Clear your own path

There are periods of time that are just hard. You feel yourself being pushed and pulled, or you feel like your spinning your wheels. You learn to pull loose ends together quickly, because you so easily find yourself off track.

You know you could be doing everything better—if you only chose to put the most important things first. But you’re getting along, so you waste an hour here or there on things that probably don’t matter.

And then, something unexpected comes up, and you find yourself with very little control, and very few choices. So many things catch up with you, which doesn’t make sense, because you were the one who was actually behind.

All of these kinds of things occur to you when you get hurt or really sick. You understand that with a few exceptions, you spend most of your time living for expediency, and less of it for solid meaning. 

Last year, I quietly told myself that I wasn’t going to let so many things come first before the important things. I wasn’t going to let everything else come before writing. I started picking at it again, like a fork tine lifting crust on a slice of pie. It wasn’t enough to amount to anything, but it did remind me that at one point, I had a path. 

I got lucky, because someone else invited me to join her writing path, and it kept me from failing myself as I think I would have otherwise. 

I didn’t make a secret pact with myself this year—no magnanimous resolutions or announcements to the world that I would get any of my acts together. Mostly, it’s easier not to break the promises we don’t make. 

It’s probably better that I didn’t even quietly converse with myself about time ticking away, and the outrageous privilege of frittering it away—even though my current day job is tough, and I do believe that some wasted time isn’t actually wasted at all. 

It ends up that at the beginning of this year, things have spun out of control early. My dearest lifelong friend is at the beginning of a fight for her life. Just thinking the words in that sentence makes me want to shut down for a while, because words have power, and who isn’t stopped in their tracks by a punch in the gut like that? 

Living in this world, there are a thousand things to occupy your thoughts and your time. They live on a spectrum of importance, and moments both magnify and dull them. It feels like a million years has passed in the few weeks since everything in my friend’s life changed forever. I am at a standstill while the branches of her universe are swept past me in a raging current, and I am powerless. But my own powerlessness is of no significance. If I had anything, it would be hers in a heartbeat. 

We can’t control each other’s storms or paths. And sometimes, we even fail to control our own. That takes me back to the idea of failing to put the right things first. Sometimes, the choices seem obvious, and sometimes we think the impact of our choices is clear. 

That’s not always the case. 

Getting off the path can become a big problem—especially when it’s a habit. Sometimes, we get distracted. There’s something that seems worth looking at more closely. Sometimes, we think we’re doing the right thing. Most of the time, the path is a metaphor, and there is no urgency about the situation—just marks along the way to remind us of where we are in relation to where we thought we were going. But sometimes, the metaphor becomes real. 

I have a bad habit of stepping aside for other people, because deep down, I don’t think the space I occupy is as important as that of others. Forever, my husband has told me to stand my ground when we are out places together, and someone walks toward me, as if I’m not even there—as if I am invisible. I pretty much always step aside to let the other person pass, because I don’t believe they will go around me. How can someone go around a person they don’t see?

A week ago, stepping aside for someone who was heading the wrong direction cost me. I fell down hard, and broke my arm in multiple places. I knew it was broken as soon as I hit the ground. The woman walking the wrong way came back to where I lay fallen on the ground and clutching my mangled arm against my chest. She said nothing. I knew she was there, and I could have been angry, but even though she hadn’t been in the right, I also had been in the wrong. I had put myself in harm’s way by putting her place on the path ahead of my own. 

I have reasoned with myself that I had to let her pass—she was an elderly woman. It would have been wrong for me to play sidewalk chicken with an old lady in the forest, in the dark. But the truth is, I would have stepped aside for anyone. 

A million times I have done the same thing. Now, I am recovering from surgery. I have a plate and screws holding the broken bits together, and I am in more physical pain than I have ever been. Everything in our life is completely out of sync and out of my control. I feel like a fool. 

Now, you may be thinking that I shouldn’t be taking this situation so seriously, and that beating myself up about it isn’t going to help. Maybe those are valid points. Maybe I’m just stuck in the moment and it reminds me of how wasteful I can be with time, freedom, autonomy, and passion. Now, here I sit, barely able to take care of myself, let alone manage anything else. Maybe I feel like I should be stronger, and that instead of letting a quiet feeling of “less than” knock me down, I should realize that letting myself be knocked down doesn’t just affect me. 

