Friendship--never surrender it

So, a few nights ago I was outside with our dog. Just a few houses down, one of our neighbors was in his garage, talking on the phone. I wasn't exactly eavesdropping, but Mo was taking her sweet time, trying to find just the right patch of yard, with a perfect fallen leaf to grass ratio. 

Our neighbor's voice carried across the crisp, fall air like a bell. "Do you ever fuck up on purpose?" he asked. After a brief pause he said "Neither do I." I know it seems inelegant, but some of the simplest, and yet most profound ideas are. Sometimes our best intentions don't translate.

It has been a little bit since I thought about friendships, but it seems like a place to which I always return. The last several years have taken their toll on many of my own friendships, and sadly, I have witnessed the friendships of others both take hits, and break down. 

I'm not a gregarious person, and I have a toddler who has entered her terrible twos both early, and with gusto. That makes building new friendships in a quiet community, heavily populated by retirees, a little challenging. In spite of my accepted introversion, I think I do find myself lonely from time to time. While most of the friends I've had over the last decade were coworkers who live three hours away, I still often wish I could go back to some of my worst moments and have a second chance. Maybe then I would feel I could reach for a lifeline more often, and I wouldn't worry that I am unwelcome.

That's one of the things about adult friendships that is so very different from childhood friendships. We are quick to upset, anger and judge, and we are frequently hesitant to give each other second chances. It would be great to go back to that place where one day you squabble with a friend over a Barbie outfit or Hotwheels car, and the next day you're playing together like nothing ever happened.

This summer, I watched a loved one lose a twenty-year friendship. As a bystander, it was so difficult to watch that I couldn't stand it. I had grown close to the lost friend and his family, too. I butted in. It didn't make a bit of difference, but I love my friend so much that I would have moved heaven and earth to prevent such a heartbreak. About five years ago, I lost my best friend of at least thirty years. So, I well knew the anguish that permeates every corner of your heart and mind after such a loss. I have never stopped thinking about it, and I have never gotten over it. 

There's usually a pivotal moment that we are unaware of in which we compromised our friendship without realizing it. It may be after a build-up. It may just be one over-arching event. What really sucks about it--to go back to inelegance--is we become so close to, and comfortable with our friends that we come to believe we know each other better than we sometimes do. We think we know everything they're going through at any given time. So, we think if there's a problem, they will share. Sometimes, we're just so caught up in our own struggles that we fail to see, and our friends don't feel like we have enough room for theirs. As a result, we don't realize that not every hurt or harm can be worked out.

The trouble is that, over time, things happen to, and about us. We are wounded by people and circumstances, and those cuts and scars can run much deeper than a fight over toys. And not all wounds heal well, or evenly. They change who we are and what we think and feel about ourselves as much as they shape the way we see others.

As friends, we sometimes fail each other, because we believe we have found that rare individual with whom we can share our flawed insides, without fear of being misunderstood or shut out. I think we all long for that feeling of safety--that one person who can fully know and accept us, and who always understands our intent.

But the cuts and scars get in the way. Friendship can be strong. But what we believe about ourselves and the hurts that we hold onto can be stronger. In some respects, that's the very reason we hold onto them--they are a defense mechanism. They whisper warnings when our hearts are getting too close to pain we have felt before. 

And so, we shut each other out. We stop extending the benefit of the doubt. We let our fear, insecurities and need for protection outweigh all the moments someone was everything a friend ought to be. A few misspoken words are all that stand between maintaining deep friendships in which we would take a bullet for each other, and walking away forever. 

It feels like that should be an impossible outcome, especially when you feel you are on the losing end of the situation. How can my friend not have understood me? How can my friend not be willing to give me another chance? How can something that feels so powerful and strong for me not feel like that for my friend?

Now, I know, sometimes we really do commit unforgivable transgressions against our friends, but I want to believe we know when we have done that. 

Earlier in the year, I made a decision. I felt I couldn't teach my daughter that it's never too late to try and make things right with those we have harmed, even if we fail, unless I was willing to be aN example of that. I swallowed pride, and dug up courage to reach out to a friend I had worked with and been very unfair to. While the closeness we had will never return, it felt good to own the damage I caused and to set it free. I wish our friendship was intact, but I understand why it is forever changed.

A few months ago, I became aware of an incident that had hurt my best friend, that I somehow failed to see. It had been about five years since we had contact, and I was really scared to make the first move. I have plenty of cuts and scars of my own, and many that are still new and fresh. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I wanted her to know how much she had truly meant to me in my life, and how the last thing I would ever intend was to hurt her, or add to pain she was already feeling. 

I let the feeling burn, trying to decide what to do about it. I kept going back to my own feelings about friendship loss--how can someone so important in our lives not be worth fighting for? Of, course, I was thinking that she should have known and understood that I loved her too dearly to knowingly hurt her. So, why didn't she love me as much? Why didn't she fight for me? 

Why didn't my loved one's friend fight for him?

Sometimes, the cuts and scars are just too hard for us to see through. They blind us to what is real. They add insult to injury by stealing away from our lives the very people who would do anything for us.

Finally, I found courage. I reached out to my lost friend, and she reached back. Neither of us knows where our new path leads, but at least there is hope. 

Sometimes, we just have to be willing to reveal our very cores to each other, and be willing to come back to the battlefield--unguarded. If we lose, we will surely walk away with new cuts and scars, but while this scar tissue can hinder us, it can also teach us many things about ourselves and each other. 

And even if we still lose, we win, because we fought for something we know in our hearts we cannot afford to surrender. 

There's a difference between a right and an entitlement.

So, I took my daughter to a children's museum the other day. She's an only child, there aren't really any kids her age in the neighborhood, and sadly, she has an introverted mom, so we don't end up with many play dates. With all these "strikes" against her, I try to get her out and about to play and interact with the world a few times a week.

On this particular day, the museum was fairly busy. I tried to direct her to areas that were both age appropriate, and not very crowded. It was the first opportunity I'd had to take her to the painting area and turn her loose. We had the area to ourselves. And then it happened--a swarm of little girls literally crowded their way in and crowded my daughter out. As I helped my now crying toddler to wash her hands, a woman overseeing the group of girls asked if they had crowded into the space and I politely let her know that they had. She replied that's how it can be with a group of six-year-olds on a field trip. 

Needless to say, I was a little taken aback by her response, and sadly, I didn't have a witty comeback at the time. 

In the moment when those little girls squeezed my little girl out of the way, she had her first lesson in dealing with mean girls who feel entitled and don't care about anyone else's feelings. And that group of little girls learned that it's okay. 

Some people might tell me that I just need to teach my daughter to buck up and stand up for herself. For one, she's only 19-months-old, and is just starting to get her words. For two, I actually hope to teach her not just to stand up for herself, but to stand up for what's right and fair. 

Without a doubt, a group on field trip has a right to enjoy everything a facility has to offer, but my daughter has no less right. And that's the crux of the problem. There is a difference between a right and an entitlement. A group on a field trip has a right to enjoy a facility within the parameters of doing so in an orderly and fair fashion with respect to the other patrons. 

And I think knowing the difference between a right and an entitlement is at least part of where the huge divide between gun rights advocates and advocates for gun regulation are butting heads. 

It's true--I don't own a gun and never plan to. I plan to teach my daughter that it is a right of individuals to decide whether or not to own and use guns. And I plan to do everything I can to teach her about the possible dangers and consequences associated with guns. We live in an area where gun culture is prevalent. Hunting and fishing is extremely popular in the Natural State. And I am sure a fair number of our neighbors own guns. 

While I may not like guns or really anything associated with them, I don't take issue with people's right to own them. What I do take issue with is the idea that such a right supersedes everyone else's rights. When we begin to believe that about a right, we have crossed a line, and that right becomes an entitlement. 

In the wake of multiple mass shootings over the last six years, the same arguments are flying back and forth. There is no one solution. But at the end of the day, doing nothing is still doing nothing. 

