It has been quite the past couple of days. I feel like I need to get a lot of writing and thinking done, and here is as good a place to start as any. Well... I guess the place to start is Saturday, when Cam and I drove up to Seattle. I went to run the Free Them 5k which aims to fight human trafficking. I ran to support the cause, but wouldn't have done so except that I also wanted to support Becca, stand in solidarity with her and her passions (not that I am not passionate about it too). It was an interesting experience to say the least, but I guess I don't really want to get into the details. After the race we waited for the bus near a fallout shelter. I was already riled up from conversations I'd overheard in the car and at the race, and a discussion with Nathan I'd had that morning, and then with the general atmosphere of the running event. I realize I was experiencing culture shock having come directly from Olympia into a very large concentration of christians, and having been on the highway/in a car so long, and then witnessing the waste and the indulgence of the event. It was a lot. And then there was the boat party -- a birthday party for Nathan's boss. I can't really even go there. The juxtaposition of my life in Oly with the entire day of exposure to things I am already sensitive about just left me exhausted.

Then I got home and witnessed how dedicated my parents have been to making changes in their lives, largely in response to my passions. It was beautiful and Dad and I did some work on the new garden plan while mom had to go back to Seattle for a call-in at the hospital. This work and seeing this transformation and being outside was revitalizing after a hard day. After Dad and I were pooped I went inside to veg-out online and came across something that has since sent me into a spiral of despair. It was a video on what a particular country is doing with its nuclear waste. In class we have been discussing nuclear power and its implications on all sorts of levels from what radiation is to how it causes cancer and how long it lasts and how fragile our infrastructure for it is. So we are already playing god, and this video just took it to another level of hubris that I can't even.... think about if I want to function. The problem is, I WANT to think about it. I don't want to live in ignorance. I want to KNOW so I can have the power, or at least the awareness, necessary to make change. But it is a heavy heavy burden to know... and the rest of the night was pain.

The next morning, feeling desperate for expression of my emotions and for guidance and support with what I was facing (what we are all facing) I wrote to FaceTribe... online community of people who live, think, feel more like me than I have ever experienced. I had seen the way they (we) have responded to other tribe members in times of need, and I realized that I can ask for help too. I wrote:

"Dear Tribe,
I find myself so in need of tribe recently. I have never truly opened up here, but today I need to. I'm sorry this heavy post comes on Mother's Day.

Last night was one of the most painful I've experienced.


From recent discussions in class, to watching an online documentary I have been discovering the horrors of nuclear waste, and last night the reality and magnitude and longevity of the problem finally all made it to my heart. I've never been so scared for the world that I love so much.


Home for the weekend, I tried to talk to my Dad. I was sobbing, and he was so "business" about it. He understood why I was hurting, but he wasn't hurting in the same way, and he tried to talk me out of feeling the pain I was feeling without knowing the whole story. That just made me feel more pain...anger towards him for not feeling the pain, for discrediting the validity of mine, and then for not having done anything about this problem, and for bringing me into this world knowing what I would have to face. ...And that he just stood there while I sobbed, holding facts to my grief.


This left me feeling utterly alone. My own father did not have guidance or emotional support for me in this time of need. I felt like there were no elders to look to, and even if there were, I was angry at them. I called two friends, and one of them said the only thing that needed to or could have been said which was: "Just go ahead and cry, you don't have to say anything. Thank you so much for feeling this pain you are feeling." Then, she talked softly to me about how much she wished she could be here with me, holding me, falling asleep next to me, and waking up in the morning to make blueberry pancakes.


Her tenderness and understanding calmed me down a bit. But laying in bed later, 100,000 years became an unfathomable number again, and all the images that were haunting me resurfaced. I felt resentful of, and let down by, the past generations. I felt angry at myself too, and began to think that I didn't ever want to bring anyone new to this world with so much pain to feel for so many problems that we've caused and left for them.


I wrote: "What an awful thing to feel hatred for one's own ancestors. But I do, for being left with no guidance about what to do in the face of such an unprecedented, dangerous, wounded, and diseased reality. I do not want to hand this to someone else, to any others, to have to face, to have to address... I do not want others to have to feel the consequences of things they did no choose."


