I caught a baby a week ago. I forget if it was a boy or girl. It was my fourth. I couldn't speak to the woman because she had absolutely no English and I had absolutely no Spanish and the nurse assigned to her did not like me and would not let me know what she was saying in spanish to the patient all night.

This was my fourth catch. I have 2.5 months left to catch another four babies. In the meantime we have a serious, serious shortage of available midwives to staff the call shifts necessary for the number of students in my cohort. At first, I was very

Little Bits

[::] It feels like it's a windy day and I went out side and my purse fell open and all the little bits of paper flew out and all over the street. I need to collect all the papers back, but I have no idea which one to chase first...or even if they're worth the effort of chasing them down. There's a lot of paperwork this semester. In fact, I'm drowning in it. My planner is effective, but things need to be added so fast that I feel like it might be time for a PDA.

[::] I caught a baby on Saturday morning

Empty

I remember I used to write about feeling like I was losing my mind. I had gobs...egg white cervical mucous during ovulation type gobs... to say. Imagine, I have nothing left to say. Well, that's exactly what it feels like every time I sit down to write- and not just here on the blog, but everywhere now. I can't journal. I can't purge on a blank Word page. Nothing.

The Dream

School has started...and it aint all roses. But first my dream:

I was driving a car, a very nice car - which is drastically different than the car we currently drive...of which the driver's side window fell out and into my hands today... I was driving this nice car down a Dr. Seuss looking road. The road was pink, and the road going the other direction was purple. They were long and narrow, and traveled over the ocean like massive bridges...except they were so low that they actually skimmed the water...and they had no guardrails. There was nothing to keep a car out of the water except careful driving. I was the only car on the road. No cars were coming from the other direction either. I could not see where the road was headed...it was like looking out into the ocean, I couldn't see the end...just a drop off the edge of the earth. All of a sudden the road I was on ended and my car crashed into the ocean. I got out of the car and climbed onto the road and started walking back where I came from. Soaking wet, I told someone what happened and they seemed confused. I kept asking for help, and then I woke up.

At the time that I was dreaming, I wasn't at all afraid or freaked out or panicked...but now, now that I remember my dream, I'm a little freaked.

1. I don't know how to swim. At all. It freaks me out that I would drive down a road in the middle of the ocean that had no guardrails and was resting on the surface of the water. It's like I'm risking death to get somewhere...

2. And I don't even know where...the bridge was to nowhere. Yes I got to drive a fancy car there, but what did that matter when it dropped off the edge of the road into the ocean? I was walking again...and back to where I came from...was the drive worth it?

3. Did I realize on my way to wherever I was going that it was no longer a place I wanted to go...and because I refused to turn around, it was made so that I had no choice? Why was the road I was traveling a Dr Seuss looking joke?

4. I was calm when I climbed out the ocean back onto the road. I was so calm on the walk back...soaking wet, but calm. I only became frantic when I kept asking for help but other people insisted on asking me questions before they gave it me.

So that was my dream. Now onto my conscious life.

School started and I had to hit the ground running. I had almost 40 hours of clinical in a 7 day stretch, plus classes, and an advanced midwifery presentation to write and present to my class, and working on my research project. We only have one clinically based course this semester, but it's tough (to me anyway) and I the break I thought I'd get from how my schedule is set up and how many fewer credits I have this semester compared to last year never really materialized. Maybe this is how all midwifery students feel...but I am entirely overwhelmed.

