Change of address

Just letting you all know that my address is changing. We are moving from our current location to a new house.

2534 W. Highland Ave.,
Milwaukee, WI 53233

As always my most updated address will be on the right hand column on this blog, so you can just look it up here anytime.

Peace and light to you. 

I am on a journey

I've begun a journey I will not be able to explain.

It started last Wednesday, Nov. 16th, the anniversary of my Mama Mia's death. I chose that day for a reason, to ask mi abuelita to be with me in the journey of healing. I went to the lake to talk to her, to talk to my God, and ask for guidance. Mandame las mariposas.

I've known I've needed deeper healing for a while now. Healing from betrayal, from loss, from discrimination, from white supremacy, from racism, from rejection, from macro and microaggressions, from my own debilitating privilege. Healing to integration, to vulnerability, to stand in my own truth, to live in my power. To be and let be.

I am letting you know that I am on this journey because I intend to spend so much time on my own healing that I wont have much space for other things. To spend so much time on my own growth and healing that I have no time to criticize others. 

I've been thinking about it as disengaging from others, but I am realizing slowly that it is not disengaging at all, but rather re-engaging in a different way. It just looks much different that what I am used to community looking like, and I am okay with that. I must leave behind old ways of slavery and risk my identity, risk the world crumbling around me, risk healing, risk transformation. 


Como las mariposas. 


So if I don't answer your call, don't end up calling you back, only say hi and nothing else, walk away in the middle, fail to follow conventions, or seem to disappear, it's not you, it's me. I'm working on myself now.

En el capullo.  

Playback

I was looking back to what I've written on this blog while I've been in Milwaukee, and I can completely understand why I've focused so ardently on white supremacy. Quite honestly its a daily (hourly, minutely, second-ly) experience and has taken up quite a lot of my energy. My eyes have started to twitch. A sure sign of deep struggle.

What I have failed to share with you is the opposite of white supremacy. What is possible when human beings are connected to themselves, their spirit, and to the spirits of others. What is possible when we deeply see each other as whole beings. When people are not afraid of touch, of holding a hand, connecting. When we are willing to be with pain and not move to fade it or fix it (-Oriah Mountain Dreamer). When we integrate the whole of who we are instead of chopping life up.

Let me digress slightly here and tell you what I mean by that: Chopping life up. This is a deeply imbedded belief in the US that is a result of white supremacy and capitalism. It is as deep as calculus. It is the understanding that in order to understand mystery, we can chop it into pieces. In calculus, its how we do limits, taking something infinite and defining it by chopping it into a series. And then the limit is how we define derivatives and it keeps going and going. We chop up everything. We chop the day into 24 hours and then create rigid color-coded schedules. We chop our lives into public and personal life. We are supposed to leave behind family and the depths of ourselves when we do our jobs. We chop down whole forests, send people to their deaths to extract fossil fuels from the earth. We let doctors chop up our bodies (literally). And then we wonder why there was no healing, no joy in our jobs, no new life growing from the ground. We wonder why our backs ache, stomachs hurt, why our air is dirty and we cannot breathe. Maybe its because we chopped out our souls, too.

So, what is it like when we don't do that? WHAT?!?! What the hell are you talking about, Jess?!?

Well, at some level I don't really know, but I know one example of a place where it is okay for me to be me, whoever and whatever I might be in that moment, with the whole of who I am that is a joyful mess of a person, an interdependent individual and spirit. A place where I can hold pain, joy, questions, confusion, peace, silence, or a hell of a lot of noise. That place is Playback Theatre, Milwaukee.

Put simply, Playback is a form of improvisational theatre in which we share stories with each other and we see those stories played back to us artistically. It is a place of outrageous laughter, profound healing, listening and honoring the story teller, and being with what is.

Now that I have written that, I don't know if there is much more I can tell you about Playback. You just have to see it. Be it. Live it.

I guess what I will say is that I am finding that one story liberates another. Her story about high school triggers my own, my story of oppression connects to another, his dilemma reminds me of hers, her laughter brings out my joy. When we can tell the truths of our lives openly, when we can tell our stories with the whole of our hearts, we open up sacred space for one another and we create community.

That's all I will say about Playback for now. You will hear more later.

I am blessed. Blessed and broken. 

The truth is.

