Month: September 2021

PowerSoft

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It is that kind of gentle but firm softness in the power of comfort, compromise, caregiving, with a determined focus on nourishing, sustainability, developmental appropriateness, holding space and grace to meet people where they are and provide humane supports.

It is difficult to bear witness to the reality of not valuing, of not cherishing PowerSoftnesses.

imhyauo
(in my humble yet arrogant unsolicited opinion)

We have tapped out our educators at all levels having been dismissive at best pre-COVID, now devolved to vitriol.

We have tapped out our healthcare workers at all levels.

We have tapped out our grocery, gas station, restaurant etc workers.

We have tapped out our librarians, first responders, and other public servants.

We have tapped out parents, grandparents, caregivers.

Our cultural values don’t allow for appreciating these critical roles in our society, other than occasional lip service or *clap, clap, clap* or perhaps a pizza luncheon. All of which, frankly, resonate like praising a dad for “babysitting” his own children or “helping” to clean the dishes *insert generous eye roll,* whilst internally judging the mom who came up so lacking that she needed “babysitting” or “help.”

*sigh* that’s how we do

as a culture – not as individuals, of course (natch)

As individuals we:
Advocate for our educators and staff through letter writing, encouragement, and voting power
Listen to healthcare experts, science, are respectful, get ourselves vaccinated, and vote.
Make humane eye contact with all interactions to the helpers/servers/healers/teachers/encouragers etc, tip generously (as we are able), volunteer for the organization, clean-up after ourselves, recognize innate humanity and right to dignity, use grace and courtesy, and vote.
Recognize and publicly acknowledge that in order to keep our current economy working we are relying on unpaid or severely underpaid caregivers by counting on their compassion to override our responsibility to them, and vote. 
Use grace and courtesy with these recognitions, and then we vote.

We are the lucky ones who get a choice, not only by our thoughts and actions, but also by engaging with our opportunity and choice to vote.

On the Rashida Jones “Ask Big Questions” podcast (the episodes are about a year old), one of their science expert guests commented that the number one way we all impact climate change is by voting. This kind of power awestruck me in a pivotal thinking way. I am a voter. I have voted in every election I could since I turned 18. I love voting and celebrate every time I get to vote from which fundraisers to approve on our local school council to national presidential elections. But have I payed attention and voted what truly has matched my conscience? Or, have I voted by public relations rhetoric? I suspect a mixture until midterm elections during President Obama’s first term when I recognized my essential need for my own deep pivot. I do not worship any leader or politician. They are human people doing human things on varying levels of the human scale of emotion, action, and thought. While I do not worship any ideology, I do make every effort to use my votes in support of those things where humane choices are at the forefront and Powersoft things are acknowledged and valued.

(insert rant on how we approach parenting, educating, healing, nourishing – too much for my squishy brainiac at the moment)

The essence of my soul knows that without the soft powers, we do not exist (whether acknowledged or not). I would Iike to be part of the nudge to humanity that the soft powers are worth culturally recognized value.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about as well as how to not abandon my post. Not my blog post – I mean my post as in carrying on with whatever I am responsible for doing (from my bolt-hole apparently and YES this noun is funny to me also I seem to be more of the female Mr Fox in that scenario). Although I do abandon blog posts regularly. Blogger fail CHECK. I know, posting posts are not the point – it is an outlet for my being. Thank you for bearing witness and space for that. I am restless with grief and I suppose this is how it blooms.

I appreciate you. How are you?

