A Certain Slant of Light

There’s a Certain Slant of Light – Emily Dickinson
“There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –”

In the beginning of my blog’s existence, I was entranced by the “certain slant of light” Emily Dickinson wrote about in the first stanza, but ignored the rest of the poem. Bad English Major, I know, but I loved how sometimes the sun shown perfectly on people’s faces. I fancied that it showed me their souls. Now, a social worker and a therapist, I’m starting to see this poem differently.
I’m struck by the word “oppresses” that is not capitalized, but drags the stanza down so much it might as well be the only word. I’m struck by how oppressive the music of the cathedral is, as if it hears the news reports of today from the 19th century and is weighed down by the sorrow.

“Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –”

The people I serve are often seen as different from each other, certainly, but mostly from society. I’m too familiar with the looks from “normal” cognitively functioning people when they see my clients. What these looks don’t see, however, is the enormous scars that some of them carry internally. I don’t think these scars rendered by oppression from family, social systems and/or grief and loss are “Heavenly Hurts” by any means as they were not meant by any god to be hurt, but to be loved.
Despite that, I am blown away by the resilience and the caring that I see in my client’s, their families, and others who care about them.  Some of my clients are not shown healthy ways to care, but yet do. I am grateful every day to know them, even though some of those days might be harder than others.

“None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –”

The older I get and the more people I serve, the more I realize life is full of death and loss. From a young age, we learn about death, maybe from someone leaving us forever or maybe from a movie or maybe from an event like 9/11, a school shooting…  I may not know Emily Dickinson’s intent when she capitalized “Despair,” but it seems to me that Despair is sadness caused by our grief that continues to seep through our bones, our sleep, and the very air we breathe. And still the older I get, the more amazed I am that humans are not only beings of sadness, but of joy. How does it happen?

“When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –”

Perhaps the secret is held in the land. Each rock, each mountain, each ancient tree has endured years of bad weather and abuse from those who are supposed to be their guardians and still stand. They may not express emotions like us, but they triumphantly, perhaps joyfully, gaze at the sky. They know more about death than us, but go peacefully into the unknown, which we avoid to the best of our abilities. I’m thinking I can learn a lot from nature about how to approach life. But I don’t want to be a recluse (despite like Emily Dickinson); I guess I’ll stick to being a people person who likes nature.

3 items of gratitude:
1. the Earth
2. new connections
3. the use of my hands

Mental Illness Speak Out Week

I’ve once sat on the phone with a woman in the middle of a panic attack, unable to say anything other than, “I’m here with you.” I’ve listened to a woman stress about how much alcohol she’s drinking and about her son who isn’t calling her. I’ve listened to someone my age describe the deep well of his depression he can’t climb out of. I’ve listened to a man who has such terrible anxiety that he tells you his cleaning and grocery schedule a week ahead of time. I’ve listened to friends describe sexual assaults and their subsequent PTSD.

According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), it is Mental Illness Awareness Week, but I wish it was Mental Illness Speak Out Week. We can spew out all of the facts about mental health disorders all we can, but I feel like we won’t be completely aware about mental illness until we listen. Not everyone can be in my field of therapy or volunteer on a hotline, but everyone can listen.

It does take practice. A lot of it. Because we are not trained to listen. We are taught to be heard and to surround ourselves with noise. I myself have always been quiet. I’ve told people that I like to listen instead of talk, but even then I didn’t really know how to listen.

Working at CONTACT Helpline of Central Pennsylvania a couple years ago opened up my eyes (and ears) about the true meaning of listening. There I became aware of all those times I was thinking about my next sentence instead of listening to whoever was speaking. I became aware of all the noise in my head that is keeping me back. Most of all, I learned these active listening skills (and more):

Validating (let them know that their experience/emotion is valid and important)

Withholding judgment (a lot of our statements can unintentionally be judgmental; recognize your own prejudices and have an open mind)

Reflecting (a simple way to tell someone you’re paying attention; one way is to paraphrase what you just heard)

I do not mean to stand on my soapbox and I most certainly do not pretend to know everything about active listening. I have, however, observed how much active listening can change lives for the better. After all, my own mental health struggles have been listened to. And that, to me, has made all the difference in my life. Without having been listened to throughout school and other life experiences, I wouldn’t be the strong person I am today and I most certainly would not have become a therapist. I was listened to so that one day I could become a listener.

