I Love...This Thing!

It was recently my birthday on September 11th, which brought along with it reflections on the national tragedy in conjuction with the Birthday Fairy.  The Birthday Fairy is my mother's invention (don't tell my kids!), and she makes birthday mornings ever so much fun!  You wake up on your birthday with a trail of goodies from your bed to the living room where, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you get some presents.  My kids love it, even when it's their mom's birthday.  M woke me up bursting and said "come see what you got, it's so exciting!!"

This year I chose several items from Amazon to "help" the Birthday Fairy choose things that I would truly love to have.  I found an old Super Nintendo game I used to love to play when I was a kid visiting my cousins house for under $10, as well as an almond flour cookbook to give support to my GAPS diet, and a CD that I haven't heard in years.  But the thing I am loving most is having this little doohickey around.  It's a scalp massager and I love it.  It relieves my stress and it was about $3, which relieves my stress a little more, ha!  The first time I used it on M he stopped in his tracks with half-closed eyes and said "it makes me feel all shiver-y".  Exactly.

Daughters of Mormonism Podcast: Gender Bias in the Book of Mormon

For the last three days I have been listening to the Daughter of Mormonism podcast, one after another.  I have been blown away by how much I love this podcast, perhaps because I consider myself "over" a lot of the issues that are raised in some of the episodes.  I was particularly struck by this feeling as I listened to the third episode called "Gender Bias in the Book of Mormon".


I was surprised by the strong emotional reaction I had as I listened to this episode.  I have given up on believing in a literal translation  of the Book of Mormon, so why would I care about whether or not there are as many "he" references as "she" in the text?  It turns out that I still care an awful lot.  The Book of Mormon and it's portrayal of men and women were a major part of my childhood, affecting the way I thought about myself and where I fit in in the grand scheme of things.


I was the kind of believer growing up who would have denied that gender bias made a difference to me.  It could have been because I was young, or I just didn't see the impact, or that I could sense that admitting that would be something you might say if you didn't have faith.  But ultimately, as is the case with feminism and sexism in general, once you see it you can't "un-see" it.  A friend of mine once put it this way, to quell fears of those who say feminism is unrealistic because feminists see it everywhere: "I see it everywhere, but it isn't the only thing I see".  That really resonates with me.


I realize now the damage that gender bias in the Book of Mormon has done in my life.  The great and abominable church, the daughters of Zion, and the gates of hell are all "she" and "her" in the BoM passages Sybil read in the podcast.  It became a burden I was used to, to "take the extra step".  I took the extra step to change all the words he to she, him to her, men to women.  I took the extra step to tell myself that I mattered even though the scriptures forgot to mention my sex.  I took the extra step to excuse the men over the pulpit who forgot me, to tell myself that they didn't mean it and I was actually included.  I took the extra step to fit myself back into a structure that was made for men, over and over again.


I accepted it because I didn't know any better.  But that doesn't mean that I didn't want something better, even back then.  And it certainly doesn't mean that I accept this now, not when I have done so much work to value myself as a whole person. I am deserving of, yes, even my own pronouns!  At the very least my own pronouns.


It is similar to the damage done by being taught and believing that the greatest deity is male, God the Father.  Mormonism's redeeming quality here is that we believe in a Heavenly Mother, but it doesn't do all that much since she is essentially silent and absent.  It wasn't enough for me to simply knew that she existed.  I wanted a female god to relate to, to imagine myself being!  And for that matter I wanted to have female scripture heroes, female General Authorities to emulate and revere, and women in my local ward who had real power and influence.


It's taken me a long time to admit how I was affected by this one specific part of Mormonism.  How did you feel while you were growing up in the Mormon faith, as a female reading these gender messages in the Book of Mormon?  Can you look back now and see more clearly how it affected you?


