Women’s Rights: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I watched the devastating footage from Kabul today. I found myself crying, afraid for those left behind. I especially have concerns for the interpreters who worked with the United States during the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and beyond. It wrecks me to think that people who risked everything to help us will be left behind to certain death. There is no easy way to exit a war that cannot be won, but what we saw today was heartbreaking, desperate people clinging to their last bit of hope as it rolled down a runway.

I spent a fair part of my day stuck on thoughts of the women of Afghanistan, women who for the past 20 years have felt something of a taste of freedom. Young women, who have never known life under Taliban rule, are watching the futures they had hoped to imagine slip away. In all the footage today, I noticed there were no women in the streets. The women were home, hiding from the horror of their future. This will sadly become their new normal.

The United States currently ranks 20th in women’s rights. I am disappointed by how far behind other nations we are in terms of equal pay, maternity leave, and personal freedoms. But when I think about the Afghan women, I am incredibly grateful for the freedoms I have known by grace of having been born a woman in the United States and not in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, or Yemen. The United States might not be the best, but we’re far from the worst.

This world can be too much for my heart. Many days I struggle to find a smidgen of internal peace despite the tumult on the planet. Today was definitely one of those days. I dig myself out of this depression by focusing on gratitude. I had nothing to do with being born here. I, quite simply, lucked out. I may whine on my blog and in my life about my minuscule struggles, but I know how fortunate I am. If you can’t be born a white woman in Scandinavia, Canada, or Switzerland, the United States is still a lucky draw. I have been given a gift I didn’t earn.

I will hold the women of Afghanistan in my heart as I go about my daily life, a life any of them would be grateful to inhabit. They deserve more, and it breaks my heart they will now have so much less.

Posted on by Me 4

Rat Pizza At A Child Casino

Anyone up for some Skeeball?

Sometimes I see things on Twitter that make me think. Other times I see things on Twitter that make me laugh. But I especially like posts I can relate to. So for everyone who, like me, has been inside of a Chuck E. Cheese, I present this beauty:

You’re welcome.

Posted on by Me 2

Treat Your Thoughts Like Clouds

Art credit to @phoebenewyork, photo by Elizabeth Schoettle

A friend posted this artwork to her Instagram this morning. This art piece sums up what I am working to achieve for myself through therapy and meditation. I strive to get to a place where I am able to put space between my thoughts about reality and reality itself. The thing about being a thought-filled introvert is that I spend a lot of time in my brain. My brain, unfortunately, was wired from a young age to view pretty much anything having to do with my appearance, my personality, my choices, and my desires negatively. I am working hard to acknowledge that my thoughts can be like a funhouse mirror, distorting reality and leaving me feeling horrible about myself without sufficient evidence to back up that view. So, the idea of treating my thoughts as clouds, recognizing that they come and go and take shape and lose shape because they are fluid and not at all concrete, is genius.

Like many people, for most of my life I have let my thoughts run away with me without understanding I can control them. When a negative or fearful or self-defeating thought pops into my head, what happens to it depends on my reaction to it. Say I look into a mirror and think, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you look like hell,” I have a choice how I react to that thought. I can let that thought define me and spend the rest of my day self-conscious and sad, with that thought gaining more weight and getting heavier the more I pay attention to it, so that by the end of the day that cloud says, “Your best days are over. You should just go crawl in a hole where no one has to look at you.” I do have another option, though, which is to do some cloud busting. I can reply to that funhouse thought with a hearty “No one believes that, and neither should you,” and move on with my day unencumbered by that knee-jerk, knuckle-headed self talk.

My attitude towards my thoughts creates the difference between a quiet, sunny day with light cirrus clouds and a tumultuous, dark day punctuated by growing cumulonimbus storm clouds. So my task is to put some air space between myself and my thought clouds and to accept that my thoughts don’t always know what they are saying. Many times my thoughts are way off base. The faster I am able to acknowledge that my negative thoughts are just thoughts and not necessarily reflective of reality, the better job I can do clearing them from my head and making room for better thoughts, creative thoughts, thoughts filled with self-love.

Eventually, I hope to become a more effective cloud buster. I would love to be able to set my thought griefcase down and work on sunnier self-reflections.