And I feel like I'm learning everything but how to be with women...which is really frustrating. Over dinner with friends we talked about our expectations for midwifery school before it started and how our thoughts about what midwifery was/is are different now that we're here and hopefully almost done. One of my friends thought of midwifery school as a shorter, better alternative to medical school. I don't think she's far off in her description now that I'm here. I think there are many similarities, but also major differences that are quite obvious (ie surgery, management of high risk patients, etc) So, she's getting what she expected... I, and others, on the other hand, are not. I was not looking for an alternative to medical school. I did not expect so much pathology. I expected the technology...obviously there's going to be a great deal of that in a research institution with massive funding...but I did not expect so much of what we learned in midwifery school to be based on this technology or testing, period. I think I go to a good school. They consistently rank very highly for midwifery (for those who believe in the validity of these things) and I don't doubt that the graduates they turn out are ready to practice. In fact I've heard as much from the graduates of the program. I think that CNMs continually add more and more primary care to their practice as they fulfill the "with women for a lifetime" slogan of the ACNM. But as we remind women that we can provide their primary care from puberty to death...I can't help but wonder how I got here. I really was never interested in this part of midwifery...nor did I know the full extent of how expanded the scope of practice for midwives was and what would be required of me to become a midwife. How does this ever expanding role affect our care of women during preconception planning, pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum? Are we spread too thin as we try to manage depression, asthma, irritable bowels, hypertension, menopause and everything in between? I believe schools of midwifery are in a tough spot... I bet they'd love to spend more time on the "art" of midwifery, and less on the technology, charting, and hospital navigation portions involved in nurse-midwifery. I'm sure they'd love to show us how to do intermittent auscultation (IA) and let us practice it often, instead of hours of electronic fetal monitoring strip interpretations...but how can you justify spending a lot time on intermittent auscultation when nine times out of ten we're going to be interpreting strips instead? In a very cramped midwifery program all the fat is trimmed...you will read and know the evidence about IA but that's about it. The problem is that IA is treated as fat in the first place. That herbal treatments are also fat. That spiritual, psychological, and mental aspects of midwifery also seem to be fat. That when we get down to the details of the curriculum, everything unique to midwifery...most things that separate midwifery from medicine...has become fat to be trimmed from midwifery education in order fit in all the new information and technology and primary care that we are responsible for. I can't argue that we should be spending time learning all of these things... I think you'd be hard pressed to find any student who plans to be a CNM catching babies in a hospital that thinks she/he shouldn't have to learn it... but it makes me wonder if I still want to do it. Is the new midwifery I've encountered now that I'm knee deep into it something I want to be a part of?

I do. I don't know how, or even why, but I still want to be a midwife. Sometimes I feel like I'm on a road to nowhere... and that maybe I should stop and turn around. Sometimes I feel like this is all a big joke... and at any moment someone or something is going to pull the road from under me and laugh. You thought you were going to be a midwife? Ha ha ha. You thought you were going to provide a drastically different model for caring for women in childbearing? Ha ha ha. You thought you'd spend more time with your patients than docs get to? Double ha ha ha.

I've been assured that the way midwifery is practiced in school is definitely not the way midwifery is practiced in the "real world" and that the way it's practiced in some of the places that I've had clinical rotations is not the way it's practiced elsewhere. I been reminded that how I feel about midwifery will change when I'm back in my (or my husband's) home community because my reason for becoming a midwife started there, and I just have to get back to my roots. I hope these people are right. I so want to believe that what we do is different. I want to believe that midwifery school is it's own microcosm of life and not at all the real thing. I so desperately want to fall in love with midwifery again.

I try to think of things I can do to reconnect with midwifery so that it's not all about the book stuff. But it's hard because I don't even have a strong grasp of the book stuff. I feel like I am right with my colleagues as far competency and book smarts - none of us know everything. But when it becomes apparent that the woman's life could very well be in your hands, it seems silly to spend time on anything other than all of the million things that can go wrong in prenatal care and birth. I keep trying to remember all the test we do and why, and when they should be done, and the risks and benefits of the tests...plus the same info for all the meds we prescribe, and the interventions we do in labor... not to mention all the stuff I actually expected to learn in midwifery school like the pathophysiology of the female body and labor and birth. And our professors are unhappy with our disinterest in politics and advocacy... but I can't help but wonder when they expect us to do all of this? The information we have to know has increased by leaps and bounds, but the lengths of the programs have stayed the same. A glass can only hold so much water before it overflows. What if what pours out on the other side is our compassion for women and our passion for the profession?

How can midwifery students rejuvenate ourselves?

How can midwifery students and midwifery educators bridge the gap that seems to exist between us now (at least in my institution)? Among ourselves, students say we don't feel nurtured at all by veteran midwives. Maybe it's time to sit together and figure it out.

In the meantime, I'm hatching a plan to fall in love with midwifery again.

And starting a countdown to my last final of the semester!

Because Something Always Keeps Me Up an Night

I'm one of those thinking people who lay in bed for hours trying to fall asleep unsuccessfully because of the ridiculously extreme future planning swirling around in my head. I'm also a planner. Organizer. Goal setter and writer-downer. A budgeter.

A worrier.

So, something is always keeping me up at night, and for the last several months the reigning question at 2 am has been: When should I get a Phd?

