I am under no illusions that I’m anyone’s savior. Still, in my late twenties and early thirties, I spent a stretch of almost seven years attempting to “save” my ex, TC*, from his addiction, his self-loathing, his insecurities, and generally from himself. TC’s past was marked by childhood sexual abuse, so for a long time I shrugged off the toxic elements of our relationship because I knew about his traumatic past.

Ultimately, however, I accepted that continuing to stick around, even as a friend, so I could keep trying to save him — despite the abuse and the tears and the insecurity, and when he didn’t even want saving anyway — would only have harmed me further. So in mid-2011, I cut off all contact. A year later I moved from Chicago to New York and didn’t give him or what had transpired between us much thought. I knew he was dating someone and was pretty sure there’d been some “overlap” with me, but what did I care at that point?

Back then, my longstanding policy was not to feel responsible for my ex-partners’ lives after parting ways. It was my view that a romantic partner’s choices after our relationship had ended — how they may or may not have changed as a result of our being together, how they conducted themselves with other consenting adults in my wake — didn’t fall under my purview. Such a burden was too large for me to bear, and, if I’m honest with myself now like I try to be, I didn’t see myself as important enough or having the kind of sticking around potential to really affect anyone’s life in a significant way. Because of that general philosophy, it didn’t occur to me to worry or care about the person TC was dating next.

And then I got an email I still think about whenever I write or speak on how alcohol abuse and sexual assault and/or intimate partner violence are intricately connected for so many of us. I knew who it was from immediately, though the subject just said “seeking the truth.”

I didn’t see myself as important enough or having the kind of sticking around potential to really affect anyone’s life in a significant way.
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I felt a lot of things at once. To be clear up front, none of those things were negative feelings about her — the woman who came next — and I didn’t feel intruded upon. By that point, fall of 2014, I’d developed a modest public platform, so getting unexpected messages to my public email account was, and remains, a pretty regular occurrence.

Still, as I considered what it must have taken to reach out to me, my heart sank for the woman who dated TC after I did. You don’t write your boyfriend’s ex from three years earlier — the one who knows all his friends and coworkers and former coworkers and drinking buddies and family (so, everyone) — without thinking about it very hard and realizing you don’t have anywhere else to turn.

Inevitably, I wondered: If I hadn’t played off what happened between he and I, if I had said something — anything! — to someone — anyone! — would his reputation as a good ol’ boy who was sometimes a sloppy drunk, but a pretty alright guy, have been tarnished enough to save his next girlfriend?

What responsibility did I have — do any of us have — to face our abuse in service of the people who come next?

TC was a drinker. (I presume he still is, but I don’t have access to any information that would confirm it.) He’d started working at the bar where we met while he was still in college, so he was initiated into thinking 20 beers and a bottle or so of Jägermeister at the end of a shift was standard. To say that drinking was a lifestyle for 90% of the staff and all of our service industry regulars is an understatement. When I tell my doctors or friends just how much we consumed regularly, they look at me like they can’t believe I’m alive; I share their wonderment.

So while we were dating, I was drinking right alongside him five or six days a week. I dismissed his abusive behavior — especially the economic power he wielded over me when my financial situation was precarious — as being the result of our toxic, alcohol-infused lifestyle and his childhood trauma. I couldn’t work the awful schedule I did for most of our relationship without access to his apartment, and our grocery shopping together meant I could finally eat decently. It took years — until the #YesAllWomen conversation, in fact — to realize that those times he came home extra drunk and woke me up because he wanted to have sex were real violations. I “gave in” because I couldn’t do most of my life if he got upset enough to throw me out; I wasn’t consenting because I couldn’t say no.

Was I ‘Raped Enough’ To Call Myself A Survivor?
He was my boyfriend, so it wasn’t rape.theestablishment.co

My story is complicated — like so many other people’s stories—and my involvement with TC lasted well beyond the years we were an official couple. Once I achieved some level of economic stability and moved into a safe, lovely one-bedroom condo and changed jobs so we weren’t working together, his power was gone — and with it the abuse. No one would call our friendship+ (we weren’t dating, but we were more than friends and still physically involved) healthy by any stretch, but at least the last three years we were “involved,” that involvement was on my terms.

At some point, he began dating a married woman with two kids, which broke his only dating rule. I didn’t know about her until months later when we were basically over, but he also didn’t have an obligation to tell me; we weren’t exclusive and I was certainly seeing other people. And around that time, we had other things to talk about. I got pregnant and, considering our lifestyle, the obvious choice for both of us was to terminate. He even took me to my appointment and looked after me the rest of the day.

But then came the weirdness, the gaslighting, the guilt. It wasn’t all that surprising to watch a rather advanced alcoholic have a feelings delay of several months, so it was easy for him to just say yes when I asked if his behavior was related to the pregnancy. I’d eventually discover why he’d been making me feel guilty for terminating — he was too embarrassed to admit that he was responsible for breaking up a marriage. When he finally came clean about what he’d actually been upset about, I felt only relief that I wasn’t his partner; while I was escaping, she couldn’t begin to know the mess she was inviting into her life.

It took her less time to figure it all out than it had me — of course, his alcoholism was more advanced and she had her two kids to consider. As I opened her email, I assumed she was pregnant just because that’s true of most who write me out of the blue.

“Hi Katie,

I was hoping you could help me with something, differences aside.”

She wanted to know about something that happened around Christmas of 2010; she’d decided he had been lying to her and understandably wanted to know just how far back the lies went. Apparently he’d claimed to have been with me on a certain date to exchange gifts, and she wanted to know if she’d been deceived.

“Something(one) very important is hinged on this.”

My heart sank. I wrote her back immediately, wanting to validate her feelings and concerns even if I didn’t have the exact information she was looking for. That timeframe was the tail end of my involvement with TC, so it was possible I saw him the day she was asking about, but it wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary. My memory simply hadn’t made note of it because I didn’t know to be paying attention.

“Hi. I’m sorry to hear that whatever is happening is rough enough that you’re reaching out to me. I can imagine that was a hard decision.

You’re right that he has trouble with the truth. I gave him a lot of slack for that when we were together because of 1) my own issues 2) his childhood trauma. He can be very endearing and it’s hard to know when it’s genuine and when to question it. I don’t know that I’m going to be much direct help in answering the most specific thing you’re after… But, if you think he’s given you reason to be unsure about something — you probably aren’t imagining it and should trust that feeling.”

I told her I’d flipped through my calendar and Facebook albums trying to nail down that date. I told her when we’d stopped talking and that I hoped she found the answers she was looking for.

What The Strange Bond Of Sharing An Abuser Taught Me About Recovery
theestablishment.co

In the days between my response and her next — and last — email, I agonized over what to do and what I should have done. I’m not someone who deals with feelings of regret as I’m rather forgiving with my past self, but I couldn’t shake it. I hadn’t just terminated my pregnancy because I’d drank a bottle of Jameson a day during the few weeks before I could confirm it or because I didn’t want kids. I very specifically knew I didn’t want him to be a father; just imagining him being responsible for a vulnerable, brand new human gave me nightmares.

While I would never ever blame another survivor of abuse and assault for not reporting or speaking up, I was struggling to extend that same generosity to myself.

When she finally did get back to me, she apologized for the delay, saying she was “running errands with the baby all day” and thanked me genuinely for responding. My heart sank again. She told me more about why the day in question mattered so much to her — she was venting, but also showed me kindness. I felt a kinship with her; there had been overlap with the person TC had dated before me, which he’d also awkwardly lied his way through.

While I would never ever blame another survivor of abuse and assault for not reporting or speaking up, I was struggling to extend that same generosity to myself.
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After thanking me again for sharing my thoughts and experiences, she told me that yes, things were really bad. She was able to call him an addict in her email. Everyone around both of them were drinkers, so she would have been entirely without anyone who would understand or validate her fears that he was deceptive and manipulative. She said their baby was three months old.

“Time to start uncovering what I think are lies and for me to make a decision.”

When I wrote back, I told her a bit about what was actually happening around that time; I didn’t tell her about the abortion because I didn’t want to sound in any way as though I thought I’d made a better decision. I purposely used loaded, truthful language in the hopes that if she was still contemplating whether to keep dealing with his bullshit that I might save her the time I spent sticking around not realizing I didn’t have to.

“We’d been through a lot, I hadn’t owned up to the abuse yet and I needed that four years of my life to have not been complete, meaningless bullshit, so I wanted some closure. I also really did want him to be ok and, since I didn’t know about you, I was really worried he was wallowing (or worse) by himself. As bad as he is when he has someone around, he’s borderline suicidal by himself. Which is NOT your fault/responsibility or mine. It isn’t your job to fix him any more than it was mine.”

I told her that I didn’t feel like I’d been very helpful, but, yes, he was absolutely a very committed addict who didn’t think he’d live to be 40 anyway and assumed he’d die alone. I told her he’d fed me the same lines about not being good enough and I should run away before I get hurt. I wanted to alleviate some of the self-blame I knew she must be feeling for falling into a care-taking role with him.

“[H]e cheats to give himself an asshole ‘out.’ He sees himself as a bad person and when the cheating/lying comes to the surface he can say ‘See; I told you I was — no good — not good enough for you — untrustworthy, etc.’ It’s something abusers and addicts do as a blame deflection/manipulation technique. They get to walk away thinking: ‘Well, I told her…’ <shrug> It isn’t unique to him; it’s textbook and most of us empathetic humans are pulled in by it.”

I said I was sure she would do what was right for her and her family, that I hoped she would find peace, love, and support. I knew “good luck” sounded hollow, but said I meant it with sincerity and kindness.

Their child would be almost three years old now. As best I can tell from sporadic Facebook posts connecting he and I through mutual friends, she chose to leave. From time to time I think about reaching out to her, but I don’t want to intrude. If she wanted more from me, I think she would ask.