It's disheartening and mind boggling that, in the eyes of gun rights advocates, calling for more thorough background checks, limiting the amount of ammunition a person may purchase, or eliminating certain guns that are capable of rapidly eliminating lives is the same thing as calling for the confiscation of people's guns and taking away their Second Ammendment rights. 

People argue that these restrictions and limits are just a first step. They argue that essentially unfettered and unrestricted access to any type of gun is constitutionally guaranteed,  and that we need these weapons to protect ourselves from our government.

I'm going to say what I think about all of that. The people who make these ludicrous associations are the same people who entertain conspiracy theories like 9/11 being an inside job and the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School being a government concocted hoax. Now, we might not all love the government, but we have the power to change it with something much safer and more rational than a lethal weapon. We can vote. 

For people who argue that armed civilians could thwart these mass shootings and that people should be trying to defend themselves, I hope that none of your loved ones are ever in a situation where they have to try to do so. I think we would quickly see how unlikely that is. My daughter, and in my opinion, everyone has the right to go to a school or public place--even if they aren't trained in hand-to-hand combat or how to shoot a weapon. The idea that gun rights advocates suggest this as the best alternative to regulating firearms is proof that they view gun ownership as an entitlement, not a right. 

There's also the argument that criminals would only ignore such legislation. That's true. The flip side of that is that sometimes making something even just a little more difficult can slow someone down or maybe even change their mind. Would that be so bad? A rational, law-abiding citizen wanting to purchase a fun is not usually doing so impulsively, and isn't going to mind a few more steps in the process. Arguing that criminals ignore laws is idiotic. If we base all societal constructs on this premise, why have any laws?

We need to understand the difference between having a right to something, and having a blanket entitlement to it. Your right to own a firearm shouldn't negate my daughter's right to go to school without fearing some bad man might come in and shoot her, her teachers, or her friends. Kids should do fire safety drills, and in our area, tornado drills, but they shouldn't have to learn how to avoid being shot at school. Teachers shouldn't have to wonder how they will keep their students safe in the event of such horrible circumstances.

People also argue that this is an issue of mental illness, not guns. My response to that is that you can't fight crazy with crazy. Crazy is throwing our hands up in the air and saying "stuff happens," and conceding defeat while people die. This isn't the kind of situation in which we should just shrug our hopeless shoulders and say the horse is already out of the barn We're supposed to be smarter than this. And if we want our children to leave the house each morning and to come back home at the end of each day, we need to be smarter than this. 

Mourning the loss of empathy

So, about two weeks ago, most of the world was moved to heartbreak when a photo of a toddler's lifeless body washed upon a shore was distributed to us through the news media.

Alyn Kurdi became the symbol of Syrian refugees who are fleeing, en masse, in hopes of finding safety and a new life in Europe. It was as if we in the West had been mostly unaware of the horrors playing out in Syria, and on the path to safety and hope.

And then, another image surprised many of us. A camerawoman from Hungary was caught, on film, tripping a refugee as he carried his child near the Serbian border. While according to NBC News the camerawoman has written a letter apologizing and claiming to have been in a panic, she was also seen kicking other refugees. I know I wasn't there, but usually when I do something in a "panic," the behavior is isolated and I don't keep doing it. 

Of course, we were all right to be heartbroken by the image of Alyn Kurdi, and we were right to be appalled by footage of the camerawoman tripping and kicking refugees. It's more than about time that we in the West become aware of the tragic and heartbreaking crisis that is the Syrian civil war.

But now that Syrian refugees have our attention, how long will they keep it? How long will it be before those of us who think we should be taking action on this crisis become disinterested, or even start to feel like it's not our problem? After all, don't we have enough to worry about ourselves? If we take in thousands of these refugees, won't they take American jobs? Won't they require all kinds of financial assistance? Shouldn't we take care of our own people first?

I ask these questions, not because I feel this way about the issue, but because any time there is a crisis that rightly draws our attention, all of these questions inevitably follow. What I find interesting about the path of these questions is that if we talk about our own people who need help, it's not long before we start to ask similar questions, and make similar statements. Why can't people take care of themselves? Nobody helps me. I'll bet that person is on drugs--that's why they can't keep a job. That woman on food stamps has an iPhone--my taxes are paying for her to have that?

So, really, even if our government didn't send aid to other countries, we wouldn't really be all that enthusiastic about helping our own people in need either.

While the world mourns the loss of Alyn, I mourn the loss of something bigger and less tangible--our empathy. In a world where many espouse faiths that encourage us to love and help our neighbor, we often close ourselves off from our neighbor, and shun those who need our help. 

When my husband and I talk about what we most want to teach our own daughter, empathy for others is often at the top of the list. We want her to be able to put herself in someone else's shoes. We want her to understand and appreciate her own fortunes, and to understand that not everyone shares those fortunes--even if they have done nothing wrong. 

We live in a terrible time with wonderful potential. We all have the ability to help someone, but many of us are worried about what helping someone else takes from ourselves, and we have come to believe that, regardless of circumstance, people who need our help are not deserving of it. They must have done something to put themselves in the situation, or they must be unwilling to do anything for themselves to get out of it.

Our own personal struggles have made us very cynical. And we have all heard stories about offering money to a homeless person, only to see them walk into the closest liquor store, or climb behind the wheel of a new car down the road.

Aside from fearing being taken advantage of, I think it's very easy to feel that we have worked very hard to get where we are in life, and that we have done so without any help. But come on, have we really? There were a few times I really struggled. I sold plasma a few times. I worked a few food related jobs. I worked my way through college. I had an unexpected medical issue. My mom flaked on me and kicked me out. And through all of these things, there wasn't a lot of help to be found. But there wasn't none. 

We think of helping someone who needs it as requiring a grand gesture, or something we can't afford. We think people who need help want to take everything we have worked hard for. The reality is often quite different. Help for me was a spare bedroom at my grandparents' house. Help was the $25 muffler my then boyfriend bought for my nearly dead Ford Escort. Help was a best friend who offered me a place to stay if I ever got brave enough to run away from the abusive household In which I grew up. 

All of those "helps" were small, but they made a huge difference to me, and there were lots of other ones besides.

A little boy, dead on a distant shore, tugs at our heartstrings for a moment in time. For an instant, the cruelty of an anti-immigration camerawoman reminds us to stand up for our shared humanity. Can you imagine a world in which those moments and instants stretched out a little longer? Can you imagine what it would be like if we remembered for more than those moments and instants that we are all made up of exactly the same stuff?

Healing by the best of intentions: don't let me become my mother

So, every once in a while you run across someone who reminds you of someone else--someone who does nothing but leave a bitter taste in your mouth. It happened to me recently, and it had an unexpected effect on me. I found myself feeling anxious. I found myself feeling angry that this person could potentially hurt someone I dearly love. I also found myself thinking I would do just about anything not to become like that person.

It's important, but sometimes difficult not to dwell on people and things that have negatively impacted you in the past. Thinking about those people and things can become a sort of reminder to arm yourself, become defensive, and to even go on the offensive--even against people and things that would never harm you. It isn't fair to the people you love, but sometimes you keep doing all of these things out of a fear that you don't even consciously know you are feeling. 

You can very easily find yourself becoming things you don't want to be. The people you care about may accept you, but they always wonder when or if you are ever going to be healed, and if you are ever going to stop going into battles your hidden fear and defensiveness create. 

I don't know the answer to that. A life of love, support, freedom and opportunity has healed a lot of wounds. Oddly enough, the darkest and most obvious wounds have been the easiest ones to heal. It's the passive, superficial ones that constantly reopen. Two years of therapy helped me recognize them, but like a "cutter," I seem unable to stop the often destructive habits that started out as defense mechanisms intended to help me run from my past and survive. 

The bitterness and judging behavior I saw in this person reminded me of my mom. 

My mom is a very unhappy person. She's led a difficult life, mostly because of bad decisions, and a failure to take personal responsibility for any of them. She is so dissatisfied with herself and her own life, that she frequently picks at, and tries to talk down other people--even people she claims to care about. She's quick to judge, and she is quick to assure you that whatever you are hoping for will never work out, and it's a complete joke. She's always waiting for an opportunity to say "I told you so." I think that deep down, she knows that her relationships are so poorly formed that she creates problems and delusions that allow her to pick fights and sabotage any hope of having something decent or real with anyone she cares about.

