I'm not sure what it means to be resilient, but when I emerge into light it has seemingly been without effort and I'm hard put to explain why, exactly, I feel better and why, exactly, things were so hard. The word grace.
I had a dream the other night (oh no, please no) that I was sitting on a toilet and shit, crap, you know (I have a hard time writing the words) kept coming out of me. It just kept coming. If that's too much information (TMI) for you to stomach (no pun intended), it wasn't in real life. There's something about the body, about bodily functions, or there's something about the body (!) that's difficult to express. When I write about the body, from my body, I am claiming it. How extraordinary that words lie in the tips of the fingers tapped out on the screen.
There's something about the body, bodily functions. There are those who would control my body (and yours) and those who have controlled your body (and ours).
I've had people ask me whether I would have had an abortion if I'd known Sophie would develop seizures and have developmental disabilities.
!
I've learned to live with questions (the question).
?
The Chimera from Greek mythology was part serpent, part lion and part goat. Chimerism is the mixing of cells from genetically distinct individuals. Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in an organism. This was first noticed in humans many years ago when cells containing the male "Y" chromosome were found circulating in the blood of women after pregnancy. (Scientific American)
Some males (and females) will grow up to be men who wish to control our (female) bodies.
Micro-chimeric cells are not only found circulating in the blood, they are also embedded in the brain. I've carried and grown three beings in my body. They live in me, still.
A thing that is hoped or wished for, but in fact is illusory and impossible to achieve (chimera)
Tonight I dragged my sorry ass self, newly recovered from a cold and cough, to a screening of a remarkable documentary about the movers and the shakers of the feminist movement from 1966-1971. It's called She's Beautiful When She's Angry.
Wow, people. Just wow.
I watched the movie with a few hundred other women and a scattering of men in an historic building in Los Angeles called the Ebell. The women were of all ages and races. The movie is funny and moving and most of all, rousing. I feel such gratitude toward these women who came before me, who so doggedly and -- yes -- angrily demanded their rights as equal citizens. The movie isn't just about white, straight women but about all women, including women of color and homosexual women. It does an excellent job, too, of demonstrating that despite all the radical goings on of the time -- the anti-war movement, the student rebellions, black power, etc. -- women were left out and not counted even by these so-called liberals and radicals. I sat on a little hard-backed folding chair and laughed and teared up at the audacity of these pioneers and radicals, realized how much I take for granted and how much left there is still to do.
I felt galvanized by these women and their history, and I felt strengthened and more accepting of my own anger and radicalism -- not just about women's equality and, particularly, reproductive rights that are being whittled slowly away, but also by this cannabis movement and my role in it as, often, a quite angry mother in confrontation with an established power structure.
I received an email the other day from our local Epilepsy Foundation affiliate with an announcement of the annual Epilepsy Pipeline Conference in San Francisco. Last year, I attended this conference and was an invited speaker on a panel. I spoke of our experiences with cannabis and didn't get the greatest reception from the physicians and "professionals" in the room -- they were either dismissive or uninterested, one was downright hostile -- but I had numerous people come up to me privately and confide their gratitude that I had spoken so openly and honestly about our experience. One guy told me that when I spoke it was as if a bomb had gone off in the room and blown everyone up. I have to say that my ego surged when he said that, but deep down I was embarrassed, too. As a woman pushing against boundaries in the medical world (and it started long ago for me and well before the cannabis revolution began), I haven't always been confident. I'm even now not always confident, particularly when I am admonished for being angry. I've been called too angry, too outspoken, undiplomatic. Several relatives have publicly shamed me and called me a miserable person. Someone anonymous not too long ago left the condescending comment You're a great writer, but you're too angry. I'm going to be honest and say that those comments hurt me, that I hold remnants inside of me that dictate what a good girl is, what a humble woman does, what makes a lady, and that I'm none of those things.
This year's Epilepsy Pipeline Conference, as far as I can see (and the schedule could very well change), has no representation of cannabis as therapy except from a huge pharmaceutical company. This doesn't surprise me, and my initial impulse is to feel cynical and bitter. Now, don't think that I haven't done a lot of soul-searching, wondering if maybe I am too angry and combative, that I'm not going to ever be invited to speak at any of these functions again because I don't tow the party line. I wonder if I should be less angry, perhaps even tone down the truth of our story with the goal of persuasion. Is it better to tone it down and try to reach more people? Is it better to compromise one's truth? Nah.
