Suicide’s Loss…

Some people ask me what it’s like to lose someone to suicide. I always say,”it depends on which day you ask”.

Losing someone you love to suicide is like a continuous hell you can’t wake up from-for several years, at least.

At fourteen, I wasn’t fully capable of processing my dad’s suicide. Each year leant itself a whole new list of feelings. Guilt. Anger. Shame. Sadness.

The hard part about suicide is that even when you’re having a really happy moment, it always creeps in. You know when you’ve lost someone close to you from cancer or a car accident, you always wish they were there? You mourn their absence. You grieve for the lack of connection to them in a moment that’s suppose to be happy. Suicide takes that pain and throws a side of anger and confusion on top of it.

When an amazing moment in my life happens or with my kids, I always think,”dammit-why couldn’t he stay? Why wasn’t he able to hang on for us?”

I know in my brain, it’s not rational. I know the data and science. I know his brain wasn’t working right. I know if there were any way he could’ve stayed and not been in pain, he would have. In my head, even though it only lasts for a moment, the goodness is overshadowed by a twinge of sadness. It always will be.

Suicide survivors know this. They’ll tell you the same thing. That every moment of happiness is followed, or mixed in, with a touch of the thing you wish would go away-the longing. The grief. The desire to have one moment not tinged with those feelings.

I can’t change being a part of that club. And in spite of the pain, I wouldn’t want to. The pain has made me pause, and relish in the immense happiness I feel, once I’ve acknowledged my pain. It’s almost as if my mind says,”we’re going to remind you that we’re here”, so I always find a way to wrap my arms around the good and sit with it. The pain has made the sweet, almost unexplainable.

I wish suicide didn’t exist. I wish we could save every person who struggles. I know that’s not possible. I wish we could’ve saved dad. That wasn’t possible. Until we get closer to a world without suicide, or at least where it’s more rare, I’ll keep taking the moments that are good and holding them as close as I can and be thankful for the gift of insight to see how beautiful they are.

If you or someone you know is struggling, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255

It Must Be Hard…

It must be hard to be you.

It must be hard to be able to stand in front of your friends and family and say “I do”. To marry the person you love. To go down to the courthouse and get a marriage license. You, in your black, sharp tux. Her, in her white, lace veil, cascading gently down her shoulders and back. Standing in front of the world and proclaiming your love. It must be hard.

It must be hard to get pulled over. Grabbing your wallet out of your glove box. Casual conversation with a police officer. You chat about your day but he gives you a warning because he’s in a hurry, so gives you a polite nod and a “slow it down, a bit” speech. It must be hard.

It must be hard to be able to walk into a dispensary and buy marijuana. You look at the menu and place your order. Not because you have a medical condition, but because you can. It must be hard.

It must be hard to march with a gun strapped on your back because you don’t want to wear a mask. Your rights are at stake, after all. You even get to shout and spit at the police. It must be hard.

It must be hard to go on dates. You both had too much to drink. You don’t know why she would seem frightened. It’s your word against hers. They believed you. It must be hard.

It must be hard to be able to vote. You walk up to your polling place and smile at the poll worker. You’re able to vote quickly, because there are abundant places in your area to early vote. You have paid vacation days to use. It must be hard.

It must be hard to be healthy and have health insurance paid for by your company. Your mom got cancer but your parents have good insurance, too, so she gets excellent care. It must be hard.

It must be hard to sit with people who look like you every day, at work. You want to stand out but everyone looks the same. The same people have been there for years. It must be hard.

It must be hard for your taxes to go up. The million dollar home-ornate and beautifully lit at night, doesn’t pay for itself. The second home in Aspen takes upkeep, too. It must be hard.

It must be hard for you. The people who don’t want you to grab women by their private parts. The people who want a fair election. The people who want decent healthcare, or schools, or roads, or politicians. The people who believe in our generals when they tell us you can’t be trusted. The teachers who don’t want to work two jobs but want to feel safe in their classrooms. The ones who want to make a livable wage. The ones who don’t want babies in cages. The ones who say Black Lives Matter. The ones who want you to listen to scientists and doctors so 175,000 more people don’t die. It must be hard to be you.

White Lies…

If I thought I needed to properly be in the right headspace to write what I feel, it’d probably never happen.

Like many of you, I’ve sat and watched at the complete horror of our country being torn apart. All I feel is rage. Rage at how the hell we got here.

If you’re white-this blog is really for you. I invite you to sit with me for a few minutes. Take a deep breath and try and keep your mind as open as possible.

I wish I didn’t even have to say it in that manner; as if there’s a presumption that we need to be talking about this in any other form than complete truth-because we are in a bad place.

For now-I’ll just tell you what I wish.

I wish we hadn’t been lied to in school. Our history was not the truth. We were given a paint-by-number version of our history. One with pretty colors and happily-ever-afters and that’s bullshit. We have some ugly truths and our biggest sin was and always will be, slavery.

If, as a country, we lie about our past and who we are and what we did, then laying claim to the belief that,”all men are created equal”, just meant for all white men. The context of what happened to black bodies at the time, never actuated to any truth to that notion.