It's sad. Really. I didn't always see this side of her. When I was growing up, we were very close. Right or wrong, we were best friends. It wasn't until maturity and distance drew back the curtains that I could see things about her that made her very difficult to be around. Ultimately, she damaged our relationship beyond repair. 

I don't find myself able to give my mother much credit--and certainly not the credit she feels herself entitled to. But I will concede one thing. I'm sure that she never wanted things to end up the way they have. We haven't spoken in almost six years, and she has a beautiful granddaughter that she will never get to know. That's a harsh set of consequences.

Being a mother is really hard. Sometimes I feel like I am never going to be any good at it. The days when I can't get my daughter to eat a decent meal of any kind, and she is beyond exhausted but refuses to sleep, I find myself struggling and feeling overwhelmed. When I have struggled with other jobs, there has always been the option to give up and walk away. Motherhood isn't like that. A great deal of the time, you can't even take a break. Sometimes, the stress level is so high that I fail. I fail to be the mom, the wife and the person I want to be. I've failed before, but the stakes have never felt so high.

I know the value of everything in my life. I have the opportunity to build a home and life for my family that I never had. I have the chance to forgive myself for big mistakes, and to get over time that I wasted trying to be things I was never meant to be. 

People say it's normal to feel like you're doing a crappy job at parenting from time to time. It's normal to lose your shit and yell sometimes--even if that's the last thing you want to do. I know it's not my job for her to always like me. I know that it's bad for me to always let her have her way, and I try not to find myself on the path of least resistance all the time.

And I don't want to be that wife who let's her past define her successes and failures within her marriage. At a conscious level, I never have any reason to be the harpie that my own self-doubt and unrealistic expectations manifest. 

But every moment I feel myself failing, it is my mother's failures that whisper in the back of my mind and haunt me. I don't want to be that erratic, crazy person who drives my family away with poor coping skills and self-inflicted wounds. Every time I think it's safe to peel the "bandages" off, it seems like I find another layer of damage that stubbornly refuses to heal.

I suppose unexpectedly seeing someone else's "scars," and their potential to cause harm has "freshened the edges" of some of my own wounds, and made me wonder if some wounds ever truly heal. I don't know the answer. I want to believe. But sometimes, the hardest thing you can do is believe in yourself--and that disbelief doesn't harm you as much as it does everyone else. 

When it comes to the way girls dress, we need a different code

So, I have to admit that I really haven't been paying any attention to all the hullabaloo about girls and school dress codes. After all, my little girl is at least a year away from preschool, let alone a regular school classroom. 

I wasn't paying attention at all--until a friend's daughter was stopped by a teacher at school and accused of being dressed in a "come get me" outfit. I've known this 13-year-old's mother since first grade. The last thing her daughter would ever wear is an outfit that says "come get me." And really, just what is a "come get me" outfit? 

Naturally, she was more than a little upset about the incident. 

My mom used to talk about the dress code for girls where she went to school. They weren't allowed to wear pants. It seemed like a million years ago to me when I was growing up. I honestly don't remember many restrictions associated with clothing when I was going to school. In fact, the only ones I do remember were that boys couldn't wear hats to school, and we weren't allowed to wear Spuds McKenzie clothing because of its association with beer. 

I was a little bit of an odd ball. I helped start a petition to allow the boys to wear their hats. 

The other thing I remember a lot about getting dressed for school is that it was my first awareness that some families had more and nicer things than others. Kids with the nicer clothes often were more popular. It took me a long time to learn that I couldn't just worm my way into those popular groups with my winning personality. It took an even longer time for me to get over that lesson.

Like it or not, what we wear tends to define who we are in the eyes of others. It's very upsetting that society seems to be unwilling to shift from the idea that girls and women are in some way trying to draw sexual advances and judgement unless their bodies are covered up. 

I think we believe we are doing our girls and boys some kind of favor by restricting girls' clothing based on the amount of skin showing, or the shape of the body part that can be discerned. What we are actually doing is teaching them that girls and women are responsible for deflecting unwanted sexual attention from boys and men. We are teaching boys that if a girl or woman fails to cover herself up "appropriately," she is asking for boys and men to "come get her." And we are teaching them both that boys and men cannot, should not and will not be expected to exert any self control.

We've been teaching these lessons for too long. I would hazard to guess that there is not one mother or father who wants their daughter to become the victim of rape. I would also guess that there is no parent who wants their son to be a perpetrator of such a crime. So, why do we keep teaching these terrible lessons? 

The thing about these lessons that perplexes me most, is that we tell girls they shouldn't wear clothing that shows too much skin or that accentuates certain parts of their bodies, but when I go to shop--even for my toddler--skirts are short, shorts are short, jeans are "skinny," and many other items are miniature adult-wear. 

Our magazines sell sexuality. Our television shows and other entertainment sell sexuality. Family values centered companies like Carl's and Hardee's burgers sell bacon cheeseburgers with ketchup and mayonnaise dripping on women's cleavage. How are our kids supposed to understand all of these mixed messages? 

The answer is that they don't. I know I don't, and I am in my forties. 

My daughter hasn't begun to show an interest in clothing yet. Mostly, she fights getting dressed, and the only things she pays attention to are the stay tabs on her diaper or any embellishment with which she can fiddle. I try to dress her in clothes in which she can easily play. My goal is to let her be a kid for as long as possible where clothing is concerned. But when she starts to show an interest in clothing, I am going to challenge myself not to restrict her. 

We live in a nation with great potential to uplift women and girls, and to set an example for the rest of the world. We often hear of terrible crimes and acts perpetrated against women and girls in less developed nations. These are usually based on the same ideals that if women and girls choose not to dress or act appropriately in the eyes of men, they are fair game. And while I agree that in many respects, being born a girl in the United States translates to many freedoms and assumed protections that we take for granted, women and girls are still being told--everyday--that they are not worthy of managing their own bodies and life choices--even down to what they wear. 

When I think of the hypocrisy with which we treat women and girls in respect to sexuality, safety and freedom, I wonder why we think we have the right to declare ourselves so much better. 

I know biases are difficult to overcome. I, myself, think about how women dress and feel silent judgement. I often fear that because of a culture that emphasizes the idea of the "temptress" from school age to adulthood, that young girls and women start to take the easy route. When we want attention fast, oversexualized attire and behavior will usually get it. Of course, this feeds the beast--the one that convinces some women and girls that the only attention they can get, and that they are worthy of is attention to their appearance and their bodies. And restrictive dress codes based on skin and body parts are one place where these ideas get their start. 

The sad reality is that as long as we keep teaching our kids that girls and women are "asking" for someone to "come get" them, our world is not going to become safer for girls and women. It will continue to be a place where, especially as a former victim, I will be worried about how my daughter chooses to dress. It isn't right, and it isn't fair that girls and women have to do things our boys and men are not expected to do. They have to exert self-control. They have to limit their own self-expression. They have to dress and behave defensively. 

For me, the easiest answer would be universal implementation of school uniforms--not to ensure that girls are "properly covered," but to level the playing field. If girls can't freely choose what they wear to school because it might interfere with learning, then boys shouldn't have that choice either. 

The real and honest truth about sexual violence is that it isn't caused by what a girl or woman is wearing. It is caused, at least in part, by the perpetual education of boys and men that they are not responsible for their urges or actions. If you were a sexual predator, and you knew that there was an outside chance that the person you raped would be shamed and blamed for provoking the rape, would you take that chance? I don't know. But it's a scenario that some rape victims face when it comes to seeking justice against their rapists. What was she wearing? How much did she drink? Was she flirting?

If we want to raise strong, independent women who can go out and take over the world, we need to recognize the harm we are doing, and the lessons we teach that discourage them. If we want victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence, emotional abuse and sexual violence to come forward and to know they aren't to blame, we need to teach them that nothing they wear, do, or say is justification for a man to do these things--ever. If we want women to be strong and confident in their own skin, we need to stop teaching them their skin and their bodies are somehow dangerous. 