I don’t carry guilt anymore about not speaking up at the time; I understand the dynamics of abuse now and know I couldn’t have handled it any way other than how I did. And I’m speaking up now — as are so many others. Sexual assault within relationships is real. Not all force is physical; manipulation can and does remove the ability to say no, and then to speak out about it.

We all have a responsibility to talk about this very uncomfortable topic, to remove the shame and stigma of being abused. Her feeling that I was the only one she could reach out to is an indictment of our entire culture. She couldn’t go to anyone in their life, her family, her co-workers, her friends. I was the only one she thought would believe her.

This month and every month, we all need to speak up. It’s vital that those in our lives know that we are a safe place to come should they be in her situation — that, at the very least, we will believe them. Sexual assault and abuse are messy and complicated and never the fault of the injured party. We must break down rape culture so that people like me and the woman with whom I share an abuser don’t feel isolated and without resources to change our circumstances.

• Name has been changed.

“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays . . . ”

This might be the truest line from any song written for this time of year — a line that fills some with warm waves of nostalgia and others with cold shivers of dread. Those on Team Dread aren’t necessarily from families that treat(ed) them badly. Many are simply exhausted at the thought of having to travel YET AGAIN this year, as they have been required to do every year since they left home. The emotional consequences of not going — perish the thought! — can last throughout the year and into future holidays.

And so we trudge home, through airports and/or holiday traffic with kids and gifts. Why? Because we’re the one(s) who left.

Left.

The word loomed over me for years.

It didn’t matter that I’d left to go to college or that I’d stayed in the new city for a job. It didn’t matter that I was only two hours away from my hometown or that there was a reliable, affordable train connecting it to my new home in Chicago. What mattered was that I LEFT. This inescapable fact meant that it was my responsibility forever and ever (amen!) to make the trek back to Indiana. It was exhausting long before the first time my mom disowned me right before the Christmas of 2011.

The cost of having to return was inconsequential to my parents. Taking off work from hourly jobs without paid vacation or sick days meant that the trip home wasn’t just the $25 or so in gas and tolls or even the time I spent driving exhausted when I shouldn’t have. To go home for a couple days at Christmas could easily cost me $500–1,000, depending on the day of the week Christmas fell and which jobs I was working at the time. But, no matter. I LEFT — therefore, I must return.

‘Left.’ The word loomed over me for years.
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And when I showed up, I better be in a festive mood, goddamnit! Four 60-hour weeks in a row in a retail job listening to Mariah Carey’s holiday album on repeat (OMG it’s only like 42 minutes long) before driving five hours home at half speed in a blizzard resulting in my not being able to stomach Christmas carols? SUCK IT UP! No understanding, no mercy. So much for the sentiment behind those carols, I thought to myself.

The imperative to return home for Christmas was made additionally exhausting, stressful, and expensive because it’s only a month after Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t be until after I graduated college that I was allowed to take advantage of our annual Thanksgiving location: 40 minutes from my new home at my favorite aunt’s house. During college, I was expected to drive home on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving (by far the worst traffic of any day of the year) so that I could ride with my parents two hours back in the direction FROM WHENCE I HAD COME LESS THAN 12 HOURS EARLIER to my aunt’s. Why? I needed to wake up at my parents’ house Friday morning for the annual Christmas decorating bonanza.

Couldn’t we have done the decorating a different day? Or perhaps I could have met my parents at Thanksgiving and then just driven to their house when we all left Thursday evening? Not a chance. It wasn’t worth the anxiety spike that would begin as early as Halloween when I would try and broach the subject of compromise.

I would continue to perform holidays as required to keep the peace for 15 years.

Since 2011’s disowning, when I was told not to feel I had to come home for Christmas, my relationship with holidays has changed — sometimes abruptly, sometimes gradually. I’ve become friends with and heard from folks who have their own stories of being the one who left and the one expected to return, no matter the circumstances. Sharing these experiences has given me a healthier perspective on familial expectations and responsibilities.

I’ve arrived at a place where I now regularly make the case for not going home for the holidays.

Even those without strained relationships have a weight to their words when they talk about “going home” this time of year. I think it begins right there with that phrase.

If I have lived somewhere else longer than I lived in my hometown, why must I call it “home?” The first time I said I had to “go home” when I was already at my parents’ house, bystanders would have thought I’d socked my mom in the stomach and declared I was leaving forever. I hadn’t done it intentionally; usually I was more deliberate with my words and actions in her house so as to make it through without a blow-up of any kind. It would take a few more years before I unapologetically called the city in which I had lived for more than a decade “home” in her presence.

While my mom may be atypical due to a likely undiagnosed mental illness, I have heard similar stories over the years — and not just about parents.

Extended family members participate in the guilt trips as well, and theirs can come with consequences beyond just making you feel bad for not showing up. If we aren’t there at the required moment, we can lose our relationships with them over time — not maliciously, but as a result of our not being physically present at the appointed time(s).

If I have lived somewhere else longer than I lived in my hometown, why must I call it ‘home?’
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Aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. often don’t make an effort to maintain connections — even with the current ease and prevalence of social media. And some of our older relatives understandably never bothered to sign up for Facebook and don’t have the hang of texting. As such, we’re told that our relationships with them, their significant others, and their children — not to mention our place in our families — is largely contingent on our physical presence.

But while this may have made sense 20 or 30 years ago, it’s absurd now. Expensive long-distance phone calls are a thing of the past, easily replaced now with free FaceTime chats. And airline tickets are generally far more affordable during non-holiday periods than during the hectic holiday season. So why engage in the Come Home Or Else holiday theater?

The idea of getting EVERYONE together at the designated day and time is rooted in a way of life that is extremely rare. We allow nostalgia and guilt-tripping to convince us that there is a right day and time to be with family. More and more I ask myself: Who cares when we see each other as long as we see each other? And wouldn’t the loving approach be to set aside a time when those who are coming together don’t experience hardship to make that time happen?

I’m not saying not to go home or to cut off those family members who can do little more than send a card, but I’m not here for the traditional practice of guilting those of us who have left. That guilt is unnecessary in a day and age where travel works in more than one direction — and is likely easier for the older members of the family who don’t have jobs without paid time off or children in tow.

Perhaps if those people fueling the guilt trips cannot engage with you throughout the year — cannot support your life and your choices and your happiness — they’re not all that important. Maybe our holidays should be spent with those who make room for us in their lives whether it’s convenient or not and no matter the distance between us.

This year I will be with my chosen family, rather than the one that raised me. True, it’s not the first season I’ve spent away from my hometown, but it finally feels like this is happening on my terms. I’m not joining up with others who have nowhere to go in a group effort to not feel alone; I have made an affirmative choice to spend time with my loved ones here.

I’m looking forward to this holiday more than any other in my adulthood that I can remember. I have found community with people who value me — and I can’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be.

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, has a 0% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.

A year after a domestic terrorist killed three people in a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, the case is a damn mess — a mess that’s highlighting why the incoming administration, the most anti-abortion in history, could be dangerous not just for patients, but for providers.

The shooter, Robert Lewis Dear Jr., has three separate times now been found not legally competent to stand trial on 179 criminal counts, including murder and attempted murder. Dear’s defense team has asserted an insanity defense against his wishes; Dear himself has stated openly and proudly that he hopes to stand trial because his attack was justified, calling himself a “warrior for the babies.” Defense experts have testified that his belief that the federal government is targeting Christians, and him specifically, is delusional and proof that he cannot fully assist his lawyers.

Justifiable homicide was the defense Scott Roeder used unsuccessfully after shooting Dr. George Tiller to death in 2009. Tiller was the 11th known abortion provider to be killed in the United States for their work. Dr. Warren Hern — one of a handful of providers who still performs late-term abortions after Tiller’s assassination — told ABC News in 2009:

Just 100 miles away from the Colorado Springs clinic, in Boulder, Colorado, Hern fears for his life again — this time because he has denied a request by the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, an anti-choice witch-hunt, for access to confidential patient information. In a scathing five-page letter to panel Chair Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Hern writes:

“You and your Republican party are vigorously allied with a violent terrorist movement that threatens the lives of women, their families, and health care workers. … Your ‘investigation’ is legislative harassment that endangers our lives. The blood of any of us who are assassinated is on your hands.”

Hern has reason to be concerned. As a longtime clinic escort, co-founder of an escort group in Englewood, New Jersey, and founding board member of the Clinic Vest Project, which has provided free vests and other resources to more than 100 clinics in over 30 states just in the past three years, I’m concerned too. The incoming administration openly plans to make life less safe for women overall, and there’s little question that it will embolden, excuse, and even tacitly encourage anti-abortion terrorism.

When an abortion provider is threatened, it is routinely the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service that respond. Both are federal agencies overseen by appointees chosen by the president and his administration. It’s not hard to imagine what effect having hostile men in those positions and as attorney general could have on the safety of those who perform abortions, as well as their staff, their patients, and even neighboring businesses and residents.

The Trump-Pence administration’s appointees thus far show cause for concern, especially since the general public and law enforcement are already disastrously under-educated about anti-abortion extremists’ tactics and history of success.

Last year, Dr. Leah Torres, a Salt Lake City-based OB-GYN specializing in reproductive health, told me that rampant anti-abortion violence — including 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 185 arsons since 1977 — hasn’t been taken seriously enough. “I’m scared for my colleagues, I’m scared for my patients,” Torres said. “This violence continues to be excused because Planned Parenthood provides health care.” If anything, that’s likely to get worse.