I put my journal down and cried more. Then for whatever reason, I started speaking out loud, into the future, begging them to know that I did care about them and that I did try for them. And I just said over and over through my tears "Please know that I loved you and that I tried....I'm trying."


After a while of repeating this, I began to hear it newly, not as a message from me to the future, but as a message to me from the past. And I realized, that someone sometime somewhere had said this prayer for me too. Maybe many people had. Maybe most people had. But if so why is the world still as it is?


I don't know what else to say. What you all offer here in FaceTribe so often helps me feel less alone, less daunted. Any words, poems, advice, love... I would gladly accept today.

Thank you."

Just writing it helped. Posting it even more so. And then receiving the unbelievable outpouring of love that I did over the next few days has allowed me to survive and begin the slow, maybe never-ending process of moving through and working with this pain. These 15+ people who responded (all of them "strangers" but one) bringing me into their hearts, hearing me, acknowledging and affirming my pain, loving me, sharing resources with me, and feeling with me have empowered me to continue.

Yesterday, in the Cultivating Voice class for the Writing Center, we were talking about difficult types of sessions. Sometimes it seems like people come into the center (maybe like an hour before a paper is due) seeking affirmation that what they have written is "ready" to turn in, seeking easy answers, rather than seeking a discussion about ways to move forward with the paper or ways to improved their overall writing process. Sandy said something like: "if you are always granted validation about your ideas, how do you learn how to trust yourself?" It reminded me of what Cam had said about not wanting to become an emotional crutch for me (I realize that isn't an exact quote either, but it is basically what I took away from something he said at one point).

I think both these ideas are valuable to consider and to keep in mind, but their importance does not negate the value and power of affirmation. No, it isn't our job to tell the student "yes, this paper is ready to submit." But as Ben demonstrated in his role play with Norma Alicia (who was acting as a panicked student wanting affirmation about her paper), we can acknowledge their emotions... validate, at least, the fact that they are feeling panic and pain. She said, once he did that, she felt the panic recede and she could look at the situation more clearly.

We don't have to give easy answers that are not authentic, we only have to acknowledge, with openness and love and acceptance, where someone is, and encourage them to proceed.

Life is already so difficult and confusing. We live in a world so full of unanswerable questions. It is nice to be validated in our experience some of the time... and at the very least, to not feel like what you are experiencing is invalid. When I was crying to dad he said: "you are getting yourself so worked up over something without knowing the whole reality of it." When I told Bret I was struggling emotionally with the content of the class he told me he didn't know what to say, "the subject matter is what it is." I wasn't looking to ignore the reality in either instance. I was facing it, head on and trying to navigate it. All I wanted was compassion.

One of the students in Cultivating Voice said something about the power of looking to elders (or "those who have gone before") for guidance (which is what I so desperately wanted this weekend and in my convo with Bret). Maybe its not even just having someone who's gone before, but having a witness. To some degree I think we all want to be heard, seen, acknowledged, validated by someone in this crowded, confusing, chaotic world where everything is judged and scrutinized and difficult. Having a witness... having a mirror... having an acknowledgment that what you are saying, doing, feeling is not invalid, and that it is okay or even powerful, can make all the difference in whether or not we continue to pursue truth, writing, life...

My tribe, when posed with my questions and pain, did not have easy answers for me. They did not tell me what I needed to do. They just encouraged me in my experience. They held me up. They thanked me. They said they trusted my emotions. They told me I was not alone in feeling them. They bowed to me. They breathed with me. They invited me to them and to places of healing. They reflected with me and reflected me. They felt with me. They loved and loved and loved me. And that made all the difference.

Love is incredibly powerful. I'd like to believe that its impacts are more powerful and more lasting than any other type of power (including nuclear). I don't know how that is true, or how it could be true evolutionarily or otherwise, but my heart believes it... even if my brain questions it. Class this quarter has made me question (at times) if love even exists at all. Silly, I know, and shocking to hear, probably... but true. I mean, the class has forced me to question a lot of assumptions I hold around humanity and life and self and, well, just about everything. And that has been good. But I guess I am realizing that nothing (no logic, no reasoning, nothing) can steal love from my heart, from the world. The only thing that seems to have come close to doing that is hatred, but, then again, I believe even that can't exist without love.



Phew! Lots more to say, but I'm going to release this into the world so I feel that I at least got some of it out. Thank you for reading.