We’ve been taught to believe that The Civil Rights Act meant that people of color had equal treatment under the law. Slavery was over. We’d reached a new dawn and our systems of oppression would be broken down. Another lie.

Slavery took different forms through the years. Modern-day lynchings became the six-o-clock viewing of police brutality, once cell phones came along. The Reagan era ushered in a war on drugs that saw for-profit prison systems, filled with black and brown bodies. A single joint might mean five years or more in the slammer. Voting rights conveniently stripped and a record meant obtaining employment was difficult.

We ascribe to the notion if we vote a certain way or hang out with certain people that we couldn’t possibly be the problem. We are the problem. Complicity has always been the problem.

How many times have you cringed when a friend or colleague or family member said or did something that you knew was wrong and you allowed it? You let it go by because you didn’t want to make a big deal of it? How many of us have allowed it?

Some of you will say,”I didn’t say it and I can’t control someone else’s actions”, but when you allow it you’re permitting the cycle of racism, therefore you are racist.

Gasp! I know-some of you are freaking out and pissed, swearing you aren’t, because you have friends of color. Here’s the good news…you have a chance to be anti-racist. Tell your old Uncle Hershel that he’s a jackass for saying what he does. Tell the client sitting in your chair that “doesn’t understand why everything’s about race” that she doesn’t get to ask that because she’s a white lady who’s never had to fight for anything. Tell your neighbor who made awful comments about “those people” that he’s a shithead and you hope he realizes he’s being one.

When you hear people talk about white privilege, that’s what they mean. We have the privilege of not sounding threatening or wondering how someone will take that, so speak the hell up. It really is that simple. Beginning to dismantle the system, starts with the basics. The very basics. It starts with calling it out whenever you see and hear it. Film the cop when you need to. Step in. Step up. When you see all white people on a school board or all white teachers in your schools, ask where the representation is. Demand diversity for leadership in your cities. Back candidates of color. Listen to them. Ask questions.

I was talking before about what I wish. I wish we could be the beautiful melting pot of United Colors of Benetton, but we’re not. Our country has proven that. We all want to say,”but I’m colorblind”, and that’s where the bullshit starts. We all see color. And we need to. Until we can live with the truth of totally being in the space where we hear and see people of color and their trauma-we will never change. They should never have to live in a world where every moment of there lives have to be filmed for us to believe their trauma. It’s like constant victim gaslighting and it has to stop.

As white people, we fight for our reproductive rights and we scream with our outraged breath when our kids get blown away at school but black bodies keep dying and they are right in front of us. What will it take for us to get enraged about that? And why aren’t we? These are our friends and our kid’s friends and our colleagues and neighbors and human beings and we have failed. When we choose to protest all the other atrocities committed and cannot be bothered to get involved with this, we have become complicit in the unraveling of the very fabric our country laid claim to be. We were the country where Lady Liberty welcomed the masses but there was always a caveat implied that the welcomed were mostly those of a certain hue, matching that of the conquerors.

Now, after all the deaths and the wrongfully imprisoned and the daily oppression that exists-even now-we express our distaste for the manner in which those who are suffering dispense their pain. “The looting’s too much” I’ve heard some say. But so was the kneeling. The Tshirts worn by football and basketball players; you didn’t like that, either.

John Hope Bryant, who is the founder of Operation Hope and served on the Advisory Council for Financial Capability for Youth under President Obama said this about the affects of looting-“I subscribe to the simple premise that rainbows only come after storms and I see a shining light emerging after the dark night of tragedy and tears.” Dr. Martin Luther King, while always calling for peace, described the civil unrest that happens as riots being the language of the unheard.

Some of you have asked what to do or how to help. There are so many systems of oppression to dismantle and it’s difficult to know where to start.

While politicians aren’t saviors and they can’t fix what’s inside of us, we must hold them accountable. When you excuse the behavior that’s happening in the White House right now, you’re part of the piece that has to be dismantled.

I live in a purple district, on the verge of going blue. It’s been that way for the last two elections. With change comes pushback. I was surprised to see that even within the party I align with, when it comes to matters of race, we still have a long way to go. Many in my community, while technically on the “side” I affiliate with-if they’re challenged about behaviors or instances of racism within our own party, we’ve been called out, blocked from media platforms and simply been told to shut up about that conversation. This leads to the permissiveness and complicity of allowing racism to still exist.

While our leaders will never be our saviors, we must ensure that they are accountable to us. And when I mean “us”, I mean that communities of color don’t just need to be let in the room, they need to be leading the table. When your friends of color talk to you about who they’re supporting and why-listen, then support that, if you really want to help make change.

