There is a great deal of talk these days about how are schools are failing, how students can’t read, how teachers are leaving. As someone who’s worked in education in one form or another for much of my adult life, working with people from infants … Continue reading The Ideal School
Listening this morning to an old song, “We Are the World” and found myself drifting away into the land of music, asking “what makes a voice beautiful.”
We are in a hard time of struggle both internal and external. It is a time to find our something to hold on to that keeps us safe while we grow strong with love.
The author reflects on a significant dream during a challenging time as a teacher in special education, feeling emotionally drained. In the dream, a circle of supportive women offers her unique boots, symbolizing empowerment. Ultimately, she overcomes her fears and joins their dance, illustrating how dreams can inspire us to persevere.
Like millions of others around the world and thousands here in Madison, I stood holding a candle last night to honor the passing of Renee Nicole Good and the far too many others who have been murdered along with her by ICE. Standing there in the cold I found myself thinking about the past 30+ years that I’ve spent standing on those capitol steps at rallies and vigils, working toward justice and peace, and recognizing the connection of my years to the those of others. We’ve stood for so long and each time the crowds are larger and stronger.
I thought about the Anishanaabe prophecies of the eight fires and wondered if we are indeed at that place spoken of in the seventh fire where we are facing that critical choice between destruction and balance. I believe we are and we must seek that balance both internally and as a whole if we are to find peace. Afterall, peace doesn’t come through war. I wish I had some answers. All I know right now is that we must reach out in peace. We must find those seeds of joy admist the chaos and nuture them, help them grow into the trees of celebration that they are meant to become.
In this moment I am just reaching out to all of you, my brothers and sisters in the struggle and sharing this electronic hug and wishing you love in your lives.
I was 17 or 18 when our family doctor first gave me told me that I was in danger or being defined as anorexic. I was 5’9″ and weighed about 110lbs. Years later I was cleaning out my closet and found a stash of booklets about eating disorders. That was it. That was the extent of my treatment.
I don’t think anorexia was ever the right term for my relationship with food, but it was mostly the luck of going to college and finding ramen noodles that kept me in the triple digits.
It all goes back to a refrigerator packed with salads, casseroles, and everything else to keep us alive and functioning. I was 12 years old. Mom was sick and she wasn’t going to get better. Family and friends came to visit and help care for her and watch me. When she went to the hospice the nurses used to make sure the fridge was stocked with pudding pops just for me. There were none there the day she died. Dad and I went home to a fridge packed with food that kept coming and coming.
I remember the day of her funeral. I ate 13 ham sandwiches plus who knows what else. I couldn’t fill the hole. We went home again to that fridge filled with casseroles and salads and leftover funeral food. It was too much. I couldn’t even look at it all. I just went to my standbys. I ate frozen pizza, chips, pretzels, and Franco-American spaghetti-o’s and ravioli. Nothing worked. Nothing filled the hole.
Dad saw it happening. He saw all the food in the fridge that friends and family brought us and he saw the garbage I was eating. He knew it wasn’t okay. He knew something was wrong and that he had to do something. It was the 1980’s and he was a middle-aged man picking up the spatula. He did his best to be sure that my brother and I had good food to eat. I tried to eat what he cooked. Fresh and homemade it didn’t fill the hole any better than my junk food disaster.
The hole kept growing. By my late teens I was feeling truly lost. I came to a point when my body and soul were so broken that I couldn’t take it in anymore. I literally couldn’t swallow. It wasn’t that I wanted to lose weight or didn’t want to eat. I couldn’t. I couldn’t swallow anymore. It hurt. So, I stopped.
Lot’s changed over the years. I’ve done a lot of work to address the sorrow of losing my mom and to see myself in a better and clearer light. I never did get that eating disorder diagnosis, but I still understand that hole and still question that relationship.
I’ve used a low-glycemic diet for the last several years to help address my epilepsy. I decided a few months ago that it was time to end the diet. Tonight, as I wander into the new year, I’m asking myself “how do I go forward?” My whole life food has been both a hideaway and a control tool. That little girl eating 13 ham sandwiches to hide from the pain of death or the me today that weighs myself at least once a day usually twice. I’ve been able to use counting carbs as a tool to fight epilepsy. I don’t know that it helped me, but I kept trying because I can count my carbs and I lost nearly 60lbs from a once obese state to a “healthy” weight. I could be in control. I could never fill the hole with food, but I could control it, but that depends on maintaining control. I find myself asking, “who’s in control here, me or the food that I eat or don’t eat?”
