Standing on the edge
Does anyone else feel like we are at the point in human history where revolution just seems inevitable? Where the systems and constructs that we've so carefully crafted to have order in our world and our societies just don't seem to be cutting it anymore. How much more can we take of the tired rhetoric of "this is the way the world works" and "this is simply the way it has always been" and all the other variations on the status quo? Are we not supposed to evolve as a species? As a society? Please don't hate me internet, but as the boys in Nickelback are saying these days, "We're standing on the edge of a revolution."
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The shooting of Michael Brown was a tipping point. It has brought the ugly truth of racism in North America right to the front lines of our news feeds, Twitter streams and viral, live-streaming world. It showed us what happens when we question the system. It showed us the levels at which authoritarian governments will go to maintain "the peace"and what happens when you step out of line. How they will try to control the narrative of events and the status-quo of a world where everyone needs to know their place in it.
I've had a few conversations over the past month with people who have said to "wait for all the facts" and "let the courts and those in charge figure this out" and THEN, I can make an "informed" decision about what happened. For me, and for many others too, this line of thinking falls apart when it's the very people in charge who are the ones that are working within a system that fails to recognize it's own ingrained biases. What this says to me, is "Let us figure this out, and then we'll TELL you what to think" and I, for one, am just not down with that.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her own house last week because of threats made against her and her family on social media. What terrible thing did she do to bring on this level of abuse you ask? She released the most recent of her series of videos on "Tropes vs Women in Video Games." and by pointing out and discussing the way that the rape, maiming and murder of women is uniquely used as background narrative or character development in video games, she was subsequently threatened by members of the gaming community with all of these very things. I am not sure how much more her point needs to be hammered into someone's head when the very thing she is criticizing about video games, ie, violence against women, plays out in real life. That certain individuals (men) believe that this level of violence against women is just a NORMAL part of video games and somehow integral to the gaming experience is a problem people. A BIG one. Sarkeesian says that when these games are critiqued for their levels of violence against women it further perpetuates these beliefs and frames the "misogyny and sexual exploitation as an everlasting fact of life and as something inescapable and unchangeable." It is NOT and we do NOT have to accept these narratives "as some kind of necessary cultural background for our media stories."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
Now on the "Ladies Master List of Things NOT to do to Avoid Being Violated" you can include taking racy photos of yourself with your smart phone. Add that to, don't get drunk, don't wear short skirts/low cut tops, don't walk alone in a dark back alley/parkade, and don't ever, EVER, leave your drink unattended - unless you have your special nail polish on that is - and it's just becoming a bit (read: A LOT) ridiculous. The level to which rape culture/victim-blaming is alive and well in our world is so insidious that it takes a couple of minutes (days) for people to register that the rape-drug detecting nail polish is actually NOT a great idea/invention or that saying, "Well, in this digital age, people (ei: WOMEN) should know better than to put naked pictures of themselves on their phones." is tantamount to saying that the VICTIMS of this CRIME are somehow partially to blame for said CRIME. In case I am not making myself clear, all of those pictures circulating on the internet are not a LEAK, and this is not a celebrity SCANDAL. This was a planned and deliberate crime, perpetrated by pathetic individuals who violated personal property, STOLE personal images and distributed them to the world for consumption at will. And EVERY SINGLE PERSON who downloaded them and got a nice good look at them is equally at fault for continuing to violate the privacy and personhood of these women. Take a stand people! Tell your friends that Googling the pictures is wrong. Tell Perez Hilton that he is a major ass creep for posting them. Unfriend /Unfollow anyone on FB or Twitter sharing them and let them know WHY. If you need some more info to convince them, Deb Rox at Blogher says it all right here: "We can start by calling this "leak" by its real name: sexual harassment via theft and publication."
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
I watched a documentary the other night called "L Word Mississipi: Hate the Sin" about the lives of lesbians living in the deep south, deeply Christian bible belt of America. It was a tough film to watch as these women tried to navigate living their lives and loving their partners surrounded by family members who openly told them they were going to burn in hell, strangers comparing them to child molesters and living lives denying their true selves for the sake of the church. I cried as I watched these women struggle with coming out to their deeply religious parents and the especially difficult story of the one woman who was "reformed" and trying to reform her gay son. At one point, my husband came in the room and asked me why I was watching such a depressing show? I was crying too much to answer him, but here is why. Because I wanted to bear witness to these women's lives, to their pain and struggle. And while that pain is not mine, I felt a profound allyship with these women. I felt loss when one woman's family left all of her childhood belongings on the doorstep of her house, as if to say, you no longer exist in our lives. If God is Love, then why can't Love be Godly? In all it's forms? Hating the sin is simply HATE folks. And that just has to stop.