In my district, our current Congressman is an old white guy who hasn’t shown up to represent any of our district in years. He wouldn’t know a town hall if it bit him in the ass. His opponents happen to be two women. One-I’m a die hard supporter of, and the other is just like him and never shows up to anything. When communities of color are screaming and waving their hands and saying they have ideas and solutions and would like help implementing those things and one of the challengers decides to just not show up-that says everything you need to know about how she’ll represent communities that are oppressed. She won’t. If she doesn’t show up on the good days, she damn sure won’t show up on the bad ones. It’s not enough for them to perform lip-service. That’s just good marketing. The woman I support has staffed her entire campaign with women of color and she goes into spaces they tell her to that need the work. The other one won’t even answer a tweet.

Holding our leaders and elected officials accountable by voting is only the first step. Once they’re elected, we must serve on boards, use our voices, money and privilege to demand that we will not allow what has been normalized. Black men and women dying because they are existing while black, cannot and should never be something we become numb to.

2020 has been the kind of year where you want to put it back in the bottle. Sage it into oblivion. Close your eyes and hope it just stops. There’s nothing like a good pandemic to remind us of the fact that black and brown folks are still dying when they don’t need to be. They are dying of COVID at alarming rates, but this is nothing new in the healthcare world. Look at the statistics and the quality of care they receive and the access to care they have and you’ll see why.

As our country burns from failing to recognize and heal our origin sin and the world falls from a death we cannot see, it reminds me that the current administration is reflective of all our weaknesses.

Failed leadership by a man who stoked the embers of racism before he ever took office, accusing his predecessor of not being an American citizen. Neo-Nazis are “very fine people”, while centuries of oppression and expressions of that trauma are deemed committed by “thugs”. An administration that permits white men clad with an AR-15, whining for their civil liberties being violated for wearing a mask, while spitting in the face of police, unscathed and George Floyd is murdered with a knee in his neck while in handcuffs, face-down on the ground.

Trump might be a metaphor of every horrible thing we are and never stopped, but he’s just the reflection of what our country’s been for years.

It’s ugly, isn’t it?

Mental health in the time of Corona…

May is the start of Mental Health Awareness Month and I’m sure many would agree, in that department, right now, we’re all taking a hit.

Whether it’s even recognized or not, most people I know are struggling, in some form. Maybe it’s insomnia. Maybe it’s the lack of routine or social structure or human contact. Maybe, financially, you feel like the world is heavy on your shoulders.

Most of you know my father died by suicide in 1991. I was fourteen.

It wasn’t until years later, I learned he had been struggling for years with depression. He had undiagnosed sleep apnea, which produced chronic fatigue. Mental health disorders were in his family, but back then, nobody talked about what they were or how to truly treat them.

After years of untreated symptoms, he succumbed to his illness on December 2nd.

I phrase it that way, because it’s important that we finally begin to see mental illness as that-a disease, and illness in the brain deserves the same treatment as the heart or kidneys or lungs.

When Corona started and I knew I would be out of work for awhile, I had a crushing feeling in my body for the first couple of weeks. I’d wake up in a panic. While I was ok financially for a time, I didn’t know how long this would last.

I began to have thoughts about being able to take care of my family. What if I couldn’t? What if I got sick?

The panic came in waves. Luckily, I have people in my life I could talk to about it and helped. My lifelines are strong and I’m thankful. I’m also thankful that my brain works in a way where I can process a powerful, overwhelming, terrifying thought and then sit with it, and work through it.

My dad couldn’t do that. The kind of depression he had was all encompassing. And what I mean by that is, before he died, he lost his marriage, his job and his will to live. His depression was so dark, and so painful, he thought his only option was to not keep living.

In the moments when I would wake up in panic and fear about money and the future, for the first time since he died, I thought,”oh my god-is this what he felt but this feeling never left him?”

That moment was so real and so painful because it was so overwhelming to wonder if he lived in a state of panic like that and I wondered for how long.

As the weeks of Corona stretched on, I would hear people say,”the suicide numbers will go up” and “the cure can’t be worse than the problem-we must get back to our lives as usual”.

Over the last several days, we’ve also started to see the suicide numbers go up for doctors and healthcare workers. The amount of PTSD they will experience through COVID will be unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetime.

Here’s what I want to call bullshit on-over 40,000 American lives are lost every year to suicide and every year cuts are made to mental healthcare.

The GOP has tried relentlessly to undo Obamacare and for some of its flaws, people who have mental health conditions were oftentimes turned down for coverage, before its enactment. Hundreds of thousands of people every year would miss necessary treatment, simply because they could not get coverage.

So while I understand we have to begin to live our lives again in the new form of whatever our “normal” will look like-let’s not pretend it’s because we now care about mental health, when history shows, we don’t. They are the homeless. The forgotten. The uninsured.

If we’re going to really play that game, and the cure can’t be worse than the problem, when the GOP talks about mass shootings not being a gun problem but a mental health problem, why do they continue to try and cut mental healthcare for every American? Doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense with that convenient theory, does it?

I don’t know what the answers are. I don’t know what we’ll look like on the other side of Corona, but I do hope, as we’ve all struggled together in some form, we remember that some will continue to struggle, long after we’ve gone back to “normal”.