I am SO SICK of having this conversation with myself. But I also think that maybe there are others out there having with themselves as well?!? Or probably some folks out there trying to decide whether they should work for an RN for a year (or another year) before going back to nursing school for their masters degree. I ask people around me questions like "how did you decide when to get your PhD?" or "generally, how many years of full time clinical nursing is considered to be optimal when you're interviewing people for faculty positions?" I've also talked to people about raising children while in doctoral programs, and having children in their first few years of practice. I guess I do field research, lol. It's funny when I think about it, but also necessary, I think. One of the best things about nursing is that it's dominated by women. Sure, there are drawbacks to this, but how cool to be a part of a profession that is mostly made up of women and therefore has women in every leadership role available. This provides the perfect opportunity to explore the intersection of working and personal life for women...

How to Pay for This

I've been thinking a lot about the debt I've accumulated while in nursing/midwifery. (What's new?) As I finished my last financial aid documents for this 3 year stretch of school I felt incredibly tense. As I looked at the totals, an instant prayer for loan repayment formulated in my head. I will probably chant this prayer for the next two years as I attempt to secure it. I have always reminded myself that loan repayment is a very viable option for me because working in the types of communities that they offer the repayment for has always been my goal. But as I look more closely at these programs - the timing of the applications, their rate of award vs the number of applicants, and just how long it's going to actually take to repay these loans - I am, again, tense. I keep trying to put the possible ways this can pan out onto paper (this is how my mind works) and there are indeed many ways to make it all work, but nonetheless, the debt load is mind boggling. The reason why I am focusing myself to have some semblance of a plan now is because the first payment on half of my loans become due in June 2009 - the month following graduation! For others who may not have thought about it (but should) or those who have thought about it and happened to find themselves stressed and teary-eyed over how it's going to work, here's the best scenario I have so far:

May: Graduate...with June and July's loan payment in the bank.

June: Take the midwifery certification exam and start looking for a job

July: Secure a midwifery job...if not secure a temp placement in order to continue with loan payments

December: loan payments increase due to the 6 month grace period on federal loans ending

February: Apply for the NELRP and NHSC loan repayment programs

Even if I am awarded loan repayment under one of these programs, I will have to make payments for at least one year before the payments are taken over. Therefore it may be a good idea to use the "graduated" method of paying back one's loans so that I pay as little as possible during that year. So far, I am settled on working for 3 years straight (I pay my own loans the first year, someone else pays them the next 2) and taking a few classes a year toward a doctoral degree during this time. After three years of this, I should be able to move into a full time doctoral program with only one more year of classes remaining + dissertation. All loans would be deferred while I am in school full time. Then I would apply for research-based loan repayment through the NIH (or a faculty loan repayment program) for the remaining loan balances. The only thing I don't like about this plan is that taking a few classes here and there means that I have to pay for them myself. Not what I envisioned! Also, some of the schools I'm interested in don't have a distance option for their PhD program, and schools are picky about transferring in credits at this level.

I could also work for one year, then enter a doctoral program full time (thereby going into loan deferrment for 4-5 years) and then apply directly to the aforementioned research and faculty loan repayment programs... which was what I initially intended to do before I started waking up in night sweats about my loan totals. LMAO

Just a couple of the many ideas I have about "how to pay for this."

Today I start reviewing notes in preparation for the start of class next week... wish me luck.

Ugh.

Getting Back into the Groove of Things

This will be my last semester of classes in midwifery school!

And it's the lightest load we've ever had. When I look at my schedule, I am in awe. I only have three classes and by some miracle they're all on the same day! I'm expecting for someone to say "oops, we saw how incredibly wonderful your schedule looked for this semester, and realized we forgot to tell you about a class..." on the first day of school. The rest of the week will be dedicated to clinical rotations (both antepartum and intrapartum) and working on my thesis. Of course I'll go into detail about these courses and the schedule when school actually starts. In the meantime, I had a ridiculous amount of fun shopping for school supplies and a new bag!

