"Oh earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you!"

I took a lot of time off the last week.

With P out of town, I hunkered down for the weekend and watched hours and hours of Netflix. I took naps. After my bad knee gave out on me Saturday, I even had a reason!

The outside-my-body-voice was monitoring the situation, asking if I was sliding back into a major depressive episode. I have felt nostalgic and a bit sad the past couple of weeks. Friends in my hometown are having babies, buying homes, and I want to be there for those things. I've had many days where all I can think is that I need my mom's advice. The winter is coming, and I am hoping that my internship will let me pick up more hours when the semester ends, as I can't have a month of down time without spiraling.

Am I already spiraling?

What I've learned about depression is that you have to be ever-vigilant. And I haven't been exercising, really, which is key for my mental health. And I've spent a lot of time alone. An alcoholic does not go into bars, if they want to remain sober. Similarly, I need to commit to stay ahead of the spiral.

I think I needed this weekend off before the real craziness of the semester hits me. But then sometimes I wonder if I am just lazy. Or maybe I will always struggle with depression. And it's scary because I see evidence throughout my life, starting around age 6, that this is the case. But when I have good stretches, it's easy to think it's over. But I have to believe that it never will be, in order to hold it at bay. It's a strange thought experiment.

I've been weighing a big decision heavily during this weekend of solitude. I keep thinking, "Once I decide, then I'll be happy." But I know that isn't true. I think of my clients, refugees, who can't do much to change their circumstances. And yet, they find a way to rebuild. And my situation is nowhere as precarious and traumatic as theirs. I need to find a way to be happy today. And I backslid this past week.

At the end of one of my favorite plays, Our Town, Emily asks, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" The answer, actually, is tattooed on my arm. This struggle to appreciate the present has been a constant for me. My arm, and Thornton Wilder, respond to Emily with: "The saints and poets, maybe--they do some."

I used to think that depression meant they you could not "realize life." But now I think that maybe, we realize it too much. Maybe that's the trouble.

Choosing my Choice: Explaining Women, the Wage Gap, and Passion

This weekend, known feminist rabble-rouser Hanna Rosin published an article on Slate declaring that the gender pay gap we all fret about is, actually, not real. My husband sent me the link thinking I was going to lose my mind. But really, as soon as I saw the piece title, I thought "I bet I know where she's going."

Rosin makes use of lit reviews and analysis of the information that conjured the statistic that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. When controlled for numbers of hours worked, age, education, and union affiliation however, that number broke down. Turns out, women aren't doing so badly when all factors are controlled. While we're not at 100%, we're at about 91%. In fact, women have been becoming more educated than their male counterparts for a while now. There is mostly good news here. But what about those 9 percentage points?

"The big differences are in occupation and industry. Women congregate in different professions than men do, and the largely male professions tend to be higher-paying," Rosin aptly explains.

This research, and Rosin's wrestling with it, perhaps unsurprisingly resonated with this social worker and freelance writer. I have the kind of career that illicits comments such as, "Well, you don't get into that for the money" or "Bless your heart. We need people like you." If I get the feeling that the person commenting has the wrong idea about social work, I've been known to respond, "No, I think you misunderstood me. I'm not a volunteer. I am educated at the Master level and work in a licensed profession. I am trained to work in politics and policy, as a resource broker for others, and in psychotherapy and mental health diagnostics." I find that this is news to most people. 

But to Rosin's point, I think the comment, "We need people like you" is particularly interesting. Why, exactly, are most people "like me" also women? I have attended task forces, coalitions, and summits of mental health professionals to find that all the social workers are women, while the psychologists are usually about evenly split, but the psychiatrists are mostly all men. As the pay scale rises, the number of women drops. Most teachers? Women. Childcare providers, domestic employees, housekeeping staff? You guessed it.

Last week, a blog post, "Just a Nurse," made the rounds on social media. The writer reflects on her place in the medical community, and the credibility she garners. When asked "Are you a doctor?" she would reply, "No, just a nurse." But then the writer carefully considers her training, her subsequent knowledge set, and her daily work. 