So, if you are willing and able, please listen to someone today, tomorrow, or the next year. You might change someone’s life.

And if you aren’t willing or you aren’t able to listen, I encourage you to talk. You are strong and courageous and you can get through whatever you’re going through.


3 things I’m grateful for:

1. People who have listened to me: my high school therapist, my siblings, my parents, my friends

2. Having a steady caseload of clients.

3. The first snowfall happening this Thursday.


National Suicide Prevention Hotline Number: 1-800-273-8255

Dial 2-1-1 for information on mental health resources such as crisis hotlines, therapists, support groups & more. 2-1-1 is a national number.

NAMI’s website: https://www.nami.org/

 

 

A Short Manifesto

I believe in ends and beginnings. I believe the earth turns and we are impermanent. I believe the forests are burning and in so many ways, have been for quite a long time. Something I do not believe in: Bigfoot. I sometime do not believe in myself, but that’s a work in progress frequently in need of a few supporting beams. I believe in ends and beginnings, when the beginnings may be sweet and the ends are sour. I believe the sun will always rise, an experience we need to keep safe for the next generation. I believe our neighbors are hurting and dying and in so many ways, will continue to do so. Something I do not believe in: complete evil in humans. I often do not believe in the goodness of this world, but it is a work in progress constantly supported by many supporting beams.

 


I’m grateful for:

1. The support of my family and friends.

2. Other “supporting beams” in my life/around the world.

3. Cicadas

Except

Almost every morning, my mom and I work out a local gym. When people are impressed, I tell them, “I couldn’t do it without my mom.” And I’ve heard her say, “Knowing she’s expecting me gets me up and going.”

We both do it for self-care. Most of the time. Sometimes, I feel awake and great about myself. Other times, I feel disheartened about my weight. But for the most part, I do it for a short escape from my stress, worries, and schedule.

Except that I can’t always escape my worries, especially about the world, which are represented on the TV screens above me in the form of Fox News and CNN. Looking from one screen to the other, comparing how each story is portrayed differently fills me with a mixture of amusement and irritation. Yesterday, the screens were filled with Epstein’s bail denial, a ballot to change a Denver neighborhood’s name connected with the Klu Klux Klan, and the burning of the flag at a local ICE protest, and more.

The news is forever intermixed with news stories that are both positive and disheartening. I remember watching these same screens during Kavanaugh’s trial last October, knowing that justice would lose. A few months ago, I watched reports of a school shooting in Colorado, thankful that none of the kids I served at my internship were affected.  And in the last weeks, I’ve heard about the scheduling of ICE raids in Denver. Looking at these news stories, I am overwhelmed with emotion: anger, sadness, weariness, and uselessness. I forget the positive news stories and the events that give me hope. Joy seems to be the exception these days.

Except, I’ve found myself listening to podcasts such as Ask Me Another and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, which use humor to poke fun at current events and podcasts such as On Being and Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, which finds meaning making as well as humor in the dark aspects of life.

Except, I found and made music playlists such as A Woman’s Rage: Songs About Being Fed Up (NPR Music on Spotify) which are born out of deep seated frustrations (Kavanaugh, in that particular playlist’s case) and remind me of the solidarity of the MeToo movement and created playlists for the last three years, which contain songs reminding me of the emotions I was feeling and the events that happened.

I am frequently divided between being proud of myself for setting aside these things for self-care and feeling guilty for doing these instead of helping with the world’s woes. I wonder if I’ll be remembered as someone who simply watched or did something. I do wonder, but it doesn’t help anybody to wonder, so I’ll just do. As much as I’m able. While I’m taking care of myself.


Three items of gratitude (from my gratitude box):

First card: I am grateful I’m alive and breathing. 10/19/17. Second card: I’m grateful for this gratitude box. 4/26/18. In between is a rock from Wisconsin.

Commencement

Hello beautiful people!

I’m returning to A Certain Slant of Light after a year of posting. The reasons for this hiatus are simple and complex (per usual): my last year of grad school was intensely busy and I needed a break. Although I enjoyed writing entries, I did not feel like I they were representing my genuine self. The news was constantly depressing, as it still is, and I felt like I was focusing too much on these depressive aspects without also taking care of myself.