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

ps I stopped at Chipotle as a crutch last night to grab dinner for SonHerisme and myself (MotherHerisme was Panera-ed up, don’t worry!), having app ordered for pickup. The place was packed. I could not move through the store to the pickup shelves without bumping through people. Less than half of us were masked in this packed place. Only 1 table had anyone eating inside – the rest of us were waiting to order food or picking up app orders. The orders seemed to be running about 30 minutes behind the app time. The staff were nonstop efficient superfast motion, and looked very exhausted and stressed as people began complaining about their wait time. It hurt my heart for everyone. I sent an extra $$$ tip along with prayers for peace, comfort, empathy, patience and compassion. WHAT are we doing? I’m so sorry Chipotle people. I’m so sorry frustrated customers. I’m so sorry children watching. What are we? The collapse still hasn’t hit, I suppose. *sigh* Everyone is trying so very hard and carrying so much. Too much. Or? Maybe it was an off night and I am annoyingly sensitive. Anyway – I send out more compassion, Chipotle. SonHerisme adores you and I wish you all of the positive things with the resilience and beauty of the flowers to all (grumpy customers as well).

Dia

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Dia de los muertos – Day of the dead is coming up next month according to my calendar. For many, their day of the dead is already here, or recently passed or imminent. Our collective grief at knowing much of the death might have been postponed with accessible resources until some other future old-aged kind of thing reached us, is shaking about palpable everywhere.

Oh – do you think I am referring to COVID? I suppose my sentiment applies to COVID as well. However, it’s domestic violence that’s on my mind this dia.

As you may have guessed, I have some thoughts…

The story of Gabby P is horrific. It is awful. As soon as she went “missing,” we knew she was dead. Every victim of domestic violence knew she was dead. All of us. We need to talk about domestic violence. Our willingness to push shame, passively or outright, on the victims, is killing us. We are sending mixed messages while ignoring the heart of the matter. Perhaps the police should have been better trained – but my goodness, they do not have the superpowers of reading the future and peeling back layers of narcissistic deceit. Perhaps Gabby should have phoned a hotline for help – but holy cow people, I doubt she was able to fully perceive her situation or predict these consequences (much less communicate her needs to a second or third party). Perhaps her online community should have seen through the cracks and offer support – but sweet beegeezus people, we were not able to save the person in our real life community from being a victim of domestic violence, much less recognize what is happening over the plastic programmed filters of perfection on the socials.

But, Herisme, I want to do something. So I will post a meme.

Memes are great at pounding home an image or message. I must admit, it is difficult for me to see your memes about how we should reach out, tell someone, know how many women are raped at what frequency in this country or around the world. It is hard.

It is hard because while you might be able to feel that something is not right with your relationship, you might not know you’re being abused. It sounds silly because to you it is obvious. He coerces and forces himself inside you – you are being abused. He controls all aspects of the finances and hides things from you – you are being abused. He belittles you, gaslights you, threatens you, threatens your child etc – you are being abused. What you see is that you: haven’t tried hard enough to do the right things, forgot to be compassionate towards his challenges, made your choices and must pull up your bootstraps and make the best of it, help him by role modeling love, etc. You are groomed to pull everything back into a space where it makes sense to gain some semblance of control. If it is somehow your fault, then you have a chance of correcting whatever it is in order to make things better. This takes away any recognition of what you know of as abuse because you are smart, intelligent, a problem solver, a doer, a thinker, a feeler, and in control of the solutions.

I know this does not only happen to cis women – but that is what I am and what I can speak to.

Maybe we can change the meme or conversations into speaking the truth about what it is to have been in a domestic violence situation. It is not all Hollywood sunglasses and smokey make-up to cover up a bruise. Sometimes it is forced penetration, sometimes it is you in the hospital after he’s slammed your head into the corner of the countertop, sometimes it is finding out he has cut off your access to the bank accounts, sometimes it is email/phone/socials tracking and using the information against you, sometimes it is accusing you of being crazy and threatening to have you lose your children and be locked up.

Instead of the, “why didn’t you reach out sooner so I could help?” or, “why didn’t you leave?” Maybe we could flip that to, “who is doing these things and how can we prevent them from doing them?” I think we need places to go and support resources for sure. I also think that those things are far too often not accessible, either due to our own feeling of disconnect from the idea that we are being abused, or fear of the fallout if you do reach out (loss of home/income/family/children etc).

