Return of the WW

Today’s post will be a solo post by the WW.

It is good to be back!  I have been extremely busy adjusting to my new life, so apologies for not writing much.  In fact, the adjustments I have been going through are part of what I wanted to talk about in today’s post.  So, without further ado…

As you probably know by now, in February, my partner and I uprooted our lives in Illinois and moved over to Missouri for work.  We split up our small family, complete with pets, after two-and-a-half years of living together.  At the time, we thought that we’d be able to find a place to live pretty quickly.  After three months of hard searching with only a few leads here and there, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t.

BUT.  This is not about that.  This is about the feelings that this change brought about.  Since moving, I have questioned a lot about myself and what I believe about my body.  My journey into BoPo Land had only just begun before moving, and when my partner and I left our home, I also left behind everyone I ever felt safe around.  The BB and I would be living in entirely different states for the first time since the beginning of our friendship, and not living on the same street was going to be a difficult adjustment, especially since we had leaned so heavily on each other during the first few steps of acceptance.  My few solo posts since then have taken a more contemplative turn, which really reflects what has been going on in my head for the last three months.

Recent events (both personal and national) have inspired me to recognize what was happening with me, so of course I have to write about it.  In true Gribbski fashion, I present you with a list:

1.     Safety

2.     Activist Burnout

3.     #YesAllWomen and Cyber Activism

Yes, that’s right.  We’re going to talk about that hashtag that almost everyone is talking about.  You’ve probably seen it on Facebook, but if not, I will happily explain what I know about it.  Patience.  We’ll get there.

1.  Safety

I’ve been thinking a lot about safety lately.  Actually, I’ve been thinking about almost nothing else.  I currently work in a teen residential treatment center where safety is the number one concern, and in my three months there, I’ve learned quite a bit about how important it is.

Obviously I’ve always known that safety is important.  From a young age, we are generally taught that we need to do certain things to stay safe, like avoiding strangers and holding your parent’s hand while in a parking lot.  But after working with the population of kids that I work with, I’ve realized just how much I’ve taken my personal safety, especially emotional safety, for granted.  My privilege of being white, middle-class, and with a family gave me that allowance.  Emotional safety is the slightly invisible cousin of physical safety; you don’t tend to think about your emotional safety as being at risk unless it already has been.  We don’t have any rules for small children on protecting their emotional safety.

Now that I am becoming more aware of emotional safety and its importance, I am starting to recognize its importance in my personal life.  I had grown comfortable with my life in Illinois.  I was living with my loving, supportive partner, and I was down the street from my fat writing partner who shared the same experiences with me.  People there knew I was fat and happy.  It was home, and I was emotionally safe. 

Moving to a new place and being distanced from everything and everyone that made me feel safe with my identity of happy and fat completely derailed me.  It took me this long to put into words just how all of the pieces fit together.  But man, it has been rough.  I cut off all my hair, and at the time, I told myself it was because it would be easier to take care of, but I think its because I was too upset to bother with the long hair.  I’ve cried a lot.  I’ve slipped back into unhealthy habits.  I’ve tried covering it up again.  I’ve even started having panic attacks, which is new for me.  There have been some nights where I feel so hopeless that I can’t even sleep, but I don’t know what to do about it.

But after three months, I am rebuilding.  I am starting to feel secure in my identity again.  Here’s a funny story:  I always told myself I wouldn’t care if a student called me fat, but until it actually happened, I wasn’t quite sure.  When it did happen (more violently than I expected), I had to hold in the giggles because I was so relieved that it didn’t sting.

I saw the BB a couple of times, and we discussed all of our life changes.  My partner and I are so close to getting a place to live.  We’re checking one out tomorrow!  I’m growing my hair out.  And after about three weeks of having panic attacks and telling myself that nothing was happening, I finally told someone about it and I’m coming to terms with it. 

I have one final thought to add to this safety section, but it requires a bit of back story, so bear with me.  In fact, I probably could have made it a subsection of safety.  Let’s call it “Support.”

I may have written about this before, but if not, here it is.  My parents and I have struggled a lot with conversations about my health, which I often confused as conversations about my appearance.  There was a lot of miscommunication that made these conversations strained and extremely stressful for both sides.  It wasn’t until the BB and I started this blog that I was finally able to have a healthy conversation with my parents about my body.  I sent them an email and crossed my fingers, hoping for the best, and I got more than I could have asked for.  My parents have been very supportive of my BoPo journey, and if I could tell teenage me that, I would go back in time and save us all a bunch of tears and frustration.

I received an email from my Dad recently that I really wanted to share with everyone.  With his permission, here it is:

Hello, [WW]. Our first disc golf club outing was pretty cool yesterday. [Your sister] came along, and we had five total people. It’s a start!

That’s not why I’m writing, though, and I know email is damn informal, but I want to tell this to you right now while the feeling’s here. For some time now, I have been jotting down phrases in a Kahlil Gibran fashion: little thoughts of big ideas. Short phrases fit well in my short attention span. Anyway, I just found one I had written down and don’t know where it came from, though it reminded my of your blog’s message. Here it is:

Define your own Beautiful.

I really like what you and your Friend are doing in cyberspace. The two of you are sharing thoughts that need to be thought of. Maybe the line I wrote down came out of something I read of yours; I don’t know. However, I wanted to share it with you, because I think of you when I read it.