(cross-posted at The Exponent)

My Choice

"So though the fight over Planned Parenthood might beabout abortion, Planned Parenthood itself isn’t about abortion. It’s primarily about contraception and reproductive health. And if Planned Parenthood loses funding, what will mainly happen is that cancer screenings and contraception and STD testing will become less available to poorer people. Folks with more money, of course, have many other ways to receive all these services, and tend to get them elsewhere already." --Ezra Klein on What Planned Parenthood Actually Does

When I was 20 weeks pregnant with my second son, I went in for my ultrasound and checkup hoping to find out the gender of my baby.  I already had one three-year-old son, and I was hoping for another boy.  The ultrasound tech saw the male gentalia and told us.  I was ecstatic!  I asked a lot of questions about the heart and brain and bones.  The technician asked if I was a nurse, surprised by my inquisition.  I said no, I was just interested in physiology.  After studying many sciences, and then modern dance in college, I had an awareness of and interest in the human body that was automatic.  The idea of growing a skeleton, muscles, life in my womb was mesmerizing in the dark of that ultrasound room.

A few minutes later, my husband and I spoke to my obstetrician about the baby.  She said that their equipment was old, but that she was fairly certain that our baby boy had a cleft lip.  I had read about cleft lips in biology a few years before, but I did not really know what was done for cleft babies.  I was not worried.  We were to go to fetal and women's center with a "million dollar ultrasound machine".  Honestly, the only thing I thought was to hope for a 4D ultrasound picture for the fridge.  My husband and I had no idea what we were in for when we made that appointment.

We went to the perinatal center a few days later and realized we were there with other high risk pregnancies.  I started to get nervous, wondering about whether or not I would be able to breastfeed a cleft baby.  Questions were forming.  In fact, during the exam I asked so many questions that the tech finally had to tell me she was not allowed to answer some of them.  The doctor finally came in and told us about the cleft.  But then she said that he also had a problem with his kidney.  They thought it might not be forming properly.  I was numb as they started to talk about how the two problems were unrelated, making the likelihood of a syndrome greater.  In other words, it was more likely that he had an underlying syndrome rather than just happening to have a cleft and a kidney issue.

They started looking to see if our baby's hands and fingers could clasp and unclasp.  Something in my mind snapped.  I shook off the numbness and shock at that point, and began to sob.  I demanded their best guesses as to what was going on with our baby.  They said they didn't know, but that we would need to meet with a genetic counselor.  We were also recommended for an amniocentesis to get more information.  It was likely that his underlying condition was bad, like Trisomy 13 or another short-lived, painful syndrome.  I was gently asked about the possibility of needing an abortion.  For the first time in my life, I considered it.

The next day we went back for the amniocentesis.  I am terrified of needles, but in the past few years I have faced my fear and been able to have blood tests done without fainting.  The doctor was bright and loving, and I trusted her when she said how good she was at very quick amniocenteses.  I wasn't in the mood to smile, but I appreciated that.  I had not slept much that night, speculating with my husband about what our baby might have.  As the needle went into my belly, and I squeezed my husband's hand and my eyes tight shut.  It was over, and I wasn't even faint.  But when the doctor announced how many CCs had been taken and I went white and had to lay down.  I asked questions about the genetic tests they would perform, and how long it would take for them to come back.

I hated our genetic counselor.  She was perfectly nice, but did not have any answers.  I knew my hatred was a mask for my fear and anxiety.  I wanted to make the next 10 days go by as quickly as possible.  I sobbed half the day, and did yoga in the middle of the night to calm my nerves.  I still remember doing sun salutations in the dark, trying to stop weeping.  We had to wait for one general set of tests, and then for another set of more specific tests.  I called the genetic counselor morning, noon, and night the days the tests were supposed to be done.  I was nearing 22 weeks, when the dividing line for an abortion in the state of Arizona had been drawn.

I wanted to know what my baby was facing, to know if I needed to spare him a painful, short life if he ended up having Trisomy 13, or something else equally horrific.  Even if he did have a fatal syndrome, I was fairly certain that I could not go through with an abortion.  The days were painfully long.  I compared the mercy of an abortion for my malformed child with the difficult birth and mere months of life that he might have to endure with many painful health problems.  I had no idea what I would do.

We finally heard back about our baby boy's chromosomes: they were normal.  There were other, more rare syndromes and diseases we might want to check for.  But the ultrasounds showed a strong heart, and one fully working kidney.  The cleft was bilateral, incomplete on one side, and in the lip and palate.  This was a rarer form of cleft lip and palate, and one of his kidneys had simply not formed at all.  But he was thriving.  Everything else looked strong and fully formed.