A lot happened over the few months that I didn't blog regularly:

[::] I became an RN! That's right, I took the NCLEX on May 20th and found out I passed 2 days later. It was monumental in terms of reaching a major checkpoint in this path of becoming a midwife and finally getting some closure for at least the first half of all the work I've done. Otherwise... I don't know. I didn't run out and get an RN job... and I feel no desire to do so even now, 3 months later. Most of the people around me have gotten jobs though and I feel like an outcast for not being the least bit interested. But in my defense, most people are doing it to make money, not for the love of nursing. I found another way to make money that's much more in line with who I am and my future goals:

[::] I worked all summer as a research assistant for midwives who were working on an application for a NIH research grant. It was such a great learning experience, and I got paid just as well as my RN working classmates. I then parlayed that into another position as a graduate assistant for a diversity program on campus that involved mentoring minority undergraduate nursing students through their own research projects. That job has been extended and I now have a job for the whole fall semester. These jobs were/are much more in line with my specific talents and goals. So why do I feel like I'm supposed to be working as a nurse? Or, more importantly to me, why can't I find more of the non-clinically working new RNs who are willing to talk about why they have chosen not to take RN positions? Where can I find mentors who think it's fabulous that I'm following my own dreams/paths to success in nursing - or at least get those who have been great mentors to really stand up and say "look, it works the way you're doing it too, we respect the decisions you've made and will make, even if they aren't in line with the traditional way of doing things in this centuries-old profession." LOL I won't hold my breath for that last one. ;o) It reminds me of something I wrote earlier about embracing all kinds of midwives, not just those who love clinical practice. The same goes for nursing. I have embraced nursing, just a different aspect of the profession. I hope I continue to find the treasured, less treaded pathways so that I am not only giving to the profession, but giving to myself as well. Good luck to all of you new clinically practicing RNs... but also to the new RNs still trying to find their niche in nursing!

[::] I went to the ACNM conference! It was held in Boston this year and we had a blast. I petitioned one of the deans for some conference funding on behalf of myself and the other midwifery students of color, and to my great surprise was granted funding (after a lot of paperwork - also a great learning experience) So we all cramped into a very small, very expensive hotel room in Boston and enjoyed the opportunity to meet midwives and student midwives from all over the country. There were of course moments where I was irritated with people for minor offenses (case in point: someone we had breakfast with randomly turned and asked me if my parents were "healthy" without it being the topic and without asking anyone else at the table... ugh ... just file it under "fat in nursing school" and keep moving I thought to myself) and the expected moments of disagreements while in conversation. Nonetheless, I had an good time. However, I will not be attending this conference every year unless it is paid for by my employer. There are good opportunities available, such as becoming certified in things like vacuum extraction and of course getting your CEU credits in one swoop. There were also good seminars, but being a student meant that we had just had lectures and read the research on a lot of the topics like hypertension, etc. It was more worthwhile to go to sessions that we will not get like those on herbal remedies, or working with residents, etc. But mostly the conference seems like one great big reunion... and I don't know that I need that every year... especially not $1,000 worth. Something occurred to us students over the course of the conference though... the ACNM is a very white haired white lady organization right now...or, probably more accurate, the younger midwives aren't very involved. We think that one reason may be that those in charge seem to be hanging on for dear life. Somehow we must make rom for the next generation... but the "next generation" is actually also quite older... so that means we should be making room for my generation. I think there is room to grow in the ACNM, but I think it is plagued with the same issues as the nursing profession is - the "requirement" that one work for a significant amount of time before moving "up" in ranks and education adds a considerable amount of years to the average age of those in leadership positions. It will be interesting to see where this goes, and to see how I choose to become involved...

[::] Random. In other not-so-significant news, I lost a few pounds, attempting to prep this plush, soft, fatty body for pregnancy in the near future. I started planning for graduation, which is seriously no small feat.

Starting Anew

I'm starting fresh for the school year...without archives. I'm not going to attempt to weave all of the compartments of my life together here on this blog because, really, it's too much and I don't have the time, energy, or mental space to do that right now. I'm going back to the roots of my blog writing. I'm here to write about my experience in midwifery school, and anything that's relevant to that.

I am no longer a completely anonymous blogger but that's just the way it is. People around me will read this to get to know me instead of actually trying to get to know me through the work of interaction. People will use what I say here however they see fit. People will gain a slight advantage by knowing more about me than I do about them. People who know me in real time will continue to read me and not offer up a significant compartment of themselves in return, and that, too, is just the way it is. And my audacity to write about my own life - imagine that- will be seen as arrogance to a few people.

When I think about how I came to be ok with all of this, I have peace; and I only have to remember why I'm writing in the first place to reach that peace.