The threat to women’s and health care workers’ lives goes all the way to the highest law enforcement position. Anti-choice publication Life News is celebrating the appointment of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to attorney general, due to his 0% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“We are incredibly concerned about Jeff Sessions becoming the attorney general,” NARAL National Communications Director Kaylie Hanson Long told me. “The last person women and families need in this job is someone who has repeatedly given a pass to individuals who commit acts of violence against abortion clinics, doesn’t take sexual assault seriously, and was determined to be too racist by a GOP-led Senate to become a federal judge. But that’s who Jeff Sessions is.”

Sessions’ legislative track record is a cornucopia of abortion restrictions; he has introduced or supported essentially every attack on access. Here’s the not-even-comprehensive list from On the Issues:

• Voted YES on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program)
• Voted YES on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion
• Voted YES on barring HHS (Health & Human Services) grants to organizations that perform abortions
• Voted NO on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines (because the embryos are “babies”)
• Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives (I find demonizing teen parents to be abhorrent, but this points out some hypocrisy)
• Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life (reminder: “partial birth abortion” is not a thing)
• Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions

Sessions isn’t just bad on abortion; he’s atrocious on all manner of human rights. “His record of misogyny and racism makes him unfit to be the country’s top lawyer,” Hanson Long said. “The American people deserve far better, but with Donald Trump at the helm, we know we won’t get it.”

The GOP also has a demonstrated commitment to closing abortion clinics, which not only strips women of access to a legal, protected medical procedure but also makes life easier for domestic terrorists — fewer targets mean easier targeting. There’s no reason to believe this will change under Trump, says Hanson Long: “Instead, we fully expect their priority will be to do everything in their power to restrict a woman’s ability to get health care, including abortion care. Their track records suggest nothing less.”

Clinics have had to brace for increased violence since the doctored tapes targeting Planned Parenthood last summer that painted it as a fetus-fueled capitalist empire. Even clinics that hadn’t previously experienced harassment or hadn’t had picketers for a period of time were forced to create or expand programs to counteract a surge of harassment on their sidewalks and around their parking lots.

Volunteer clinic escort groups are the most visible protection for patients; escorts wear neon vests labeling them as an extension of the clinic and use non-violent non-engagement to create a buffer between picketers and patients. Benita Ulisano is the founder of the Clinic Vest Project and has been involved in escort training and organizing since before the federal policy prohibiting the blockade of doors — the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) Act — was signed in 1994.

“There has been a dramatic increase in vest requests since the Planned Parenthood anti-choice videos were released,” Ulisano told me. “Clinics that did not need vest support or clinic escorts for the longest time now needed our help — and in larger quantities. We have also seen our current client base of escort teams need more vests as well. We have sent vests to over 100 clinic in the past three years, with a dramatic increase in 2015–2016.”

Ulisano is particularly concerned about federal appointments because, essentially, federal law trumps state law. In her city of Chicago, the Pro Life Action League — the group that created “sidewalk counseling” (i.e. harassing patients as they try to enter a clinic) — is suing for the right to get all the way into patients’ faces. If they win, patients will still be protected by the federal FACE act — but not if it’s overturned by the new administration. Ulisano worries about “the blockades happening again like they did in the late 80’s, 90’s when hundreds of anti-choice protesters would show up at a location and literally block entrances and people from going in. It was so, so scary.”

While the threat level started spiking before the election thanks to the videos, Ulisano says clinics are — again — bracing for an increase in harassment.

“The clinic escort group I co-organize for the Illinois Choice Action Team hopes to have an emergency response plan worked out with our clinics,” she said. “It’s an effort we will be working on beginning in 2017. I am aware of other groups doing the same as well.”

As with any policy hindering access to safe, legal abortion, independent providers face the bulk of the obstacles. Independent clinics provide between 60 and 80% of abortions annually, with far less name recognition-boosting fundraising dollars than an organization like Planned Parenthood. It’s vital that our independent clinics have the resources they need ahead of January 20th.

Nikki Madsen, executive director of the Abortion Care Network — the national association for independent community-based, abortion care providers and their allies — stresses that the threat of violence, though it may get worse under the new administration, is nothing clinics aren’t prepared for.

“Abortion care providers care deeply about their staff and patients, so no matter who is in office, Abortion Care Network providers are always thinking about safety and security,” said Madsen. “While we’ve certainly seen some opponents of abortion access emboldened by the recent election, anti-choice harassment and threats are, unfortunately, nothing new.”

What Madsen has seen is an increase in awareness about clinic violence and people signing up to help.

“Our member clinics have seen an increase in the number of people interested in volunteering as clinic escorts since the election,” she said. “It does seem that anticipation of an administration hostile to reproductive rights has mobilized members of our community who are invested in their local clinics and willing to show up to defend patients’ right to access care.”

The interest in helping is welcome. Madsen says that “it’s crucial that allies and community members get to know and support their local clinics.” This is an area where people can do very hands on work providing support; we have a lot of power at the local level.

“There are many ways that those committed to reproductive freedom can help,” Madsen said. “Donate directly to their local clinic, volunteer as an escort, support local and state buffer-zone ordinances, and oppose state funding for deceptive, so-called ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers.’ Because independent abortion care providers are deeply rooted in their communities and every community is faced with different challenges, we recommend connecting with your local clinic directly.”

We can’t know exactly what’s going to happen and how fast. But having the most aggressively anti-abortion administration in our country’s history at the helm means that anti-choice extremists and their supporters have been validated. The combination of validation and perceived oppression (the primarily white, middle-class, Christian picketers are oppressed, don’tcha know!) can be combustive.

Now is the time to get involved in supporting your local clinics. When you’re preparing for an all-out assault on bodily autonomy and self determination, there’s no such thing as too much help.

You can send a message of support to Dr. Hern through NARAL with THIS LINK, find your local independent clinic HERE, and contact the Clinic Vest Project to be connected to a volunteer escort group in your area HERE.

Being smacked in the face by a major revelation is especially jarring for those of us who are hyper-aware and over-analytical. We get worried about what else we missed and what it means, while also trying to process what’s changed. When moving into a safe and supportive living situation with literal and figurative room to think a year and a half ago kicked off a series of life-altering realizations, my critical self-doubt told me I should have gone through all of this ages ago.

Because my mid-late thirties seems too old to me to be figuring out who I am (especially because I thought I knew), I’ve spent more time than usual interrogating myself about new feelings and perspectives. This one has been developing for almost a year now, through hours of conversations in therapy and with several close friends.

The current revelation in progress? Discovering I’m not Kinsey 0.

It turns out I’d assumed I was straight the same way I had assumed I was monogamous and wanted to get married. But different friendships and experiences eventually scrubbed away both assumptions. I’m probably situated at a 2 on Dr. Kinsey’s famous 0–6 scale of sexuality — “predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual” — and still mainly hetero-romantic.

I’m embracing my newly surfaced sexuality with the label “queer.” If gender/ID isn’t a make or break qualification for attraction — if I’m not so intensely and singularly attracted to maleness — then I can easily picture being into people of all or multiple genders.

I’ve always had a rather busy inner monologue — likely due, in part, to being a well-behaved only child left to occupy myself much of the time. I was also the awkward outcast most of my childhood and adolescence, which gave me time to observe “normal” and popular people. I became fascinated with human behavior from the outside, which explains my fondness for Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. His ability to perform human tasks while not quite being able to understand human idiosyncrasies and feel what people felt still resonates with me. I, like Data, tried to mimic behaviors I saw and worked to internalize desires and behaviors.

I was so successful I did myself a disservice. I followed the script set out for me by a hetero/mono-normative culture and internalized it before I realized there were other ways to be and live. There were no out queer women in media and entertainment while I was growing up (not that there are so many roles for them now). I had gay, cisgender male friends in college and my twenties, but didn’t have many women friends, period, and no openly queer women in my life — until I became part of the reproductive justice movement.

While reproductive rights circles are still largely straight and white, reproductive justice circles are more diverse. (Reproductive rights efforts historically focused on decriminalizing abortion; reproductive justice is a term coined by SisterSong to distinguish that well-known, narrow focus from the intersectional efforts of activists of color.) Even before I knew the difference between the two terms, I found myself drawn to organizing and then to social spaces that were largely made up of marginalized people. I became real friends with women — women who shared details of their lives and loves.

In was within this context that I developed a . . . crush? Maybe? A maybe crush.

At a reproductive justice conference, I’d run across the room to hug someone I’d collaborated with, but not yet met, and when I set my stuff down, the two seats next to her were occupied. So I sat behind her next to a professional, intriguing-looking woman who said she worked in public policy at the local level. My wonky heart was captivated — professionally, of course — and a friendship that’s still thriving today was born.

A couple of years ago, I stayed with this friend for a while, generously taking advantage of an offer I knew was a big ask for someone as introverted and independent as she is. We talked a lot — really talked. About pretty much everything. She’d been married to a man, but described herself as bi- or pansexual. So I asked how that manifested in her life, and she was gracious enough to talk about her life in some detail. She had the kind of life I wanted: a professional job in public service, a house and a dog, a developed and comfortable sense of self, and a community of people to spend time with.

We joked that it was too bad I was Kinsey 0; I said it was probably because I just really, really like men.

“It’s like . . . if I’m going out to eat, I’ll always end up at the sushi restaurant or the steak house. Every time,” I said, fumbling through an analogy I would use for years, not realizing I’d cribbed it from an Ani Difranco song (“In or Out”). “I’m never going to pick the Indian restaurant because I like other things more. Now, if a group is going, then there are definitely things on the menu I enjoy, but I’m not going to opt-in if I’m planning the evening.”

We laughed about the sushi restaurant in my analogy standing for straight men.

Sexuality is so binary in our culture; people can either be straight or gay. Those whose gender identities and attractions diverge from the confines of “either, or” fall outside the narratives we’re comfortable with. But through conversations with my friend, who openly eschewed “either, or” for “both, and,” I began to question this limited conception of sexuality.