"What do we want? We want change.
How we gonna get there? Revolution."
~~~~~~~~~~
The thing is, revolution is never pretty. It's not quiet. It is not NOT angry. It is not always orderly and it doesn't happen with all parties coming to the table for a "civilized" conversation and leaving happy. Revolution is by it's very definition an overthrowing of a social order in favour of a new system. Revolutions are emotional, they are fuelled by passion and anger and that stuck in your craw feeling that enough is finally, and absolutely ENOUGH! It takes strength to not back down. To not retreat to the way things have always been and just live out a mediocre existence in a world full of overt or not so overt oppression. You've got to get in some people's faces and keep doing it over and over and over and over again. Revolution happens when someone takes a stand, plants themselves there and refuses to sit down. And then someone else joins them. And then another person. And another. And another. And, well, you get the point right?
I do believe that in a lot of ways our world is indeed on the edge of a revolution. The question is, are we willing to step off that edge?
n~
Nickelback just released the new video for Edge of a Revolution yesterday.
You are welcome/I am sorry.
the list
I've been quiet here lately. But not in my head. In my head it is loud and full. The words and thoughts are bouncing back and forth and I am getting to the point where I can write/type them again.
In the mean time, please watch this. Because Jay Smooth is my Youtube boyfriend and because he speaks TRUTH in ways that I just can't get enough of. (You could just go subscribe to his channel too and see more of what I am talking about).
But seriously folks. Watch, Share, Repeat.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/MlNUIIyDA_w[/youtube]
Be back soon...
n~
eleven days
Every day.
I said I would write something every single day for one month.
It's day six. I've already missed one day and trust me, this is not really going to count for much.
I am tired.
Perhaps it is because my son will be officially discharged from the rehab hospital tomorrow.
And now I can finally breathe again.
Perhaps even sleep again.
~~~~~~~~~~
I want another month of summer holidays.
Ours just started.
I am not ready for the kids to go back to school. I mean, yes, I have purchased all their school supplies and new clothes and all of that. I mean *I* am just not ready. I want more lazy days cuddling in bed in the mornings and then wandering the zoo or the museum or the science centre for hours with no schedule to keep or appointments to go to.
I want to take off to the mountains for the weekend and walk trails and have little adventures and order room service popcorn and watch movies in a giant bed in our room at the lodge.
I want to have naps every day and then stay up late playing Wii games till everyone is exhausted.
I want to cook all our meals on the bar-be-que and have our friends over to play in the backyard.
I want more time to fill up the notebooks I bought in May with all the words that were not there for so long and are now coming back to me.
Eleven days until the first day of school. Eleven days until we have to leave the safety of our little nest and face the world again.
I need more time. I need more summer.
I am just not ready.
n~
Curves and Edges
There I was. Going about my day, taking one kid to camp and the other to his therapy appointments and I stopped for a minute to check my email. And there it was, right in the subject line:
"You're beautiful underneath it all."
Huh?
The email is from Lolë, a Canadian lifestyle company that I quite like and whose products I buy regularly (and therefore why I get their emails). It is an ad for their new "delicate, feminine underpinnings" line of products and I assume they are trying to say that what you wear under your clothes can be beautiful too. The problem is, that is NOT really what they are saying.
They are saying that *YOU* are beautiful underneath *IT* all. And maybe I am overly sensitive to this kind of thinking/speaking/messaging, but then again, maybe I am not.
"There is a skinny person in there just trying to get out."
"You've got lots of muscle tone, it's just covered up with that extra layer."
"Once you lose X amount of weight, you'll look and feel so much better."
These are all things that have been said to me in my lifetime.
