sign of “moving through something, like a shedding snake with new colors on its skin.”  My lips pursed in repulsion.  Dry, dead skin of a snake.  Interesting comparison.  It made me itch, physically.  I’m not drawn to crackling and lifeless skin trails.  It haunted me though because, despite my shuddering and itching, it felt true.  New colors.  Finding hard, uneven ground to slither my body so I could more easily rid myself of useless layers?  Hunting rocks to scratch myself against to help the process?  In this profoundly odd way, it was perfect.

Some months later after the dead skin talk, I played Scrabble for the first time with a group of friends.  And when a controversial play called for a dictionary validation, I picked up the heavy green reference to look up the word and immediately lost my grip with my left hand.  It fell, split open to the floor and that’s when my eye say it at the top of the left page: ECDYSIS. A shedding. A moulting of an outer integument of skin.  Like a snake shedding its skin.

There it was.  A word to describe the process the priest told me I was in.  I just didn’t know it wasn’t a process.  It was my life.

I took a mental photograph and flipped the pages to validate the disputed word and went on with the game.  But as I outwardly continued with Scrabble, yelling at and even wrestling Mike one of my roommates, over the use of the word “navajo,” for the win, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something larger was being conveyed.  And it came through the accidental drop of a dictionary.

Although I consider myself both spiritual and religious, I largely put my faith in people.  I think humans reveal more about truth, sanctity, and creativity than any symbol or natural element and that placement of faith leaves me with a touch of skepticism when people say “it’s a sign” is used to describe a curious encounter.  But when ecdysis flopped itself open with a Webster, I wasn’t so sure that crumbs weren’t being laid so I could find the loaf.

The next twelve years were cyclic like that.  The shedding was constant and followed a pattern.  Pain, lesson, implementation of lesson, enlightenment. Restlessness.  Repeat.

I find myself today, twelve years since that dictionary fell out of my hand, ruminating on ecdysis.  My literal muse.  It’s taken me that long to metabolize its enormity and helpfulness.  Restlessness is not a state of unhappiness, or lack of joy.  Quite the opposite.  The joy of everyday life – my loves, my struggles – fuels the desire to pursue more and it’s taken me twelve years to accept that without shame.  And now that I’m here it seems ridiculous that I was even hiding.  I hid the fact I was unsatisfied.  (Some in my life would say I hid it poorly.)  But I didn’t want to insult others.  I didn’t want my dissatisfaction to hurt others.  I didn’t want others to think they or my relationship with them didn’t or doesn’t give me joy.  But fulfillment is much larger than singular threads of relationship with others. Fulfillment is about relationship to one’s own life, one’s own practice of living and pursuit of meaningful existence.

And it took awhile and several rounds of partner dialogue with Nick, strategic therapy sessions investigating emotional and cognitive patterns (aka “Why do the same thoughts keep surfacing?), playful cuddling sessions with Isaiah, face down in the pillow crying sessions followed by and face up in the pillow staring sessions to digest another basic survival tool: we end up living a template if we don’t create our own design.

Snakes shed their skin at different frequencies.  I don’t remember the  last one I went though of this magnitude.  The ecdysis I am currently experiencing is moving me to new terrain, bigger rocks…and this time, I’m giddy with anticipation.

Life and love share a common cosmology: time changes everything.

Thank ecdysis for that.