Holy Mammogram Moments

I tend to be a rule follower. I am loosening up and busting out on occasion these days, but there is one place that my dogmatic tendencies serve me well - my health care. I dutifully went for my baseline mammogram as I approached the age of forty and have headed to that not so fun appointment each year since. 

A few weeks back, this appointment was like none other that I had ever experienced. I know the drill. Go to the desk and check in. Listen for my name to be called back to interact with the administrative/insurance assistant. Go back to the big waiting room and sit down. Listen for the mammogram hostess to call me back and show me the gowns to put on - "make sure you tie it in the front..." Awkwardly schlep my bag with all my upper body clothes and reading material (brought in for distraction as I wait) inside as I try to hold the gown closed and avoid flashing my saggy breasts to the ladies in the small mammogram waiting room. And then plop down and wait for my turn to go into "the room" with the boob squashing machine.

This time, as I sat in the small waiting room, the lady beside me pointed to the coffee machine and said, "I sure wish there was wine in that thing." The five to six women all nervously waiting chuckled, responded, and made quick human connections. My "new friend" said, "I told my son that having a mammogram is like taking his testicles and smashing them between two metal clamps." As mom of three sons and wife of one man, I am pretty sure that is not a completely fair comparison. I have seen the "collapse on the floor" response when that male body part is involved. I kept that response to myself. She was obviously very anxious. Truthfully, my mammogram experiences are uncomfortable, but not painful. Then my waiting room neighbor was called back into "the room." 

She came out and flopped down back into her chair. "I have to do round two. I felt a lump...my mom had breast cancer in this exact same place." My heart went out to her, and then almost immediately, it was my turn. I thought about her as I did my yearly duty.

Most mammogram technicians are lovely women with a great sense of humor.This wasn't my favorite mammogram tech as she kept saying, "relax your shoulders." Hard to do when the vise is clamping down. I got a little annoyed that two of the angles had to be "re-done," upping the squash count from four to six. 

Then I walked out and saw my neighbor who had gotten difficult news sitting there. All I knew to do was touch her shoulder lightly, look into her eyes, and say "I hope you will be ok." And then I headed out the door into my own life. Ever since, as she comes to mind, I lift her up in prayer.

Later that day, I wrote this light hearted post on my Facebook page - "Today I told my teenage daughters about mammograms as I prepared to head out for the yearly visit. So many exciting things ahead for them as they enter into womanhood...." One of my young forty something brave mom friends said, " I continue to put that dreaded visit off. I know, not good, but it sounds absolutely awful! I think I will need a Valium to make it through!" And what ensued was the beauty of women living and responding to one another in community. There were multiple offers to go with her, lunch invitations post-first mammogram, etc., etc. A mutual friend told her story of finding out about having breast cancer during this routine screening. The idea for an informal "mammogram buddies" was born.

It is so beautiful when we as women walk alongside each other, truly SEE one another, and hold each other's hands during the scary and painful times in life. There are some "less than fun" parts of being female, but I find great comfort and joy in true friends who are willing to hold my hand when I am faced with something that seems overwhelming. And for strangers who offer a smile or a kind word in the midst of an unexpected and unwelcome moment. These truly are some of the holiest moments in life.

PS A few days after I had my mammogram, a pink envelope showed up at my house with these words on the outside "Please Open Immediately." I felt scared and my heartbeat picked up the pace. I was given 10 seconds of genuine empathy for those who receive bad news in this way. It was just a glimpse as I tore open the letter and received a one year pass. Until next year...

PSS Sorry I don't have an original photo of a mammogram machine, BUT, not usually what I am thinking about when I am in "the room." Thanks google images.

Book coming fall of 2017: Adopting Grace: A Parenting Journey Out of Legalism

Poetry From the Mouths of Babes

“Poetry consists of words and phrases and sentences that emerge like something coming out of water. They emerge before us, and they call up something in us. But then they turn us back into our own silence. And that’s why reading poetry, reading it alone silently takes us someplace where we can’t get ordinarily. Poetry opens us to this otherness that exists within us. Don’t you think? You read a poem and you say, “Ah.” And then you listen to what it brings out inside of you. And what it is, is not words; it’s silence.” Marilyn Nelson in a recent OnBeing podcast.

