I AM PRO-THRIVE

February 18, 2019 / christyterese / Leave a comment

Recently, I have noticed that many people on Facebook have a purple banner at the bottom of their profile picture that reads, “I AM PRO-LIFE”.

Now, I am not one to condemn free expression, since I love my own and hate when people try to silence me. But those little banners annoyed the crap out of me after a while, and I needed to say something about them. But I chose to say something here, instead of saying something on my Facebook profile, because I thought that my response required more explanation than a few sound bytes. It required something more fully reasoned and more fully expressed–with some history and some anecdotes, perhaps.

And as I started firing up the Chromebook and getting ready to respond, the first two songs on shuffle play were Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield and All I Want Is Love from A Great Big World, which just seemed to be signs from The Divine that I was on the right path writing this here.

I am not “pro-life” any longer. Lots of people assume that is because I am liberal. And I suppose, in many respects, I am.

But blanket terms like “liberal” don’t always describe what we think we are describing, and I would call myself progressive, not liberal, as a point of fact. Because I don’t agree with things along a party line, and am an independent voter, based on whatever and whomever I think follows what I believe is “right”–ethical, beneficial, and based in love, beauty, and truth.

This is the point where lots of people want to yell comments about killing babies not being ethical, beneficial, or based in love, beauty, and truth. But that assumes a lot of things. That assumes that you believe life begins at conception–which I don’t think is a true statement. That assumes that our society deems all life equal–and it doesn’t. That assumes that “benefit” and “love” are seen through the eyes of a fetus and not a pregnant woman–which I don’t believe it should be or can be, exclusively. And I understand those assumptions because I used to hold them as facts to be demanded, not assumptions to be challenged. I used to be pro-life and a supporter of anti-abortion causes and rhetoric. I hope that I will be forgiven for my narrow-minded, single-focused, self-righteous stance at that time in my life. Because I should have challenged my assumptions and listened to the stories of others and wondered at the courage of women who walked beyond a line of picketing jerks to get an abortion, and why it was so important for them to make it through that door–because it couldn’t be that they were just liberal Jezebels with no love in their hearts, if I had stopped to think on it for a few seconds. There were really good reasons. But I didn’t stop to consider those reasons for far too long.

I’m not entirely certain when the break came for me. It was a gradual understanding that things couldn’t be as I believed when I was back in high school and my first year of college. Maybe part of my consideration of women’s choices being valid came because I started losing my own fetus on a regular basis. One live birth out of six confirmed pregnancies–and a couple of suspected early miscarriages where I missed and then had heavy menstruation. My body killed one in six babies, at least, on its own, without any interventions. And that takes a toll on a woman, even when she doesn’t particularly want to be pregnant or give birth. Then the child that survived did so at the most inopportune time. And I love that daughter with every fiber of my being, and didn’t consider abortion for a moment of my pregnancy with her, but I did learn the challenges of adoption agencies and the choice that is offered to many women as an “opportunity” to place their child in a “loving family” that can “better meet his or her needs”.

I called bullshit on adoption. I would hear many more stories that called bullshit on adoption later in my journey, but most of you won’t like to hear those stories. You prefer the idea that adoption is always good people saving helpless children from lost souls. Bullshit. It’s terribly corrupt–especially when it involves children from overseas–and it is damaging for children in significant ways, but even more so for parents. The suicide rate for birth mothers is outrageously high, and their risk of substance abuse AFTER placing their child (not before) is also much higher than that of the general population. Placing your child harms you in serious and debilitating ways. But we don’t like to talk about that. We like to pretend that adoption is all about the babies and saving their lives. I’ve had more adopted children, as teens or adults, tell me they would rather have died than been placed where they were, than I can count on my fingers. But nobody wants to hear that part of the story. Nobody wants to hear that we took a baby and placed it with abusive parents who ruined the life of that boy or girl in really terrible ways. And we can’t say, “At least they are alive!” We can’t promise that not living would have been worse. We cannot prove that hypothesis!!

I’m always struck by the instances in the biblical text where there are cries such as “Oh that I had never been born!” There were clearly those who thought not living was better than suffering.

I’ve been there. I’ve been in struggle deep and affecting enough that I wished not only for death but that I had never been born to suffer this way at all. If I had a choice. If we went back in time, and The Divine laid before me life with all that I have suffered, or not living, it would be a very challenging decision. And if I knew that dying in the womb brought me straight to some afterlife, where living made me suffer first and then brought me to the same end, I would probably skip to the end.

There’s been a ton of joy in my life. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not discounting that joy. I’m just saying that the suffering has been far outweighing the joy for most of my existence, and other people don’t get to say that my suffering is better than not being around to suffer–joy or no. Other people don’t get to define the limits that I can tolerate, or the impact that events have on my person, or the way that I choose to cope with what I have endured and will endure. We don’t get to tell other people that they are better off alive and suffering than they would have been if their parent would have chosen to abort. We don’t know that. We can’t prove that. We want that to be true, but that doesn’t mean it is.

That sounds crass, but it is true. I can’t say that being born is better. I can say that I am glad those people are here and that they offer great things just by being alive in this world. So, it isn’t as crass as you might imagine, in practice as it is in theory.

I almost typed that I “would never express that a person is better off dead”. That would have been a lie.

Lol. Now some people are really stirred up!!

But I did say that. I thought that sometimes when my mom was suffering a lot from her Alzheimer’s and would cry uncontrollably and be confused and frustrated. It was hard to see her that way, and there were times that I said I wished her disease would progress, because I wanted that suffering to end. I, obviously, didn’t want my mother to be dead, but I didn’t want her to suffer. I felt that way because of how much I loved my mom. I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling–the love you feel that makes you let go of someone.

