A Voice of One's Own

(via byebyewiththebathwater)

Angelene Norman (via byebyewiththebathwater)

Dyeing scarves at a women’s vocational training center in Vientiane, Laos with Rachel. Feeling privileged. Feeling grateful. Feeling alive.

ikenbot:

Melissa Harris-Perry’s open letter to Steubenville survivor

So much respect for that.

(Source: free-winona, via parallelmovement)

givemeajobplease:

I went on a date last night and then you texted and asked, again, whether I would come there. Start our days with coffee, end with you making dinner. Forever. I feel myself tug towards yes and then I remember why it will always be no with you and I.

There are people in…

Marriage equality now.

Laos. I’m into it.

Today we spent hours floating around a river inner tubes. Our new friend, B, told us at some point about a documentary, Happy, which I’m now dying to watch. She said that, according to the film, the happiest people in the world spend lots of time with family, friends, and doing community service. I can’t help but be so grateful for all the happiness in my life and for the fact that I will be home with my family, friends, and beloved community so soon. I am one lucky girl.

commovente:

When a beautiful boy who loves you drives

you to the train station and tells you to talk to him as you’re near-tears

with a foot out the door, — Don’t run. Turn back. Stay.

When you’re tired and your mouth is a flood of shame and regret

and other nouns that you…

And maybe that’s how change really happens. One moment you’re sitting in the sun, sweating slightly because of the heat, hoping the skin of the body you probably don’t appreciate enough gets a little tanner, hoping that tan makes you look a little sexier, head-throbbing from dehydration, sleepiness, and a tad bit of a hangover, eyes squinting in the almost unbearable sunlight, judging yourself for how little care of yourself you take while traveling. The next, a breeze comes, awakening you to your senses all at once. You look up, startled, swearing it must be rain. Just as your body tenses, ready to gather your belongings and run for cover, you realize that the rain isn’t coming, so instead you sit in awe of the way a mere breeze can send so many leaves flying off the trees above you. How quickly it can cause branches to transform right before your eyes from clothed to bare, how each dead, dry leaf can cause such a clatter as it makes its way to the ground. The breeze affects you, too, reminding you of the way the seasons change, somehow simultaneously gradually and suddenly. Just when you’re comfortable, everything shifts, what was once stable goes flying down to the earth below and you are left alone with your own bare branches, which make you feel oddly naked and exposed. The noise of the change wakes you, but then the sound, too, dies down as the air becomes still once more. You are left in silence with yourself, with your own thoughts and feelings. You are left to reevaluate all that you thought you knew. With new eyes, you wonder why you’re sitting in such suffocating heat for a tan that might, if you’re lucky, last a matter of days. You think, too, of all that you haven’t done and wonder what really matters.

And maybe this really is how change happens. It blows through you on a hot day, opening your exhausted and bleary eyes and throwing off the dead, dry shit you cling to. It un-covers, un-distracts, and un-clothes you, leaving you to see once more what is truly important. Once that breeze has blown through us, we will never be exactly the same again. If we merely allow ourselves to feel the breeze, we, like trees changed with each passing season, will be transformed more deeply into the people we were born to become. It is, all at once, both terrifying and beautiful.

Makin friends with the chubbiest pug ever in Pai. Love my life.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
One of my most favorite women asked me recently what it has been like to meet myself in a different place. I cherished the question because I frequently contemplate what it would be like to meet past versions of myself with each new perspective, with each life-altering experience. I imagine what I would say to little me and often smile thinking of hugging her and comforting her worries about the future which I am now joyfully living. Since I was asked this question about meeting myself here in Thailand, I have been considering my response, and while in some ways I have been transformed, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the many ways in which I haven’t changed at all… Or maybe some of the changes have been increased confidence and courage to be me. Maybe some of the changes have been my ability to undergo transformation and still cling to my core beliefs, values, and priorities. When we got off the plane on may 22nd, everything changed. My whole life turned upside down. From the moment I woke up in an unfamiliar bed, wrapped up in unfamiliar blankets, in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar building, on an unfamiliar campus, in an unfamiliar city, country, and continent, nothing was stable or certain. I didn’t know how to communicate or where to get food or what I was eating even when I figured it out. I frequently wondered what the hell I had been thinking when I decided to come to thailand and what the hell I was now doing. Everything was challenging. Nothing felt safe or easy. It’s no surprise that I felt lost, that I was lost. Amidst complete and total unfamiliarity, my only option was to muddle along, living day by day to the best of t ability. Now, though, that the once frighteningly unfamiliar has become home, I can look back at this year with fresh perspective. The other day as I wandered down the streets of our Bangkok neighborhood, I laughed thinking about how steady I’ve been—maintaining discipline, habits, routines, values, and priorities. From my workout habits to my love of writing, there is a lot that hasn’t changed. Even things I questioned, reevaluated, or tried to change, I often came back to in the realization that they were authentically me or that they were healthy for me in some way or another. I found myself, I met myself, and saw that regardless of my surroundings I’m still me. This year has given me more strength to be me, it has stabilized me in way I never expected. One huge change has been in my desire not the change, in my desire to maintain the person I have chosen to become even when everything around me is changing. This year, in short, has given me the courage to become, even more deeply and confidently, who I really am. In utter peace and gratitude, mt

laying on the bus to korat, i feel more alone than i have in a while. i miss, perhaps more than ever, my community of survivors and allies, and so, this is a shout-out to them…

there are moments i feel so separated from the people around me. in a split second, words and actions can send me tail-spinning into a flashback or into the all-too-familiar feelings of trauma, degradation, objectification, worthlessness, dehumanization, despair, numbness, loneliness, or the kind of anger that momentarily renders me incapable of polite conversation. 