No one wears a "come get me" outfit. No one says "come get me." So, when are we going to stop teaching our girls and boys that they do? 

Refuse to look away

 So, there's a saying that goes "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." 

Very occasionally, I get called out for sharing too much "doom and gloom" on my own Facebook page. I suppose I find myself feeling outrage more frequently than is comfortable for others.

The United States media has finally started to respond to the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe, and the most prominent example has been a photo of a little boy, drowned and washed up on a beach. CNN posted the photo on their social media outlets, and there was immediately a backlash against them for doing so.

The backlash against the news media for sharing the photo infuriates me. Why? Because if our news organizations were doing their real job, we would probably all be feeling a little more squeamish and a little more outraged quite a bit more often. Instead, our news organizations are reduced to feature factories, and they only give us what we want to see. 

And if you believe what you see news organizations posting on social media most of the time, the only things we really are interested in seeing are stories about celebrities, bad boy politicians and whatever the sensationalist reality star of the week has to offer. I know that I am not the only one who sees all this garbage and asks "where is the news?".

Do you wonder why it's so easy for Americans to say that we should just go after extremist groups like ISIS? It's because we rarely have to see what the outcome of "going after" people is. We don't have to see thousands of our citizens under siege on a daily basis. We don't have to fear for our lives to go to the grocery store, where the shelves are often empty. We don't have to consider fleeing our homes for foreign lands because our own country has become too dangerous to hope for a future.

If our journalists were allowed and encouraged to do their jobs as intended, we would have a much better grasp on how to be grateful for the relative comfort and safety we enjoy compared to so many other corners of the world. 

A lot of people are also asking why Europe should be expected to take in so many of these refugees, and not neighboring countries. On some levels, that is a valid protest. After all, Europe has become the "go to" for much of the world's "tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free." While on vacation in Ireland a couple of times, we have witnessed the resentment against foreign immigrants who are welcomed and who often receive government assistance. 

On the other hand the West, including and especially the United States, bears at least some responsibility for foreign policies that have taken an unstable area of the world and destabilized it even further. Somehow, many of us still believe that our interests outweigh the lives of innocent men, women and children. And yes, there are plenty of innocents, including Alyn Kurdi--that little boy on the beach. They are just like you and me and our own children--trying to live their lives and get through day-to-day. Only they are under the constant threat of gunfire, violence, food shortages and inconceivable fear. 

But up until this week, we didn't have to face any of it. We didn't have to see the bodies of drowned toddlers washed up on a beach. We didn't have to think about the pain and suffering of others, thousands of miles away. Out of sight, out of mind. 

Very recently I ran across a quote by a college professor that seemed very comforting and reassuring: 

"You all have a little bit of 'I want to save the world' in you, that's why you're here, in college. I want to tell you that it's okay if you only save one person, and it's okay if that person is you."

I took comfort in the quote because it gave me permission to continue working on restoring what has been broken about myself, without worrying so much about the rest of the world. It was comforting to be given permission not to be strong enough, at this time, to take action on behalf of my fellow man or woman. And though the statement doesn't say it, one might even feel permitted to look away from that which is too much to deal with right now.

Sadly, I think we all give ourselves permission to look away, even when we do possess the wherewithal to make a difference for others. We live in a climate that makes it okay to be more concerned about what someone in need might take from us, even if we have nothing for them to take, than what we can offer to give to them freely. In a world where one percent of our nation's population possesses the majority of the wealth, how does it make sense that so many among the remaining ninety-nine percent of us feel so threatened by a single mom who needs food stamps? Calls for drug testing are raised by people who are, themselves, living paycheck to paycheck. We automatically assume that a person who needs help could not possibly have a legitimate claim, even though we might very well be in their shoes if the right set of circumstances befell us.

We had guests from out of town over the Fourth of July this year. In the course of conversation, my husband mentioned having seen real poverty in our neck of the woods. One of our friends posed the question: "what are you doing about it?" The answer, though honest, was embarrassing. Nothing. I know that I talked about intentions--most to be fulfilled when we were done "saving ourselves." 

I think we get so caught up in "saving ourselves" and protecting what's mine that we forget we are part of a bigger picture. Even if we don't all share the same god, or share a god at all, we should at least be able to share our humanity.

A friend reminded me today that a very wise man once said "We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies. But will we be that generation?"

That statement applies to more than the children of Sub-Saharan Africa that Bono was talking about. We have the power to do the very simplest thing: Refuse to look away. Even when the image angers you--especially when it angers you--refuse to look away. Even when the image brings tears to your eyes, and makes you hug your own children tighter--refuse to look away. Refuse to look away.

So, yes, I am still working on "saving myself" a little. But, I was wrong about something. I was wrong to agree that I am doing nothing. I do refuse to look away, and sometimes, I hope I am not the only one who sees and tries to give those visions a voice.

 

Pets and their price--worth every penny and every pain

So, the sun was just coming up this morning as I looked over to see my little girl holding tightly to a tiny, stuffed version of the K9 Advantix dog. Working in veterinary medicine has its perks. To her right lay a stuffed beagle that she frequently carries around the house.

At almost 18-months, she is starting to get lots of words. Yesterday she got the word "puppy." She's already been saying "Mo Mo" for months.

As I watched her sleeping and thought about these things, an all too unwelcome lump arose in my throat, and I felt myself tear up. That lump and those tears have flared several times over the last week. 

For nineteen of the last almost twenty years, there has been at least one dog in my family's life. Blue taught me that love can fill holes and make a home. Scrubby taught me patience and joy. And Mo has taught me unbridled, hold-back-nothing, unconditional love.

I know that on more than one occasion I have sworn that I would never be without a dog again. And yet I know that I will be--sooner than I want to even try to comprehend. 

I wasn't going to go down this path yet. I was going to try and just let the days pass and be what they are. But that's not how I cope. Quiet acceptance is not who I am. And I'm not going to get through this loss, the one that I am now anticipating, by keeping it to myself. 

I always wonder if it is worse to lose a loved one suddenly or to know that losing them is imminent. We knew our other dogs were "old," but as I so frequently told clients, "age is not a disease." We knew that the aging process takes its toll on a body. But we were still taken by surprise when it was suddenly time to say "goodbye" to both of them. And now, Mo. We learned last week that she has a nasty cancer that is going to leave us without a dog in our family. 

There is more that we could do, but nothing that will buy forever, and nothing that will buy more than a little bit of comfort--for a little while. There is no expense that we would spare if it meant forever and feeling good. I know. Not everyone feels that way about their pets. 

When I think of the care we have provided to our three dogs over the last nineteen years, I am sure that we could have put aside a nice little chunk for our daughter's education. Perhaps we could have purchased a car, or paid off other debts sooner. Granted, I could probably say the same thing about travel, concerts and shoes. 

The money we have spent to care for our pets bought us things that has no monetary value, but those things have been priceless. It bought us a sense of family when we little understood what that meant. It bought us comfort during heartache. It bought us security whenever we were afraid. It bought us friendship when nobody else understood or cared for our troubles. It bought us the ability to care for those who cannot, or struggle to care for themselves. 

Over the years, I have watched people struggle with decisions. Sometimes I know the struggle is real, and other times, I know that the struggle is with priorities I can't understand. These struggles are part of what makes being in veterinary medicine so difficult. People can choose not to care. People can fail to care. People can even be cruel. And there is very little that we can do. 

There are plenty of people who think that we are crazy when it comes to our pets. They wouldn't justify hundreds of dollars for tests, hospitalization or medications, let alone what we have spent. They wouldn't have driven hours to get "the right" care. And while it is true that being part of the veterinary profession afforded us the benefit of discounted care at times, we never based any decision on affordability. In some people's books, that makes us frivolous. After all, they are just animals. To plenty of people, humans are "in dominion over" them, or they are just food--certainly not to be valued at the same level as us.