I think we need honest, often and early conversation about how to recognize healthy and unhealthy relationships.

I think we need to use our voices of hindsight to lift up the next generations.

Will this eliminate abuse?

No.

I’m not that naive.

But, will it ground and save some people (in addition to support resources)? Yes, I believe it will.

Professional support to stop generational cultural normative abusive patterns, is critical. Dialogue and hearing about what people have learned and experienced, is critical. The situations I mention are either my own or someone I have an irl connection with. That is just me, one teeny tiny little glittering piece of sand on an endless beach, and I know so many more. I am sure that you do as well. If you say you do not, you have not opened a safe dialogue with enough of the people that you love and care about. Open it. I implore you to OPEN that box and talk about what we are doing to each other in our communities and how we can best support each other, and our sweet children for a healthier tomorrow.

To be silent does not work – it only enables more abuse.

To meme it up gets the word out there (important) but it is not enough.

To talk about it openly, honestly, and sit with the reality that we all know someone who has been abused, and hold space for that grief, recognition with a focus on health and safety, is vital.

My truth is that I know for sure both maternal and paternal grandmothers were abused, my maternal grandfather was abused, MotherHerisme and FatherHerisme were abused, SisterHerisme and BrotherHerisme were abused… as was I. I hope that the buck stops with me. Sadly SonHerisme has early abuse, one NieceHerisme was molested as a young tween, and other NieceHerisme had suspected physical abuse. My G-d. I never processed that truth until this moment. It is so ingrained into our culture … wth

*sigh* Carry on Cycle Breakers Carry on Peace Warriors

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

this was h e a v y so I will use the goings out into the natures as a balm this afternoon my teeth are numb

Poxic Tossitivity

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Are we all feeling as if toxic positivity has taken yet another unhealthy turn where not only are you meant to zen love smile radiate embrace remain present in order to achieve all of the lovely things, but also condemn those who do not/cannot?

You must not yoga enough with the right people at the right time in the correct vegan yoga things, so you’ve built your own quagmire of shit as a result.

You did not radiate the holiest beauty of rainbow sunshine, so you must not be doing your job correctly which is probably why you will fail at it.

You are requiring something of me and no one ever requires anything of me in ways I do not want. I am the one who should be requiring things of you. You are oppressing me because I feel very unhappy about what you are saying.

Maybe it’s just me.

It’s bizarro world again, still – or whatever

It is understandable that most people want the same things: love, health, belonging, meaning, recognition.

What I struggle with is embracing the culture of toxic positivity to work towards those things. You must love yourself before anyone can love you! Fake it until you make it! Everything happens for a reason! You deserve a break!

This all sounds pretty freaking toxic to me.

No one loves you if you don’t love you. If you cannot pretend to be happy, then you will never be happy. There are reasons why these awful things happen, so your feelings about them are not appropriate. There are times when you do not deserve a break.

I toss some pox on that. Culturally we toss pox on that.

You don’t look like you love yourself enough, so I have decided you are unworthy of love and consideration. You do not look happy to me so I have decided your happiness is unworthy of consideration. You are not worthy of consideration for a break because I have decided you do not deserve one.

Our culture has full on embraced toxic positivity with a constant stream of shaming/blaming/fear-based living, and lately have one-upped that with the poxic tossitivity.

We have been deliberately systematically brainwashed and gaslighted to accept this as our culture, and I am exhausted by it all.

Stop telling me that I am building resilience in myself and in SonHerisme while you strip away mine, my sister’s, my nieces’, my friends’, my neighbors’, my menstruating community and future menstruating communities’ access to medical care.

Stop telling me that we are building resilience by shoving kids and teachers into COVID superspreader overcrowded schools by pretending that we are doing this to save our economy when we could have all been vaccinated and masked (except for young kids) or made entirely out-of-the-box different plans.