So, for the millioneth time, the blog is public again. But what does that mean when there is no archival history previous to this post?

Oh!

And I happen to be really happy lately.

Feels so good.

Digging Deep

I'm just living inside my own head right now.

Trying to nourish myself, my brain, my heart, my body.

Trying to hear my own voice again.

July 4th, Home, and Hair

It's been a moody few days. The holiday came and I was miserably homesick. We stayed in the (dark) house the whole day and didn't venture out until 10pm to see a movie downtown. The man had bought me some sparklers, so when we came back from the movie we sat outside and I played with those and it was right at midnight by then. Back home the usual street-blocked-by-barricades-for-fireworks-family-BBQ was in full swing. New babies, old friends, and good food. We were supposed to go to a work BBQ, but didn't make it out the house. I just wasn't in the mood for random conversation. I miss...everything. I didn't cook either, but yesterday I cooked what I would have cooked (jerk chicken, kale and collard greens, and yams) Then I finally cut my dreads out on Friday night which was...emotionally painful. I was left with about 2 inches of hair (less than an inch in the back) which I promptly got braided up. The hair appointment turned out to be a a pretty good pick me up with a beautifully ghetto salon with not air for the first few hours I was there, filled with African women speaking french most of the time, and videos of african dance and drumming playing on the TV. 7 hours later, I was again homesick (albeit a different kind of home, but home nonetheless)

The Final Say

In one of the previous posts I was talking about having the final say in me and the man's relationship when it comes to child rearing...

Russell wants the world to know that the same goes for the mama of his babies, so back the hell up... why do ya'll care how much money a billionaire provides his family anyway?

LMAO.

I went to sleep for a long nap after that last post. Technically, we went to IHOP, brought home some Denver omelettes and carrot cake pancakes, and then fell asleep from a sugar/grease induced coma, but that's neither here nor there.

h sent me this quote:

The Love of Family

What do we make of the love that strangles, chokes, brands us? The last name that branded me is one I was/am so attached to that I did not give up when I married the man. "I've known you all of 6 months...and I'm supposed to give up my name? Hell naw." "Did I ask you to give up your name?" Oh. Right. He didn't give a damn. I was just on some tangent based on what I thought he'd want. But why was I so ready for that argument? And why was I so hellbent on keeping my name...a name that wasn't even my mother's? Right now I'm thinking, I would have liked to have had my mother's name...but even she didn't have it... I was not willing to give up who I was/am to be married...and my daddy had/has no sons...and I belong somewhere...and my name tells me/you where. If I am lost, near death, or have lost my mind completely and don't know who I am...you can find my place in this place by that name... I am not alone in the world... But then again, it's only a name... it's a brand, like cattle - it shows where you belong... who you belong to. Me and the man played around with making up our own last name, and we came up with a pretty good one...but we chickened out (or, more truthfully, we knew we would never do it but it was fun to pretend) knowing we needed these names we were given to remember who we are, where we come from, where to return to. The man has both of his parents names, I only have my father's. But when we married I only added his mother's name to mine. He said hers was more important. I woke up thinking about that this morning. He didn't flinch when he decided. He doesn't even acknowledge his father's name as a part of his name unless someone specifically asks his full name. The man has one of those beautifully ghetto names...it's five names long and was made up by his mother...a name that rolls off her tongue easily, but one of those names that is pronounced correctly by only a few on the first try. Certain people snicker and sneer at these names..."ghetto"..."too long for the baby to learn how to spell"..."they will know he is black just by the name and they will not give him the job"... I get it . But I will not conform on that point. My children will have first names that give me a certain feeling when I say them. We will not be compromising on the selection of their names based on society's ability to respect it. But what of their last names? We made this decision when we got married, so it's not really a matter of what their last name will be, but rather how I feel about what having that last name - his (maternal) last name - means to me. Will they feel bound by the name? Is the space where these people, his people, our people, collect going to be a good place for them to call home? Will they be free to be who they are, even with this name?

