The 88 Cent Tote Bag

I am getting married in a few weeks, and my partner and I are trying to find something to give to people as favors, their prize for coming to our wedding. Our budget is approximately one dollar per person, which rules out the fancy vegan chocolates, the tiny succulents in little tin pails, and pretty much most things I’d want to buy or they’d want to own.

I finally came up with the idea of buying cheap blank tote bags and block printing an image on them. I knew how we would present them, rolled up and tied with twine and a little tag that would say “Thank you for coming.” I could picture their future lives, like so many given-away kittens, hanging out in pantries, in the kitchen, at picnics.

I searched the internet, ruthlessly turning down totes that cost $1.86, or $2.35, and finally found some for under a dollar. I started the purchasing process and got to the part where it totalled the shipping costs: $26.45. “Well I bet I can find a coupon for that!” I thought, proud of my thrifty nature, and opened a new tab to search for coupon codes. I found a couple of dead links, and a few wedding boards featuring former brides complaining about the low quality of the tote bags from this particular site. I looked at one woman’s sad photo comparing the actual quality of the bag she received with the image on the website, and I started to freak out.

This tote bag was almost certainly made by someone working in a sweatshop, I realized. Which is obvious, given that it costs 88 cents, but which I’d been avoiding until that moment. If I’m not willing to pay a fair price, who do I expect to make up the difference? The employer? The government?

The cognitive dissonance between my vision of sweet, hand-printed gifts lovingly tied in twine and the reality of the product I was about to buy made me feel dizzy. I want to give people something I made, but who made this tote bag? And how many other tote bags did they make that day, and how were they paid for it, and what was the ventilation like? What is their name and what is their life like and what were they thinking when they made it? One thing is for sure, they were not thinking about me or the guests at my wedding. Suddenly this "personal" gift started to seem extremely impersonal, and probably immoral.

I realize that it is somewhat ridiculous to fixate on the tote bags, when I have no idea where most of the things I purchase, for the wedding or otherwise, were made—or rather, I do have an idea, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in an intergenerational feminist craft collective made up of my friends and loved ones.

Sometimes I buy things that cost $1 because they’re a good deal even though they smell like plastic and sadness, and sometimes I buy locally-sourced, organic things for too much money. Either way I hate myself a little bit.

In my dream world, we would all make most of what we use, either buying or making the materials to do so. If we wanted to buy something, it would be for a fair price, and it would be because that thing was special or beautiful, not because we didn’t feel like taking the time to make it ourselves. Things wouldn’t be cheaper to throw away than to repair. We would value the time and labor it takes to make something.

I realize that I could make my life more like this if I tried. Instead, I live in a city and buy cheap crap quite regularly.  I am often extremely happy to walk down the street eating a 99 cent popsicle with 35 ingredients.

But aren’t weddings about trying to live out our romantic fantasies of how could be? Isn’t that the point of saying the nice words and wearing the special outfits and getting everyone you love together in one place? Some fantasies include riding in a limo and wearing a diamond ring. My fantasy includes not buying 88 cent tote bags. I know that I can figure something out that will be just as cheap but that won't make me freak out. For better or for worse, I'm going to live the tote-less dream.  

Two Paths

Something happens when you become a mother; it’s easy to lose sight of who you were before. For some women this happens all at once, when they become pregnant or right after they have the baby. For others, myself included, it is more like a trickle. Everyday when I look in the mirror, my previous self seems farther and farther away. Right after Charley, this made me depressed. I would stare into my enormous closet full of size four silk dresses that weren’t even close to fitting. With tears in my eyes, I wondered when I would ever wear them again. I must have had forty pairs of heels, that sometimes for fun I would shove my foot into and walk around in our apartment. Slowly, throughout that first year of being a mom, I let go of all of that. I sold my dresses, one by one, on Ebay. Sometimes I would search for the addresses of the recipients on Google. I imagined that my prized pink wool tweed dress was going to another adventurous girl at 150 Oak Street, Chicago, Illinois. I bid it adieu and hoped she would wear it well. I pictured it going out to fancy dinners and to the opera. The shoes went next. They were narrowed down until one day I had only a few pairs, and they were all flats (or clogs). This editing infused every aspect of my life. I purged perfumes I didn’t use, jewelry I never wore, even books I would never have the time to read. I purchased ‘mom shorts’ and chopped all my hair off. I embraced motherhood. Or so I thought. Suddenly, sometime after my second son was born, I looked in the mirror and gasped. I couldn’t even recognize myself in pictures. I realized I had strayed too far down one path. In embracing motherhood, I had ignored my true self, the ‘me’ I had discovered before kids.

I set out to merge these two paths. I knew I didn’t want to be 100% ‘mom’ but I also knew I could no longer be 100% ‘me, me, me’ like I was before children. They needed me as their mom, but I also needed me as me. Part of merging these two paths was making decisions with both selves in mind. So much of parenthood is dealing with your previously suppressed notions of what it means to be a family and a mother. For some reason, I believed I had to buy those ‘mom shorts’. I felt they were my ticket to the club, to some hidden sisterhood that I desperately wanted to be a part of. Instead it just made me feel further from myself.

Part of combining my two selves is bringing my kids to experience the places I love. For the first time, we brought them both to Chicago last week. Charley was thrilled! He pointed out every tall building (there were many) and every type of truck he could see. We walked up State Street, where I had moved as a wide-eyed college student. It was a nostalgia trip, to say the least. But it felt like home for the first time in a very long time. I saw my two selves merge, I could be a mom and I could be my old self as well. It would just take time.

Independence Day

My mom married my stepfather on the Fourth of July. Her second marriage and his third, the celebration was small and the guest list short on immediate family. The wedding took place across the street from my stepfather’s house — our new house — at the home of a neighbor who ran the nondenominational Christian church we attended. The following year, I would be baptized in that same neighbor’s pool, wearing a starched white robe, my sins washed clean in chlorinated water. Mom wore a mauve dress and a matching broad-brimmed hat. I donned a yellow dress and worked triple duty as flower girl, maid of honor, and ring bearer. My legs grew tired during the long ceremony, but I took my roles seriously, staring stoically at the minister.

Mom’s wedding ring was a cluster of diamonds and sapphires, my birthstone, because, as my stepdad liked to say, he was “marrying them both.” Unlike most men who spotted the truckload of baggage my 30-year-old single mother dragged into a first date and bolted for the nearest exit, my stepdad was thrilled to be a father. During the reception, he ushered me from table to table, showing off the trophy-sized version of his wife to his coworkers. Wasn’t his new family pretty? So charming, so pleasing, so blonde.

The reception took place on the neighbor’s waterfront deck. After the sun set and the new couple enjoyed bites of wedding cake, the stormy night sky lit up with a perfect view of the city’s Fourth of July fireworks display.

I wanted to like him, but I just couldn’t. He was too old, his tall, broad frame too physically imposing to find comforting. He was too eager to hug me. I felt bad that I didn’t like him, knew that I was being the stereotypical stepchild, unhappy with any parental copy vying to replace the original. I was softened by his prideful, paternal glow, but his hand on my shoulder was heavy and oppressive, like dead weight. The determined way he maneuvered me around tables of new faces at the reception made me uncomfortable. Well wishers and cheek pinchers said that Mom and I had much to be thankful for because my new dad loved us very much and would be very good for us.

Good for us. What about to us?

He was neither. This Thursday marks the 237th anniversary of our country’s independence and the 26th anniversary of my mother’s dependence on an abusive spouse. He was cruel and psychologically abusive, berating us — mostly her — on a daily basis. He picked fights, pushed us to breaking points, and then exercised his will, dangling our freedom in front of us like a carrot. If we took the abuse without “mouthing off” or “disrespecting” him, maybe we’d get what we wanted, which was usually a day without fights or insults.

I’ve found it difficult to convey the experience of living with him. He did not fit the familiar Lifetime movie mold of the abusive husband. He did not hit or molest us, but he told us we were unlovable and dim-witted. The golden trophy family he once proudly boasted became his “stupid bitches,” “lazy brats,” “fat pigs,” and “cunts.” Mom preached endurance to me; she saw our union with my stepfather as a trying but finite sentence. We would endure him until I was off to college. We would use his good neighborhood, zoned for good schools, to get me a good education and arm me with everything I needed — everything she said she couldn’t give me on her own — to get out. We strategized and conspired as if we were tunneling out of Alcatraz. Between the ages of seven and eighteen, it became clear that the dual escape we were planning was only meant for me. We argued and fought and Mom placated me, but her interpretation of our situation shifted from “I’ve made a mistake. I’ll make it right.” to “I can handle him. Don’t you worry about me.”