" I am often in a room with a small child on a ventilator, multiple intravenous medications infusing through central lines keeping the vascular system constricted or dilated. I monitor blood gases and adjust ventilator settings accordingly. If the blood pressure goes too high I adjust the medications related to these values. I keep my patient adequately sedated and paralyzed, for their safety, without over medicating them. It is often my responsibility to determine this balance."

No "just" about that to me. 

If women are valued primarily as nurturers in our cultural context, it isn't shocking that some of us gravitate to and feel more naturally talented in caretaking roles. And, given that we are the bodies that can house new life, and feed new life for months after birth, our careers often take a different trajectory than those of men. And I don't think any of these are the problem. The problem is that word: just. You just gestated new life, and fed it with your own body? You just control a room of 30 first graders all day, despite their various behavior problems, learning disabilities, and unknown family life? You just find ways for refugees to obtain housing, English language skills, employment, and medical care four months after they land in the States? 

Put that way, it sounds pretty ridiculous.

This is part professional identity and pride, yes. It's also part of the work still left for the feminist movement. And just as past feminist gains have been good for everyone, regardless of gender, changing the deeply ingrained value structure placed on our professions will raise status , wages, and benefits for the men performing this jobs as well. 

Rosin ends her article by saying, "you have to leave room at least for the option of choice—that women just don’t want to work the same way men do." I believe that extends to any of us who took a career knowing we would not be buying a lakehouse with our Christmas bonus. We have to redefine success to mean fulfillment.

Self care for social workers and all

One of the first pieces of jargon I learned in the social work world was "self care."

"If you can't take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of your clients?" Indeed. Absolutely. I'm with you. The insistence on it, however, leads me to believe that it's often forgotten in practice. That maybe professors of social work are hoping the next generation does better with this.

I have to be on campus three days a week. Given that this is only the second week of class and we also had Labor Day in there, I'm not too busy yet. I slept in until 9am, then laced up my sneakers and leashed up the dog. A Chicagoan for nearly a decade, I know that the likes of this mild sunny September morning will soon be gone to winter's harsh wind. I poked my head in my room mate's bedroom and asked him to walk to the bird sanctuary with us. We talked as my dog sniffed and munched on grass, and listened to birds tweet and skip among the wildflowers.

When we got home, I got to work in the kitchen. For about an hour, I sang along to Annie Lennox and prepared a healthy soup to eat off of the next few days. I felt happy. I thought about the packaged processed frozen food I used to eat when I was single, how I let P take over the cooking when we met, and how I eventually taught myself. I thought about how my mother never really taught me, or seemed to get joy out of it the way my family does now. As I tasted at various stages of progress, I tried to imagine what P would like or dislike about it. I thought about what friends I might invite over who would love this soup. I thought about the farmer's market trip to procure the kale I was ripping, and I thought that it would be so nice to share a meal I made with my mother. I thought about how shocked she would be.

I was, simply, enjoying myself. Sure, preparing food for my family is productive. Walking the dog is necessary. But today, I decided to do them with grace. With joy.

It occurred to me that teaching self care to social workers isn't enough--that maybe if we taught everyone self care, we wouldn't need as many social workers. How healing it is for me to spend a Sunday afternoon, as I did last weekend, canning 12 pints of marinara sauce with friends? It does more for my mental health than scrutinizing labels of jarred sauce at the store and finally deciding on the one with the least sugar and preservatives. I have had many mornings before, and will have more ahead, where all I have time to do is run my dog out long enough for him to do the necessary business, and then drag him back upstairs so I can leave. When we can enjoy the day, we should.

City life has made me live in fast forward. The rhythm of the city sort of determines it. And I have to fight against the impulse to wake up early and run on the eliptical in the dark workout room of our building, staring at a blank wall. To then run upstairs, grab a quick shower, run the dog outside, run him back, run to my to-do list. Instead, I walked a few miles, staring at whatever beauty caught my eye. I let my dog lead. We meandered home and I made soup and sang loudly. And I feel whole. How many of us don't feel whole? It seems that whenever someone shares that they enjoyed some leisure time it's met with "Must be nice!" or some other comment that basically means: That doesn't count. If you're not working hard, you're being lazy. But I refuse to feel guilt about enjoying life. I refuse to be made to feel less than when, actually, I am whole.