These past two years in my social work program, I have learned a lot about self-care. Am I better at it? Not necessarily, but it has led me to practices of gratitude and writing. I hope in my reinvented blog that I will be able to share that with my readers as well as stay faithful to what this blog has always been about for me; reflecting on that certain slant of light that can shine on and transform literature, people, and the world.


Almost two weeks ago, I graduated with my Masters in Social Work (MSW). As I sat through the ceremony, I thought of the two previous graduations I’ve been a part of: high school and undergraduate. Unlike these occasions, I know what I’m going to be doing, what career I’m going to have – at least to a certain extent. At my high school commencement ceremony, I knew I was going to college. At my undergraduate commencement ceremony, I knew I was going to Pennsylvania,  to a place called the Sycamore House. I couldn’t ever have imagined that my year in PA would inspire me to be a social worker. There was a marked emphasis on the meaning of graduation at high school commencement and for the life of me, I can’t remember what was said at my undergraduate ceremony. This time, I did pay attention to the speech, which was about struggles in the speakers’ immigration to the U.S. and the entrepreneurial spirit, but what created the most impact for me was what I had written on my cap:

  gradcap“She Believed She Could So She Did”

And I did!

Now, I can place the letters “MSW” after my name and in the next couple months, I can start calling myself a therapist. A slightly scared, excited, fledgling therapist, but a therapist nonetheless. I am proud that I can add these letters to my name and I am proud that I am training with and joining the legion of therapists. May I be a compassionate, helpful one.


Every week, I try to write down things I’m grateful for. I then deposit them (or an object symbolizing my gratitude) into my gratitude box. After 2 years, it is full and heavy. I am dedicating this space at the end of every entry to share three items of gratitude. Starting… or commencing… now.

I am grateful for:

1. Family

2. The stress of grad school being over.

3. Keeping in touch with old and new friends.

 

always to call them people

I have a habit now of listening to podcasts to help me to go to sleep. Usually I end up falling asleep about 20 minutes in, but tonight, listening to Krista Tippett’s “On Being,” this quote caught my attention:

“I see how we have lapsed into calling the people on ships that are floating perilously around oceans or children and parents in detention around our border – how we call them “migrants” – and what difference it would be both for the journalists who are recording this and the politicians who are legislating it and for us, who are consuming it and figuring out what to do as fellow citizens, if we just – I think we have to call ourselves – always to call them, “people.” -Living the Questions with Krista Tippett #1, On Being (emphasis mine).

I can’t help but think of the moment when a presenter came into one of my classes last quarter and asked us “What are you?” She meant, “what class is this?,” but a couple of us answered the question literally. We said, “human.”

I also can’t help but think of how worn and saccharine an appeal to our better nature is “call them people, not migrants.” I do not disagree in the slightest. But this question has cropped up in varied forms in the past. Rodney King cried out saying, “Can we all get along?” and I’ve heard and seen many people say, “We all come from immigrants,” “We’re all the same.” But yet, despite how true these sentiments have been, they have been fairly futile.

I wonder if there’s a better question. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

As a white, middle class woman, I have the privilege of being able to pronounce that question and let it go. I have the privilege of relying on a stereotype, even one unknown to me, to help my way through an encounter. I have the privilege of sleeping safely and warmly at night. I can only hope that I can use -or better yet, to set aside – my privilege to say, “What can I do to help” to my fellow human, citizen or not.

 

 

 

I can’t pick a single issue.

For my MSW program, I had to choose a concentration for my second and last year. I chose the mental health concentration because it encompasses everything, race, religion, social and economic status, sexuality and gender identity. Truly, mental health is the most important issue for me. But sometimes it doesn’t seem enough. It doesn’t seem enough to focus on people with schizophrenia or dementia and their caretakers, even though that has become a passion for me. It doesn’t seem enough when ICE, our president, and so many others are committing crimes against humanity.

But I’ve been told to focus on an issue or two because otherwise I’ll be stretched too thin. And I’ve been told that I can’t help everyone, even though I want to.

I’ve known that I can’t help everyone for a long time. I knew I couldn’t help my friend when four year old me had the suspicion she was afraid of her father. I couldn’t help that little bird in the backyard who had lost its mother and couldn’t fly. I learned again that I couldn’t help everyone after a couple people at my internship expressed their opinions that they would rather drink themselves to death and be homeless than live in their current situation.