Right now, it’s a few bones that have been forced back into alignment in a very painful way that has my family and me off track, and me unable to be with my friend when she needs me. But when I look deeper, I am always allowing things to get me off track and to hijack things that are important. 

It’s not easy to put yourself first. It’s not easy to stay on your own path when life comes at you. And like it or not, sometimes you are only reminded of your own value when you put the wrong things ahead of yourself and you find yourself flat on your back with no other choice. 

Sometimes, looking at yourself and realizing how prone to self-sabotage you are is just as important as helping someone else. Maybe it’s not someone else’s path you should be clearing. Maybe it’s time to get out of your own way. 

The walls that make America

So, over the last several years many of us with privilege have learned some painful lessons about our country. One of the lessons we have learned is that a portion of our population still responds to racist dog whistles, and ahead of all of their own interests, they would rather support someone holding that whistle than have lower drug prices, wealth equity, an environment not under threat by continuing to favor fossil fuels and by rolling back basic protections, affordable higher education for everyone, healthcare, and infrastructure. 

That’s a short list of the things that aren’t as important as answering that whistle like a lap dog. The promise of a big and beautiful wall to keep us safe from poor and desperate brown people who are coming to steal our jobs, get free stuff, commit crimes and drive down wages is like a beacon—calling to that shining city on the hill—the city that keeps out anyone who doesn’t look or speak like us.

Some walls protect us, while others destroy us.

There are so many things that we have learned. 

Of course, these are lessons plenty of black Americans have known almost since birth. They have lived their entire lives behind the walls those of us with privilege have either built or allowed to remind them, every day, that they are second class citizens at best, or subhuman at worst. These same walls stand high as mothers teach their sons they will be held to a much higher standard by police officers than their white counterparts if they must interact with police officer, because they may not come home again. These same walls stand as obstacles to the access to quality education and healthcare whites enjoy. 

Some of us with privilege have started to wipe away the hazy sleep from our eyes—not because we have earned the label of being woke,” but because we suddenly feel threatened by walls ourselves. 

Women have lived all of their lives behind a wall of inequality. We have lived being paid less for the same work as our male counterparts. We have been blamed for violence perpetrated against us, because somehow there are a million ways in which we ask to be violated and harmed—even if we are simply walking down a sidewalk. We have lived with the additional threat that we have no autonomy over our own bodies and what happens to them. Our worth and our position in society dictates that we are not entitled to the same rights and freedom from discrimination and harm as men—even while we are not asking for more than they are able to take for granted. We thought we had made progress, but we learned that walls can go up very quickly. 

Same sex couples have lived their lives behind the walls of discrimination and exclusion and struggling to acquire the basic rights other couples take for granted. They have fought to have the right to marry the people they love, to be able to adopt children, share property, and access spousal employment benefits. And that’s just a short list. In recent years, same sex couples had attained some of the rights they had been fighting for, but they have seen that there will always be someone standing ready to rebuild walls.

Americans of the LGBTQ community have lived their lives behind the wall of fear of being harmed, being unable to access necessary healthcare, being fired from their jobs, being unable to access and retain housing, and having equal access to education without discrimination. Transgender women of color are particularly at a higher risk of being the targets of violent crime or death. The tide of legal discrimination was very slowly beginning to turn. An end of the discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in our military had finally come. Very quickly an open ban on transgender Americans serving in our armed forces reminded us that the walls that were being dismantled could go right back up. 

Americans outside of the Christian faith have unexpectedly found themselves living behind the walls of fear that they will be discriminated against, targeted with violence while in their places of worship or wearing traditional garments associated with their faiths, and being believed to be anti-American or potentially threatening to others. The promise of freedom of religion was a wall that Americans of different faiths believed they could count on, but along with the threat of violence, many saw the wall solidified when loved ones hoping to emigrate or seek refuge were banned from America’s promise of freedom. 

These are some of the walls we decide to maintain when we support the ideals of fear of “the other,” superiority over people of color, women, anyone who is not “heteronormative,” or Christian. These are the walls that guard us from the original promise and potential of America. 