Earlier, I said that many would not believe that being pro-choice could be a thing that came out of love. But it can be when you consider that feeling–the love you feel that makes you let go of someone. And that is the love that lets women let go of the potential of a person. It isn’t yet a baby in the mind of most–because science. But even if it were a person, and it were a medical necessity to let go, love is still the driving force that makes that decision. It isn’t selfish. It is selfless, almost always, to choose to end a pregnancy. And often the challenge is that you cannot provide the home that this child will deserve, because you have other children to feed and care for and cannot take on the responsibility of another.

I know, the trope is the irresponsible, young girl who gets knocked up … and like all the tropes, it isn’t true.

I have hundreds of stories and all sorts of scientific facts that I could tell, and they would express my transition from someone who didn’t understand that most abortions are had by women who already have children, and that there is a decidedly racist and classist reason that black women are more affected than others by unplanned pregnancy, and that Planned Parenthood saves far more lives than it has or will ever end (my own included in those saved), and that the decisions of others regarding procreation are not anyone else’s business, to someone who now does understand those things. I am happy to share statistics and happy to share stories at any time. From the 12-year-old friend whose mom pimped her out for drugs who had 2 kids by age 14, to the friend who suffered trauma from placing her son with an amazing family, to the intrusions of others into my own choices about my body when I had to have a hysterectomy. I have people in my life who have had abortions, who have been placed or placed their children for adoption, who have adopted with relative success or adopted and been faced with a host of problems, and who have faced all sorts of choices and challenges regarding procreation, fertility, birth control, and similar subjects. But none of that is what I want to take away from this post.

What I want to take away from this post, is the ways that being “pro-life” tends to ignore the “life” portion of that statement once that life has gotten beyond the point of gestation. Really, many of those who have that purple banner under their name should say, “I AM PRO-GESTATION”. Because once that baby is born, it ceases to have any support or care from most of those same people who proudly shout at innocent mothers and spread propaganda against Planned Parenthood.

I found this out the hard way.

So many people were pro-baby Bloem before I had my child as an almost divorced mom. After I pushed away the baby-grabbing adoption agency and they essentially called me a crazy person for keeping my child, my parents offered their full support. Many others offered support as well. But my parents were the only ones to keep their promise. The rest were loving and supportive so long as I kept that little one gestating safely, and lots of people were also loving and supportive for a month or so after she was born. After that?

I remember crying as Bill Clinton addressed the country in his State of the Union in 1997 and promised reforms that would make life easier for women like me on welfare. I didn’t know then that welfare reform would mean lifetime limits and work demands that were impossible in my tiny community, and that would actually make life harder. It would toss millions off of the rolls, and pretend at success, but would actually disappear those families–many of them forced into homelessness, sex work, illegal enterprise, or fraudulent use of programs to survive. The laws still haven’t been reformed from Clinton’s crap reform, so the number of people forced to survive off the damaging and difficult circumstances that the late 90’s forced people into has stayed relatively steady, and the welfare rolls don’t increase much with the strict rules still in place. So, while this desperation and struggle continues, there are many who promote their pro-life agenda and also still call for cuts to spending on social programs. They think too many people get “handouts”. Too many people on food stamps. Too many people on disability. Too many people on welfare.

I wonder, how many is too many? How many is just right? Who is the fucking Goldilocks of social programming who decides what is the correct number of disabled and hungry people, and then how do we make that number equal with the number of people in society that actually NEED these services???

If you won’t vote for MORE social safety net funding, you aren’t pro-life. Because if you won’t vote for more such funding, you don’t want all people to thrive. Do you think life is worth living in a state of constant need and hunger and suffering? Do you think it is great to sell your vagina to buy formula? Great! You do it! Otherwise, vote for equal pay and equal rights and more funding for every program that helps people who are not you. And if you will not, then do not say you promote life. Say that you promote gestation and birth, but not life, per se.

Let’s move beyond that subject to another aspect of thriving–prison! The most obvious thing to bring up here is the death penalty. If you support killing people who break the law, but not a fetus, I call bullshit. And you can quote the Old Testament until you are blue in the face, but before you do, let me remind you that I went to not one, but two seminaries. So, I can not only quote the bible back, but I can explain why the New Testament offers an alternative to the penalty of death and asks you to extend mercy, not judgment. Does the law allow for death? Yes, in some cases. Should it? Absolutely not, if you claim you are pro-life. You can’t ask for life on one hand and death on the other. If life begins at conception, then once god conceived of you, regardless of your sins against him, you deserve life. If not, then we can talk. But you can’t have the cake and eat it too, people. Pick one and stick with it.

Secondary to this is the treatment of humans in general. Being beaten, raped, tortured, etc., is NEVER acceptable if you are to claim you want life for all. What kind of life is that?? Nobody deserves such treatment, and if you aren’t supporting an end to mass incarceration, rights for foreign detainees, and just treatment of prisoners everywhere, then you don’t want life for all, but you want gestation and birth for babies. Once they are born, and make a mistake, you don’t care who does what to them. And that is NOT the will of any god that I will ever serve. If you are fine with the rape and torture of anyone, anywhere, you should seriously evaluate your heart.

Please don’t tell me, “Those people committed crimes!” So did you. Every last one of you has gossiped, or committed adultery, or lusted, or lied, or, at the very least, driven over the speed limit. You are all just as depraved as the next, right Calvinists? So, don’t tell me now that you are better than those criminals. You aren’t. They may have sinned differently, or gotten caught, or just been unfairly treated by an unjust system that leans toward punishing black and brown boys, but they certainly are not less human or less good than you at their core. They are people–every bit your equal. And they deserve equal rights, as such.

I can go on and on. An end to war. Equal pay for women. Ending sexual violence. Gender justice. Racial justice. Stopping this incessant whining about immigrants taking something from you when you are extremely fucking privileged and losing nothing to them.

