Katie

For the people and by the people?

Can you remember the celebration and fanfare surrounding the 2008 election as so many first-time Black voters came to the polls to elect the first Black man to the presidency? Can you remember 2012 when the Black voter record was broken again? Can you remember wondering what happened to all these Black voters in 2016, as their turn-out at the polls dipped for the first time in over 20 years, and by over 7%? Did you think that maybe the Black population just wasn’t that excited about Hillary? Or maybe worse, that they were being complacent after a double Obama victory? Ashamedly, that thought crossed my mind.

What I didn’t realize was that in 2013 the Supreme Court essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an act which gave the federal government the role of supervising voting in parts of the country known to have practiced racial discrimination in voting via acts of violence, poll taxes, literacy tests, knowledge and understanding tests as well as good character tests. The protections offered by the Voting Rights Act helped boost Black voter participation, which had been negligible in the South since post-Reconstruction when the Southern States adopted regulations such as those outlined in the Mississippi Plan which worked, according to Virginia representative Carter Glass, “to discriminate to the very extremity … permissible … under… the Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.” The laws were quite successful. In Louisiana, for example, there were more than 130,000 blacks registered to vote in 1896 and in 1904, after the adoption of the Mississippi plan, that number dropped to 1,342. These stats are from Carol Anderson’s book, One Person, No Vote.

The Supreme Court decided in 2013 via Shelby County v. Holder that the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required the US DOJ to approve any changes in voting procedures before they could be implemented, was unfair and was unneeded because since the time of its inception Blacks were voting in record numbers and were winning plenty of elections. It is true that the Voting Rights Act and the involvement of the federal government increased Black voter turnout and civic engagement tremendously,— in Dallas County, home of Selma, Black voter registration increased from 2% in 1965 to 67% in 1972 (Lewis and Allen 1972).

Not coincidentally, the decreased Black voter turnout for the 2016 election was the first presidential election in over fifty years held without federal oversight to protect Black, minority and poor voters from voter discrimination. Without needing to get pre-clearance from the federal government for new voting regulations, 14 states, Nebraska included, adopted new voting restrictions. Poor and minority voters faced strict Voter ID laws, found themselves purged from the voting rolls and showed up to closed or relocated polling places. No wonder the Black voter numbers were down. In Wisconsin, which enacted both Voter ID law as well as decreased and restricted hours voting hours (Brennan Center for Justice), Black voting rates decreased from 78% in 2012 to 50% in 2016. In Milwaukee County alone, which is majority African American, fifty thousand fewer votes were cast in a state that Donald Trump won by only twenty-seven thousand ballots.

I asked my friends on Facebook to share with me what democracy meant to them, and I heard varying versions of the phrase “government for the people by the people.” I think this idea of a democracy being a government in which the populace participates is pretty widely shared, but upon taking a close look at our nation’s (very recent) history, as well as history in the making, it appears the government may not be for or by all people.

Here in Nebraska Senator Slama has proposed a constitutional amendment, LR3CA, that would require poll workers to review a photo or digital ID to verify voter eligibility. While this doesn’t sound crazy to many, for lots of people getting to a DMV and locating a birth certificate are difficult. It requires flexible daytime hours, money (which essentially equates to a poll tax) and transportation. Because this amendment is not needed – we have never had a single conviction of voter impersonation in the state of Nebraska- this requirement can only have been born out of a desire to suppress the votes of those who are already less privileged, those of minorities, differently-abled, elderly and rural voters.

If you value democracy as a government for all the people by all the people, I encourage you to reach out to your Nebraska state senator and let them know you don’t support poll taxes or voter suppression.

the tax of racism

Reading Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted has left me feeling nauseous and discombobulated. Thanks to a recent reading of Palma Strand’s article “’Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…’: Reflections on Fairness and Housing in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region as well as viewing of the Open Sky Policy Institute’s Policy and Equity Webinars, I had recently become aware of the effects of 1930’s redlining practices on Omaha’s current situation via statistics like these:

Half as many Black households own homes as white households.
Due to middle class wealth being accumulated by home-equity, the wealth of Omaha whites is 20 times that of Blacks.
Due to our city custom of annexing private neighborhoods built by private developers, we have a severe lack of affordable housing in Western Omaha as well as a city-wide shortage. (There is affordable housing available for only 19% of households eligible for it).
Our city’s Western-most school district is 88% white with 6% of students receiving free or reduced lunch while our Eastern-most district is 29% white with 74% receiving free and reduced lunch.
Renters living in non-white census tracts are evicted at a rate of 41 per tract, per year compared to 17 for those living in white census tracts.
Most of these evictions are in properties with open code violations, meaning the renters are awaiting the landlord to fix a roof, toilet, hole in the wall, etc. (the average critical code case is open 672 days in Omaha).