As we think about American walls, there is one wall that we seemingly have decided not to care about or fight for. It’s a wall that was designed to protect everyone in our nation from tyranny, oppression and abuse by our leadership when it deigns to put its own power over its obligation to and its oath of service. It’s a wall that was designed to help our leaders protect us from foreign invasion, foreign political interference, and to keep our democracy safe and intact.

This week, people we voted for have the power to make sure this wall continues to stand—that it continues to mean something. This week, people we voted for have the power to decide whether the efforts of our founders to create structures, limits and boundaries in place to balance powers are still relevant, or if they are so worthless that they should be ignored and kicked to the curb with all the other extraneous garbage we no longer care about. 

When our leadership wraps itself in the luxe and engulfing embrace of power, and allows that power to do what we know power can do—corrupt its intentions and tempt it to actions in direct contradiction to the structures, limits and boundaries, the people we voted for have a duty. 

Why is action so urgent that the people we voted for not pursue enforcing subpoenas through the courts? Why is patience a travesty in this situation? Quite simply, it’s because failure to act ensures that our next election will be tainted by the scandal of foreign interference—again. And this time, it will be at the direct and explicit invitation of our president. Allowing that to stand allows everything else to fall.

This week the  wall—our Constitution—is swaying in the breeze of a potentially powerful wind. 

What will they do? Will they answer to the better angels of our nature—the framers of that wall—or listen to the intoxicating whispers of the demon that threatens to destroy the foundation—the whispers of their own power? 

We should all be afraid of the looming and likely answer. 

Selling redemption and enslaving reality: Michael Vick and the acceptance of slavery in plain sight

There’s a lot of debate about whether Michael Vick should be the captain of the NFL Pro Bowl team. There’s discussion about redemption, time served, and the cultural context of his crimes.There are the questions about viewing what he did as being more significant than if he had simply beat up his girlfriend. There are the issues of how unfairly the deck is stacked against black men in the criminal justice system, and would we even feel the same way about his past if he was white?

I have actually thought about it a great deal. To, on the one hand understand that our criminal justice system is just a legalized means of perpetuating oppression and systemic racism, and on the other hand be unable to see this man as a victim of that system might appear incongruent. 

How can I recognize and acknowledge our culture, society and systems as deeply oppressive, but disagree that in this one instance that two of our systems favored a black man? Well, to start, I am imperfect, and have never said that I get everything always right or even fair. I’ve never claimed to be more “woke” than anyone else, or unwaveringly open-minded. Anyone who would say those things about themselves would be inviting ridicule. 

There’s a lot to unpack with the significant issues in professional sports and our criminal justice system. 

Where money is king—as in professional sports—perpetrators of unforgivable acts are given sanctuary. In our criminal justice system, the average black man who commits ANY crime—no matter what kind or how serious—is punished much more extensively than the average white male perpetrator of equal or far worse crimes.

Both situations are wrong, and both send heartbreaking messages to young black men, and they perpetuate many other wrongs. 

I actually hate football, and am indifferent to the majority of sports. I hate animal cruelty, neglect, and abuse. I signed the petition to ask the NFL to remove Vick from the pro bowl team, even though I wouldn’t be watching anyway. So, it’s fair to say this doesn’t directly impact me. But any time I get an email to sign a petition to punish perpetrators of animal cruelty or abuse, I sign it. Same with people who rape, people who abuse children and people who commit acts of domestic violence. And in all of these instances, I don’t stop for a second to consider why someone might deserve a pass in these cases.

For me, this isn’t an issue of black, white, fame or anonymity. I couldn’t care less about those things when it comes to certain types of crimes. 

And I have a really hard time accepting the cultural component so many associate with dog fighting. I am not a perfectly “woke” person, but it is not lost on me that our oppression of people of color—especially young black men—often sets in motion realities I will never experience and a life context with which I cannot relate. I have not, nor will I ever have to walk in their shoes, and no matter how much I learn in my life or strive to do better, I will never understand at the level of a person who has been the target of this kind of oppression. 

That being said, there are certain acts a person commits that they KNOW are wrong, regardless of whether they end up in the criminal justice system, and regardless of what cultural norms led them to do those things.

When you willfully pick up another living creature, lift them into the air, slam them to the concrete, and you see them bleed, hear them cry out and you are not impacted by that—to the extent that you do it over and over until the animal is dead—the right or wrong of the action outweighs the context of culture. You know you are torturing another living thing, and at some level you are enjoying it. 