I am Pro-Thrive. I consider all of these things when I speak, write, read, vote, and live out my days. I consider the actual LIVES of the poor and marginalized, not just their births. Because what the fuck does it matter if babies are born if you won’t do anything to fight for justice in their lives after that fact? If they die of hunger, or they have to sell their bodies to pay for necessities like food and housing, or they end up in prison at age 14, or they die by war or suicide or gun violence at a young age, then what was the point in funneling all that money and energy into keeping them gestating until birth?? Was that better?? I don’t think it was good enough!

We can do better!!

The fact is, I don’t particularly love abortion as an option. I’d love to see free birth control offered to everyone, so that we can limit abortion. I’d love to see, science-based, comprehensive sex education courses offered to everyone, so that we can limit abortion. I’d love to see social programs increase, so that we can limit abortion.

But I would never tell a woman what she is or is not allowed to do with her body, because I don’t have that right. I’m not her. And if there is one thing that being sexually violated teaches you, it is that NOBODY tells you what to do with your body but you. So, I would rather she get a safe, legal abortion, if that is her choice, than go back to the fucking stone age and endanger the lives of women who do make that choice.

Regardless of my personal preferences, however, the point here is to look at the whole life of a person, and to make whole life a consideration. If you claim to be a person of faith, and you claim to honor life, but you support war and torture and the death penalty and cuts to medicare and SNAP, something is off-balance. If you wish to claim that you are for life, you must be for all of it, in all of its forms and for all of its people. If you are not for life for all people, at all ages, in all circumstances, you should come up with another claim. You are not pro-life. You are not pro-thrive. I’m not sure what you are, but it isn’t very inclusive and it isn’t very much like the Christ of the bible that most of you claim to be following. So, that is a concern that you might want to take to heart and consider for a while.

In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out over here in my progressive corner with The Divine. I am pro-choice.

But I am also PRO-THRIVE!! And I am very glad I have evolved to that point. Hallelujah!!

And the Storm Rages On

May 3, 2018 / christyterese / Leave a comment

It isn’t easy for me to be vulnerable.

I remember a friend from cohort saying to me once that I was very open by not very vulnerable, and I was upset by that statement, because I didn’t think it fair to separate the two out in that manner. Being honest was, in my mind at that point, being vulnerable. Now I understand more fully that there is a difference, and that Chris was correct in his assessment. It is easy for me to tell the truth, and it is hard for me to be open about how that truth can harm me—how exposing the heart of me is different from exposing the facts of my situation.

I was recently quite vulnerable about the financial situation that I find myself in, and the subsequent challenges that my daughter is experiencing. I let people know how hurt and frustrated and damaged and judged and punished I was feeling as a result of all sorts of things that are far beyond my control. And I didn’t shy away and rewrite and edit and try to add decorum or lessen the blow of my emotions.

Overall, the response was positive. I had a few people who commended my authenticity and vulnerability in stating not just the true facts, but the challenge of my own feelings about those facts.

But there was one response that has been eating away at me for days now, and I can’t help but craft some sort of retort. I won’t start some strange, heated Facebook argument about it, however. So, instead I want to address it here, and, hopefully, give it a worthy apologetic.

After lamenting that my daughter was forced to drop out of her educational program just 6 weeks prior to graduation due to financial constraints, and noting that my own challenge of being trapped in cycles and systems that keep me in an impoverished state, rather than offer me the chance to thrive—both of which I consider to be rather unique to me in my particular circles of acquaintance and/or influence—I received this comment in reply:

It’s not just you, Christy. Nor is or (sic) just single income households. The economy is tough and there are a lot of people that I know right now that are struggling to keep the lights on.

I’m so sorry. I know what you’re going through when the stress, the anxiety, disability, and desire all meet in the perfect storm.

I’m praying for you guys…

And under that was a meme that said:

Sometimes God calms the storm. Sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child.

I later texted another friend that I was “Zen as fuck” until I read that comment.

I can’t fully express how upsetting comments like this are for someone in my situation. The idea that my situation is just like a whole lot of other people’s situations is laughable. To normalize what is incomprehensibly abnormal as a strategy to deny me aid is not one that is foreign, unfortunately. People love to rationalize their refusal to help their fellow humans as “reasonable” instead of cruel or evil in all sorts of ways. And the easiest way to do that is to dehumanize the person in need—using racism, classism, moral relativism, or some other ism to blame the needy for their own struggle. That dehumanization is much more difficult when you sat beside said person in seminary classes and your child was babysitter to mine, so you resort to the second easiest rationalization—the “lots of people” argument.

“Lots of people” have disabilities and they…

“Lots of people” are divorced and they…

“Lots of people” are having financial challenges. “Lots of people” have anxiety. “Lots of people” want life to be different than it is. “Lots of people” struggle.

All of this is true. So, in the mind of the one arguing for the many, the one is simply an exaggeration of or a dramatic expression of what all sorts of people are dealing with. They “understand”. They “sympathize”.

Bullshit.

I call bullshit.

And I get to call it because of this ugly feeling in the core of my being whenever I get to read these sorts of comments under my vulnerable posts.

Ironically, just above this comment was a series of comments and replies that talked about how I hate to open up because of the times that I opened wide my arms for a hug and got a gut punch instead. This “lots of people” comment is a gut punch where there should be an embrace. And I will tell you why this feels like a gut punch.

My vulnerability is not something that is shared by lots of people. It is an intimate thing, to share my heart and my deepest wounds and fears. To say that lots of people are touched in the same way—even if it were true—is a betrayal of my trust. This comment is akin to a friend confiding in you that they were raped, and you saying, “Lots of people get raped. I know what you’re going through. Sometimes you need to let go of shit and let God change your perspective.”

Gut fucking punched.

I’m deeply involved in all sorts of methods for changing my perspective, by the way. I meditate almost every day. I practice yoga. I practice gratitude daily. I use several mindfulness practices, and I have all sorts of routines in place to keep my heart open, my outlook positive, and my disordered thinking in check. When I said that I was Zen, I meant it. I could not have been calmer when I received that offending comment. And I addressed it in the calmest manner possible: I ignored it. I talked to a close friend about how it made me feel, and she supported me through the event and helped me to keep a positive perspective throughout the situation.

