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GANE Insight: Kim Jorgensen Gane's Blog

I'm no longer directionally challenged--I have a clear vision to celebrate #MOREin2014 via GANEPossible.com. Preempting my novel in progress, Bluebirds, I'm very close to releasing my first GANE Possible publication (prescriptive "Dr. Mom" nonfiction), Beating the Statistics: A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Fertility, Halt Autism & Help Her Child Grow From Behavior Failure to Behavior Success. I'm also working on completing my memoir, My Grandfather's Table: Learning to Forgive Myself First.

It took a lifetime to get here. This blog documents my quest to self-fulfillment through my writing, and ultimately to shifting my focus to Beating the Statistics & My Grandfather's Table and speaking about them. They are the wellness and the memoir parts of my journey that had to be told, so that Bluebirds can one day be the meaningful, but fictional *story* it aspires to be.

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My Cup is Full with Author Friends: Books I've Loved, My To-Read List & a Giveaway!

4/5/2015

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I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted, but life, book/writing coaching others, writing my own someday book babies, and, most wonderfully, bringing LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER to the community anyone who knows me will tell you it's no secret I love, has taken over. Also moving. Also the holidays. And most recently a most exciting endeavor, my husband's soon-to-embark food truck, Baja Gringo Tacos! Yes, someday there'll be a cookbook in our future, too. But for now, we've been eating a LOT of tacos as he experiments and perfects the recipes that have filled our boy since we lived in San Diego. The story of what this means to my husband, to our family, is on simmer. But for now I'll just say that it makes me very happy to once again bear witness to the dimples that won my heart in the first place. 

This chilly Easter weekend, with night-time temps that are still a bit too cold for making tacos in the truck, spring cleaning in preparation for a long overdue visit from my stepdaughter and her husband has me counting the numerous books cluttering my coffee table and about every other flat surface. Is Evelyn Woods speed reading still a thing? Because I need to invest if I'm going to keep up with the many prolific authors I'm blessed to know personally, even if in some cases, it's only online. Getting to know authors is something I've felt driven to do as I battle my own writing doubts, demons, and dragons. We all have them. Some of us are simply farther ahead in the conquering department. Holding their books, ruffling the pages, taking a whiff, and brushing my hand over the signatures of authors I've met in person and built friendships with online makes me feel that one day publishing a book--sooner rather than later--is possible for me, too. And you all know how I feel about POSSIBLE. 

I know that my own "authordom" is about managing my time and prioritizing the completion phase of those projects on which I'm already so close I can smell the ink. But I also know that the same drive in me and my family that makes my husband's irreverent, anti-establishment, stick-it-to-the-man, cleaner eating and naturally gluten free taco truck a reality that makes sense for us, will open my work and my life up to critique and criticism. I have to acknowledge it: that fear is a part of what's held me back. There's so much nastiness and judgment online. It can be downright scary to put yourself, and by default your kids, out there. 

Which brings me to the topic of the first book on my to-read list, Galit Breen's, "Kindness Wins."   
From Amazon: When freelance writer Galit Breen's kids hinted that they'd like to post, tweet, and share photos on Instagram, Breen took a look at social media as a mom and as a teacher and quickly realized that there's a ridiculous amount of kindness terrain to teach and explain to kids―and some adults―before letting them loose online. So she took to her pen and wrote a how-to book for parents who are tackling this issue with their kids.
I have a twelve-year-old boy who suddenly thinks he's made of stuff that warrants his own Instagram account. I'm listening!

What Amazon doesn't tell us is why Galit set out to write this book in the first place. The author, herself, was a victim of online bullying and downright heartless cruelty. Breen published a beautiful piece on Huffington Post entitled, "Twelve Secrets Happily Married Women Know." In it, she shared a beautiful snapshot of her and her husband on their wedding day. The post went viral. What followed was a troll-fest rife with vitriol and hate directed, not at her words, but at her weight. One of the reasons (besides the fact that one of the wealthiest women in the world doesn't believe in paying writers who publish on her website) I, myself, have never published on HuffPo is the reputation that played out right under Galit's original post. Check out what Galit had to say about the experience and what became her book here, on her Twin Cities Live appearance. Kindness Wins releases this Tuesday, April 7th, and is available for preorder. I can't wait for my copy to arrive!
Next on my to-read list is another book that releases this Tuesday, April 7th. This one features a topic that's near and dear to my heart, and it's brought to us by a woman who shares the mission of online and in person kindness, compassion, and understanding. That has to be what's at the motherhood heart of the national, 39-city movement that in it's sixth season also celebrates the book, "Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now." Ann Imig, founder and national director of the live stage show and social media extravaganza, has compiled and edited a selection of some of the amazing stories that first graced Listen to Your Mother microphones and stages across the country. Yes, you can watch over a thousand archived videos from past seasons, but there's something truly special about lying in bed and reading the words as they were originally authored, dog-earing your favorites, and revisiting them time and again. The stories remind us as mothers, as humans, that we share so much more than separates us. The stories remind us how resilient we are, and that we are not alone in this world. 
From Amazon: Listen to Your Mother is a fantastic awakening of why our mothers are important, taking readers on a journey through motherhood in all of its complexity, diversity, and humor. Based on the sensational national performance movement, Listen to Your Mothershowcases the experiences of ordinary people of all racial, gender, and age backgrounds, from every corner of the country. This collection of essays celebrates and validates what it means to be a mother today, with honesty and candor that is arrestingly stimulating and refreshing.
If you're in or near St. Joseph, Michigan on Saturday, May 9th, our adorable little indie book store, Forever Books, will be on hand selling these at our inaugural Listen to Your Mother: Southwest Michigan show.  
Okay, technically? I've already read this one. But Patty Chang Anker is one of the storytellers represented in the Listen to Your Mother Book. She is a warm, witty, and delightful author I've had the pleasure of meeting, twice! Her book, "Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave," is now available in paperback, and sports a beautiful new aqua blue spine. And it's clearly (see second paragraph, above) one I could stand to revisit. I had the honor and pleasure of introducing Patty when she visited Forever Books last summer. And then I met her again in New York when I drove there for #BinderCon just three days after moving last fall! Crazy, I know! But I had a free conference pass I'd won, the promise of meeting several online friends IRL, and a welcoming friend with a comfy sofa whom I'd met at a prior conference. So nothing was stopping me! The opportunity to see Patty again was just too irresistible. Her book and her experience with Listen to Your Mother had so much to do with me auditioning and garnering a spot in the Northwest Indiana show in 2014. And it certainly helped me find my brave and pitch my community as a new city in 2015. 
From Amazon: “A compelling story of everyday courage” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Inspired and inspiring, this book draws on Anker’s interviews with teachers, therapists, coaches, and clergy to convey both practical advice and profound wisdom. Through her own journey and the stories of others, she conveys with grace and infectious exhilaration the most vital lesson of all: Fear isn’t the end point to life, but the point of entry.
You have to read it for Chapter 7 alone, in which Patty describes her adventure of surfing for the first time on Lake Michigan, off the soft white sandy shores of Silver Beach in my hometown. In the middle of WINTER!!! While I don't feel the need to try surfing in winter myself, there's abundant wisdom worthy of revisiting here.
As tender, green, delectable shoots emerge from the earth, "Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal," is a perfect spring read by another lovely and vastly talented author I met at #BinderCon in New York. Ava Chin and I shared deviled eggs and conversation as we sipped Chardonnay and chatted with other authors at a bar in Manhattan. (An event that prompted me to ask whether this was my life!) Her beautiful book has been on my to-read list for far too long, and now is the perfect time to move it to the company of my currently reading list! Without a kitchen since moving into our house in October, I must confess that the idea of reading about food as the world around me was going to sleep felt rather torturous. But I've decided to think of it as inspiration to recommit to cleaner eating, and to get my GANE Possible kitchen moving in the right direction. And I'm hoping to convince Ava to visit southwest Michigan for a foraging tour and book signing this summer. Be sure to Subscribe--->so you'll know when & if it happens!
From Amazon: In this touching and informative memoir about foraging for food in New York City, Ava Chin finds sustenance...and so much more.

