This Pregnant Feminist Will Eat You Alive

Everything's changing.

The moment was actually split. Plural.

There were two realizations that changed my life. One was the moment I knew I wanted to be a mother. The second when I realized I was pregnant.

Those two moments were distinct and both charged with a transformative power difficult to express.

The moment I knew I wanted to become a mother of some kind was a shock of worry -- what if I couldn't become pregnant? What if my health was not up to par? What kind of mother would I be? How will my life change?

Then the moment arrived when I realized I was pregnant. Everything turned into a statement, not a question. That left me in shock. I am now pregnant. My health is not up to par. I will be a mother. My life will change. All declaratives. All terrifying. No more questions.

I've come to understand my life in terms of my feminism and vice versa. My feminism is subdued or enthralled by the ongoing events and lessons of my everyday life. The more I engage in my life, the clearer my thoughts become, the more complex my issues grow. I wondered how my blogging would be affected -- would I suddenly be thrust into the prego blogosphere? No...I thought to myself, I'm still the same person. I'm not a genre. I'm a womyn of color, pregnant. I am growing fire inside my uterus. You better believe I'm going to be writing about this.

Being a pregnant womyn has pushed me into a new role in this world. It has shifted my thoughts to a future-oriented way of thinking. When I watch the news, it's not longer about me, but how it might affect the future my child will live in. When I see a car accident, I wonder if a child was lost, or if a child just lost a parent. Then I cry.

My eyes are wet with weepiness. As I ran on a treadmill, I stopped to weep into a corner. Then I got up and ran again.

The assault of medical worries and superficial expectations on what makes a "Good Mother" has astounded me. Everything from pre-natal yoga to avoiding bologna...all of the information and "education" has paralyzed me.

The greatest advice came from a friend who simply said, "Listen to your body. It knows what it needs."

There's a new fragility in my life that has gifted me with a strength I do not want to refuse. I want to be a strong mother, a strong womyn. I see the demons of this world who have painted the canvas of motherhood with images of white perfection, middle class luxuries, and the oldest tool of oppression used toward new and old mothers: guilt. I see the expectations heaped upon my life in the short 9 weeks I've been pregnant and am tickled with excitement. The world has no idea who they are messing with. Me. You are messing with pregnant me and my writing is going to fire back at all the mainstream feminisms that have contributed to the locking down, locking up, and criminilization of womyn of color who choose motherhood despite the odds, who choose to have children with or without a partner, who choose to raise their children with less than adequate healthcare coverage, who work and fight and love all in the same day. My blog will be focusing on the issues of pregnancy and feminism, on giving love and attention to all the truthful ways real womyn birth life into the world.

There is no epidural for the kind of birth I want.

Speak! Speak! Speak!

Pump up the volume and enjoy.

Choice and Memorial Day Weekend

When I think of all the people and their families who have served in some capacity for their country, I think of my options. And my fortune. And my privilege. I think of the secrets that the public does not know or want to know of our military.

I think of a former colleague, a mother whose son was in Iraq and barely spoke for the three years he was away and then 9 weeks before his discharge was the only time I saw her smile as she told me he was soon coming home. Weeks later, I looked for her at work and heard her son was killed in a roadside bomb.

I think of friends who whose loved ones are away, shut away in a remote part of the world, their duties mysteries, their actions unknown, their security unstable.

I think of all the people who are actively in our military, whose belief system I do not understand but simultaneously respect. I think of how so many of these people fighting in our war are late teens and early 20-somethings. They're kids.

And I think that that is how my choices are available, how our world builds its freedom -- on who wins wars, who has military power and security and bullying power. I think of all the activists, professors, and educators in the Philippines who are abducted, raped, tortured, and disappeared under the watch of their government. I think of the voiceless screams of the women I know walking the streets of Mercado Oriental, in mother-daughter prostitution rings, who have no choice but to work for violent pimps and sell their bodies, their mother-daughter relationship to an evil system of endless oppression, and whose government gives them only sobras and palabras?

Memorial Day always makes me think of choices. It always makes me think about privilege. It always conjures up the two sides to every coin and often the confusion I feel when I pass cemeteries with hundreds of mini-flags and flowers, confetti on the graves that honor those who gave their lives and to whom I hang my head in prayer and gratitude. It makes me think of our freedom -- and what it buys us in other countries.

Choice. At what expense does yours come with?

"Is"

I was about to google a question that began with the word "is" and these ten questions appeared down in the scroll to try and predict what my "is" question would be:

IS
bronchitis contagious?
pneumonia contagious?
Obama the antichrist?
Michelle Obama pregnant?
your Jason Mraz lyrics?
limewire illegal?
Lil Wayne dead?
the world going to end in 2012?
santa real?
pluto a planet?

Let's pretend Google is an omnipotent force...
If you could ask one "is" question today -- what would you ask if you knew you would get the truth in reply?

Quick Point for the Day

Anytime a White identified woman asks how to be an ally to a womyn of color, or how to be a "real feminist" that includes full self-actualization, I am always in amazement that the first things said are about how "hard" things are, how "oppressive" the world is, how racism has depleted the hope, stamina, and good-nature of womyn of color.

Speaking at least for myself, yes, there is another side of life that womyn of color must deal with that often has to do with poverty, injustice, violence, and discrimination in waves that most US-White women do not understand.

However, what I think most people don't understand is that with rough terrain often comes full souls, hearts that are readily open and laugh often, party much, and celebrate the matters of most importance.

Communities of differences beset by injustice are often the first to identify the good spots of life, the waters that most take for granted.