Posted on by Me

The Burger Brawl And Pickle Problem

  • Two peas in a pod

We have two sons who were born three weeks less than two years apart. We have been fortunate. Our sons have been best buddies from Luke’s arrival. I don’t know how. People used to ask how often they fought. The answer was almost never. They like the many of the same things, but they are not alike in personality so they balance each other out. This is not to say that they don’t bicker, debate, tease, or torture one another. It’s just that it’s never been mean spirited. They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They look out for each other. They love each other even when they are acting like jerks.

They are 20 and 18 now, which means they are legally grown. And yet their conversations often sound like the ones they’ve had forever. They love to argue about nothing. They have argued about nothing for as long as they’ve been brothers. Tonight in the car on the way home from In-n-Out, they were arguing about burger toppings. Luke, the purest, said the best burger was the basic one, just meat and bun. Joe’s burger choice, Luke said, was too complicated. Joe thought this stance was insane. A burger with pickles is NOT complicated. So, he began hazing Luke about a burger without pickles. The guys despise anything made with vinegar, but for some reason Joe’s vinegar aversion stops at pickles. Luke finds them disgusting. But, Joe has ADHD and that gives him a superhuman focus when he is invested. He was invested in arguing about pickles.

“What is wrong with pickles?” he prodded.

“I don’t want your vinegar cucumber chips,” Luke snapped.

And they were off. Bickering about nothing after a previous argument that was also about nothing…again.

Joe goes back in college in Washington in two weeks. Although I chided them in the car about their constant arguments about nothing, I will miss hearing them. Don’t tell my sons, but those arguments make my heart smile even as they make my mouth grumble. I think it’s because I know that no matter how old they get or how their lives change and grow, they will continue to get together, make each other laugh, drive us crazy, and squabble passionately about pointless things. That’s just what they do. It’s a gift.

I don’t know that Luke will ever like pickles, though. This argument might come up again.

Posted on by Me 2

Flipping The Script

While searching my brain for something to write about tonight, I found this gem on Facebook. I love the idea of flipping the script, taking something basic and turning it upside down until it looks a little more intriguing. When I was years and years younger, I did this with my career as stay-at-home mom. I told people I was a “Wildlife Manager,” which was infinitely more descriptive and appropriate. Seriously. Have you ever tried to manage two boys under the age of 5? They are a bit much.

So much of what happens in life is predictable, prescribed, and ordinary. We fall into boxes readily, like cats into taped off squares on the floor, because they make us feel secure. Student. Business professional. Realtor. Doctor. Parent. Dog mother. Athlete. When you meet someone new, what is the first place the conversation naturally flows? “So, where do you work?” If you’re lucky, you get a more nebulous, “What do you do?” We are comfortable when we can rely on these scripts. We feel good about ourselves when can give someone the elevator-chat, ten second version of our life, a version that usually revolves around what we do, not who we are, not what makes us happy or interesting or passionate. I think this is a crime.

I propose that we mix things up. Let’s stop talking about what we do. Let’s start talking about who we are. Wouldn’t a cocktail party be much more interesting if instead of starting with work talk (because who wants to talk about work when not at work, anyway?), we asked what someone’s first concert was or which television character they would invite to dinner if they could. And what if our ten-second, elevator-chat personal description went more like this:

“I’m Justine. As a child, I was terrified of anything having to do with UFOs. I played cymbals in high school marching band. I suck at throwing frisbees. I’m a die-hard introvert, but I love to plan parties that I preferably would not have to attend. Oh, and even though I’m 53, I sleep with a stuffed dog I named Eliot.”

Imagine what we would know about each other, imagine what we would learn about ourselves, if we stopped putting people into boxes based on religion, politics, and career and began talking to each other as if we were all the unique, interesting individuals we are. What barriers might we break down? What assumptions about others might we lose? I think if we started flipping the script, we might be able to raise the level of discourse in this country. Let’s re-enchant life by focusing on the parts of our human experiences that make life worth living.

Posted on by Me 9

Peace Is Where You Look For It

“All good things are wild and free.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was raised to be an apologist, so forgive me if I apologize for the short but sweet post tonight. I do try to take time to write, but sometimes you have to take time to live.

