Lessons from 2017: extreme parenting, playing backup & fleeing the #ThomasFire

Well, we made it. Seriously, there were some touch and go moments last year, if I'm to be honest. As I haven't blogged for six months, and those six months were some of the most emotionally taxing in recent memory, I wanted to give them their due in my end of year reflection.

2017 held some high highs professionally. I learned an incredible amount last year and really pushed myself. But as much as I'd like to focus on my professional achievements this year, it was my personal life that taught me the most.

In August of 2016, I had a bit of a mom-crisis/epiphany. We had acquired our 7th kiddo earlier that year, and with adding Arial to our flock, I was going to have a kid graduating from high school every year for 5 years. Five of our seven kiddos were teenagers and the youngest two are squarely in their preteen years. John told me, "the next five years are going to suck and then our lives will look a lot different." I was pretty confident that the second part of his prediction was inevitable, but after 2017 I can tell you that his first prediction seems to be spot on. I'm sure this is no surprise to any of you, looking in from the outside and thinking, "well duh, having seven kids is hard," but I can tell you that up until 2017 is wasn't THAT bad. We have really good kids, but they unfortunately only have teenage brains and things like consequences or planning or big picture thinking? Non existent. While there are lots of parenting highlights, the biggest being officially adopting Arial, in general, 2017 will be the year I remember that parenting went next level and all I could do was hold on and do my best.

In 2016, John went back to college to get his teaching degree. It's something he had wanted to do since before we met, and even though we knew it would be hard, I pushed him to do it. And it has been hard. But neither one of us could have predicted that because of him going back to school, and taking a job last January running the STEM classes for an after school program, that he would have been hired as a full-time robotics and engineering teacher starting this past fall. Still going to school to get his degree, starting his dream job...John had a good year professionally, and I am learning how to be the supportive, behind the scenes partner in our relationship. It's actually not very comfortable for me, and sometimes I worry that I'm not very good at it, but I'm learning.

All of my work/parenting/spouse balance was thrown over the edge in November when both John and our 11 year old Sallie had surgeries (deviated septum and broken ankle, respectively). Nothing life threatening, but it reinforced for me why I didn't go into nursing. I struggled to balance taking care of my work responsibilities, taking care of my family, and taking care of myself. As we celebrated Thanksgiving and prepared for Christmas, I was looking forward to life getting back to normal. I joked, "no one is allowed to have a medical emergency for the rest of the year."

The Universe accepted my request and raised me the largest wildfire in California history.

At about 9:30 pm on December 6th, we packed our kids and dogs when the Thomas fire evacuation was announced for our house. Earlier that day, knowing that the fire was moving towards us, we had packed our irreplaceables and moved them into a safe storage spot well outside of the evacuation zone. We were fortunate we had enough warning. By the time the evacuation was announced for our house, I was already having trouble breathing from the smoke thanks to my asthmatic lungs. We had heard stories of folks in Ventura who were woken up in the middle of the night to evacuate and we just couldn't imagine wrangling all the kids and dogs if the fires were bearing down on us, so we left that night, confident that we'd be back in a day or two, hoping our home would be spared. As we walked through the house one last time before leaving, we made sure there was nothing remaining that we couldn't replace or live without. It is amazing what the imminent threat of fire does to your prioritization of things.

And here we are in 2018, almost a month later. The fires did not reach our home, but the smoke and ash have left a hazardous grime on everything that requires more cleaning and restoration services than we can do ourselves. Based on current estimations, we are hoping we can move back in by mid January.

The last few months have provided some extreme lessons.

Lessons in friendship. OMG, you really know who will be there for you when you are in the middle of a crisis. I have some amazing, amazing friends. I love them more than they may ever know.

Lessons in letting go. Letting go of "stuff," letting go of expectations. Letting go of needing to know what's going to happen next. With the letting go has come clarity. Clarity of what's important. Clarity of purpose.

That clarity, my purpose, what's important? My family. And that's what 2017 was all about, really. Putting my family first: my spouse's education and career, my kids' well-being, education, and aspirations. I've had to let go of some things in my life that I loved, because right now my focus has to be on this big, crazy family. I love them most of all.

If 2017 is any indication, John was right way back in the summer of 2016 when he said the next five years will suck. Being a parent to this many humans is hard. But it's also amazing and fun and I love the people these kids are turning out to be. One year down, four more to go...

The Great Divide

When I grew up in Michigan, The Great Divide was a college retail apparel store (I hear it's now called "The Split Mitt"?). One side was Blue and Gold (or Blue and Maize, depending on how much of a Michigan purist you are) and on the other was Green and White. One half for Michigan fans, one half for Michigan State (Sorry CMU!). The joke, of course, that many of us knew first hand was that even in families, there were clear delineations in support of your favorite Michigan college team, so much so that you needed to separate them out with a big dividing line that zigzagged through a store to keep your college team purchases from blending together.

Even the ceiling tiles are divided...

When I started this blog, I focused on what it was like to be a female entrepreneur. I wrote about learning and technology and games. Sometimes I wrote about personal stuff, but mainly I kept it professional. A few years ago, however, I started to shift. Work was becoming less of a driver of my personal growth, and my blog reflected how my life had moved from career-first to a big ol' mixtape of personal and professional. Sometimes even political. I started posting my reflections from the services I participated in at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. I started posting about my kids more. About personal accomplishments. Suddenly, my blog was much more about me and not about my work.

I think that's ok. Blogs can be whatever we want them to be. For me, Learning In Tandem has become all of me, and it has been great to have an outlet to reflect and write about my life.