So, even after being gut punched by the insensitive rationalizing comment, I kept my cool demeanor. I didn’t need “God to calm his child”.

But the storm is another story.

The storm should NEVER have been here in the first place, and yet it rages on.

This common little meme, and the saying upon it, are very upsetting for me. They assume that the things in life that harm us are somehow meant to be hanging around our heads so that God can teach us some sort of lesson in how to keep our cool under pressure. And I don’t understand where that idea comes from, but it is a terrible sentiment, and we need to put an end to it.

My challenges stem from disabling conditions, yes. And those disabling conditions might never go away or be cured. I understand that a certain amount of coping is required for me to navigate life with those conditions. In that sense, there with always be challenges.

But “the storm” for so many of us can simply go away if people stop using the rationale to avoid helping one another and affect change.

My storm includes a system that doesn’t fully support those in our society who have disability, and only offers me $750 in cash and $15 in food benefits, plus a housing stipend. Adding those together doesn’t make a livable situation, and I am constantly in need and constantly in danger of losing my home, starving, not having my medications, or some other disastrous challenge.

My storm also includes the challenge of mental illness that has been present since early childhood, and which left untreated for so long has influenced my life in countless ways, making it impossible to consider any decision I’ve ever made one that wasn’t made under duress, and challenging me to figure out who the hell I am, and why. I don’t need a midlife crisis, because I’ve never had an independent identity—my crisis is ongoing.

My storm includes a divorce from a horrible man, whose damage to my person and my psyche cannot and should not be downplayed, for any reason. And that also means an absent father is a part of my daughter’s storm—and the storms of our children influence our own storms. The weight of being a single parent goes far beyond “single income” households—and I’ve generally had a no income household, because of my difficulty with employment due to PTSD. Having a completely absent parent, who contributes in NO way, is not anything that a person who lives in a two-parent home can ever imagine. It still infuriates me when married people say things like, “I’m a single parent for the week”, when their partner is away on a trip or something. Having a partner who is physically absent for a matter of days is nothing like having no partner at all. You still have all sorts of support, financial and emotional just being the tip of the iceberg. You can’t imagine none of that being present, ever.

My storm includes debt totaling over $250,000. Most of that is from student loans, and much of the rest is due to the three years’ time that I spent waiting for my disability claim to be approved. I was unable to work and waiting for the Social Security Administration to look at the body of proof that I was unable to work and sign off on my meager $750 a month payment. In the meantime, I had nowhere to turn but credit cards, my dad, and charity. So, I owe far more than I could ever pay back on my own, but I am not eligible for programs that would forgive these debts. So, I sit and owe, and the interest just increases the amounts and increases the amounts.

My storm includes the complicated situation where my adult daughter cannot be considered an independent student, according to the rules of the government, but I cannot claim her as a dependent, according to the rules of the government. This leaves her with a shortfall that other students don’t need to deal with regarding their own financial aid. She can’t take out more money, but I can’t take out money on her behalf. Because she is in this weird limbo state, because I am a disabled individual. This isn’t her fault. This should not be a storm she needs to weather, because I should be able to provide for her. But I can’t.

So, my storm also includes the constant feeling of guilt because I cannot offer my daughter enough to put her in a position where she is on equal footing with her peers. She isn’t set up for success. She doesn’t have the advantages that her cousins and her friends and the children of the commenter on my post have. I can’t offer her a chance at starting out at zero sum and working her way up from there. She starts with my handicap. She starts at the back of the pack, because I can’t give her an education and rent money and clothing and food and care packages and enough love to make up for the losses that she has suffered and the abandonment that she has felt. I have loved her fiercely. I have done and continue to do all that I can. But it will never feel like enough.

My storm includes shame. So much shame. Not being a pure virgin girl, and not knowing how to stop being abused, and not understanding what that abuse even was or meant. The shame of hiding and the shame of secrets and the shame of difference. My storm later became one that was volatile and violent and full of rage—so much rage. I felt like I was the storm, or like the storm lived somewhere deep within me and it was trying to get out and I was desperate to hold it in—failing to hold it in. And then the storm became the shame of promiscuity and feeling like all of those words that are used to keep women captive—whore, slut, bitch—were the only thing that I could be, tainted that I was. And it felt good to be used in a sense, until it was over, and then the dissociative state wore away and the wave of shame washed over again and I started holding in the storm again, as long as I could … until the next time.

My storm includes being all the people that you could rationalize away as not quite human. Homeless. Addicted. Divorced. Unemployed. Mentally ill. Using my body as currency. Shielding my body from blows and then crawling into bed next to the one who wielded them. Perpetually single. Having sex with partners that were not my husband. Having sex with partners who were not men. The girl who stays out too late. The girl who mows her lawn on Sunday. (Oh, yes. Some people consider that a grievous offense!) I received anonymous notes about my bad behavior. I was told I could lose my scholarship for having sex. I got dirty, side-eyed looks from others. When I talked to your husbands after church, you would suddenly appear at their sides and pull them in a different direction—like talking to me would lead to me stealing them away to mow lawns and suck on body parts by sundown. In truth, I was just interesting and unconstrained by convention. It’s an attractive thing to be interesting and unconventional. (Translation: read some books not written by female bible study developers and then discuss the contents with your husband … he’ll be mowing your lawn in no time.)

So, my storm also included years and years and years of not having my needs met. Hence the comments about opening my arms for a hug and getting a gut punch.

I’m still not surprised when I open myself up and somebody hits me hard, instead of offering me love and support. Unfortunately, it is what I have come to expect.