Stop telling me that universal healthcare will make us a communist country, and that socialism programs are bad for our country. Roads, fire departments, police departments, the schools you were desperate to prematurely reopen, roads, libraries, bridges, military, parks, museums, your freaking sportsing stadiums, public transportation are ALL socialist structures…

Stop telling me that we are building resilience by sending 6-week-old babies into institutionalized crap-waged/crap-benefited care facilities for 50+ hours each week so that the mothers can “work,” as if birthing, feeding, and raising babies is “not real work.” But, some people have to work, Ms. Herisme… NEWSFLASH… if they are caretaking (babies, elderly etc) they are FUCKING WORKING, they just aren’t getting paid in a pretty pretty direct-deposit paycheck. What the hell are we doing multiple-layer-middle-managing this shit when people have been birthing the babies and raising the families, and caring for infirm, for thousands of years and the BEST we can come up with is to force more people into more institutionalized care facilities? I do not get it.

We throw answers at problems without even asking the root questions, then blame the people we claim to want to help when the inevitable shitstorm lands.

We subsidize the institutions, because their operational costs are too expensive to exist on tuition/rent. Then we subsidize the staff because they do not earn a livable wage or have health care. They we subsidize the family who cannot earn enough money to pay for the institutions. Then we punish the worker by terminating them when they have to stay home too often with their usually institutionalized family member, due to illness or a freaking pandemic.

gah – enough on this topic

I am tired of being asked to build resilience

I am tired of toxic positivity

I am tired of it turning into poxic tossitivity

TOSS the POX

Maybe there’s a vaccine for that… it might be more tea, a meditation, and a list of to-do’s with brief dancey-dances as each is checked-off as complete

Or maybe it is to embrace the grace to recognize that there are fairly shitty things happening due to no one’s inability to love themselves enough, vegan up enough, recognize the beauty of a blade of grass well enough, shiny happy people face enough, work hard enough/long enough – the shitty things are just life and shit. Perhaps we can find a moment of joy, or witness someone else’s moment of joy, or see that the ‘O’ in joy is a reminder of the cyclical nature of the everythings and feel that heaviness as hope or despair or recognize the feeling of anything real, genuine, pretend for even half a second (even predictable boredom in slogging through this shitty writing/listening, or just a breath in and out) – that is enough, you are enough. If you cannot do any of that, I will at least breathe once in and once out just for you. (7 counts all around and into my lower diaphragm natch, if you must know)

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

side note: MotherHerisme presented a bottle of artichoke oil in pill form to take with my dinner just in case I have any interest in losing weight, but no pressure. She read about it on her computer and is only trying to help. She just wants me to find a husband and be happy. *eye roll to tomorrow-ville and internal screaming pleas to NOT ENGAGE* I have discreetly disposed the pills. Weirdo times. TOSS this POX

if you’re vaccinated and asymptomatic, join me for some tea on the back deck later – much later, time-to-light-a-fire later. Screw the tea, actually. Bring something deeply colored, very strong, and sublimely lovely. later gator

Rainy Day

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Welcome to my rainy day.

So far there’s been: a 1:30am thunderstorm with a yet-to-be-identified tree fall, a 3am panic attack from weirdo schmeardo nightmare, an overly optimistic 6am alarm, and a more realistic 7am alarm followed by a 10 minute snooze button, hand-holding school drop off, slight leaky-eyed tears driving home from drop-off… big emotions swirling for what turned out to be an adventurous day.