But the more I shared, the more I wondered if I was doing this right. I was no longer just an entrepreneur, but also a technology executive. I was no longer focused solely on games, but on building scalable technology. I was no longer just starting out, but now mentoring and coaching. I had moved in many ways from simply learner to learner and teacher. I find these days I have more to say about how to survive and thrive in the tech industry. Often, I keep these thoughts to myself, as I didn't know if they had a place anymore on this blog. In short, I felt like I was writing for everyone, which ended up with me writing for no one.

Today, I had an epiphany (which, besides wooly mammoth, is my favorite word). And so, I'm starting a new blog, just for my professional writing. It's roadmapher.com and starting this week I'll be posting about what it means to be a product manager, and product management strategies, and generally things that reflect what I do all day long in building products and businesses. Maybe there's even a book in there, somewhere. I'm anxious to see how it goes.

As for Learning in Tandem, I'll still be posting here. I'll cross-post things that I think are interesting, but I'm going to reserve this blog for focus on learning, whether personal or professional. This blog has grown up with me for the last 10 years and for those of you who have read along, I'm not going anywhere...just hopefully posting more, now that I have more clarity and focus.

Maybe it's more of a Venn diagram than a Great Divide? Either way, I hope you'll follow me to my new blog if you're interested in what I do, and stick around here at Learning in Tandem if you're interested in who I am.

(I'm totally a Spartan, btw. I can sing you the whole MSU fight song if you'd like. Don't even think of buying me U of M gear). 

On Being a White Cis Woman at the #WomensMarch & Beyond

I keep thinking back to Jack's quote from Lost as I write this: But if we can't live together, we're going to die alone. 

Maybe dying alone is a dramatic outcome, since we're not stranded on an island and based on the attendance of about 3 million people at marches all around the world last Saturday, we are most certainly not alone. But it is true that we are stronger together, and in order to truly "be together," not in the physical sense of marching, but in the ideological sense that we're all standing up for one another, white women have a lot of work to do.

Consider these points:

• 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump...the MAJORITY of white women. Why?
• how many women of color did you see at a march wearing a pussy hat, if you attended?
• what are transwomen supposed to think when participants at the marches are equating anatomy with womanhood?

If these things don't make you pause, then you're not doing the hard work yet. 

And consider this photo:

Photo credit: Angela Peoples @ms_peoples

When I saw this photo online, I made the mistake of reading the comments. Predictably, white women were defensive. I don't know the women in the photo, and for all I know, those white women are active transgender organizers in the Black Lives Matter movement. I have no idea...and the point isn't about those women personally. The point is that while we are donning pink knit hats and posting selfies of ourselves at the march on social media, women of color know that MOST white women voted for a candidate who has bragged about sexual assault, does not acknowledge #BLM, is already threatening women's health by defunding Planned Parenthood, and is threatening the rights of our LGBTQ community. 

White women, we're embarrassing ourselves and undermining our claims of feminism if we ignore that more of us than not support the patriarchy that continues to hold all of us back.

This weekend I also saw an online post from a white woman explaining why she wasn't attending the Women's March (not linking to it here. I don't want to be responsible for promoting it). It was a whole lot of march shaming, culminating in the assertion that we should stop whining about how bad it is in the U.S. and go help women in other countries who have it much worse than us. Not surprisingly, a bunch of white women posted and liked it on Facebook. And I thought, THIS is who we need to understand. White women who voted for Trump, who are shaming those of us who are fighting for equality, who are denying our lived experiences. Just as bad as the white liberal feminists who want credit for showing up but not doing the hard work are the white women who deny that the hard work even needs to be done. 

So for my white cis sisters who attended the march, waving their signs and wearing their pussy hats, here's some work for us to get started on this week. It's not going to be comfortable. As our sisters of color and trans sisters can tell you, it is not easy. But if we are to live together, to work together, to make change together, then we need to be prepared for the fight. This work is going to require more than poster-making or hat-knitting skills. It requires us to examine our innermost biases and beliefs, open ourselves to the experiences of others that are different than our own lived experiences, and then fight to change their experiences even when fighting for them means challenging our own privilege. THAT is the work. 

And for any of the white women who voted for Trump, or who spoke out against those of us who attended the Women's March this weekend, I invite you to do the work, too. We really are all in this together, and it all starts by listening to each other. ALL of each other, not just those who look and think and vote like you.

Let's get started. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• What would you do if you were harassed at work based on your gender, race, or religion? Would you have the ability to quit your job, or easily find another one? What if you had worked hard your entire career and landed your dream job, only to be harassed at work? What would your options be?

• What would you do if you were the only breadwinner in your home? How would that change your answer or options to the scenario above?

• What if you or your child or your partner had a pre-existing medical condition and would lose health insurance and wouldn't be eligible under a new plan if you changed jobs? 

• How many transgender folks are in your family? Friend circle? Community? Do you know the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity? Do you know what agender, or bigender, or gender fluid mean? Do you know the laws in your state that protect or discriminate against transgender folks?

• Do you personally know folks who are Muslim? Undocumented? LGBTQ? How many of these folks are in your family, your friend circle, your community? If none, how could you meet them or hear their stories? 

• Have you ever avoided going to the doctor for routine care because you couldn't afford it? Do you know folks who have? Do you know people for whom free or affordable clinics like Planned Parenthood are their primary source of medical care? What services would you use if you suddenly lost your health care coverage?

•  Do you have a safety net for health care coverage once you retire if there is no Medicaid or Medicare? What will your options be?

