Becoming my Mother

One of the earliest memories I have with my mom is an anatomy lesson.  I can't remember what I asked, but it must have been about babies.  I remember her saying:

"Hold out your fist.  You have a uterus, and it's about the size of your fist.  That's where a baby grows."

 

Completely enamored by this thing called a uterus, I did not think of a follow up question as to how a baby would find its way into a uterus.  My lack of critical thinking skills at 4 is not the point though.  My mom tells the truth, and as I grew up I learned to live in my own truth, and grew to appreciate the transparency my mom encouraged. 

I don't remember the exact moment I learned about suicide, but I grew up knowing what it was.  My maternal grandmother committed suicide the year before I was born.  This was a fact of life as I grew up, and is a piece of my history too.  I grew up with a mom who encouraged us to take an emotional inventory regularly, and to distinguish between the typical fleeting sadness and hopelessness. 

My mom is a badass, and the thing I admire most about her is her honesty, even when I don't want to hear it.  She is a badass bitch, and a solid human being who is filled with wisdom, rationality, while also serving as huge source of encouragement for all of the life decisions I seem to make on a whim.

I'm getting to the point in life where little things I do (typically things that drove me insane growing up) make me realize I'm becoming my mother.  One time in a cleaning frenzy I recycled the registration for our community car in JVC, and had to ask my program coordinator to go to the DMV to get another one.  I'm becoming my mother.  Whenever I turn on my headlights while driving when it's daytime I think of my mother.  All of the times I lose my phone in the giant bag of food I carry around with me to work and school, and assume it's lost for good--I am my mother.  When I let out a long line of expletives because I'm excited, I think of her then too. 

My maternal grandmother used to say to my mom, "you inherited all of my bad qualities, cholera!"  I will happily take what I have previously rolled my eyes about, as long as I get to continue growing in a similar way, into the person she is becoming. 

Also, my mom (and whole family) pretended to like me when this was how I acted on vacation regularly.  Me being 15 was hard for everybody.*  So, yeah, I think they're pretty great.

*please note my black nailpolish

The Bleeding Heart

Service can feel so limiting, because it challenges you to realize that you can’t be everything for a person, or absorb someone else’s pain.  Essentially, it’s learning that you cannot be God, and what can be offered is companionship.

My heart bleeds with these men I work with.  They suffer so much, and the reality of my job is that there’s not a lot I can do to tangibly fix anything.  The best I can do is to be a constant, steady presence, and experience the hardships of life along their side.

One of the men on my case load, Tom*, recently lost his girlfriend of 12 years.  She had a stroke two weeks ago, and then a second last week which over took her.  When Tom told me she died I felt too young and stupid to know what to say.   I felt way too inexperienced in life and relationships to offer anything to him.  I actually hastily googled “how to accompany people grieving a significant other” and now ask him, “how are you doing today?” because the semantics of that sentience verses “how are you?” is supposed to be less triggering.  It still feels wildly inadequate.  My tools are undeniably limited, and all I feel capable of doing is showing up, making a few phone calls during the week to check in with him, and fussing over him when appropriate. 

I love my dudes, and something I’ve realized and adopted this year is fussing over them, because it’s a simple way to acknowledge their humanity.  Some of my guys don’t have many strong and reliable relationships in their day to day life, and I think that fussing over a person’s haircut or their new shirt can really go a long way.  It sounds kind of stupid, but I think it provides them with a level of validation that we crave as humans.  We crave to be accepted and noticed.

As I wrap up my time at Our Brothers’ Place next week, I keep returning to this image of a bleeding heart that looks like it’s had the shit beat out of it.  And it's not this bullshit commercialized heart:  it's got a ton of arteries and veins leading in and out of it.  It’s not my heart, but more of a metaphor for the hearts of the marginalized and those who walk with them.  The blood of our suffering unites us, and is pumped through our bodies:  we all bleed.   I will continue to carry these men in my heart, which bleeds with them as they continue on in their lives.  I will most certainly miss them.

*Name has been changed

3rd Rock From the Sun

The concept of time this past year or so has been so funky.  It's hard for me to describe how I'm perceiving it:  is it moving quickly, or slowly?  I've been a JV for 21 months, and something about that cracks me up, because I have no idea how this time fits me. 

One question I've been asking myself for awhile is, "What am I still doing here?" 

So much of this year has been gritty and hard, and not in the ways I had necessarily hoped.  I don't think I can pinpoint what's been challenging me on such a deeply spiritual level while in Philadelphia, but something I continue to return to is the earth.

The first time I realized how much I missed nature was at the AY retreat in Texas, and it was there that I proclaimed, "that's it!  I'm moving back to Minneapolis!"  And this has continued to be a struggle this year.  Philadelphia is a lot of lovely things:  historical, community oriented, and filled with social justice advocacy groups.  This winter was also overwhelmingly gray and dark for me. 