But that's just it--our pets gave us what we needed to become more than what we were before they came into our lives. More than the dumb animals we were. Not many things we've spent money on have done that.

As I have been contemplating the period of time when we will be without a dog in our family, I have been contemplating another cost--the one that is unquantifiable and much higher--the pain of losing them after what will always be too short a time. 

We have said goodbye before. We have felt the unbearable pain before. Until I sit down and weigh what we have gained against what we have suffered, there is no question that the high cost is worth it. Knowing this doesn't decrease the past or coming pain, but it makes bearing the time we will wait to bring another family member home a little easier since we know what our daughter might possibly gain from having a "puppy" at the right time.

They are always worth everything we can give and everything we have. In this life, you only "get" what you are willing to "pay" for. I would pay every price for them, again, and again. 

Gender neutrality in the toy department right on Target

So, I have been surprised by the negative feelings some people have toward Target for deciding to remove gender based signage in their toy departments. Until the last year and a half or so, I really hadn't given the toy department an awful lot of thought, but as Target announced the decision, I thought it was great.

There's been a lot of talk lately about people becoming too easily offended by symbols. Most recently, there have been weak arguments by those who still think it's appropriate to display the Rebel or Confederate Flag in spite of its strong association with racism and the South's secession over slavery. It is unfathomable how people can so erroneously claim the Civil War had little or nothing to do with slavery. I also can't figure out how anyone waving that flag can imagine that doing so doesn't fan the flames of interracial strife among blacks and whites. 

While I agree that we sometimes get our feathers unnecessarily ruffled by symbols, frankly, some symbols and symbolism really are harmful. 

The gender differentiated toy department is harmful to kids, especially girls.

When we look at the current political climate, it is clear that women still have a long way to go to be seen as equals in this nation. 

Legislators are targeting Planned Parenthood and promising to defund it because the organization's facilities perform abortions. They don't care what the real numbers are, and they don't care about the many other health services that are provided to women in need. The leading Republican candidate has openly remarked that a female journalist, whom he felt was being unkind to him, had "blood coming out of her eyes, out of her wherever." Women are treated and talked about by powerful men as if they are children in need of a firm hand and lots of guidance. No man would tolerate the level of disrespect women are expected to stomach everyday. Every election cycle brings us back to the argument about women's reproductive rights. Every election cycle regenerates "the war on women," that leaders on the right always claim does not exist. 

What, you may ask, does this have to do with the girls' and boys' building sets signs in the toy department at Target?

It's about controlling the message to young girls. "These are the toys girls are supposed to play with." "You are limited to coloring your life experience in shades of pink." 

For children, play is work. It is how they learn about the world around them. It's how they develop new skills and gain knowledge. But play is also how children develop socially, and how they become who they want to be. It shouldn't be your toys' job to tell you who to be--it should be your job to tell your toys what to be. 

Now, it is true that parents can ignore labels and they can purchase any toys for their children that they want, but if labels are there to be ignored, why even have them? Wouldn't it just be easier to take all the labels away? 

I don't frequent the toy departments at Walmart as often as I do the ones at Target, in part because I can't seem to make heads or tails of the ones at Walmart. They seem to kind of be all over the place. But I really tried to peruse one of the Walmart toy departments yesterday. Interestingly enough, I didn't notice any signage. I don't know if I just overlooked it out of my normal Walmart induced confusion, or if it just isn't there. It made the negative backlash about Target's toy signage decision even more mind boggling.

Let's be honest, changing the signage in the toy department is only a first step in the right direction, and when you walk into the toy department, you will still be able to easily guess which toys girls are "supposed" to play with. There is still going to be an aisle that nearly vomits pink at you from a Barbie or Disney Princess package. Nobody is proposing the idea of gender-neutral packaging or removing toys that reinforce the gender stereotypes that all girls want to and should play with dolls and toy vacuum cleaners. Nobody is suggesting that toy trucks and toy guns won't still be targeted at boys. Frankly, I think the world would be a much better place if those things did happen, but there's too much money to be made by reinforcing patriarchal positive gender stereotypes. 

There are plenty of other places in the average retail establishment in which gender differentiation is obnoxious. 

Little girls' summer shorts are still shorter and tighter than little boys' summer shorts, and it recently occurred to me that the bottom half of almost all little girls' bathing suits are bikini-ish in cut. Not a boy cut leg in sight. If you want something different, you have to get outside of the "box" and look or special order. There are no Speedo style swimming trunks for little boys. 

And I am sure every woman can bemoan the difference in price between merchandise for women and merchandise for men--even if the item is only different because it is a pastel color or teal, or it says "lady" on it somewhere. 

It would be great for equality among genders to infiltrate every aspect of my retail experience. But if I have to make a choice between paying a little more for a disposable razor and my daughter not having labels to point out what toys with which she should play, or telling her that it is appropriate for her to show a little more leg at 18 months, I am happy to pay that difference. 

It is our job as parents to help our kids become who they are, and who they want to be. Some of us are comfortable with the status quo. Some of us momentarily cringe when our daughters are given their first doll to play with--only because we don't want our girls to get any kind of message about what their place in the world should be or that there are limits to what she can achieve. Girls have been getting that message for too long. And as I watch all of the political drama play itself out in the same vicious cycle, with women and their bodies to be controlled as pawns, I have little hope that the times are changing soon. 

At the end of the day, our kids need choices without labels. If my daughter walks into the toy department and wants a Lego set that builds a Star Wars Millenium Falcon instead of a Disney Princess castle, I appreciate that she's not going to feel awkward because her choice came from the "boys" section. At the same time, no boy should feel weird about wanting one of those Little Tikes toy vacuum cleaners.

I've made my argument for gender neutralization of the toy department because of my own feelings about how positive such a move could be for girls, but without question, it will be a positive for those kids who are wrestling with their gender identities. And those kids are real and their pain and confusion is real.

Playtime should be a safe place to express yourself and be who you want to be. It shouldn't be wrought with labels and heavy guidance. Our kids are smart. They don't need signs to tell them how to be kids. They will figure out what's right for them without help from clever marketing, and without all the old "rules" about how to make their choices. 

Slavery vs. Racism: apologize for what?

So, a friend recently raised an argument on social media against Senator Bernie Sanders' proposal that the United States should formally apologize for slavery. He discussed a number of reasons why apologizing for something for which currently living Americans were neither responsible or personally victims of would only perpetuate a victim mentality and sense of entitlement among African Americans. His argument sparked a fairly heated debate in which I chose not to become involved, at least in part because I was reading it in the wee small hours of the morning and didn't feel I could be intelligent at the time.

I think that, perhaps, the argument against making such an apology is the application of a narrow view to a much broader, and irreconcilable issue. We as a nation often hold ourselves up as an example to the rest of the world. As that example, I think many people believe that we should apologize and take responsibility when doing so is right and reasonable. I know I do, and I expect other nations to do the same. 

So that begs the question: For what actions should a nation or institution formally apologize? 

Obviously, nations take actions in their own self-interest that cause harm to others all the time. I count our own nation among a handful of nations which seem to believe themselves to be beyond reproach much of the time. I think that a reasonable standard for making an apology should be whether the harmful action would be considered a crime. 

In the case of slavery, our nation was complicit or involved in the kidnapping, physical assault, occasional sexual assault, human trafficking and occasional murder of citizens from a nation outside of its own borders. If the nation were an individual, it would be eligible for prosecution and subsequent punishment. 

Other nations and institutions have made similar apologies. Germany apologized for its role in the Holocaust. As a representative of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, its own complacency associated with the Holocaust, burning people at the stake during the Protestant Reformation, the sexual abuse of children within the Church and transgressions against women by the Church. 

Did those apologies undo any of the harm caused by those actions? Nope. But there is one thing they did do. They validated the hurt feelings of those who felt wronged. And they gave everyone the cue to move on. 

For what should we not apologize? Racism. Yeah, I just said we shouldn't apologize for racism. Why would I say something so outrageous? I would say it because if you consider the behavior of all animals, racism really isn't an unnatural behavior. 