Urban foraging is the new frontier of foraging for foods, and it's all about eating better, healthier, and more sustainably, no matter where you live. Time named foraging the "latest obsession of haute cuisine," but the quest to connect with food and nature is timeless and universal.

Ava Chin, aka the "Urban Forager," is an experienced master of the quest. Raised in Queens, New York, by a single mother and loving Chinese grandparents, Chin takes off on an emotional journey to make sense of her family ties and romantic failures when her beloved grandmother becomes seriously ill. She retreats into the urban wilds, where parks and backyards provide not only rare and delicious edible plants, but a wellspring of wisdom.
I can't mention authors I've met without reminding you of my time in spectacular Whitefish, Montana, with Laura Munson, author of "This is Not the Story You Think it Is...: A Season of Unlikely Happiness," and Haven writing retreat host. I mentioned how happy I am lately to see my husband's dimples again, but back when I read Laura's book, those dimples were a far off memory. Laura's book spoke to the pieces of my heart that felt desolate and alone in the aftermath of my husband losing his job, leaving California, and returning to Michigan with no prospects. I truly believe it not only had a significant part in my marriage surviving its darkest moments, but the book, Haven, time spent in Laura's company and in the company of other women writers inspired my participation in Listen to Your Mother, as well. Laura's book and Haven helped me to focus on the future I wanted to create, and it helped me to live as an example for my husband. Even though he never read a word of Laura's book, I honestly believe that without it he wouldn't have the opportunity to heal the loss of our restaurant by living his dream of opening Baja Gringo Tacos. Life is feeling pretty complete for us these days. And I owe a big piece of that to Laura and to Haven. My project has changed a great deal since Haven, but it's growing and it's becoming closer to the book I dreamed of writing when our daughters were young. 
From Amazon: By the time Laura Munson had turned 40, her life was not how she thought it would turn out. Career success had eluded her; her beloved father was no longer around to be her biggest cheerleader; and her husband wanted out of their marriage. 

Poignant, wise, and often exceedingly funny, this is the moment-by- moment memoir of a woman who decided to let go-in the midst of the emotional equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. It recounts what happened as Munson set out on her spiritual journey-and provides raw, powerful inspiration to anyone searching for peace in an utterly unpredictable world.
Before finding a publisher for This is Not the Story You Think It Is, Laura had written fourteen novels. Her's is the story of persistence and resilience. 
This has turned into a post about being brave, which really wasn't my intention. But I suppose a short month away from showtime, it's what I needed to remember at the moment. There is little braver than reexamining and correcting a lie as an adult that began in childhood. In "Cinderland," Amy Jo Burns has done so in smooth, warm, amber words and turns of phrase, recalling small town America in eloquent, and in turn beautiful and ugly ways to which many of us can relate. In her gripping memoir, she holds herself and others accountable, while exploring the impact secrecy and speculation had on her life, and the lives of others who told, ignored, assumed, and judged the truth. In Burns' book not a single word is out of place or wasted, each one carrying the weight of their topic impeccably. And I think it sports one of the most beautiful covers ever. I've gotten to know Amy a bit online, and hope for an opportunity to meet her and hear her read in the future.
From Amazon: A riveting literary debut about the cost of keeping quiet

Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, an industrial town humbled by the steel collapse of the 1980s. Instead of the construction booms and twelve-hour shifts her parents’ generation had known, the Mercury Amy Jo knew was marred by empty houses, old strip mines, and vacant lots. It wasn’t quite a ghost town—only because many people had no choice but to stay.
 
The year Burns turned ten, this sleepy town suddenly woke up. Howard Lotte, its beloved piano teacher, was accused of sexually assaulting his female students. Among the countless girls questioned, only seven came forward. For telling the truth, the town ostracized these girls and accused them of trying to smear a good man’s reputation. As for the remaining girls—well, they were smarter. They lied. Burns was one of them.

And finally, for the Giveaway! 

I can't thank Ruth Curran enough for sending me a copy of her important book to giveaway this spring. I'm currently reading my own copy of, "Being Brain Healthy: What my recovery from brain injury taught me...," and I'm finding it wise, well written, and hopeful. Together with the brain training games she's developed and offers on her website, Cranium Crunches, Ruth's mission is to help everyone understand, no matter their stage in life, "harness and use neuroplasticity to live a richer, deeper, more fully engaged life." Ruth's empowering message of self care and self responsibility is one, A) I needed to hear, and B) we share. Though I'm reminded that I want very much to be able to walk and function later in life, which means I want to conquer that exercise portion of wellness she writes about. I'm going to need all the stamina I can build, and spring is the perfect season to do it!

During the time I've gotten to know Ruth online, and having been interviewed by her recently for a podcast, I never guessed she suffered a brain injury until I became aware of the topic of her book. I'd have to endorse what she teaches as impactful for those with brain injury, and for those who want to optimize their own neuroplasticity. One of the most important things I've found to help lessen my self-diagnosed ADD is writing, which Ruth talks about in her book. I'll keep doing it. And I'll add more purposeful exercise to my list of empowered wellness activities.  
From Amazon: The journey to wellness when coming back from a brain injury can be a long one. It is one that author Ruth Curran knows well. Faced with a myriad of challenges after her own brain injury, she decided to turn up the volume on the things that she loved and found ways to work through the discomfort and discouragement that can plague so many who are faced with this devastating diagnosis. Her own path – one that took 18 months – is one that she shares with readers in Being Brain Healthy. Being Brain Healthy is a book of hope. Curran shares insights on healing with readers and has the unique ability to explain complex neuroscience in a way that makes sense to even those who are just taking their first steps on the road to recovery. Convinced that everyone can work their way out of what Curran refers to as “the fog” and can build better thinking skills, the author shares how she turned her entire life into a better experience.
At the end of the month (April 2015), I will randomly select one winner from among the comments I receive on this post to receive Ruth's book! So tell me about a memoir, novel, or work of nonfiction I should put on my to-read list this summer! 
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Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Make No Progress: The Marginalized Need to Take a Lesson From the Right, or We're Screwed

11/6/2014

1 Comment

 
Women and minorities got caught holding our breaths, waiting for our next “Savior.” In doing so, last night’s midterm results, wherein the GOP took control of congress, were a punch in the gut this morning.

I can’t recall voting in a mid-term election before yesterday with the vivid detail I imagine I will later recall this one. I know I did, but never before were the results as devastating. In the past I was guilty during a general election of just checking a box because I recognized a name or knew a family. Not because the state of our government and our country doesn’t matter to me, but because I didn’t feel I knew enough or that I was smart enough—maybe I felt I didn’t have enough “skin in the game,” so to speak.

I’m slowly adjusting my thinking. I did a bit of political writing before the 2012 election. I expressed my frustration with both parties and revealed that I didn’t identify with either one. As a result, an essay I wrote is included in the upcoming book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics (http://womenandpolitics.us). That essay was adapted from a post I wrote which was featured and got some traction on BlogHer. “The Enlightened Middle Majority and Why The Sides Are Alienating Us,” was later honored by BlogHer amid the 2013 Voices of the Year in the Op Ed category. It was written as a follow-up to another BlogHer featured post, “My Friends Think I’m the Only Liberal They Know. I Don’t Know What I Am.” And when Yahoo! Voices existed I was excited to be counted as a contributor with an original piece entitled, "Am I the Only White Person in America Offended by Racism and the Tea Party?" My post was bound to be controversial, which is why they selected it. Your clicks and comments would have been much appreciated, but I chickened out. I didn’t promote my Racism/Tea Party post, and thus it fizzled into the ether.