I wasn’t prepared for the above stats to be made flesh and blood through the stories of those affected by federal, state and local policies in Evicted. To witness trauma upon trauma being compounded by a complex system of access and denial, I was left frustrated and dismayed. The people I met in Desmond’s work are from Milwaukee, but I am sure their stories echo those of Omaha’s most unfortunate renters: not calling the police on domestic violence due to fear of being evicted for “nuisance calls”, deciding between utilities, food or rent, taking sponge baths with boiled water for lack of a functioning shower, five school transfers during middle school alone due to evictions and moves, sleeping five to a bed-less room, having to take what’s available because there are twenty other families who would happily take the apartment with a hole in the roof and a busted out window…

Why aren’t landlords being held to the standard of making sure apartments are habitable? Why isn’t local, state and federal government doing something to address the problem of evictions for the short-term? And long-term, why isn’t there enough affordable housing to keep the market competitive? Desmond provides options to address the affordable housing crisis:

Provide legal counsel for all those going to eviction court. Studies have shown that evictions decrease up to 90% when legal counsel is provided. LB419, discussed last week in committee, addresses just this.
Create federal housing vouchers to subsidize renters so that no one pays more than 30% of their income on housing. (Some pay up to 70% of their minimum wage income on uninhabitable shelter.) This would require a statute making it illegal for a landlord to discriminate based upon income level. LB196, also discussed last week, addresses income discrimination.
Create more Affordable Housing. This will require brainpower, creativity and heartfelt intention.

I can already hear the complaints about subsidies, taxes and the need for hard work, but did you know that of the $190 billion the federal government spent in 2015 to help Americans buy or rent homes, the seven million households with incomes of more than $200,000 received more than the 50+ million households with incomes of less than 50k?

The rich are getting subsidies that far exceed those of the poor.

Of course they are, they have the means to lobby for their interests. They have access to health, wealth and education to keep the status quo, or to improve it in their favor. But is a growing divide between have and have-nots what we want as a nation? What does it mean to be American? Are our fates not entwined?

British- Nigerian author Nels Abbey says,

Racism is such a tax. It’s a burden on you. It’s a financial tax, it’s an emotional tax, it’s a spiritual tax, it’s a political tax.

I lobby to dump the energetic tax of racism and to increase our wealth taxes so that we as a united America can transform the structures skewed to advantage the already advantaged.

*photo credit to Philip Montgomery

grammar matters

Today’s contribution to Black history month (something we will celebrate and uplift until having a separate month isn’t needed) will focus on the education of white people. As I asserted in my latest blog, Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?, white people need some educating around race because it’s not something we’ve been required to study.

Another thing I pointed out in the blog is the need to have relationships with white people who may be further along the path toward creating racial equity who can help steer our way to growth and understanding. Luckily for me, I am in relationship with numerous kind souls who are more immersed than I in anti-racism work and who can gently point out when I may be committing micro-aggressions of which I am unaware,

such as capitalizing both Black and white.

I admit to being reluctant to the first suggestion. We all matter, I thought. (That should have been a heads up!)

When the second suggestion came, I thought this may really need to be considered, but I felt strong commitment to create white culture dedicated to creating an equitable world, and didn’t want to off-put potential learners by seeming to be anti-white.

Not one to believe in coincidences, the third suggestion really got my attention. It helped that it came with a link to more education.

Turns out this grammatical suggestion was put in motion by W.E.B. Du Bois back in 1926. Almost 100 years later, we are still working out how to respectfully acknowledge our Black brothers and sisters to show them that they are seen and heard and that they matter, that we see Black as a culture.

It also turns out that there is a history of capitalizing white among white supremacists, a group I’m not looking to imitate.

For now I’ll capitalize Black and leave white as is, and I’ll dream of a time when exerting energy thinking about the capitalization of a color is a thing of the past, a time when we are all more concerned with capitalizing American and when being American means automatic inclusion and equal access to resources.

Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?

Ever since my kids were little one of my favorite after school questions was “who did you sit with at lunch?” When my son Max went to high school I noticed that despite having Black friends, he never mentioned eating with them. When asked why, he said he didn’t know but that they all sat together. I was baffled. What had changed in high school? Was it because he was attending a private school? Was it a racist place? Had we made a mistake?

I mentioned my concern to a Black friend who had attended the same school as Max. He said it was the same in the 90’s and explained that it was due to shared experiences. Many of the Black kids took public transportation to school and came from non-parochial elementary schools. They felt more comfortable together. He didn’t seem concerned, so I let it go.

Flash forward to the first antiracist conversation group I hosted last summer. The discussion got heated when the topic of lunch room sorting surfaced. There was much surmising as so why some of us witnessed segregated seating in our various school experiences and some of us didn’t. We fumbled our way through dialogue about how much of it had to do with certain locations and ages being more racist than others. None of us felt like we could speak to what was going on, and there was much frustration.

Jump to today. I’ve just read the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum. She explains the role of personal identity development and how in adolescence most of us struggle with questions about who we are and how we fit into the world. For those of us who see our race as the standard, racial identity isn’t on our radar, but for those of us who are beginning to understand our race as perceived as a deviation of the norm, perhaps due to experiencing various micro and macro aggressions, seeking out peers who understand and can reflect understanding of our experience back to us is of vital importance, hence the separate cafeteria seating.

This theory also explains why students of different races may congregate readily in elementary cafeterias and may choose not to as they enter the stages of self- exploration and identity development in high school. In addition, it explains why not all Black students feel the need to self-sort, as adolescents vary in both experience and timing of identity development.

I’d like now to come back to the idea of white people not necessarily having to consider race as part of our personal identity development. Why would we? We see ourselves reflected back to us positively everywhere we look: on TV, in the movies and in leadership positions from the classroom to the capitol. We are the norm and we have been for as long as we can remember.

Though many white people don’t choose to reflect upon being white, I believe the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing BLM movements and resistance to these movements during the critical pause of the pandemic and under the exclusionary rhetoric of Donald Trump have caused many of us to feel the need to explore what it means to be white and our role in current events.

Like the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria, we too need to come together to share our experiences of racial development. We need to share our stories of coming into racial awareness, of the discomfort and the fuck-ups, of the guilt, fear and frustration. We need to gather with other people interested in developing white identity, one not based on assumed normalcy or felt superiority, but rather one based on reality, cognizant of the current system of racism set up for our advantage.

We need to gather with other white people who are further along in the process and acting as change-agents, who can accept where we are and compassionately offer guidance for us in noticing our blind spots and taking steps toward dismantling personal and cultural racism.

We need to strive toward techno-colored vision— toward appreciating the uniqueness of each person we encounter, regardless of race, while at the same time recognizing the role race plays in our all our experiences. We need to strive for equality for all, with focus on our own liberation from patterns of socialization that lead to the oppression of self and others.

We need to create a world in which school isn’t felt to be a racialized space, where Blacks aren’t feeling the need to segregate, a world in which asking “why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” is a question of the past.

Home

Since Covid-19 struck our planet, I’ve become a little more cognizant of the importance of home. I appreciate the efforts I’ve taken over the years to make ours cozy, the ample space we have to spread out and the four parks we can reach within a twenty minute walk.

What I wasn’t appreciating until very recently is more important than all of the above. My family is warm and safe and not in fear of being evicted, we have17 years of equity built and we live in a good neighborhood.

What makes a neighborhood good?

I’d venture to say that most would agree on quality schools, low crime and easy access to shopping and recreation.

What makes a neighborhood best?

I discovered recently that in 1935 the “BEST” neighborhoods were defined by the federal government (with help from local real estate experts) as those that were all-white. It was in these neighborhoods, (along with yet-to-be-built neighborhoods outside the city center) where they chose to invest. They defined as “HAZARDOUS” mostly Black neighborhoods and denied them federal investment. They lured whites out of the in-between neighborhoods labeled “DEFINITELY DECLINING” and “STILL DESIRABLE” and into new suburban construction by offering federally backed low-interest rate and long-term mortgages. These investment opportunities were not available to Blacks.