By the same token, when you beat the crap out of your significant other, and you see their lip split, their eye blackened, or their bones broken, you know you are causing harm and pain. 

When you do these things once, it’s unconscionable, but when you do it over and over, you are making a conscious choice to cause harm, pain or even death. It’s no longer an accident of cultural context. 

It’s true that it isn’t my right to decide if Vick is redeemed. At the same time, if the NFL or any other professional sports organization glorified him or any other violent offender, I would feel the same way and take the same kind of actions. 

In this case, and many others, the message is sent to young black men that you are nothing to us if you cannot provide us with financial gain, entertainment, subservience, and acceptance of your status. It tells young black men that if they make a mistake or commit a horrible crime, they are only worthy of fairness if they are famous and can throw a ball. It also reinforces that any cultural norm is reason enough to justify your behavior, especially if you have something white people want. You aren’t expected to be a good human, because we still believe and treat you like property and a commodity—we still consider you to be less than human. 

Vick is lucky. He can do something with a ball well enough to win games and put people in seats. I would even argue that this controversy makes him a MORE valuable commodity to the NFL. He also got an offer in the criminal justice system that no black man in their right mind would ever refuse. He got what almost no other black man would get in the same situation. If the charges of animal cruelty hadn’t been dropped, he probably would have spent a significant portion of his life n prison. 

The NFL and its fans glorify this guy and athletes who have beat up their women or worse, but they shun, mock and crucify a man who kneels to honor and fight the struggle and inequities that young black men face in every facet of life, especially the criminal justice system—and especially black men who don’t make millions of dollars playing ball. 

Whether Vick has redeemed himself or not, the NFL is treating him and all other black athletes as property. It’s another form of slavery. The NFL treats its players like livestock. It’s culture glorifies a bunch of men intentionally running into each other and potentially inflicting irreparable injuries to themselves for our entertainment. If you perform at the expected level—win games and draw crowds—we’ll turn a blind eye to your failings off the field. If we can’t derive profit from you—you don’t win games, fans don’t like you—we will sell you out. Like an unproductive bull, you will be culled. 

I can’t reconcile professional sports or the criminal justice system, because I see both of them treating human beings like animals. And I cannot reconcile that anyone goes unpunished for crimes against the most vulnerable. 

I am not Michael Vick’s god. I don’t even know if I believe in anyone’s god. I wasn’t the judge or prosecutor in his case. I am not an arm of the law, and I am not perfectly anything. There are many things that aren’t crystal clear to me and many things that my own privilege won’t allow me to understand the way other people can. 

All I can say is that there are some lines that are not blurred for me. There are some lines that once crossed cannot be uncrossed. He cannot “un-torture” those dogs. Spouses who beat their significant others cannot take those punches back. People who rape cannot “un-rape.” People who abuse children cannot “un-abuse” them. 

I don’t know what would be enough to right some wrongs or to adequately atone for them. But I do wonder if the things we reinforce by rewarding someone for their ability to make us money are as insidious and terrible as I believe the torturing to death of another living being to be? I wonder if we don’t perpetuate an already destructive set of systems, when we reinforce that the value of a man of color only correlates to their ability to turn a white man a profit, or entertain them on a Sunday? To me, it’s the same game we’ve been playing with race from the start, and in my eyes, no matter the outcome, black men almost always lose. 

Beggars, liars and thieves: Giving is about you, not them.

So, something has really been bugging me for a while. I don’t have a claim to any faith. I’ve been exposed to a lot of them. I seem to embrace elements of several, and I find the most comfort in faith paths that teach us to love one another, to honor our spirits, and to understand our connection to every living thing in the wider universe. Like it or not, none of us is truly ever alone in our existence or our impact on things around us. 

One of the elements of Christianity I particularly embrace is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Show mercy. Help your neighbor. Do what you can. I don’t have much love for the Old Testament. I don’t have a lot of use for self-espoused Christians who choose to ignore the most important values in their book. 

When you give money to someone, it’s no longer yours. It’s not up to you what that person does with it. If you are uncomfortable with what someone might do with the money you give to them, that’s about you—not them. 

Giving and trying to help someone in need should not be predicated on whether or not you believe that person is worthy or not, or if they are going to do something that—in your view—is misusing it.