As May begins our mental health focus, my ask is that when you want to get busy or make change, you help elect people who care about this, even when we’re not fighting a battle we can’t see anymore, because thousands of Americans will continue to battle, long after we don’t hear COVID, every day…

Cataclysm

It’s funny to even pretend we’re counting, anymore. Most of us don’t. I can tell approximations because of my grey roots. Somehow, I don’t mind them as much, now. They seem trivial, at best.

It’s interesting how lessons are learned in life, isn’t it? One day, we’re going about our business and we hear echoes of something coming. We think it couldn’t be that bad. Doesn’t it seem like almost overnight, our normal played into some sort of weird, foggy dream? The kind you wake up from but it doesn’t seem that way because you seem to be vividly living it?

What’s been the biggest thing that’s shocked you? Are you shocked, anymore?

I began screenshooting the numbers in late March. I skipped a few days, then snapped every day, beginning the first full week in April. I’ve read far too many dystopian novels to not capture what was happening.

How are we all living in different realities? Or is this how it’s always been? My friends of color and my LGBTQ friends tell me it’s so. There have always been different worlds between us and them. Their treatment versus ours. The death makes it even more stark, now.

How do we have one reality-with nurses sharing their stories of six days straight and reusing their PPE, while they’re the only one holding someone’s hand as they die-a complete stranger?

How do we have another reality where people march in the streets saying,”you won’t tread on my liberties” and others proclaiming Bill Gates is trying to shoot them with a tracking vaccine?

How did we get to a place where Mother Earth was so mad that all it took for her to begin to heal was a month? A month of us just taking a time out, but looking at the photos-you can see her wounds and where she’s starting over, new. How did it only take a month?

How did we get to a place where a majority of our “essential workers” have never felt essential at all-most unable to afford to miss a day of work?

How do we have so many people who have worked their whole lives not able to save for a three month catastrophe?

How do we have our small businesses that create the heartbeat of a city, get turned down for help, while the man at the top who throws scraps, keep getting fed and fed and fed? They bleed dollars while leave us with none.

I only ask questions today, because I have no answers. I feel numb to it now. The death. The chaos-and the truth is-I’m not even in it. I’m fortunate enough to have my home and food and a job to go back to, but watching it all feels like the dystopian novel you read and think will never happen-but it did. It is.

I feel like we are at the brink of either deciding we’re in this thing, or we’re out. Our humanity. Our civility. Our ability to construct something from the broken. We’re broken right now and how do we make it out?

I’d love to know. Inside I feel myself being pulled between the anger and the decency.

I cry every time I see teachers do drive-bys with their students or people greeting nurses in song outside of hospitals. The ZOOM happy hours with friends you never see, the intimate conversations about deep love and reminders you find while cleaning out drawers of memories with your dad. I weep at the gratitude for these moments in the chaos that feel like light.

The daily briefings of blame and disbelief. The angry crowds of privileged people who’ve never really known what it’s like to be oppressed, at all. The selfishness. The dirty souls that will never get clean, no matter how much hand sanitizer they drink. The disconnect. The hardened hearts.

I want to scream,”go back home”, but I feel like if they liked their home or who they were inside, they wouldn’t really want to leave. They’d want to wrap up their frail grandmas or new babies and keep them safe, as long as they could stand it. They’d want more than anything to save them because that’s what love feels like to me.

When I finally turn off the filth at the end of the day and my eyes have seen enough-all I’m left with is the comfort of knowing that my heart always pulls me back to what I know is right and true.

The irony seems laughable when things are quiet and it seems so simple, now. I hate to assume the angry ones are the empty-hearted, but what else could explain it?

Buddha said,”you will not be punished FOR your anger, you will be punished BY your anger”.

Whatever the other side of this looks like, I hope this thing we cannot see, brings us to our knees. I think that’s the only way we’ll see the way up…

The floating days…

It’s day whatever, now. I’ve stopped counting. I believe I said this last time. Maybe it’s better that I’m still not counting.

Like everyone else, I vacillate between fear, sadness and peace. It’s the strangest mix of sensations in my mind and I’ve decided to let them all just be.

I’ve tried to rationalize in my brain, what’s to come of all this. What purpose it serves or what lesson we’re suppose to learn.

Since my nighttime schedule seems to have reverted back to me being the ever elusive night owl, I often find myself contemplating everything. Viruses, the meaning of our existence, how wine was first discovered…things that are really important.

Some of you might not know, but I’m a poetry junky. Herman Hesse, Thoreau and Emerson are some of my favorites. I think in some strange way, it’s interesting and emblematic to listen to men pour their tortured souls out.

As we spend time indoors and by consequence, our air qualities are improving, water is becoming clear in lakes and rivers and animals are finding their homes again, I can’t help but think Mother Nature has purposefully intended this virus, all along.

“That would be cruel”, you might think-but if you look back on our history and the writers who understood the power of nature, you might see how our own arrogance had us clandestine for this.

Emerson didn’t believe our ultimate goal was to be happy, but to be purposeful in our work. He also believed that for us to separate ourselves from nature was to separate ourselves from God. In nature, we find the beast and the heaven and we, too, have that in us.