Housing discrimination based upon race was made illegal in 1968, but Omaha’s racial map looks virtually the same today as it did when it was legal.

What does this mean for our city?

Omaha is the 38th most segregated city in the U.S.
70% of white households own homes, compared to only 30% of Black households.
Due to middle class wealth being accumulated by home-equity, the wealth of Omaha whites is 20 times that of Blacks.
Poor whites live in neighborhoods of > opportunity than poor Blacks.
Exclusionary development continues to be the norm.
Black applicants are denied home loans at 2x the rate of white applicants.
Due to our city custom of annexing private neighborhoods built by private developers, we have an alarming lack of affordable housing in Western Omaha as well as a city-wide shortage. (There is affordable housing available for only 19% of the households eligible for it).
Our city’s Western-most school district is 88% white with 6% of students receiving free or reduced lunch while our Eastern-most district is 29% white with 74% receiving free and reduced lunch.
Renters living in non-white census tracts are evicted at a rate of 41 per tract, per year compared to 17 for those living in white census tracts.
Most of these evictions are in properties with open code violations, meaning the renters are awaiting the landlord to fix a roof, toilet, hole in the wall, etc. (the average critical code case is open 672 days in Omaha).

All of this means that while I’m home being grateful for comfort, space and quality of life, many in Omaha -most of whom live in a different geographical part of the city- are worried about being evicted from a substandard housing unit. They are not enjoying the wealth, health and opportunity that come with home-ownership. They are not able to choose where they live due to a lack of options. This current segregation is setting the stage for continuation of the status quo.

What can we as Omahans do to create change?

-Become informed.
-Start and stay in conversation.
-Bring these concerns to our city council members and our mayor.
-Create path-ways to increase home-ownership (wealth) for our Black -community members.
-Incentivize and create policy around building more affordable housing in more areas of Omaha.

In the words of Omaha’s Dr. Erin Feichtinger,

We need to create and address housing policies that increase equality with the same level of specificity and intentionality that we once created housing policy that codified racism and inequity in our communities.

As the old saying goes, it all starts at home.

*These learnings happened via Dr. Palma Strand’s article “’Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…’: Reflections on Fairness and Housing in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region as well as the Open Sky Policy Institute’s Policy and Equity Webinars.

Pain and choice

Trauma causes pain, of that there is no doubt. But trauma therapist and bestselling author Resmaa Menakem says that not all pain is the same and that we get to choose what kind of pain we experience and put out into the world. He explains:

Clean pain is the pain that mends and can build capacity for growth. It’s the pain you feel when you know what to say or do and you really don’t want to say or do it, but you do it anyway, responding from the best parts of yourself. It’s also the pain you experience when you have no idea what to do; when you’re scared or worried about what might happen, and when you step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.

Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, or denial— it is experienced when you respond from your most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away. This response creates more pain for you and others.

This week I’ve been dealing with a hurt I caused and the backlash it created, and Resmaa’s explanation of pain has been instrumental in guiding how I work through the conflict. I have had to ask myself time and again if I want to put my energy into avoidance and defensiveness or into self-examination and making amends. I knew I would suffer either way, but sitting with the pain instead of lashing out and then owning my mistakes and apologizing instead of pointing out the other’s wrongs has allowed me to metabolize the pain as opposed to perpetuating it.

The concept of clean and dirty pain helps us to navigate personal relationships and tricky situations, but it can also be applied to the collective. In the news recently we’ve heard the POTUS say that he doesn’t want the truth of our nation’s traumatic history of slavery, policing and systemic racism taught in public education. He’s also banned diversity training for federal employees and gone as far as showing public support for racist and chauvinistic hate groups working to suppress.

He is essentially the head of a household saying to his family that what happened in the past must not be discussed, healed or amended. It must be stuffed and denied and the blame for the trauma we all feel must be placed on something outside of us. Absolutely no therapy or healing for anyone.

Modern psychology and ancient wisdom both tell us this is no way to heal and grow.

So many of us are in pain. The good news is that each of us -in so many minute decisions- gets to choose how we will respond to our emotional pain. We can be in pain while avoiding, blaming and denying, or we can be in pain while growing, opening and repairing. Our individual actions can affect the world we live in, choice by choice.

I know what I choose, and I hope that with a little Covid-induced time-out our current leader will choose the kind of pain that leads our nation to growth and reparation.