Charitable giving was never addressed with me growing up. I know from time to time my step dad helped pitch in and buy bicycles for kids at Christmas a few times, but he didn’t ask for praise or talk about it a lot. Neither he nor my mom told me what I should do. 

We all see people standing on street corners asking for handouts. We all see that some people roll down their windows and hand over a buck or few. In that transactional moment, a person decides that person on the street corner is a human being. All human beings are flawed and have failings. Some are con-artists and ne’er do wells. Some are suffering from mental illness or ended up asking for handouts because of some tough break in their lives. You may never know who’s a “good guy” and who’s a “bad guy” in this street corner begging scenario. 

Giving something to someone happens because something in you feels a kindred sense of humanity, and because you know that life is unpredictable and at any given moment, you too could find yourself hoping someone will be moved to help you. Those feelings are about you. Your actions are about you. 

This time last year, my husband lost his job. We were lucky. We were prepared for a rainy day. A lot of—most of—us aren’t able to prepare for a rainy day. We didn’t need help from strangers, but it was still worrisome and stressful. I can’t imagine what that worry and stress would have been if we hadn’t been prepared. We didn’t have to worry that if we needed help, someone might question whether or not we were worthy of that help, or that we would do the wrong thing with it. 

I don’t typically give money to strangers—mostly because I hardly ever have any cash on hand, but also because I know for every kind person around me who thinks I did a decent thing, there will be twice as many who think I’ve been a fool. Every time I see these folks, I have that feeling gnaw at me—that kindred humanity and the sense that it isn’t my job to decide who that person is, it’s my job to decide who I am. 

Children often have that naive innocence that tells them people who need your help are always worthy. My daughter has been in the car with me when we come upon these busy street corners, and she has asked me why someone is standing there. I tell her that they’re standing there because they need help. Her response: “We should give them some money, shouldn’t we?” 

I don’t want to teach my daughter that helping other people might make her a fool. I don’t want to teach her that we should only help people if we know they “deserve” it or can be trusted to use it in the way we think they should. 

Of course, I don’t want to teach her that it’s okay for people to con or take advantage of us either. But in that moment, when she sees someone needing help, I know I will be much more at peace knowing that her inner debate about whether to give someone money or help is about the feelings she has and not whether we should or shouldn’t help our fellow humans based on their worth. I will be happier knowing her decision is about who she is and not who that panhandler on the street corner is. 

When we hand over a buck or few to a stranger, that money is gone, and we will likely never know how the person used it. The thing we will know is who we are and that the action of giving defines us, no matter what happens after that.

As far as that panhandler goes, it’s not my job to address whether they actually go to a car at the end of the day and drive home with a couple hundred bucks. It’s not my job to address whether they go out and buy meth with it later. That’s Karma’s job. 

My job is to recognize that I sometimes let the judgment of others dictate how I respond to that feeling of kindred humanity when I see someone ask for help. And it’s my job to decide whether I teach my kid informed empathy, or bitter judgment. I also have to help her understand that someone is always sitting in judgment of our actions, and it’s only normal to be impacted by that. Sometimes, we’re going to allow our need to be accepted by others to keep us from doing what our hearts tell us. 

We’re going to make mistakes with our fellow humans and we’re going to have to develop our own strategies for meeting all of those feelings about kindred humanity and the need for acceptance with our own truth—either in the moment, or as soon as we are able. 

I always feel like it isn’t right for me not to help someone—not because of who they are, but because of who I am. It’s a feeling I can’t shake, and when I actively ignore it because I might be seen as a fool, that feeling morphs into something else. Shame. When I don’t accept my own feelings about what seems right, I feel so much guilt and shame that I can’t bring myself to make eye contact with the human I am consciously ignoring. That feeling isn’t about them. That is ALL me. 

It’s okay to fail at being a good human. It’s okay to fail at empathy. There will always be another opportunity to help someone in some way. Whether it’s seeing someone begging at the corner of the Walmart parking lot and guiltily driving on by, then buying one of everything on the list of needed items for a local food pantry, or reading a stranger’s heartfelt plea on Facebook asking for programs she can access to give her two kids Christmas because her husband lost his job and deciding that I can spare a little bit of what I have so she can maintain some level of normal for her kids. 