You are a strong, independent woman. Who cares what other people do? You achieve what you want, and what you want is nearly always for the good of others.

I’ve got hundreds of pages of writings lying around: poems, stories, songs, etc. No one will likely see or hear the majority unless someone goes through my things someday. If you can find a use for this little thought, please share it. You inspire me, and I love you for that. Most Parents are so busy trying to turn their Children into themselves that they don’t take time to learn from the people that are often the smartest in the room. You, however, have taught me much, and I thank you.

Have a great weekend, Abri. You are a Beautiful, Beautiful person.

Love,

Dad

This email is just one of the many kinds of communications I have with Dad, and I think it really ties in well with this idea of emotional safety.  It feels so wonderful to have such an important person in my life validate my thoughts and feelings about something we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on.  This email came when I was just piecing things together again, and it helped solidify my identity as a body-positive activist again.  Which bring us nicely into my next point…

2.  Activist Burnout

One of my oldest and greatest friends, who happens to be a regular reader of this blog, shared an article on facebook a while ago and tagged both the BB and myself in it.  At the time that she posted it, I didn’t read it, and it turned out to be pretty ironic.

Here’s the article.

At the time, I was in the midst of my busiest week at work so far: the parent retreat.  This is the time when the parents from each gender’s community come out to have a couple of great therapeutic bonding days with their kids.  I was so exhausted from work every day that I would barely even look at my Facebook.  SO when I saw this post, I read the title, thought about how interesting it would be, and promptly fell asleep. 

I read the article for the first time yesterday and I was amazed at how much it would have helped me if I had read it sooner.  Note to self, never put off reading something again.  The whole thing is about self-care and how easy it is to get activist burnout if you don’t take care of yourself first.  This whole time, I’ve been wondering if I’m really as BoPo as I claim to be, or if that was just something I forced myself into.  I never realized that I just wasn’t doing the self-care thing properly!  The last three months have been like a recovery period. 

Seriously, read the article, because realizing that it was okay that I didn’t want to write blog entries all the time made me feel a lot better. So much better that I even started looking into the whole #YesAllWomen thing that I kept seeing on Facebook…

3.  #YesAllWomen and Cyber Activism

There are so many things to talk about here, but since I’ve already made this post pretty long, I’ll narrow it down a bit.  #YesAllWomen is a conversation about the persistence of misogyny in every woman’s life.  You know when a man does something terrible and then men around the world say, “well not all men are like that”?  This is sort of a response to that.  Sure, not all men are rapists, but yes, all women have a one in six chance of being raped.  That sort of thing.  #YesAllWomen are targets of misogynistic practices such as street harassment.  #YesAllWomen are taught to never leave drinks unattended at parties, but #NotAllMen are taught to not rape.  Make sense?

You probably heard about Elliot Rodger by now.  If not, here’s a link.

Basically, this guy felt entitled to sex, and when it didn’t happen, he killed a bunch of people and blamed it on women.  This was a punishment for ALL WOMEN who never slept with a guy who was kinda good-looking and nice to them.  What really is getting a lot of people is the fact that before this shooting happened, Rodgers’s therapist called the police.  When they arrived at his house, they decided that everything seemed okay and that Rodgers was lucid and not suspicious, so despite his therapist’s warnings, they left.  But what is really blowing my mind (and a lot of other angry feminist minds) is the fact that we’re blaming this entirely on a mental illness rather than even a little on misogyny and entitlement.  Even though this guy outlined his misogyny-based reasons in a manifesto, we can’t talk about that.  Instead, we’re going to focus on how there’s nothing we can do because he was crazy, and there’s going to be a bunch of arguments about gun law reform. 

Instead of reading my rant about it, you should check out Laci Green’s video about it.

The part of this that I really want to focus on is the Cyber Activism piece.  While the BB and I do practice BoPo in our lives outside of cyberspace, we really push it on the internet.  A lot of people call this kind of activism cowardice or lazy activism, but the #YesAllWomen conversations have been showing why Cyber Activism has a really important place in today’s society.  The internet is a place where women are regularly abused, objectified, harassed, and terrorized, and part of the reason for that is that it is anonymous and easy to do.  The internet is not a safe place for anyone, but especially not for women.  People like Laci Green and Arthur Chu (author of this masterpiece) are making their voices heard in the fight for making safe spaces online for women, but it is certainly not lazy activism.  While Cyber Activism may seem like cowardice, it is really about the medium.  It would not be effective to stage a protest on the street about creating safe spaces online because that isn’t where the violence is happening. 

But the coolest thing about Cyber Activism is that it is more convenient than anything else.  If you can find something that you can really get behind and support online, then do it.  This is an easy step towards implementing some activism into your actual life, like the BB and I did.  We started out with writing about our BoPo journey online, and then we started bringing it up in conversation offline. 

Here’s a small paragraph summarizing what I hope you get out of this (I hope you’re not saying to yourself, “Why didn’t I just scroll down to get the summary?!” but if you are, I won’t be mad about it): Sometimes finding your voice online can help you strengthen it offline, which is what I am rediscovering.  Don’t be afraid to take some time off for yourself, either.  Surround yourself with the people who love you and support you.  Take care of yourself and then take small steps back.  That’s all it takes.

Thanks for being patient with me, readers!  We’ll be back again soon.