Writing

I need to be doing more of it. The last 6+ months have been so personally heavy that I have utterly neglected this blog. I feel the blog calling me. It's saying, "Sara - get back to me! Share your feelings again!" I will heed its call. Expect a certain outburst of posts in the near future.

Wayside Cup - Team Radnecks

As many of you are already aware, I have been working REALLY hard for The Wayside Center for Popular Education. If you don't know what Wayside is about yet, check out their website here: www.waysidecenter.org. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from their "About Us" section:
"Inspired by the Highlander Center in Tennessee, we envision a vibrant center where activists, organizers and other justice-loving folks can come together for education, training, socializing, rest, renewal, healing, fun and whatever else it takes to grow and be nurtured into a movement powerful enough to create the world we want to live in."

Food Not Bombs Norfolk has entered a team to participate in the first annual Wayside Cup Event. This is a grassroots fundraiser to help Wayside fund their projects and workshops such as "....permaculture workshops, anti-racism training, organizational retreats for long-range planning, interpreting for social justice workshops, skill-shares, cultural events...grow our own food and experiment with, learn about and eventually model ways that we can live more sustainably." I am writing to you today in hopes that you may be able to donate $5 to $10 in our team's name. All donations made in "Team Radnecks" name will help put us closer to bringing home the trophy and bring Wayside closer to achieving their goals. If this is something you can support, please go here: http://www.waysidecenter.org/donate.php

Thanks everyone!!!
=)

Pakistan

The content of this poem might change. This is just what I came up with so far.

How many times
Have we seen this scene
Replayed over and over again in time
Children crying
Men punching and climbing like ants scurrying to the pie
Women bawling hands up to the sky while
Scarce bags of rice are flung at sheer
desparation by the naked emperor's army while we
Sit back
Admiring the emperor's sleek and shimmering new robe
Or
More aptly
Lightly carressing the iphone in our hands, pacified on technology's tit
Flipping from CNN to ...lost to lose the image in a blink
while never pondering
"why?"

Clean Love

This is an excerpt from a book I am reading. It deeply resonated with me so I thought I would share.

Can you imagine love without jealousy, without possessiveness- love cleaned of all its clinginess and desperation? Let's try. We can take some thoughts from Buddhism: What would it be like to love without attachment? Or to open our hearts to someone with no expectation beyond another heart opening in return? Loving just for the joy of it, regardless of what we might get back?
Imagine seeing the beauty and virtues of a beloved and letting go of how their strengths might meet our needs or how their beauty might make us look better.
Imagine seeing another in a clean light of love, without enumerating the ways in which that person does and does not match up to the fantasy we carry around of our perfect mate or dream lover.
Imagine meeting another person in the freedom and innocence of childhood and playing together, without plotting how to make this person give us the kind of love we wish we could have gotten in our actual childhood.
But...but...but. What if you open your heart to someone and you don't like what happens next? Suppose that person gets drunk? Or treats your open affection with scorn? What if this person doesn't fulfill your dreams? What if this one turns out just like the last one? Suppose all those things do happen. What have you lost? A little time, a brief fantasy. Let it go, learn from it, and go find someone more worthy of your love.
Love doesn't much take to being stuffed into forms, which is what everybody's fantasies and imaginings are: custom-built plans for a constructed individual they've created to solve all their problems. Your authors have dream lovers too. But people are not made of clay or stone, and it won't work well to approach them with a chisel. Look what happened to Pygmalion.
How many times have you rejected the possibility of love because it didn't look the way you expected it to? Perhaps some characteristic was missing you were sure you must have, some other trait was present that you never dreamed of accepting. What happens when you throw away your expectations and open your eyes to the fabulous love that is shining right in front of you, hilding out its hand?
Clean love: love without expectations.
Wishing your love clean doesn't require advanced spirituality or weekly psychoanalysis. You'll probably never let go of every single attachment - at least we've never managed it. But maybe you can let go just for an instant: your history, worries, frets, and yearnings will still be there to come back to you when you need them. Just for now, take a look at the nifty person who is standing right in front of you.

Waiting on the Hierophant to Talk

not scream
throw smoke bombs
divert and dance away.
just talk.

meanwhile the time ticks away

tickticktick

the tears keep streaming

.:drip:. .:drip:. .:drip:.

What's a woman to do?

Keep getting gray while waiting for the day that the transformation takes place?

-OR-

Stop waiting for the hierophant to meet my own needs

Nine years gone already

pieces of me blowing

bit by bit

grit by grit

until only my old bones are left.

The hierophant will no longer keep me from myself. Time is up. I will take my power back.

Love is just a four letter word...

I found this really cool old video of Joan Baez playing this song with Earl Scruggs.

Here are the lyrics:

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Café
With a friend of a friend of mine
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four-letter word

Outside a rambling store-front window
Cats meowed 'til the break of day
Me, I kept my mouth shut,
To you I had no words to say
My experience was limited and underfed
You were talking while I hid
To the one who was the father of your kid
You probably didn't think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four-letter word

I said goodbye unnoticed
Pushed towards things in my own games
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name
After searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core
Though I tried and failed at finding any door
I must have thought that there was nothing more absurd
Than that love is just a four-letter word

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man
I could only think in terms of me
And now I understand
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that's supposed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be assured
That love is just a four-letter word

Strange it is to be beside you, many years the tables turned
You'd probably not believe me if told you all I've learned
And it is very very weird, indeed
To hear words like "forever" plead
so ships run through my mind I cannot cheat
it's like looking in a teacher's face complete
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard
That love is just a four-letter word.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

I logged on with the intention of writing about popular education & the Wayside Center. Instead, I find myself wanting to write about something rather personal. In a way, it is connected to Wayside since Wayside also intends to be a place for personal healing as well as popular education. I think that's what got me on this train of thought to begin with.

Many of my friends are aware of the trauma i endured as a child. I was physically, mentally and sexually abused by my mother's ex husband from 4 until I was 12.5. My mother left him the summer before I turned 13 because I finally point blank told her what he had been doing to me. I will always be so grateful for the fact that my mother believed me and left. I have heard too many survivor's tell the sad tale of their mother's accusing them of lying, blaming them & abandoning them further. Thankfully, that was not my situation.

Thus began my journey of healing, learning to re-wire my brain for love rather than fear, relearning how to connect with others in a healthy, wholesome way. Here I am, 19 years later, still continuing down this healing road. I have often thought of this process as an upward spiral. It is never ending, yet the emotions needing attention ebb & flow. Each time I ascend the spiral, I end up better for it despite the pain & hurt that has to be tended to a long the way. I currently find myself with a whole lot of issues resurfacing, which can sometimes lead to me feeling really frustrated and tired. If I am feeling particularly immature about it all, I throw my hands in the air and say "When will this EVER be OVER??". It is painful and tiresome to continue to grow, push myself beyond the bounds of comfort. In reality though, I wouldn't have it any other way. This cycle of pain & growth is what keeps me evolving, keeps me striving to be a better person to myself and a better parent to my children.

I will leave you all with a poem, the title of this blog, written by Portia Nelson. It has often brought me comfort when I am in a self-deprecating mood in regards to some misstep I have taken or succumbing to old self destructive patterns. I hope that someone out there may find some solace in it as well.

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.