The dumb thing about that meme is that you don’t have to tell me that the storm might not go away. I fully expect that storm to fucking tear me to pieces and kill me. It takes weekly therapy, twenty drugs, a host of friends, and all sorts of self-care strategies to convince me that the storm can be survived. It takes every ounce of energy I can muster to get up in the morning and face the storm again. It takes all manner of strategies to be my Zen self in the midst of all this chaos and terror and shame and unmet need. But I do it. I do it day after day after day.

I keep on facing it.

And some days the storm wins a little, and I freak out on a new potential partner with a host of doubt and shame and fear. Other days I wake up and counter that with a bit more of the Zen and apologize and open up and tell him why I reacted that way, hoping that he will meet my need and connect with what I am saying … and not gut punch me while my arms are open.

But I face it.

And your job, as the people who would support me, is not to remind me that there is this big, ugly, terrifying storm that I am working so hard to live in the midst of without losing my shit. Your job is to do everything that you are able to make that storm disappear. Your job is to offer support where there wasn’t any. Your job is to accept me and not shame me. Your job is to love and not harm me. Your job is to prove that the storm isn’t going to win, and that we can make all of that crap go away by being better than the crap. We can change and grow and not hurt one another anymore and counter the falsehood with truth and slay the dragon of cruelty with a sword of kindness and acceptance and love.

That is the only way I know how to continue to face the storm—by trusting that we can eventually find calm skies for everyone. Without that assurance, facing it is a worthless effort, and I may as well off myself now. (That isn’t a suicidal statement, fyi. That is me drawing on the extreme to make a point.) Because if there isn’t an end to the need and the shame there isn’t really a point in moving forward. And I don’t mean just the money—I mean the need for understanding and connection and love. But I define love as “meeting needs”, so the money is a part of the equation.

If you are to assist another, you need to do more than tell them that there is struggle all around them and to work on their perspective. You need to work to end the struggle. Because no matter what your perspective is, if the struggle persists, you aren’t doing what you should be doing. You aren’t helping.

I know that standing up against the storm isn’t an easy thing. It is much easier to say, “Check your perspective” or to hide in some shelter and hope that the storm passes. But for many of us—and for me—the storm rages on, indefinitely. And that storm can’t stop. It won’t stop without the change of perspective from many other people who are not me.

It is often not the people suffering, but those who are unaware of or those who are causing the suffering who need to change the way that they are operating in the day to day. I’m usually not the one doing things “wrong”. I’m generally suffering because of the things that are unjust, not the things that I cannot accept but that are perfectly fine. And the ones suffering an injustice generally don’t have any power to make the change required to stop that suffering. If they did, the change would happen hastily and without resistance. Because, despite the lies that many in power like to feed you, people don’t wallow in poverty and addiction and illness and homelessness and sex work because they want to. Just like Kanye West is an idiot for presuming that slavery was/is a choice, anyone who thinks that people live in the middle of storms because they like how lightning feels is an idiot. Those people don’t have the shelter they need. You must find ways to provide it for them—preferably by asking them how you can best provide them shelter.

Robert F Kennedy once said:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

This is the type of shelter-building act that we need in response to those who are in the middle of storms opening their hearts and asking for assistance. Building currents that sweep down walls—sweeping away the clouds of the storm and bringing, perhaps for the first time, calm, blue skies, should be the goal that we aspire to reach. Asking people to be quiet and calm in the middle of injustice is not the answer. Fighting against injustice is the answer, on the grand scale.

And meeting me in my storm, with open arms and an embrace—not a gut-punching meme that seeks to discredit my need, devalue my expression, and normalize an injustice.

When you are met with someone who opens up and seeks to be authentic and disclose their struggle, don’t tell them to sit quietly in chaos, please. Don’t ask them to be happier with the injustice that swirls around them. Act to improve their lot. Strike out against injustice. Send forth that ripple of hope.

And if you won’t do all those good things, at least stop sending gut punches.

Contribute to Christy’s fundraiser here if you wish to help lessen her storm’s raging. Thank you!

On Being

November 1, 2016 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I made a plea for funds on my fundraising page recently. This happens a lot, because I have a lot of financial need at present.

I wrote something within that plea about being a human being, and therefore deserving basic human rights. And not long after, I felt this unsettling feeling in my gut. I felt that feeling because I realized that making this statement means that I believe that some of the people who know me do not understand basic human rights. I realized that some of the people I know do not think all people deserve life and health and safety.

That is the worst feeling!

I am making an argument for my dessert of life to people who know me.

Seriously, let that sink in for a moment. People I know need to be told that I deserve life.

It is hard for me to imagine that others think existing on the most basic level is not a right. It is even more difficult for me to conceive of, because many of those same people are insistent on the rights of a fetus. Before your life is viable, you have rights. After being born, you cease to have those same rights? I find that concept difficult, if not impossible to argue.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights lays out a number of rights that all human beings deserve, simply because they are human beings. One of those is the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of a person and his or her family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his or her control.

This right, that is offered for all who are human, is denied me on an ongoing and regular basis. I’ve been living without that standard of living, and without that security for the last two years while I wait for my disability hearing to occur. And I have been living without that standard and that security for pretty much my whole life.

Obviously, I don’t count childhood in the financial failings of the system of social services, so my adult life has been plagued with poverty and lack of security. But I have been without life, liberty, and security of person since childhood, since I was not free and not safe during that time. Life, liberty, and security of person is one of the rights expressed by the declaration as well. And I didn’t have that. I still don’t.

And I am not alone in my lack of life, liberty, and security of person. Millions of people share this state alongside me.

We make all manner of excuse for why this life and liberty and security and standard of living and equal pay and recognition and participation in government and freedom of thought, expression, religion, and peaceful assembly are not offered to all humans. And all of them are inexcusable responses to the failures of our society to meet these standards.