With each year of marriage gained, Mom gave something up in kind. First it was her job, followed by her car. Then she wasn’t to leave the house during the day. Next she was limited to one phone call per day (she snuck in more), with no incoming calls after 6pm. We spent the years keeping secrets from my stepdad to ensure I enjoyed more freedom as a teenager than she did as a middle-aged woman. She manipulated and cajoled and weathered his outbursts and accepted the brunt of his venom.

Five years ago, when Mom began forgetting things, withdrawing from family members, and acting insecure and fearful, I assumed that 20+ years of verbal abuse were simply taking their toll. Amidst the usual exhortations to leave him, I tried to give her perspective. “You’re not stupid. I forget things all time, and I’m not being berated constantly.” But her smile and trademark Pollyanna optimism weakened. Needless to say, recent research suggesting a link between depression and dementia comes as no surprise to me.

Now that early onset dementia has reduced my mother to a husk of her former self, my stepfather is in the unlikely role of caretaker. I believe he loves her as much as he is capable of the feeling. But he does not accept any guilt for Mom’s breakdown, and often counts her illness as another way in which she has made life difficult for him.

Only a few years into their marriage, my mom and stepdad stopped acknowledging their anniversary. There were no gifts, no cakes, no date nights. It was always just another 4th of July, just another Independence Day.

On Ashes: The Outtakes

This post is an add on to Katherine's piece, On Ashes, published on her blog Helping Friends Grieve.

After sharing the story of spreading my father’s ashes, other people’s stories have trickled into my life. Many more people than I had expected responded with their stories of the ashes they have spread and those that have yet to be spread. I should preface this piece by noting that there appear to be a variety of experiences that surround the process of spreading ashes and a multitude of ways that individuals interact with the process.

From what I have seen, we seem to strive for this seemingly magical moment where everyone finds peace with the death, the birds may sing, the sun rises above the mountains, and we know it is time. Of course, my description of the sun and birds, is a hyperbole, but it is meant to show that reality gets in the middle of our plans. The mishaps, planned and un-planned plans, and stories of carrying ashes around (for months or years) captivate me.

As always, many people have a story, and I am going to take the liberty in this piece to weave the narratives of others in with my own story of how I ended up on top of various mountains and rocks to spread my father’s ashes. Ultimately, I had my magic moments, the sun did rise above the mountains, the birds did sing, and I was overcome with a sense of peace---but not without the reality and hilarity of mishaps along the way.

Last summer, I had my first brush with what I call the re-personification of someone in the presence of their ashes. As we were walking into the small church in the center of town, a family friend asked me to grab her mom out of the back of the car and bring her in. Of course, I knew that her “mom” was the black box of ashes safely tucked in the back of her. This box, “her mom,” had accompanied her on her recent road trip, yet the banality of the request made me give her a double take. We joked that her last trip with her mom had been this road trip she had recently taken on the east coast. My family friend had visited her friends, accompanied by her mom, in the black box, in the back seat. In this moment, an uncle snapped a shot of me, in a cute blue dress, ready for the funeral, arms full of giant yellow sunflowers, with a small backpack, containing the black box, on my back. It is so mundane, yet, her mom, has such a huge presence.

I realize these stories may sound a bit crude, if you’ve never had ashes in your possession or reached in a box and physically touched someone you have missed for years. However, the thing about ashes is that they have to be transported (or at least stored somewhere) to wherever you plan to leave them, thus, you must interact with them. This moment of interacting, somehow forces the presence of the person who has died. Momentarily, the person takes a physical form or a presence in your journey, a journey they are no longer part of. Rarely, as living beings do we come so close to touching death. Rarely does it feel like something you can touch---something that can simply slip between your fingers if you open them just a crack. Yet, the presence of the ashes momentarily relieves the gaping hole experienced by someone’s absence. On the drive home from spreading part of the ashes, I was alone. I simply buckled my father, in his black box, into the passenger seat in the front seat. In a moment of unrelated frustration, I expressed to him a sentiment about wanting to be outside, running and climbing in the mountains---something only he a few others in my life understand. Perhaps I was able to have that thought pattern because my mind was attuned to his presence.

In my journey home to Colorado to spread my father’s ashes, I felt this sense of presence. I carried his ashes to Columbine Mountain outside of Winter Park, I carried them to the top of a peak at over 14,000, I climbed with them up a rock wall at my family’s cabin, and finally, I took them on a multi-pitch climb---testing my own climbing abilities. I felt invincible, as if the ashes could protect me, after all my dad had touched the ground in each of these locations, in his living life, so I imagined him guiding me there in his afterlife. I imagined, the natural world, making way for me to complete climbs, knowing that my father had to be returned to this very location. It all seemed clear as thunderstorms split, showing lightening on each side of our rock face, but leaving us safe and dry. The irony that I felt he needed to be returned to the natural world, the same world that had captivated his imagination and led to his early death, was not lost on me. But in that presence, it really felt right, and by right, I mean, that there was no other option---when someone is home it simply feels right.

As I wrote in reflection to spreading my father’s ashes, after eight years without touches or embraces, to suddenly touch his body, although reduced to ash, was astounding. Yet, I am embarrassed to say, a small part of me was disturbed at literally touching a dead body---after all, in spreading the ashes, you physically touch them. I had never really considered the consistency of ashes, but I imagined the fine ash left by a camp fire. I was surprised at the small remnants of bone that weighed down the ash when I spread it on my palm. Reaching my hand into the black box, only brought about more questions of how his body had become reduced in that manner. I teetered between loving the closeness I felt to my father and being concerned when suddenly the wind picked up and the ashes flew back at me---covering my jacket and black pants with white and grey dots. What do you do next---wash your hands? Wash your clothes? After all, those grey dots are still part of him. Or---as Coree---so appropriately notes after finding herself spooning her “dad” into an urn, what do you do with the spoon? You can’t just wash it off---after all, it has ashes on it.

Yet, you laugh with the process. After hours of climbing to recreate a picture of my dad on this specific rock in 1979 and to spread his ashes there, I reached the point---100 feet down on a free rappel. I managed to open the medicine container I had stored the ashes in with one hand (the other hand firmly on my rope---as I was still hundreds of feet in the air). As I prepared myself to spread them, the wind grabbed the ashes, whipping them up into my face. I was startled, but more than that, overcome with giggles at what a joyful hilarious moment this was. That picturesque moment became a hilarious struggle of me trying to rappel, laugh, and somehow get the ashes out of my eyes and mouth.

Like everything else, it wasn’t as planned. Yet it was a moment in which I felt closer to my dad and closer to his sense of home---which after all, really was the point.

Dream vs. Reality

By Erin R. Van Genderen I turned twenty-three in June, and in no such way did I ever imagine my life to have turned out the way it has.

When I was younger, I pictured my adult life as a whirlwind of jet-setting, cosmopolitan adventures. I would graduate from college at the top of my class and move somewhere new to work a prestigious job or get a doctorate and teach upper-lever literature theory. I would be professional, impressive, independent, a bombshell. I would make my own life for myself and escape the stigma of my small-town upbringing. Eventually, I’d find someone and settle down, but only after I accomplished everything I wanted to do and worked the wandering out of my bones. I would probably be Thirty.

Move into reality, where I’m newly married to a military man and the name of our game is impermanence. In our current assignment, I’m a stay-at-home wife with a few little jobs on the side, looking forward to a more permanent station where I can pursue a couple of Master’s degrees I have my eye on. As external self-worth goes, I have very little---there is no boss to praise me, no co-workers to compete with, no promotions or raises for which to struggle---and so I’ve learn to give my own self a pat on the back when I get all of the laundry finished or meet a deadline.

And although the first scenario certainly sounds glittering, I’m happier than I could have ever dreamed with the second.

Chalk it up to the honeymoon phase if you will, but I like to think that the life I live now is so much richer because it’s taking me in directions I could have never traveled by my own volition. As a planner and perfectionist, I’m constantly stretched by the nature of my husband’s job. We don’t know where we could be going next---overseas? D.C.?---but I have to be ready to adapt at a moment’s notice. We uproot and move on every few years, leaving behind little homes and orphaned potted plants, but the excitement of a new place is always just ahead.

It is hard. Sometimes it is sad. But this lifestyle is already exhilarating.

And that’s a lot of what marriage is, I’m finding---many of those everyday details transform into something thrilling, and many of the fluttery moments become the mundane. It is an adaptive state, never one of stasis, just as we are adaptive creatures.

The realities we dream up for ourselves are a little bit short of what we should really be expecting. But what a pleasant surprise it is when, if we are adaptive, we have the forethought to reach out and grab the good things flying by and hold on tight, leading us on to a brighter adventure than the one we had stashed away for the future.