I was relieved.  I didn't have to choose between an abortion or my baby's death at the age of 1 due to some awful syndrome.  A cleft lip and single kidney was welcome indeed.  I no longer had to wonder if he had something life-threatening or that would cause a terrible death at an early age, a situation that I might have considered having an abortion for.

I still do not know what I would have done if my baby had been missing a chromosome, or was found to carry a fatal sickness.  But I had a choice.  I had a legal, supported, dignified choice that I could make myself, alone.  I had a choice that I wrestled with day and night for weeks while we had testing done.  If I had chosen to have an abortion in a situation like that, it would have been out of love and out of necessity to spare our baby pain and suffering.

I am so thankful for the women at the perinatal center for giving me that option without any judgment in their voices on those first uncertain, rocky days.  They did not presume to know what was best for me.  They simply offered options, and support.  And trust.  They trusted me to know what was best for me and my baby.

I decided to keep him, of course.  He beat the odds with his genetic testing, and I was spared my own Sophie's choice.  He has beat the odds on many fronts.  I am lucky.

I am also lucky to have the right to choose what I want to do.  I have that right because I live in a country where abortion is legal.  I have that right because I am a white middle-class woman with means and health insurance.  I have that right because I am informed of my options.  I have that privilege.  Many do not.  There are millions of women who, when faced with a situation similar to mine or worse, do not have the options I enjoyed.

This past week has been dramatic as we have watched a government shutdown nearly averted, all turning on the fulcrum of Planned Parenthood and it's funding.  I do not wish on anyone what I went through with my youngest baby, but it will happen anyway.  Sometimes it happens to women who don't have money or health insurance.  Do they deserve less than I do?  Do they not have the right to a legal procedure, if they need it, if they weigh their options and make a heart-breaking decision about what to do?

97% of Planned Parenthood's services are preventative: cancer screenings, yearly exams, rape services, and birth control.  Planned Parenthood's services do include abortion care.  But those procedures are not touched by federal money, despite all the recent headlines and spin that the budget crisis was over federal funding for abortion or just abortions themselves.  The truth is that the budget war was, and is, over access to basic women's health care.

I stand with my choice to keep my baby when I found out he would not be severely ill and in pain during his life.  I would have stood by my choice either way, because I would have known that I had made it while considering all sides.  I stand by women who make these decisions in secret because of the stigma of abortion.  I stand with Planned Parenthood.  I stand with life and choices both staying in tact whenever possible.  I stand with my sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters, grandmothers, and all the other women I am connected to on this planet as a war rages around their bodies.  I stand with women.

(Exponent II's most recent issue has three pieces on Women and Reproductive Choice, found in the Exponent Generations feature.)

(cross-posted at The Exponent)

Put in My Place

This past Tuesday I woke up to International Women's Day feeling excited.  I practiced mindfulness as I went throughout my morning routine, which was especially busy that day.  I ran to various stores, banks, and dropoffs.  I wanted to get done with my work and then go for a short run, listening to all my favorite female artists on my playlist in honor of the day.

As I got home from picking up my son from school, running milk and water into the house and grabbing bikes to take to the shop while my boys waited in their carseats, I noticed that Tim was at my next door neighbor's house.  Tim is a neighbor from one street over, characterized by his intensity.  He once found my lost keys and walked around the entire neighborhood for an hour until he found me and returned them to me.  He also takes it upon himself to inform all the residents in our area of their alleged infractions of HOA rules.

In fact, just a few days before he had yelled over his fence that we weren't allowed to play in the parking lot while my son learned to ride his bike.  My husband and I argued with him for a few minutes, tried to leave several times, and resolved to ignore him from then on at all costs.  This was mostly because he asked for our address in a menacing way, prompting me to immediately sit up and take notice of the implicit threat in his voice.  I told my husband that I did not feel safe around him after seeing him come after us so aggressively.

Growing up in abuse has made it so I can see abuse coming from a mile away.  I usually go with my gut when I choose not to trust someone.  I take careful inventory of if I feel threatened, belittled, or treated as "lesser-than".  I joke sometimes that I grew up with master manipulators, and I am unimpressed with the efforts of some people that I meet by comparison.  My neighbor Tim set off this alarm in me that day.

