Month: April 2015

Fortune Favors the (Thoughtfully) Bold

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Three years (and one week) ago, I embarked on what I thought would be the greatest adventure of my life: I moved to Hawai‘i.

I am a cheesy human who likes celebrating small anniversaries like that, so it’s ironic that, each year, I have been off-island on May 1st (and always for a TFA trip!). I always end up celebrating my move to the island by being forced to leave it.

And maybe that’s a good thing. Sitting here, in my parents’ place in Kona (one of the many changes over the past 3 years), I’ve been rereading my blog from that time in my life. Doing a time-warp is always fun, but I was struck not just by the sense of adventure I had, but also how frenetic I now remembered that time was.

Moving to Hawai‘i was, in fact, the biggest, most adventurous risk I had have ever taken. I don’t have close family here, I didn’t have any close friends out here. I was jumping into a job that dealt with organizing things, laughably my worst skill on earth. I was making ridiculous decisions with little thought to the outcome. Continue reading →

Teaching While White

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Tough, essential questions.

Mel Katz's avatarYoung Teachers Collective

Co-authored by Melissa Katz and Molly Tansey

Screen Shot 2015-04-15 at 5.05.14 PM

This past summer Mia McKenzie of Black Girl Dangerous published a piece entitled “All the White Teachers I Wish I Never Had.” In the piece, she discusses how during her early school years her entire world was Black, filled with family, friends and teachers who supported her academic curiosity.

“As a very bright, gifted Black girl, having Black teachers, mostly Black women, who saw my giftedness and encouraged and nurtured it, meant everything. These were teachers who could look at me and see themselves. They could see their children, their hopes, their dreams. These were teachers who could be as proud of me when I did well as my own family was, who could understand me when I talked about my life, and who knew how to protect the spirit of a gifted Blackgirlchild in a world they knew would try…

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On Being and Learning Again

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I’ve felt… off-balanced lately. A little lost, a little weary and wary. Occasionally, like most folks, darkness comes in and you cannot help but question why it’s there and who causes it.

And while it’s scary, I’m lucky. I’ve seen the other side of darkness enough to know that “Easter will come,” things will brighten. I have family and friends who love me and make me laugh, a job I cannot help but find joy in, a partner who holds my hand the whole time and says, “I got you. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”

Last night, and in the past few weeks, I have been struggling with the concept of “Enough.” In the NPO or education world– it often feels like I don’t do enough for the people in my life– my students, family, friends. Sometimes I feel like I’m too scared to take on the big challenges because I have this nagging need to take care of myself and do things that make me happy too.

So, on a whim, I found out that Fr. Greg Boyle, one of my favorite writers, priests, human beings, had been interviewed by On Being, one of my favorite podcasts.

I’ve read and listened to so much of Fr. Boyle, and what he shared wasn’t necessarily new to me, but just hearing it reframed again was so essential– I was immediately snapped back to myself. I know what I need to be doing. I know it will take time to get there. I know I must be eager, yet patient in God’s timeline.

I think, sometimes, we want to glance over reflections or lessons we think we’ve “already learned.” Yesterday, I didn’t want to reflect on body image because I thought, Well, I’ve written about that before, shouldn’t I know better?

We are so quick to forget our own flawed perfection means sometimes the lessons need to be restudied and relearned to gain a new, revolutionary potency in our minds. It doesn’t mean we’re silly, merely that we have the fantastically human ability to form and reform new and better connections with things as we grow.

So, with a renewed heart for the work and what it looks like for me, I’m coming out on the other side.

I highly recommend the linked podcast (I always choose the unedited version), and a few favorite tidbits below:

On perceptions of the communities we serve:

So you see how they love one another or there is nobody in need in this community, for example. But my favorite one is — it leaped off the page to me — and it says, “And awe came upon everyone.” So that the measure of our compassion lies not in our service of those on the margins but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship. And so that means the decided movement towards awe and giant steps away from judgment.

So how can we seek really a compassion that can stand in awe at what people have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it?

On doing the work:

Question: …what more can I do other than shrugging my shoulders and writing a check?

Fr. Boyle:  Well, don’t stop writing the checks!… but we must obliterate the illusion that we’re separate…How do we dismantle the barriers that exclude? How de we dedicate ourselves, in our own way… how do you participate in the birth of a new inclusion, where nobody is left out?

And that takes humility! …Humility asks the poor on the margins, “What do you need? How can I help?” 

Hubris says: “here’s what your problem is and here’s how you fix yourself.”