I wish this didn’t come back to politics and money, for me, but I think it does for all of us.

The currency of our lifeblood as humans is almost non-existent. As they say in Fight Club,”we buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t even like”. Why?

If the rich man has no family but all the money and the poor man has no money but all the family-who would really have died with more wealth? At the end of your life, does your money hold your hand when you die?

Aren’t we witnessing that now? No matter who you are, right now, if you get this virus, you aren’t surrounded by your family. People are dying alone. Is there a chance that this is what we’re suppose to see? That the people we love at the end of our life are the only thing we really want. None of us want to die alone.

That’s what the poets are always trying to convey.

I never understood that until I went to Montana the first time. I honestly thought I was a beach girl my entire life but my girlfriend kept trying to convince me this would be different.

I had never been on vacation by myself but somehow she convinced me to come for nine days. Nine days. Holy shit. In the woods. For nine days. What would I do in the mountains for NINE DAYS?!?

For those of you that know me, you understand my love for Montana. It is my idea of heaven-and when I say that, I don’t say it lightly. It is the most transcendent place I have ever seen.

I remember the first time I went to Glacier National Park and I kayaked in a beautiful river with a giant mountain behind me and I sat there for a moment and I was paralyzed with awe. I sobbed like a baby. For the first time in my life, I felt completely out of my own body and I realized how insignificant I was. I realized that I was insignificant and enormous, all at the same time.

That’s the basis for our being and I pray, that’s the lesson we’ll learn from all of this. We are this collective, beautiful, chaotic experiment floating around and our only purpose is to love and learn from each other. That’s it. It’s that simple.

As humans, we’re really good at complicating everything. We all spend time worrying and stressing about things we can’t control. We spend time with people we don’t like and do things that never light our soul on fire.

When I look at what’s happened to us, I feel so, so sad. We’ve become a nation that is driven by rhetoric and ego and somehow it’s bought and sold like a commodity needed to exist. But it isn’t. Because those things break us. They move us away from who and what we were called to be. If we are all an extension of God, isn’t it our job to listen to the lessons laying at our feet? If this isn’t a flare gun shot to the face, begging us to wake up-I don’t know what is.

One of my favorite quotes is from Thoreau and I still carry this around in my wallet as a reminder…

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…”

What are you living for? Sure-we’re all going to the store deliberately-but are you loving that way? What will you take away from this? Will you kiss your loved one longer? Will you hug tighter? Will you be more purposeful in your work? Will you help those that have nothing when you have so much? Will you do a better job of taking care of the earth? Will you take better care of your body? Will you be a good neighbor and accepting of everyone?

Where will you stand, when this is done…if you’re standing at all?

The Reckoning…

It’s day whatever. I don’t even know what day we’re on, anymore. Could be Saturday. Could be a Monday. It all seems to run together, now.

It all looks like a ghost town. Austin-this city I grew up in. Walking down the street, with the grey skies as the backdrop, seems reminiscent of the zombie apocalypse movies I’ve watched through the years. The few people you pass, look glaringly judgmental. I know they’re wondering if I have it. Or did they have it?

How did we get here?

Right before the holidays, Ben joked that we were due for a pandemic. I laughed it off. Like the way he always does, he enlightened me with facts about the years between each pandemic and how it would be worse, now, since we’re connected more than ever. The way he often proves me wrong-I didn’t know how right he would be.

Although time seems to have stopped in our daily lives-for healthcare workers, this is a fire they’re watching move at record speed.

We’ve been in dire straights before. We had 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina approximately four years a part from each other. Each time, we’d watch the devastation from a far, knowing the majority of what was happening was contained to certain areas.

This thing we can’t even see is causing global devastation that is certain to have lifelong impacts. As we all watch, holding our breath, to see if our jobs will be gone and people we love will die, I can’t help but wonder what we’ll be when the waters have receded.

During 9/11 and Katrina, we had businesses coming together and neighbors and every government agency at the ready, to immediately address the situations we were in. We didn’t think-we just acted.

While we’re doing that now, there’s a different factor at play.

Every tragedy before us we’ve ever had in history had a leader that attempted to dispense the truth. They gorged themselves with information and resources that could best prepare us for the scenario before us. They put the best people in charge of ensuring as a country, we felt safe. That’s their job and in times of crisis, we expect that more than ever.

While it’s no secret of my disdain for Trump, even in this scenario, I kept thinking this would be the thing that might humble him. That the threat of the consequences of not being prepared would somehow win out in the end, over his ego. That the cost of human lives would somehow shed light on the importance of science and truth.

I never imagined how bad this would be. None of us did. I never imagined six months into my daughter’s new nursing career that she would face this with her colleagues. That they would have to eventually make choices they should never have to make. In medicine, I know they always have tough calls. She reminds me that’s part of the job-but to know they will be going into these battles without proper equipment feels devastating.

I know there will be a time for healing and thankfulness and we’ll look back in retrospect at all the wonderful lessons about being too wasteful and being better to your neighbor and learning to rest and connect more. But now-for right now, this feels like a reckoning.