• Have you ever been prescribed birth control pills for something other than birth control? What other options would you have if you could no longer afford birth control?

• What would you do if the schools in your local district had such poor student outcomes that families who could afford it all pay to send their kids to private school? What if you couldn't afford private school for your children?

• Do you have the option financially to stay home? What enables you to have that choice? If you are financially dependent on your partner, what would be the impact of them losing their job, losing their insurance, or simply being passed over for raises or promotions?

• Have you ever noted in a conversation that you "have a black friend" or "work with a Muslim" etc., to prove you aren't racist?

• Have you ever said in a conversation, "I'm not racist, but..."?

• Have you ever said in a conversation, "I'm not racist."?

• When considering Black Lives Matter, do you more closely identify with those who support, those who oppose, or police officers? If you don't most closely align with supporters, what would it feel like to change your perspective for a week? A month? A year? Could you view this movement through the experiences of a black woman? 

• Consider how your experiences and opportunities would be different if you were black. Or Muslim. Or born to undocumented parents. Or born with male anatomy but feel very much like a woman. How would your life be different today? What challenges would you face that you don't have to think about today?

 

Burning bright

Last Sunday I served as Worship Associate at USSB and shared this reflection in the service titled, Dark of Winter. I didn't know what the reflection was going to be about when I started writing...I was thinking about winter and cold and darkness and how they resonate for me. Sometimes just writing triggers memories to work through; one of the benefits of having this space to blog.

Welcome 2016. Here's to winter and writing and having community to support you.

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I grew up in Michigan, and during my preteen years, in Northern Michigan. Because of where I was raised, I have very particular mental references for what constitutes winter. Snow, of course. Lots and lots of snow. Cold. Burn your nose and ears and fingers cold. The kind of cold that creeps into your clothes and takes a while to shake off once you’re indoors. Blinding whiteness. Everything white and shiny and bright. Glittering whiteness. But the thing I miss most is the quiet.

When it’s so cold and snowy in the heart of winter in northern Michigan, you spend a lot of time indoors. Everyone does. Fireplaces crackle and blankets and slippers are the preferred fashion of the season. Indoors is loud and cozy and bustling with life as you stick close with family and friends to stay warm. In my house, there was a lot of laughter. A lot of reading. My sister and I put on shows for each other. There was safety and love in my house.

That wasn’t true for everyone. Winter in Northern Michigan for some meant being trapped. The winter I was in 7th grade, I went over to a friend’s house after school. You know that feeling, when you walk into an environment and immediately feel like you need to leave? I knew something bad was happening in that house. I could feel the suffocation all around me. I could sense my friend didn’t want me to leave. Her sister clung to me. I could feel the tension from their dad, asking when I was getting picked up. It felt like he wanted me out of there.

When my mom finally did pick me up, I didn’t know how to describe to her what I felt. The days were short then, so even though it was only 5 o’clock, it was already dark as night. When we got home, I went outside to think.

There’s nothing like the dark silence of winter. When heavy snow has fallen, there’s nothing to make noise: no crickets, no birds, just the occasional sound of branches breaking under the weight of heavy snow. Sometimes, when there’s no moisture in the cold air, the snow itself can creak, an icy, low-pitched crunch as the snow gives way underneath you.  I remember sitting in my backyard, thinking about my friend. The cold air hurt to breathe in, but I kinda liked it. It made me feel alive.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless. Maybe that was the first day I really understood what empathy was, knowing that my friend and her sister wanted me, needed me maybe? to help them, but not knowing why or how. I could just feel it. The only thing that made me feel better was sitting in the dark, feeling the cold, and surrounding myself in the deep silence of the winter night.

Eventually, my mom came out to get me, made me brush off the snow in our vestibule, and then brought me in to sit by the fire. She knew I was upset, and she knew that neither one of us could fix it. Sitting in our warm, glowing family room that night felt wrong to me. I wondered what my friend was doing. In the era before junior high kids had cell phones, wondering was all I could really do.

A few weeks later, my friend handed me a note in class. It was a suicide note. I was only 11 years old, but I knew that I couldn’t let me friend hurt herself, even though she had written in the note that if I told anyone, she would never talk to me again. I took the note to my school counselor and there was a huge hubbub. My friend was whisked off to meet with counselors and administrators. Calls were made. I knew big important things were happening, but I didn’t know what. I knew my friend was safe, though...I knew that she had a chance to tell people she could trust what was going on in her life. I still don’t know what those things were. She was true to her word for a long time...she didn’t talk to me, and even when she did, our friendship was never the same.

The rest of that winter, I would go sit outside at night. I would let the air burn my lungs and my toes start to tingle as my boots couldn’t keep out all of the cold after awhile. I would sit in the silence of the heavy, snowy night and think. Did I do the right thing? Was my friend going to be ok? How could I enjoy being inside with the warmth and love of my family when other people were sad, in need, and in pain? 

I still like to sit out in the dark and think, although winter nights are not quite the same in Carpinteria as they are in northern Michigan. There’s no snow to muffle the noise, and no cold air to burn my lungs. But I can remember those feelings, and those nights, thinking about gratitude and fairness and empathy and helplessness. And I can still capture that clarity of vision in the dark that somehow is so elusive in the light.

2015: My year in review

I just took a look back at my resolutions for this year...I did not accomplish one of them. Not one. Wow. Not sure if that's something I should be advertising, but my goal-setting was WAY off this year.