Urban Violence, Domestic Violence, and Vicarious Trauma: Part I

I've been thinking about violence a lot lately. As a social worker, as a Chicagoan, as a feminist.

Last week, I was in Indianapolis, Indiana, my hometown, visiting friends. Monday, my best friend, husband, and I venture to south central Indiana and spent the afternoon at Oliver Winery.

photo credit: www.in.gov

I sat in the sun and laughed with my best friend and my husband. The next day, we journeyed home to Chicago. And the first headline I read when I fired up the Chicago Tribune was that within walking distance of my home, a gang shooting has claimed one life and critically injured four while I was listening to a waterfall and eating cheese. I don't often walk that intersection, and actually even try to avoid it as a bus route, because it's pretty dicey. So it sort of feels removed. But it is also, in actuality, walking distance from me, one el stop north of my el stop, and in my zip code. 

We bought our current home in March of last year, so almost a year and half ago. In that time, there have only been three shootings on blocks that I actually frequent: blocks I take on my daily commute, to walk my dog, to my local coffeehouse. And I realized recently that saying "only three shootings" makes a lot of sense in Chicago where some neighborhoods experience daily violence, but to utter those phrase in south central Indiana, or even Indianapolis proper, sounds ludicrous. Indy of course has an inner-city, and the same problems any major city faces. But the body count in Chicago is unrivaled. We are now known nationally for this. And when I walk to Montrose Harbor and in one glance can see Lake Michigan stretching out like a great ocean to the horizon, a sandy beach of picnics, a bird sanctuary, and the gleaming skyline in the distance, I can almost forget that just miles away, some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation exist. And in the same zip code as this inspiring view that fills me with emotions every single time, gang shootings are perhaps not as regular, but still not unheard of. 

photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org

Nothing illustrates our city's violence problem better than the documentary, The Interrupters. The film follows CeaseFire, an organization operating in the most violent areas of the city. Violence Interrupters mediate potential incidences of violence. If a shooting has taken place, the Interrupters try to stop the retaliative violence that will undoubtedly occur. Most of the Interrupters are men and were formerly gang members, or have served time for violent crimes. They understand why the violence happens, and they are respected by those perpetuating the violent cycle. The documentary is one of my favorites. I've made donations to their organization since, and have real respect for all the men and women who work to quell some of the violence in my city.

Well, in May, one of CeaseFire's founder, Tio Hardiman, was arrested on domestic violence charges.

Hardiman was convicted of beating his wife, Allison, though she dropped the prosecution of these charges in July. He was also convicted of domestic violence against his ex-wife in 1999. Ceasefire let him go after this recent conviction, which I applaud. 

This is problematic for the obvious, right? Anti-violence activist is violent. I've been mulling this all summer. And it makes me physically ill. I re-watched The Interrupters this week, and hearing Hardiman talk about violence in his community was so difficult, knowing that he has also been a perpetrator of violence, and recently. Is violence against women not violence? Does it matter less?

When Trayvon Martin was killed, and George Zimmerman not convicted, many of us wondered, Do black lives not matter? When someone shoots up an elementary school full of white children, the NRA publicly declares that teachers should arm themselves for protection. No such declaration was issued to black men after Martin's death.

This is not the Oppression Olympics, because nobody "wins"--intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and class don't allow for it. It's all bound together. So I am not suggesting that women are worse off. Clearly, we have a problem with violence when the biggest threat to mortality for young black men is being killed in violent crime. 

But when you search "Tio Hardiman" on Google, none of the first hits are about his recent violence against his wife. In fact, one of the first hits is an article he wrote for HuffPo about urban violence--with no mention of his own actions. 

I'll dissect his article in HuffPo in a later post, as I think it is a very telling example of how we think of violence against women as separate and different--and of course, in ways, it is. But then, not really at all. 

In the meantime, I'll vacillate between escape and engagement: for my own mental health, do I retreat to a safer place on the earth? It doesn't make the violence go away, but it removes it from my immediate, daily experience. But, does staying help anything? Does exercising my agency to leave insult those without it, or honor it?

Now it is later.

I had a dentist appointment yesterday, in my old neighborhood of Edgewater. I don't have occasion to visit it much, so I made a point to arrive early, and walk past my old building.