When I think of my last name (and my mother's name and my stepfather's- who is simply my dad/father -name) I think of love. As mushy as that sounds, it's true. But what of this love? Is it healthy? Does it make me feel whole? Is it forgiving. strengthening. coddling. encouraging. stifling. suffocating. wise? Love, for me, has always been one of those things that just is. I don't spend a lot of time trying to explain it, define it. Commitment I can explain and define. Trust I can explain and define. Loyalty I can explain and define. But love. Love just is. (Or always has been, I should say) It is simply something you feel, no matter how you came to feel it, once you do, it's there, with you. My limitation in talking about how love manifests in families is limited because I...I believe in it...with all my heart. Maybe family is what manifests as god on earth for me... maybe that doesn't make sense? This is more philosophical than I imagined it would be... For me, family is love. And when I ask myself what I want in this lifetime, it is love.

Because families are made of imperfect people, they can not be everything you need them to be. Because families are a collection of people, they are flawed, terribly flawed. There are people who hurt each other, kill each other, even. There are people who lie to themselves and everyone else. There are people who prey on the children, and people who do not or can not keep the children safe. There are people who are addicted to all kinds of things. There are people who feel isolated from the whole...because they are...because they are gay or dark or ugly or the child of you know who, who did you know what or they are too smart or too loud or they are a girl who doesn't want marriage or babies or boy who doesn't play sports or they don’t go to church or believe in god or wont limit the number of children they have or any other offense that somehow embarrasses the whole. The irony lay in the fact that each member has committed some embarrassing sin, and therefore, by their own rules, no one should belong. But of course it doesn’t work that way. There are things that people are willing to look the other way for and things that are simply unacceptable. But what if being who you are is unacceptable? I worry about this for all of us. What if I don’t want to be one of the 'smart ones' anymore? What if I detest the very idea of "smart ones"? What if I never wanted to make it out of the hood, I just wanted to be able to live- fully, as I am- in the hood? Fireworks are going off in my head right now… I never wanted to leave the hood, the family…I just wanted to be me in the hood, in the family…if I felt like I could do that, there would be no reason to leave (and not come back) Hmm family who ever sees this will wonder…they will say, 'but you can be you here." But that is not true. Not because they won’t allow it, but because the environment is not conducive to it…my neighborhood, my community, my family is not conducive to it… the half-nerd I was and you know me to be, aint got shit on the real me. A real me who becomes clearer and clearer every day. A real me who might not have even been able to find herself if she hadn’t found this ivory tower – even with all its attempts to annihilate her – that encourages her to dig deeper, read more, question everything, learn, grow, learn, grow, ask, learn grow ask debate read read read readreadreadlearngrowreadlearngrowread. Naw yall, I couldn’t get that at home. I wanted it so badly. I still want it. I want to be able to do this on my own street. With my family. But the environment was not/is not ready. And yall knew it. Correction, yall know it. When I think of love, I think about how wonderful it was to be left alone to read…how much I appreciated the books, and the space to read them. I am so grateful that ‘nerd’ was used in a loving way in my community which allowed me to embrace the word despite how much venom was used in grade school when it was spoken. But right now I’m thinking of how much farther, faster, I could have gotten if people were able to love more fiercely. If families could love more openly. If they could love in new(yet old) ways. Where would I be if my reading were not only tolerated and encouraged, but also cultivated and guided? If there was a community of people who read with me? If people were able to/had chose to challenge me intellectually? If people could love me in not only the ways that they did, but the ways I needed?

What if instead of counting people’s children and how many men they went through to have those children, we simply celebrated and welcomed them into the world, into our family, our community? We do this in my family (welcome and love all the babies) but we do not spare our judgments about their mothers…can you love the child without loving the woman who brought the child into the world? Really? How much would change if instead we actually sat down as women and talked about what we need and why…if we could say openly, without shame, that we just want to have sex without the cover of “he loves me, I love him, we’re together” and yada yada yada? Would we have fewer babies because we could/would protect ourselves openly? And why do we feel the need to limit the number of babies in the first place? I know money is the first answer. But if we removed money from the equation? I think we’d find something else to replace that answer because we’ve internalized the need to control people’s reproductive freedom. What if we believed that there wasn’t only one god…and that he’s a man…and that anyone who calls god something else according whoever they know it to be in their part of the world was not going to hell to burn for eternity? What if we openly questioned what we’ve been taught and analyzed it critically? What if we just stayed home from church every Sunday like we know we want to? What if there was no guilt that came with that? Or in the very least what if we could wear whatever the hell we felt like to church and of instead sitting there listening to one man’s interpretation of the holy bible, we sat around the floor together with multiple “bibles” of multiple faiths written by diverse people which we were all free to share and interpret among each other? What if I came and sat and read a poem by Nikki Giovanni that speaks to me about faith in an odd, reassuring way? Couldn’t you still love me? Or can we only love those who close their eyes and sway to the beat as they sit on the pugh ignoring the words. I understand this kind of love…I do… I sway and bounce and snap to a buncha songs as I try to drown out the words, too. Thank god for Lupe Fiasco for trying to bring consciousness back to mainstream rap.