On mutuality in “service”:

I’m not the great healer and that gang member over there is in need of my exquisite healing. The truth is, it’s mutual and that, as much as we are called to bridge the distance that exists between us, we have to acknowledge that there’s a distance even in service. A service provider, you’re the service recipient and you want to bridge even that so that you can get to this place of utter mutuality. And I think that’s where the place of delight is, that I’ve learned everything of value really in the last 25 years from precisely the people who you think are on the receiving end of my gifts and talent and wisdom, but quite the opposite. It’s mutual.

On the work as Christ did it: 

I haven’t found anything that’s brought me more life or joy than standing with Jesus, but also with the particularity of standing in the lowly place, with the easily despised and the readily left out, and with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop, and with the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

Source: http://goo.gl/7MNO3h

Rolling Thunder: Falling In Love With My Thighs

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NOTE: This piece originally ran 3 years ago for The SF Marathon, and was edited for clarification and grammar.

But, after trying to love myself today, post-half-marathon, it felt worth revisiting.

When I woke up last Tuesday, I knew I shouldn’t run. I had injured my leg at Surf City the week before, and it wasn’t feeling any better. It was tight and kind of painful and none of it felt right.

After a few years of running, I frankly should’ve known better. I should’ve known that, even with a marathon 5 weeks away, I should rest. No, the marathon wasn’t what got me out of bed and got me to put on my running shoes that morning, despite my better judgment. Confession time:

I woke up that morning feeling a little fat.

Now, that’s a big thing for me to admit. Firstly, admitting that you feel fat or even just not-great is not sexy or becoming in any way. I try to be a big believer in loving your body (and, generally, I do). As an advocate for positive mentality in running, I also am a big believer in being happy with who you are, as long as you’re healthy and you feel good.

Still, with all my positive attitude and happiness about running and the self and blah blah blah, I have to admit that, as a 24-year-old woman who lives in Los Angeles, sometimes I wake up feeling a little gross.

My struggle with weight isn’t really a traditional one. Sure, I grew up in Laguna Beach, California, home of the perennial beach bunny. As a chubby kid, I definitely didn’t fit that mold, but I was never really picked on for my weight.  My parents were very attune to what kids deal with, and always made it a point to tell me I was pretty and loved. I’ve even been lucky enough that I’ve dated generally good guys, and have yet to be with a guy who has ever said anything negative about my weight– a huge bonus for a curvy girl.

Still, even though I had a lot of support systems and luck, I’ve struggled with my weight since I was a kid. I always felt kind of chubby and like I was never going to be skinny enough to be like “other girls” (I don’t know who these other girls were).

I remember, in middle school, a girl in my class put her feet together and her thighs didn’t touch. This blew my mind.Are you kidding me!? I thought. How can her thighs not touch in the center?! My legs touch all the way from my calves up!

Cut to my senior year of college. I was chubby and unhealthy throughout most of college (I recall lots of cookies-for-dinner nights). That year, though, I began working out– nothing crazy, just a few hours every week. I noticed my body changing. I was way hyped. I started eating healthier too. I dropped a few more pounds.

Then, I got engrossed in the stress of my senior thesis. I was so stressed, and felt so out of control that I pretty much stopped eating. Looking back, I estimate that I ate under 800 calories a day. I pretty much subsided on 4 or 5 cups of green tea, and a handful of grapes or a few pieces of fruit every day. After a few months, I noticed that my clothes were a little loose. Without having really looked at myself in a while (since I was so caught up in my work), I jumped on a scale. I was far below my goal weight, the lowest I had ever been in my post-adolescent life. I finally looked at myself in the mirror, expecting to look glowing and thin.

The girl looking back at me was a little surprising.

I had dark circles under my eyes.  When I lifted my shirt up and raised my arms, I could see all my ribs– I could count them. My collar bone stuck out in a really weird way that I didn’t like.

Ironically, my thighs still touched.

When I started training for marathons, I began looking at my body in an entirely different way. My body had always been this thing I fought against. It was this thing that I hated and that didn’t do what I wanted it to do and didn’t look how I wished it would look.

As a runner though, it was hard to hate my body and be able to succeed. My mind and my body had to work in tandem.

My body was the vehicle, and when I mentally pushed myself to run 15 miles and my legs responded by actually doing it, I finally started feeling gratitude for what my body was giving me. When I had the mental elation of burning past another runner in the last half mile of a race, it was those muscular-always-touching calves that I had to be thankful for it.