Bloom

One summer I am watering a lavender plant, which, I suddenly realize, has begun to look rather like a twig than a plant. I had known all along that it wasn’t thriving, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the transformation had taken place. The plant had seemed mostly the same to me from one day to the next. On that particular day, I was certain that it looked much the same as it had the day before, but I was equally certain that it looked quite different from the lush lavender plant I’d picked up months before at the farmer’s market. I intercepted a wise roommate and asked for her opinion on the matter.

“Do you think it’s dead?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely.”

“Are your really sure, though? I mean, I don’t want to throw out a plant that’s still alive.” (Translation: I am not ready to let go of this plant.)

“Well,” she said, generously accommodating my denial, “try not watering it for a while and see if anything changes.”

I did, and it didn’t.

Since then, there have been a handful of plants, some of which passed quickly and mercifully and others which have persisted miraculously despite my neglect. In fact, I’ve just repotted an orchid that’s been with me for two years, and a peace lily of four is still hanging on for dear life.

There’s a little saying from the Talmud—I’m sure you’ve seen it on a greeting card somewhere—that every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” These two sturdy plants must have very attentive angels because their earthly guardian has no idea what she’s doing.

Still, I’m fascinated by the slow and quiet surprises of living with green things. Another summer, I remember watching with delight as the long-flowerless peace lily suddenly sprouted a few delicate white blooms. I couldn’t say what made the difference. To me, it was a summer just like any other summer, and the water was the same and the sunlight was too. It must have been something too subtle for me to notice, but in any case, there were flowers briefly and then they were gone.

So often we measure our lives in terms of how many paces it has been since the last milestone and how many more till the next. Lately, though, I’ve been learning to find joy in slow blooms and brief delights—the everyday wonders quietly awaiting our attention.

What Are You Writing?

My name is Samantha Marie Bohnert. I enjoy the snow, words, adventures, writing letters and finding something new to dream of daily. I have been a writer since I could put pen (or pencil) to paper, and I am inspired by many things, from the way the light hits my toes in the morning to the sounds of my surroundings. I live in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio; a city that has kept my heart safe and follows me wherever I go. My love for coveting what is beautiful—and sharing that beauty with those around me—brings me happiness, always. Well, I’m a writer. To put it more honestly, I am a person who derives joy from words, organizing them in a way that is both aesthetically pleasing and comprehensible. If I have had any kind of self-proclaimed identity, and not one that others have given me (“bubbly,” “irreverent,” one who speaks with a certain “frequency”), it would be that I am a writer, through and through. Teachers of my past, whose goal was to inculcate me as something significant: instructor, artist, or even a poet, were some of my biggest supporters. My mother told me that my second grade teacher said I wrote at a level well beyond my years, and I can still remember the look on my 6^th grade teacher’s face when I handed him a 72-page story, to which he quite bluntly informed me that while impressed, he wouldn’t have time to read completely. And at this point I should specify that I am speaking about writing of the creative persuasion. I would write short stories, the beginnings of a novel, stream of consciousness, but rarely poetry; poetry was something I admired from afar, like acting, or singing that sounds good outside of a shower. I wrote as much as I read, so my youth was cloaked in verbiage and a world’s supply of notebook paper.

But alas, there came a time when I plateaued. The last time I can remember writing with fervor was around 12 years old. Writing succumbed to a similar fate as my love of reading (to prevent regurgitation, please refer to a recent WAYR post). Looking back on it, I think I just ran out of material. A hopeless romantic since kindergarten, my stories were where lovers went to die, à la Romeo and Juliet, but incredibly juvenile. I wasn’t experiencing much and I was trapped in a romantic prison of my own making. It was probably best that I stopped writing, because I was missing it. I was missing that very thing that writers have. This is not to suggest that I knew what that thing was, because I haven’t figured it out yet, but I knew I was missing it. I also knew I needed a break to live some sort of life outside of books and other writers’ made-up stories. It was a long break, potentially never ending.

But one day, just a few short months ago, I started to feel like a girl of 12 again, with a 28-year-old girl’s experiences. Every breath, every excruciating moment, and all of the uncontrollable peals of laughter have brought me full circle, and with a fresh perspective. All I want to do is write, and while it’s a terrifying thing to wonder whether or not I’m good at this, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care. I care about saying something, moving mountains, causing a stir, and being honest. I care about showing that I see the world as extraordinary, and also showing others that simple things are worthy of note. Even the tiniest, seemly insignificant and overlooked event has a story.

Example: for the past few months I have walked by the same concierge on my way to work. And though our exchange has only ever been a nod from him and a cordial “hi” under my breath, I’ve realized that his existence is something to be celebrated. His kindness, his sincerity, and the fact that he seems to unapologetically love his job, is fascinating to me. I could immortalize his blip of space in my life, because he epitomizes what I want to do as writer. I want to say thank you to everything for just being, and for allowing me to take all of it and spin it however I choose. Perhaps in my story of him he’d have an accent, or maybe he would carry on weekly conversations with me, or maybe I’d write him exactly as he is. The world is mine to mold, all the while keeping in mind that there is a fine line between writing in a way that shows that I can see the world as it actually is, and what it could be. Writing is a process, and there is a comfort in knowing that none of it will be perfect. Passion never is. It is a chore, it takes work, and it’s a fight, but a good fight that shows it’s worth something. I’m a writer, and I have no idea what I am doing. And maybe knowing that is the infamous it.

Luckily, there are many, many talented women who will hopefully 1) tell me what they do to be successful writers; 2) share their experiences with me concerning the toils and troubles they face from holding steadfast to the “writer” persona like I do; and 3) tell me what they believe it to be. I look forward to using this space as a place to meet “ladies of letters,” a moniker I’d like to patent once I figure out how one does that. I’d also like to take this opportunity to revel in the talent of other writers who like to talk about writing. Ideally, I’ll learn a little something. Realistically…well that is to be determined.

Why We Need Feminism, Reason #3849

Hi Sibyl,

I feel very lost.  Within the past 4 years, I've moved to another state, lost my job, gotten married, cheated on my domineering husband, gotten immediately divorced due to the shame of my actions, started my own business, moved 4 times within this city, and had the misfortune to fall in love with a wonderful man who turned out to be an alcoholic.

First and foremost, I struggle with the cheating and divorce.

My husband was a great guy, but treated me very much like a mother, being bratty until I fed him and coddled him, and took care of him -- and at other times, he treated me like I was a child.  After moving to his hometown, I made friends very slowly, but when I did, it upset him and he became jealous and would scorn me..  I felt trapped.  I lost my job as an architect, and went to work as a hostess at two restaurants, at my husband's immediate urging.  I also began working at starting my own business.  I had no access to our checking account or shared car, and he was grumpy whenever I needed rides.

I just snapped at some point, and began drinking, partying and had decided it was worth it to let a predatory co-worker have his way and we began a sexual relationship.  I've always been a good-hearted person, slightly bookish and nerdy, so when this co-worker cornered me at a work function and told me that I was beautiful, and sexy and basically proceeded to force himself on me, something in me felt amazing and energized, for once.

But it only made me ashamed of myself and unable to face my husband.  I pulled away, sure that our marriage had crumbled because of me.

That became a turning point in my life.  I ended the affair, moved out, got a new job, and ended up falling in love with a man that I felt immediately kindred to.  During my marriage, I had this feeling that things were happening TO ME, rather than me being in control of my life.  As soon as I made the decision to finally face what I had done, and began rebuilding my life, I felt for the first time in my life that I could see clearly what was important to me and how I had failed to have agency in my own life with my husband.

I remembered all the times when his dominant personality had prevailed, turning me into a submissive and scared person, at his mercy.  I have never been a fighter, always sensitive to the needs and wants of others, and can easily see their perspective.  However, this type of personality, without a sense of grounding in what I wanted, turned quickly into people pleasing, rather than being understanding.  I was an easy victim who fed right into the types of emotional manipulation that people like this rely upon to keep others under their control.  Being isolated from friends and family meant that I had fallen into the perfect situation for an emotionally abusive person to take hold of me.  It's taken me a few years of therapy and personal growth to understand this, and my role in the situation.  I vowed never to get into such a bad situation again.

Very shortly after leaving my husband, I met S, a very charming, handsome and successful entrepreneur.  He was everything my ex-husband wasn't: fun, super sexy and totally energetic.  Whereas my ex-husband never had many friends, S had a million.  He was adventurous, loved my cooking, and we'd talk for hours about life, design, and literature.  He felt like the adult I had been looking for.

We quickly moved in together, and began building a life of trust, health, adventure, and business-building. I had even quit my boring marketing job to begin my business full time, with S's new company as my largest client.  Things felt like they were falling into place.

After two years of our life together, I found out that he had been cheating on me with roughly 5 other women.   Of course I was devastated, but because I had committed similar acts of deception, and had known the healing effect forgiveness could provide, I decided to listen to him and give us a chance to reconcile.

That's when everything began to unravel.