But what if a discussion about bigotry and the blatant factor it is in the utter constipation that has become our government had taken wing? What if my post had inspired a conversation that led to some sort of progress back when John Baynor and Barack Obama couldn’t keep their distaste for one another away from rolling cameras? What if it had gone viral? What if it had the power to activate voters and voices and breed new politicians at all levels of government? What if it had the power to activate women to say, “Hey I’m pissed, too,” possibly preventing the erosion of women’s rights we’ve suffered since 2012 and before? ...What? It's possible. Women earned the right to step into that booth and vote their hearts and their minds and their truth less than one hundred years ago. Many exist who wish they could control what we do behind that proverbial curtain, or wish we didn’t have the right to vote at all. They are the ones preaching absolution through political action. And they are the ones who won last night.
Picture
By Rob Young from United Kingdom (American Flags @ Rockefeller Plaza) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Instead of the beautiful, progressive growth Obama’s election felt like at first, and could have validated in our society, his presidency has spurred a vapid effort to quash women and minorities. Women’s rights supporters yield ground every day, week, month to Tea Party supporters and conservatives. Because we don’t gather each and every Sunday, because we aren’t as organized, because we aren’t in each other’s faces, talking about our truth week after week, and maybe because we have a perceived “Savior” on the horizon, we lose. Even though conservatives lack a clear frontrunner, they won because they’re organized. They came together despite their ideological differences, and they took action toward one goal: to overtake our government. Brandishing those words is scary, but that’s what happened. The most worrisome issues will likely pass in committee. And the two thirds of registered voters who hit the snooze yesterday and in the years before won’t even notice.

It astounds me that we’re still having a discussion about same sex marriage, for instance. Since Obama’s reelection, progress that was made in the fight for women’s and gay rights has slipped, and now it will only slip further. Many in the middle likely felt they didn’t have an alternative to re-electing President Obama in 2012, because of our fear that what happened yesterday would happen, the events of which underscore the flaws in our two-party, push/pull/dig-in-your-heels system (and which don’t begin to call out the squiggly delegate maps that have completely skewed things to give advantage to those who already have plenty).

Leading up to the 2014 Midterms, we had no vocal leader, inspirer, activator, and it showed. While we sat waiting, political analysts and publishers weighed the odds of how and when they’ll get the most votes or sell the most books. No leaders stepped up to fan the flames, and thus they died. We’ve been waiting for Hillary to announce her candidacy for president. And because she hasn’t, we didn’t. We didn’t engage. We didn’t take lessons from the conservatives’ handbook. We didn’t have signs on our gathering houses reminding our flocks to get out and vote; the words not said reminding every parishioner of the message and the stakes and the end game and the promise of life everlasting…if they vote properly.

And I’m guilty. I personally did nothing in advance of the 2014 Midterm election to organize or to engage all those I know – all those who nod with me, who whisper, “me, too” – to vote. I see now that many of them didn’t. It was chilling to wake up to the reality of what each and every one of us allowed. And why did we allow it?

Because the shame of rape and abortion and domestic violence still keeps us silent.

A Facebook friend posted that a man grabbed her ass while waiting in line last night to vote. If that isn’t an ugly, frightening metaphor for precisely what happened to women and the marginalized during this election, I don’t know what is. (She wasn’t silent. I applaud her for calling the scum out.) We gain ground, but then because we are silent in between the “big” elections the rain pounds and the mudslides begin. We think it’s only the presidency that matters. We think we need a leader to show us the way. Because we’re marginalized, we think we don’t know enough or we don’t matter enough or we can’t make a big enough difference. And we’re guilty, and we’re silent, and we don’t want anyone to know our secrets. So we do nothing. We say nothing.

Little people can accomplish so much when they band together and take action. Doing something gets results better than passive activism, which takes place when we click and forget. Like the #YesAllWomen social media campaign in response to Elliot Rodgers,’ as it turns out, not so bizarre acts of terrorism against women,  (source: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175850/), we’ve shown what can happen when you and I have the guts to have open conversations in a real and meaningful way. But unlike religious conservatives, we’re not following it up with political organization and action that can lead to the sort of change we say we want to see in our society. We’re too busy dodging the title of feminist, while our clicks lull us into a false sense of security. So that when action is needed, we hit snooze rather than wake up and show up at the voting booth.

Did the #YesAllWomen Twitter swell prompt the trolls to come out in force? Yes. Did it showcase some frightening, pervasive patterns among young women and girls who didn’t get it? It did. A completely screwed up mindset (yes, rape culture) exists toward women, and we need to change it.

Like French Montana’s acid rap Pop That and Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, etc., etc., music beats into kids’ brains through their ear buds (source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/cakeshep/10-songs-perhaps-just-as-rapey-as-blurred-lines-f7az). They get “news” and images of what’s truth and what’s important from places like TMZ. The TMZ network “reports” in a “newsroom” style discussion. Speculation and humor inspire clicks rather than actual facts. Next to inflammatory headlines, a perpetual sidebar of ads with degrading links for bigger breasts, flatter tummies, and smaller waists degrades our body image – in our own minds, our value withers. A smorgasbord of mental drivel pops up for kids to consume and consume some more — it’s no wonder girls’ and boys’ brains are full of “rapey” themes that confirm their worth only if they’re skinny enough. It’s no wonder they begin to think rape and domestic violence is totally acceptable. Nay, cool. My generation grew up ashamed of our thoughts if they were “impure.” Our youth today are conversely ashamed of too chaste ones, of not being ghetto enough. We middles who don’t speak up, who didn’t show up, who because of shame and because we’re afraid they’ll think it’s okay don’t speak to our kids, are up against an almost insurmountable hurdle.

On the other side of the spectrum are messages that tell us we’re going to hell unless we find redemption and vote the right way. On not-so-super-Tuesday, a creep can grab a woman’s ass waiting in line to vote, but once he casts his vote correctly and shows up to testify on Sunday, the keys to the gates of Heaven are his, so who cares?

The great motivator for silence is shame. We’re ashamed of our sexual histories, of our choices, even when choice was taken from us, as in the case of rape and domestic violence. As in the case of recent domestic violence victim, Janay Rice, we can’t help but be aware of how victims are mistreated and blamed. There are thousands of blog posts and articles weighing in on why she married Ray Rice after the beating we all got to witness and speculate on, thanks to victim mishandling and the leak of a security video by the NFL. Which brought about another round of hash tags, #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft.

I declined a friend’s offer to share a post I wrote in response to the #YesAllWomen campaign, “#YesAllWomen: Abortion, Rape and Why Shame Can’t Keep Us Silent” (source: originally posted on BlogHer, http://www.blogher.com/yesallwomen-abortion-rape-and-why-shame-cant-keep-us-silent). Though I hoped it would contribute to the discussion, I wasn’t prepared to lead it, and the post decidedly did not appear on my own website. I told myself it was because I work so hard to focus on the positive. My #YesAllWomen post was anything but positive. It was about my own experience with rape and why maintaining women’s reproductive rights is so important to me as a woman who ended an unplanned pregnancy, and who later chose life and became a single mom at only twenty. Later still, I battled six years of infertility with a constant question running in my head of whether or not I was paying for my sexual history. I was not. There were physical and emotional reasons. But I never spoke to anyone about my feelings because of the shame. Even now, as a relative grownup, I’m not sure I’m ready for my small town to lump me with, “you libs,” or weigh in on whether I’m going to hell or whether I’m crazy. But I feel worse this morning about what my silence – yes mine, and yours –cost us last night.