Peering into that wrought-iron gate was strange. I did a lot of hurting and healing in there. It was the first home I owned. I brought my dog home here when I adopted him. I prepared for a wedding, and then hid during a divorce. I cried a lot. It was on that back right window where I sat and stared down at this court yard all night when I learned my mother had died. It was to this home I returned the night of her burial, my world changed. And then a few weeks after that, on the back porch, I asked the love of my life to marry me.



12 weeks later, we stood in the court yard, on the way to our wedding.


And after five years of hearing the red and purple lines clamor past my little slice of the city


We packed it all up. For more space, for a safter neighborhood. For the next step.


I have been doing a lot of hurting and healing again, lately. I have friends right now struggling with great stress and pain: the death of a spouse, another with a bad breakup, some with money troubles, and one saying goodbye to a dying dog. It feels heavy. I received my own bit of heartbreaking, though not devastating news, yesterday. And as I come to terms with what it may mean for me, and for P, I think about that small home I had by the train tracks. I think of all that those walls held for me. Books shoved into window sills when we ran out of shelf space, and had no room to put another shelf. A storage unit in the basement full of things we were saving for "later," when we had more space. Later is now. We have a guest room. We have a den. We have a living and dining space. Two bathrooms. And luckily, as I traverse new griefs and new joys in "later," I find that the love that seemed to fill my old home to the bursting point did not dissipate when it had more room to flow. It only grew.

"I think everything counts a little more than we think."--The National, "Ada"

I'm sure that in the day-to-day of raising children, you don't quite know what is sticking. What will become a memory?

In a little over a week, my mother will have been gone for 2 years. That seems impossible, but here we are. If ever there was proof that Freud has some things going for him, it's the way my grief manifests as I move further from the last time I saw her face and heard her voice. Rather than a conscious thought, "I miss her," I find myself talking about her more. Searching through old photo albums and lingering longer on her face. And, listening to show tunes, particularly The Sound of Music.

I grew up on the movie The Sound of Music. I likely recognized the voice of Julie Andrews around the same time I recognized those of my parents. I believe I have posted before that my eulogizing of my mother was based on the plot of the movie. It meant that much to her, that it's a huge part of what keeps me connected to her.

I bet she didn't know that would be the case, on rainy weekdays as we snuggled on the sofa watching Andrews throw open her arms to the mountain sky.

Holidays and family visits have always sort of made me anxious. The expectation to have fun, to make memories, to make this "the best Christmas ever" is a tall order. And, after all the hype, cross-country travel, and money spent, it often can't live up to the expectations set. SImilarly, with so many organized activities that take up children's days, and highly choreographed vacations to sanitized, pandering-to-the-masses places like Disney World, I hope that people are also making time for what usually sticks: ourselves. Over years of screenings of The Sound of Music, I learned more about my mother each time. She had seriously considered becoming a nun; she had wanted many children; she used Maria's wedding march when she walked down the aisle to marry my father; she had been a musician since the age of twelve. The list went on and on. Each of these facts spun out into more facts, more stories, of a life before I existed. Of the life that existed now, with me. I don't think she planned these lessons. It was just what came up. She just answered the questions I asked. And when I look back on those conversations, and singing loudly in the car with her, and seeing her meet the actual von Trapp family in person, these are the things I remember. These are the ways in which I know she was real. The vacations are there too, and the birthday parties she planned for me. But those were about me. And I am so profoundly grateful now that she also chose to make my childhood a bit about her. When I think about raising my own kid(s), I wonder what will stick with them. And then I try not to over think it, as I think that is exactly the point, right? Just be. Just be with the people you love.

What likely began as a way to keep me occupied and stationary so she could relax became the thread I can pull when I need to unravel her.

Easter

Today is Easter Sunday. Family-oriented holidays are strange for me, given that my "family" is made up of a husband, and then a random assortment of close friends scattered around the Midwest. There is no usual, no tradition, and each year is different. As an atheist, I don't care. Holidays generally are more gloom for me than celebration. They remind me of happier holidays, or holidays where people who are now dead gathered. And while there is much liberation in getting to choose each year and each holiday how I will spend it and with whom, there is also a feeling of instability.