It was right around this time I became aware of S's upbringing.  He was one of 7 children in a fundamentalist Christian household, and was celibate until age 23.  He had carried a Bible around with him every day, and was very fanatical about his religion.  Until he decided that he didn't want that life anymore, choosing the opposite.  He left the church, began drinking heavily, opened up a bar with his brother-in-law, and began sleeping with as many women as possible.  He would start fights about anything that resembled family values, like having children, getting married, being faithful, creating a home, etc.  Though, he also became extremely hard on women who might be like him, dating multiple guys, being expressive of their sexuality.  On one hand, he wanted to be near these "slants" as he termed them, yet also hated them.  I believe he also has a similar feeling about himself, which leads me to the drinking.  I believe he has such internal conflict about how he lives his life, that drinking and girls ease that pain for him.  From my experience as a cheater, the worst part is facing the other person that you hurt.  There are a few ways to get around that.  You find someone new, who has a good opinion of you, surround yourself with others who have low morals and wouldn't judge you anyway, and numb yourself with booze or drugs.  I fell into the "new people" and "drinking" categories.

I've never written this story, and I apologize that it's so long.  Basically, I learned from my own experience that people fall, they fail and deserve a chance to be forgiven.  So I honored this decision and began to work with S to understand him and be there to help him get past this.  I knew that forgiveness would have gone a long way for me.

Another reason that I'm attracted to S is that he is a creative, very successful entrepreneur.  That's something about him that I wish for myself, to be as successful and well-respected.  Being accepted by him somehow makes me feel less insecure about my own shortcomings, which stem from financial instability, building a small business, and taking responsibility for my life.  I also love him, and we truly have a wonderful connection---or so I thought.

As soon as I discovered exactly what S had been hiding from me-- the girls, the drinking, the deception-- he was never the same.  He turned from a loving and supportive partner into a combative, irrational, mean-spirited person.  He began to blame me for "finding out" and for expecting too much from him.  He cared less and less about falling short and hurting my feelings.  I found out that he had been in an on-again off-again relationship for 8 years (which went on during an engagement to another woman, and during my relationship).  I know all this yet, my main problem is giving up and moving on.

Our city is small enough that getting away from someone like this business-wise is extremely hard to do.  My clients are linked to him and his to me.  He constantly makes it seem, to these people, that we are a couple, or at the very least that we are on good terms.  This is what I've termed "emotional-business abuse".  He's mostly concerned with how the public sees him, because he runs 6 restaurants/bars and wants to be seen as a leader.  He threatens that if I tell someone who he really is, that he'll destroy my business.  He constantly tells me that he created my current success.  He represents us as a couple to whoever it seems like it might be fitting to do so (without my consent and without me being there).  Everyone loves him and is fooled by him.  It's kind of a mess.  And I end up feeling so overwhelmed and (again) not in control of my life.  I didn't want this to happen, I wanted to build a life with S, and focus on doing good work and building a great business.  It just seems that because he can't come to terms with who he is, and forgive himself, that he needs everyone to like him to combat the truth of his life.

I feel courageous for having gone through what I did, and to have emerged with a greater sense of who I am, but now I'm just baffled at how to create a life that I am happy with, because so much has been destroyed in the last few years.

The whole situation leaves me with these feelings:

1.  Did I make a mistake leaving my husband?  When it comes down to it, I would love a partner and a family and a home.

2.  Why does someone like S have this power over me and why is it so hard to not equate my self worth with what he thinks of me?

3.  How can I begin to feel happy again, to plan my life with excitement?  Right now, I tend to feel like a failure.

4. How can I let this go and pursue a life that I love?

Thank you so much for reading all of this.  Just writing it makes me seem like I'm spending too much of my time thinking about this.  Please help me gain a new perspective on this situation.

Thank you,

Baffled

Dear Baffled,

You are in what I like to call a Patriarchal Shit Spiral. What I would really like to do is plunk you down in a feminist re-training program, where you are not allowed to date a man for at least a year, but I am not sure that exists.

The current man in your life is really no different from the last, he's just a bit more interesting. Both of them see women as objects to get what they want, rather than whole people.

I'm going to directly address your questions rather than speak overarchingly, since there is a lot here.

1. You did not make a mistake leaving your husband. Divorce is a two person endeavour, and there are very real reasons that you cheated on him and left him. You felt it was your only recourse to get out of a marriage in which you were completely stifled as a person. Could you have done it more gracefully? Perhaps. But you needed to get out of there, and sometimes the only way out is to implode it all from the inside.

2. S has power over you because of what you find attractive. In order to stop dating men like S, the co-worker, and your ex-husband, you are going to have to radically change your idea of what is "hot". You'll have to take back a lot of the power you've been giving to men to run your life, and make choices for yourself. It is extremely scary to do this at first, but in the end you'll find yourself wondering what you ever saw in those kinds of overpowering male personalities. I really want you to ask yourself some deep questions, about why you are attracted to these kinds of men, which I think would be best done with your therapist. Have you ever been into a person who wasn’t a domineering personality? How did that relationship go?

3. In order to feel happy again, you need to be free. You are completely bound up in the expectations other people have of you, particularly what the men in your life think of you. You need to get in touch with who you really are internally, rather than whether or not you are a success in your relationships, career, and life trajectory.  I know you are reluctant to let go of S, because all you see down that path is loneliness and ruin, but believe me, this man is not as universally liked as he appears to be. You will have allies if you leave him, and you will rebuild both your business and your self-worth, on your own foundation, not someone else’s.

4. Self-forgiveness is tantamount to your ability to let go and build the life you want. In order to fully embrace that, you need to understand that your choices, and your subsequent shame about them, were a part of the patriarchal system designed to uphold the image of men as powerful beings that get to call the shots, and women as mercurial sprites who exist to support and serve them. It is a system that is hurting men as well as women, and you are seriously caught in its web right now. You’ve got to cut your way free, which will be painful, but incredibly worth it.

In closing, you are definitely not thinking about this too much. It is all you should be thinking about.

In Solidarity,

Sibyl

There are so many different kinds of us

By Layla Guest The tiniest Cambodian woman I’ve ever seen rang me up for two magazines and a bottle of water at I Love LA, the news and gift shop in LAX’s terminal 2. She smiled so wide at me, taking her time as she looked at both my debit card and my ID, “Lie-la. No, Kayla. No, Lie-la. Yes, that’s you. Lie-la.”

She hummed as she carefully checked and re-checked my purchase total before punching it into the credit card machine. One nod for each button pressed correctly. A giggle and a double wink when she pressed the wrong button. “Oh oh oh, that’s not the one.” She handed me my items one at a time. “Always be beautiful. Always be strong. Stay smiling and you will be wise. You are very brave. Stay beautiful.”

There’s a great scene in Up in the Air when George Clooney is describing which line to get in at airport security, “never get behind families with children.” I boarded my flight behind a young mother with her two children who had stopped to tie shoelaces, pull up pants and rearrange pony-tail holders. I passed them on the jet way and walked towards our plane.

From behind I heard, “excuse me, um, can I cut you?” I turned around. Nothing. Then I looked down. From a clear face with a half-toothless grin, “um, I just stopped to tie my shoe. I was in front of you. Can I cut you? Well, me and my sister and my mom. Can we cut you?” His mother rolled her eyes and took in a breath that signaled yet another impatient, “LUUUUUKE!” I said, “of course, it’s only fair.” He looked at me like I had just let him skip to the front of the line at Splash Mountain. In disbelief, he marched forward, head high.

We de-planed in Minneapolis/St. Paul to stretch our legs before boarding the exact same plane bound for Boston. Jordan, my partner, and I overheard a woman we had our eye on earlier. A man had been in her husband’s seat in LA when they boarded. The man seemed to have a pretty reasonable thought process behind wanting (needing) the window seat. In the window seat, he could sit slightly sideways, leaning against the plane to keep his frame from spilling over into the seat next to him. The couple, showing no patience, demanded he move out of the window seat to the aisle. I eavesdropped as the embarrassed passenger said, “I asked for a window seat, it’s best if I sit there. I’ll fit better that way. Do you have a window anywhere? I don’t want to be a burden. I asked for a window.”

The flight attendant said no, only in the emergency exit row, which is exactly where Jordan and I were sitting, with a roomy window seat directly to our left. He looked at it and us longingly. Jordan said, “just give him the damn seat.”

On this plane, we had to pay extra for the extra legroom, so it was not a seat that could just be given away, apparently. The gentleman proceeded to stuff himself into the aisle seat next to the impatient couple. “Can you just buckle the belt, sir?” “Yes, I’m not an imbecile.”

After the impatient woman recounted the story to a flight attendant at the gate she complained that people as fat as the man she was sitting next to should not be allowed to fly in a regular seat. “Isn’t there a way you can ask everyone how fat they are when they buy seats? We shouldn’t be subjected to his issues.” The flight attendant said simply, “Ma’am, he’s just a man.”