I have no idea if the man I passed up on the parking lot got help or not. Unless he’s a “regular,” I’ll never know. I don’t know if that woman from Facebook and her husband are responsible with their money or have trouble holding down jobs or not. 

But I know who I am, and at the end of the day, it’s myself I live with. I may be a flawed human who doesn’t help every time I can. I also might be a fool when I do. But I’m only a fool in someone else’s eyes. In weighing the importance of being true to myself against the insignificance of someone else’s judging my empathy as foolishness, I think it’s way more important to be able to look myself in the eye. 

Triggered and under threat

So, here in Arkansas tonight, there are a bunch of parents weighing their options. They’re considering whether or not they will send their kids to school tomorrow.

They’re not debating because their kids have spiked a fever or had a bout of vomiting. They’re not worried their kid has a cold or the flu and they might pass it onto some other kid. 

They’re thinking of a threat made online about a mass shooting that could happen at their kid’s school. They’re trying to decide if what is most likely just a really awful joke could actually be real, and if it’s worth keeping their kid home—just to be on the safe side. 

For the first time, I have a child in school. So, I’m one of those parents. 

People make bogus threats to schools, places of worship, companies, government agencies, and organizations every day. No one can ever predict which one of those threats will amount to anything. 

I worked in a synagogue for two years. On two different occasions we evacuated our building because of bomb threats. Luckily, they were just threats.

I’m not keeping my kid home. It’s not because of some principle like choosing not to live in fear or anything noble like that. I’m playing the odds. The threat is non-specific. It included the schools in Kentucky, which were under threat today. I haven’t heard any reports of a school shooting there today. 

I think my daughter and her classmates are going to be fine at school tomorrow. 

But I’m still pissed. I’m pissed that a threat like this could be credible. I’m pissed that any of us have to weigh our options when it comes to whether or not our kids will be safe from being gunned down while they’re learning how to write their name or how to do algebra. I’m pissed that nine days into kindergarten my daughter already knows where to hide from a bad guy at her school.

And I’m pissed at anyone who isn’t pissed that this is an acceptable reality in America. 

If I can believe polls the majority of Americans—including gun owners—want common sense gun reform. So, I don’t know why nothing’s been done. 

In this free country, I have to worry that my kid might get shot at school. In this free country, I’ve stopped taking her with me to the most convenient grocery store, and I avoid going there myself on the weekends now, because wouldn’t that be the most likely time for a shooting? 

Many of us are trying to be more aware in public places. Where are the nearest exits? Is there someplace close to hide or get under cover. 

The big argument against common sense gun reform in America is that we will be giving up some of our freedom. 

Aren’t we already doing that? 

Use your words: Media fail

Something has really been bothering me about the media, and today I just had enough with it. 

I often find myself annoyed by those who talk about the world becoming too politically correct, and too concerned with offending people. In my view, much of what gets labeled as “political correctness” is just common courtesy and human decency. 

That being said, I do feel like there is a dangerous trend in our media. Regardless of liberal or conservative bias, I find myself wanting to scream the same words to media outlets that parents often use when trying to help tantrum throwing toddlers express themselves—use your words! 

The specific trend that bothers me most—today—relates to sexual violence—especially its victims and perpetrators. 

When I was about seven or eight years old, my parents were watching the evening news, and an anchor was reporting on rape. I didn’t know what the word rape meant, so I asked. My stepfather immediately slapped my face and told me not to say that word, leaving me horrified and stunned. 

When I eventually learned what the word meant, I still didn’t understand its power. And lately I’m beginning to wonder who slapped the faces of journalists and writers who cover these crimes and made them afraid to use their words. 

The most obvious recent case that has raised such ire in me is that of known sexual-predator, child rapist, and pedophile Jerry Epstein. There—I used all of my words. 

In media reports, Epstein’s victims are frequently referred to as “underage girls,” “underage minors.” The words you’re looking for are children and little girls. It does not matter how close they are to voting age, being able to drive a car, or even wearing a real bra. His victims were children. 

Most reports also talk about “inappropriate behavior,” “sexual massages,” “trafficking,” and “recruiting.” The words you’re looking for are sexual predation, hand jobs, and exploitation. And while the criminal justice system’s view is more narrow, victims view anything that qualifies as sexual violation of a person in order to derive personal pleasure as rape. 