I am saying that I am here, and I am me, and that I am like you just as much as I am different from you. I am saying that I love the yous that I know yall to be. But more importantly I love the yous that you could be if only you allowed yourselves…if only we allowed ourselves…to be free, to be loved, to love unconditionally. This is hard. We, people, do not just automatically open our minds to the possibilities of living whole, authentic lives…first we have to see what it is about our lives that is not authentic…and that takes work. This one of the areas where yall never get to see the real me…the real me is always, always, always doing the work of attempting to build an authentic self, but it’s a mental dialog that I haven’t shared very much…because yall weren’t/aren’t ready. But love, when narrowed down to terms, is also truth. How can we love eachother if we don’t tell each other the truth? I am so ready to live more fully, more openly with those I love. How amazing would it be if through the process of sharing more and more of myself I see more and more of the you who lives inside your head and we both learn that we aren’t as weird as we think we are? Can somebody, anybody, from my community please step up.

If the love that says “I am the parent and the adult and you are the child, so therefore you can not, will not be smarter than me or talk back to me or question me or challenge me in any way” were not such a given…if it were not the only way we knew how to parent…knew how to give love…who and where would I be? I think families give the best that they’ve got…as long as it upholds what they have learned is important. That is to say that I think a mother will let her child grow only as far as it does not threaten her position as the mother…because when her position as the mother is challenged, so is her position as the daughter. And we have accepted these positions as love. Submitting to the hierarchy of ‘respect’ is supposed to represent love. To obey your parents is to love your parents. To honor your grandparents is to love your grandparents. To submit to your husband is to love your husband. To sacrifice yourself for your children is to love you children. But in my adult life I am hardly ever as liberated as I am when I replay the moment of my mother telling me she didn’t want children. Liberation is love. She probably doesn’t even remember it. I don’t even remember the details, all I know is she said it just as matter of factly as someone would tell you what time it is. My point is, real love is that which honors the self and tells the truth…and then offers that to the other person. I still believe that love, unconditional, unwavering love is the answer.

I wanna come home. I love yall. We share names, histories, children. I love not only the yous you are right now, but the yous you are in your heads. I don’t believe I need to build this community of people to love and be with…I think I need to encourage the family I already have to be that for each other. I believe we can learn together, if we wanted to.

The question is, and always has been, what if no one wants to join me?

Finishing the Thought...

I didn't clarify how the ways I was t taught to love my (future) husband were/are detrimental to my own existence... it's the expectation that he comes before me - even to me. You see, it's one thing for society to think that I should put him first (which is biblical by the way - thou shall have no other god before me) but it's another thing entirely for me to believe it...for me to actually tell myself, that him and his needs come before my own... I have a hard time accepting this for mothering...so I certainly have a hard time accepting it for another grown person. It is...suicide...to have your life rise and set on someone else. Yet another thing I tried to explain with my classmates at dinner. They could not understand why we had conditions on our marriage...they truly, unwaveringly, believe in death till we part. I said "even if he kills you?" I remember a friedn once challenged me that I could not live without the man after I said that I would be ok if we weren't together. I admit, it would be hard, and I wouldn't want to do it. I love me some the man. Yes, yes, yes I do. Mmh. BUT...if have to, I can. I hope I never have to see it, to test it, to deal with it, but like every other person who has suffered something, I can live through it. I have to believe this because my life as an individual hinges on it. It is not healthy to be so dependent on someone that you think you can't live without them...and I think that often times this is what women are expected to do/believe in traditional love relationships. Why can't I love him fiercely with the understanding that I am still a fierce chick who can handle her own? Why is the expectation that we become 'one' instead of a chopstick-tight twosome (or whatever other combination one desires)? Marriage would feel like slow death if we could only grow together...I have separate dreams that deserve to be stroked just as much as our common dreams. The man is so boring when he's not working on anything for himself...there's nothing to talk about. The point is that if we only love in the ways we were taught, we will only have the relationships we've seen...and we want something different.