During this particular time in my life as an American citizen, my heart delights and finds rest in poetry. From the Psalms to the words of African American poets to those of children, poetry reaches something deep down inside my soul. On a recent stressful day, I filled up my bathtub, sprinkled in baking soda, Epsom salt, and essential oils, and I just floated. I moved my limbs through the steamy liquid, and it pulled the worries and anxiety right out of my rigid body. That is sometimes how it feels when I listen to or read poetry. Other times, my heart is touched, and I am propelled to ponder the deeper, more complicated sides of life. And sometimes I am moved to action.

About a week ago, I showed up at a downtown park to hear my seventh grade daughter, along with her fellow classmates, read or recite “change makers” poems that they had written. It was a gorgeous, blue skied, North Carolina day. I was both inspired and comforted. Our American future looks bright. These kids are thoughtful, passionate, and full of grace. They will work for justice.

In my daughter’s poem, there is one section that makes me squirm a bit. I am not a savior, though I have tried to be one at times. I have MUCH MORE to say about that matter in my upcoming book – Adopting Grace: A Parenting Journey Out of Legalism. Stay tuned…

Taking a cue from Marilyn Nelson, I will share a few of the poems that I took in as I stood in a downtown square.  I will end this blog without commentary. I hope that you are then, “turned back into your own silence.” Enjoy.

Stereotypes

By Barrett D.

(edited by me. Barrett had a lot to say!)

I walk into a store

And turn my head to the right

I see the boys section

Blue, black, and red

I turn my head to the left

I see the girls section

Pink, sparkles, and ruffles

I ask why?

A few terrorists make a mistake

All of sudden

The whole race is bad

I ask why?

I turn on the TV

Sports is on

It’s always boys playing

And girls are the cheerleaders

I ask why?

Growing up in a world of lies

Everybody says the world is perfect

But it’s not

I discovered that this world is far from perfect

So I ask why?

You say people who love

the same gender as they are,

aren’t equal

That you can only love the opposite gender

You say they're not right

I ask why?

We are all humans

We need to accept people for who they are

And not for what they could be

So live life on the edge

Gain momentum as you go along

Don’t let the opposing force of others

Bring you down

And definitely,

don’t let others push you around

I’d ask why again but

I’ve asked so much already

So instead, i’ll say

My  motto

There will be a day

When there’s no more tears

no more pain

No more fears

There will be a day

When the presence of this world

Will be made new

Will be made great

And there will be a day

When people will change

When people accept

And people will forgive

There will be a day

When you will know my name

Hidden Children

By Hannah W.

In a room that slowly pulls away faith

When you walk in

a glimmer of hope emerges in their face

Through their eyes you can read everything like a book

They wait for the first page of hope to be written

They have so many torn pages behind them

that the true story becomes unclear

Blackouts on almost every page

When they talk

they hold out fresh pages waiting to see what you write

They give you something special and

one wrong move will upset the balance

To them they are forced into a box

blocked from their own voice

I should know

I was in an orphanage at a young age

Trying to balance not being loved

With not being heard

My book tells a story

Ripped pages behind but clean ones before me

What changed?

I found a home

And parents that love me

400,000 children across the US without homes

Find your own voice

Help one person so that they can help themselves

and then maybe one more

Start a ripple of new beginnings in a polluted ocean

You can’t erase the pages you wrote

but you can choose what gets written next

make a change

Unbalanced, Unfair

By Parker F.

This is how it is

Our friends and family afraid

Afraid of coming out

More afraid of themselves

Than being bullied and teased

Afraid of being put under at the dentist

In fear they’ll say something to give it away

This is how it is

Vanilla so much more valued than chocolate

Chocolate fighting to stay on the menu

Just because of the food coloring

Dark chocolate beat and neglected

Vanilla praised and living the life

Just by default

This is how it is

Our mothers and fathers. Same job

Daddy’s balance rising faster

Mommy with a fifth less

Ratio: 80 to 100

Still no women president

Ratio: 0 to 45

This is how it is

Islam, a bad thing

Muslims rightfully fearful

Scared of being a victim of a hate crime

Government officials can’t get back home

Refugees fleeing war can’t get a new start

Stuck in a select few countries

This is how it is

Pulse Nightclub, Orlando

Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X

Women get $0.80 for a man’s $1.00

Yaseen, Hanna, Sulaiman, Rayann

This is how it is

Forces pushing and pullingf

Unbalanced, unfair

We can change how it is

You know it

You’ve seen it

You can change it

Spread awareness, don’t remain silent

Make our world balanced, fair

Practicing Empathy

After I came home from the racial reconciliation day that I wrote about in my last blog, I needed reminders on how to respond to my internal emotions as well as to the people and stories I heard on that day. A short little video by Brené Brown on the topic of empathy came to mind. I sat down and watched this three minute video once again.