There certainly are arguments for and against it, but I have noted similar behavior among my own dogs. Our oldest dog was a dachshund mix and our youngest is a dachshund. Our middle dog was a beagle. Our oldest dog looked more like a dachshund than the beagle, and he and our youngest dog never fought. But both our oldest and youngest dog scuffled with, or persecuted the beagle. He wasn't like them. 

Of course, we can all point out exceptions to such natural behavior. We have all seen the videos on social media of cats nursing abandoned puppies, dogs befriending elephants, etc. And when we see these videos, we all think about how adorable the behavior is and get a warm fuzzy. The reason we get that warm fuzzy is because such behavior is out of the ordinary. It is not the norm. 

We humans like to believe that we are the most intelligent and civilized link in the evolutionary chain, but when we are in new situations, with new people, we tend to look for people who are similar to ourselves. We gravitate toward those who are like ourselves because as animals, it is a means of attempting to predict the behavior of others and assess our own safety in an unfamiliar situation. We do it defensively and offensively to protect ourselves in situations where we feel discomfort, misunderstanding and fear. Even in a situation where all individuals are of the same race, we will frequently gravitate toward individuals that share our own traits, mannerisms or behaviors. 

Am I saying that these natural tendencies absolve us for discrimination and mistreatment of others? Nope. I'm just saying that there is not a resolution of the underlying issue of racism, because whether we want to accept it or not, we all have racist tendencies. Myself included. If we try to deny it, we are only fooling ourselves.

Growing up in a small Missouri city, I was able to tell myself that I wasn't racist. And I was horrified by racism in my own family. But in thinking about it, I can only recall a handful of African American students with whom I attended school from kindergarten through high school. I was never truly exposed to people who didn't look and behave similar to myself. When I moved to a much larger city, my exposure changed, and I not only more frequently saw African Americans, but I saw them behaving in ways I didn't see myself behaving. Based on appearance and behavior, I developed an unconscious sense of judgement that I had never had before. I am sad to know this about myself.

Does that mean we give up on trying to be fair and even to each other? Nope. I hope to raise my daughter to be as color blind as possible. But I know that I can't be everywhere she is throughout her life, and I can't counteract nature. I can, along with her father and trusted friends and mentors, do my level best to teach her how we should treat each other and every other living being with whom we make contact. 

I certainly don't believe that racism justified slavery, but I think to a very large degree racism between blacks and whites is viewed as being far more unacceptable than racism among other peoples because of slavery. And that is why the issue of a formal apology matters. 

So where does that leave us as a nation and whether we should apologize for slavery or not? There is not only a precedent for other nations and institutions formally apologizing for their wrongs, there is a similar precedent in our own history. 

After an investigation initiated by President Jimmy Carter's administration, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which made formal apology for the wrongful internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. 

Apologizing for slavery, racist laws, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or any other human atrocity doesn't erase those acts of the past, and it shouldn't be perceived as a blanket justification for criminal behavior or a victim mentality that promotes a sense of entitlement ad infinitum. But it does acknowledge our responsibility for those acts and lays a foundation for learning how to live with one another in spite of our past. 

We are stronger when we are alive

So, I was outside with my daughter this morning. She loves to run around on the driveway in the morning. She likes to pick up leaves and carry them around. She usually dances and sings a little as well. It's a great time of the day. Sometimes, I don't appreciate it the way I should. I'm usually thinking it's already too muggy to hang out in the Arkansas sun, and that I would really like to go back inside where it's cool and have some breakfast. But this morning was different.

As she was collecting her leafy treasures, she did something all toddlers do. She started tearing and crumpling them. I've read destructive behavior is a natural part of toddler exploration. If you look at various pieces of furniture, almost every children's book in the house, and just the general state of constant disarray in our home, you would know that our daughter is an expert at such "exploration." 

She seemed to notice something about the leaves as she was trying to disassemble them. The brown leaves were much easier to destroy than the green ones. As I watched her fascinated consternation, a thought flashed through my mind: We are stronger when we are alive than when we are not.

Now, this would be a point at which someone might accuse me of going all "Captain Obvious," because of course, we are stronger when we are living than when we are dead. That's not really what I mean. What I mean is that we are stronger when we are engaged in the process of living than when we are not. 

As an introvert, I often relish in the comfort and safety of cocooning here at home, and figuratively "snuggling" with all the things that make me feel at ease and secure. Sometimes, being  "checked out" from the rest of the world is like unwrapping a Godiva milk chocolate with almonds bar. I always anticipate the way it's going to enfold me like a warm and gentle hug.

But also as an introvert, I recognize that my need for quiet and down time by myself can leave me off on the sidelines of my own life. Staying in our sheltered, comfortable places can prevent us from the experience of truly being alive. It might make us feel safer and protected from harm, but it also puts us at risk for being more easily crumpled and torn to bits.

Someone in a management position once told me that we "grow outside of our comfort zones." By now, that's a giant cliche, and at the time, he was using it to pressure me into something that was not in my own self-interest. But, there is a great deal of validity in that statement, inside the professional spaces of our lives, and in the "living" spaces of our lives. 

A few years ago, my husband encouraged me to go on what seemed like a crazy huge trip--all by myself. It was a trip to New England that involved airline travel, booking hotels, renting and driving a car. I felt a little anxious about doing all of those things by myself--not because I'm not capable, but because it meant I had to potentially fail at any or all of these things and there would be no one to catch my fall. As it happened, I missed one flight connection and I found myself lost trying to get to Edgar Allan Poe's house in Baltimore (it was right under my nose the whole time, but not well marked). 

Up until this trip, I had always had a travel partner, or there was very little chance of failure. The only non-traditional things I routinely did by myself were go out to eat and the movies. The only thing that made me feel any sense of security is that most things can be remedied with a credit card. 

That trip to Baltimore, and then to Salem was so amazing. There is something fabulously liberating about traveling on your own. You are literally free to make all of the decisions, and to explore in ways that you just can't when you are being considerate of someone else's feelings. When I got back to my room at the end of each day, I was gloriously exhausted, but also so inspired and invigorated. I thought as deeply as I breathed, every single day. I wrote every single day. I lived every single day. I swear, It's better than dessert. 

And it changed me. I have no doubt that I could do it again, and with even more pleasure, because it's not as hard as I thought it would be. I believe I could take on an even more challenging trip after that success. And I believe I could help someone else do it. It made me an "expert," or at least an expert in the eyes of a few of my friends. Sometimes that's all you need to be.  It was only about five days, but what it did for my self-confidence was nothing short of spectacular. 

Sometimes simple risks like going out to dinner alone, or taking a trip alone can teach us so much about ourselves as well as the world around us. And doing such things always reminds me how important it is to "live." Friends have praised my "courage" to go it alone, and tell me how they could never do something like that. My response always is that if I was alone and wanted to do something, I can't imagine letting that keep me from doing it. What a waste that would be. 

Life hands all of us a bushel of things to sort through, live through, and learn through. Some of those things are joyous and wonderful, while others take the wind out of our sails and leave us doubting everything. I think the more opportunities we take to truly live, the more opportunities we find to strengthen who we are and become who we truly want to be. It allows us to offer so much more to the people we care about. 

Sometimes that means we try things and fail. We may try to take on a new career or job and realize that it's just not something for which we were cut out. We may move someplace we have always dreamed of living, only to find it isn't a dream come true. But sometimes it means we soar. We may go back to school to restart our lives or to fulfill a hope in our hearts that has nagged us for years. We may pursue that job we've been passionate about since vet school, or we might even buy our own practice. We may go out on a limb and allow ourselves to believe what we have to say or share can have meaning for others. We may write that novel. We might become mothers or fathers late in life, and understand what we would have missed if we hadn't taken the risk. 

And we may be surprised to find our place, even through our failures. 

But if we don't take those chances, we're just as vulnerable as that brown leaf in my toddler's hands. We are more, we are stronger, we are fuller, when we fully live. And when we do that, it is much harder for others to tear us apart, because we know who we truly are and what we have lived. 