I don't know how I'll look back on this year, 2015. While there were some big milestones for me personally, this year was a lot more about our kiddos. I think that's ok. As they get older, I love getting to know them as the people they are growing into and enjoying the time we spend together.

We have a lot of really cool kids.

So here's a few highlights from the year, in no particular order:

My new tattoo

• New job! This is really the biggest one for me personally. I'm loving the new adventure of heading up the Product group at ShipHawk. 2016 is going to be a very big year.
• New tattoo! I finally did it! My third tattoo, but by far the most ambitious...I got my pirate mermaid with her jellyfish and octopus. 
• I did the service on gender at USSB that I've always wanted to do. It felt good. I hope others got something out of it, too :) You can read the transcripts of my reflection here and my sermon here. 
• We have redone a significant portion of our house...our room, our family room, our living room...and we did it all ourselves.
• I finally got to the Monterey Aquarium.
• I saw Oingo Boingo perform Dead Man's Party live onstage for the first time in 20 years.
• We really got involved in and learned a lot about the trans community. I can use they/them like a champ.
• We hosted 2 Spaghetti Western Wednesdays, and attended a few TuTu Taco Tuesdays. I like our new traditions.
• We had a getaway to a dome treehouse and a private dinner in the trees. Highly recommended :)
• We attended the Edward Gorey Edwardian Ball for Valentine's Day. 
• We got married in Vegas by Elvis. Viva Las Vegas!
• We finally made it whale watching! We saw an actual whale. We called him "Spouty." We saw some dolphins and sea lions, too. 
• I jumped into some super interesting virtual reality ventures.
• John saw color for the first time. It was inspiring.



Only fools rush in? Nah.

• We made significant progress on getting HelloYello to market - 2016 will be the year!

I'm sure there is more that I'm missing. Our kids had great successes and great struggles this year. We laughed a lot. We cried less than we laughed. We dressed up in silly outfits on a regular basis. We were spontaneous. We tried to always say yes to adventures. We tried to be present in the moments and enjoy this time of our lives, with our kids, and not take anything for granted.

2015 wasn't a great year in the world. I feel like we were surrounded by injustice and sadness and pain. I struggled with how women are treated, how minorities are treated, how immigrants are treated...I struggled with how much we allow people to be marginalized, victimized and ignored. People are angry, but often at the things I think are insignificant. People are complacent about the things that scare me. I hope that 2016 is the year of hearts and minds prevailing, of us standing up for what is right even when it's hard, and for thinking globally and acting locally. Good bye, 2015. Thanks for the memories and lessons you've taught me. 

What does equality look like?

On November 9th, I led services at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. The service focused on gender equality; previously, I posted my opening reflection, "What Would Geraldine Ferraro Do?" Here is the transcript for the sermon I shared in that morning's service.

_____________________________________________________________

A few months ago, I heard through my "family grapevine" that one of my kids was not a feminist, or at least he had been saying negative things about feminists. I was in complete disbelief and that night at dinner, I asked him about it directly.

Here's how the conversation went:

Me: "I hear you've been saying negative things about feminists."

Him: "Well, yeah. I mean, I don't get how they want to be treated better than men."

Me (seeing red, freaking out inside): "Feminists don't want to be treated better than men, they want women to be treated equally to men."

(at this point my husband and the other kids made some excuse to leave their half-eaten food at the table...)

Him: "I don't understand. Women ARE treated equally to men. These feminists want to be treated better."  

At this point, I totally broke down into a rant about how women are NOT treated equally, citing numerous examples of bias and discrimination against women in general, but also bias and discrimination that I've experienced personally. I pointed out all of his privileged statuses (sex, gender identity, race, class, geography, able-bodied, apparent sexual orientation...he's at the top of the privilege chain). My son sat there wide-eyed and in silence, finishing his tacos.  

I believe I ended with, "I can't believe you're MY son, you live with me, and you don't know that gender discrimination exists."

As I was preparing for this service, I recalled the stories shared last year when a group of women in our congregation who were having  a decade birthday gathered in celebration. During one portion of the day-long event, we shared what life was like in different decades and I was struck by how much, but how little, things had changed for those of us turning 40 compared to those turning 50, 60, 70, 80 and even 90 years old last year. Some of the women talked about having to choose between having a career and having a family. Others shared how career options were limited to teacher, nurse or secretary. It was a day full of reflection and joy, and still I left feeling a little disheartened. For all of the progress that feminism has made in promoting equality, there are still so many ways we fall short.

Women still only make 79% of what men in similar positions make. 

Only 29% of speaking characters and only 20% of employed characters in films are women. 

Only 20% of Congress and the Senate are women. 

Only 14% of top executives in the Fortune 500 are women. 

Eroding abortion rights. Rape culture. Catcalling. Gamergate. Mansplaining. 

Interviewing an all-woman team of astronauts and asking them about hair, makeup and men.

There are still so many ways, large and small, that gender influences your choices, opportunities and life experiences.

So why did my son believe that women are treated equally? And why, when I asked a female member of YRUU to share a reflection today, did she answer that she couldn’t share a reflection because she has never been discriminated against? Is the world that our kids are seeing more equal or inclusive than what the data would suggest?

One answer may be that we feminists have done such a good job of promoting equality that it has been ingrained in our children. My son truly believed that women are treated equally, and some of that I’m going to take credit for. He’s grown up watching me, after all: in his lifetime, I led and grew a very successful division of an agency, I started my own company, spoke internationally, wrote a book, and have been at various times the primary breadwinner at home. He’s also seen me speak on this chancel.

