The Day After

Photo credit: Heather Hoppe at Sideways Sunrise

I have a lot of questions about day(s) after. Most of that thinking is about the day after the revolution than the day after my holiday vacation, but both are equally valuable.

Today is the day after the anniversary of 9/11 and, in my experience, the day occurred without more than a blip. Even in NYC, there are large amounts of people that aren't being affected by the constant reminders to "never forget." And yet there are also folks that are acutely aware every year when the date comes up; their families have been directly affected by the loss and helplessness of the moment itself or they've been impacted by the very real hate and violence that happened in its aftermath.

Perhaps it's the healer in me, but the days after always make me think about wellness. What kind of world do we envision, for ourselves and our communities? This thought process has made me feel conflicted -- apart from the violence that comes from "never forgetting" a narrow messaging around 9/11 (read: Islam and anyone read as a "foreigner" is our enemy), there is a genuine helplessness lurking in our collective memory. That helplessness affects how our communities participate in their own healing.

The day after can be one of disaster or resilience. Often, it is both.

As a 5th grader in the Seattle area when the actual event occurred, I remember having a collapse in perspective; in my innocence, I thought that the Space Needle would go down next. But out of that youthful confusion, I grew in sharpness against the Islamophobia I'd seen around me. I gained a specific type of political education, and stubbornness. I never put my head down or took the advice to hide my Islam, and I was rewarded with being able to participate in some of the most amazing community building efforts and activism. In a confusing way, I owe something to that event 13 years ago -- it has sparked many many good questions.

How do we learn to trust again after the immediate crisis has passed? I have the privilege of being physically safe for the most part, and I am at a point in my life where I feel that I'm not just surviving. And yet, there is still this edge of survival mentality that creeps into my everyday life -- from the way I pack my bag in the morning to the way in which I approach responsibilities. I am always planning for the worst, and I am ready to leave at a moment's notice.

I want to live these days after with a renewed sense of vitality. I want to use these critical anniversaries not only to mourn the suffering we have faced, but to recommit to modeling wellness for myself and for my community members. The only way that we'll create a world that will hold us all with the same care/safety is to struggle towards wellness, to fight for it whether our bodies are on the line or whether we are modeling what health really looks like for people that have faced so much oppression.

I am still struggling with how to do this. My questions are still the same, though I have collected a few semi-satisfying answers. For me, the process of trust looks like letting go of some of my old coping mechanisms. I am curious to know what others need in order to feel more whole.

On the day after 9/11, I am getting up to go to work again and feeling tired, but blessed. I am learning as I go.

In the Service of Others: Working Myself Sick

I've been working myself sick lately.

Taking a step back from my commitments so that I can recommit to myself -- a lesson that I am always in the process of re-learning, but that has especially come up since the month of Ramadan -- has proved to be way more challenging than just canceling a few appointments and finishing a few jobs.

One of my major tasks at work is to address the needs of patients who are calling into the clinic; their issues may be urgent, or they may feel they are urgent despite the easy answers that come with a few minutes of gentle probing. They don't know our systems, and we don't know their lives. But we are building a scaffolding to address their health needs not only in response to symptoms, but at the root in prevention. Even though I have to keep in mind when there are difficult callers that they are experiencing really stressful situations, I can't get enough of the feeling that I am helping people.

I am always moonlighting to get more of that feeling. The jobs that I feel called to are all in the service of others: in the past three weeks, I have attended an equivalent number of births. I have massaged three women while they were in labor, watched their babies come into the world in the wee hours of daylight or the late hours of the evening, and absorbed that unique energy that keeps birthworkers up for hours and hours at a time (minimum, I have been with the moms for 7 hours or more per these births). You step out of your body for a moment, through giving so much of your energy to that person as they deliver. I have been wanting to write about this feeling for so many weeks, but haven't had the breathing room to sit with it.

 
This feeling is one of the reasons I love my healing work. People need me, it feels like. People need me to answer the phones, send the emails, stand by the bedside, advocate for their rights, connect them with resources... I am the interpreter of systems and the gatherer of knowledge -- how lofty and cool does that sound? But, in some ways, it's a trap.

When I am facing my deepest personal challenges, I often ask: "caretakers, who takes care of you?" It's not just a silly inversion of words. It really helps remind me that I need to rely on and truly trust others to provide me the energy in order to keep working in their service.

Lately, I've been circling the drain of thinking that the only reason someone would want my presence is for my ability to serve them. Resting your self-worth on a concept so tied to performance takes a toll on you when you decide, for your own basic wellbeing, that you must take time to eat food at regular hours, sleep in, and turn down potential job offers. Because there is no end to how many things people need from you, and ultimately you will disappoint someone. Ultimately, you will disappoint someone through taking what you need.