At this moment, in the United States of America, there are children being gunned down in the streets, and unarmed people of color being murdered in the name of “feeling threatened” by the police. There is a violent response from law enforcement to the peaceful protest of indigenous peoples on their own land. There is humiliating punishment, torture, cruel punishment, and slavery within our prison systems (that are privately owned and income generating). People are not protected from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile. Political refugees are being refused access and protection. There are millions assumed guilty until proved innocent, instead of the other way around. There is arbitrary interference with privacy, family, and home with the NSA listening in on the American people.

All of the above are in direct conflict with the declaration of human rights that the UN puts forth. All of the above are not acceptable. And all of the above are excused by claiming moral failure or some form of action that pretends to nullify the humanity of those without adequate human rights.

So, at this point, I am offering the whole of society a command: STOP.

Stop treating me and others as though we are not human. We are human.

Dehumanizing happens in many ways, but at its core is the idea that we make someone seem like less of a person in order to ignore the responsibility we have toward other humans. We take an individualist stance, and we find reasons to say that people deserve what they have received on an individual level, so that we can ignore systems of injustice and refuse to change, share, care, or relate to others.

I sometimes feel like I live in a society of toddlers. When you are a toddler, you don’t yet understand that the world is not revolving around you. As an infant, you cried and someone responded. All the things were about you. And then, suddenly, you are thrust into social interaction, and all the things are not about you. “Mine!”, becomes your war cry. And all the adults are telling you to share, to respect boundaries, to not harm others, and to see your life in community instead of seeing it as a place where your voice is met with immediate action and all the things are meant for you.

The society I live in is struggling with the concept of sharing. Adults are still using “Mine!” as the war cry. My woman. My home. My paycheck. My desserts. My right to take and never give. My parenting style. My business. My tax breaks. My neighborhood. My border. My ego. My viewpoint. My voice.

But that isn’t how a society works.

We cannot be a group of individuals all working toward our own interest and ignoring the interests of others and believe that this manner of being will lead to justice and equity. It won’t.

It cannot. Because society is not just a bunch of people doing their own thing.

The word society originates from the Latin word “socius”, which translates into the concept of “companion”. A companion is one with whom you are a friend, a partner, a complement. Companionship requires the consideration of others, and the partnership between parties. Somehow, we have forgotten that those within our communities are companions, partners, and friends. Somehow, we have supplanted the idea of “individuals in a space” with the original meaning of “society” that includes companionship.

Our concern ends at those we consider “close”, both in relationship and in common interest, and we no longer extend our concern to those we see as outliers or strangers or “threats”. The comaraderie of society ended as the shift from the 16^th century meaning was made and we began to look at life in the way of the toddler, by fighting to keep our individual self at the center of the universe. Society became a group of individuals sharing the same space, and lost sight of our responsibility to one another.

I’ve studied social justice for some time now. I’ve lived a life that denied me basic human rights for even longer than I studied. And I can tell you, both from an academic research standpoint and as a person affected by the way we view rights, that being a bunch of self-interested individuals who pursue our own agendas in the same space is not working. The increases in crime, in protest, in outrage, in violence, in refusal to help and share and identify with others, are all symptoms of the problem of that individualist thinking.

We need to find that understanding of society and companionship once more. We need to see all human beings as deserving of the basic rights that the United Nations has put forth. We need to look at all other humans as equal to us in their humanity, regardless of race or religion or poverty or moral failures or any other standard we might assign to others in order to dehumanize them, and to justify our lack of companionship with other human beings.

We need to treat humans as human. We need to care for each as we might care for the one we consider our closest companion. If you wouldn’t treat your friend or partner in a particular manner, then you ought not treat any human being in that same manner. Would you leave your partner homeless? Would you submit your partner to torture? Would you deny help to your best friend when they lost their job suddenly, or became ill? Would you tell your child to “deal with it” when they are profiled, policed under different standards, and denied education? Would you find excuses to allow the harm of those closest to you?

If the answer to those questions is “no”, and I hope the answer is no, then the answer should remain “no” when that person in the scenario or circumstance is not your partner or best friend. We should refuse to allow that treatment to any one of our companions—any person in our society. We need to begin thinking of our society as our companions, our partners, and our complements. When we work together, we create good things for all. Symbiotic relationship doesn’t apply only to the nature channel’s programming. Society is a symbiotic relationship, and each individual within it should benefit from the others.

I once had a conversation with a man on the bus who was in tattered clothing and appeared to be transient. We talked about his kids, and about his previous experiences, and about his life now. He lives in a tiny room above a bar, and he has a sign in his window that says, “Piano lessons, classical” and has his phone number below. He has that sign because he was a concert pianist. A talented and well-traveled, educated man was sharing this conversation with me. He told me of the places he had been, and the people for which he performed. He was famous in cultural, musical circles. And now he was without resources, because playing the piano doesn’t necessarily pay well anymore. When people pass him on the street, they think of him as a bum, a drain on society, a dirty or bad or frightening threat to the wellbeing of “good, clean, responsible” citizens. But he isn’t what they imagine. And if they could see him as a comrade, as a companion, or as a friend, as I saw him, they would enjoy beautiful tales of extraordinary fame and fortune. They would know, if they could see him as their equal, that he was more accomplished than anyone else on that bus.

But they don’t see him as an equal. They don’t offer him the human rights to housing, clothing, food, medical care, and social services. They don’t offer him more than a look of disgust, or the ever-present tactic of pretending that he doesn’t exist.

I’m not offered the human rights to housing, clothing, food, medical care, and social services either. I’ve been disabled for a few years, and I still haven’t been given resources to survive and remain safe. I don’t have what I need to live—to stay a human being and not become a pile of ash—unless I plead with people to meet my needs on an almost daily basis. The pleas are met with resources, thank the Divine. But those resources often come from the same six or seven individuals. The rest of my acquaintances ignore the pleas, or offer reasons that I do not deserve resources or should “get a job” to gain resources. They don’t seem to care about my rights as a human being. They don’t seem to believe that I deserve the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his or her control. They don’t seem to believe that I have the right to live.