In fact, he’s seen a lot of women in leadership in our church. From Reverend Deborah Mero who led the congregation we joined while living in Pennsylvania, to Reverend Julia and Reverend Caitlin here at USSB, all but one of the religious leaders Jackson has had personal experience with have been women. And that’s likely true of a lot of Unitarian Universalist youth. Currently, almost 60% of UU ministers are women.

But even that majority percentage doesn’t tell the whole story. Although women are 60% of our clergy, they are still very underrepresented in the leadership of our largest congregations.  Senior ministers of large congregations are overwhelmingly male. And maybe in part because of the size of the congregations they serve, female ministers still make less money than their male counterparts.

Still, all of this could easily be lost on a teenager whose mom has been instilling feminist beliefs into him since he was born, or on any children of highly privileged feminists who have only been told what equality should look like and not shown the inequality that still exists. My son looked around his world and seeing his successful mom and women in leadership roles all around him, made the assessment that this is what equality looks like.

Our current world, however, is definitely not my vision of what gender equality looks like.

As I’ve thought about it, I realized I have no idea of what it WOULD look like. What is my vision of a feminist utopia? How might it be the same or different from your vision?

Last month, a new book, The Feminist Utopia Project, was published. It is made up of short stories, artwork, and other depictions from 57 different feminists of what the world might look like if gender equality existed. Each of these stories focuses on an aspect of society that the author or artist is passionate about.

Digging into these visions, I started to notice a trend. In their depictions of what a feminist utopia looked like, it wasn’t just about gender equality. Their works painted a picture of overall equality: gender, racial, class...the visions incorporated what the world might look like if we were all treated equally, respecting our differences and providing for freedom of choice.

I have a confession: lately I have been struggling with the label feminist. As our family has been learning more about trans identities and the gender spectrum, the word feminist has felt too limited, too tied to the binary concept of male or female. I have always been a loud and proud feminist, and yet, I have felt a tension in fighting for equal rights for women when there are other marginalized identities that feel left out of that fight. There are even tensions among people who identify as feminists in how to advocate for women of color or trans women. And what about people who are agender, like my oldest child?

And yet, as I’ve heard celebrities recently claiming, “I’m not a feminist. I’m a humanist,” my reaction to that generalization is a strongly negative one, as has been my reaction to the #AllLivesMatter counter-campaign to #BlackLivesMatter. Doesn’t it make it harder to fight for the rights of a marginalized group when you don’t name them? Doesn’t it become easier to obscure the struggle of gender equality if it’s lumped under the label of human equality?

The label of feminist is unique in that no other group fighting for equality have a name. There is no name for people fighting for racial equality. There is no label for people passionate about equal rights regardless of your sexual orientation, or immigration rights, or for fighting against poverty. The only other social justice group with an identity label are environmentalists, and even that name has fallen out of style.

So what is a feminist like me to do?

Maybe the place to start is to embrace the concept of intersectionality, a term used to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc. are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. A vision of a feminist utopia wouldn’t be complete without addressing all types of discrimination, because our identities are not limited to our gender identities.

Feminism is meaningful to me as a starting point for thinking about equality because of the intersectionality of my identity and privilege. Perhaps for you, racial equality is where you start. Or accessibility drives you because of your disability. Wherever you start, whatever the inequality that inspires you to action is no more or less meaningful than what drives me or her or them. Much like how each of the pieces in The Feminist Utopia Project are from the author’s or artist’s particular view and perspective, so too will each of our utopian visions spring from our reality, our privilege, and what we feel passionately about.

For me, imagining what utopia looks like is still a struggle. As much as I want to be able to work towards a vision of what equality looks like, it’s hard to see it clearly through the day to day realities that obscure my view. If I can’t articulate my own vision of utopia, how can I explain the difference between the reality of today and my vision for the future to my son? In the introduction of The Feminist Utopia Project, the editors acknowledge the challenge we face in imagining a gender-equal world. They write:

“When we yearn for more - food, power, sex, love, time - we are gluttonous, egomaniacal, slutty, desperate, silly. To want less, to be less hungry, we are told, is to be “reasonable.” After long enough, we tell ourselves this, too. Sexism justifies itself by commandeering our logic and, quietly, the limits of what is constrict our logic of what should be. Misogyny comes to taste like air, feel like gravity: so common we barely notice it, so entrenched it’s hard to conceive of a world without it. So how can we propose new ways of living when misogyny fogs even our imaginations? And even if we tried - where and when would we organize not just to preserve what we have but to build a wildly better future?”

Where and when would we organize to build a wildly better future?

Where and when can we talk about, form, and challenge each others’ visions of what equality looks like? Where and when can we collaborate, support and inspire each other to reflect on our privilege and plan actions to move our world closer to equality?

Here. Now. And every Sunday.

Please join me in a few moments of reflection on what your vision of utopia looks like. Think about how we might think differently about gender, race, body size, sex, family or governance. Imagine about what equality would look like for you.

[Closing Words]

As we leave each others’ company this morning, hold on to your vision of equality. Share it with someone after the service. Share it with a friend over coffee this week. Write it down. Draw it. Know that it’s a work in progress. And as you go through your week, acknowledge the instances where reality differs from your vision. Name it. The only way for us to get to utopia is to work together today to build the path. Go in peace, go in love. Let us call out a blessing.

What would Geraldine Ferraro do?

This Sunday I had the privilege of leading services at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara; I chose to tackle the topic of gender equality. The following is my reflection on gender discrimination.

I know the exact moment I became a feminist.