Today, I even read that despite Epstein’s apparent suicide, the investigation into his crimes, and those who knew of his “penchant for young girls” and helped “recruit” his victims would continue. The words you’re looking for are that the investigation of those who knew of his pedophilia and helped him prey on children will continue. 

The Epstein case is only one example of how the media—in what is at best a misguided attempt to prevent triggering other victims, and at worst a complicity in perpetuating rape culture—hurts victims, and thwarts justice. In today’s media, you rarely see or hear the word rape. Instead, you will hear sexual assault. You rarely hear victims described in ways that remind you they are humans—they become generic terms like “alleged victim.” 

Maybe at one point it seemed to make sense to use the blanket “sexual assault” term to describe sexual crimes, because there are so many ways in which a person can be violated besides penetrative rape. Every kind of sexual violation is criminal. But this kind of blanket term doesn’t posses the same power as the word rape. Since sexual assault might include someone pinning me to the ground and penetrating me by force or simply putting their hand on my backside, there’s room to dispute the severity of an assailant’s actions, and therefore the impact of those actions on the victim. 

I promise you, in the mind of the victim, there is no difference. Sexually violating another person is a rape of their psychological peace just as surely as it is a physical action. Penetration isn’t required.

When we allow ourselves to become squeamish about using real words to describe real horrors, we send a message to those who commit these crimes that what they’re doing isn’t so vile and horrible. We send a message that there is some kind of gray area when it comes to the life-long impact on a victim. It allows the wider culture to accept truly horrible actions as just part of the norm. 

When we can’t use the word rape, rapist, pedophile, or predator when talking about these crimes, it’s easier to put those thoughts out of mind. 

When we fail to identify victims in human terms, they become nothing more than empty vessels. They become the equivalent of the windshield someone broke. 

When we minimize these horrific acts, euphemize their perpetrators, and dehumanize their victims, we give an already entitled patriarchal culture permission to pass off these crimes as “locker room talk or antics” and “boys being boys.” We allow victims to be viewed as acceptable targets because of what they were wearing, where they were, or just because something about them attracted their rapist’s attention—maybe a bare shoulder because they wore a tank top to school.

The sad thing? This is only one example of how language in the media allows humanity to be viewed as little more than collateral damage. 

We allow the media to minimize crimes and to dehumanize crime victims, civilian men, women and children killed in wars, blacks profiled by police, and our fellow humans who happen to be gay, lesbian, transgendered, Hispanic, Muslim or refugees. The word you’re looking for us people.

Use your words. 

Estrangement: When love gets pushed off a cliff.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines estrangement as : “having lost former closeness and affection : in a state of alienation from a previous close or familial relationship.” The key words for me in that definition are “close” and “familial.”

Most of us have some element of wonkiness in at least one familial relationship. We have a sister that always acted out, and made family time miserable. We have a father who doesn’t understand the career path we chose, or agree with our politics. Maybe we have a sibling who we feel picked on us when we were growing up. 

Wonkiness doesn’t have to end a relationship. Sometimes, those rifts and rough edges make us stronger, more persistent, and more self-aware. Maybe they even make us better people, because we learn what we don’t want to be ourselves. 

But sometimes simple wonkiness goes over a cliff. Sometimes, the actions of a family member cross too far over the line, and we find ourselves picking up a figurative hammer and a box of nails, and boarding up all the windows and doors to that person because it’s the only way we know that we can keep them from causing harm. 

Merrimam-Webster defines a boundary as: “something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent.” The key word for me in that definition is “limit.”

We all have a pain tolerance level—the point at which stimuli pushes us beyond what we are able to withstand. It’s very much like a boundary—a boundary or limit to what we are willing or able to endure. 

At times, people we dearly love push beyond our boundaries, limits and tolerance for emotional and psychological pain. Maybe they don’t mean to, but sometimes you can tell someone they are hurting you, and they don’t stop. It’s as if they know you’re on the edge, and they willingly push you over. 

Estrangement is that cliff. 

Not every cliff is beautiful. 

A friend of mine recently expressed some really deep pain and uncertainty about very important familial relationships that are fractured, and radiating pain to loved ones around them. I could really feel for her. She happens to have suffered a significant loss of a loved one, and that loss contributed to the fractures within her family. 