I'm sorry Cecil.

So, I have this habit. I have a tendency to want to document and commemorate experiences. Most of the time I do so with a camera. And often times, I want some kind of souvenir--something that says "I did this," or "I was here."

I think a lot of us are like that. We somehow want "a piece" of our moments that is more tangible than just the memory. Perhaps, we want a "trophy."

In the wake of the killing and mutilation of Cecil the lion, it occurs to me that while I do not own a gun or hunt, I am guilty.

We don't have to be trophy hunters to be complicit in these senseless acts. All we have to be are idle bystanders. 

We, in America, live in a country where food is plentiful, and except for the culture of greed and turning a blind eye, there is no need for people to go hungry. Very few people actually need to hunt and kill any wild animal in order to eat or survive. A good (or bad) portion of our nation's hungry are women and children in our urban core, not in areas where people are likely to hunt.

Every hunting season, the photos start to pop up in my Facebook Newsfeed--those photos of proud men and boys, all posing with the beautiful trophy creature they have so needlessly and skillfully taken down. 

Give me all the defenses of hunting when you don't need food that you want. It helps control populations by decreasing herd numbers and removing the weaker individuals. It's a family tradition. It's a coming of age rite of passage. It helps youngsters learn gun safety and conservation.

I honestly couldn't care less about any of these "reasons." 

I frequently see photos in my newsfeed of big game hunters who kill for the sheer sport of it--individuals who want to be able to say they killed a leopard, a giraffe, an elephant, a rhino. It's as if killing something either gives you power over it, or helps you commune with its spirit. Frankly, all it does is leave something beautiful dead. 

Humans are capable of so much good. We are the "intelligent" animal. We can reason. We are inventive. We are curious. But sadly, it often seems like above all of these traits, we are consumers. We have a great sense of entitlement. Many of us still refuse to see our role in the destruction of natural habitats and natural resources. And while someday, this denial will be to our own detriment, and that of our children, today, we are complacent. 

We kill elephants for their ivory tusks, because we believe we are entitled to them for decorative purposes. We kill rhinos because we believe their horns have medicinal properties. We kill tigers because they are said to have medicinal properties as well. We kill wales because our ancestors always have. We kill because it satisfies some warped need we have to prove our dominance over an animal kingdom that would otherwise be essentially indifferent to our existence. 

We kill, because we can. We consume, because it's our unfortunate nature. 

The world is up in arms over a man killing a beloved lion. They are offended by the photos of him holding the carcasses of his proudly obliterated prizes. Where were we when all but a handful of white rhinos were allowed to be poached to almost certain extinction? Where were we when the polar bears started having to swim for days to find food because the sea ice on which they live is retreating--due to global warming, caused by us? Where are we when people in the countries in which these animals live have no better means of supporting their families than to feed our culture of consumption and entitlement? 

I realize friends who value the hunting experience in their families may be offended by my feelings about hunting. But none of the people I know who hunt, or support hunting do so because they need to. And while it may be offensive to be called out for that, it should be no more offensive than all of the dead deer photos I hide from my Facebook Newsfeed every season because I just don't want to see the pride in these needless kills. 

When we look to heritage, most of us must remember that there were people who came before us--people who had a respect and love for the land and everything in nature. Their lives depended upon it. They took none of it for granted and they were grateful for its bounty. 

In a culture of consumption, collection and trophy hunting, perhaps the thing we miss the most is presence of mind--our presence in moments, instead of our collection of proofs. 

Chief Sealth of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound, Washington is credited with saying that we should "take only memories, leave nothing but footprints." 

A man from Minnesota has taken the head and skin of a lion, but certainly not the lion's heart or soul. It is likely that Cecil's progeny will also be killed because of this senseless act. A ripple effect. The memory we will all have of this man is one of selfishness and waste. But at the end of the day, he and this memory are only the personification of all that we take, and all that we do not do in the name of our entitlement to consume everything in our path. 

Riding our own rides--again

So, there's something about this time of year that's special--or at least it used to be. 

For three weeks every July, a bunch of men ride a hundred plus miles on their bicycles everyday during the Tour de France. I use to be an avid viewer. That all changed when cycling's grubby underbelly rolled over and invited the world to scratch. Most of us who really loved the beauty and grace of the sport took one look and shook our heads with disgust. We had been able to deny the dirty doping side of cycling until it was so clearly thrown in our face. 

There's a phrase in cycling that I have returned to again and again over the years--it's probably universally spoken in athletic circles, but cycling is where I heard it first: ride your own ride. 

For a summer, I ran a handful of 5Ks. I don't know why. I'm not athletic, and I am certainly not physically active enough to even consider being competitive. When I ran these runs, I really didn't care how fast I ran. I just didn't want to be last and I wanted to at least run across the finish line, even if I had had to walk somewhere along the course. 

Sixteen months after having my daughter, I find that I have regained just about every ounce of weight I lost while I was pregnant. Yes, I am that freak of nature who weighed less at the end of my pregnancy than before. It's amazing what not being able to eat much more than grilled cheese and French fries will do for your waistline--especially when you can't eat them in any quantity without feeling horrible. It was a rough nine months. 

Most women I know think that weight loss was a gift. Sadly, I have baked, cooked, eaten and parked myself all the way back to where I started. So, it's only natural that I feel a little bit of panic and pressure to do something about it. And so, I dug out my running shorts and sneakers. 

Initially, I spent two weeks barely able to move after developing a horrible case of runner's knees. I was in so much pain, I was afraid I would drop my daughter every time I tried to carry her up the steps from the garage into the house, or the giant step at the front door. It was awful. 

Fast forward to getting our treadmill up and running again, and getting passed the runner's knees, and I am once again tackling "Couch to 5K." When all this running started, I figured I should build slowly, and so it only made sense to follow some structure. 

It was simple enough for the first several weeks. Run some. Walk some. I knew it would eventually get harder. But in the beginning, I felt pretty okay about my progress. And then, week five.... 

The instructions started correlating a distance with the running time. Up until this point, I had felt pretty good about "running my own run," because it wasn't a requirement that I be able to run a certain distance within a certain time constraint to be "successful."

Yesterday evening, I found myself foregoing use of the app on my phone, because I didn't want to feel like I had failed if I couldn't run two miles in twenty minutes. I just tried to run per the instructions, and not surprisingly, I wasn't able to finish two miles within the 20 minute time constraint. It took me another four minutes or so. 

It doesn't matter, and it's completely stupid, but didn't want to "fail" in the eyes of a faceless app.

I think we all do things like this. We might tell ourselves to just do our best at things and not worry about what someone else thinks, or about comparing ourselves to people we view to be more successful. 

It's not as easy to "ride your own ride," or "run your own run" as it sounds. 

In the Tour, cyclists are under pressure, not only to win, but to represent their sponsors and gain precious air time. It drives cyclists to become liars and cheats in order to fulfill what was probably an honest and pure dream at one time. I wanted to believe that the smile on my very favorite French cyclist was driven by the pure joy of the sport, and not the adrenaline pump from a banned substance. Sadly, I was probably dazzled and bought into the unreality of the sport. (Not Tommy!)

In life, we also face pressures--in work, in parenting, in relationships and social circles. We often find ourselves "lacking," even if it is the result of self-inflicted judgement and doubt. That's when it becomes easy to forget our strengths and to squeeze ourselves into a mold or constraint that just won't ever fit, and frankly doesn't really matter. 

I may never be able to do a 5K in less than 45 minutes, or without stopping to walk a few minutes and catch my breath. And I shouldn't let that define my "worth as a human being." Who cares? I haven't been able to get my daughter to eat a decent meal or take a nap today, and at this point, she's still cosleeping with us every night, because I when it came down to it, that was the only way I could get more than four or five hours of sleep a night. I'm letting her watch "Bubble Guppies" so I can write today. None of these things make me a bad parent, they just represent the kinds of challenges and solutions we all face. 