All is right with the world when you get to spend time with people you love. My sister is in town from Connecticut with her family, and we took them out for a late afternoon of paddle boarding on a nearby lake. Afterward, there were some non-competitive corn hole games, followed by some long walks. Sometimes you get caught up in the busy business of life and you forget the simple pleasures. I am guilty of this too often.

I’m grateful I took time today to be present with people I love, to get out into nature and feel the cool water on my feet while I paddled across a windswept lake, and to remember what it’s like to be free, to be comfortable, to be loved just as you are. I should remember to do these things more often.

Posted on by Me 3

But What If You Hate It

So, I did a thing. I have been thinking about it forever, but I finally decided it was time to woman up. I mean, how can I claim I am ready to take back my power from people who would keep me caged if I don’t take concrete steps to stand up for what I know in my heart to be the right decision for me?

Today, Joe and I got our first tattoos. Before he came home from college in May, Joe gave me the list of things he wanted to do this summer, which included riding his bike over Vail Pass and hiking five 14ers. I asked him when we were going to get tattoos. He has been talking since his sophomore year of high school about it and has had his design picked out since that time. Back then, we told him it would be better if he waited until he was at least 18 before making what is a fairly permanent decision. And then, as the ubiquitous story goes, Covid hit. The tattoo idea got shelved. I think I brought it back up because I was looking for a partner in crime. Someone who I knew would be be wholeheartedly supportive while making sure I didn’t chicken out.

Joe being brave and being first

Joe’s biggest anxiety about the tattoo process was pain. My biggest anxiety about the process was quieting the echoing voices in my head, the voices of those who for years told me it would be a mistake. I could hear them. But what if you hate it? This is the question I have repeated to myself every time I thought I might at last be brave enough to speak for myself. After some recent therapy sessions, I flipped the script on those voices. I asked them some questions for once. But what if I love it? What if every day that little bit of ink reminds me of what a badass I am? What if that small tattoo becomes an outer representation of the spirit inside me? Damn. My inner voice is good when I let her speak up.

After doing some research and talking to a lot of people, we ended up going with a tattoo establishment about 20 minutes away from our home. The artist we booked with had recently done a tattoo for my friend’s daughter, and the tattoo she got was similar to the ones Joe and I were interested in. We needed someone we were confident could do a great job on clean lines, simple lines. Kevin at Clean Slate was exactly who we were looking for. His personal artwork and skill level go way beyond what we asked of him, so I felt a little guilty taking up his time with such simple work.

Joe went first. His tattoo is a compass rose, which symbolizes his love of travel, geography, and adventuring. When Joe’s was finished, Kevin showed me what he had worked up for mine. It was definitely bigger than I was imagining, but after Kevin explained the reason for the size I knew he was right. The detail would get lost if it was much smaller. I looked tentatively at Joe, and he of course told me to go for it. I texted my husband whose response was “Go big or go home.” I was doing this thing.

Selfie of me getting inked

My tattoo is a spiral sun. I’ve had this image with me for about 30 years. I went into a rock shop in Estes Park decades ago and saw a small basket filled with stones etched with Native American symbols. There were bears and arrowheads, healing hands and turtles. None of those spoke to me. I chose a small rock with the spiral sun image because I read that the spiral sun represents power, and I needed more of that in my life. Over the years, I carried that rock with me through multitudes of moves. I called it my Power Jus rock. When I was four months pregnant, I held that rock in my hand during the defense of my master’s thesis. That image on that little rock has reminded me for decades that I am strong, powerful, capable, and ever evolving. Now that image is on my inner forearm where every day it will remind me that I am on my own journey and I have got this.

As for those who will give me crap about it (and there will be those), let them. Maybe it’s bigger than a tattoo you would get. Maybe you think a spiral sun tattoo on a woman of eastern European descent is cultural appropriation. Maybe you think a tattoo in such an obvious place is a bit much for a 53 year old mother of two grown sons. Maybe you have a point.

Then again, maybe I just don’t care what you think anymore. Maybe I can handle my own life and you should just mind your own damn business.