We’re raised to respect our family relationships, and to try and retain them, but very seldom does anyone talk about the reality that retaining some relationships can come at too high a cost. We don’t talk about the reality that some relationships and even people we dearly love can create toxicity in our lives, and that line or boundary is so ignored, and so disrespected that there is no easy resolution. 

People can change. Life experiences can teach us how to better adapt to situations and develop a thicker skin and better coping mechanisms. We can learn from our mistakes, and understand our role in causing pain to other people. But those things don’t happen if we cannot self-examine, and develop self-awareness. 

This begs the question: If I don’t choose to stop hurting someone I love, do they still owe me their loyalty, forgiveness, and unconditional love? If you have experienced estrangement with a close family member, you know that there’s not always a simple answer to that question. And in some instances, the closeness of the familial link prompts others to wonder if your position is unreasonable. 

In families where mental illness, trauma, abuse, or life altering events are intertwined with the relationships in which we develop our sense of self, it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the gray areas. We are conditioned to accept that someone we love doesn’t have the emotional skill set to have appropriate relationships with others. We allow their painful histories to justify their hurtful behaviors, and tell ourselves that they don’t mean to be that way, and they cannot help it. And we often allow the same patterns of transgressions and harm to repeat, in turn damaging our own development, our own growth and our own ability to create and maintain loving and successful relationships as well. 

So what happens when someone we love crosses that invisible, but visceral line where there is no return? 

You have to look yourself in the eye, and you have to make a choice. You can understand that if you go back to the relationship, everything that led that family member to push you past your limit will happen again, and the same scenario will play out over and over. You can distance yourself, limit contact, and try to establish boundaries, and limits. But if those approaches aren’t livable, and that person continues to ignore your limits, you sometimes choose to close the door and walk away. 

From the outside of the situation, others may see your attempt to rescue yourself as rigidity, a failure on your part to be the bigger person, and a sign that you have forgotten the good about your relationship with that person. 

Everyone’s situation is different. We’re often told that forgiveness is not for the person who hurt us, but for ourselves. I haven’t always understood that idea, or believed it. I haven’t understood how that applies to me, because I assumed forgiveness was a “one size fits all” idea. It has taken me at least half a lifetime to understand what forgiveness looks like for me, and I know it must look different for everyone. 

Someone I should have been able to trust abused me and violated me. I don’t owe him anything, but I also don’t have to look back at every moment of my life and paint it with the brush of that pain. I can pick out the things that weren’t awful—the things and memories for which I am grateful—and I can live my life and my truth with love and dignity. Another loved one hurt me many times, and it took me forever to recognize that, and to feel strong enough to establish boundaries and limits. It was a very important relationship, and irreplaceable. I fought hard to retain it, and to honor it, but even while I sobbed and begged her to respect my limit, she pushed me over my cliff. She’s a part of everything I am—the music I love, the stories I read, the memories through her eyes of other people I have lost or never known. 

No matter the distance I have placed between them and myself, these people will never be extracted from who am, and even who I still may become. My forgiveness is knowing that some relationships cause harm and end, but I don’t have to define their entire history by the most painful moments, and I don’t have to forget the good in order to honor my own boundaries, my own limits, and my own tolerance for pain. 

I don’t know what happens when you cut ties with someone and you must face that severance down the road. Most of us who find ourselves estranged from a loved one never planned to be in that position. The answer to that uncertainty is like forgiveness—it’s different for everyone. Maybe some of us find our way back. Maybe the other person changes and the relationship can be rebuilt. But we don’t all get that. We don’t all bridge that distance, because in doing so in the past, we so often have found ourselves teetering on that cliff. 

Everyone has a path, and we all have hurt someone along the way—even people we love. Just as we need to learn what forgiveness looks like for ourselves, we need to understand that it may look very different to someone we have hurt. 

I don’t believe the universe sends us requests for forgiveness, acknowledgment and gratitude like recurring bills in the mailbox. I am not expecting some kind of eviction notice. We can give those things one time and honor our familial ties. But when those ties cut the circulation off between our dignity and attempts to establish reasonable boundaries, we can’t be expected to overlook what’s happening indefinitely. 

We owe no one unlimited opportunities to push us over the cliff.