It was 1984 and my elementary school was holding mock presidential elections. I knew I was a democrat because, while Walter Mondale was running for president, I barely noticed him in the shadow of my hero, Geraldine Ferraro.

My mom had raised me to believe that I could do ANYTHING I wanted to do, be anything I

wanted to be. But when I learned about history, specifically US history, and I saw that endless parade of white guys, I wasn’t sure that being president was included in that word “anything.”

I was only 10 years old at the time, but I also remember that about the time that I was learning about political party affiliations, I also learned about sexual orientation when I heard Geraldine Ferraro called a lesbian and asked my mom what that meant. While my mom answered me with definitions not emotion, I understood from the way the media was depicting Geraldine that the only thing worse than being a female Vice Presidential candidate was being a gay female Vice Presidential candidate. I didn’t understand either as being an insult, although that’s how they were being depicted in the media. In spite of all the vitriol flung in her direction, I hoped and prayed that Walter Mondale would win so that Geraldine Ferraro, a woman, would be 1-step away from being President.

It was, of course, not meant to be, and I heard all of the commentary after the election that maybe having a female running mate had been a publicity stunt, or that it cost him the election. I was angry: angry not only because Geraldine Ferraro wasn’t going to be Vice President, but because so many people thought she shouldn’t, or couldn’t, be because she was a woman. I realized that while my mom told me I could be anything I wanted, a lot of people didn’t agree. I was frustrated, I was confused, I was sad. And I was angry.

I know the exact moment I decided to stop taking math classes.

My junior year of high school, I was taking a class called math analysis, which was the name for the honors pre-calculus class. My teacher had been teaching this class and honors calculus for over 40 years. I was getting a B in the class, which was driving me crazy because it was ruining my straight-A grade point average. About half-way through the second semester, I was frustrated when I got another test back with a B grade. I reviewed my answers and couldn’t figure out why I had gotten one of the problems wrong. I compared my test to my friend’s; he had gotten an A. We reviewed my wrong answers and found that they were exactly the same, except his were marked correct and mine were marked wrong. I remember walking up to my teacher with both tests in hand and asking for an explanation for why my answers had been marked wrong.

My teacher answered, “Because you’re a girl.” I wish I could tell you that he was joking, but he wasn’t. He refused to correct my test grade. There were only 2 other girls in my math class. They had gotten lower grades, too, but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

You’d think that I would have freaked out, and you’d be right. I went straight to the principal’s office after school and showed him the two tests, then told him what my teacher had said. I told him I wanted the teacher fired, and I wanted my grade changed. The principal said, “Your teacher has Parkinson’s disease, so he’s only teaching for another couple years. There’s nothing we’re going to do.”

For the rest of the year, I despised walking in that classroom. I didn’t take calculus my senior year so that I could avoid having another year with that teacher. But something else happened, something that I didn’t acknowledge for another 10 years. My perception of math gradually changed from “I hate this situation” to “I hate math” to “I’m not good at math.” By college, I truly believed that I wasn’t good at math and I avoided any majors that required math classes. I actually changed the whole trajectory of what I believed I was capable of because one math teacher in high school told me girls weren’t good at math. Even though I was angry and didn’t believe what he said was true, the power of his words changed the course of my life.

Years later, I took a calculus class at a community college because it was a prerequisite for a graduate program I was applying for. I aced that class. I loved it. I realized how many years I thought I couldn’t do calculus, that it was too hard. I thought about all of the doors I closed, what potential paths I didn’t take, because I thought I couldn’t be successful because of my gender.

Geraldine Ferraro is my hero. She had to have faced a million of those obstacles along the way, people who told her she was less than because she was a woman. People who wouldn’t hire her into their law firms because they weren’t hiring women. People who pushed back against her fight for wage equality. People who said a woman wasn’t qualified to be Vice President. She faced much worse opposition than a sexist high school math teacher, and she had the strength to move forward.

I remember Geraldine Ferraro when I’m ignored or marginalized. I remember Geraldine Ferraro when someone implies that my abilities are limited by my gender. And when I look at my daughter, I hope that next year, when she is 10 years old, she sees the first woman elected President and grows up trusting that she can be anything she wants to be.

Holding your breath

Yesterday I saw this article posted on Facebook: Breath-Holding In The Pool Can Spark Sudden Blackouts And Death. 

I thought about how much I've been holding my breath lately. 

Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover was released and took social media by storm. I held my breath, waiting for the transphobia and hate, because that's what you do when you have a kid who is gender non-binary. You hold your breath and hope that the world gets better and more loving and understanding. You hold your breath and hope that there are way more of us, allies and advocates, than there are of them (I'm looking at you Drake Bell and Fox News). 

I hold my breath, waiting for the transitions to shake out at work. Hoping that my work is noticed, that my passion is valued. 

I hold my breath when I travel, knowing that inevitably one of my kiddos or one of their schools will call me and I won't be there to fix it. 

I hold my breath as the side project I've been working on takes off like a jet, article published in TIME magazine and big meetings with important people that could mean big, big things. 

I hold my breath so my husband doesn't hear me wheezing the last few nights. He does anyway and knows that this cold I'm trying to ignore is kicking my butt. 

I hold my breath when I see a text from one of my sons. He is unhappy but fixing it would mean conflict and there's nothing he hates more than conflict. I hold my breath waiting for him to tell me he's ready for it. 

I hold my breath when I step out of my office building at the end of the day and the air is like breathing oil. Since the oil spill in Santa Barbara a couple weeks ago, there are times when the fumes are still so bad where we live that you can't ignore it. We shouldn't ignore it. 