The truth is I am discouraged.
The truth is I don't know how to heal this deeply.
The truth is I wonder if anything will change.
The truth is I think things are always changing.
The truth is I hate myself sometimes.
The truth is that's not true.
The truth is I don't like affirmation about myself.
The truth is the reason I don't like affirmation is because I don't think its honest.
The truth is the reason I don't think its honest is because I've been told I'm not enough.
The truth is my mantra is that breathing is enough to be loved.
The truth is I make myself shrink.
The truth is I am outraged.
The truth is I'm stuck.
The truth is my leg hurts.
The truth is my eyes are twitching.
The truth is I have access to my tears.
The truth is I know how to feel.
The truth is I know how to fall.
The truth is I know what it means to hold the hand of a person of color.
The truth is I know what it is like for people to cry with me.
The truth is I know what it is like to cry with another's pain.
The truth is I have heard stories.
The truth is people keep telling me their stories.
The truth is I can't stand white people right now.
The truth is I can only stand some white people, a few at a time.
The truth is I got hardcore judged today for not speaking fluent spanish.
The truth is I am rejected on both sides.
The truth is describing myself as latina is a cop out.
The truth is describing myself as nicaraguense is a cop out.
The truth is describing myself as spanish is a cop out.
The truth is describing myself as nica, spanish, american is a cop out.
The truth is, I don't know what isn't a cop out.
The truth is I am a joyful mess.
The truth is I miss myself.
The truth is I wonder sometimes if I miss old ways of slavery in me.
The truth is I am pissed off at the world.
The truth is.

An Affirmation of the Spirit

Another moment for meditation. I've heard this before, I think from John Wooden's book that I read in high school. But I've changed some parts of it. Behold:

An Affirmation of the Spirit.

Let me be so deeply rooted that nothing can disturb my peace of mind.
Let me look on the sunny side of everything, and make my peace come true.
Let me think only of good, work only for good, and expect only good. 
Let me be just as enthusiastic about the blessings of others as I am about my own.
Let me forgive the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater light of the future.
Let me be a joyful being at all times, and have a smile ready for every living creature I meet.
Let me give so much time to the growth and healing of myself that I have no time to criticize others.
Let me be too grounded for worry, too centered for anger, too alive for fear, and too joyful to permit the presence of trouble.
Let me live in the faith that the world is on my side as long as I am true to the Spirit that is within me.



Mama Mia, te quiero mucho. Te mando mi amor, mi luz, mi paz, mis oraciones y bendiciones. Siempre estas conmigo, yo se y yo te siento.

Someone asked...

Someone asked me what I was up to in Milwaukee, what it's like, that kind of thing. I've edited and deepened my response to post here:


Hmm, Milwaukee. I would say it is a place of great oppression. It is one of the most segregated cities in the US. There are literally lines that split the city (for example, west of Holton is almost all African American, East is white. South is Latino). I'm working at a hospital called Columbia St. Mary's. It is located near the richest people who are literally all white in the city overlooking the lake. It's utterly disgusting to me that the richest people can walk to the biggest hospital I've ever seen, while the poor have to travel miles and miles to get here. Also almost everyone employed by the hospital is white, or at least almost everyone who has an office (the valet parking workers are primarily people of color. They are also some of the few people who consistently say hi to me. Most people in the office try to look away when I say hi).

I'm working on some of the projects/clinics the community services department has out in the communities. What I like about it is they put these clinics out where the people need it-- in neighborhoods and out of churches and into schools. I also really like being around other human beings. What I don't like is that there are so few, and while they do some limited good, it's not enough. Really, these programs are all bandaids for a deeper system of oppression that makes people sick. Plus, it allows the hospital to point to something "good" its doing in the world while maintaining its own system that continues to help and give priviledge to white people and rich people and ignore the rest. Even when their promotional materials are "inclusive," they are only inclusive insofar as the patients might be some people of color, but the doctors never are. The heirarchy is maintained, white supremacy prevails. The Black Panthers would call what I do a survival program, something that is needed because people are dying from oppression, but its only a bandaid, "survival pending revolution."

I've realized that the reason the infant mortality rate is so high for African Americans in Milwaukee (it is higher here than in 65 other countries) is because of the stress of racism. The oppression enters the body of the mother and makes the child vulnerable, and they die. Or their development is affected, etc. That's also the reason why diabetes and hypertension is so prevelent. So the bandaid programs I'm working for give prenatal and parenting education to black women, a program called Blanket of Love. What is great about that program is that it is completely tailored to what the women need, it brings them together for a meal when they are very often isolated, and provides some life skills and guidance for the women. I'm working on curriculum for classes to bring Blanket of Love into the public schools for pregnant teens in school, but I'm trying to maintain the lack of structure that allows for space for what is real and needed and wanted from the girls.