So here I am, a few days later, trying my best to avoid him, and finding him almost on my doorstep, literally.  I was standing in my driveway, loading bikes onto the rack, trying to avoid talking to him.  However, Tim saw me and immediately came up and started yelling.  Now that he knew where I lived, he remembered the time he had brought me my keys.

He verbally attacked me for arguing with him, for not being nicer to him because of the keys incident, called me confrontational, said he was glad he knew where I lived now.  Because he's the kind of person who talks over people and doesn't listen, I already knew I didn't stand a chance trying to reason with him again, or trying to engage him at all.  He was right about everything, and he knew it.  From the moment he stepped onto my driveway and into my personal space, my alarm went off full throttle.  I started shaking, but kept my head and repeated these words to him, forcefully, over and over: "I don't want to talk to you", "Get off my property", "Stop talking to me", and "Leave me alone".

He spent ten minutes ignoring my request for bodily safety.  He felt entitled to threaten me with his words and his proximity.  He told me what to do, and how, and without a trace of irony told me how confrontational I am.  He finally stepped away from me as I didn't back down.  I kept shaking and got into my car as he bemoaned to my next door neighbor how awful I was.  I dropped off my bikes at the shop, called the HOA to lodge a complaint, and then called my husband.

As the shock wore off, I realized that I had been harmed in a way that warranted police intervention.*  I deserve to live in my house without fear of verbal attacks, or eventual physical assault (which I'm sure could happen if I talk to this man again).  In fact, I owethat to my sex to stand up for myself.  So I did.  I have healed enough in my life to know what I deserve, and to take it.

On International Women's Day, I honored myself as a person deserving respect.  I took action when I was put in my place by Tim, declaring to humanity everywhere: "No, I will not cower to this controlling man.  I will defend myself and not apologize for it.  I know what is right, and I will boldly stand up for myself."

I am a woman who has worked too long and hard to cower to old, sexist, aggressive neighbors.  But I am a big enough person to see him for the way he is, and let it be.  The greatest experience I could have had for IWD was the reminder of how some people see me.  I feel closer to women all over the world because if it.  And I feel stronger in my sense of self.

*I did call the police, and he was served with a trespass warning.  I haven't seen him since.

(cross-posted at The Exponent)

Reflections

"Love everybody, all the time, for no reason at all." 

It's the time of year where wintry temperatures, even here in Arizona, evoke thoughts of quiet thoughtfulness.  We look forward to warmth and spring, seeing parts of ourselves in each season of the year.  I love that we cycle through four seasons every year, each shift in weather reminding us what it is like to feel hot, what it's like to sit with family during the holidays, how wonderful it is to plant seeds and watch them grow.

Growing up in the Church planted many ideas that I still carry to this day.  The eternal round idea still appeals to me, even though I have left many other pieces of Mormonism behind.  We have the circle of seasons, cycles of the moon, the biorhythms in our bodies.  Now I interpret it differently.  I think that whatever I send out with my energy, is what I get back.  After all, the Earth is round, not flat.

Today also happens to be graduation day.  Today, at 6:30 sharp, I will be sitting with my youth in our mentoring pair as she graduates from our ten-month program.  I have regrets but I also feel gratified.  Each day I spent with the community at Phoenix Youth at Risk was a leap of faith, a laboratory for change, a group therapy meeting, a magical process.

Mentoring my youth wasn't about changing her, it was about loving her without judgement.  It was ten months of practicing unconditional love, remembering that she was the possibility of all possibilities.  I wasn't very good at loving her.  I let preconceived notions hamper me.  Sometimes I could not see her. I have a problem with that.  Sometimes I don't see my 5-year-old either, or my husband, or my 2-year-old.  It's easy to see them as obstacles.  But then I wake up, remember that they are here happening forme, not to me.

As I reflect on my Mormon upbringing, the mentoring of the last nearly-year, therapy, and meditation, I see that these are mirrors in my life showing me me. So what do I do with that?  I own my shit.  If I own what's mine, then I can move from there.  Because it's only then that I truly see the world and people around me, without the film of my own issues blurring them from me.

"May I be filled with loving-kindness,

May I be well,

May I be peaceful and at ease,

May I be happy."

--Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart 

(cross-posted at The Exponent)

The Thousand-Petaled Lotus

When we reach this level, the seed of our soul has sprouted from its roots in the earth, and grown upward through the elements of water, fire, air, sound, and light, and now to the source of all--consciousness itself, experienced through the element of thought.  Each level brings us new degrees of freedom and awareness.  Now the crown chakra blossoms forth with infinite awareness, its thousand petals like antennae, reaching to higher dimensions. --Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith, pg. 320

Last year I went to a retreat in southern Arizona, a yearly event with my husband's law firm.  We get to stay in lovely hotel rooms, eat gorgeous meals, relax at the spa, and golf in spectacular surroundings.  As usual, I shunned golfing and signed up for a full body massage, my favorite thing on the planet.  And since my husband did not want to go to the spa, I found myself with an extra time allotment.  I had never had a facial, so deciding to try something new I put myself in the schedule.

Carefully choosing the simplest line of products the spa offered, I laid back and started talking with the esthetician as she was working.  Partway through our session she asked if it was okay to "work on my chakras".  I tried not to roll my eyes as she got out her chakra stones, reminding myself that I did not know anything about chakras that I had not heard from skeptics or pop culture.  Either way, I would have a personal experience with chakras that I could draw on for information.

The stones clinked into her hand out of the drawstring bag.  She told me that if I had a chakra out of balance then I would feel the stone as being either hot or cold.  She started with the Root Chakra and worked upward, setting a semi-precious stone over each one on top of the sheet that covered me.  I know now that in yoga practice pranic energy in the body can activate dormant spiritual energy called Kundalini, visualized as a snake coiled up in the first (root) chakra at the base of the spine that, when roused, can move upward passing through each of the lower chakras until becoming one with Crown Chakra.

Halfway there, when we reached the Heart Chakra my skin was exposed and the stone felt cold on my skin.  I internally harumphed and thought "of course it feels cold on my skin, it's a stone". Throat Chakra felt neutral.  Third Eye Chakra felt neutral.  After each placing of the stone, she read a small paragraph from a paper explaining what the chakra meant, what color was associated with that chakra, and which stone she was using.  We had reached the final chakra.

I could not have prepared myself for what that last stone-placing would be like.  She took out an amethyst and said that Crown Chakra was associated with knowledge, intelligence, and oneness.  As she started talking she took the amethyst and gently drew a circle with it on the top of my head.  I flinched as the stone drew that white hot disc on my scalp.  The burning felt bright, like looking into the sun.  I was stunned, though I did manage to explain what had just happened.  The only direction I got that day was to "look into balancing your crown chakra".

Since then, I have pondered what my surprising reaction to that amethyst was.  I have since been to a chiropractic appointment where my coronal suture (the top of my head) was very tight and required a shoulder and neck adjustment.  And just last week I got a(nother) massage and the therapist said I have one of the tightest scalps she has ever worked with.  The universe seems to be trying to send me a message: "fix your head!"

Did the amethyst just feel hot because I have tension in my scalp?  Maybe.  Are chakras more than they seem?  Probably.  I cannot deny that I have been profoundly affected by that experience, especially as it keeps resurfacing in my life.  I even have a crown chakra necklace I wear most days, reminding me of my true nature.  My resolutions for the new year are in a similar vein too, to increase mindfulness through daily meditation (and then tweet them under #meditation365).

I have always known that I should meditate, but I never saw the glaring need until this year.  As a survivor of abuse I have a few post-truamatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.  I have noticed a correlation between my general stress levels and the severity of my symptoms.  I have also noticed a correlation between managing my stress with meditation and being able to sleep well, eat well, and make progress on my weight loss goal.

Physiologically, the crown chakra relates to the brain, especially the higher brain, or cerebral cortex.  Our amazing human brain contains some thirteen billion interconnected nerve cells, capable of making more connections among themselves than the number of start in the entire universe...Our brains, as instruments of awareness, are virtually limitless...From within, we access a dimension that has no locality in time and space...In other words, we carry the whole world inside our heads.  --Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith, pg. 321

I will continue to find connections between my body, mind, awareness, health and spirituality.  What kinds of connections have you, dear readers, found on your spiritual paths?

(cross-posted at The Exponent) 

Submissions for Exponent II Spring 2011 Issue due January 15th

I am writing an article for this submission.  Any of my readers want to contribute?

You can check out the announcement and call for submissions here at The Exponent.

And you can read the current Winter 2010 issue here.