The enlightening friendship would play an important role in my life when, last year, I started researching an article on adult getaways, and my boyfriend and I began talking about scenarios involving other people. We’d been seeing each other again (we’d dated for a spell in early 2015) for a couple months and had great chemistry; the timing was right to discuss dating as a couple. Not all polyamorous people date in the same fashion.

Some of us know all of our metamours (our partners’ partners), some of us date outside our anchor partner (the live in/spouse role) on our own as a social activity, and some of us date as couples and individually. We decided we could have fun in group scenarios and incorporated it into our flirting and fantasy life.

I put up some profiles and started exploring the idea of dating couples on my own as well; being a third with an established pair who know each other and themselves sounded awesome. I reached out to my friend, knowing she had some experience, and she was excited for me. It was new, but felt normal — a thrill of sorts, but not because it was challenging some norm or breaking a rule. My brain thrives on both routine and newness (as does my boyfriend’s) and I couldn’t wait to expand my experiences.

After chatting with a couple of couples (most often with the woman of a cis/het couple) I realized I should probably figure out just how into women I was. Not because I’m necessarily preoccupied with labels (though my self-analysis-driven anxiety does find them comforting), but because in open and kink circles people are refreshingly upfront about their likes and dislikes, deal breakers, and preferences. If I was going to engage with people honestly, I should probably have some idea of what I wanted.

I spent time thinking about it. My mff (male-female-female) fantasy life got more vivid. Let’s hear it for sexual gifs and how much fun they are to flirt with! I pictured myself as one of the women and then the other. Thanks to the dearth of decent hetero porn (the exceptions being some made and performed by women, trans, and gender nonconforming folks), I perused a fair amount of queer porn.

I also thought about my friend, who I was starting to recognize I was maybe into as more than a friend.

“Maybe I had had a crush on her,” I thought. “Or, maybe I just wanted to be her. Cuz I still basically want to be her.”

I’d never had to evaluate this dynamic before. Why was I drawn to her and how much? And was I confusing a crush with envy or just a tight female bond — a notion that was still new to me as someone who had always primarily had guy friends? No doubt I found her attractive, but was it just in that appreciative way in which you can recognize people are good looking, whether or not they’re your type? It’s not like the attraction had registered on a conscious level when we met . . . but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

My brain had filed it under “I wish I could be more like her” rather than the “I’d like to hit that” category that’s so natural with men thanks to years of conditioning and habit. I’m still not sure if I’ve always been attracted to women, but stifled the impulse, or whether this is simply a newer development as my sexuality has changed over time.

And because my friend is in a committed relationship (among other respect-based reasons) I wasn’t trying to figure out if I should confess with the intention of something happening between us; it was more of a mental exercise I knew she would be okay with.

I knew I could eventually just tell her about the maybe crush, because she’s an adult with boundary skills. We got together on Skype a few weeks ago and I opened with a joke about how maybe that old restaurant analogy didn’t work anymore. She smiled as I said the story had a lot to do with her — that she helped normalize some of the situations that have manifested in my life before I encountered them. She said “CONGRATS!” and got excited (a reaction I’m privileged to have gotten a bunch since coming out on National Coming Out Day) and wanted to know all about “how this came about.” (She’s used to my long stories.)

“It’s evolved over time to my understanding more why I’m comfortable in some spaces and not others and because polyamory literally offers me more choices,” I told her. “You’re how I figured it out. I was trying to determine whether I had . . . a crush on you . . . ” (Thank god she’s still smiling.) “ . . . or just wanted to be you — because who wouldn’t want to be?? — that really helped me work out what I wanted.”

She was predictably gracious and flattered as I interrupted to add  — “and I knew I could tell you and it wouldn’t be weird and you wouldn’t, like, think I was hitting on you or not respecting your current relationship.”

She laughed. She radiates a calm assuredness (one of the things that draws an anxious, less grounded person like me to her) and is deliberate when she talks. When I asked if it was weird or somehow convenient or co-opting for me to be adopting this different label, she shook her head and told me she understood why I asked.

“You’re thoughtful and good-hearted and I don’t think it’ll come across that way,” she said. “Also, if you’re attracted to other genders now, then now you’re queer. Or bi. Or however you want to identify as. It doesn’t really matter whether you always have been or were yesterday. Today you are.”

And just like that I absorbed a bit of her calm confidence. Having heard something similar from another bi friend whose attractions have ebbed and flowed over the years, I felt better. Both friends reminded me that I’d uncovered a lot of things over the past 18 months — everything from learning my ADHD affects my dating life to how much childhood trauma and an abusive adult relationship still affect me. None of those things were any less true because I hadn’t known they were there, under the surface, until recently. Relationships between queer women — the friendships or the romantic ones — simply aren’t modeled for us. Anywhere. (With apologies to Shonda Rhimes for How to Get Away With Murder’s Annalise Keating/Eve Rothlo subplot and recent episodes of Easy and Black Mirror.)

I was being more judgmental about myself than I would ever be of someone else. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been skeptical when I heard someone come out about, well, anything really. People’s lives and circumstances change; our experiences mold us.

If almost everything about the way I see myself and what I’m allowed to be and want has changed, why would my sexuality be static?

My favorite reactions from the people who didn’t know before coming out day were variations of “Oh! Thought you were! Welcome!” My closest friend here in San Diego was so excited I thought she might levitate. I’m very lucky. The people who have stuck around through the past few years (unsurprisingly, mostly people who’ve been marginalized or struggled themselves) are really great — at least when it comes to moments like these. Bigots don’t tend to hang around my social media or in-person spaces much.

Because I am privileged to not have to worry about how anyone will react, I felt comfortable writing about this revelation. Queer women are depicted as a novelty or a turn-on for straight men on the rare occasions they’re depicted at all. (Again, apologies to Ms. Rhimes . . . I LOVE YOU, SHONDA.) Or it’s the focal point of their character. And queer women in hetero relationships are even more invisible — as though you trade in part of who you are when you decide to spend your life with one particular person over another.

Which all means it’s still important for people with a public platform who can be open to not hide behind their privilege like a shield. I’m not shaming anyone for not being out; sharing anything private is unhealthy for some people, for example.

Being open about personal shit is clearly not an issue for me, and so here I am.

I haven’t figured out the answers to all my questions. But I hope I never reach the point where I have nothing new left to experience and, thus, run out of questions altogether.

Rudy Giuliani: “Hillary, we don’t want your socialized medicine. Take it and stuff it up your… I didn’t say it!” https://t.co/oyjY1zuxa2???@politico

ATTENTION RUDY GIULIANI: NOT EVERYTHING IS A FUCKING JOKE.

ICYMI “America’s Mayor” is one of three remaining Donald Trump surrogates. Everyone actually in elected office or running for elected office, from Speaker Paul Ryan on down, is scampering quickly away so they don’t get any of the shit in the “Trump tapes” on their shoes.

“When you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump said on the tape leaked last week. “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Then, yesterday, in case you didn’t yet feel like you were living in a reality show called “American Democracy on Fire,” Giuliani ratcheted up his support of Trump’s “locker room talk” with some of his own.

“We don’t want your socialized medicine! Take it and stuff it, up, ummb buh,” [trails off]. HUGE cheers from the crowd. “I didn’t say it!!” [hands up] “I didn’t say it; I suggested it, but I didn’t say it!”

While I contend that you can make jokes about anything (seriously, even rape — Dane Cook, who is awful, has a funny rape joke), not everything is a joke. Part of what makes Cook’s joke work is that he’s openly mocking how we have essentially casualized the word “rape” in a way that completely desensitizes us to sexual violence and gaslights victims.

Considering Giuliani’s public divorces (he notified his second wife of their divorce via press conference) and fighting with his ex-wives, it wasn’t necessarily inconceivable (if it ever is) that he was misogynistic enough to utter distasteful things about a female political opponent. And then there was his whole “men, at times, talk like that” shrug defense of Trump’s “locker room” talk tape.

“First of all, I don’t know that he did it to anyone,” Giuliani said on CNN. “This is talk, and gosh almighty, he who hasn’t sinned, throw the first stone here.”

When I accidentally heard the audio from yesterday, I was initially stunned. Like all of the women/femme people in my circle, I am worn down because — SORRY, BRO — words matter.

When “suggesting” that someone(s) shove ANYTHING up anywhere on the first woman candidate for president elicits laugh breaks in a speech, violent language against women has again been normalized. And this normalization actively perpetuates assault.

Studies show that shrugging off statements about sexual assault helps cultivate a sense that this violence is normal and to be expected; as a result, women are more likely to question other survivors, and even to refrain from reporting their own assault. I have questioned my own assaults in part because of this normalization.

Moreover, these statements are damaging because, for so many women, they are triggering, bringing to the surface traumatic memories that have been painfully downplayed as no big deal. As writer Kelly Oxford proved on Twitter, this affects basically everyone, to some degree.

Women: tweet me your first assaults. they aren't just stats. I'll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my "pussy" and smiles at me, I'm 12.

???@kellyoxford

Not even 30 minutes later, she followed up her original tweet by tweeting: “I am currently receiving 2 sex assault stories per second. Anyone denying rape culture, please look at my timeline now.”

Oxford was just asking for people’s first sexual assault. (For the record, I was 8 or 9; Kevin, on the playground as we were lining up after recess, walked up and performed the action Trump bragged about in front of the teacher. No action was taken.) Millions of people have seen it, tens of thousands directly retweeted it, and more than can be accurately counted shared their stories.

For most of us, our first assault was done rather casually, and for many it was brushed off by authority figures. So, listening to a high-level campaign surrogate — an authority figure — smile and laugh while describing a violation similar to what we have experienced is FUCKING TRAUMATIC.