Three women

One of these women I fell in love with last Fall while reading her first memoir.

One of these women I heard speak last week in a video montage at the DNC.

One of these women I came to know yesterday via a friend, who is being her badass consciousness raising self.

What do these three women have in common?

They have all been trafficked for sex.

I read Maya Angelou’s second memoir, Gather Together in my Name, just last week. I was blown away to discover that as a teenager Maya had a pimp and didn’t even know it. Her poetic storytelling painted a picture of just how easily and unintentionally becoming a sex worker can be– how through impeccable grooming, the relationship between “lovers” can morph seemingly nonchalantly to that of master and slave.

This book landed in my lap shortly after learning of the conspiracy theory QANON and its singular obsession with connecting child trafficking to those opposing Donald Trump. Doing some research, I discovered that over 50% of child trafficking is not done by predators at the park, celebrities at pizza parlors or on remote islands, but rather at the hands of family members, which leads me to Donna Hylton.

I discovered her in much the same way I discovered the above mentioned conspiracy theory. There were posts going viral about a convicted murderer being celebrated by the DNC. I dug a bit and came to discover that Donna was sold by her mother in Jamaica to a NYC couple at the age of 7. She ran away from this abusive home at 14 and at 19 was convicted of murder. She spent 27 years in prison where she earned her BA, MA and became an ordained minister. She is now a Criminal Justice Reform Advocate.

The universe never messes does she?

Friday I became aware of Zephi Trevino, age 16. Like Maya, Zephi entered sex trafficking through a man who appeared to be a boyfriend. Like Donna, she is convicted of murder, despite not having pulled the trigger. Zephi is being held in the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice facility, where she has been for almost a year, as she awaits trial for the murder of a man she was being forced to perform sexual acts with. The man who pulled the trigger was her trafficker, and he is out on bail. While we work to change our criminal justice system there are ways you can help Zephi and her family.

1. Educate yourself and follow #freezephi

2. Sign this petition

3. Donate money for legal fees

4. Call DA John Creuzot (214) 653-3600 and demand Zephi be released to receive the care and recovery treatment she needs.

5. Stop victim shaming and blaming when you hear it.

A different type of blogpost

I’ve written from a place of shame; I’ve written from a place of compassion, and I’ve written from a place of love. I don’t know that I’ve ever written from a place of anger of the sort I feel now.

I am angry at our operating system.

I am angry at the patriarchy.

I am angry at the Judeo-Christian, off-planetary, white male, asexual god.

This myth has got to burn.

Operating from this place of hierarchy and feudalism is killing our planet, and this dominant world view divides. If we’re operating with parent images, we must replace the god metaphor of king on the throne with that of the Great Earth Mother— a strong, black, beautiful and naked woman who birthed (and wants to nurture) us all. We must replace in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit with in the name of the North, the East, the South and the West. We must see and feel our connectedness. We must see that we can’t be for women and deny them the right to make decisions about their very own bodies. We must see that we can’t be pro-equal rights for some and not for others.

We cannot believe only some are the chosen people.

We must look to our historical figures with accuracy and cut the bullshit. We can walk in the way of Jesus, but we can’t distort his activism, love and self-sacrifice. And we certainly can’t use his name has a shield to protect us from the work we need to do.

We must know how powerful we are and the responsibility we have because of our power. Every word we choose and act we perform has consequences. We must act bravely and with discernment. It is absolutely okay to take breaks. It is not okay to stick our heads in the sand and pretend the lives of others are not our business, play that we are here on earth merely to consume and be entertained and distracted.

No.

We must wake up to our potential, to our power and to our duty to serve and to protect this earth and all her inhabitants. We must see that I am you and you are me. We must acknowledge both the slave and the slave master in each of us. Don’t try to tell me you don’t have slave master in you. How does the voice in your head speak? Is it kind? Compassionate? Soothing? Or does it tell you you are not good enough, that you must compete harder and perform and perfect better? Or else.

The work is inside work and it’s outside work. And it is all HARD FUCKING WORK. It will make you tired. It will make you mad and it will make you confused. I know. And I know I’m not alone. You can join me too.

Please stand up to nonsense. Please stand up for all humankind. Please don’t concern yourself with where people put their private parts, or with whom they put them. Please don’t value your property over human life. Please don’t tell me we can have differences of opinions about basic human rights like voting, healthcare and personal safety and still be friends.