Brown’s advice on “perspective taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotion in other people, and then how to communicate that” were all great reminders. I have probably watched this video about five times since it was first introduced to me a year or so ago. I need concrete reminders.

There was a not so long ago day when I experienced skewed and unhealthy empathy. I got myself into some sticky situations. Holding healthy boundaries is a critical piece of practicing healthy empathy.

One chapter of my upcoming book is called Attachment and Emotions 101. These topics have taken study and professional help to land in healthy relation to so many truths of navigating the world of emotions. They have not always been my forté. I had to retrain my brain and work to understand true and healthy empathy. I have rewritten this particular chapter over and over again. It doesn’t come easily to me.  But I have in fact made great progress.

Brown’s suggested empathic response of “I know what it is like down here. You are not alone” gives specific words for situations when I am confronted with difficult emotions of another. Or when these words are not authentic, I suggest something like this: “I have no words. Thank you for sharing this with me.” Or even better sometimes, just a hug.

There are so very many places to practice empathy as I look around at my personal and communal life: The undocumented immigrant parent who has given specific instructions to their children on what to do if they get home from school one day, and they are gone; The rural base of support for Donald Trump that feels invisible, struggling for work, and left behind; The black moms at the conference who continue to struggle with everyday matters of racial injustice; My daughters as they navigate the world of middle school.

photo credit: Ashleigh Cannon

Empathy requires vulnerability. It invites me to put myself in painful places from my own life experience and stories so that I can relate to others in the best possible ways. Where are you being called to be empathetic these days? I would love to hear from you.

My White Mom Privilege

Though the idea used to make me quite uncomfortable, the truth of my body is that my white skin offers me privilege as I navigate this world. Recently I spent most of a day at a conference called “Bridging the Gap Between Black Women and White Women.” On more than one occasion, my white privilege showed up and slapped me right across the face.

There were vulnerable, raw, honest speakers of both races. Several stand out to me. The first was a mom navigating schools alongside her children, just like me. The story she told was one that I could have slipped into many times over during the twenty-five plus years that I have had children in school settings. She wasn’t proud of this story, but it was her honest experience. One of her children has struggles within the classroom setting. He is loud and likes to move. On more than one occasion, she has been called into the school to talk about his behavior. A highly educated woman, she sheepishly shared that whenever she meets with a teacher or administrator, she very intentionally removes her work badge and lays it right on the table in front of the school representatives. She does not want anyone to assume that she or her husband do not work or struggle financially. Her experience is that sometimes such assumptions are made simply because of the color of her skin.

She is not proud of this show of her credentials each time she meets with school officials, but it is her reality. As she told this story, my heart was struck deeply. I have been interacting with teachers and principals for several decades. Not once have I ever felt that I needed to display my credentials. In fact, I have been a stay-at-home mom for all of these years. I have no badge to throw down on the table. But I enter such meetings with confidence and not one thought of whether or not the school official will make negative assumptions about me or my family because of the color of my skin. I have white privilege.

There was talk of fear around being mom to black teenage boys. I pay attention to news and the stories of Trayvon and Michael and Emmett, so this idea was not new to my heart and mind. As the mom of three sons, I understand the concern that all moms of teenage boys have around possible stupid yet developmentally appropriate choices our boys may make. But the possible consequences are often times so much greater for a boy of color. Even the possibility of death for walking down a street with a certain posture; or stealing cigarettes; or speaking or whistling or looking at a white woman in a certain way.

At my table, the one and only African American teacher in her school told this story. She taught first grade She had a blond-haired and blue-eyed boy in her class. He was very disruptive and destroyed the work of his classmates and picked up scissors to use as a weapon. The principal would come into her classroom, look at this boy, and say, “He is so cute. I can’t believe he could do such things.” I asked her, “How would this be different if this was a black boy?” She replied. “Oh, there was another disruptive African American boy in this grade in a different class. He threw a book in class. They called the police.” He was in the first grade!