Yesterday was a big day. The Supreme Court’s rulings on DOMA and Proposition 8 make me incredibly hopeful. Hopeful that we are moving forward as global citizens---in understanding that, as evidenced in today’s interactions in and around the airport, there are so many different kinds of us. Us, being humans. We are old, young, unconditionally altruistic, innately cruel, deeply profound, struggling to get through our days, always searching for reciprocity. While some will consider yesterday’s rulings as a step back, an inconvenience and wrong, there are spirits that shine bright, like my sagely airport cashier, reminding us to be wise and stay brave.

Lessons from the Emirates...

Dearest Clara,

Every so often, I’m able to be exposed to a part of the world I hadn’t known before, with customs and traditions and environments that are completely foreign to me.  We often seek that out in our personal travels, but my work trips tend to be confined to a set of usual locations.  That’s comforting in its own right, but sometimes, it’s exposure to a completely new place that perks me up and makes me interested in what it is that I do all over again.

I had this feeling just last weekend I traveled to the Emirates for the first time, taking in that intersection of the world as much as I could over the few days that I was there.  I couldn’t help but to see their world with new eyes and I noticed:

• Modesty is not a bad thing: Regardless of one’s opinion as to why, women’s dress was largely more modest in the Emirates, and in the larger Middle East in general.  Like most people raised outside of that environment, part of me can’t help but be fascinated by women who cover up nearly all of themselves when in public.  But once you notice how much certain women do cover up, you can’t help but also notice how much women who are visiting do not---shirts that go lower, skirts that go higher. There was something about that juxtaposition that made me choose clothing and combinations that were more modest and more covering than I might normally, even though I don’t consider myself a revealing dresser.  And interestingly, it was in that additional coverage that I found a certain bout of comfort and confidence because I knew I was being judged by what I was saying, and not what I was showing.  You don’t have to change who you are when you go abroad, but you should absorb your surrounding environment and adjust accordingly.
• If it doesn’t look natural, it probably isn’t: Across the city of Abu Dhabi, I saw plenty of things that were beautiful and modern but didn’t necessarily look like they were part of the natural scene.  For example, when approaching the city the road is flanked by sand dunes until skyscraper upon skyscraper rises to the sky . . . or until fountains of water appear in the desert heat.  One of the beautiful things about being human on this earth is building and improving and changing the conditions we might have been born into---we don't have to be confined solely to what "was" but we have the possibility to dream and build what "can be".  But we still need to be mindful of what belongs, and what we give up by adopting that change.
• Invest your resources: The Emirates were fortunate with the natural resource of oil, but also with the foresight that money made from resources can always run out.  It’s amazing what the country has done by putting resources into building and tourism, and making itself a crossroads for the world.  But more importantly, they’ve also invested into education and transport, as these are the things that stay long after the money is made and pave the way for future possibilities.  When you are lucky enough to profit, make sure you set aside a portion into savings and activities that build your future.
• Look behind the scenes: Most people who work in the Emirates aren’t actually from there.  And if you take the time to speak to waiters, drivers, hotel clerks, and just about anyone else, you’ll find that they are far from home and their families, and looking to make a living so that their children are entitled to those very basic resources that I mentioned above.  When you’re being treated to a wonderful experience, take a look behind the scenes to see what makes things work.  Chances are, you’ll be surprised at just how many people’s efforts go in to making that experience for you.  Compensate appropriately, it affects their future.

All my love,

Mom

Ida B. Wells: Journalist, Activist, Civil Rights Pioneer

Everyone knows that, in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and move to the back, and with this refusal became a major figure in the Montgomery bus boycott and the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. (Well, everyone should know that anyway.) But Parks was not the first to engage in an act of public transit civil disobedience—nor, I’m sure, will she be the last. For starters, in 1884, Ida B. Wells similarly refused to get up and move to a different train car when ordered to do so by a train conductor on the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad. She was by force removed from the train by three men who, I think, really needed to stop and evaluate what they were doing with their lives.

Wells didn’t stop with train sit-ins, but we’ll get to that in a second. First, who was Ida B. Wells? Not to be confused with muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell (roughly contemporaneous), Ida B. Wells was an investigative journalist, tireless campaigner for African-American and women’s rights, anti-lynching activist, and influential public persona. She was born in 1862 in Mississippi to slave parents, emancipated three years later with Abe Lincoln’s Proclamation. She was educated first at Shaw U., then at Fisk University, both Southern black colleges. When she lost her parents, she took on a job as a teacher in order to support her siblings.

Sometime during her young life, Wells got into politics—not surprising considering the tumultuous, nasty times she grew up in. The War was over and slavery was done, but America’s attempts at Reconstructing™ and creating a just post-war, post-slavery society were, let’s face it, occasionally pathetic. The government, fearful of completely alienating the South, made too many concessions and took just as many steps backward as forward.

One of the most hideous evils to become common in this period, and for a bunch of otherwise perfectly nice people to get complacent and blind eye-y about (see also: segregation, imperialism, most wars) was lynching, specifically, the lynching of black men in the South. In 1892, three of Wells’ friends were lynched by a mob in Memphis. So she turned to investigative journalism as a means for change.

Wells begin to study similar murders across the South, and then published her findings in a pamphlet called “Southern Horrors: Lynch Laws in All its Phases.” She concludes that the “reasons” for lynching black men usually fell along the lines of: they failed to adequately accept their alleged inferiority as raced human beings. This could involve competing economically with white men, being disrespectful to white men, and so much as looking at a white woman. (Wells also found that most sexual encounters between black men and white women were consensual, despite popular myth to the contrary.)

Wells traveled and worked with famed abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass, doing speaking tours of Europe and getting a bunch of British people on her side. But she continued to face an uphill battle at home, where the New York Times called her a “slanderous and nasty minded mulatress.” Oh, the liberal media!

In short, Ida Wells was no shrinking flower. She was one of the earliest women to not change her last name when she married. She wasn’t shy about getting into it with people she disagreed with, including white temperance activist Frances Willard and famed black intellectual W.E.B. DuBois (she said he excluded her from the list of NAACP founders). She fought for what she believed in and wasn’t afraid to face, head-on, one of the ugliest legacies of American slavery. Amidst headlines about affirmative action, George Zimmerman, and (yes) Paula Deen, it’s hard not to hope for similar take-no-s*** voices in our own time.

The Price of Fear

I first mentioned the lump to my boyfriend after it had been there for a month.  "I thought it was a pimple," I said.  "But it's not going away." "Go get it checked out," he said.  "We live in England, so why not?"  Why not, indeed?  In the four years since I graduated college, I'd spent more time than not uninsured.  I'd chosen the path of freelance work and enterprising startup jobs, which, while rewarding, came laden with different types of concerns then I'd ever been faced with before.  One Christmas, I stared at my pinky toe, which, after a run in with a table, had now grown to the size of an apricot.  Hospital visits were going to be several hundred dollars, at a minimum, I knew.  I decided that I could walk it off.   Another time, I fainted at a cafe, the back of my head absorbing the weight of my whole body on the concrete floor.  When my right pupil grew slightly but perceptibly larger than my left---a potential sign of a brain bleed, which can quickly turn fatal---I was told by my doctor friend that I needed an MRI, which would cost upwards of $1000.  I found myself playing the Russian roulette of What If games.  What if I spent over a grand that I didn't have and they found nothing?  What if I didn't spend that grand and it was something, and then I was nothing?  Eventually, fear won out and I got the MRI.  When they found nothing out of the ordinary on the scan, my relief was surpassed by anger, guilt, annoyance.

Now, though, I was in England, where the NHS ensures that all medical care is free.  Yes, you heard me---free doctors, free dentists, free prescription medications, free physical therapy, free surgeries, free outpatient care.  I scheduled an appointment with my primary care doctor, and I waited.  And I waited, and I waited and I waited some more.  Non-urgent cases are often given appointment weeks---if not months---out.  When I finally saw my doctor, he told me that his roll, essentially, was that of a gatekeeper.  "I think it's just a cyst," he said, "but that's just an opinion."  He couldn't diagnose my arm lump, but without him, I couldn't see a specialist.  "I've put into the system that you need an ultrasound," he said.

"Great." I nodded.  "When will I get that?"

"It's in the system," he repeated.  "You'll get a letter in the post once they book you an appointment."  Ah, the post.  The British are fond of the post, and use it almost exclusively for the scheduling of medical appointments.  Three to four weeks after you see your doctor, a letter arrives.  On it, is a single time on a single day.  Can't make it?  Only then can you call a hotline, where a slightly exasperated person (who are you, after all, to be too busy for their carefully arbitrarily scheduled appointments?) will offer you a different slot.  Maybe.  If there happens to be one open.