In other news, MotherHerisme wore lipstick! W H A T WHAT the what what?!!? Like fuh reals? YES. She had on a pinkish orangey melon colored lipstick like back in the day. In my growing up times, and until maybe the past decade, MotherHerisme was always lipsticked, usually foundationed, and occasionally mascara-ed with tidy hair, outrageous sparkle shirts, cozy pants and shiny shoes. While she still sucks up the energy in the room, it used to be she sucked it all up to blow back out in enthusiastic boisterous gregarious loudnesses. In the past decade she just broke down into massive seriously full-on narcissistic, fist banging, leg kicking, throwing things, screaming, crying, temper-tantrum mode. It has been difficult times. I think she just broke from years of trying to force the universe to bend to her will through gregarious extrovertednesses. She has trauma, for sure, which I think until recently she truly had no idea she was acting out and passing down. Recently she told me that for the first time in her whole life she has felt like she could just be herself now. She claims to have never considered her own mortality until now either. It has been a very hard road for her to recognize that she is a uniquely privileged piece of the universe, in a never-before-in-human-history and never-again-in-human-history, specialized race/socioeconomic/cultural specific generation. I am not certain that she can fully embrace that knowledge now either, but I do think that very occasionally she has the ability to see outside of herself, which is a step to empathy. Just this morning, she commented that she’s never felt so relaxed in her whole life as she has these past two years specifically.

I cannot remember what I have shared previously about MotherHerisme. To sum up, she has been living in my house since Christmas of 2016. Today her version of how this came to be is that she has had a series of medical issues and has established physician relationships here which prevent her from moving back to her own home (3 states to the west, where my father, her husband, still resides across the street from my sister and her family). This topic is for a different day’s writing.

ANYWHO, the day I began this writing turned into a massive shitstorm – as in Ida held firm in her own resolve to deposit her hurricane remnants hither and thither around my area of the world. We are all okay. My heart aches for places which are not okay. This is a tiny picture of my lucky story.

School dismissal was a bit bumpy. My road was washed out, as were all roads leading to mine. They’re currently being repaired (huzzah to seeing taxes work for the people!). We can enter and exit back up the hill and through another little town which has a raised highway entrance. The water is clearing itself out after cresting yesterday evening. Mother Nature – we see you and raise you a Texridiculas women’s oppression body control shitstorm! TAKE THAT bwahahahahaha (not in Richard E Grant’s voice this time as his wife has sadly passed away and I am sending him oodles of comfort, peace, space and grace for grief).

No school buses are available for our school, so I drive SonHerisme everyday. Pre-COVID, I walked him inside in the morning, and walked inside to pick him up in the afternoons. COVID times make us an exclusive carline school. positives: SonHerisme likes carline now that he is an 8th grader and can sneak hand holding and a sweet momma kiss before he disembarks to school. negatives: we are not a neighborhood school so we miss out on the milling about the front of the school community connections, plus, sitting in the car for an hour is HARD for this sweet momma (crying the tears of the privileged).

As I drove to pick up SonHerisme through aggressive Ida remnants, the thought occurred to me about warnings for driving through washed out roads (mine was, many were between home and school), as well as how the flippity rain deluge did I think I was getting us home if it was still pouring and I’m pretty sure our road was washing away as I skidded over it. Spoiler alert – segments of our road (and many others) did wash away. By the time I had gathered SonHerisme (THANK YOU to the edges of reality and back to ALL school staff – bc you guys ROCK the job-damned living hell out of what you do!!!!), my road and roads leading to my road, were indeed closed.

But, what ho, thought I… the rain had subsided somewhat and I had made it out on my road, surely I could make it back in! Bravado! Entitlement! Calculated risk trust exercise! Alas, there was a police car right behind me escorting county maintenance vehicles assessing and closing off roads. Did I care? No! YES! A weakened maybe perhaps as I pulled my SUV (yup, I’m that momma and SonHerisme plays soccer) into an empty parking lot with a water run-off embankment located just before my road (post multiple re-routes to get this close to home). As soon as the police car was out of sight, I u-turned my car, drove down the middle of the road (as the lanes were completely under water, but the center was slightly raised and not under water), and bypassed the “road closed” sign for my road, as if I lived in the little neighborhood just past the sign. I told SonHerisme that I might have to backup or pull into the church parking lot on a little hill, if our road was fully washed out or if the water was too deep to see the pavement. C’mon I’m not CRAZY crazy.