As I sat and tried to wrap my mind and heart around these stories, tinges of guilt and the old helpless and hopeless feelings around racial issues arose within me. My most profound and instructive interactions came with a lady that I ended up sitting right beside. She is a black single mom. In time, I learned of how much she has to swallow at work just to keep a job that she needs to support her family. At one point as one of the black mothers was telling her story, I became aware that big emotions were arising within my table neighbor. I touched her shoulder – in my mind, this was a gesture of solidarity and compassion.

Later, we got the chance to have honest discussion around each table. The woman beside me in answer to the ever present white woman question, “What do we do?”, felt freedom to speak important truths to me. She gently and directly told me that “What can you do? Where do we start? You don’t even know how things can come across. When you put your hand on my shoulder, I heard ‘quiet down’.” She also shared that as she was processing very deep and heavy emotions, I asked her a reasonable question that could lead to better understanding between us. But my timing was off.

I shared this story with a friend. She said, “The same thing happened to me in yoga teacher training. It was pointed out to me that I was interrupting someone else’s process. I was comforting my crying friend to make me feel better.” Bingo. That is exactly what I was doing around that inter-racial table. And when my timing was off, I treated the black woman beside me as if she was invisible and my question was more important than her feelings in that moment. She had absolutely no reason in the world to trust me or my motives, given her history and her story.

This process of racial understanding and reconciliation is hard work. It is so easy to get defensive and throw up my hands. As I left that day and let so much of what I witnessed and heard swirl around inside of me, I first felt misunderstood, overwhelmed, and a bit defeated. “This is too hard. I am just going to go back to my own world and forget about trying to reconcile.” “I don’t need this stress in the midst of so much anxiety from so many places.” Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. The only reason that I could even entertain such a thought is because I have white privilege. This is not an option for my sisters of color.

In an interesting twist of circumstances, my table neighbor ended up being the person to give me a ride home that day. Each conference participant was challenged to take one action to increase understanding or relationship across our races. I am grateful for this woman who gave me the gift of honesty and personal growth on that day. I invited her and a mutual friend to come to dinner at my house. I hope that in days ahead, we can continue to have the hard conversations. We have much to say to and learn from each other.

FEAR in Parenting and Politics

I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a statement by my friend Tom Revak – “Fear is the ultimate cancer in any relationship.” It resonated with me and seems to be a descriptor of so much that I am observing and feeling these days.

Last night I was sitting at a restaurant with my two girls. For some reason the topic of grounding as a discipline method came up.  One of my girls asked a very astute question. “Mom, with kids, does it work better to scare them with a punishment or is it better to get them to do things because of a good relationship?” She doesn't consciously know this, but that question pretty much sums up one of the core paradigm shifts for me as a parent.

As is often the case these days, I had to begin my answer with this formula: “With your brothers, I did “x,” but now I believe it is better to do “y.“ So I answered her honestly, “Well I have tried both. With your brothers, I used a lot more punishment, but with you, I have come to believe that a strong, connected relationship is a healthier and more effective way to go.” She asked a follow-up question. “Would you ever ground me?” This led to a discussion on natural consequences and when grounding might fall in this category.

As I look at the weekend headlines, instilling fear toward people seems to be one tactic of our new president, particularly on the topic of refugees and others of Muslim faith. Trump’s argument for an immediate immigration freeze from a number of Middle East countries (with the very suspicious absence of several countries that have in fact been a source for terrorists BUT also are places where Trump has significant business investments) is full of scare mongering rhetoric. He appeals to our base level fears of protection and survival.

Unless we are of Native American descent, we are all from a line of refugees and foreigners from “other places.” Over and over and over again, within the Christian scriptures is the call to care for orphans, widows, and foreigners, aka strangers or refugees. They are portrayed as the most vulnerable within society. I feel sad and angry that many of the loudest religious voices in our country are silent or dismissive of this call. Thankfully, others are speaking up.

I agree with my friend Tom that “fear is the ultimate cancer in any relationship.” It is true in the parent/child arena as well as any other human interaction. We can shift the fear dynamic as we take time to listen to the stories and dreams of people different from ourselves. We can transform a relationship within our family when we do the same. When any authority figure uses fear tactics to try and control or dominate, relationships suffer.

As both a parent and a political being in today’s world, one of my go to verses is this one from I John: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” Though creating fear is sometimes expedient and effective for a while, it takes a lot more courage and strength to pursue the path of love. I choose love in both parenting and political perspective. I hope that there are many others who desire to join me.