I do have that right. And if you would treat me as your companion, your comrade, your complement, you would see how much I, as a human being, have to offer, and the importance of offering me life.

You hear much about “the system” or “systems” of late. People whom I stand in solidarity with are being oppressed and denied their basic human rights. We have created ways of acting within society that cause systemic damage, meaning that the whole of the society is affected. We have created a society where individualism, racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and all sorts of other “isms” are infecting every part of the whole. And many think that the answer to this problem of an unjust system is to spew forth more hatred and division and insistence upon individualist approaches to finding solutions.

But when the whole is affected, you cannot simply treat one part of the disease, leaving the sickness to spread in other areas. The whole is affected. And the treatment plan needs to begin with addressing the whole, not a part. The cure for our society’s ailments begins with adherence to the declaration of human rights. We need to stop being toddlers and grow into compassionate adults, who share and work together and have concern for others. The way to justice and equity is clearly spelled out for us—life, liberty, and security of person. The way to justice and equity is seeing people as human beings, and treating them as such.

I am.

Descartes stated that thinking was the basis for being—I think, therefore I am. But I believe that he was off by just a bit. I am, therefore I am.

Being is what makes us worthy of being. Living is what makes us deserving of life. Existence is what demands I receive resources to maintain my existence.

I am.

That is the whole argument.

And none of us should need to plead for our lives, no matter who we are, what we look like, where we come from, or what we do or do not accomplish. We should be offered a basic standard of living because we exist.

We are human beings.

We are.

But Some Lives Don’t

September 17, 2016 / christyterese / Leave a comment

I removed a comment from my Facebook post this morning. Its basic message was “ALL LIVES MATTER”. I was as kind and respectful with the one who commented as I was able, but I could not leave that comment on my page.

It isn’t that I think all lives mattering is a bad thing. I’m all for that. I would love to see that.

The problem is I see very clearly and close-up that some lives don’t matter. And that isn’t right, and it isn’t good, and it needs to be rectified.

I think that a lot of people miss the point of the Black Lives Matter movement, and other similar movements that are pressing for equity and safety and opportunity for those who are marginalized in our society. The point is not that these lives matter more than the “all lives” that some use to counter these movements. The point is that these lives already live under the oppressive and marginalizing weight of being treated like they don’t matter.

Last night I posted because I watched a young man be shot across the street. He was a black man, living in an underserved neighborhood—my neighborhood—and he was just walking down the sidewalk when he was struck with bullets and fell to the ground. There were lots of people out last night, on that same sidewalk on this block. Women, children, elderly people, and young men all shared the moment. We sprang into action. I called for the police and an ambulance. Several others ran to where the victim had dropped, peeling off their shirts and pressing against wounds, administering what first aid they could and keeping him conscious until help arrived. And after the event, I posted a plea for an end to this injustice, racism, classism, and access to firearms that transforms quiet blocks on the Westside into blue-lit, yellow-tape-covered, crime scenes.

Many responded with sadness, some with shock. One left the “ALL LIVES MATTER”.

They don’t. They matter in the sense that I believe in equity and that humans deserve love and respect and opportunity and safety and security as humans. They don’t in the way our society currently treats the brown and the black and the poor and the sick and the suffering. We are treated like shit. We are treated like our lives are not worth the air we breathe. We are treated as though our lives mean less to others than “rights” to have entitled and privileged and unfettered space for the most white and most rich and most cis and most male and most heterosexual. We are treated as though our lives don’t matter.

Here I will interrupt myself for a moment and clarify something. I’m not black or brown. I am poor and sick and queer, so I understand much of the marginalization that my neighbors experience, because I experience that too. But my plight is not their plight, exactly. I can pass for a normative, respected, acceptable person when I am not asking for money or ranting about the problems that disability creates. I can simply not share with others that I am unable to work and struggling to survive. But my neighbors can’t pass as white-bodied individuals. And no matter what other status or wealth or purpose or good works they may have associated with them on an individual level, they are judged first and foremost by the color of their bodies. And that judgement leaves them unsafe, disrespected, gunned down, impoverished, and more.

I live in an area where I am one of very few white people. It took me living here for over a year to even meet some of my neighbors. There was a suspicion that floated about me. Why was I here? What did I want? Why would I not live in a “better” or “safer” area? After all, I am white, so I should be able to easily find a place to be among the other white people. But I am poor and disabled, so I cannot afford to live among the other white people. And, as my neighbor so poignantly expressed last night, “None of them are buying you a house in the suburbs, are they?”

Nope.

Nobody has offered me a place to live in the relative safety that they live in. Some will help with finances so that I can continue to eat and heat or cool my home and stay alive in my marginalized state. Many will judge me and treat me poorly and say bad things about me to others in order to discredit my claims that the system is rigged against people like me and my black and brown neighbors. “Lazy, free-loading, welfare queens” is how they see us—not as hard-working people of integrity who just happen to have arbitrary traits that prevent us from being valued in our society.

I stood outside and talked with my neighbors for some time last night after the shooting had happened. We talked about how nobody wants this for themselves or the ones they love. We talked about how a teaching career and a host of graduate degrees and the love of god and fellow humans means nothing, because we have that arbitrary trait of ours that negates all of the good, purposeful traits.

We are good people, by and large. We are families. We hold down two or three jobs. We learn from a young age to appease the system at all costs, to prevent increased suffering. We learn that even appeasing that system all the time will not necessarily prevent suffering—it might still end in us shot on the sidewalk. It may even cause us to be shot by the people who are sworn to protect and serve us.

I’m not black or brown-skinned. But I count myself as “we”. I count myself that way because I have been immersed in this culture, in this neighborhood, and in this experience for over five years. That is but a fraction of the years that these others have and will be marginalized due to arbitrary standards, but it is enough time for me to know and to feel the pain that is endured here. Not fully, of course, but in part, I feel what those around me feel. I hear their cries. I listen to their stories. I relate to their pain and fear and frustration.