There will be some that scoff that “we shouldn’t dare make this political” but how can we not?

We have politicians that won’t go without their weeks and weeks of sick leave and wonderful health insurance while dishing out a one-time check to those that will go weeks without and won’t get paid because they’ve never had sick leave, much less insurance. We can’t get testing the way other countries have because we like to make a profit off of everything in the good old US of A. And we’re hoarding things because dammit, we’ve been told to hoist ourselves up by our boot straps because it was nobody else’s responsibility to save us.

We’re a country of dichotomies and it might very well be our downfall.

I wish I could be apologetic about my tone or be one of those people that just sees the positive in every situation but right now, I can’t feel that way.

This existence we’ve lived and the things we’ve been fighting against are coming home to roost. The small businesses and the restaurants and the salons and the local movie theaters will close, because nobody truly understands how the lower part of this totem pole lives. They don’t realize how fast we will fall-because they’ve never had to.

I can’t fault Trump for not understanding how blue collar workers live pay check to pay check, because he’s never had to. I don’t expect him to know how hard it is to pay for college or healthcare, because he’s never had to worry about that and he never will.

What I do expect is to have a leader that when many of us ARE truly terrified, they have the empathy and stoicism to understand that good leaders mobilize every resource in a time of crisis and they do everything imaginable to help us pause and know they’re doing everything they can. They don’t blame. They don’t scapegoat. They don’t gaslight. They lead. They reassure. They give us the truth.

I know we’ll survive this. I know our planet might be better for it. I know there will be developments in science and medicine to come from this.

When we count our lessons, will we hold on to the ones that matter? Will we look around and see we’ve been a country that made money on the backs of the sick, long before this virus got us? Will we be a country that realizes we have to ACTUALLY hold our leaders accountable when they make decisions in THEIR best interests instead of ours? Will we be a country that finally decides to value our workers and pay them so they can live? What will our lessons be?

We will survive this. I only hope when we get a break and start to venture back outside, we can remember how fast something took us down we couldn’t even see. Maybe it’s a metaphor for how we’ve lived.

In the time of this virus, I have to be thankful for my family who always reminds me of what love really looks like. To have a daughter that is brave and loves what she does and will keep doing it. To have a partner that I have laughed with through this whole thing and has held my hand when I felt like falling apart.

I hope the memories made with your loved ones in close proximity serve to be a reminder of how we should live, always. I hope when we finally come back from this, we’ve learned that we can’t go back to what we were. We never should…

Boxing Gloves

The heaviness is palpable. You’re trying to see through the fog but can only make out twenty feet in front of you.

These times are heavy. We probably needed it. Finding a way to weed out the garbage is a necessity in life. But there’s so…much…garbage.

When I said nearly four years ago on election night,”congrats America-Mr. Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief is at your service”, I honestly thought it would be bad, but that eventually things would calm down.

Michelle-I feel you and love you and have got the shirt, but I don’t feel like going high, anymore. This all feels so, so, low. The shit stain on America we can’t get off.

I’ve become swear-y. Maybe it’s the peri-menopause, or hitting my forties, or that we live in the Twilight Zone every damn day, but “FUCK” comes out of my mouth, a lot. I don’t even care, anymore. It feels appropriate for the times.

These times have changed me, but they’ve changed us all. They’ve made me a fighter, and I’m ok with that. Whether it’s someone sitting in my chair or someone I’ve had in my life for years-I can’t let it lie, anymore.

People say we should combat the hate with love, and while I agree with that, I believe we can use our anger to fight for those we love. We can fight for justice. We can fight for equality.

You can say you don’t want your white son being blamed for something because he’s white and I’m gonna say you’ll never know how it feels to be a black mother, afraid her son won’t come home because he got shot for being black.

If you say you don’t want your taxes going up when you’ve never hurt for anything in your life, I’m gonna tell you to think about the person who can’t afford their medical bills and a break on their taxes would’ve paid for their insulin.

If you say we have to be careful about who we let in this country but there are children dying at the border and white men continue to use guns to slaughter us every day, I’m gonna tell you to check your racist behavior.

Before you say,”but I’m not THAT person”, remember that you are. If you got offended by any of that-you are.

We’ve all allowed it. Contributed to it. I’ve excused conversations in my chair because I didn’t want an uncomfortable situation. It’s time for us to be uncomfortable, though and face this shit.

This shit. The shit we turn a blind eye to every day. The shit we allow at our holiday meals and “friends” on Facebook who aren’t really your friends and in our spaces every day, we allow it.

We have to get uncomfortable to change this. Change is uncomfortable and you have to wrestle with it and yourself. It will be fucking ugly because nothing’s pretty, anymore.

We’ve allowed it.

The people who scream,”I’d love to come sit with you at the table, but I can’t even get in the room.”

We’ve allowed it.

We know what it says in red by the almighty but we turn a blind eye and judge and cast out the least of these.

We allowed it.

We watch as babies get slaughtered in our classrooms but the number two in the Constitution says we have the right.

We allowed it.

We watch the LGBTQ die and be denied who they love and they take their lives.