I’m asking myself tonight if it’s okay to order a pizza. I’ve been asking myself that same question all afternoon. It shouldn’t be that hard of a question to consider, but yet all the ups and downs of my dietary life leave me wondering if a pizza will leave me ill or destroy me or if it’s something that is just simply okay, something I can do and enjoy.
This has been a bit of mess of a piece to write, but at least it’s out. Maybe I’ll be able to create something more clear and well written in the future, but this is the mess I feel in the moment.
It was in November of 2024 that I first came across Gretchin Rubin’s book, “The Happiness Project” and decided to take on my own happiness project.
Last January I leapt in, focused on four areas- creativity, spirit, health, and connection. I went online and bought a planner to help me track the process and think through my direction. I set clear, measurable goals, and jumped. I started out with 15 minutes a day of creative time, 15 minutes daily of meditation, and 15 minutes daily of stretching/opening exercises. I started strong. By April these things began to feel like habits and I sought more. I added in time to make music, get outside, and to read for pleasure. As spring warmed I took that idea of getting outside and started running again. By mid-summer I was running about 10 miles a week and really loving it along with building my community connections through volunteering at the zoo and the MSCR pontoon boats.
Each of things was something that I enjoyed, but by August I learned there was something I didn’t like anymore. I didn’t like my planner or being committed to doing all of the things that I’d added to my list. While I loved to play with art supplies, I didn’t like having to make sure I did my 15 minutes a day of creative time. The same was true for meditation or music or anything else. I’d somehow taken so many things that were so fun and relaxing and made them into jobs that I had to do or I’d have failed. That wasn’t what I sought to do. How had I taken this stress reduction exercise and turned it into a stressor? It collapsed and I collapsed.
As school started again I got lost in the new year, preparing for all my students and trying my best to stay afloat amongst the growing icebergs of work that are the life of a special education teacher. The best I could do in the moment it seemed was to let go of the structure of my “Happiness Project.” I had to let myself not create, not meditate, not make music, not run, not play outside. It seems a strange way to approach it I suppose, but it worked. I decided for myself, unknowingly I’ll admit, that the project was no longer a job for me and I didn’t have to do it.
It took some time where I didn’t meditate or run or create or do much of anything that I’d set out to do in the beginning of the year, but after a month or two pieces started to drift back in. I meditate daily now. My creative time has been knitting almost daily. I started running again in the fall and did a 5k. I’m cutting my tv time and increasing my time reading fiction. The one thing that I’ve not returned to though has been my planner. I have learned that while happiness is intentional it can’t be overplanned or it becomes work.
My work for social justice for the past few years has largely been working in special education. It looks a lot different than my days running non-profits or organizing on the streets, but ultimately the same questions are there. It’s always about recognizing the underlying issues if we want to find the long term answers.
Because of the federal government shut down SNAP is running out. Millions of people will be losing the benefits that make it possible for them to feed themselves and their families on November 1st. Many states are jumping in to hold off the crash and to keep people fed.
As a teacher at a school that serve many families that receive SNAP benefits, I’m wondering what’s going to happen. How long will states be able to keep their finger in the dike to stop the hunger flood? What will be cut from those state budgets to make it possible to keep the families fed?
Mostly, I find myself asking what happens not only in the loss of SNAP but in the fear of the loss? When families are in that spot of having to choose whether to buy food or pay rent, which will they choose? So many families are already making tough choices to make ends meet and it impacts our kids far beyond the dinner table. Families are choosing between buying food or paying for gas. When they can’t keep gas in the car, kids don’t get to school. In many schools this means that not only are they losing out on their education, but they’ve also missed out on breakfast, lunch, and probably a snack which they were entitled to via free and reduced meal programs. It’s an awful circle. Not enough money for food and gas, so buy gas, then no food at home so skip eating from lunch until the next day. Buy food and well, can’t get to school and parents can’t get to work.
I wonder how our attendance rates will be affected in upcoming weeks with tightening budgets and already stressed parents facing yet another strain making it more and more to keep themselves together and get their kids to school. I wonder how behaviors will change. Kids are ultimately mirrors of the stresses in their parents’ lives.
How to we amplify the voices of these kids and their families so that those in Washington can hear them? How do we make their struggle visible? How do we take this moment in time of losing SNAP and point to where it leads us with kids going hungry, struggling in school, struggling in life, and just not going anywhere?