There are so many other times I hold my breath. Sometimes I find myself taking a deep, gasping breath and realize I've been holding it in. 

When I saw the headline yesterday, I wondered if blackouts and sudden death were only symptoms from holding your breath under water. I worried. 

Today I listened in to a session at work with Matthieu Ricard, the "World's Happiest Man." I tried to follow his meditation exercise at my desk, but I couldn't stop worrying about my breathing. I thought about how I tell my bionic boy, when his ADHD overwhelms every cell in his body, to take a deep breath and he looks at me like, "mom, you really think that's going to help?" and I make him do it anyway. I even do it with him, trying to model deep breathing. 

Holding my breath is more than deep breathing: it's ultimate mindfulness, forcing to a halt my body's automation. Being still and not even letting the ebb and flow of air in my lungs distract me. It is ultimate focus. And it can only be temporary...until it's not. 

I used to have contests with my sister in my grandma's pool to see how long we could stay underwater. Sometimes we would race to see how far the length of the pool and back we could swim without coming up for air. Sometimes we would sink to the bottom and be still, feeling the burn in our lungs as air ran out until we finally pushed to the surface. I always won. Now I find out every one of those contests was inviting sudden death. I not only could hold my breath the longest, but I could also out swim the Grim Reaper. 

I think maybe all of this holding my breath I've been doing will not lead to sudden under water death but slow, above water tempting of fate. 

How do you practice NOT holding your breath? Isn't that just...breathing? 

I am thinking that instead of holding my breath with each challenge that, like lamaze for life, the important thing is to feel everything and still breathe through it. Maybe that is mindfulness. Maybe it's intention. I think it's better to not hold your breath. 

Make a game of it

Today I led my first service at USSB; the theme was how games can help heal brokenness. I led the congregation in a spirited round of massive multiplayer rock-paper-scissors. Below is my reflection, where I included mentions of Sid Meier, Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman, Jane McGonigal and Raph Koster. It was a really fun morning for me & from the conversations I had with people after the services, it sounds like I helped people to think differently about the value of games. And Unitarians proved they are seriously into rock-paper-scissors :)

Here is my reflection:

My family had just moved to a new town at the beginning of my 6^th grade year. A few weeks into the school year, the entire 6^th grade had a pizza party at the local Little Caesar’s restaurant. This was back when Little Caesar’s had restaurants, and this particular one also had a bar with a huge dance floor where the locals hung out on Friday and Saturday nights. But on this particular Friday afternoon, my entire 6^th grade class was having a pizza party. And then a dance contest.

I had no intention of dancing. I really hadn’t made any friends yet. When a boy that I recognized from my math class named Kevin asked me to be his partner, I was so shocked that I said yes.  He pulled me out into the center of the dance floor and the music started.  The contest rules were simple: keep dancing until a teacher taps you on the shoulder, indicating you are “out.” The song for the dance contest was “I can’t drive 55” by Sammy Hagar. If you have ever heard this song, you’ll know that it’s not exactly dance contest material.

As it was, the song choice didn’t matter. I didn’t know that my dance partner was a 12 year old dance prodigy. To be honest, he could have probably won the contest on his own.  He was dancing so enthusiastically that I couldn’t help but try to match his clearly superior moves.

Something happened as I tried to keep up with my partner; I forgot all about the people watching us. I didn’t notice the teachers tapping the other couples’ out. I was focused on dancing. I was having fun. And for the 6,000 times they played that song, I wasn’t a shy 6^th middle school girl who was trying to make friends in her new school: I was a dancing queen.

When the music finally stopped, Kevin and I were standing alone in the middle of the dance floor, sweaty and triumphant. The kids surrounding us cheered and patted us on the backs; Kevin grabbed my hand and held it up in victory.

Now, I was a very, very shy 6^th grade girl. I had ended 5^th grade as a social outcast in my previous school, shunned and bullied by my best friends. I was honestly relieved we moved to a new town for middle school, even though I didn’t know anyone.  And then a few weeks into the school year, my shyness and relative anonymity were blown to bits in the middle of that dance floor at Little Caesar’s.

Our brains are quirky, funny organs. Brains are super pattern collectors and recognizers, constantly seeking out meaning amidst chaos. We delight in finding patterns where none should exist, like when we see a cloud that looks like a bunny, or we see the image of Jesus in a piece of toast. Our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world, to get better and better at recognizing patterns and anticipating cause and effect.

The funny thing is, when we are presented with a new or unexpected pattern, our brains are not very good at dealing with it right away. It’s like our brain goes into shock, yelling “This is not what I expected! What do I do?” It can send us into a state of paralysis, or it may prompt you to make a decision you normally wouldn’t, like participate in a middle school dance contest.

In order for our brains to learn a new patterns to better anticipate cause and effect, we need to practice recognizing the pattern. We know that practice is how we learn. Need to learn an instrument? Practice. Need to learn how to do algebra? Practice. We know that practice is the path to master a skill.  

When we are young, we practice navigating the complexities of life through play. We learn to negotiate and argue and apologize and make new friends all within the context of make believe and games that we create our own rules for.

At some point, though, we flip the expectation that play is the catalyst to learning and growing and begin to see play as a waste of time, a form of entertainment with little other value. As we stop valuing play, we deprive ourselves as adults of a safe place to practice and fail and learn how to navigate new, complicated situations. Our brains haven’t changed: we still are constantly struggling to learn and recognize new patterns. Just because you’re 16 or 36 or 86 doesn’t mean that you know everything you need to about relationships or about yourself.