Women are bombarded every day with these kinds of messages and with clothing options to cover our flaws, that use "slimming" technologies and push up or pull in various parts of our bodies to fit the styles and trends of the times and the ever present single layer version of beauty. We have to worry about muffin top, back fat, waving underarms, and the dreaded thigh gap. We are told over and over to love ourselves, no matter what size, shape, or colour we are, and then companies fill magazines and commercials and store shelves full of products and messages that are meant to help us change all of those things.
Love your skin, but here, make sure you remove all that hair, cover up/lighten those spots, and please! do something to smooth over all that cellulite.
Love your face, but don't let it get all wrinkly and *gasp* OLD!
Love your hair, but maybe it should be shinier, fuller, longer, and have more volume.
Love your body and go on and wear that bathing suit, but make sure it pushes up the girls, slims out your belly and here's a great video with 77 ways to use a sarong cover up, because really, no one wants to actually see that.
But don't worry, because you are beautiful underneath it all.
And we buy it. I buy it. I wear clothes strategically to cover my "flaws". I have a drawer FULL of anti-aging products to reduce fine lines, not so fine ones and everything in-between. And I have a love/hate... mostly hate relationship with my bathroom scale and what I think it tells me about me and my body.
I love this line from John Legend's song, All of Me.
'Cause all of me Loves all of you Love your curves and all your edges All your perfect imperfections
I realize that this is a love song about and sung to someone else, but sometimes when I am alone in my car and it comes on the radio, I'll turn up the volume really loud and sing it TO MYSELF. To remind myself that I have curves and edges and a lot of perfect imperfections. And that I love ALL of me. That all of me, JUST AS I AM, is worthy of love and happiness and that I am beautiful.
Not underneath anything.
Not despite anything.
Not when I am tucked in, slimmed down, covered up and/or made up.
And the same goes for you too.
You are beautiful. FULL STOP.
XO,
n~
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Tonight's post was going to be about respect. Respect for people. Respect for our world. Respect for another person's piece of it.
And yet somehow, going off on a rant about my dumb-ass neighbours who let their giant dogs run willy-nilly all over the neighbourhood, peeing all over everyones shrubs doesn't seem right.
It doesn't seem right when in a small town in America, a man was shot six times and it is not called murder. Where the people of this town are living in a police state with a curfew in place and folks are getting tear-gassed and arrested for peacefully protesting.
My dog issues are nothing compared to the fact that in Gaza tonight, even the animals at the zoo are not safe from the crossfire of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the cease-fire deadline is approaching with no clear resolution in sight.
When a whole country is essentially on lock-down because of an Ebola epidemic, my privileged little first world problems becoming glaringly apparent as such and petty.
So, no, I won't get on my "be a responsible dog owner/neighbour" soap box tonight.
But I will say something about respect.
It's a common conversation in and around our house right now (and always). Respect for ourselves and how we talk about ourselves, respect for our possessions and the home that we have built for our family, and respect for others, in how we speak to them and about them and how we want to be spoken to as well. We talk about how we can be more respectful to Mother Earth and my kids are big into recycling, not wasting energy or water and thanks to the Kratt brothers, are all up to date on animal conservation as well. The concept and application of respect is truly a daily topic in our house. As it should be.
I came across this quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower and it seems to fit tonight.
"This world of ours...
must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead,
a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect."
The problem as I see it right now, is that in this world of ours, the pendulum has swung so far over to the fear and hate side of things, that we can't figure out how to get back to the mutual trust and respect side.
I don't know how exactly to swing that pendulum back, but I'll start small. At home, and in my neighbourhood, and in my communities both online and off. I will listen, I will speak with respect, I will not let hate into my mind or my heart and I will teach and model this behaviour for my children. Maybe if we all started small, we would eventually overpower all of that fear and drown out the hate.
Maybe...
n~
Pillows
While we were on Vancouver Island for our holidays recently, we visited more than one craft/street/farmer's market in the towns and areas surrounding us. It's one of my favourite things to do while we are there and I look forward to it every year. This year while at the market in Qualicum Beach, my daughter saw a super cute puppy pillow and really wanted it. It was $20 and I looked at it and thought, I can totally make that and proceeded to tell her this. And every day since we have been back she has asked me if today is the day we are going to make her puppy pillow. At this point my stalling seemed to be getting a bit cruel, and so I decided that yes, today was indeed that day.