In follow up to my #YesAllWomen post, I also wrote this poem of sorts, because in addition to two grown daughters, I have an eleven-year-old son at home:

#RealMenWait4Yes, Because They Know They Are Worthy of It

          by Kim Jorgensen Gane

 

Rape is when a woman’s right to refuse sex is taken away from her.

Rape is when a woman must pay for her survival with her body.

Rape is when sex is taken whether or not a woman is physically or mentally capable of giving her consent.

Rape is when intimidation is used to compel a woman to engage in sex when she would refuse if she were in an environment where she could do so safely.

We have the right not to feel like it, not to feel like it with you, not to feel like it right now, but maybe later, and we have the right not to feel like it whether or not we’re married to you.

Our bodies are ours alone.

They don’t belong to the boy we laughed at, they don’t belong to the boy who bought us dinner, they don’t belong to a bunch of guys at a party because we’re too drunk to defend ourselves or to articulate no, they don’t belong to our husbands, and they sure as hell don’t belong to our employers.

Men are afraid women will laugh at them[?] Women are afraid men will kill them.

–Margaret  Atwood

It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing. It shouldn’t matter where she is, whether she’s alone, whether it’s dark, whether it’s day, whether it’s night, whether the wind blows.

Men are afraid women will swallow them whole and spit them out like yesterday’s wine. Women are afraid men will beat them, batter them, rape and abuse them and then leave them for dead under the black sky of a cornfield.

Men are afraid of women’s power of want over them. Women are afraid of a man’s physical power and mental capacity to justify taking what he wants and crushing her.

Women are afraid to hurt someone’s feelings, we’re afraid to be impolite, we’re afraid to be called a bitch for saying no politely, and we’re afraid of being followed back to our apartments and attacked by that guy we tried to politely say no thank you to at the bar, but who just couldn’t walk away and take a polite no for an answer.

Men are afraid of being rejected in front of their boys.

Women are afraid of the guy who can’t walk away, who takes what he wants, who just because he gets an erection, feels it’s a woman’s responsibility to help him take care of it.

Men are afraid to be laughed at? Women are afraid to die.

#RealMenWait4Yes, but many, many boys aren’t taught, aren’t nurtured, aren’t loved by real fathers and real mothers into real men.

Real men respect women’s bodies and they respect women’s minds, and they respect a woman’s ability, liberty and right to choose whether or not to allow a man inside of her. And they respect themselves enough to wait, to earn, to deserve it.

#RealMenWait4Yes because they are worth it and they stand in respect and protection of women until they give themselves—breathless, wanton, with or without love, but they give.

The giving is a gift. And a real man believes he’s worthy and she’s worthy of knowing, of wooing, of waiting for the giving.

Real men walk away if she laughs, because they know it’s a reflection on her, not them, and a real man knows he deserves better.

A real man deserves the gift of the real woman who is ready to willingly give herself to him.

Because the giving is so much sweeter than taking.

(source: http://www.blogher.com/realmenwait4yes-because-they-know-they-are-worthy-it)

My fellow Enlightened Middle Moms of daughters and sons: we have important voices and we need to use them. Because we sat passively by and allowed it, last night we were raped at the polls. This morning and every morning that follows we need to tell everyone about it who will listen. Silence equals permission. Not being silent can shut down an aggressor, as told in “The View From the Victim Room,” an amazing Modern Love piece by Courtney Queeney, a woman who refused to be silent after she was beaten by her boyfriend (source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/fashion/the-view-from-the-victim-room-modern-love.html?_r=0). We mustn’t give permission with our silence any longer.

Whether or not you agree with my thoughts and beliefs, I encourage women, the marginalized, and mothers especially, to do the following:

·      Whatever your medium, use your voice

·      Hold your politicians accountable

·      Consider becoming a politician yourself

·      Gather & Check In: Participate in thought-provoking, productive conversations about the state of our country and      
       anything else about which you feel passionate

·      Don’t chicken out!

·      If you are concerned about reproductive rights, consider going public about why

·      And for God’s sake, talk to your kids

·      Talk to groups of kids

·      Talk to and engage each other

Speaking out is how progress occurs. This is how we call out bullies and tell them we're not having it anymore. Talking about rape and how objectification has impacted our own lives is how we teach young people—both boys and girls—that it’s wrong. Open discussions around the dinner table about current events are how we help kids identify the mixed messages with which they are inundated. Rather than preaching at them, asking kids questions and listening with open ears to what they think and sharing both our own experience and our own questions is how we can encourage kids to share and discuss their own uncertainty at home. If we don’t, they’ll figure out how they’re supposed to feel based on what their friends on SnapChat or Instagram have to say on a given day. Communicating is how we elevate awareness and let others know they're not alone if they feel the same, or afford those who disagree the opportunity to give thoughtful rebuttal. And parents, exhibit for your kids that we can disagree respectfully and still be friends. It gives kids power. Power to stand up to a bully or to a rapist, power to vote their truth, power to own how they feel. Power to no longer keep silent.  

Just as spirituality doesn't belong only to the Christians, however, neither does politics or the responsibility for our collective future belong only to those who identify with either the Democrats or the Republicans. And it certainly doesn’t belong only to the menfolk. Every ideology thinks they're the only ones going to Heaven. Despite that, conservatives have successfully banded together as a scary, up and coming political party. In the case of politics, each ideology thinks they’re the only ones with the right answers for our country. When the best, fairest, most progressive answers most certainly share bits and pieces of each one.  

I believe that political ads have grown more distasteful and polarizing to cause those of us who don't identify with either party to turn away and not be active. Maybe their purpose is to compel us to cover our eyes and our ears—to stuff our mouths with our fists and just pick a side, any side.  


Even before 51%: Women and the Future of Politics is released, I'm grateful that being involved with the pending publication has empowered me to discuss things that are important to me, that fall neither to the right nor to the left, or that at any given time fall to both. From many of your nods and responses, public and private, knowing I'm not alone is gratifying. Even disagreements are gratifying (source: http://www.cuteconservative.com/blog/2012/05/03/to-the-enlightened-middle-majority-its-time-to-be-honest/), because it means we're alive and it means we’re having a conversation.

51% validated me as a writer and as an essayist. But I believe the publisher’s decision to wait – one can only assume for Hillary to announce her candidacy for president – based on the goals and import of the content versus the goal of selling the most books, has been a terrible missed opportunity. Whether or not the book ever comes out, or whether I’m still in it after publishing this essay, I still have a voice and a responsibility to speak out and to frickin’ VOTE. We all do, whatever our beliefs.

I may be “just” an Enlightened Middle Mom, but my thoughts matter. I’m fighting for my daughters’ and my son’s and my nieces’ and my someday grandchildren’s future. I’m fighting for girls to believe they have the right to say no, and to make reproductive choices that are right for them if no isn’t heard. Or if we give our yes to the wrong guy and biology wins over pharmaceuticals, or even if we make a youthful mistake. I’m fighting for boys to believe and to understand that they are worthy of waiting for that yes, and to recognize yes as the gift it is.

And yes, as a young unwed mother whose daughter saved her life, and later as a married woman who struggled with six years of infertility, believe me, I recognize that life is a gift. I’m all about life and possible. But the potential for life is not more important than my life. And as I said in, The Enlightened Middle, “…children deserve so much more than to merely exist.” Let’s do a better job of taking care of the mothers and children who are already living and breathing, starving, neglected and abused in our country before we cast stones about when life begins and what every single speck is worth – as long as it’s the right demographic and nobody has to pay for the prevention of its existence, for the termination of it, or for its care and feeding.