That side of womyn of color is often not understood.

I am not a meeting the world with a bitter head, I see it head on, face up, and have joy.

I have joy.

So, if you want to better understand the lives of womyn of color, it is imperative to not only understand the pain, but to watch the joy.

Bumper Feminism Stickers

BA lights it up while I can make a bumper sticker about it.

Giselle: Artistic and Racy or Just Racist?

Take a look.

What do you think?

The Concept of "Work"

Anytime I talk about "work" (work being defined as a series of assigned tasks for which you are regularly paid), I'm always met with misunderstanding. Work, clearly, is one of those deep and layered topics that convey class and privilege. I know that.

I know that the things I am about to write clash in a country beset with a recession, with terrible stories of loss and hardship.

That's not the context of work I am talking about today. I'm not talking about work as a means of survival, a means of providing life and nutrition and basic needs. I'm talking about work as an avenue of creative force; a garden of possibility to grow and till our ideas and tender seeds of maybe.

Work, the way the US has exposed it to me, sucks.

That's all. That's pretty much my point.

Across sectors - academic, corporate, private, public, government - and across disciplines - mental health, social justice, physical therapy, spiritual and religious, legal, blue collar and white collar...

Work tends to suck all the energy and creative forces from me. The paid, 40-hr work week frankly depresses any bank of creativity I had. Even jobs that boast the ability to be creative don't really want new ideas, they want new ways of being successful, but not necessarily new or philosophies.

By no means a research study, but I often ask my friends and acquaintences how they feel about their life in terms of their job. A lot of them say, "it's ok," and divide what they do professionally with their personal life. That's understandable. Not everyone has the privilege of fusing the two in a pleasing relationship.

So, what's wrong with me? Is anyone else out there that feels like an office is an eerily similar shape and size to a cell?

Or when you look at children, your joy fades when you envision them growing up to sit in front of a computer screen?

As I continue on an aggressive path of carving out a career, I am consistently coming back to these questions of division. Why do I have to do this? Why have I not yet learned to just suck it up when everyone else has?

In the pit of my stomach, I feel a pretense when I say what I do for a living. An ideal life to me is brimming with work that brings me joy...a life where I met with challenges and daunting prospects that bring me closer to community, the world, and myself.

"That's what everyone wants," is what I'm told.

Than what do we need to do to make that happen?

Forget funding the revolution, how about funding our own existence, starting with being happy with our jobs, our lives!

Are you happy in your work? Do you separate work and Work?

Since I can't ask when, I'll ask this: HOW do you find what you love to do?

Bumper Sticker 2

Patch your car with my new bumper stickers!

The Roar of the Midwest

The first time I went to Detroit, Michigan, it was to attend the Allied Media Conference. That fateful June of 2007, I met some of the most amazing thinkers, writers, and activists I'd ever been witnessed.

One of the things that caught my attention (and envy) was the absolutely loyalty people had to Detroit.

At the time, I'd lived in several big cities in my life - Boston, New York, LA. I'd had my share of smaller cities like Aberdeen, Washington and Cincinnati, Ohio. I'd even lived in Managua, Nicaragua and Quezon City, Philippines as well. I'm rattling off my nomadic record to say that I'd never met activists who were born and bred in a city and determined to see it resurrect from the grave like I met the ones in Detroit.

Sure I'd met some crazy loyal Bostonians, New Yorkers who would die for the burrough of Brooklyn and those infamous born and die in the 'Nati folks...but there's a difference between loyalty or pride and urban blood love that translates into action.

I've spent much of my adult life lamenting the locus of my geographical soul. Like a pathetically, navel gazing fool, I'd spent so much time on what the sky scrapers said about me and my spirit, I never connected with the spirit of a city, cultivated a connection with its streets beyond what it FELT like to me. In short, I never gave anything or worked to make a city better than how I found it.

Now I live in Cleveland. I'd listened to movies that poked fun at Cleveland, that snickered at the darkening and hollowing problems that plague the city. When I moved here, I expected to cut out my own existence and stick to that. But now I'm opening myself to this place. I'm open to absorbing this lakeside city that is slowly emptying itself.

A city of problems, a city of frustrated citizens determined to see it grow, Cleveland is a place of strength in the face of delapidating buildings, abandoned warehouses, and rotting corners. But it is also the face of medical intervention, fresh and organic neighborhoods, unusually compassionate locals...the spirit here is raw, deep, and convincing.

So it bothers me when videos like this come out...essentially using old habit humor (read: negative) to list the city's wrongs and embarrassing points. While it's just another YouTube video, it gets under my skin that so many Ohioans are passing it freely calling it nothing but hilarious and a belly work-out. Ha Ha - Lebron James. Ha Ha - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ha Ha - "we're not Detroit."

For those who fight for dying cities - where the media is struggling, where the unemployment rate is worsening, where the ailing health of our youth is translating into more adult obesity and diabetes, where the gun violence lingers while the jobs flee - videos that commonly satirize poor, urban areas are angering.

It angers me. Greatly.

What makes a city great?

The culture, the diversity? The restaurants, the community amenities, the number of independent entrepreneurs it draws each year? The weather? Its living cost? Whether its a coastal location? Accessability to nature and the great outdoors? Its sports teams?

Maybe its its residents. The activists and educators and artists and bakers and leaders who are aflame with energy to see the city rebuild itself.

I don't know if Cleveland is the place where I will die and be buried, but I know that the spirit of this city is a alive. Even if its turbulent, it's alive. And those fighting for Cleveland know it is more than just a political talking point or a punchline for comics. It is our Home.