I can think of no better example of this than regarding my recent move. In the past few months, I have had cockroaches destroy my things and crawl over me while I slept in my Bronx apartment. The decision to move was inevitable, but I finally took steps to make it happen in the last month. In the past week, with the help of several friends, I packed up and shipped out to a new comfortable and roach-free place in Brooklyn. My previous landlord, however, decided to take this as a personal affront to him and called -- not to collect money or ask me to do any particular thing -- but to lecture at me for 30 minutes about my irresponsibility as a tenant. I interpret that he needed me to take his emotional burden from him as I tried to meet my own needs. Then it came forward: Disappointment in myself. Guilt about moving. Shame. In my mind, I was already taking responsibility. I had to realize that the other person must also hold up their part of the relationship.

I've put on hold a lot of the work that I can be doing for others, but that doesn't make it any easier to step away when I feel responsible. Or to acknowledge my own emotions/ego around success or failure. Or to admit that caring for others allows me to avoid caring for myself. If Allah gives us only the burdens we can carry, easing someone else's does not guarantee that you have managed your own.

I send love and wish ease to all those who are carrying burdens now that feel impossible to hold. I admire those who survive, who take what they need with no apology whether they are forced to or by choice. Know that I need to learn as much from you as I do from other healers about how to move closer to my own truth.

A Building Collapses in Harlem...

This post is helping me to process some of my first reactions to the Harlem building collapse that occurred last week and the media coverage following it. After only finding formal press coverage of the issue while Googling, I would like to be in dialogue with people who are actually on the ground and working on this particular issue -- please email me or Tweet @thecowation with your thoughts.

  
The first thought I had was: "How dare they?"

There was an explosion in Harlem, the news alert said. Two buildings collapsed. After a while, I turned off the TV and closed the open tabs filled with articles. They all said the same thing. They lamented; they listed the dead.

How dare they portray this as a casual accident, an unexplained tragedy -- a backward glance and then, boom? Anyone you ask could tell you those apartments have been crumbling for years. No landlord in sight, no incentive to be.

One life lost unfurls into three. Then six. Then eight. For every life that is extinguished, five are impacted by life-changing injuries, mental and physical. Maybe more. Yes more, endless more.

The injured are always shuffled to the end of the sentence, always the follow-up. But they remain present, devoid of context after the news cycle has run its course. In ICUs and family homes, unable to get insurance or with insurance that will not cover their care, they survive. Some will end up on subway trains begging, while other riders turn down their heads. Long after the initial event, these people will continue to navigate a world not designed for them.

My best layperson theory about the housing situation in NYC is that it's a ticking time bomb -- the buildings are old and there isn't much incentive to renovate unless you're knocking them down to build condos (read: gentrification). There are few city interventions for communities that aren't cared about, and when there are they always come after they're needed. After the crisis.

How do you mourn when your everyday life is a crisis? This is the same question I asked after the Rana building collapse in Bangladesh, where the death tolls were in the thousands. I continue to ask them now as the bodies are carefully dug out of the rubble in Harlem and the area becomes just another hole in the ground. Who lives on? Who benefits from their misfortune? And how, as onlookers, do we do anything at all?

I am wrestling with these unanswered questions. I have looked back at my social justice influences -- interviews and articles by Mia Mingus for disability justice in particular. Taking a workshop with her a few years ago completely changed my understanding of how social justice work can be connected with healing. As she mentions: we should center disability justice because we all have the potential to become disabled, whether or not we began that way. With that in mind, the question becomes "How do we change this?" Healing work should not only be responsive after a tragedy occurs; it should focus on preventing violence and creating accessible services for those who experience it.

So how dare they? How dare they separate this violent incident from all of the structural violence that led up to it? Its causes are echoed in a laundry list of ways that the system has failed us -- lack of adequate housing, lack of resources for homeless people, and lack of mental and physical healthcare. Not to mention how the myth of U.S. superiority hides its connection to broken infrastructures abroad.

Very few sources connect us with these answers; now, we must write our own.

Thoughts from an Activist Doula in Training

I've always talked about wanting to get more involved with healing work - psychological, physical, and spiritual. These past few months, I've been diving in.

I am naturally drawn to characters who make it their focus to care for others and provide resources. They create change in ways that aren't as visible as putting a banner in the air, and are often too busy to write about their work in Tweets and comment sections. But even if the healing work is labeled as stereotypically feminine (think "soft" and "maternal"), there can be no doubt that the spaces I've entered are kicking major ass in their approach to patriarchal and racialized systems.