Frst we had to go to Michael's and get supplies, and I don't know about you, but I can never get out of there without spending at least $100.00. Then we had to drive the 45 minutes to my mom's place to borrow her sewing machine, and being as it is now 12:35 AM, I have poked myself innumerable times with a sewing needle, had to go and check Youtube for a bunch of tutorials on how to actually use my mother's sewing machine and I am finally done and just put everything away, all I can think of is, "Damn it woman, buy the bloody $20 pillow next time!"
Also, this is what the house of a non-crafter looks like when she decides to go against her nature for the day! Don't ask about the hammer...
And this is the hand that had to undo way too many stitches today, because... NON-crafter!!
And after many hours, this is the final (non-stuffed) product. I gotta say, despite it all, I am feeling quite proud of myself. Yes, the whole thing cost way more than the $20 bucks I would have spent at the market, and yes, it took me all of the day to actually finish the damn thing, but I can't wait to see the look on her face when she sees this little guy sitting on her bedside table waiting for her tomorrow morning!
Here is the tutorial I found for the puppy pillow from Lisa over at The Red Thread. And since I was kind of on a roll and found some old quarter pieces of fabric that I had tucked away in the laundry room, I busted out this guy too. Yeah, C's gonna be stoked too! 
And now it is almost 1 AM. I have to be up in less than 6 hours and I believe that I have officially fulfilled my crafty-mama quota for this year! And to all you people who do this kind of thing for a living, I salute you! And I will never, ever again try to haggle with you over the cost of your products! Because if someone wanted to buy one of my pillows today, with the amount of time and effort and injury to my poor fingers that went into them, these babies would be $500 EACH!
n~
A challenge and change and channelling my anxiety.
Ask me to drink 3 litres of water a day and I'll make it to maybe day four. Ask me to wake up one hour earlier than usual to meditate/workout/write and realistically I'll do it a few times and then be back to hitting the snooze button until small people insist that I wake up to feed them.
But...
Challenge me {for the third year in a row} to write a blog post a day for a month for the 2014 Summer Blog Challenge, and BAM! I am in. Again.
To be honest, I need a kick in the pants to get my writing mojo back. It has been lost for a while now as we were dealing with other life altering events this summer.
Daily blogging definitely is a challenge. And with school starting in a couple of weeks and the regular and some new {our first year with an IPP} challenges that this will bring to my life, will likely make it even more so.
So why do I do this then?
That is a very good question.
Because it is tradition now. Because I like to prove to myself that I can do it. And because every now and then, amongst the silly, last minute, "oh crap, I need to get a post out today" drivel that yes, I fully admit, you will get, sometimes a shot of brilliance will shine through. I'll have an epiphany and some divine power will guide my hand and I'll bang out something fan-freaking-tastic.
Today I spent most of the day cleaning the house and clearing it of the debris of life that has been collecting in unaddressed piles since June. The bags of all of my son's school work that his teacher lovingly packed up for us, the mail that has been sitting on my desk unopened along with all the unfiled bills and papers, the toys and books that have accumulated in all the tiny spaces that they can find to play together just like before. We tackled it all today ,and while it may not have seemed like it for everyone around here (read: there was much whining about when we would be doooooonnnnne), for me, it was a mixture of purging and nesting and wiping the slate clean to ready ourselves for the next chapter in our lives.
I am the most prepared that I have ever been for back to school this year. A couple of new outfits each and all the school supplies have been bought sorted and are ready to go. Every year, the beginning of the school year is like walking into a bit of an unknown (we don't get to find out who the kid's teachers are until that first day), but this year it feels even more so. Most people know that C was very sick and in the hospital, but few know the full extend of his illness or about his stroke/brain injury. He has expressed his concern to his therapists and to me about going back to school and having people ask him all about what happened and what he will say to them and he now has a list of answers that they came up with together and wrote down. I think I may have to follow suit as I am realizing that I too am feeling quite anxious about this as well. And when I get anxious about events or situations that are outside of my realm of control, I re-organize. I control my immediate environment and make it orderly and pretty.
Seriously people, my closet and my office have never looked better.
All ready to welcome back both me and my mojo!
So.... Here we go!
Subscribe to my RSS feed, sign up to get my posts delivered directly in your email every day (see box over there on your right), or find me on Facebook or Instagram (and maybe Twitter too, although my presence there has been sporadic lately - more on that in another post) because you never know which one of these posts is going to be the brilliant one!