At silent retreat two weeks ago I spent some time walking through the woods the day we left, and as I meditatively walked beneath trees I felt like I was saying goodbye to the surface of the earth.  I know, dramatic. 

But it's soil.  I need soil to feel connected to the earth and to reflect, and pray.  Some of my fondest memories last year of community involved the four of us outside in our yard not talking and doing separate things:  weeding, reading, chopping wood.  Soil is surprisingly challenging to find in Philadelphia, but we do have it, and I need to make better use of it.

Soil sustains life, and also sustains me.  The world we live in is broken, and that brokenness can be exasperating and overwhelming.  The life that nature provides me with is this:  the world is still a beautiful place, and although parts of it may seem shattered there are still undeniably beautiful patches of it waiting to be witnessed.      

Aubrey Hightower and the Parameters of Reality

So, just for fun I've developed this silly alter ego within community and work:  Aubrey Hightower.  I have a man on my case load DJ* who I have been working with for 5 months.  He still struggles to remember my name and experiences delusions regarding drug charges from 1990. 

DJ calls me Ms. Hightower.  DJ is usually in a rush to attend a group for a free meal or some tokens, so when I run into him on my way into work he will hastily update me on the progress of his legal case.  One day as I was shuffling along the icy sidewalk to buzz the door, DJ saw me and said, "Ms. Hightower, I have great news, I am appealing to the US Supreme Court!"

One thing I've started to incorporate into my work the past year is the concept of entering other people's realities.  I have met many homeless men (and one particular woman who wears black bourrés) who have been so negligent with their medication that they are living on a completely different plane of reality.  As a result they usually have no one to talk to and bare the brunt of shelter bullying.  So I keep a closer eye on them, because I love the underdog.  And if I have the availability during my day I will spend hours talking to them (I'm looking at you, HL who talks to the coffee pot and jams with his radio off). 

I am not necessarily "job ready" when it comes to identifying mental illness, and thankfully that's not my job.  My job revolves around the power of suggestion and goal setting:  I build a lot of little bridges for men to walk across to enter stability.  Building these bridges is easiest when working within or at least having a desire to understand an individual's reality.  Aubrey Hightower enters people's realities and will go to the "crazy" place with people, because it's a solid foundation for relationship building, which is what I enjoy the most about my job. 

I met with DJ last week to review his housing plan....and legal battles.  DJ continues to put off having his psychiatric evaluation completed for his housing application.  I wouldn't say I'm a patient person, but for some reason I'm able to find a deep well of patience when it comes to the mentally ill especially when they're afraid of the stigma accompanying their diagnosis.  And I am comfortable with the long time this will most likely take.  I'm comfortable knowing I will most likely not see DJ get housed because I'll be onto a new job, and I'm learning to exist within the parameters of my own reality. 

I had this bizarre dream where I was at work and one of the older men who is on dialysis had a cut on his head.  I grabbed our first aid kit and put on some gloves and pulled out a couple of Band-Aids, and I was shocked to see that the Band-Aids were actually the rough, gritty part of Velcro.  I turned to my boss and said, "This is ridiculous, you really want me to put this on the cut," and  was told, "Audrey, you need to learn to work within the parameters of your reality."

So this is where I have been the past few months:  sorting out what the parameters of my reality are while maintaining a sense of how messy the structures I work within are and determining how to sustain an appropriate and livable amount of tension between the two.

*Name has been changed

Extra Christmas

This December the Advent and Christmas season have been filled with more pain than I anticipated.  Without a doubt, the inhabitants of this planet feel a lot of psychological, emotional, and physical pain.  Delving into these topics on an intellectual level is disturbing, because it's pleasant and easy to trust that Justice is commonplace.  This December I’ve began to experience a whopping amount of grief regarding the deaths of marginalized populations, and it’s become much more personal and emotionally geared.   

Early this December a man on my caseload died.  It’s something I always knew to be a possibility working with the homeless, but receiving that email from the director of my shelter while waiting for a flight in the Chicago Midway airport really kicked my ass.  It stole my words, and I was left feeling completely blank and white washed.  It’s something I am still sorting out internally, and am so mixed up about I’m not sure where to begin. 

This December as I’ve been maintaining contact with co-workers at my previous job, I learned about the death of someone on site, as well as a slew of overdoses.  And I feel with my former co-workers; I feel their pain, shock, fear, and unsteadiness.  More than anything I wish I could be in St. Paul working with them, and supporting them in tangible ways, especially at a site that seems to be perpetually short staffed and walking the fine line of burn out.