It gets worse.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was on ABC’s Good Morning America Wednesday morning; Politico reports she had this to say about Trump’s dwindling support and surrogate count:

“Well we want the support of anybody who’s going to publicly endorse us. But enough of the pussyfooting around in terms of, you know, do you support us or do you not support us? The fact is that some of these leaders have been wishy-washy.”

I get that “pussyfooting around” is a colloquialism. I’ve heard my mom say it in polite company, so I’m going to assume most people aren’t particularly offended by the phrase on its own.

But for the campaign manager of the Republican party’s presidential candidate to NOT GET THE OPTICS of using anything with “pussy” in it right now — WHILE their most active defender and surrogate is at a rally joking about shoving something up an orifice of the opposing candidate — is the death knell of satire.

This is not just — as has been repeatedly suggested to me on Twitter — me being “oversensitive” or demanding everyone be (GASP, THE HORROR!) “politically correct.” It’s not even just me giving a fuck or two about the psyche of more than 50% of our population.

This matters because words become action when they’re legitimized.

And this is hardly limited to words about sexual assault.

America’s Voice updated their “Trump Hate Map” today with a story from Talking Points Memo: “A Donald Trump supporter was arrested Monday night after allegedly threatening to beat a black woman outside a ShopRite in upstate New York.”

According to the responding officer, 55-year-old Todd Warnken yelled: “Trump is going to win & if you don’t like it I’m going to beat your ass.”

Trump’s encouragement of Islamophobia has also led to such pervasive violence, families are being driven out of our country.

To keep from pulling my hair entirely out, I’m going to rest in the optimistic rhetoric of Rebecca Traister, who wrote Monday that “Trump’s One Public Service Was Exposing the Misogyny of the GOP.”

Great, it’s exposed. The question we’re left with, then, is now what? Other than shoveling Skittles into our face holes, how do we use this moment and all this misogyny exposure?

We know how the far-right patriarchy fuckos are using it:

Trump backers tweet #repealthe19th as polls show he'd win if only men voted https://t.co/K4vd5JClE2

???@latimes

I have to hope we can do better — eventually. But much like overt racism spiked during the administration of the first Black president, I’m anticipating even more of this when we inaugurate a woman in January. If that proves to be true, it’s men that will need to handle themselves and their boys — and do a better job of that than us white folks did for our friends of color the past eight years.

You shouldn’t need to be anyone’s father or brother or son to not want to hear men in positions of power talk about grabbing, shoving, poking, sticking, etc. women against their will. Sexual violence is pervasive and destructive; that should be enough to condemn it. Just as language like that used by Giuliani and Trump can give others permission to speak and act in abusive ways, challenging the words that our friends, family, and co-workers use can work to reverse rape culture.

It’s not enough to ignore your buddy’s distasteful rape joke or not participate in egging him on while he plies the girl at the bar to soften her judgement. If we want the violence to stop, we must actively condemn the words and behavior that write the permission slip.

***

Lead image: flickr/PBS NewsHour

When they donned the “pro-life” label in the 1970s, anti-abortion activists and politicians planted their flag in the moral high ground. After all, what could be more moral than protecting the sanctity of life?

Despite their singular focus on forcing any pregnant person to give birth without regard for what happens after the baby takes its first breath, and despite not offering any public advocacy for prenatal care or tackling our country’s horrific maternal mortality and child hunger rates, those opposed to abortion continue to claim that they are righteous.

It’s an incredible act of alchemy really; their rhetoric handily transforms anyone opposed to them into immoralists. (Linking pro-choice demands to morality has rarely been done on the left outside of typically sidelined reproductive justice groups and organizing efforts — like the highly intersectional 2013 Moral Monday protests.)

More than 40 years after the passage of the Hyde Amendment — which prohibits the federal budget from covering abortion care and remains the only medical procedure ever banned from Medicaid — it’s clear that the majority of Americans don’t believe in the rigid structure created by those opposed to abortion. A full 74% of voters — including 62% of Republicans — not only think abortion should be legal, but that “as long as abortion is legal, the amount of money a woman has or does not have should not prevent her from being able to have an abortion.”

With public opinion firmly on the side of bodily autonomy, perhaps it’s time for pro-choicers to snatch back the morality flag and fly it high themselves.

“[T]here is a moral case for abortion. More importantly, there is a moral case to empower a woman to decide whether to have an abortion on the basis of her own moral reasoning,” writes Ann Furedi, chief executive of the UK’s leading abortion provider British Pregnancy Advisory Service and author of a new book, The Moral Case for Abortion.

Furedi argues that empowering people with the right and ability to access abortion — whether or not they exercise that right during their lifetime — is a moral good all its own.

“When we prevent a woman from making her own moral choices about her pregnancy, we undermine her humanity by taking away that ability to exercise her agency,” she says.

The most prominent abortion provider in the country agrees. Dr. Willie Parker, OB/Gyn and board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled simply, “Why I Provide Abortions.” He described his change of heart — having once seen abortion as “morally wrong.” The more patients who came to him for help, however, the harder it was to see denying them care as the moral position:

“I want for women what I want for myself: a life of dignity, health, self-determination and the opportunity to excel and contribute. We know that when women have access to abortion, contraception and medically accurate sex education, they thrive. We who provide abortions do so because our patients need us, and that’s what we are supposed to do: respond to our patients’ needs. It is the deepest level of love that you can have for another person, that you can have compassion for their suffering and you can act to relieve it. That, simply put, is why I provide abortion care.”

The public debate over abortion as it’s covered in the corporate media has little room for this narrative. Abortion polling is done to make it seem as though Americans are divided, that the battle for hearts and minds is up for grabs. News outlets — even on the “left” — and elected officials whose voting records are given high marks by reproductive rights groups perpetuate this by shying away from being bold and unapologetic in their support of abortion care. In January, for example, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — the highest ranking democrat in the House as well as the former Speaker — told the nonpartisan politics/election coverage site Roll Call: “I don’t believe in abortion on demand.”

When we prevent a woman from making her own moral choices about her pregnancy, we undermine her humanity by taking away that ability to exercise her agency.
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Furedi addresses this couched support (to put it nicely) for abortion in both the U.K. and the U.S. in her book, writing:

“Liberal thinking no longer tries to define what is ‘right’ by appealing to deontological [i.e. moral] principles. Instead it looks to find what is ‘acceptable,’ what is ‘reasonable,’ or what ‘works.’ In polite liberal circles, expressions of belief in values, and opinion about rightness and wrongness come across as rather old-fashioned and judgmental.”

Anyone who’s ever been on the wrong side of a Thanksgiving dinner debate has experienced this. Somehow, the conservative viewpoint is always given deference; the impetus to change hearts and minds is on the person speaking from a liberal perspective. Why? Because of the conservative claim on morality — a claim that has been largely conceded over the years by their opponents. Furedi posits that this has left the liberal viewpoint vulnerable:

“A further problem with the liberal estrangement from moral principles is that is has left the moral high ground free for occupation by a small, but loud, minority of those who are fundamentally against reproductive choice for reasons based on faith and doctrine. A moral case as it relates to abortion is assumed to be a case against it, not an argument, as made in these pages, that morally defends its choice.”

This concession of morality has allowed stigma to flourish around a procedure that has existed as long as pregnancy, has a less than 1% complication rate, and will be utilized by one-in-three people who experience pregnancy in their lifetimes.

Much of the work being done by reproductive justice groups is to — at least in part — reduce the stigma around abortion care. Those leading this work overtly challenge unfortunate and persistent tropes like “safe, legal, and rare” by proudly declaring abortion a public good. They’re here to take back that moral high ground once and for all.

“Abortion is absolutely a moral and public good in and of itself,” Pamela Merritt, co-director of the reproductive rights direct action group ReproAction, told The Establishment. “That’s why the current state of abortion access in America is a degrading, man-made humanitarian crisis.”

ReproAction has gone hard at liberal favorites like Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and President Obama for being wishy-washy on abortion, often avoiding referencing it — even with euphemisms. Merritt and her co-founder Erin Matson are looking for champions and demanding even those “on our side” to be proactive. As Rebecca Traister so concisely wrote in her latest book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, women in the democratic party were told to put their needs aside for the good of the country for decades as anti-choice democrats were strategically run and elected. The result of the party priorities? Anti-abortion restrictions have been introduced and passed at a historic rate.

Merritt is here for a trend reversal:

“To deny . . . people who experience pregnancy access to abortion is to deny access to a needed and safe healthcare option. It’s ridiculous that so many people have the right to abortion in name only because of closed clinics, financial barriers, insulting hurdles, baseless religious exemptions, and terrorism against providers. ReproAction celebrates legal, accessible, and funded abortion as a great thing. We know women must be able to have sex and become parents on their own terms if they are ever to enjoy political, social, and economic equality.”

Steph Herold, co-director of The Sea Change Program, which is dedicated to the study and reduction of stigma surrounding abortion and other reproductive experiences, is also unapologetically celebratory about the role abortion plays in our lives.

“Abortion is more than a public good; it’s a five-minute procedure that often gives people control back over their lives,” Herold told The Establishment. “When people are able to choose their own futures and decide if and when they’re ready to start a family, that’s better for them and for society as a whole.”

To deny people who experience pregnancy access to abortion is to deny access to a needed and safe healthcare option.
Click To Tweet

Herold is frustrated at the way polling is often done on abortion; it assumes a binary that simply doesn’t exist. People’s views on abortion change with circumstances and questions from polling firms are sorely inadequate.

“Unfortunately, the majority of polling data we have about how the American public thinks about abortion is pretty flawed, because it turns out people have complex views about this issue,” she says. “For example, a standard Gallup question they’ve asked for decades is, ‘With respect to the abortion issue, do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life?’ What that question doesn’t tell you is how that person would treat a friend or family member who’s had an abortion or how they think an abortion experience should be.”

Citing newer polling data with questions that respect the complexity with which people approach abortion, Herold was hopeful.