We allowed it.

We send soldiers to fight endless wars and they, too, come back broken and die by their own hands.

We allowed it.

We must stop allowing it. It’s breaking Lady Liberty. Her flame flickers, only to remind us of the possibility we have to save her, but she’s dying.

So now-I fight. I’ll fight with whatever I have. I’ll break my knuckles to do it. I’ll use my words. I’ll use my energy-I’ll spend it all, but I will not allow it. Not in my chair or my house or in my space. No more.

When we look back on this time, years from now, what did you allow?

T’was the night before Christmas…

Well-Christmas can officially begin. Fresh off her night shift, she’s currently asleep in my bed, catching up on her slumber before the night’s festivities happen.

As I peeked in on her, looking like she was five years old, again-I couldn’t help but think how grateful I feel.

This year has been difficult for so many. Not just this year, but the last few. A world divided.

On Christmas Eve, many show up at churches to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. They celebrate him, then go out into the world, and live their lives as if they have no clue of the very things he fought for.

Jesus fought for those that couldn’t fight. He protested the corrupt, unjust governments that persecuted their people. He was an immigrant and fought for immigrants. He commanded us to love our neighbors and brothers as God loved us, without judgement and without hesitation. He fought for these things and died for them.

I know people throw around the “what would Jesus do?” question a lot, but I have to wonder-if he were really walking among us right now, what would he think? What would he feel about the things we’ve perceived to be truth attached to his name?

As I look at the last few years, I can’t help but think there’s a revolution coming. A revolution of truth and justice.

If the Bible talks about false prophets and men who would claim to be the chosen one, this has to be a test, right? When the false prophet leads his believers down a path that looks nothing like the one Jesus called us to be on, this has to be the penultimate test, right?

As I sit and look at my sleeping daughter and my ever-quickly-growing son, I think about how lucky I am. I’m in love. My children are healthy. I have presents under the tree. My life is simple. It makes me all the more aware of how many don’t have that.

The mother who has to worry about her black son being pulled over by the cops and praying he makes it home. The couple who loses their home because the wife got cancer and they can’t afford their medical bills. The teacher who has to work two jobs because she can’t make ends meet. The family who gets separated at the border because they were fleeing egregious violence and wanted their children to be safe.

I have to wonder-what WOULD Jesus think of these? What side would he be on? What would he protest? The dark-skinned Jew whose mother immigrated to another place to safely give birth to him, would probably weep, right now.

As we count our blessings and gather in beautiful spaces with candle lit backdrops to celebrate the birth of him, I pray in 2020 we can begin a decade where we actually embody the work that he wanted to accomplish.

I believe the revolution that’s coming is full of volunteer registrars, voters, community activists and social justice warriors. I hope it’s a movement of love for our LGBTQ community. I hope it’s a movement where we begin to heal the past traumas created by our country on people of color. I hope it’s a movement of women elevating their voices. I hope it’s a movement of kindness and deep love. I pray for the love of all that we have to fight for, that anything rooted in evil will never win-not for long and not for good.

As Christmas Eve passes and Christmas Day begins, I hope that wherever you are, you know you are loved.

Jesus fought and died for that.

Suicide, twenty-eight years later…

The distance between December 1st and December 2nd is actually a world apart for my family.

December 2nd was the day my dad died by suicide. All of my friends and family already know that, but this year was different in terms of research with mental illness, for me.

December 2nd was the day my heart broke wide-open. When I say wide-open, I mean in the ugliest of ways.

There is no pretty or easy way to process a suicide. It’s messy, chaotic and disturbing. It invites its guests(shame and anger) into your brain to take up space amongst the living. It’s relentless and unforgiving.

I was fourteen when dad died, so let’s just say my high school years were less than stellar. While everyone else I knew was thinking about prom and what college they might go to, I was smoking dope and fighting with my mother. I was the epitome of self-hatred and I hated everyone else, too.

High school was a fog. Between the drinking and the drugs, I didn’t know which way was up. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to die, like dad had, but I wasn’t living, either.

I remember driving really fast in my car one day and I slammed on my brakes as hard as I could because I felt so out of control. My spiral scared me.

It wasn’t until years later and lots of therapy that I shared that experience of driving so fast I could’ve flipped my car, before my therapist told me the thing that changed the conversation about suicide for me.

She asked me what I felt as I was slamming on my brakes. I looked at her like she was crazy and angrily said I wanted to stop because I didn’t want to die. She told me there was actually a very scientific response in our brain that does that. It’s a chemical called GABA. She told me the GABA is literally the brakes on your car for your brain. She said more than likely my dad’s GABA receptors weren’t working properly when he killed himself and that sometimes it can be that way for years. It can get triggered and a situational response can cause it to over or under react.

While I felt semi-relieved that my GABA situation seemed to be functioning, I was heartbroken to think what he felt in those months leading up to his death.

What I’ve learned over the years about suicide is this-there are chemical responses in the brain leading up to a suicide attempt, and during, and many are treatable. There are different variables involved, but many causes of depression can be treated with proper care.