Six weeks after my initial doctor's appointment, I went to the hospital, where an ultrasound technician looked at my arm.  "This is definitely not a cyst," the man I'd never seen or met before said.

"What is it?"  My eyes were wide, fearful.  I would not cry in front of the businesslike ultrasound man.

He snapped his gloves off and shrugged.  "I don't know," he said.  "You've got to get it out.  I'll make an appointment for the surgery."  Seeing my wet cheeks---my attempts to hold back tears had clearly failed---he sighed.  "It's an in-office procedure," he said.  "It won't hurt."

He entered into the system and three weeks later, I got a slip of paper with my appointment time and not much else.  The appointment was still six weeks out, a month and a half I spent worrying over what the lump in my arm was and what the surgery entailed.  Did I have skin cancer?  Was I going to be under anesthesia?  Could I eat in the 24 hours before?  Would I have normal use of my arm immediately after?

The day of the procedure, I woke up early to make my way to the hospital across town.  I rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, and made my way to the dermatologist's office.  "Are we doing the procedure in here?" I asked, looking around.

"Procedure?"

"I didn't eat last night or this morning," I said.  "Just in case."

"Oh, honey.  This is just a consultation."

"But the ultrasound guy said---"

She shook her head.  "For this kind of thing, you don't even need an ultrasound.  Look: there are 350 dermatologists in the whole of the UK.  We're hard to get appointments with, so they like to put obstacles in the way."  She poked at my arm, and determined that it was, indeed, just a cyst.  "The ultrasound guys don't know what they're looking for," she said, and then: "Don't worry, we'll get this thing out of you."

The kind dermatologist walked me through what it will entail, finally filling in one of the many black holes that have surrounded this experience.  I haven't received my appointment yet for the final procedure, although I'm told it should be within the next four months, or approximately nine months from my initial appointment.

In the US, I likely could've had my cyst diagnosed and removed within a week, likely for a cost upwards of a thousand dollars.  In the UK, I'm receiving care free of financial worry but laden with every other kind: six months of not knowing what a strange lump in my arm was; months of back and forths to different doctors; a disconcerting lack of clarity from most parties; being at the beck and call of a scheduling system that likely hasn't seen any change in the last fifty years.

What is the value of fear?  What is the value of convenience?  I feel incredibly fortunate that I can even ask these questions; I realize the amount of people in the US who wouldn't have gotten the MRI ever, simply because the cost was completely prohibitive.  But as our health care system is changing in the US, I think these are questions worth considering.  While I remain in favor of free healthcare for all, I now know that free does, sometimes, come with it's own price.

Slippery words of another tongue

Every so often an article catalogues untranslatable words from around the world. For example, as this Matador Network piece tells me, mamihlapinatapei means "the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start" in Yagan, an indigenous language of the Tierra del Fuego. According to the same article, the word 'tartle' in Scottish refers to "the act of hesitating when introducing someone because you have forgotten their name." And then there is my personal favorite: saudade. Not quite nostalgia, not quite longing or yearning, not a blend of both. There is more to saudade---and perhaps its magical grip lies in that untranslatable space the other words do not quite capture. I grew up in a word-loving family, with Greek as my mother tongue. Tallying up the score of Scrabble games with my father exposed me to double-digit addition and to the perennial "is that a word?" any game of Scrabble inspires. Studying for the SATs as part of the process of admission to an English-speaking university in the United States exposed me to a whole other family of potential Scrabble words. While I excelled at the questions that required knowledge of words with a Greek root, I struggled with the ones that required test-takers to pair an animal and their young. What do you call a young lamb in English? What do you call many doves flying together? The kind of knowledge that one acquires in her childhood when English is her native tongue was foreign to me. And so at the age of 16, I scribbled on flashcards: "An ewe is a baby lamb." "A calf is a baby cow." "A constitution is a group of doves, a pride is a group of lions, a pack is a group of wolves."

The realization of my own English fluency sank in when I began to dream in English, when the English words started seeping into my subconscious, displacing the Greek ones. When I started learning Spanish, or German, or even fledgling Arabic and Hebrew, I noticed that there came a moment when the precious few words I had mustered would find their way into my dreams---or, indeed, my nightmares, as that one night in Bogotá when I dreamed that I could no longer speak a word of Spanish in front of a room of 750 ex-combatants would attest to. I still maintain my connection to my mother tongue and actively try to cultivate it, even when there are few people with whom I can speak Greek in my daily life at present. I read the Greek news, and I return to my favorite book of Greek poetry by Odysseas Elytis when I am homesick for Greece or hunting for inspiration. And still---I can feel the words slipping away as soon as the language of my dreams shifts away from Greek.

It is not just the words that slip; it is also the fundamental functionalities. For a long time, I spoke 'professional Spanish.' You could ask me to lead a conflict management training and I would produce polysyllables comfortably. Put me in a bar surrounded by Spanish speakers and I would be effectively mute. The casual rhythms of a language often lag for me. I long for familiarity with those words that break the stiffness. When I aspire to fluency in another language, I hope for those words of wit and smiles, the teasing words or casual words you only learn by living somewhere and listening closely for motifs and idioms. The more of those I accumulate in a language other than my mother tongue, be it in English or in Spanish or otherwise, the more the informal Greek slips away from me. Put me in a bar in the Greece of 2013 and I would struggle with not having the ease of conversing naturally like a young person who knows she can find the word that best describes what she wants to express---the perfect word for saudade or mamihlapinatapei.

When I first arrived in the United States as a college student, I felt the impact of words in Greek. "I'm sorry" was a concept I understood by relating it to its Greek iteration: συγνώμη. "I love you" was Σ' αγαπώ. It was as though I experienced the full weight of those words only if I uttered them in my mother tongue. "I love you" did not feel intimidating in the way that saying 'Σ' αγαπώ' for the first time did---because I associated the nerves of young, unuttered love with Σ' αγαπώ and not with "I love you." Saying 'I love you' in English initially felt like performing in that way that speaking a second language often does, thus robbing the words of their full power which only existed in Greek in my mind at the time. After living in Guatemala and Colombia, I became conscious of the many linguistic iterations of "I love you", of the difference between Te deseo and Te quiero and Te amo. Despite the beauty and benefits of multi-lingualism, I never quite want the impact of αγάπη to fade---I never want the Greek iteration of words to feel more foreign or distant to me than the English word 'love.'

Every time I arrive at a new country for my job, there are words I am immediately curious to learn how to say. Empathy is one such concept, as are the words that express gratitude or respect or compassion. English is the default language in which I think now; every new word learned in a foreign language gets translated in my head to English before it's fully comprehended. And much as I celebrate fluency and linguistic curiosity, a little part of me grieves for the Greek words that quietly slip away.

*If you have a moment, look up my favorite untranslatable Greek word: filotimo -- φιλότιμο, as telling of my mother tongue as it is of my people.

Dream Job

Growing up, I imagined many dream jobs. Astronaut, architect, interior designer, novelist, journalist, professor, magazine editor, ballerina. I directed sustained and passionate efforts toward a few of these trajectories; others were brief but memorable blips on the dream job radar. In college, publishing caught my attention, and I began to distinguish between the various logos on the spines of my used paperbacks. One fall, I made a starry-eyed pilgrimage across campus with droves of other English majors to a Random House info session. I clutched my brochure and free pen with equal parts hope and anxiety. I remember every word.

After about two hundred runs through the brochure and a chat with a career counselor, I decided to let go of that trajectory too. From what I could tell, it seemed the only path toward making books went like this: move to New York, clamor for unpaid internship, starve. I decided I couldn’t afford the risk and let it go.

But a winding and unexpected journey took me through grad school, finding love, moving to Atlanta, creating my own hodgepodge internship of sorts, almost starving (how many different ways can you cook rice and beans, people? seriously.), and finally picking up that thread again, of helping to make books and sending them into the world. I couldn’t have planned it that way, and if I had, it would have seemed like a weird and crazy plan.

Of course, dreaming of a job is entirely different from actually doing it. A recent post by Lisa Congdon helps explain some of the unexpected challenges of making your dream job your real job, and I’ve been wondering lately about the whole concept of dream jobs in general.

Sometimes it seems as if the internet is full of people with dream jobs, people on their way to dream jobs, and people giving advice about how to get/find/create your dream job. Is anybody else overwhelmed by this? I am a little overwhelmed. Here’s why.

The most obvious path toward landing or creating a specific dream job is to work very hard over a long period of time acquiring a particular combination of skills, experience, education, and expertise. But here’s the catch: along the way, you will be changed by your experiences, and that dream job will be changing too.