Any amount of controversy or flack we must endure will be worthwhile if we can give voice to those who have felt drowned out by the extremists bumping chests and posturing for attention. You know, the ones who are now strutting about the yard crowing.  Even those of us who can’t pick a party deserve to be heard. Because this is still a free country. Or at least, it was.

Instead of rolling our eyes and changing the channel, or worse, waiting breathless and wordless and action-less for our “Savior” to announce, let us pay attention. Let us hold our politicians and ourselves accountable. I have the same right as anyone else to not sit idly by, but rather to pay attention, to care, to question, to express myself and to vote my beliefs. And you do, too – starting today.

I hope to incite folks who are as frustrated and as guilty as I am this morning to never let this happen again. Inform yourselves. Feel responsible. Whatever your beliefs or whatever you think you know, research and question. Look inward and review objectively the state of your own families over the last fifteen years or so, your truth, the state of the world as you know it. If we don’t speak out, we make no progress. Let us uncover our ears and take off our blinders. Let’s forgive ourselves, and rather than keep silent, let’s wear our shame close to our hearts but boldly on our lapels. Because uncovering our mouths and using our keyboards is where our power lies. Let’s get involved. Our hard work and sweat and heartbreak have benefited many who aren't looking out for us in the least. Let us look out for ourselves. Whoever you are, wherever you sit, I invite you to participate in the conversation. All the Enlightened Middle Moms out there need to join in a collective dialogue. We need to share our stories of rape, of abortion, of single motherhood, of all of it, as in my case, and speak openly about why reproductive rights are so essential to our survival, and not only during an election cycle. We have a lot of work to do before 2016 to halt this slip back into black and white era Pleasantville politics, and it needs to start today.  

Hillary doesn’t have an exclusive on leadership. Progress could have been made had we all stood up as leaders. If we continue holding our breaths, we continue to yield ground in the fight for our reproductive rights, for gay rights, in the fight to no longer be marginalized, to no longer be held down by the thumbs of the 1%. Whether the former First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State does or whether she doesn’t become the first Mrs. President, we are, each one of us, responsible for taking the lead in gaining back the ground we’ve lost. Today I believe that Hillary is the most qualified and prepared individual to lead our country. I wish like hell she would thumb her nose at the Democratic Party to run as an Independent. She could be that much stronger with those of us in the middle leading the charge than she will be with us tagging along behind. 

1 Comment

Am I the Only White Person in America Offended by Racism and the Tea Party?

10/18/2013

4 Comments

 
If politics remains a taboo topic in polite conversation, then racism in politics represents the equivalent of suppression, of something whispered behind closed doors in the dim light of one flickering candle.

I must believe an overwhelming majority exists today versus the brave few who, more than one hundred years ago, risked their lives to hide slaves under their floors.  If I didn’t, I couldn't live in this America, amid an undercurrent I can’t escape.  I think about it daily, and only more so during the last several weeks of looming and actual government shutdown.  Grateful for our momentary reprieve, I'm keenly aware that if we allow it, our country will soon be held hostage by insipid and racially motivated bipartisanship all over again.

We’ve come too far to watch our neighbors get away with not-so-thinly-veiled racism that has occupied the news over the last several years, certainly that which cloaked the recent government shutdown.  It isn’t acceptable in polite society, or in any society.  We are all human beings who must coexist on this planet.  I guess this is where Enlightened Middle Mom falls to the liberal side of things.  I don’t care what consensual adults do with one another in their bedrooms.  I want everyone who inhabits this earth to feel like they have as much right as I do to be here, certainly the same opportunity to be a school teacher, police officer or even president.  The hardworking middle deserves to be rewarded every bit as much as the entitled few.

My fear is that we haven’t seen anything yet.  If we continue to rubber-stamp this attitude, I fear a woman president will be subject to even more hatred and division than we’ve seen over President Obama’s terms thus far.  I saw hate delivered to the beautiful and deserving Nina Davuluri, as she was crowned Miss America.  I saw loathing and rape threats thrust at Lindy West, recipient of the Women’s Media Center’s Social Media Award in New York this month, because:
  “When Lindy spoke up to explain to comedians why their jokes about rape might not always be so funny, she received rape threats just for voicing her opinion on the subject,” [Jane Fonda, two-time Academy® Award-winning actress, humanitarian, activist and Co-Founder of The Women’s Media Center] said [upon presenting the award]. “Lucky for us and for everyone, Lindy hasn’t let the negativity stop her from being funny, smart and insightful about comedy, media and everything else.”
Freedom of speech extends to everyone, even those in possession of phones with higher IQs than their own.  The freedom to write about what we feel, to start and contribute to important conversations is an American constitution on which I place tremendous value.  And it’s more accessible than ever to anyone and everyone with a computer or a phone.  But allowing discrimination and hatred toward blacks, toward homosexuals, toward women of all kinds to pass without calling it out, is deeply troubling.  It’s no different than bullying that goes unchecked on the no-man’s-land of playgrounds and social media screens across America.  Just as we must encourage our children to stand up for victims when they witness bullying, to prompt the vast majority of others who find themselves ambivalent in that middle place to tug on a shirtsleeve and say, “Hey, not cool, man.  Let’s go,” we must set an example that calls out those who speak racism and hate, even when they do so in code or in microblog.  

Racism is something we all must check within ourselves.  Depending upon our upbringing or on the region in which we’re raised, conquering our fear and inherent tendencies toward racism or hatred might be nonexistent or it might take great effort.  It is an endeavor worthy of our sincerest efforts, more than perhaps any other.  

Not talking about what we’ve witnessed over the last several years won't get us anywhere.  Our silence won't help the future of minorities and women in politics.  Platitudes won’t tell the Tea Party that their thinly veiled propaganda absolutely will not be tolerated come the next round of budget votes.  We’ve bought a paltry few weeks before we once again endure the same threat to our economy and our place in the world.  

Those of us in the Enlightened Middle Majority might not be perfect, we might be works in progress where our own attitudes and mores are concerned, but we need to trust our inner voices and rumble a lot louder if we hope to further progress.  We can't keep holding our breaths waiting for the next guy to stop the ruckus.  Together with the likes of Senator John McCain, the “Sister Senators” and the rest of the bipartisan coalition that banded together in the interest of ever elusive progress, it will be up to the moderates, our voices and our midterm votes to prevent future economic catastrophes like the recent shutdown we witnessed.  I don’t know about your family, but mine can’t take much more irrepressible division.  

We have it on good authority there are more of us who have had enough than there are of them. 
4 Comments

There IS an Enlightened Middle Majority and Maybe I Should Have Googled It

10/1/2013

6 Comments

 
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It is midnight, with a looming government shutdown, and we are at an impasse over needed but flawed Healthcare Reform.

It seems like the appropriate time to address a response to my “Enlightened Middle Majority” post that I was shocked to find the week before I attended BlogHer’13 as a Voices of the Year Honoree in the op-ed category for precisely the post in question.  I deeply wished I’d Googled “Enlightened Middle Majority” long before the night I did so as a lazy way to link to my post.  I had to read Dani’s post of The Cute Conservative twice (maybe thrice), because the first time all I kept thinking was, "She said I'm a gifted writer!"  She called for me to be honest, so this is me, being honest:  Dani describes herself as a “bona-fide journalist,” who likely has a college education, and I'm *just* a mom, so I confess I was deeply honored by her assessment.

In light of recent events, I submit to Dani, however adorable, generous and gifted a writer she may be, that it is precisely the GOP’s denial of the existence of the Enlightened Middle Majority that cost them the last two elections. 

It is the failure to acknowledge that we are a powerful force that may well lose both the Republicans and the Democrats the next one.  If “the sides” continue to devalue and ignore us, and continue the unreasonable, childish, divisive nonsense of President Obama’s reign (and I include him in that assessment—we did not vote him King and high ruler, we voted for him to represent we, the people), future elections could be unwinnable by either side.  