I Had An Abortion Because I Love My Son

“Of the people they polled, most want abortion to be available in their communities,” she says. “They want people who have abortions to feel supported and be able to access abortion without burdens. To me, this signals that the way people label themselves related to abortion views doesn’t necessarily map on to how they feel interpersonally about abortion. We need to figure out how to help those folks see how they can help manifest that desire for compassionate abortion care in their communities into action.”

The question is, then: How do we do that? How do we get to a place where society allows the standard internal moral compass supporting legal, accessible abortion to become the presiding public narrative? How do we take the private conviction that — at the very least — it isn’t our legislature’s right to dictate the course of a pregnancy and make that conviction the publicly acknowledged starting place from which laws are written and discussions of health begin?

“At the same time as being a procedure that over 1 million women have every year, we all know that abortion is a social, cultural, and political experience too,” says Herold. “That’s where I think we have some work to do — in making abortion normal, social, and a connecting instead of a dividing issue.”

Merritt, like Furedi, spreads the blame for the stigma barrier around.

“We must acknowledge that abortion stigma has been nurtured by both opponents and advocates; people have received negative messages about abortion for decades,” she says. “So, when I talk to people about abortion, they often start out repeating those negative messages — even if they support access.”

One of the biggest myths that perpetuates stigma is “abortion regret.” It’s the foundation of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s “concern” for women who have abortions. As Supreme Court expert Dahlia Lithwick wrote at Slate last year, Kennedy helped to solidify this non-occurrence into both our legal system and broader culture:

“Those of us who were incensed at Kennedy’s paternalism in Gonzales v. Carhart, his last major abortion opinion, in 2007, took issue with his odd (and scientifically unsupported) fetish around ‘post abortion syndrome,’ and his insistence that ‘it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.’

This kind of language sent Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself into orbit in her dissent, scathingly noting that ‘the Court invokes an anti-abortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from severe depression and loss of esteem.’ Ginsburg went on to quote a 2006 study showing that ‘neither the weight of the scientific evidence to date nor the observable reality of 33 years of legal abortion in the United States comports with the idea that having an abortion is any more dangerous to a woman’s long-term mental health than delivering and parenting a child that she did not intend to have.’”

Still, the myth persists.

A 2013 study at the University of California, San Francisco found that “[w]omen who are denied an abortion feel more regret and less relief one week later than women who undergo the procedure” and a 2015 study from Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) found that just having abortion available for those who can get pregnant increases positivity and the ability to make and achieve goals.

Study after study proves the emotional, fiscal, and cultural importance of abortion access, and yet far too many ascribe to Kennedy’s thinking: “Well, certainly some people regret their decision.” Sure, people regret decisions every day; this doesn’t mean we take away their right to make regrettable decisions. Even if “abortion regret” or “post-abortion syndrome” were real, it wouldn’t be legislators’ jobs or right to eliminate options. As Furedi writes, “policy makers and politicians need to accept that there is a moral component to abortion and not everything about it can, or should, be resolved by law or regulation.”

“The reality is that most people who have an abortion do not experience regret,” says Merritt. “I’m thrilled that people have started to share their stories and push back against stigma and I’m optimistic that the more we talk about the reality of abortion, who has abortions, and what their actual experiences are, the more people in America will see abortion as a moral good.”

Study after study proves the emotional, fiscal, and cultural importance of abortion access.
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Herold looks forward to a day where abortion is not just accepted, but understood as a beneficial part of society.

“Abortion is a fact of life — and I use the word ‘life’ deliberately,” she says. “People will always need abortions simply because people will always have sex. I’d like to think not so much that we’re stuck with abortion, but rather that we are in the awesome place of building a world where abortion is a visible to the public — where people who have abortions can choose to be open about that experience, where abortion is integrated into mainstream medicine, and where having an abortion fosters connection between people instead of driving them apart.”

To get there, even with the public behind abortion access individually, will take time and yet more work.

“ReproAction believes in the power of direct action, so we are excited to build on the momentum already present in the grassroots,” says Merritt. “We’re going to be doing some raucous work: holding those who stand in our way accountable, and organizing fellow rabble-rousers on the ground. Now is not the time to step back. Now is the time to march forward — and we’re ready.”

Herold is a believer in the one-on-one, person-to-person approach that empowers everyone to do their part to reduce stigma and thereby increase access to abortion.

“We all have a role to play in normalizing abortion. We can start at a place as familial and familiar as the dinner table and have genuine conversations with friends, family, colleagues, pastors, exploring how you think the experience of abortion should be in your community,” she says. “We can all evaluate where our community is at in terms of abortion access. If a friend said that they needed an abortion, would you know where to refer her for compassionate care? Would you know how to support her? Make sure you’re prepared, and then help others get there too.”

These conversations and visible showing of support like op-eds, flyers, buttons, and social media posts don’t just serve to further culture change; they also speak directly to people who might need support.

“We all know and love someone who’s had an abortion, whether we know it or not,” says Herold. “How are you going to make sure that person knows you are there for them? It really starts at that person-to-person level. Then you can build to something more: How can you show other people in your community that have had abortions that you support them? . . . There are so many ways to connect to this issue and we all have a responsibility to give people ways to plug in and take action.”

Here’s to Dr. Parker’s motivation becoming the norm for our culture:

“I found my sense of purpose and place by making the decision to provide abortions, and it is very much consistent with my core values, in regard to my spirituality and my humanity. That’s why I do this work.”

If politicians and the public could leave the doctoring to the doctors and the deciding to the pregnant person, we could be done with punishing policies like Hyde.

“We must give credit to and support the activism that resulted in the Democratic party officially opposing Hyde, and ReproAction is committed to adding our energy and voice to the call to repeal Hyde,” says Merritt. “The lack of government funding for abortion is shameful and has had devastating consequences for many women. Now is the time to push individual politicians to embrace their party’s opposition to Hyde and hold them accountable for doing the work to achieve repeal.”

Herold also credited grassroots activism for the historic stance of the Democratic party and its presidential candidate.

“The fact that the Democratic party platform now includes repealing the Hyde Amendment is a direct result of women of color and reproductive justice groups campaigning fiercely on this issue over the last decade and being unwilling to let the Democratic party — and, frankly, the pro-choice movement — throw people struggling to make ends meet under the bus,” says Herold.

“This change is also the direct result of the over 100 abortion funds across the country making visible the gap between the promise of Roe — abortion access for all — and the reality of abortion access in the US: abortion access only for the privileged.”

A right available only to the privileged is certainly not a moral position for a society. If the reproductive justice activists of today have their way, we’re moving toward a more consistent and equitable culture.

Despite our tendency to overlook important off-the-field issues, a dozen NFL teams and social media coverage of their decisions made the often invisible priority problems of the league hard to miss during this year’s draft. Most pointed is the difference between how this year’s star prospect, Laremy Tunsil, was received compared with last year’s star Jameis Winston. Video evidence that you smoked some pot one time? Teams are worried you might be a “problem” if they sign you. Be the subject of the highest profile rape accusation in college football history complete with damning evidence and an administration/city law enforcement cover-up? You’re celebrated after going number one, just as anticipated.

Laremy Tunsil was projected to be the number one draft pick this year — a big deal for a left tackle, as the top slot usually goes to the higher profile, point-scoring positions like quarterback, running back, and wide receiver. Considering only the first 19 picks last year received fully guaranteed contracts, just going first round isn’t enough. To ensure you land a contract that will take care of you and yours beyond your ability to play in a very dangerous, volatile game, you need to go in the first half of the first round.

So when Tunsil’s hacked Twitter account tweeted a video of someone assumed to be him smoking weed through a gas mask bong moments before the draft kicked off Thursday night, all he could do was delete the account and watch as millions of dollars literally went up in smoke. Tunsil eventually went 13th to the Miami Dolphins — not even the top left tackle in the draft, let alone number one overall.

This year, the number one pick is expected to land a contract worth $28.65 million, while number 13 should come in around $12.76 million. Tunsil lost an easy $16 million+ and gained an undeserved label of “problematic player” because he smoked some pot in college. As Ian O’Connor reported for ESPN.com, that seconds-long video of a player inhaling — something, by the way, our president admitted to before we elected him twice — sent teams running for the hills:

‘He was the highest-graded player on our board,’ said Giants general manager Jerry Reese, ‘beyond the guys with issues.’”

“Guys with the issues” — aka, guys who smoke pot? A non-violent act that’s legal in some parts of the country?

I typically ignore the draft hoopla and wait for one of my favorite sports writers to tell me how it went and how my team did, but playwright/“comedy person” Jack Moore’s feed nabbed my attention first:

Reminder: Jameis Winston went first in the NFL draft last year despite RAPE ALLEGATIONS. Laremy Tunsil once smoked weed and no one wants him

@JackPMoore

I had Jameis Winston — who signed a four-year, $23.352 million contract last year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers despite accusations of raping a fellow FSU classmate — automatically suggested for my Fantasy Football team yesterday morning as I was ranking my QBs before our league’s draft. This is what it’s like to be a rape survivor and a football fan: You watch and listen as prominent national public figures comment on what they’d need to believe us. You watch as sexual predators are celebrated every week — both those who are “just” accused and those who have been convicted.

USA Today has an NFL Player Arrests database. I count 10 with sexual assault and/or domestic violence charges from 2015 alone. I count at least eight in 2014, the year before teams were falling all over themselves to sign Winston. And those are just the official arrests — for a set of crimes that are widely under-reported and all too often not taken seriously by law enforcement. NFL players are arrested for domestic violence, rape, battery, sexual assault every year, but league leaders are clutching their pearls over some pot — a substance that’s increasingly (and accurately) seen as less harmful than alcohol. I asked Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation and host of the “Edge of Sports” podcast about the disconnect:

“The NFL has a ‘man code’ baked into its ethos that sees weed as a greater mark against your character than sexual assault. It really is sick. Is it because marijuana is seen as a relaxant, something that makes you lose your edge while sexual assault is associated with the hyper-aggression that makes for good football? I don’t know. But I do know that many NFL GMs [general managers] — most of whom never played the game — could benefit from putting down the coffee and chilling the hell out.”