Watching this documentary and seeing what those women (and those before them who struggled for suffrage) did and how they handled oppression opened my eyes and strengthened me.
I am beautiful when I'm angry. You are beautiful when you're angry.
Here's a trailer for the movie:
Here's the website with information about screenings and the forthcoming DVD issue.
Today's activities included a visit to the Annenberg Center for Photography and an over-the-top free exhibit celebrating 125 years of National Geographic. The exhibit was called The Power of Photography, with "powerful" an understatement. The way the photos were arranged, the video installations, the explanatory movie about the power of photography -- well, it was really mind-blowing. I was overwhelmed with emotion several times -- and both Henry and Oliver were mesmerized as well. My favorites were the photographs shot in Afghanistan by Lindsay Addario -- this one in particular (there was no photography allowed in the exhibit, so I pulled it online). Addario's commentary in the short movie shown was compelling -- particularly when she spoke about the power of photography to change the world, how an image is seared into our consciousness and how her desire was to show, expressly, the plight of women.
I learned a lot more about the suffering in the Congo -- Marcus Bleasdale's photographs of the children who fight in the wars and are then conscripted to mine for gold (most barely into their teen years) -- our gold, our insatiable need for gold -- and the more than 5 million people who have died there in the last decade.
It took my breath away, made me think about the over-the-top response our country has over the deaths of several thousand. The whole exhibit made me think of the wide world, the breath-taking world, the scope of the planet and all living things and our own, often spoiled existence here in the United States.
I'm loathe to even post about it here, knowing that I'm just contributing more muck to the overall muckiness of it, but a few people have asked, so I'll say a few words and then I'll desist.
I'm bored and annoyed by the latest mommy war -- you know, the one about Hillary Rosen taking a swipe at Ann Romney by saying she's never worked a day in her life and then Romney snapping back that she raised five children and that's work enough or something to that effect. And now all the blowhards have jumped in and everyone is freaking out on both sides, people are outraged and insulted, the Catholic Church is throwing a conniption that Rosen is a lesbian mother (horrors!) and therefore in no position to speak for mothers, and poor Ann Romney who has triumphed over breast cancer and struggles with multiple sclerosis, not to mention a complete Ken-doll of a husband is caught in her very first political crossfire. No one's even paying attention to the apparent fact that Secret Service agents have been frolicking with prostitutes in Columbia which has, apparently, affected the serious economic talks The President is supposed to be having, and once again the news that consumes Americans is -- well -- just plain dumb.
I've had short and terse tirades about most of the other mommy wars -- the Tiger Mother thing and then the French Mother thing, and I've always found the whole Working Mother versus Non-working Mother thing an enormous yawn. I get even more bored when the whiners step in and say something to the effect of why can't we all just get along? and expect that just because we share the same sex chromosome we're somehow irrevocably bonded as women and shouldn't argue but support one another, recognize what we have in common, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Don't get me wrong, Reader. I'm grateful to the legion of women who have paved the way to my equality, to my ability to speak my mind, vote, choose whether or not I will bear children and have a shot at doing a job that used to be denied to my sex. I guess the main reason why it all bores me to tears is because I'm a mother in an extra-special sub-category of mothers -- the extreme mothers -- and because I'm also a mother to some typical kids, I can justifiably say that the problems of the aforementioned (the Tigers, the French, the working, the non-working, the lesbians, the Mormons) are ridiculous in comparison. And for all you psycho-babblers out there, I'm perfectly aware that I could perhaps be projecting, except that I'm not.
I hate the word mommy except when it's used by very young children, and I hate even more the words mommy war.
I think it's all manufactured outrage, and I wish everyone would just shut up and move on (including myself).
**Just a little ditty that I sang to myself while I tapped out this post. O'Keefe was the only word I could think of to rhyme with chief, and then I remembered that she never had any children but painted a lot of vagina flowers, so it all seemed to fit. Humor me.