No.

If you are not willing to stand up to your church or your church’s teachings, or your parents or neighbors or anyone whom you love in the name of keeping the peace, I ask you, what kind of peace do you want to keep?

Racism must become uncomfortable for all, not just for those whose skin is darker than ours. Misogyny must be uncomfortable for all, not just for those harassed. Discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation has to stop. Xenophobia must go. We are a global community whether we like it or not, which means we are all in this together.

All of us.

understanding sameness

I opened up my facebook feed this morning and was greeted with a post from someone I care about mocking the concept of wearing masks. I felt an immediate and visceral reaction to this message of ridicule. It was potent and defensive, but I wasn’t sure if it was anger or hurt.

Confused, I asked myself:

Q: Why do people wear masks?
A: To feel safe and somewhat in control, and to feel like they are protecting those around them.

Q: So, why make fun?
A: This is a defensive reaction, perhaps to a dislike or fear of being told what to do, or a simple disagreement in values and beliefs about how the world should operate.

Upon coming to these conclusions I made a comment to my husband about a person’s desire for a mask being similar to a person’s desire for a gun, both of which are related to the need to feel safe and to protect. I went on to say that one of these objects hurts no one, while the other has the potential to hurt so many. My husband began, don’t make the comparison… or some such similar statement that I really can’t remember because I immediately shut down when he started telling me what to do.

Bingo.

I was in a similarly patterned loop as my friend, who I believe to be a gun-supporter. I got defensive with my shut-down just as she had gotten defensive with her put-down.

So what is my message, my learning, in this discomfort and realization of sameness?

It’s that the universe is nudging me to continue to try to look for connections and similarities between me and the people with whom I disagree, both at home and faraway. Where I believe my husband was attempting to lead me, albeit with bossiness, was to the idea that when I engage in further divisiveness (from a place of supposed superiority) I’m not helping to create the connection and understanding I long for.

As I write, I look up and see on my 2020 vision board:

Being receptive to the view of someone we disagree with is no easy task, but when we approach the situation with a desire to understand our differences [and sameness], we get a better outcome.

I want a better outcome. As well as more joy in the process.

Thus, I commit to being receptive. I commit to observing with curiosity my reactions as well as the reactions of others experiencing my reactions. I commit to imagining how and where we might broach conversations that lead to greater understanding. I commit to increasing connectedness.

I also commit to continuing to speak, even if it my speech isn’t perfected.

Work in joyful progress.

For more shelter-in-place interpretations of my pre-Covid 2020 vision board, please visit @katietwitwrites on instagram.

the still, small voice of love

Holy shit. She’s done it again.

I sat down to prepare for a sophomore conversation call, one in which a guide from the high school meets with my husband, myself and our soon-to-be a Junior son to reflect upon the first half of high school and make goals for the second half. I, of course, had my journal in one hand and a list of questions to contemplate in the other. My son, lounging in front of the TV, had his phone in one hand and a video game controller in the other. I sighed, let him be, and picked up my dinging phone alerting me that new grades had been posted. I don’t always click, but it being so close to the end of the semester and minutes before the reflection call, I did. It wasn’t the course grades that caught my attention, it was the “effort grades”.

B effort!

That lit me up. We’d been home for 8 weeks and school has pretty much been his only obligation! I immediately blasted out a text to him saying that I was feeling disgusted and that I’d prefer lower course grades and A effort to this average display of attention. I followed that up with a tattle call to my husband. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of texting a friend to ask if was I being/expecting too much that I snapped back into real time and space and admitted to myself that I had the answers within, and the yuckiness I was feeling and wanting to discharge was in direct relation to the real conflict at hand: the pressure I was putting on him was the same pressure I’ve been trying so desperately to shake off myself. I was literally planting the same voice in his head that I’ve been trying my damnedest to quiet.

Do more!

Do better!

Prove yourself!

I deleted the text and opened the zoom call. Our talented guide started our conversation with this poem-prayer by Henri Nouwen:

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

I really appreciate when the universe puts me in my place so quickly and decisively with her magic ways. (I hear you!) And I recommit myself to solitude, silence and a strong determination to listen — to both gentle and not-so-gentle reminders (this one was gentle, thank you) and to my kids when I pause long enough to ask them questions of the “are you okay with this feedback?” sort.