I actually started to like some things about my body. I felt good about myself. No, I was never going to be a size 0, but, after training, I could run 26.2 miles. There are definitely some trends that these hips will never pull off, but they are able to get me through 5 hours of running straight.

I knew my body image had changed one morning, when I was running before going to work. I looked down my legs. Each time they hit the pavement, I saw my quads flex on impact, pushing me forward every step, every mile.

ThighsThen, I surprised myself. My thighs are definitively not lean, tiny, not-touching thighs. I looked down at my now muscular thighs, and the first thought that came to mind was:

Damn. That’s pretty hot.

I can’t stress enough how much running has changed the way I view myself, and I hope it’s a message that I (or you!) can pass along. I wasn’t the only middle-schooler that struggled with my weight. Recently, the National Heart and Lung association polled a group of girls. 40% of them said they had tried to diet.

They were between 9 and 10 years old.

It’s not easy on men either. The same organization polled a group of fifth grade boys, and 45% of them said that they had felt dissatisfied about the way their bodies looked.

These issues, this battle with what our bodies are and what they can mean to us starts young.

When you work out and take care of your body, it’s important to not only know your weaknesses and set goals, but to show a little love towards yourself too. After finishing my first marathon, I felt limitless. I was the kid who had cried to get out of the weekly mile, and now I had run father than I ever thought I could. I had my body to thank for that feeling.

So, as I take a little break from running (oh, yeah, that run I did last Tuesday? I pulled my calf. Learned my lesson, huh?), I’m using it as an excuse to fall back in love with my body. I sit in the jacuzzi and actually relax for the first time as I love my body by letting it heal. I look at myself in a new dress, and try not to feel guilty or boastful by thinking Huh. I look good. I do cheesy, clichéd things like yoga in the park while I enjoy a beautiful day.

Oh, and I maybe reward it with some frozen Cherry Garcia yogurt too.

Enough. 

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I will never do
Enough.
I will never give
Enough.
I will never have
Enough.
I can never be
Enough.

There is so much more
that I could do, that I could give,
that I could know.
There are always flaws, always
cracks, always empty, gaping holes.

I dip my thumb into the
vastness of all these perceived
Slights and fails. In them, there is
that human stillness–perfect, frail.

In my flaws, I find
Enough.
The holes, they let in breath–
Enough.
The cracks that let in light–
Enough.
In these broken, empty hands–
Myself.
Enough.
Enough.

Gone Quiet

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But yeah… running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didn’t get it because they’d never broken through. For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with.

But you can’t muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it. Relax enough, and your body becomes so familiar with the cradle-rocking rhythm that you almost forget you’re moving. And once you break through to that soft, half-levitating flow, that’s when the moonlight and champagne show up : “You have to be in tune with your body, and know when you can push it and when to back off,” Ann would explain.

You have to listen closely to the sound of your own breathing; be aware of how much sweat is beading on your back; make sure to treat yourself to cool water and a salty snack and ask yourself, honestly and often, exactly how you feel. What could be more sensual than paying exquisite attention to your own body? Sensual counted as romantic, right?    –McDougall, Christopher, Born to Run.

Lately, I have been running silently.

I fully blame this quote. Before, music was an escape. Now, I push through and try and find the sweet, subtle place where my body finds peace, grace, the quiet calm at the center.

I never really thought I’d ever be able to run silently. Like most, running was an escape, and music only aided in that. I’d jam to songs that I would eventually come to know as well as the pattern of my footsteps. I would look forward to the stop lights that forced me to wait and eventually have a little solo-sidewalk-dance party. Running without headphones felt more like torture then the dance party music made it.

This past year, however, I’ve been running more and more for the love of it. Once I stopped timing myself last year, re-centered myself around my running goals, and became stronger for it, I also rediscovered how much I actually liked running. For so long, it had been a way to lose weight, then a way to bond with kids.

Now, though, after trying lots of other types of exercise, I’ve come to realize that I just love the act of it– the rhythmic, soothing, visceral connection. Running is so unique because it requires almost nothing: just the road and your own will. There’s no bike to set up and little gear to put on. It’s just the consistent conversation between the yammering of your brain, the thump of your heart, the swirl of your breath and aligning it all with the patter of your footfall.

Once I found that, I actually stopped wanting to use music. I would pause it while I followed my breath, or zoned out and worked on a problem while I ran. I realized that music was actually separating me from the run, and I didn’t like it.

So, now I guess I’ve gone quiet for a bit. I don’t plan on giving up sidewalk dance parties anytime soon, but I’m certainly loving this reconnection with my body.