Moore also made another good point in his Twitter feed:

HOW DARE HE SMOKE MARIJUANA?!” the commentators asked as the young man began the career that would kill him in his 50’s.

@JackPMoore

The chances that Tunsil and his teammates will be prescribed medical marijuana for football-related trauma injuries is pretty damn high. But heaven forbid that’s not the first time they inhale. What does the commissioner have to say about the whole thing? Roger Goodell was true to his never-fails-to-disappoint form:

Roger Goodell to @MikeAndMike on Tunsil situation: “I think it’s all part of what makes the draft so exciting.” https://t.co/W1S1NwgfcU

@ESPNNFL

So, your league’s gross disproportionate handling of its player and prospect histories leading to the loss of millions of dollars and the labeling of a player who has yet to be on an NFL field as one of the “guys with the issues” — which could cost him future millions as well — is just an “exciting” marketing moment?

Classy, Roger.

Goodell’s problematic (to say the least) history on almost every issue imaginable has been well documented by many, including Zirin who called for his resignation last year and has painted the commissioner as both the abuser and the savior in his handling of domestic abuse cases. Suffice it to say, it’s time to revive Ultraviolet’s #GoodellMustGo campaign.

I would love nothing more than to watch Tunsil excel as a player, rack up some records, and make every team that passed on him regret their cowardice. So, even though it means I have to root for the Dolphins from time to time, I’m with O’Connor:

“Here’s hoping that chip inspires Tunsil to become the best player in his draft class. He got screwed Thursday night, as in royally. He didn’t deserve to be humiliated for doing something that a lot of college kids minor in, if not major in, yet in Chicago he handled this ungodly and unscheduled mess like a grown-up.”

The NFL, on the other hand, could stand to be a bit more humiliated for its appalling choice of priorities.

Lead image: flickr/Parker Anderson

I do not need to be surprised by injustice or bigotry to be outraged.

Recently, there has been a spike in people explaining to me that a thing I am annoyed about or find infuriating is “unsurprising,” inevitably followed by a “because” clause. As the heat of real, white-hot rage boils up from my toes through my chest and out my ears, turning my head into a tea kettle, I scan back to see if I indicated any surprise in what I said. Inevitably — as I am rarely surprised or prone to unintentionally over-the-top language at this point in my life, therapy, and recovery from childhood — what I find is that I didn’t in any way express surprise.

Of course I didn’t. Injustice is enragingly common. So why dismiss and downplay my outrage with a “oh, that’s unsurprising” response?

To the apathetics who go into rhetorically shallow, verbally deep detail about why I shouldn’t be surprised at the thing they super-wish we’d all stop talking about because they find it so bothersome, I have this to say: Give it the fuck up. I see friends and writers and culture-change advocates who express opinions both in person and online go from zero to boiling over on a regular basis when this happens. Depending on our backgrounds and levels of privilege, we are growing increasingly intolerant of this bullshit — particularly when it comes from “our side,” which it usually does — for a variety of reasons. All of them have to do with where the “unsurprising” shrug-off stems from: We’re being told to calm down about something we see and/or experience regularly.

“I’m not surprised” as an online comment is a close cousin to “Who cares?” The Who Cares People stop by to let you know how much they think the thing they’re taking the time to comment on is a waste of everyone’s time. They don’t get the irony here, and it for some reason doesn’t occur to them to keep scrolling; They simply must let everyone know what is and isn’t valuable or interesting.

“I’m not surprised” as an in-person comment has long been used to announce the necessity of topic change. I’ve heard it in bars, at the Thanksgiving table, in conversations with friends’ obnoxious partners who think they know more than me about topics I cover for a living, and by onlookers in every imaginable public space who aren’t even part of the conversation they’re policing.

When you tell someone you aren’t surprised, it’s the same as telling them they shouldn’t be surprised and, frankly, something about them is lacking or deficient since they are reacting in this irrational and overly emotional manner. This is especially infuriating when the person being dismissed hasn’t expressed surprise or otherwise reacted in any emotional manner other than to say something is wrong, sad, unjust, frustrating, or any other number of pejorative, but hardly inflammatory descriptors.

Oh, and if you’re a man telling a woman “I’m not surprised,” you might as well be telling her to smile.

The “it’s not a surprise” rhetoric acts as if injustice can only register as such if it’s shocking. But in reality, those of us engaged in social justice are more righteously angry about the things that do not surprise us than we are about the rare instances of unexpected awful. This should make sense not just from an experience standpoint, but also from a common sense one. The everyday-ness of certain brands of injustice, from misogynistic advertisements, to the hatred spewed by those who twist religion to suit their bigotry, to the microaggressions where our country’s entrenched racism plays itself out in what should be innocuous interactions, ARE ALL THE MORE INFURIATING due to our lack of surprise. That we as a society have allowed such things to be shruggable, letting the privileged apathetics and the young view them as accepted norms, means that whatever rage we are expressing is more justified, not less, as you would like it to be.

Perhaps it is not we, the unsurprised and yet enraged, but you, the dismissive and actively ignorant, who should pause to consider your reaction to said event or statement. Your condescension and silencing are a bigger problem than the issues we’re raging about. Silence would make you complicit; purposely policing our anger and lived experiences is actively engaging in strengthening the oppressive systems that continue the cycles of injustice we’re upset about and make it unsafe for us to navigate this world.

Even if I were rhetorically off-base (and I’m not) about the justification of our collective and individual rage, you sidling up to say how unsurprised you are smacks of superiority. If you aren’t surprised, you could just listen to Elon James White, who is offering you an alternative:

If you’ve never done it before, today is a really, really great day to start following the 1st rule of #ElonsLAW???@elonjames

So, next time you feel the need to weigh in with how much a thing isn’t a thing, while people are sharing how they’re affected by said thing, pause to reframe your thought: Ask yourself not why we are overreacting, but why you are underreacting. And then reread our words to see if we actually overreacted or if you are projecting that onto us while hiding behind your unwillingness to hear people and participate in making shit better.

Some days, like today, I just can’t. More accurately, sometimes I CAN’T in flashing all caps with animation and, well, here:

We’re taught not to say those words, that they’re self-defeating or will magically become true because we say or think them. Hell, that’s the ENTIRE premise of The Secret — that your self-talk and desires are why you have/haven’t achieved all the things you want. I’ve actively been reclaiming the phrase “I Can’t” for a while now because it frees me up from self-blame and means that I have time to pursue things I Can do and am good at.

We’re also taught to not say “This sucks!” because it externalizes blame — as if an internal blame deficiency is something we’re all suffering from and as if there aren’t real life experiences and structural/systemic reasons for why shit is legitimately hard. Prescribing positivity as though it’s magical fairy dust for people with challenges is mean and ableist. So “This sucks!” is the next phrase I’m going to reclaim — and I’m starting right now as I continue my pursuit of effective treatment for a number of mental disorders.

The reason is simple: I will fucking lose it if I don’t acknowledge out loud that some things inherently suck. Figuring out what kind of care you need, accessing said care, and getting that care is exhausting. And at the point of getting care, you are literally just getting started. Yes, there’s some relief at having survived the no-help-available portion of the ordeal, but you haven’t actually started unpacking or treating anything yet. And, well, that sucks.

And in fact, many things about the process of getting to where I am right now — seeking second-line treatment 17 months after beginning a care plan — sucked quite a bit.

When you spend your entire adolescence with a major depressive disorder your parents ignore like it’s their job; have your Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) missed by a mother whose actual job included testing kids for ADHD; and endure your early 20s with a bipolar misdiagnosis that seemed plausible because of the symptoms actually caused by a combination of the depression and ADHD . . . well, that sucks!

When you spend years paying one-quarter of your meager service industry wage on out-of-pocket health insurance because you knew the bipolar diagnosis was coming and you were about to be uninsurable (pre-Affordable Care Act inclusion of pre-existing conditions, #ThanksObama); bounce around to overworked, exhausted sliding-scale psychiatrists at community centers willing to prescribe whatever; and put yourself through multiple drug trials because you can’t afford medication before finally going to a “real” doctor and having her tell you none of it works because you aren’t bipolar . . . well, that also sucks!

And now that you know you aren’t the thing you thought you were (#ThanksMom for the topnotch convincing), you suddenly are left with just self-blame. Again. While clearly still being in desperate need of therapy at 26, but unable to afford it and still eight years away from even a glimmer of hope that our imperfect health “care” system would allow the pursuit of real diagnostic avenues and possibly even effective treatment. Hopelessness and a lack of options . . . well, that sucks again!

Thank goodness that several years later a close friend, who’s a doctor and also ADHD, encouraged me to address my inattentiveness — which I formerly viewed as a character flaw, a form of motivation and competency deficits — and suddenly things made so much sense. I had known I had “issues,” but now I had a starting point in the form of an initial complaint to take to a doctor.

After moving to southern California where the moderate normalization of therapy has meant doctors to choose from who specialize in my issues andtake my insurance (a rarity in our country), I started seeing a psychologist I lovingly call “Doc” a year ago October. With her support, I went to see a prescribing doctor exactly a year ago. Halfway through my ADHD evaluation, my psychiatrist very generously said, “You’re what I call a ’10 out of 10’ in severity; I’m not quite sure how you’ve been functioning.”

“Poorly,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

She started me on Adderall which was like a miracle — albeit a miracle my body doesn’t tolerate well. It helped with the multiple all-nighters during my unpaid nanny stint, that’s for sure. But it only lasts four hours a pop and when my prescribing doctor asked me how many hours a day I need to focus, I responded truthfully: “All of them.”