AUTHOR UPDATE 10/15/13:  And apparently it's something we're talking about.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I believe 2016 is the year a woman can not only win, but it might be the year she should run as an independent [thinker].  Too many of us only continue to become more disillusioned with and disappointed in anything the Republicans or the Democrats traditionally represent.  Both sides need a time-out equally, because together they have been completely self-serving and ineffective and they’ve collectively left our country even more disabled than it was post-Bush.  

I am the girl who regularly felt like the only conservative in the room when she lived in California, and who often feels like the only liberal in existence back in her hometown.  I once balked at the idea of an open political debate, but I’m always free to vote my conscience once I close that proverbial curtain.   I remain frustrated and pissed off, and come time to vote again, I will remember, and my keyboard will continue to ring loud and clear.

This good, God-loving girl is deeply grateful to have come out of a public school system that had a fantastic English department, from which I actually managed to learn, despite not doing a lick of homework.  Had I done some of it, had I taken advantage of the one community college opportunity I did have, but walked away from because all I wanted to do was get out of Dodge and away from my stigmatized family, I often wonder what I might have been capable of, or had the confidence to purse, much earlier in life.  I couldn’t get back to Dodge fast enough, and my son will likely be a 4th generation graduate from that same public school.  Due to cuts in education and the stresses to the system I described in my “Enlightened Middle Majority” post, he won't likely receive the same preparation for written communication that I enjoyed despite myself.  I don’t know how colleges will decide whether or not he deserves to attend when this year his school has eliminated grades in favor of rubrics and matrixes and individual ”growth” assessments.  I guess it’ll be determined exclusively by who is lucky enough to afford it, which is looking like an only scarier prospect by then.  We still haven’t been able to help our second grown daughter.

I respect the position the Cute Conservative holds dear that comes from her religious upbringing, and would equally enjoy sharing a happy hour barstool and a couple hours of lively debate with her.  As long as we establish that being more pious doesn’t make her more deserving of God’s love than me, and it doesn’t mean she believes in God *more* than I do…only that she believes in a building and in a book, and in her interpretation of God, or the Universe, or whatever.  What I hoped to express in my post, something on which I think we agree, is that we can both live in this world, love God (or not) and love our country; neither of us any more or any less deserving of representation than the other.  

I am a complex creature.  We are all complex creatures.  For any number of reasons, many of us hold positions and beliefs that can be claimed by either “side” at any given time, but to answer her question, yes, I am passionate about the things in which I believe, just like she is.  

My frustration remains with the loudest voices being those to the farthest of any side, via the sensationalism that our media perpetuates for ratings.  Most importantly, from my first featured post, “My Friends Think I’m the Only Liberal They Know:  I Don’t Know What I Am,” “I’m deeply concerned about my ability to determine what the truth really is and to whom I should listen. If the Republicans are full of crap, and the Democrats are full of crap, and the media is full of crap, where in the world does the truth lie, and who the hell is shoveling it?”  (And who the hell knew anyone would read it?!)

Dani asked whether or not I am opposed to drilling for new oil.  I was opposed to and offended by the ridicule and Rudy Giuliani’s offish behavior that lead to the chant at the 2012 RNC that diminished something important to me—which lead me to feel that they could never hear me, would never listen.  

I presume I am like the vast majority of Americans, who are in favor of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but I’m not willing to passively drink the drill-baby-drill Kool-Aid.  I am fully aware that the oil lobby pushes something we can probably most all agree on as a divisive issue meant to distract from our efforts toward biofuels, conservation and green jobs.  Hello.  They’re jobs.  And they’re not fracking up our earth.  To be fair, here is an excellent article on “The Truth About Fracking.”  As long as the “gassholes,” as Kevin refers to the frackers, are required to handle the waste water with better than best practices as some of the natural gas companies are forward-thinking enough to do, I’m becoming open-minded, and I most assuredly don’t want the feds fracking up the issue.  I’m from Michigan, heart of the Great Lakes, and I don’t believe it belongs here, where companies may or may not feel compelled to protect the precious resource the greatest collection of fresh water is to the entire country.  And I wonder often how green jobs could possibly be a bad thing, except for the fact that they don’t make the already most profitable industry in the world more money (and incidentally, according to Kevin, neither does fracking, so who really are the “gassholes” drilling up that debate)? 

Dani responded to the issue of abortion in her post, so here we go yet again.  And honestly, her implying that perhaps I’m less worthy of God’s love because of the position on abortion I share with many women and men, is the only problem I had with her otherwise thoughtful rebuttal.  

I try not to be a sheep.  I try to think and reason and live my life with awareness.  In the comments of “My Friends Think,” I said, “Why must everything be so black and white?  Liberal vs. conservative, welfare vs. being cut off completely, Christian men vs. "all" women.  Of course I understand that [it isn’t really men against women, but because we mostly hear from men on political issues,] liberals behave like they can swing the women's vote by saying conservatives are taking away abortion, and conservatives try to keep everyone in their corner by saying, ‘Watch out!  Pretty soon every woman will be entitled to a free abortion and she'll be doing it every other month because she'll be using it as birth control and you'll have to pay for it!’  Geez!  Can we just STOP already?”  And then in the comments for “Enlightened Middle,” I said, “But here we are getting mired in the issue of abortion once again [and again, and again].  We must ask ourselves, who benefits from constantly pushing the issue back in our faces?  Take abortion off the damn table.  Then see what happens, then see what we talk about and what, as a nation, we can accomplish.”  

Because--let me annunciate this very clearly so we can all understand, girls and boys--abortion was debated and decided, it’s an amendment to the constitution.  My life is not less important than the potential for life, and Christians simply don’t have the right to make that decision for me or for my daughters or for my nieces, based on their book’s and their place of worship’s religious morality, because not everyone shares it (I so wanted to capitalize that).  And who says their morality is best—oh, I know they do, loudly, even as funding that feeds many children and mothers that already live and breathe on this earth is again and again threatened.  None of us will really know until we get *up there,* if there is an up there, which I happen to believe there is.  I happen to believe that I will be judged as an imperfect human being that was created in his image on my life as a whole, not on one high moral position on this one issue, or even whether or not I, myself had an abortion.  

It might surprise Dani to know that I was once a thoughtful, smart, capable Midwestern girl with a good Christian upbringing—and then my Christian family fell apart and the bottom fell out.  I was raised singing in my church my whole childhood.  My grandmother held court in the front pew every Sunday, and was one of the driving forces that built the church of my youth.  She was also one scrappy lady.  When I became a single mother at twenty, my church had nothing to offer me.  No compassion or empathy was bestowed by anyone, except my grandmother.  She had forced her eldest daughter to give up a child for adoption.  She was glad that things were different for me—that I had a choice.  While my church may have smited me, this didn’t stop me from believing in God, and in fact, were it not for my strong belief in God, neither my daughter nor I would be alive today.  I hope I have taught my children to appreciate God in the world around them; to be kind, to be respectful of others, and especially to honor themselves, because I didn’t honor myself for many years.  

My first child saved me from myself and put me back on track and I have always put all of my children first.  But my life and everything I believed in, including myself and my Christian upbringing, was absolutely shaken for a long while.  I could never presume to make such a choice for any other woman.  And make no mistake; it is an issue of supreme importance to women, because it is about our bodies, our business, it is our lives that are changed and impacted most by choosing whether and when to have children.  Women and children live in poverty in vastly greater numbers than men, which has been the case all over the world and throughout history.