At the end of the day, we all have to make a choice about who we are and how we get through "the race." I'll probably still continue to push myself to run those two miles in 20 minutes. I don't expect to succeed, but I'm stubborn, and won't let go until I reach a point where I have either injured myself or just given up. I'm not saying that's what I should do, but I know myself, and I know my flaws. 

I don't have a solution for overcoming the urge to catch up, to keep up with, or outrun the figurative pack. And while I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't strive to be the best we can be, wouldn't it be good to sometimes be able to look at ourselves fairly and accept where we are instead of trying so hard to ride a ride or run a run that isn't true to who we are? 

Mommy spam--the justification

So, not long ago, I read about a woman who had been shamed on social media for sharing too many photos and stories about her kids. It's probably not a surprise that I started thinking about how much I share about my own daughter on social media.

I do understand that not everyone sees each little smile, smirk, or quirky new activity my daughter displays with the same pride or joy with which I see them. Just in the same way I usually couldn't care less about your fiftieth "vague post" of the day, or the perfect apple turnover someone made. But here's the thing, last night, it occurred to me as I watched my daughter saying her version of "duckie" in the tub last night, that I don't document and share for others, I do it for myself.

Not every day of being a mom is easy. I knew it wouldn't be when I signed up for the job. But frankly, some days are downright hard. 

Some days I feel like all I do is string together an endless series of 'nos,' 'don'ts,' and 'pleases.' (I literally just set off a barrage of 'nos' that rivals any semi-automatic weapon on the market, in hopes of keeping her from trying to eat bird poop again today.) Some days, I feel like I move from one mom failure to the next, from the moment we get up until the moment she finally gives up and goes to sleep. Some days are so ordinary, that it feels like I have been on auto pilot for hours and I don't know how we got through the day. 

While you're being a mom, you don't often have time or the wherewithal to think about how far you have come from the moment you left the hospital with this tiny creature you knew nothing about, but for which you were entirely responsible. The only things that I have ever been able to equate it to are being caught in a water park wave pool, or working a shift in a veterinary emergency hospital. There is no thinking, there is only doing and managing. I know, I make it sound awful. A lot of moms wouldn't admit it, but sometimes, it is. 

One of the great paradoxes of social media is that it is inherently anti-social, and even if you think you're sharing a wide cross section of yourself with people, it's up to them which snippets they look at or care about. That usually leads to people receiving an entirely skewed idea of who you are and what your life is like. Depending on which things your friends and acquaintances choose to take in, you are either incredibly successful and living "the life," or you are despondent and on the verge of suicide, or a mass murder. You don't get to decide what people think about you and your life. 

I think that's at least one of the reasons why people get so annoyed by mommy spamming. Their perception of the situation is very different from the person sharing. They don't know that the photo of your child stuffing a green bean up her nose is the funniest thing you will probably see all week, or that that moment is the only time today that she wasn't grabbing handfuls of your 15-year-old dog's skin and twisting it with glee as you frantically tried to keep peace. They don't know that you are scared of all of the things you don't know how to do for, or teach your child--or how much you hope you aren't screwing it up like your mom did.

Those brief snippets of documented affirmation probably don't mean much to the "been there, done thats" on your friend list, or to childless folks with whom you worked ten years ago. But they are the snippets that help you get through the not-so-awesome days. 

And, now, thanks to Facebook's daily reminders of the moments you've shared in the past, they are the gifts that keep on giving. When you are just trying to keep the house intact and everyone alive until the end of the day, imagine how helpful it can be to see the photo of your daughter holding her head up for the first time during tummy time--it reminds you that you occasionally get it right. On those really awesome days where everything is going smoothly and you see the photo of your daughter playing the drum during music class--you might even be able to look at yourself and say "you got this."

So, at the risk of annoyance and alienation, I will continue to snap photos of the seemingly mundane, and the blissfully fantastic moments, and I will post them everywhere I might need to see them later. I know what my real life is like--it's pretty good, some days overwhelming, others dull as a butter knife, and absolutely fantastic. All of those things rolled into one. And if you're on my friend list, you get to see it all!

Attachment friending

So, as ever, relationships and why we behave the way we do are at the forefront of my mind. It seems like I keep pondering the inner workings of friendship this month, and how people become so close, yet so easily lose each other. 

Earlier this week, I saw a dear friend's Facebook post about a friend who was taken away too soon. My heart went, and still goes out to her. I haven't lost a close friend in this way. Mostly I've lost friends due to foolishness--sometimes mutual, sometimes unilateral. Always painful.

It's amazing how attached we become to our friends. We often feel closer to them than some of our relatives. Writer Edna Buchanan said it best: Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.

I started to think about why that is. Why do we form such strong bonds with people outside of our family unit? I am sure there is a long list of possible reasons. We both love "Doctor Who." We grew up in the Midwest with dysfunctional parents. We work in the same field. We both like to ride bicycles. We both dislike the same things. 

These are the obvious links, but they aren't the reason.

I think at the core of these strong bonds is the sense of belonging and acceptance we feel within friendship, and the fact that someone who is not obligated in a familial way extended that sense of belonging and acceptance. What could be a higher compliment? What else could make us feel a little more comfortable accepting ourselves? 

When we are chosen to become someone's friend, it's because of the person we are whenever we are with that person. We become inherently defined by the people who call us "friend." I think that's at least part of the reason our adolescent years can be so painful. When we find ourselves outside of the well-thought-of clicques, we can often find ourselves feeling like we're on the fringes, or that we do not belong anywhere. And in those painful moments, how can we help but ask the question: what does that say about me? 

In reaching adulthood, we often believe that we have gotten passed all of that. We don't believe we will still find ourselves in, or surrounded by cliques, and we believe our friendship bonds are so strong that only a major falling out could destroy them. 

We start to allow ourselves a sense of comfort with our friends, because we believe that we know each other so well, and we care for and believe in each other maturely and strongly enough that we can get passed or through most anything. We believe we have found friends with whom we can truly be ourselves, and we don't have to apologize for it. 

I think that is why losing friendships in adulthood can be even more painful than losing friendship any other time. Our sense of self, and our feeling of worth are frequently dependent on what others think of us, no matter how much we try to make the mantras of self-love work for us. It may well be that some of us are naturally more gregarious than others, but even those of us who tend to find ourselves more comfortable on our own at times, need to feel the sense of belonging and acceptance afforded to us through friendship.

When a friendship falls apart, we often fall apart right along with it. The loss forces us to look at ourselves, and our friends, in an unflattering light. Because we allow ourselves to feel defined by those who choose us as friends, when they suddenly "un-choose" us, we feel our sense of who we are to ourselves slide out from under us too. That seed of self-doubt puts us on the defensive in all of our other relationships as well, and can even prompt us to withdraw as a means of self-protection. If we don't put ourselves "out there," we limit the opportunities to be hurt. 

I know we have all been on the receiving end of friendship loss, but I think we don't realize that we not only hurt for the person who has left our lives, but for the piece of who we believed ourselves to be because that person chose us to be their friend. We question our worth. We become paranoid about being ourselves around others. We redefine ourselves based on the loss. We grieve and try to start over without that person in our lives--often trying to shrug off the pain and pretend that we are somehow better off.

Are we? I don't know. In the moment that someone decides we are only worthy of being emotionally torn down, we have to make a choice between believing ourselves deserving of that deconstruction, or believing that the parts of that person with which we so strongly connected were false or altered. I also don't have an answer for that. Perhaps every instance is different, and therefore so is the result. 

I do know the pain. I know that it is like the pain of every deep loss I have experienced in my life. It has a thousand triggers--a song, a fragrance, a favorite meal, a silly moment remembered. It is like the pain of saying goodbye to a family member, a dream or a "might have been." It flares like a bum ankle in damp weather.

The pain makes you wonder if it's worth it to ever let someone that close again. After all, if it is so easy for someone to go from believing better of you than you do yourself to doubting you even more, how can you ever trust yourself or anyone else? 

At the end of the day, I suppose all any of us can do is hope the risks we take in friendship will lead us to people who really do accept us, at both our best and worst, and that we will offer the same in return.