The facts in this country also express the lack of interest in actually treating mental health. Over half the people in the United States don’t have access to adequate coverage and 1 in 5 adults is suffering from a mental health condition.

Fun fact and one I’ll gladly argue my Republican counterparts-the states who have adequate mental health coverage are also lead by Democrats and have lower suicide rates, historically speaking.

You can argue semantics all day long, but those are facts. When Democrats are in office, mental healthcare is a priority. Will it cost money? Sure-anything that’s worth having does.

I’m tired, y’all. I’ve studied this until I’ve pulled my hair out and I’ve screamed at people to listen until I’m blue in the face. YOUR BRAIN RUNS YOUR BODY.

I’m tired of watching mommas bury their babies and wives bury their husbands and friends tell me they’re struggling and can’t get help. I’m tired.

I’m tired of people begging for healthcare they can barely afford, while corporations reap the benefits of billion dollar profits.

I’m TIRED of watching suicide statistics going up for African American children for the first time in history due to exclusions in healthcare(provider bias and inequality of care), educational bullying, and extensive, unchecked discrimination by law enforcement and elected officials.

I’m tired of feeling like this new country of ours cares more about things than we do people.

What are we doing? I’m tired. I’m still angry-and yet, somehow, I’ve managed to see things differently.

For the first time people seem to be caring that our kids are choosing to take their lives. That our vets are coming back broken and they don’t want to live.

Somehow-even in my anger about all this, I see the light. It’s not bright, yet, but the truth is making it more possible.

While science can explain the chemical components that happen when someone wants to end their life, there are other anomalies that are acts of humanity.

We know that because the survivors who have attempted or thought about attempting, tell us that friends or family helped change their mind. Kindness. Love. Humility. Compassion. While it won’t fix the motor neurons in their brain that are misfiring, it can give them a moment of hope until they can get the necessary help they need.

People ask me why I make politics personal and I ask them why the hell they don’t. Deep down in the broken parts of my soul that will never be truly healed, I will always fight for people who suffer and can’t help themselves. Always.

That fire that started the day dad died has since turned to a passion for change. The anger I once felt towards him for leaving me, has turned into a desire to learn more about what killed him.

I always love the moment a suicide survivor comes to me and they recollect the good memories of the person they lost. When the blame and shame leaves them and they finally realize suicide is just a malevolent disease that robs us all. The people who are lost to it and the survivors.

I will always support candidates who choose to put human health above monetary gain. If we continue to travel down this dark and unforgiving road, it is a path we can’t come back from. Suicide is a preventable death and politicians playing roulette with our healthcare sends a very clear message that our lives are up for debate-and they’re not.

Sixteen years ago, my son was born. Nearly five months into his pregnancy , I was laying in a hospital bed and the doctors were telling us it was way too soon and he wouldn’t make it. I told everyone to leave the room. I had someone I needed to bargain with.

I already knew God was going to do whatever it was he was going to do because he’s big like that, but I needed to talk to dad.

You see-when dad died, I remember people-grown ass people-telling me they were sorry that dad killed himself and wouldn’t go to heaven. I knew my God didn’t work that way. I politely told those people to fuck off. I had a sailor mouth, even then.

As the room cleared I started talking. I told dad that if Ben were coming to be with him, that I needed him to be taken care of. Somehow, that made me feel safer. But I begged and pleaded that he tell God that I wasn’t ready and couldn’t take another loss like that again.

I’m not exactly sure why I was spared the pain, but I was. Ben was born December 1st. December 2nd didn’t seem like a dark memory, anymore.

Did rainbows and unicorns shoot out of Ben’s butt when he was born and it took the pain away? Nah. This isn’t a freakin’ Lifetime movie-but somehow that magical date shifted to a release somewhere in the cosmic heavens of forgiveness and I was finally able to just love and miss my dad. From that moment on, I knew I needed to help other families, too.

Each year as a suicide survivor, the road changes. You learn something new from a family or an experience and it breaks your heart wide open, again. Luckily for my hardened, feisty, heart, it’s managed to soften.

Suicide broke me wide-open but it didn’t break me. I don’t want it to break anyone else, either.

Love isn’t going to solve the world’s problems overnight, but what will it hurt? Losing dad once kept me so closed off, I would’ve rather risked not loving than to be hurt again. Now-I’d rather be broken wide open than to miss out on love. No matter what form that takes for you-whether it’s your family, or friends that are like family, or your job-the act of love produces the good chemicals in the brain that we all need to function and that we equate with happiness and peace.

I got dad for fourteen years. It wasn’t long enough, but sometimes the things that break you, will mend you, too.

I will keep fighting for him and all the others. Love is a bad-ass, son-of-a-bitch. It might’ve taken me a really long time to fully get that, but I’m glad she’s here.

The next time someone politely asks me why I get so fired up about politics, I’ll gently remind them that 42,000 people a year die by suicide in the United States and many because they lacked healthcare. Then I’ll ask them if they’re registered to vote…

*If you or someone you know is struggling, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.*