I had PTSD long before I began living in a ghetto-like environment where people of color are trapped for lifetimes, and living to age 50 is a landmark worthy of parties bigger than the reception after most weddings. But being here triggers much, because the traumas of being black surround me, even though I am white. I’m not afraid of or in my neighborhood. I am afraid for my neighborhood, and the people within.

Our lives do not matter to politicians or manufacturing companies or many of the police or “decent” white people living in large houses in nice areas where you don’t even lock your doors at night. Our lives don’t come with the assurances offered to others. Our lives are lived moment by moment, challenge by challenge, and triumph by triumph. And we value life more than most, because we see the fragility, and we understand how quickly and without comment we can be removed from this world.

There were no news vans or helicopters last night on my block. There were only those who live here and those paid to come here and help. This young man was gunned down in the street, and only those who live and work here even know about it.

Sure, there might be an article on Monday about how many shootings and homicides happened in Chicago over the weekend. But this young man may not even be mentioned specifically, and all the people with power to change the situation will pass over that article and give it over to statements including drugs, gangs, “black on black” crime, or “ALL LIVES MATTER”. They will give it over to excuses, and not to the truth of the matter.

The truth of the matter is that we do not matter. The sick, the aging, the black or brown, the woman in hijab, the man with prison tattoos, the person with the name you don’t know how to pronounce, the mother who has three jobs to provide for her children, the veteran on the corner with a sign and a paper cup asking for care and respect and the ability to live—we don’t matter. And we feel the weight of that every day. We know you don’t believe we matter. If you did, you would change your actions and fight for our rights and stop saying that “ALL LIVES MATTER” to justify your ignorance and lack of care for the most vulnerable in our society.

If all lives really mattered to you, you would stop purchasing fast fashion to save the lives of Bangladeshi men and women. If all lives really mattered to you, you would demand that social security support those who are disabled without years of suffering and waiting to be heard and offered care. If all lives really mattered to you, you would be screaming at your representatives to put an end to the sale of handguns and assault weapons in our country. If all lives really mattered to you, I wouldn’t be trying to crowdfund my existence because you would be generously donating funds or making certain that there were safety nets for those who need them in this country. If all lives really mattered to you, you would reassess your views regarding women and birth control and safe access to abortion to make certain that you were not looking at the issue from a privileged viewpoint. If all lives really mattered to you, you would fight for the rights of the formerly incarcerated, sex workers, and juvenile offenders. If all lives really mattered to you, you would call for an end to the “war on drugs” and private prisons and mass incarceration. If all lives really mattered to you, you would celebrate love between people, regardless of their gender, and use the pronouns and names that transgender or queer individuals have chosen for themselves, and stop looking sideways at men in dresses, or women with shaved heads, assuming that they are “wrong” somehow, for being who they are. If all lives really mattered to you, you would be outraged by the oppression of, marginalization of, or limited rights of any and all people or groups. If all lives really mattered to you, they would matter equally.

I can hug a homeless, mentally ill, prostitute on the corner and wish him a good day and ask how he is doing. His life matters to me, regardless of anything he does or does not do. And if all lives matter, then he should have healthcare and medication and safe housing and opportunities to make money in other ways than selling the only “capital” he has—his body. If you wouldn’t go near such a man, then all lives do not matter to you.

If you would not sacrifice a portion of your own comforts and securities to make certain that all others had equal, or at least basic, comforts and securities, then all lives do not matter to you.

And if you cannot admit that you treat lives in a hierarchical manner, placing some lives higher than others, then you are in no position to say “ALL LIVES MATTER”.

This post is harsh. But I won’t apologize for that, because it is necessary.

People with extreme privilege need to stop pretending at care for all lives. Instead, all people need to care for one another in a manner that demonstrates we want a world without privileged status—we want a world where each life matters as much as our own.

I don’t see that from most of the people who say things like “ALL LIVES MATTER”. I don’t see that from many of my acquaintances or my Facebook “friends”. I don’t see that from most of my family members. I don’t see that in my neighborhood or in my city or in the way that the problems we are facing are addressed. I don’t see equity. I don’t see lives that matter. I look out my window and I see a sweet young man, who passes my home almost every day, bleeding on the sidewalk—shot, wounded, and not mattering much at all.

So, please, for the love of all that is good, stop pretending and making excuses and going forward without challenging the systems that are oppressing others. Grow. Think. Listen. Consider. And then change, so that you are participating in a society that offers equal rights and equal benefit and equal status to all.

Don’t say all lives matter until you are doing everything you can to honor every single person living on this planet, and have your actions be intimately tied to the care and concern for every single one of those lives. My guess is that following this suggestion will create a situation where only a handful of people I know—maybe less—will be able to say that all lives matter. The rest need to sit and study and wrestle with the concepts of privilege and oppression and injustice and equity for a longer time and with more intent.

Yes, all lives matter. But no, we aren’t treating people in that manner. So start treating people as though they matter, or stop fucking saying that they do.

This morning the blood is washed away and people are out doing work. The men across the street are working on fixing a car. Next door to them is a man working diligently to rehab a house that has been boarded up for about four years. I’m sitting in my office, overlooking the children and the young people and the men and women moving about. We just go on. We just keep on doing life in the best way we know how, in the midst of trauma and terror and task forces and terrible social support systems. We are resilient and we are strong and we are good. We keep fighting for change and working toward peace and summoning hope and praying for better situations.

Even if you don’t show us our lives matter, we know that they do. So we live our lives, in the best possible ways we can. Our lives matter to us. We hang on to one another, and we work together, and we keep telling our stories, hoping the world will one day hear and respond. Hoping one day we will see that our lives matter, that all lives matter equally, on a global scale.

May that day come soon.