Yesterday I received news that a former client of mine was murdered by another client in her apartment.  I felt so far away from the grief people were experiencing.  Again I just want to be in that place that truly needs extra hands, where people are hurting and feeling this loss.  If I’ve found one thing to be true, it’s that sitting with people in their suffering is crucial, and right now a whole group of people I have walked with is hurting in a very real and emotionally trying way.  I feel powerless. 

Right now the world at large and the world I interface with daily appear so incredibly dark and twisted.  What frightens me most is how hardened I feel, and how capable I am of allowing this to roll off me.  I want to give these events the emotional energy and prayer they deserve. I need some extra Christmas, because I need to focus on Hope in what feels like a very dark and sad place.  This is a heavy December, and I need some extra Hope to walk through it and effectively accompany the people in my life.

Emotional Erosion

 

“…Some of you will be so changed
by weathers and wanderings
that even your closest friends
will have to learn your features
as though for the first time…”

 

I’ve been revisiting this stanza from the poem, Passover Remembered (Bozarth, Alla) a lot lately.  I’ve been considering my experiences as a JV and how I am worried that I’ve shifted too much.  This is in the forefront of my mind this month especially as I prepare to be reunited with some college friends at Fairfield’s Alumni Weekend. 

When I examine how I am living my life today compared to how I envisioned my life as a senior in college there isn’t much overlap.  What sticks out to me in this stanza is the word weathers.  It took me back to 4^th grade, when I learned about weathering and erosion.  Initially when considering erosion in nature I come up with negative connotations surrounding destruction, but I have started to rationalize the necessity of the process and the beauty that can accompany the altered landscape.  While perusing the internet I found an article discussing the duo of river erosion and landslides’ role in maintaining some of the world’s most iconic mountain ranges.  This cycle is credited with maintaining mountains, but erosion itself proves the malleability of the Earth’s surface.  I think our minds, hearts, and thoughts are malleable like the Earth.  My one-year-plus of JVC has eroded the exterior layers of my metaphorical heart. 

And this makes me nervous, because it makes me think I feel too much now.   I am nervous because I am not sure what landscape my heart is taking.  I wonder how the men I work with will continue to erode the crust of my heart, and transform it into something unrecognizable.  I am the most nervous about not being recognized by myself and by my family and friends.  I am afraid of becoming a stranger in the lives of those I value from my past. 

There are these conflicting moments of dual clarity and confusion regarding my emotional and intellectual erosion.  As I walked home from the subway after work, I was thinking about the physical property of volume.  All of the sudden it hit me:  I can't remember how to solve for volume.  I was seriously shocked, and as I walked down Girard Avenue my mind was without an answer as it feverishly searched for a formula.  All I could think was, "Holy shit!  I've lost all of my knowledge and all I have are feelings!"  As I turned onto 18th Street I came up with a solution. 

D = m/v

Just manipulate that equation.  During that final stretch home, I gained a new appreciation for the saying, "if you don't use it you lose it."  I use my empathy regularly at Bethesda Project.  So I suppose that this consistent use of empathy and compassion are the two rivers that I feed, and are responsible for the erosion of my heart, and the reshaping of my life.   

 

 

This I Believe

I am grateful for technology.  I am thankful that while I am physically in Philadelphia I am able to have pieces of myself scattered throughout America.  I am grateful for funny people.  And for people who gently remind me to put God first through their own thoughts and actions.  I am grateful for snapchat.  

I saw my Twin Cities community the other day through a snapchat from my former PC who is in MN for his Fall area visit.  I saw the three of them together smiling at me through my phone, and I was reminded of how much I love them.  Upon seeing those three people, there was some unnecessary happy shouting.   

The Fall area visit for Philadelphia is in full swing, and last night was Spirituality Night in the Thomas Merton House.  We discussed beliefs.  I think the 6 of us melted a little while listening to this child’s list of 100 beliefs. 

http://www.npr.org/about/press/2009/011509.SevenYearOldTIB.html 

I've been keeping this in the back of my mind while at work today, and a few more thoughts popped into my head.  I believe in being present to the people I am with.  I believe that pieces of me are scattered across the country, tied up with the people I have come to appreciate and love.  I believe that sometimes all you can have with people are small moments through technology.  I am beginning to believe that technology may have some value for maintaining relationships, instead of being a distraction from the people I am with.  I believe this because I know I must have both feet on the ground in Philadelphia literally and metaphorically.  I believe people from my past experiences are important to keep with me.  As a result I've accepted the small sense of defeat  that has accompanied the reintroduction of my iPhone into my life.  I believe smartphones might not be as destructive as I previously thought.  However, I believe that people are capable of maintaining connections through more than just phones.  

I believe in the strength of letters.  I am certain I will continue to have circular, conflicting thoughts regarding my iPhone use.  I believe technology can be constructive.  But sometimes it's best to kick it old school.

Twin Cities:  keep checking your mail.