“The Church” is an EXclusive club rather than an INclusive one:  follow their doctrines; look alike, think alike, or risk being ostracized if you’re different or if you fall.  Home schooling is a largely Christian choice because it blocks perceived liberal teachers from the opportunity to infect Christian children with their wacky views.  Then they wonder what went wrong when a *good* Christian girl leaves the baby she didn’t understand she was having to die in a dumpster because she wasn’t taught sex education.   How many good Christian girls have crossed state or county lines to have secret abortions, and how many good Christian boys have paid for them?  Look at the devastating rate of suicide when, God-forbid, a promising Christian boy or girl turns out to be gay. 

Above all, I stand by my call for more common sense than I perceive here in politics and for peaceful, respectful discourse like I pray I’m delivering, to replace posturing and bullying, particularly when so much of that is greed-based.  That’s my problem with the whole system…perhaps it isn’t as much the two parties, as it is the lobbies that have made it nearly impossible to gauge what’s truly best for our country.  

We are a nation of hungry and seemingly no one has enough.  It’s all about beating the other guy and grabbing the *most* market share, and if possible, kicking the other guy completely out of the sandbox.  So yeah, I’m a let’s share the sandbox kind of girl, but I don’t think that’s being weak.  I think it’s being sensible.  There truly is enough sand for us all, but we need to position ourselves properly to claim our share of it.  I don’t need a bigger share than the next guy…I just need enough to take care of my family—which right now is a pretty scary proposition with all four of us adults currently unemployed.  I don’t think the next guy should have to give me some of his if I haven’t worked for it, but neither do I think he should be allowed to hurt others to get his.  Sadly, that’s precisely what goes on in the name of progress.  People are being hurt.  Our country is being hurt.  

Here’s another example about which I’m pretty passionate:  Infertility means that our species can’t reproduce, which ultimately equals extinction.  In recent years when we do manage to reproduce, 1 in 75 children between the ages of 6 and 17 present with some form of neurological deficit (encephalopathy, aka “autism”).  According to the people that live with them and know them best of all, the vast majority of children considered on the autism spectrum are not born that way; something in our society makes them that way.  I see a big problem there, and it’s a problem that isn’t being acknowledged by the powers that be, or adequately addressed with healthcare reform.  Look at how our system is taxed by aging and retiring Baby Boomers and be afraid, because we haven’t seen anything yet.  I live in a small town, there are far more rest homes here than it seems our small area should need.  When so many children become adults who can’t hold jobs, who tax the system further, whose parents are financially wiped out and completely used up from caring for them their entire lives, when marriages are further stressed and broken because of it…we don’t have a huge problem brewing, it’s here.  Where’s the acknowledgement?  Where’s the accountability?  

Big Changes need to occur where Big Food and Big Pharma and their cohabitation is concerned (ie, Food and Drug should not be one entity), and I don’t see that happening fast enough, because not enough people are talking about it, are even aware of it, and many still think it doesn’t apply to them.  

I want Big Food and Big Pharma held accountable for the toxic load of crap they have together foisted on our society, on women’s reproductive organs, and on our ever-increasingly damaged children.  I want to hear more people screaming about it in the streets, more parents crying foul and advocating for their broken children.  But many of them are too damn tired, and many others aren’t quite sure they know what they know because they’re bullied and badgered or bribed with coupons and left to feel inept, unworthy and guilty by judgy doctors and other parents and *studies* that are sponsored by government and Big Pharma.  The same guilty that made my Christian upbringing sensibility feel that maybe I deserved infertility.  I didn’t .  No one deserves infertility.  It is merely another condition of our broken society that needs healing, and my son is here to tell you that Obamacare isn’t the answer.  

I am in favor of further examination of healthcare reform before needed changes are adopted, for starters, because as it sits now, I feel it aims to take away my choices as a parent and as an American.  The math is beyond flawed when I will be fined because I can’t afford to purchase insurance.  I don’t even know what that makes me, besides pissed off and disappointed…besides vocal and willing to stand up now and be heard and my numbers counted because that’s where I think the Enlightened Middle Majority comes in.  Many of the answers aren’t black and white where issues like the environment and the future of our children that are already walking on this earth are concerned; they aren’t merely Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Christian, man or woman—they are American--which leaves us in a big fat crap shoot where tomorrow and the next election is concerned.   Enlightened Middle Majority to me means that with various issues I could be found leaning to either side of the aisle, that I can’t identify with one or the other, because, just like a marriage or a good debate, neither party can possibly be right all the time...and when they only want what they want when they want it, regardless of what’s truly right for America, it’s time for all the mommas of the world, Dani (mother or not) and me included, to deliver a serious time out to determine where in the middle the truth lies.

Large corporations (too many of them foreign-owned) are calling the shots and they’re calling them based entirely on greed and an agenda to get their guy elected.  Both “sides” are punishing Americans when things don’t go their way.  That’s a scary, scary situation in my book, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, and that’s precisely where the Enlightened Middle Majority will no longer passively graze, oblivious.  We need to come together and be heard and be willing to fight in the most sensible and respectful and aware of ways--for America.
6 Comments

Hope and Homework, Today Anyway

2/14/2013

1 Comment

 
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He won't be nine much longer, this boy of mine who almost wasn't.  And nine is pretty terrific, and tough, all at the same time.

The past couple weeks have brought us to a crossroads with school work, in this, his first year of real grades.  This semester isn't going to look good.  But today?  Today was great! 

He burst into my arms the moment he reached the car.  I knew it was an exceptionally good day, because I'd received an email from his teacher.  "Mom!  I got to get off addition for Math Center and do multiplication and I PASSED!"  Yes, my fourth grader was stuck on the same (still) addition sheet for WEEKS, unable to finish the last three problems in the arbitrary two minutes.  My boy who has a little hitch in his brain body connection and who lets stuff get to him, like timed tests, like boys who are bullies, like girls who are "over" him because sometimes he gets stuck and he just "can't" get it. 

This is the same boy who is teaching others in his class to do long division, because that he gets.  Long division, he loves.  Multiplication, today, he loves.  Addition, not so much.  Ever. 

This is the same boy I reminded today how his teacher last year believed in him, and genuinely liked him, and who thought he was an amazing kid.  His teacher this year believes in him, genuinely likes him, and thinks he is an amazing kid.  I reminded my boy today that he has an amazing brain that is going to do amazing things someday; a brain that is already doing amazing things like long division.

He looked away, and swiped at his eyes.  He swiped at his eyes again, and then rubbed them vigorously. 

"Buddy?  What's the matter?"

"Sometimes I'm just so happy I have tears."

I swiped at my own eyes, so I could see the road before us, "You make me so happy that I have tears, too."

1 Comment

BULLY and Society's Conundrum

3/25/2012

5 Comments

 
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My ADD brain is going in so many directions, it’s difficult for me to filter, and I’m regularly guilty of not paying attention to things until they directly affect me.  Suddenly when I think in terms of my own children possibly enduring any pain or struggles in life, I wake up and smell the French roast and maybe even take a stand.  I’m compelled now to pay close attention to a topic of great importance to every parent with kids in school, and to try to get you to do the same.

 
If, like me, you thought bullying wasn’t a topic that required immediate discussion in your house, watch this clip from Ellen, in which she interviews one of the families featured in the controversial film BULLY.  David and Tina Long lost their eleven year old son, Tyler, to suicide as a result of enduring four years of bullying by his peers.  The makers of this film and a great many supporters tried unsuccessfully to get the R rating it earned, due to the f-word being used to pointedly depict the violence that too often occurs while our kids are at school, changed to PG-13 so it’s target audience of middle and high school students and their parents would be more likely to see it.  The segment states that "13,000,000 of our children are bullied every day, and 3,000,000 of them end up staying home each month because they can’t face what happens at school."  