There is a popular psychologist who says that too much choice and freedom is bad for us. At the start of his teaching career, he said his students didn't worry about much--they knew they would likely marry their high school sweetheart, settle in the same hometown in which they were raised, and their kids would attend the same schools. Now, everything is up for grabs. There is something delightful about that, but also something so unsettling. Nothing is assumed, nothing is for sure, nothing is forever. Limiting, and freeing. Constricting, and inspiring.

I took a quiz online that was supposed to compile my interests and concerns and tell me the best places in the US for me to live. 4 out of the top 5 were in Oregon, which makes sense, I suppose. When I imagined a new life there, I thought about my friends-like-sisters in Indiana. Would I want to be so far? Could I manage only seeing them once or twice a year? Don't I want my kids to know them? Everyone I care enough about to factor into this decision lives in Chicago or Indianapolis. Would the quality of life outweigh all of that?

I suppose I feel that since I am sort of unmoored, and only moored to some people by choice and not chance, that I can do whatever I please. That I would be perfectly happy with P and any children we have, creating my own little tribe anywhere. My little family, my dog, my coffee, my books. Some place cheaper, so not all of our income went to mortgage and property taxes. Some place with a decent school system. Some place safe.

After 8 years, I feel the weight of this city life, and no wonder, as the cost of living, as well as the violence, has risen dramatically here in my tenure. It's all a lot. It feels noisy. It feels limited. Perhaps all I need is a vacation. Perhaps all I need is a beer. But after 8 years and no family to stick with, and "family" who is also spreading out and understanding of this need to see and experience and explore, I'm curious. And I'm restless. And I miss the Easter basket cupcakes my mom used to make every year, with the dyed coconut flakes as grass, three jelly beans for eggs, and a bent pipe cleaner for the handle. And I suppose if I can't have those no matter where I live, I also suppose it doesn't matter where I live. No matter my zip code, I'll constantly, as always, be making it up as I go.

One of my favorite memories is of my mother and I on a park bench in Paris, France. It was the last city of our three week tour through Europe and after breakfast of croissants and coffee, we sat on a park bench to decide how to spend our day. I ended up asleep, my head in her lap, the cool early summer breeze funneling through L'arc de Triomphe and over us, ruffling my mother's frosted feathered hair.

Fancy meeting you here

I admire bloggers who stick with it. Honestly, I do. Posting day after day. I suppose I have things to say every day, but I've come up against two things. For one, I began grad school last month. I am five weeks in and totally in love. The thing about it is, you aren't ever really done. If you are caught up on reading for this week, you better work ahead for next week because there is also probably a paper coming up, or a professor will email you extra reading, or there will be some event happening on campus during your scheduled study time. I've had a really difficult time putting down my work to see friends, watch a movie, take a run, et cetera. Most days I spend at least six hours on school work. After doing that this past weekend and waking up with a headache today, I gave myself permission for a "day off." I still worked for three hours. And the worst and best part is that sometimes this happens because I can't distinguish work from play. Grad school has just put an intense focus and rigor to the things I already found interesting. So if I'm assigned reading and writing on the 1996 PRWORA, I do it... and then I Google and read more about it. And then before I know it I'm down a rabbit hole, watching a documentary and emailing my congresswoman about something that pisses me off. And it's all school work. And I live and breathe it right now.

Secondly, this blog began with a narrowed focus: grief. Living with death. Continuing to forge an adulthood while healing childhood wounds. I've felt less inclined to write about these things recently because, as stated above, I'm busy. But also, I've been doing a great deal of healing. And unlike last summer when I started this blog, I don't feel like every day is a battle. My depression has greatly decreased, and not every incident seems to be related to my mother's death. All good things. But good things often don't make good writing. It may have been Hemingway who said something about creative geniuses all being a bit melancholy (that sounds very Hemingway, anyway). There is some truth to that, I believe.

Sometimes I think about how much I want my children to have. And then I think, "But what will they write or paint or dance or compose about, if I give them a perfect childhood?" Is that insane?

I think blogging will never really be the perfect platform for me. I write when I'm moved to, and I don't care enough about traffic to fill the space with a silly cat video if I don't have anything to say. I just don't write. But I do miss writing for the digital abyss. So maybe I'll try to come around more often.

The senate passed VAWA today. My faith is a bit restored.