The most openly radical space I'm in is doula training - in short: a birth companion who doesn't provide medical attention, but provides emotional care and information (click the link for more!). Reproductive healthcare work in general is awash in politics: whether you are an obstetrician, a midwife, a doula, an abortion provider, or a parent, there's always someone telling you what you should be doing and how. And the norms stated by the media are perpetuated in what resources are funneled dollars. Greater research on the effects of medical intervention? Nah, the medical system is great as it is. Resulting fear around birth? Discredit the midwives, or make it harder for them to get certified training. Try to have support people present? No, they're just getting in the way. And of course: gender roles, gender roles, gender roles.

The focus of a doula is to listen first and provide resources rather than imposing a particular view on the person they are caring for. Funny how that simple act can be revolutionary. But half of our training has been to learn about where we fit into (and sometimes challenge) a medical system that doesn't want us in it. And that can mean everything from providing low- or no-cost services to folks that are uninsured, undocumented, or just have financial hardship. Or that can mean not passing judgment on a pregnant teen or assuming the gender identity of a person asking for services. Or simpler even than that: in our healthcare system today, just having a consistent support behind your choices in birth, labor, abortion/termination, adoption, etc. is radical. And that's something I'm very very drawn to. (Check out Radical Doula for more info on folks that work at this intersection.)

It gives me hope to see how many people are on call literally round the clock to do this work. In their ideal world and mine, mothering is not "soft" or "women's work" with all of its connotations. Mothering can be a form of radical resistance that is not limited by gender and subverts mainstream expectations around care providers. We are part of an ongoing movement, and I am glad to be swept up in its flow.

(psst, you can now buy my zines on Etsy! Check out how you can get Loving Ghosts and back issues of my other zines there)

We Do Work Here: Healing Spaces and Our Best Selves

I have just started work at Sadie Nash for my summer job (also the place that I did my fellowship to create As[I]Am, which you should still check out!), and I have been thinking a lot about space. Not just in that dreamy way that you get when you're apartment hunting and you're thinking of all the amazing ways that you could create a space that feels like 'home' - although I am doing that too - but in the sense of all the intentional work that we have to do to create spaces that feel safe for some really tough conversations to occur.

In case folks don't know, Sadie Nash is a young women's leadership and empowerment organization that really takes to heart the idea that every young person is a leader. Right now. Not when they finish the summer program, not when they are given permission, but in their homes and communities as they are. We just simply give them the tools to enact that if they would like to.

But spaces, unlike the young leaders, are not immediately safe for those tough dialogues.

When I think about the place I work and places that I've worked in the past, it's with this idea in mind: we have to reframe a lot of conversations to make the spaces we're in - whether online or in the actual world - feel ready for people to come and be the best they can be. Through respecting others, through listening to others, we create spaces that can welcome in all that work that we have to do together. Why we don't get that in other parts of our lives?

It seems to me that the primary view of what will motivate people to be their best selves is giving them a task and telling them to shoot for it, whether those are skills or tangible accomplishments (jobs, earnings, education, awards, etc.). The other motivator is power, whether that's over another person or animal or object. Both of these things are necessary in some measure to survive and feel safe. But they can also mess up our treatment of others, create conflict and hierarchies, and just make people feel like they have to hide parts of themselves so they can 'focus on the goal' or gather more power.

Activist spaces can sometimes feel unsafe too, of course. That's where the work piece must be underlined. We do work here. We do the work of healing ourselves so that we can help heal others. A space is the just one of those ways we make this possible. In the next few weeks, I'll be writing more about healing work and how I think it plays a big part of the work I am and want to be doing - stay tuned.

Rant About Emotions #1

I learned something today in yoga (as I often do) and it really turned the corner on my ideas [and also made me a little more worried about myself]. So, I am taking this time to process said emotions. Take 1.
I learned that fear is the core of all negative emotions.
It goes... Hate : Anger : Sorrow : Fear... according to my yoga teacher. In order to find the next meaning, you must peel away one. I feel that I have only barely peeled away the idea of hate from my mind. I am much more in love with the world than I was a long while ago. I am still deep in the process of taking away my anger - and that's what is really getting to me.
Today I had an outburst unlike [or maybe too like] the normal days. Often enough I get really near tears and stuff with these crazy problems etc. (yeah, I'm not manly) and I work it out some other way. But today was like a tirade against my dad when working on math homework [like the old days] It was really upsetting to me because I thought that I had at least calmed down from yoga class... but maybe it just brought these feelings up.
My yoga teacher says that we live so comfortably with fear that it immediately translates into something else and we don't even process it as fear anymore. I just... I can't believe that I did that. I feel disgusting. I should probably apologize, but I don't know how much that would absolve me. I just thought... I don't know. I feel like I just set myself back many steps - but maybe it just takes a long time for this process to go.
I've decided that I will learn to be closer to my own spirit over the summer. Probably by exploring emotions and religion fundamentally [the gritty stuff will probably be to move it, not apologize]
I will live. I just got really shocked today. That's all.

If you enjoyed this lesson from yoga, read about another one I took away much later: living in the moment.