Since I attended that fateful info session around 2007, publishing has undergone (and is still undergoing) massive changes. And the day-to-day work in any of my childhood dream jobs must be very different now from what it was when I first imagined it. (For one thing, everyone is on Twitter, including astronauts and ballerinas.) There are also plenty of brand new dream jobs to wish for: Content Strategist, Full-time Blogger, Etsy shop artist/entrepreneur, Social Media Maven, Ninja (this is a thing, I guess?).

A dream job, it seems, is a moving target. At any given moment, you, your dream job, and your perception of your dream job are changing. The idea of a dream job can offer inspiration to work hard and to meet goals, but, held too tightly, it can also be a recipe for disappointment and disillusionment.

How about you? Are you doing your dream job, or working towards one? Is the idea of a dream job inspiring you, or just getting in your way?

xxxxi. provence

My family takes a bus from Aix to Cassis, a small beach town not far from Aix. While my parents wander the streets and visit shops, my sister and I lay out our towels on the pebbly beach and soak in the Mediterranean sun with all the other bronzed bathers. I sit up, my arms wrapped around my knees, and stare out over the sea, imagining the Greeks who originally colonized this place looking at the same view thousands of years ago. It probably hasn’t changed very much since then.

Even though it’s June, the water is still freezing but I decide to go in anyway. I let the waves lap up to my waist, the goose flesh spreading over my skin, and then wade back out. I just wanted to touch the sea. I come back to Cassis almost three years later with my language partner from ACCP, a shy boy named Luc, whose English is nowhere near as good as my French. It is night and we are going to have dinner along the small marina and practice speaking to each other.

I still feel that same urge to touch the ancient Mediterranean water, to feel its history on my skin. And here I’ve come, just now, with ships and crew, I silently recite as I walk down to the shore to skim my palm over the lapping tide. I am Athena, Book One, lines 211 through 212, sailing the wine-dark sea to foreign ports of call. 

One Big Awesome Tide Pool.

Dear Diary, Last week I started working on my first podcast. It’s a new sub-project of my documentary film Stories From The Green Cabin. The podcast is a little silly, really. It asks people to talk about their work as if it were a wilderness. Say, for example, that someone is an essayist. The podcast asks them: What would essay writing look like as a physical place? Is it like a lush rain forrest, a freezing tundra, or a beautiful, peaceful field?

Then more questions along those lines: What is in an essayists backpack? Do you need a map, or is there a clearly marked path? Is it lonesome or are there lots of others like you?

What is the most dangerous animal to an essayist? (The Internet? An empty coffee cup? Self-doubt?)

What’s in your canteen? (Tea? Coffee? Whiskey?)

What’s your advice to a newly exploring essayist? How important is it to go to school or have a guide before venturing into this wilderness?

What would a Girl/Boy Scout style badge for your work look like?

I’ve had this podcast idea for a long time. I had been listening to shows online about writing, pop culture, science, international news, cooking , etc. Eventually I started using the Sticher app on my phone, which helped me burn through even more podcasts while walking my dog, sitting in traffic, or riding the train. Most of the shows were great. I loved them. Two of my favorites were The Dinner Party and Hash Hags. I liked the content and the hosting of Hash Hags, the theme and the structure of The Dinner Party. I wanted to listen to a show that combined the two, but couldn’t find one.

So I bought a bunch of audio equipment and told a few close friends about my idea.

Then I let the audio equipment sit unused on my bookshelf for almost six months.

Then I emailed Elisabeth and Miya and said “Hey, I have this idea for a podcast, can I share it on Equals?” They said yes.

Then the audio gear sat on my bookshelf for another month.

Something was wrong.

My desire to produce a podcast was there but wasn’t strong enough to justify a stand-alone project. The podcast didn’t have a home within Stories From the Green Cabin at that point. Would I really want to create a new website and media presence to support this podcast? I wondered. Would I really want to bother my friends about having them as guests on a silly little side project without knowing where it was all headed? There were so many people I wanted to talk to about their work but there was little reason for me to set aside the time in my schedule to record, edit, and promote this quirky program.  It seemed to me, at that point in time, that the podcast idea was just a distraction.

It wasn’t until recently, when I was halfway though an application for a summer media program*, that I realized how the film and podcast were linked. Applying for something always has this clarifying affect on my work. Regardless of whether or not I secure the grant or get accepted into the residency program, the structure of an application always demands a simple, straightforward explanation about the project in question.

The boundaries an application presents in format and word count always leave me with a better understanding of what I’m really up to. This time around I came to see how both the podcast and the film satisfy this intense curiosity I have about identity, creativity, and work. It seems so obvious now, but just months ago I couldn’t make that connection.

When I was little I was obsessed with tide pools. They felt like mini-oceans suddenly and perfectly contained for observation. Every once in a while a big wave would come and wash all of the little tide pools into one big awesome tide pool. I felt the same sense of wonder and excitement when connecting the film and podcast. For a long time I was just waiting for the next big idea wave, I guess, when all it really took was filling out that application to change the tide.

*The program I applied to (and have since enrolled in) is hosted by AIR (Association of Independents in Radio) and Uniondocs in Brooklyn. It’s called the Full Spectrum Storytelling Intensive. For any freelance radio or film producers out there, check it out---there are still a few spots available!

It's Not You, It's Me. And By Me I Mean My Job.

Dear Sibyl,

I am young and employed at the exact place that I said I would love to have a job at when I graduated with my undergraduate degree just over a year ago. I have a benefits package and vacation days. I rent a small home with a fenced-in yard and a small vegetable garden in the back. Every morning, when my alarm goes off, I seriously consider calling in sick to work. Some mornings I cry.

I have struggled, over the years, with chronic "mild" depression and anxiety issues. I have gone to therapy, tried medication, and have no issues with either of these things. They helped! It was great! I have been off of both for five years to no ill effects. But I have always been "moody" and "high strung," even when it wasn't bad enough to require medicine or therapy. Coping is not my biggest strength. But I'm trying to find a therapist in the area and maybe that will alleviate some of what is happening. I'm just not sure that is the entire problem here.

I loved my job at first. But staff has changed, and now the situation feels toxic. A new coworker is saying negative things to my boss about me. My boss is increasingly taking anger about mistakes made prior to my hiring out on me. I've become paralyzingly afraid of making even a single mistake.  My boss gets annoyed if I don't respond to emails they send after hours or if I leave before they do.  I miss interacting with (and helping, even in small ways) customers, as the nature of my tasks is devolving rapidly into standard unpaid intern-type tasks (and that's about the level of credit I get). Twice last week I came very, very close to having anxiety attacks while I sat at my desk. I've only been at this job for 6 months, although I've been with the organization for 3 years.

Sibyl, do I just need to get over myself? Is this job really not for me? Should I consider jumping back into the job search, even if it means leaving my current position after just a year (assuming I am able to find an alternative after a brief job search [I probably wouldn't be so lucky])? Are the issues with my job just a figment of my currently depressed and very stressed imagination? I should be happy right now---so why aren't I? And how do I get there?

Sincerely,

Sick Of It All

Dear Sick of it All,

Perhaps you are familiar with this quote, attributed to Steven Winterburn: “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

I think you may be finding yourself in the latter category, my dear.  You absolutely need to get out of that job.

I can understand your confusion.  It is noble to ask yourself first, "Is it me?  Am I the author of my own unhappiness?"  But I think that before you come to that conclusion, you've got to say, “Well, maybe it’s a little of both.  Let me rule out some external suckiness and see how I feel.”  If you want to find out whether depression is plaguing you once again, you need to get to a baseline of peace to see what your natural state is.

It's possible that you are getting hit with the solemn reality that, for most of the world, work really, really sucks.  It's dehumanizing and disempowering, and all the infographics about "doing what you really love" don't help when you're punching a clock to make payments on student loans that you'll never actually pay off in your lifetime.

However, it does not seem like your issues are normal work drama stuff.  Something in you is reacting strongly to this current environment, and I'm here to tell you, you can make those changes you want to make.  You must be willing for your life to look really different, but it is possible.

Having spent way too long in a job that went sour, I asked myself, once it had all blown up in my face, "Why didn't I get out sooner?  I saw the writing on the wall months ago - what kept me there?"  Everything I could think of: loyalty, security, false hope, all could be summarized by one thing: FEAR.

I feared I wouldn't find anything better, I was afraid of having less money, and I feared what people would think of me if I left.  So, eventually, I was forced out, and once the dust cleared I saw that not working there anymore, even though it meant I was out of the full-time workforce for a considerable amount of time, was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I came to the realization that no job, if you are miserable every time you’re there, is worth the paycheck, if you are paying in mind-body-spirit health.  We spend more time at our jobs than anything else we do.  I’m not saying we need to love every second - all jobs have their equivalent of “taking out the stinky garbage” - but yes, I think you should look for a different one.  And if the garbage still smells so bad that you are hyperventilating at your desk, follow up on those therapy referrals.