I’ve told myself several times that people hurt and struggle every day no matter what big thing is going on in the news and that is why I’m focusing on these people on a smaller level instead of stressing about nationwide and worldwide situations I cannot possibly have any control over. It works, sometimes.

I can’t pick a single issue. But maybe focusing on mental health is a start.


Kindness

“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. ”
—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

 

the flame

Every time I open my phone, I see this picture:

IMG_20171221_174452661

Taken at the annual remembrance of the homeless who have died on the streets of Denver earlier this year, it reminds me of two things: hope and why I’m studying to be a social worker. The remembrance happened on the longest night of the year and the coldest night that we had felt so far. As the long list of those who had died were read, I spied a kid, about 7 or 8 flame of his candle. Entranced by his candle and enable to keep my own lit, I snapped a quick, albeit poor quality picture.

My family occasionally volunteered at a soup kitchen with my church when I was still in elementary school. I didn’t understand who these people were whose skin was weathered by the sun, had missing teeth, and sometimes spoke roughly. I was simply there to wash dishes and serve dessert. I, of course, did not realize that there were children my age that were like these people, without a home and often without food.

Later in high school, I volunteered at a day shelter in downtown Denver. I saw more weathered skin, missing  teeth and limbs, but I also learned to observe some of their struggles with mental health issues and heard in passing tempestuous relationships with the criminal justice system. What gave me hope as a teenager with a home and no trauma in my past was their smiles and their “thank you.”

It is hard to hold onto that hope of a 15-17 year old as I work with a plethora of people who have been homeless, who have had traumatic experiences, have lost the support of their families because of their substance abuse and/or mental illness, or have been mistreated by so many social systems that are supposedly there for them.

But the thing about that tenacious candle, was that it was held by a child, who perhaps did not quite realize what the memorial was for or what homelessness means, but was there anyway. That child was influenced by his parents, just like I was (and am), to bear witness to the homeless. And perhaps, he, like I, will be inspired to become more than an observer. Perhaps he will become their storyteller, their doctor, or even their social worker. This, in an administration of increased ignorance, gives me hope.

 

we think in colors

I think sometimes

we think in colors

because we are psychologically divided between black and white,

red blood and white satin.

The winter’s often mild, lately,

While we think about green, red, and black poisons.

 

Je pense que je suis une femme jeune ou ancienne

(parceque…)

 

I’m purple. Dark purple. Passionate but world weary.

We think in colors. Sometimes.

But the land doesn’t think. It is.

 

purple-mountain-majesty.jpg (500×357)

A Portrait of MLK Days

Growing up, my family usually participated in the MLK Day marade that marched – or rather, walked at a leisurely pace – through Downtown Denver. The first year I remember going, my dad pulled me in our little red wagon. Then there was the year we saw and briefly talked to Cleo Parker Robinson. And the year we met our neighbors there. The weather (because this is Colorado after all), was always different. It was windy or hot or chilly or cold with a side of hot chocolate. But two things remained the same for over the years: we went to Chipotle afterwards and… it didn’t mean much to me. I had learned about Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, and what they stood for, but I saw the day and the marade as an excuse for no school and a long walk with hundreds of strangers.

In college, even though I had long since discovered racism, both historical and present, MLK Day was admittedly the day before my second semester and quite simply, a day of mental and physical preparation.

Today, I worked. I listened in as a staff member read about MLK to some residents while they ate cake and occasionally interjected with facts or questions. And I returned to listening to and observing the ones I was there to serve. I had learned that all of these civil rights leaders and legends were human and not infallible, but these people I interacted with, even so, more real and equally as impacted by the abuses, neglects, and hatred of the world as the people I learned about in history books.

Listening to a resident describe how he was mistreated by medical professionals and seeing how another resident was abused by family and the world around her, I truly see what racism, sexism, and stigma sound and look like. In some ways, I think working today has been the best experience I’ve ever had of MLK Day. It’s made me feel a little helpless, I have to admit, but mostly, it’s given me another reminder of why I want to be a social worker. Maybe one day instead of feeling helpless, I’ll feel help-ful.