I was able to navigate our road by staying in the middle. The sides of the road had fallen off in spots, especially by deeper gully areas. Most of my road is going uphill, so after we drove about 3/4 mile without issue, I felt like we were just fine. EXCEPT for the two 40ft uprooted giant oak trees that had fallen across our road just before our driveway. County vehicles were already on the the scene, along with a firetruck (as first responders from the top of our hill). By now SonHerisme had to go to the bathroom since he’d been in the car with after school snack/water for over an hour at this point – we live about 4-5 miles from his school.

SonHerisme had a few choices: get out and pee off the side of the road, stay in the car and wet his pants, or ask road maintenance if he could shimmy over/under the giant fallen trees to run up our driveway to the house. He chose running up the driveway to the house since, as he described his situation, “I have to go to the BATHROOM bathroom, not just pee, MOM!” He’s totally teening.

Since my sweet teeny tiny squishy newborn baby looks 19/20 at 13 years-old, except for his super cute school backpack, the road crew and firemen agreed he could go underneath the fallen giant oaks. Once they supervised him through, they asked him how old he is and one of the crew on my side of the trees jogged back to me. “Don’t worry ma’am, he did just fine and said he will call you as soon as he is inside. You can wait right here for about 15-20 minutes and we will have the road cleared for you to get home.”

So I waited.

Meanwhile, at least one school bus with 10 students had to be water rescued having been pushed off the road by fast moving water, so all school buses had been ordered back to their schools. Parents all over the county had to pick up their children whenever they could, however they could. It was a proper emergency. School staff organized and kept kids secure and safe until they could be picked up.

We have two little elementary girls down the hill and across the road who got stuck in their school bus for about 2 hours because their bus couldn’t get back to their school or to their house due to closed and impassable roads. About ten minutes after the giant oaks were cleared from our road, the girl’s bus came down the road from the top of the hill and dropped them off safely at home. That is a hero school bus driver for sure.

What a day. Not one local person lost their life. We are lucky.

The next day school was canceled due to too many impassable roads. Water levels peaked in the early evening, and began to recede in time for enough road work to allow schools to reopen on Friday. Of course, the city rec tennis coach got her assistants and brooms out about 30 minutes before SonHerisme’s Thursday evening tennis, and they cleared all but one of the courts which had been submerged in water and were full of debris and silt. Life 🙂

On a sad note, I’m sure we’ll see an uptick in COVID because of the necessary last minute carpools/crowding together for immediate safety. I’m sure we’ll see this present even worse in much harder hit areas.

Note to self: we are freakishly lucky and I am committed to sharing the luck as I can where I can. Meal delivery is one thing I can do to share. Donate $5 to local flood support groups and for women’s support local to Afghanistan.

Please take good care of yourself and your communities. So much hurt is bubbling to the extremely visible surface. I wish moments of peace and joy to you!

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

ps. I know better than to drive through water covered roads. The hubris of me is occasionally unbearable and difficult to acknowledge in an emergency moment where hyper vigilant assessment and instinct kicks in. In those moments it feels like everything I see, think, feel, is positioned on the very tip of a pin in tiny droplet of water I can quickly scan from all different panoramic angles, noting multiple outcomes of various decisions, like in chess but perhaps 3D live chess. Based on that tiny pinprick moment, I make a pathway decision and go. One day it won’t work out for me, just like it doesn’t for lots of other people. For now, I experience the weather changes and my extremely good luck. It’s all about positioning (by choice or circumstance) to be better advantaged to possibly hit on mysterious luck. NOT mysterious lick, which is what I accidentally tippity typed before correction and leaning into gross. No mysterious lick. No sir. No ma’am.

and also, I am cycling through struggles. I send solidarity via {{{hugs}}} to all of us struggling with the things, and will seek some comfort in tea. Today finds me tea-ing up with black tea chai, no milk, no sugar. woot woot!