Be smart about it---don’t do your job searches while you’re on the clock, don’t burn your bridges (you never know when connections you made at a miserable job will pay off in the future---someone is watching your hard work, believe it!), and save as much money as you can, so you’ll be in the position to take a less-paying but more fulfilling job next, if that’s what happens.

The first step is opening your mind to the possibilities that await, and deciding that being so upset at your job that you are questioning your own sanity is not okay.  You need to break up with this bad job like it’s a really terrible partner that steals your money and crashes your car.  No looking back.

Love,

Sibyl

The Volume of Silence

In 2010 Marina Ambrovonic had a retrospective show at MoMa, as part of the retrospective she performed a new piece: The Artist is Present.  I don’t know why I was unaware of this show while it was occurring, but I only recently heard about it.  The Artist is Present invited attendees to sit across from Marina in the gallery and share a moment of silence.  Just sitting in silence.  The piece spawned facebook groups and blogs devoted to photos of the participants.  People smiled, people cried, people looked confused.  Marina was serene.  She was present.  It’s amazing and beautiful even to read about.

I wrote my final paper in my Modern Art class on one of Marina’s performance pieces.  I can’t honestly remember which one anymore, it was second semester of my senior year and I was more focused on my thesis than any other papers. But I remember parts of the research; I remember reading about her previous pieces, notably walking across the Great Wall of China to break up with her longtime boyfriend.  Marina and Ulay were/are both artists, they performed and worked together during the 70s and by all accounts were a passionate pair. When the relationship was no longer working, they decided to set off on a journey: they each started at a different end of The Great Wall and started walking.  In the middle the met, hugged, and said goodbye. The second half of the walk was the start of the next Journey.  After that moment in the middle of China, the said goodbye and didn’t make contact with the other again.  Until Marina’s retrospective, when Ulay came to participate in The Artist is Present.

This is one of the most beautiful, most touching things I have seen. It brings tears to my eyes every time I watch.  I’ve changed my desktop background to a still shot, to remind me.  Remind me of the beauty of passion and the importance of the journey.  Remind me to look into someone’s eye, to try to truly see. Remind me of the volume and multitude of things that can be expressed without speaking a word. It touches my heart.

Lemon

Two memories.

1) 3rd grade. My friend Rebecca’s mom was an artist, like my mom, and she did a painting for our class based on Charlotte’s Web. I wanted everyone to know that my mom was an artist, too, so I suggested to her that she should paint our class a picture of the Boxcar Children (you know, in her spare time). She told me that she was sorry, but she couldn’t ever seem to get excited about making things that were other people’s ideas.

2) Junior or senior year of high school. Sitting on my bed, looking at an art school course catalogue, and thinking, “All of these majors look really cool...except for graphic design. I would never do that.” The page about the graphic design department had an image of a lemon. I recoiled from it the way one might a person whose behavior reminds you too much of your own secrets—the kind of reaction so strong it deserves to be examined, but usually isn’t.

I spent most of my life assuming that no matter what kind of artist I was, I would never, ever be a commercial one. Like, it would be much better to work at a job I don’t care about at all, than to compromise the purity of my artistic expression.

I came of age, after all, during the grunge era, and if I learned anything from Kurt Cobain (and from my mom), it was to avoid being a sell-out.

Now it’s 2013 and lo-fi has become an aesthetic found in car commercials and Taylor Swift videos, twee is an insult, and punk is an exhibit at the Met. Sleater-Kinney broke up and Carrie Brownstein is on TV making fun of the hegemony of the DIY aesthetic (“put a bird on it!”) We’re in a brave new world, people.

The friends I have who make art either:

a) Are commercial artists in one way or another (even if they also have a fine art practice)

b) Are part of academia

or

c) Feel like they have no idea how to make a living as an artist, and have a job doing something else.

I’m not sure if this is just me growing up or an actual cultural shift, but I do feel like the successful artists I’m aware of these days seem less like Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites and more like Ben Stiller in Reality Bites. I mean, it’s easy to make fun of the Ben Stiller character because he kind of betrays Winona Ryder and he's such a people pleaser, but...he’s trying. Ethan Hawke is just stealing candy bars and making fun of her dress and sitting around the house acting like he’s above it all.

I’m almost done with the book trailer I’ve been working on—someone else’s words, someone else’s story, but my aesthetic and my visual interpretation. The overall “voice” of the project isn’t purely mine, but I believe in it to the extent that I feel good about putting my name on the finished product.

I’m thinking about that lemon. I remember the paper, it was matte. I remember the colors, yellow and green. It was a nice lemon, you know? You can do a nice still life painting of a lemon and photograph it and make a cool graphic image of it. You can do whatever you want with that lemon. It's a lemon, it's not going to get mad at you.

My Mother’s Twin

When I was little, my mom would go out a couple times a month to play bridge with a bunch of girlfriends at my godmother’s house. Though infrequent, I dreaded these outings. A worrier by nature, once the sun set I started to imagine worst-case scenarios. What if she got in an accident on the way back? Mom was a notorious nervous ninny behind the wheel, and I was convinced that her too-tentative method of merging would be her doom. What if she got mugged walking to her car in my godmother’s sketchy neighborhood? I whipped myself up into a panic that was somewhat quieted by two (okay, maybe three) “check-in” calls to my godmother’s house. But the angsting did not subside until I heard Mom’s key slide into the lock of our side entrance. Until that moment, I stayed awake, vigilant, as if encouraging my gut churn would keep her safe. I prayed silently and obsessively, like a mantra or a compulsive tic: “Please, God, let her come home. Please, God, let her come home.” These moments made clear that Mom was the only real thing to me. I wasn’t comfortable with anyone else. If she died, where would I go?

One of these evenings my hand was hovering over the phone for another check-in call when it rang.

“Hey there! How’s it going?”

“Oh good, I was just about to call again. When are you coming home?”

“Wha-- ? Oh no, honey, I’m sorry. This is Lynn.”

Lynn is mom’s identical twin. When they were little, they dressed in matching outfits and white-blonde pigtails. Even they can’t always tell who is who in old photographs. As an only child for most of my adolescence, I was captivated by Mom’s twinship. She and Lynn spoke almost every day. They often had the same dreams. In elementary school, they would switch classes, each pretending to be the other. They also have the same voices — the same timbre, the same slightly Southern cadence, the same hearty laugh. This wasn’t the first time I’d confused Lynn for Mom on the phone, but the audial illusion never ceased to surprise me. And freak me out a little.

If Mom dies, I used to think, 99.95643 percent of her DNA will be living in Boise, Idaho. I imagined how much it would hurt to hear Mom’s voice on the line, the false hope it might inspire, if Mom died and Lynn called me.

In addition to sharing most of their DNA, Mom and Lynn display matching personas. Exuberant, optimistic, easy to laugh, and quick witted, being in their joint company felt a bit like watching a sitcom. They were two halves of the same brain, a near-constant stream of mirth and/or argument. Though their twin lexicon was heavy on inside jokes and shared experiences, you were never excluded from their banter. They seemed to be aware of how fun they were as a pair and wanted everyone plugged into the experience.

Lynn’s presence validated my unconventional relationship with my mother. Growing up, I somehow knew that Mom wasn’t regarding me as other moms did their daughters. She spoke to me like an adult and often didn’t shield me from adult realities. I’ve long said that I was raised to be Mom’s friend or confidant, but remembering how she was with Lynn, it’s obvious that I was filling the void of her twin’s absence. Even when they weren’t getting along, Mom and Lynn were always close, but they haven’t lived in the same state since before I was born. Being a twin was in Mom’s bones, and physical distance didn’t stop her from feeling like one half of a whole. The relationship she nurtured with me was informed by her twinned experience, the imprint of her sister a blueprint for every relationship she had.

Mom and Lynn turned 57 on Saturday. With Mom in a Florida nursing home and Lynn now living in Nevada, they are still separated by several states. Over the years, Mom’s dementia has rendered them singletons. Lynn is bravely if not reluctantly redefining what it means to celebrate a birthday, one that is no longer shared with a functioning other half. Though Lynn will never replace my mom, she has been an unexpected gift in my grieving. Over the past five years as Mom has rapidly deteriorated, Lynn and I have become closer, sometimes talking a few times a week, sharing and comparing stories about Mom, providing updates on her condition. Lynn has become a surrogate mother to me, and her likeness to mom — in both looks and humor — is a comfort I can’t articulate. We are bridges between the sister and mother of our youths and the memory she is becoming. As more years pass since the last time Mom was able to speak to me on the phone, Lynn’s voice on the line is less a copy and more an original. I see distinctions in their personalities that I didn’t detect before. Her voice lets me remember my mother’s, the voice that was imprinted on me, and allows me to speak to it as I learn to let it go.