Whether you see your child as potentially one extreme or the other, or comfortably in-between --which many of us know from personal experience is an illusion that can change rapidly with the breath of a rumor about being different or weak in any way-- will you take him or her to see BULLY, despite its R rating?  How about The Hunger Games?  Did you or will you take your children or allow them to see the larger than life version of the hugely popular book that depicts children fighting for their survival to the death, in only the most PG-13 way?  Common Sense Media gives both movies the nod for age 13, and I pray that parents won’t let BULLY’s rating stop them from investing in another worthy trip to the movies when it is released, Friday, March 30.

Times are hard.  If we want to go to movies, buy great books and feed those ravenous little mouths, nasty though they may occasionally be, we parents have to work.  I might one day have to send my kid to school on the bus, or allow him to walk home from school alone where I am powerless to protect him.  Every day, I must send him out onto the playgrounds and into the school halls of the world, and I can’t be there.  I can’t be there to teach him to respect and have empathy for his peers, and I can’t be there to help him deal with it when he becomes the outlet for some Brutus’s or Lucy Van Pelt’s frustration, as happened to my son last week.  That’s likely what made me pay attention, if I’m a little late to the swing set.  And I can’t be there every moment to help him know what to do if he’s caught in the middle.

Most of the time, my family could probably be described as in that quiet little section between the bullies and the bullied, which is likely true of  the majority of us.  We may enjoy certain anonymity because we go through life being what society considers fairly normal.  Because of that, I may have deluded myself into thinking that such a topic wasn’t important to address with my child.  Or maybe I felt I could address it in the future, because until last week chances seemed good that we wouldn’t be directly affected by such a problem.  But maybe those of us in-between the victims and the bullies, those of us in the majority, are exactly the ones who need to pay attention.  There is power in numbers, and those of us in the middle are the very ones it will take to stand together and put an end to bullying in our children’s schools and in our communities.  What did they do in the old west, when a really bad guy was tormenting a town?  They gathered a posse to go after him and his gang.  Why?  Because there is strength in numbers. 

                Posse: Origin: 1575–85;  < Medieval Latin posse  power, force, noun use of L infinitive: to be able, have     power, equivalent to pot-  ( see potent) + -se  infinitive suffix

According to a study referenced here by WebMD, brutality toward one’s peers is often linked with an atmosphere of brutality or abuse at home.  I’m probably also guilty of going through life with blinders on.  Whether I’m shocked to hear about a victim acting out in violence or taking his/her own life, or absolutely floored one day when another parent tells me that my child is the potential bully, I tend to believe it couldn’t possibly happen in our school; to my child.  School administrators are in a difficult position, and have dealt with these issues for years.  But schools are changing rapidly and the rate of children with Asberger’s, ADD, ADHD, learning disabilities and even vast socioeconomic difference within one school system is rising astronomically.  These days, one in 100 kids is officially diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  These kids are in mainstream schools all over the country, and it is they who are most often the victims of bullying. 

These kids have a purpose, an important place in society.  According to Dr. Temple Grandin, one of the foremost authorities on autism and herself autistic, every kid, despite their particular challenges or differences, deserves the opportunity to figure out at what he or she excels, just as much as the “perfect” child does.  There is a potential for greatness in these kids, just as there is in anyone else’s.

In her talk for Ted.com, Dr. Grandin says, “The world needs all kinds of minds,” and the ones with low level forms of autism, like Asperger’s which Tyler Long had, are the future scientists, engineers, artists and visionaries of our society.  She says, “We need to help students who have unique minds to be successful,” and I couldn’t agree more.  Because there is also the potential that the once upon a time high school jock will end up delivering beer for a living. 

I often wonder if there is any hope that those who are doing the bullying might get worthwhile guidance from their parents, when bullies are often victims or observers of bullying in their own homes.  And I worry that popular media is contributing to a cruel pattern when kids see images shouting at them that it’s cool to be mean or to be like the Kardashians or the Jersey Shore characters or they have no worth.  Such repetitive images can drown out anything good their parents might have told them from the time they were young, and can create in children more feelings of entitlement and visions of grandeur, and lead them to think they are cooler and more desirable when they’re puffed up and beating down someone younger and smaller than them or worse, ganging up on another child. They might see themselves as somehow better and more deserving of a place in this world, and kids who are different don’t deserve to breathe.  It’s difficult to imagine that a child might think it’s acceptable to tell another child to hang himself, or shoot himself or believe in any reality that it would be OK for his or her parents if a child did what they’ve suggested over and over again, every day he or she goes to school.  We hear something long enough and we begin to believe it.  I’ve heard it from my grown daughters time and again, kids think their parents have to love them, and they view school as the reality of what the rest of the world until the end of time will see in them.  They can only see a future of worthlessness.   

Teaching empathy for kids who might be viewed by my son and his peers as imperfect will start in our own home, but that might not be enough.  Sadly not all parents are capable of it, and I can’t teach the neighborhood mean girl to have empathy and treat others with respect when her mean mommy blogger is leading by that unfortunate example.  I’ve been yelled at by parents on the sidelines when I’m volunteering my time to teach their children, and I’ve heard those same parents yell at children who blow a pitch or miss a catch. 

My son will be nine this week, and I will be going to see BULLY myself to determine whether it’s appropriate for his age and sensitivity level.  Either way, it will become a regular discussion point in our house.  I will strive to teach my son that there is strength in being comfortably in the middle, and that standing by is just as bad as participating.  My child must become part of the solution, to encourage others like him to band together to support the kid who is bullied, and redirect and counsel the kid doing the bullying, because as any parent knows, children’s peers do have a profound impact on them.  Prevention can be something as small as grabbing a friend by the shirt sleeve and pulling them away saying, “Man, not cool.”  And it can certainly begin with leading by example.

Being kind to someone doesn’t make us weak, it makes us powerful.  It makes us admirable.  It makes us likeable and someone who earns the right to be looked up to, not someone who is entitled to it by sheer brutality or athletic prowess.  It’s important that I set a good example and teach my child to treat others with empathy, kindness and at least respect if for no other reason than otherwise he might one day find himself sitting in a low chair across a very large desk from someone he once bullied in school.  That Sir or Madam who was once a geek or a nerd who didn’t “deserve to breathe,” might just find the strength to make use of the hardship he delivered to become the next Steve Jobs or Temple Grandin. 

I wonder in the very near future whether our changing system will leave room for programs like gym class, the arts, and something so important, so essential to our development as human beings, like empathy.  I, for one, certainly hope so, and I hope that BULLY can be the start.


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    Kim Jorgensen Gane

    Author|Award-Winning Essayist|Freelance CommercialWriter|GANE
    Empowered Wellness Advocate, Facilitator, Speaker

    Kim is a freelance writer, living and working on Michigan’s sunset coast with her husband, youngest son, a standard poodle and a gecko. She’s been every-mom, raising two generations of kids over twenty-seven years. Kim writes on a variety of topics including parenting  through midlife crisis, infertility, health and wellness, personal empowerment, politics, and about anything else that interests her, including flash fiction and her novel in progress, Bluebirds.  Oh, and this happened!

    Kim was selected as a BlogHer '13 Voices of the Year Honoree in the Op Ed category for this post, an excerpt of which has been adapted for inclusion in the book, 51%: Women and the Future of Politics, to be released late 2014.  Visit her Wordpress About page to see her CV.
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*GANEPossible.com is an anecdotal website and in no way intends to diagnose, treat, prevent or otherwise influence the medical decisions of its readers. I am not a doctor, I do not recommend going off prescribed medications without the advice and approval of a qualified practitioner, and I do not recommend changing your diet or your exercise routine without first consulting your doctor. These are merely my life experiences, and what has and hasn't worked for me and my family. You must be your own best medical advocate and that of your children, and seek to find the practitioner with whom you have the best rapport and in whose advice and care you can entrust your health and medical decisions.


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