XO,
n~
P.S. There are quite a few bloggers from all walks of life participating in the #SummerBlogChallenge. On social media we usually hashtag it as such or #SBC2014 or just #SBC. I'll have the full list of participants for you tomorrow if you'd like to check out some of their writing as well.
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #28
Today's post is not really that feminist in nature, but nonetheless, every piece here has touched me immensely this week. This very hard, very difficult, very sad, very frustrating, very angry week. I have cried, I have cry-laughed, I have felt bubbles of rage in my belly and I have been tired, so, so very tired. Yes, this week was a doozy, and we are all still here, despite it all... Because of it all? Either way, here we go...
{Trigger warning bells on all of it! Suicide, depression, racism, sexism.}
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Robin Williams
1951-2014
Not very often do I hear of a celebrity death and immediately fall on my bed in a puddle of tears, but that is exactly what happened on Monday when I heard the news of Robin Williams' passing. This man, this funny, funny man, whose work has peppered my life with so many memories, was gone. Suffering from depression (and in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease), he took his own life and left this world. I don't want to comment on why he did it, how he did it, why he needed more help with his depression, or anything of the sort. He is gone and the world mourns and we start talking about depression again and this post from Logan Fisher at A Muddled Mother, was probably one of the most powerful things I read that day...
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Last Saturday, another tragedy occurred in America. An 18-year-old, unarmed black man was shot dead by a police officer in the town of Ferguson, Missouri. His name was Michael Brown. His life cut short for no other apparent reason than the fact that he was a black man, walking on the street with his friends. What happened next seemed like something from a movie of a war-torn village in the Middle East, but it was not. The following post from Greg Howard outlines so much of what has been happening not only in Ferguson this week, but across the country, where it really does seem that...
The impact of all of this is being felt the world over and by people whom I care about and respect very, very, deeply. Please read their words, examine how this is affecting you too, and if it isn't, ask yourself why that is?
Karen Walrond at Chookooloonks is very Affected by all of this. And Vicki Reich at VillageQ, who is from Kansas City, gives us some cultural context for what is happening in Ferguson and amplifies the voices that need to be heard right now.
And finally, one of the most powerful things I read this week comes from a Canadian writer. Sarah Bessey lays it all out in black and white and left me raw with emotion after I read her post, In which I have a few things to tell you about #Ferguson.
In all of this, I only have one more thing to say. Silence is not an option. Sit with the uncomfortableness of these hard conversations and issues of race and justice and oppression, and really listen, and then stand up. Stand with the people of #Ferguson and those across America fighting for justice and more often than they should be, for their very lives.
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Social media is how we communicate. This is the truth of our time. BUT... within these constructs, these massive platforms of code and algorithms and formulas and insidious marketing campaigns, how do we make it work for us. How do we "buck the system", especially when the system is constantly changing, not to suit our needs, but those of the people who make boatloads of money off of us. BUT, but, Facebook is FREE, right? Well yes, it is free, as in, you do not have to pay a fee to use the site, but you do pay with something far more valuable than money these days... you pay with your "LIKES". In the span of a week two people wrote about two similar yet completely opposite experiments they conducted with their Facebook usage. Mat Honan from Wired decided to LIKE everything he saw on his Facebook feed for 48 hours and Elan Morgan from Schmutzie.com decided to NOT like anything on her Facebook feed for two weeks. The results of these two experiments are somewhat fascinating.
And for the record, I too have sworn off the "LIKE" button myself to see if and how it changes my Facebook experience.
~~~~~
I have posted things from Robot Hugs before, and this comic strip ranks up there as one of my all time faves. It's the kind of thing you should keep bookmarked on your phone so you can pull it up at a moment's notice, whenever someone starts going off about how "they just don't see all this sexual harassment you ladies are talking about".
One of the challenging things about talking to men about violence, harassment, and sexism against women and femmetype folk is that it so often seems invisible.
Dude: I certainly never see it! Are you sure you’re not just being sensitive?
~~~~~
OK, I know that was a lot to take in. Just breathe.
Take some time for you this weekend.
Know that no matter what, love wins, compassion is hard (but worth it) and we are all in this together.
XO,
n~