Posted on by Me 14

An Open Letter to Senator Josh Hawley, (R-MO)

Screen capture courtesy of my iPhone

Dear Senator Hawley,

My family and I got Covid-19 last November. We had been careful, wearing masks everywhere, not eating out or going to movies or malls, even having all our groceries delivered and left on our front doorstep. In the end, despite our diligence, we likely contracted Covid-19 when our masked son, who was working as a volunteer, came in contact with an out-of-state visitor who refused to wear a mask while visiting Dinosaur Ridge. Joe argued that asking others, who had blatantly disregarded signage about state mask mandates, to don masks was above his volunteer pay grade. We agreed. So, he got sick first and then we all did. We had mild cases, for which we were deeply grateful. After our two week quarantine period was up, however, we noticed we weren’t bouncing back to our usual healthy selves. Weeks after we had resumed our now normal distanced and masked lives, we noticed we were struggling through exercise and having greater difficulty catching our breath. We were constantly tired, and our senses of taste and smell had not fully returned to normal. Nine months later, three out of the four of us still don’t have our taste and smell back to our pre-Covid experience. Covid can leave a mark.

Despite being a Covid-19 survivor and having had a positive test for antibodies in mid March, I got the vaccine. I had no concerns about its efficacy or safety. I am not a scientist, but I understand how science works. If physicians and researchers who dedicated their lives to eradicating viruses were lining up to get the vaccine, it was safe. I didn’t give it a second thought. I wanted normal life back. I too wanted to get rid of my mask. So, by mid April my husband and I were fully vaccinated, and our teenage sons followed suit by early May. When the CDC decided that vaccinated people could take off their masks, we were thrilled and nervous. We resumed our mask-free lives, relatively hopeful that others would step up for vaccines and we would all be safe from Covid soon.

But that didn’t happen. That didn’t happen because half the nation decided to think about getting vaccinated while the more virulent Delta strain ravaged India. All the warning signs were there. We knew Delta was beginning to increase infections in the US, but the unvaccinated weren’t concerned. And Fox News and Republican politicians like you raised no alarms. You instead bolstered doubt by politicizing the push for vaccines as something dubious that the Democrats had up their sleeves. You pushed the notion that freedom means not having to get a life-saving vaccine or wear a stupid, goddamn cloth mask (which, by the way, most four year olds I’ve seen can manage better than right-wing conservatives). As Delta started turning your state into a Covid nightmare for your hospitals, the CDC had to reverse course on the mask mandate. Masks were needed again because Delta, with its higher rate of transmission, was burning through the population and creating an unnecessary burden on our hospitals and health care professionals.

So, let’s get something straight. The mask wearing the CDC is recommending is about politics. We have to go back to wearing masks because conservatives refused to get vaccinated before Delta took hold. You all had months to do this. Months. Vaccines were being tossed in the garbage because you would not get the shots. People around the world were desperately clamoring for vaccinations, but spoiled, selfish, and self-righteous Americans were turning up their noses at them. And, thus, Delta came calling, you all kept spreading, and now masks are back. This is not a flip flop by the CDC. This is a revision in advice because of a precipitous increase in Covid-19 cases due to a more virulent strain. And that, my friend, rests mostly on you and your unvaccinated acolytes.

As to your hyperbolic complaint that we will be forced to wear masks indefinitely, no one knows if that will come to fruition. But viruses do have time to mutate and become more deadly while their hosts are busy hemming and hawing about vaccine safety and using politics to cast doubt on science. So, if there does come a day when we all have to wear masks indefinitely to stave off deadly, airborne viruses, I will be looking at you, Senator. Well, the part of you I can see under your mask, anyway.

Posted on by Me 5
Even in an empty stadium, the spectacle of the Olympics was amazing.

Okay, I was a little bah humbug, face-down-in-a-bathtub-full-of-vodka with my post yesterday. And for good reason. Watching the deleterious effects of climate change occur in real time is devastating. But today I decided to take a break from reality and tuned into the last bit of the Olympics from Tokyo.