I'm working at a dental clinic and teaching kids how to brush their teeth (I got that gig because I ONCE taught kids how to brush their teeth in Mexico... resumes are so stupid). What they haven't been telling me, or telling the kids, though, is that you actually don't need toothpaste when you brush your teeth, you can reverse cavaties and root canals (though I don't yet know how). I don't think the toothpaste companies would be too happy is we told people they don't actually need toothpaste, nor will the dentists who make a living off of drilling your teeth.

I make appointments for people to come and get their blood pressure checked and get their free meds. That might seem like a good thing, but think of it this way: Human beings consciously created a system that benefits some and diminishes and dehumanizes others. Then within that system, those oppressors made it so that the oppressed are dependent on them for survival programs. Then the oppressor gives medication to the oppressed to "fix" the problem that they oppressor told the oppressed was "their fault" for creating, for not eating right, not exercising right, smoking too much, etc. The oppressor group makes money off of the medication, and can assuage some of their guilt, but they fail to heal anyone. Fail to provide the deep kind of healing needed after personal and generational trauma that makes the oppressed sick. Fail to provide the deep kind of healing needed for the oppressors who do not even notice that they are oppressors.

I hope for the day that a hospital as big as Columbia St. Mary's and with this many resources will be built in the poorest parts of town, and the outlying clinics will be for the those who don't need it as much and are able to get to the hospital whenever they want in their grand cars. More deeply, I hope for the day that a hospital will actually offer healing, not medication. Even more deeply, I pray for the guidance of how I can make that day now.

I'm stretching as a human being as I begin to oppose these systems of oppression. I do not yet know how to stand in my own truth. The real work is in me. There is this huge Occupy Wallstreet thing happening, but Wallstreet doesn't need healing, I need to heal the Wallstreet inside of me (-Adrienne Brown). I need to create sacred space inside myself. I think the rhetoric I have heard more often than not is this question of how we use our privilege for good, but I think that's not the real question to ask. The real question is which privileges do I use for good (the privileges that everyone ought to have, like shelter, clean water, and food), and which privileges do I give up (like having a car, having cash in my pocket?) to others in order to create more equality. More often than not, I should be giving up any privilege that I have rather than using them, because when I use them, I keep the same system of oppression and I steal people's voices away. So I must work on myself, both to heal from oppression and heal from the oppressor in me.

And here is the thing. People of color are never allowed to forget racism. The poor are never allowed to forget poverty. A function of privilege is that it allows you to "take a break" and forget about it for a while if I choose. So I must choose to think about poverty as much as the poor have to, if I am to be their ally and work for connection and love. I am no longer working for justice. Too often justice is still a part of the system. I am working for humanity, connection, and kinship.

What's more, I've been awakened to all this oppression while here in Milwaukee, but it happens everywhere. White supremacy is a global problem. I grew up in it, and so did you. It is a conveyor belt of oppression that we are all on, and unless we are running in the opposite direction, we are oppressors. You cannot be neutral on a moving train (-Howard Zinn).

That's what's been on my heart and mind and in my bones lately. And always.

Moment for Meditation

From the Columbia St. Mary's Moment for Meditiation line:

An affirmation of the spirit called Everlasting Arms.

All this week I am going to live worthily as a child of God.
His love is around me.
Underneath are the everlasting arms.
I'm going to be honest and true
And brave
in all the events of life
and I believe that to those who love God all things work together for good.

I'm going to rise above all worry, fretting, fear and hatred
to live in an atmosphere of spiritual serenity.
My life is part of God's plan,
and that which is divine within me can never fail nor be defeated.
Behind all that comes,
God's love and wisdom will be present to strengthen and sustain.


Courage: To speak the truths of your life from your whole heart.

I'm sorry

About a week ago I was walking at a park in the middle of a pathway looking to my left at a man flying a kite. It took my attention, one of those with two strings so he could zip it around. Then I realized a black woman was walking towards me and going to pass by. I looked at her to say hi, but she didn't make eye contact and I didn't end up saying anything.

Then I realized that the woman was walking on the grass, while we passed by. I quickly looked behind me and she was back on the paved path. So, she must have stepped off of the path and into the grass when she saw me coming.

This is a small but significant example of how racism/colorism works. Light skinned woman takes up all the space without noticing it, dark woman steps off to the side to pass by.

I took too much space and it was too late when I realized what had happened.

I'm sorry.

little things.

Stop using staples, and instead use paperclips. Paperclips are a reusable office supply, but staples are not.

This was a tip I saw in a calendar today. live simply.

its the little things.