i wrongly assume that others see, and perhaps cherish, the value and importance of just language—especially if they are aware of how it has the potential to harm those they claim to love and care for. when the people in my life use the language of my traumas flippantly or when they turn a blind eye when others do, they show me how little i matter. i am reminded how little i deserve love and protection, and i immediately feel that if i express these feelings that i will be deemed oversensitive, overemotional, or the dreaded, “too much.” i feel like my reality is unwanted, that i, therefore, am unwanted. you know what? sometimes, i don’t want my reality either. sometimes, i wish i could leave it at home for the evening, get a babysitter, unload it on someone else, just for a fucking break, but even when i pretend that this is possible, i can still feel it living inside. it is part of me, and while i have learned that bits and pieces of my reality may be ugly, they are in fact my reality. i don’t have a choice. that choice, among other things, was taken from me. forcibly.

I didn’t choose to be haunted by violently vivid flashbacks both in my dreams and in my waking. I didn’t choose to struggle constantly with whether or not to “come out” as a survivor to every new person I meet. I don’t choose how their perceptions of me might change once I share my story. I didn’t choose to be hit in the stomach just because he was in a bad mood or had a bad day. I didn’t choose to be offered a gun and told by my own flesh and blood that he hopes i kill myself. i didn’t choose that others, who claim to love me, would turn a blind eye to my abuse, affirming his message that i in fact don’t deserve the love, protection, or care that I believe we all deserve. I didn’t choose for some kid to feel me up as we sat watching a high school musical in tenth grade, telling me that he couldn’t control himself because I was “too” attractive. I didn’t choose to be attacked by someone I considered a friend during my freshman year of college. I didn’t choose, less than four years later, to wake up to a stranger removing my clothes, shown once more how little worth i possess. i didn’t choose to be silenced, his hand pressing down over my mouth, as he forced himself on me. i didn’t choose to spend years of my life looking in the mirror and wondering what others saw that made all the abuse okay, what they saw that made harming me and disposing of me acceptable. i didn’t choose to be so affected by my trauma that I have spent years punishing, staring, and harming this body—my body—which I so often hate. I didn’t choose to become so disgusted by my own flesh that I could only think about what it would be like to rip it off and be granted a new body—one untouched and unharmed. i don’t choose to be told that i am unwanted because of what has happened to me. I don’t get to choose when the flashbacks happen, how long they last, or what they force me to relive. i don’t choose the way that physical interactions sometimes terrify me because i know too well how violent they can become. i didn’t choose to spiral into depression. i don’t choose the at times uncontrollable thoughts of suicide. i didn’t choose any of it, but i, like too many others, live with these realities every day of my life.

i know some of the consequences of a culture that commodifies sex and degrades women. i didn’t choose the culture and i didn’t choose to be affected by it, to feel the sting of these ills, but wanna know what i do choose? i choose to remember that i’m not alone, to reflect on my life, and to make sure, to the best of my ability, that i am not participating in the harm of others. i choose to give of myself so that others might know, too, that they are not alone, to learn self-love, to heal, to climb out of depression, to liberate myself from my fears. i choose to value both myself and others, to devote my time and energy to finding a solution. i choose to love as fearlessly as i can in order that the people around me might feel cherished. i choose to learn generosity, forgiveness, and compassion. i choose to see perpetrators not as monsters, but as people affected by the sickness of our culture. i choose to learn self-care and self-acceptance. i choose to nourish all the aspects of my being that were damaged. i choose to remind myself all that is worth living for. i choose to find the courage to speak out, to open my eyes, head, and heart to others’ pain, to pray, to follow my calling, to be honest, and to live. i choose to survive. i choose to try to be better and better every day. i choose to face my reality even when it’s hard. i choose to never tell another that his or her reality is too much for me to bear alongside them.

in my eyes, using just language comes down to two things: awareness and priorities. first we must realize how our language might affect others. then, in this knowledge, we must choose whether or not we want our words to cause harm. for me, people are more important than perhaps anything else. people are my priority. there is no question; i would rather use my words, my voice, my expression to love. in case you haven’t noticed, we need a bit more love in this world. let’s give it.

currently, the two of us are on our way to chiang mai, thailand, where we will spend a couple days before heading north wherever the wind may blow us, before heading into laos. seeing as we were supposed to be in Calcutta right now, our trip is literally a haphazard “voluntourism” (as Rachel is calling it) adventure. on our agenda: massages, a floating guesthouse, elephants, swimming, volunteering, learning to weave, reading and writing (of course), rice paddies, good food, a museum, free-spiritedness, and each other!

when i found out that i would not be able to get to India, which was the place i most wanted to go, i was sad that the news meant i that i might not travel with Rachel. between living together in a studio apartment (with our love, Emalee), a ten day excursion to Burma, a trip up to chiang mai, and the ridiculousness of the full moon party, some of my favorite memories include this wonderful woman. i had so been looking forward to the special gift of being able to spend two weeks with her volunteering. after she considered the dilemma, though, she decided to change her plans as well so that we could create a new plan together. neither of us is exactly sure what our trip will look like, but i am excited to walk into the beautiful uncertainty with such a dear friend. i am grateful, too, for the next twelve or thirteen days with her, for our friendship, for all of our memories, and for whatever is to come—both here and at home!

with love and gratitude, mt