I am not a big Olympics fan. Our oldest son, though, is a huge fan of them. He says it’s because there are a lot of varied sports, and it’s amazing to watch the best of the best competing against each other. I think it’s because he a student of the world and he loves the countries, the costumes, and the flags. Oh, the flags! At any rate, he had the Olympics turned on in our house from day one of competition. He turned them on every day. Often I would come out of my room and see him perched on the couch, and he would try to teach me about water polo. And as the days went by and I saw his excitement about them, I tuned in more, partially to spend some time with him before he heads back to college and partially because, dammit, he got me caught up in the magic of it.

I found myself tonight watching the Closing Ceremony in tears. I love watching the athletes relish their last Olympic moments because, after all the competition has ceased, they are finally free to relax and enjoy themselves. And before the Olympics started they were so busy training and preparing. The Closing Ceremony must be a huge exhale. But as I watched the ceremony, I kept thinking that despite the precarious state of life on this planet, we are all tied together and maybe we will yet be able to do better together. If we are able to hold an Olympics during a worldwide pandemic, maybe we aren’t doomed? And Paris 2024? Come on! We have to stay around for that. We can’t possibly miss that.

I found myself singing these lyrics from The Police tonight because they make the most sense about why I would watch the Olympics when I normally don’t:

“When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.”

The Olympics are the best of what is still around. All these nations, all these athletes, participating together, celebrating together, working together, playing together. It’s the most optimistic thing we do as a planet.

Posted on by Me

The Big Yellow Taxi Prophecy

There should be mountains in the distance, but they seem to be going on vacation more often.

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” ~Joni Mitchell

I try desperately not to fall down the rabbit hole that is climate change. Honestly, this particular topic is one of the few that can leave me rocking on the floor in a tight fetal position. It’s horrifying. Despite what some powerful and wealthy (primarily white male) people would tell you, climate change is real. We see its effects daily. We aren’t doing enough to stop it or, at least the very least, ameliorate it. We are at a tipping point. Our planet is screaming for help, and we humans can’t figure out how to prioritize saving it.

Our recalcitrance isn’t changing the fact that California doesn’t have enough water while Europe just lost hundreds of people to massive flooding that was so extensive it shocked climate scientists. And there is now real concern among such scientists that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), aka the massive water-conveyor belt in the Atlantic that moves currents to redistribute heat and regulate weather patterns around the globe, could shut down sooner rather than later. This would thrust Europe and parts of the United States into a deep freeze, interfere with seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the globe, and raise sea levels along the eastern coast of the US. And extreme drought keeps bringing us to wildfires that are wiping out entire towns. The examples of climate change are plentiful, and I am certain you could add more from your own experience if you thought about it for a second.

Today, my hometown of Denver had the worst air quality in the world because of smoke from fires in California. Salt Lake City experienced a similar phenomenon. Colorado is known for its mountains, but this week the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks that we normally see from Denver were obscured by heavy smoke. Our phones buzzed several times today warning us not to exercise outdoors or leave our windows open. This is not the Colorado I grew up in. I have no memories from my childhood of massive amounts of wildfire smoke blocking out the entire Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. I grew up in the era after Denver fixed its smog problem with strict air quality measures. Summers in Colorado when I was a teenager were predictable. Clear, cloudless skies in the morning with temperatures warming into the mid 80’s, followed by a build up of early afternoon clouds, which would lead to afternoon thunderstorms that would cool things down and provide perfect sleeping weather. You didn’t need air conditioning here when I was a kid. We are hotter and drier now, though. Winter and spring storms are more volatile, mountain snow melts earlier, and the Colorado River carries less water to the lakes that provide water to Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

On days when I get overwhelmed by the gravity of climate change and what it means for the rest of my life and for the world my sons will live in when I am long gone, I stop and take a deep breath. One of my go-to favorite activities to clear my head is a long walk or hike in some of the remaining open space around our neighborhood. But it’s getting increasingly difficult for me to find a way out of the climate change rabbit hole when I can’t get outside for that long walk because breathing there is detrimental to my health. I don’t want the Rockies to be the second set of Smoky Mountains in the United States.

Shit is getting real. It’s not going to get better if we don’t start making sweeping and immediate changes to the way we operate. Wake up and smell the smoke, people, or you will lose the only home you have ever known. But then maybe that is what has to happen because “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”

Posted on by Me 3