I face issues every day that I don’t know how to respond to. Sometimes I think it would be great to sit down and have a tea party with my 8 year old and try to work through them, but I’m pretty sure her stuffed animals aren’t as experienced with working through the nuances of my adult relationships with my parents or how to deal with gender discrimination at work.

Still, there’s something to be said for play as a way to make us better, stronger and more confident in navigating the world around us. And games are the perfect way for us, even as adults, to play and learn and grow.

What is a game, really? Sid Meier, who is the famous designer of the Civilization computer games, defined games as “a series of meaningful choices.” This definition has always rung true to me, although probably a little too broad: couldn’t life itself be defined as a series of meaningful choices?

Another definition from game designers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman says that a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. I like this definition, particularly because of that last piece, “a quantifiable outcome.” This is what differentiates play from games. In a game, there is an outcome, usually a score that tells you who won and who lost. Those outcomes, whether successes or failures, serve an important purpose: they provide you with feedback. Are you winning more, getting higher scores? You’re learning and improving. If you aren’t getting better at the game, what do you need to differently to improve? What are others doing to win that you can learn from?

Games, really, are patterns that we learn to solve. The simple ones, like tic tac toe, are fascinating to kids who are just learning pattern recognition. But one day after a couple years of practicing tic tac toe, you realize that you can win or tie every time depending on the skill of your opponent, because you have learned every pattern possible in the game.

My uncle was so good at solitaire that he could tell after only a few minutes of play whether he was going to win that hand or not. I was not that good, and I would get so frustrated watching him for a few minutes and just as my mind was starting to get into the game, he’d fold the deck and deal a new hand. How do you know? I’d ask him. And he’d say, I’ve played this a million times. I know.

In 2009, I attended the annual Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco and saw a presentation that changed my life. Jane McGonigal presented a session on how games can change the world. She had recently launched a game called “Top Secret Dance Off” with one goal: to make people happier. The game was simple. You went to the game website and joined a team. Once you were on a team, you could start completing dance challenges. For each dance challenge, you needed to complete 3 steps: 1. Assume a secret identity. 2. Video tape yourself completing the dance challenge in public. 3. Upload the video to the game site. Once you uploaded the video, other people could vote for your dance  - the team with the highest vote total for their dance videos “won.” The website still exists and if you visit it today, you can still see the amazing and hilarious videos of people in disguise dancing in public.

What was the pattern that Jane wanted people to recognize in this game? Simply that dancing makes you happy. Even watching other people dancing makes you happy. In her talk, she proposed a noble purpose for games: games can be designed to elicit lots of different types of emotions and develop different types of skills. What if we designed games to help make people better and, even grander, to change the world for the better?

I knew that what she was saying was true. A decade earlier, I had made of game of eating using Weight Watchers points and over the course of a year had lost 75 pounds. If I could make something super hard, like losing weight, into a game that I could play and win, why couldn’t that same idea be used to solve even bigger, more complex real problems?

Two years after I saw Jane McGonigal speak for the first time, she published her first book, Reality is Broken. In it, she expanded on her idea that games can be a catalyst for growth and change, for individuals and for the world. Her idea was catching on. A game called Re-Mission helped kids with cancer understand how chemotherapy and radiation worked and let them play along fighting cancer cells during their treatment. Another game, World Without Oil, challenged people to go through their day without using oil products and to journal what alternatives they used in order to help other players facing the same challenges.  There were games addressing subjects as complex as how to most efficiently rescue survivors during a natural disaster like a typhoon or hurricane or how to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Even more powerful than the games that were allowing people to work through complex problems were the real issues gamers were being asked to solve.  In 2011, gamers were able to solve a virus enzyme structure in 3 weeks that scientists had been unable to solve for over a decade.  In the same year, gamers were able to identify cross-species DNA segments that geneticists were unable to identify using computers.  All by making a game of science.

We, humanity, prove over and over again that our brains are the most incredible pattern recognition systems and problem solvers. And it’s not just that we’re capable of doing it. We think it’s fun.

Fun is a loaded word. Raph Koster in his book A Theory of Fun defines fun as “the act of mastering a problem mentally.” I like this definition because mastering a problem mentally defines fun as an active state, which differentiates it from entertainment or enjoyment or delight. Koster further defines fun as learning in a context where there is no pressure.

Learning in a context where there is no pressure. This is why games matter.

This is why playing games, at every age, is important. If we are constantly in a state of brokenness, then we are always in a state of repair. When we don’t know how to fix a situation, we must learn. How better to learn a new pattern, a new cause and effect, a new way to look at the world, than in the safety of a game where we can practice and learn and get better, step by step? How better to make ourselves and the world better than in a game where we can have fun doing it?

When I look back now, I can see why winning that dance contest in sixth grade meant so much to me.  It was the perfect game for me to play at the perfect time. I needed to learn how to make friends in this new environment, but there was no pressure in that dance contest: I didn’t know anyone and I had nothing to prove. But I learned that taking a risk, putting myself out there and trying something new COULD be the catalyst for friendship and success.  It’s a pattern that I have recognized and repeated throughout my life, from starting my own business, to meeting my husband on a blind date, to joining this congregation.

Any challenge can be made into a game, just by approaching it in a playful way. My daughter makes something as simple as walking down the street a game by trying to avoid the cracks (and sparing my back from breaking).  More complex challenges like exercising more, I can break down into smaller challenges and reward myself for achieving milestones along the way.

What challenge are you facing? How can you make a game of it?