It was a great rally. It was many great rallies. It was more than 7 million people out in the streets saying “No Kings!” It was also simply a tool in the process of organizing.
I started as a professional community organizer back in the late 1990’s working for an organization called SOCM in East Tennessee. I was just out of college and had the justified anger and the will to fight every day for social social justice and the big environmental wins. I was there to stop the multinational corporations that were clearcutting the foresting and stripmining the hills. I knew if we just fought hard enough, rallied enough, yelled loud enough, we would win. We had to win. There was no other option. We had to save the world.
Every month I had to take on the hardest struggle of my organizing work. I had to first write my work plan then, even more challenging, I had to sit down with my boss, Mo, and review and edit that work plan. Every single month Mo would ask me the same question multiple times as we went down my list of things to do. She kept asking me over and over– “How does this move the work forward?”
That question still echoes in my mind. “How does this move the work forward?” Rallies are great. They are important. Writing to your legislator, voting, writing letters to the editor, signing petitions, volunteering, and some many activites are wonderful things. But, we must remember that each is simply a tool. What is it that we are working to do? It’s not enough to simply point out that Trump is not good for the US or the world. We have to develop and work toward a different answer.
Are we working to save democracy? What does democracy really look like? What is the role of the grassroots in a healthy, functioning democracy? Once we start asking ourselves those questions and really coming up with our vision of what a healthy, functioning democracy based in the power of the grassroots might look like then we can speak to that question “How does this move the work forward” with each and every action that we take. Each thing that we do needs to move toward the goal.
We don’t rally for the sake of rallying. Rallies are a tool. Let’s use them in the best ways possible. Let’s ask ourselves “How does this move the work forward?” When we make our path and goal clear the seven million engages beyond the day of the rally and the movement multiplies. We can win. First step is knowing what winning is. Is our goal to save or rebuild democracy or is it simply to get Trump out of office? Second step is figure out what we need to meet that goal. Third step is to determine how we get those things that we need whether it be redistricing or strong presidential candidate or any of a hundred other things. Next we prepare to act while asking ourselves every step of the way, “How does this move the work forward?”
It is a long and hard journey. We know that. We also know that long journeys are often much easier once we pull out a map. It’s time to create our map of where we want to go.
The energies are building and it is fantastic. People will be gathering in small towns and large cities around the world on April 5th to protect democracy in the US. For someone who’s been working on social and environmental justice issues since the 90’s, it’s exciting to see.
It’s always great to see these times when the big rallies happen, drawing everyone from the babies in strollers to the elders with walkers. These gatherings are important for many reasons. They are a way to let those in political power know that we’re here and what we expect of them. They are also a tool to educate the public as well as to share ideas amongst our fellow activists. Perhaps most importantly, they are a space in which to make connections and build our community. Which brings me to that question of what happens on April 6th?
After this upcoming day of action we will be in a completely different world and yet nothing will have changed. Large scale protests can both empower and disappoint when we wake up the next day and find there is no immediate answer. If we look at history, we learn that while the marches and rallies were what we shown through the media, it was the months and years of work between those marches and rallies that made the huge changes.
I encourage us to be prepared for that feeling of empowerment and dismay after the rally and to talk with our fellow protestors about what will we do after the rallies to create the society that we believe in. Note that I’m not saying simply to stop our current administration, but to create the society that we believe in. How do we create community and connect with eachother?
Maybe for some of us it is continuing to write our legislators for others it may be running for office. Some will start community gardens or coordinate infoshops to create spaces for people to come together growing food and sharing resources. Maybe a few will develop training programs to teach people how to do community organizing or coordinate educational events to share the stories of the many great grassroots organizers and activists who’ve come before us so that we might learn from them. There is so much to be done. There is a role for everyone.
How do you figure out what your role is? I’ve been doing this work for a long time and I don’t always know, but there is a story that might help. Many Native tribes in the US speak of the seventh generation. My friend Walt, an Anishanaabe man from the Red Cliff reservation on the shores of Lake Superior, used to speak of it in this way. He’d tell people to imagine yourself looking down a long tunnel, at the end of that tunnel is a baby. That baby is the seventh generation. If you do what is right for that child seven generations from now, you’ll be doing what is right for today.
How are you continuing to be a part of the movement and growing community where you are?
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