So we tried Strattera — a new, once-a-day med that isn’t a stimulant and has components that also help with anxiety, since all adults with ADHD also have anxiety. In fact, according to my docs and most experts, that’s what undiagnosed adults “present” with; they go to the doctor because of the feeling caused by ADHD. You’re nervous, agitated, generally uncomfortable. All the complaints that go with an anxiety disorder are on the table.

Halfway to a therapeutic dose I stopped drinking coffee. Previously I’d been a 10–12 cup a day self-medicater — all just to be a zombie-esque level of semi-functional. The reduction in bathroom time alone was damn near revolutionary. By the time I hit the 80mg dose I’m still on, my whole life changed. I could sit down and write, I could prep for interviews, I could even — GASP! — get lost in a book or a movie for the first time since maybe middle school. I cried tears of relief almost every day for quite a stretch.

I didn’t have any illusions about being “fixed,” though, and was still seeing Doc every week. With the ADHD mitigated, we had to assess the remaining pie chart of symptoms. My current diagnoses include:

• severe ADHD
• dysthymia (like a chronic, low-grade depression that flares whenever it feels like it)
• anxiety
• maybe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The PTSD is something Doc has asked me to be open to. We spent most of my first year managing serious life problems like my unsafe living environment and additional crises like not being able to eat, but now we’re exploring more of my history and which of my coping mechanisms are healthy and which indicate long-standing trauma. The way I automatically shut down my emotions for protection has her considering this fourth diagnosis, which may or may not require alterations to my treatment protocol at some point.

I like the way she’s built my profile over time by getting to know me and making me part of her consideration process during sessions. (She also sends the most adorable text messages.) But the length of time it takes to untangle 30 years of life, trauma, and misdiagnoses sucks — especially for someone with my neurobiology. ADHD adults move faster than the general population. I don’t just mean in the stereotypically hyperactive, bouncing-off-the-walls sense. Our brains fire faster and demand more input; we tend to make our own rules, not out of defiance, but because we can process multiple options and create a faster system for doing almost anything that doesn’t require memorization and data regurgitation. So, some days, the length of time nailing down accurate diagnoses and a full treatment plan (both meds and therapeutic needs) is taking this is taking and will continue to take is excruciating.

Especially on bad days. Like today: “new medication day.”

Over the past year, my baseline of functionality had moved up from “HAHAHAHA NOPE” to “Oh hey, I can do some things really well!” And then November and December happened. My first dysthymia flare since becoming functional. I couldn’t get out of bed. A lifelong insomniac, I was sleeping 16–20 hours a day. And the worst part was that I didn’t even care that I didn’t care. That’s the thing no one without a depressive disorder considers — it’s not necessarily constant sobbing; it’s often intense, unrelenting apathy. The danger of feeling nothing is that you don’t care if you feel better. Ever.

As I dug out of that (or it just ebbed back out like the tide; we aren’t sure), I was having trouble focusing again. Or, more likely, my body had gotten the chance to rebound from the frantic pace I’d worked and lived at for a year and now that I had my basic needs met, I could assess how effective my treatment was. The clear answer: not effective enough. I needed a psychiatrist with specialties in my intersecting and overlapping conditions. My original prescribing doctor was fine, but I’m a more complicated case and a lot of the methods and meds for treating adults with ADHD is new. Hell, not long ago, they thought everyone outgrew it by their early 20s.

So yesterday I saw a new psychiatrist.

Aside: psychiatrist is a word I’m still getting used to saying and typing even though I publicly advocate for reducing stigma around mental health, therapy, medication — all of it. It has a pathology attached to it along with a negative connotation. They should be seen like other doctors with specialties (i.e. whenever your condition indicates), but even in communities where enough people are in therapy that that isn’t a big deal, having to seek out a prescribing doctor has additional stigma. It’s “worse” than “just” needing a therapist. Therapy is something you can opt into; seeing a psychiatrist sounds heavier and permanent and clinical. So, I’m trying to say and type it more.

I like my new doctor very much — and not just because the spoons required to find a doc I can get to (I don’t have a car) who treats all my issues, who accepts my insurance, and who is taking new patients makes me want to quit desperately. Dr. C reminds me of every favorite teacher I had in high school. She carries herself with that calm assuredness of someone who has a mastery of their topic/specialty and knows they’ve seen it all. Meeting her was very calming. She asked why I changed doctors, what my current diagnoses were, whether I liked my therapist. We went over my extensive history and all the meds I’d done time with over the years, along with what it was about the Strattera-Adderall combo plus the available medical marijuana card that wasn’t working for me.

An hour later, she wrote down a five-pack of options that are on the table for me and asked if I wanted to pursue them with her. I said an enthusiastic, “Yes, please!” Her preference for changing one thing at a time made me feel comfortable and the first move was to swap out the Adderall and add Vyvanse for the ADHD. I took it today for the first time which means I spent all day watching for side effects and couldn’t sleep last night in anticipation of the change. (Even positive changes cause anxiety in people with anxiety disorders.) And now I get to analyze all my symptoms with more intensity over the next three weeks while factoring in life, boring things like allergies and the flu which affect functionality, and taking extra care to eat and get enough sleep so I can report back with confidence.

That is exhausting. That kind of attention to detail and having to turn down work to take care of myself can, on its own, cause anxiety — something else that has to be factored in. I really want this to work, of course, so I also have to gauge whether I actually feel better or just want to.

And that sucks.

A Call For Sick Days To End Mental Health Stigma
theestablishment.co

I will also likely need a higher dose of the Vyvanse. I’m starting at 20mg because that’s where I was with the Adderall, but you can take up to 70mg. Most people need between 30–50. The increases usually go by 10mg and I check in with her every two to three weeks to make the shifts. So I may not even know if I like this change for more than two months. And that’s just the first step — solidifying my ADHD protocol. Next we get to analyze my anxiety and start trying additional options. Those are typically incremental drugs as well with side effects to watch for, so I might not be on the road to relief for that until May.

And that really sucks — particularly because I realized in my first appointment with Dr. C that my ability to focus isn’t my primary complaint at this point. It’s still the right thing — both medically and for how my brain operates — to get the ADHD checked off the list before starting to treat my next complaint, but FUCK is this a long process. I knew that it would be; I knew that I likely had more than one disorder and would probably need multiple doctors and multiple treatment plans. Intellectually, I know how this works. But when you’re in it, knowing that “this is how it is” doesn’t always help.

Which means bad days. Like today. And trying to be kind to myself. And continuing to be grateful for the wealth of support I suddenly have in my personal and professional life. This is absolutely the perfect time for me to be going through all of this rough trial and error shit because I am cared for.

The woman — previously a stranger — who saved my life by getting me out of my abusive living situation has proven to be someone of immense character and generosity; she is truly like family. I have never had a roommate who provided more relief than anxiety. She is my daily reminder that people are good. The friends who have stuck around through the past godawful years are the best people on the planet. I love them and we regularly trust each other with our lives. And the amazing board members, editors, and other project heads that I work with have been understanding beyond what is even reasonable.

I know that I’m lucky, that not everyone has this. I know, because it took me 36 years to find it and some of it found me. It’s very tempting to breathe such a deep sigh of relief that I stop doing the very hard, necessary work of continuing to get better and instead assume the impossible: that at the end of this new assessment and option testing I’ll be All Better.

As my friend, the brilliant, funny, and brave comedian and author Sara Benincasa wrote in her upcoming book Real Artists Have Day Jobs, there isn’t necessarily a point in our wellness journey where we can declare, “Ah ha! Success!” and triumphantly be finished with all this suckage:

“There is the urge with any narrative of overcoming obstacles to make it sound as if happily ever after were a simple thing . . . We tell stories about ourselves, about the shit we’ve been through and the fights we’ve fought, and sometimes we want to tie it up in a neat bow for the listeners. But real endings aren’t so neat and clean. And happily ever after only lasts for so long.

“I’ve struggled with mental illness for my entire life, and I talk about it and write about it often. There is a temptation to present myself as ‘healed’ or ‘cured’ or ‘fine,’ to peddle the lie that if someone only follows my foolproof five-step plan (I have no such plan, but I could invent one), they’ll be happy and healthy the rest of their days.

“The truth is that there will always be shit days. Always. I don’t care if you’ve gone 365 days feeling blissful and glorious; eventually, you will get a flat tire on a busy highway, or catch a case of explosive diarrhea on an airplane, or find yourself strongly tempted to do that bad thing you swore you’d never do again.”

Today was just a shit day. Tomorrow is another day — it might be a shit day too, though I’ve uncharacteristically planned to take the day off, so probably not. But it still could be. That’s the thing with most of my disorders: I don’t have to actually do anything to have a bad day, they just come. And then they end. And there will be more. And those will end too.

I talk and write about the reality of this struggle in the hopes that you might be kinder and more generous with yourself on your shit days — especially those of you who are still back in the middle of my story, not yet able to get care for whatever reason. There are a lot of us. You don’t have any responsibility to perform “healed,” “cured,” or “fine” for anyone — not even yourself. Having a bad day doesn’t mean failure and it doesn’t necessarily mean that your coping mechanisms and/or treatment and/or life choices are all wrong.

You deserve to be well and happy; you are allowed shit days. Try saying “this sucks” on your next bad day and see if you feel a little lighter. I know it helped me immensely today.

It’s almost here. It happens every year. And every year it catches me off guard: “New Year, New You!” season . . . more commonly known as the first week of January.

Henceforth known as NYNY season, this not-so-magical time is marked by an onslaught of shaming headlines like:

Discover the Shortcut to Making More Money This Year!
25 Quick Ways To Improve Your Marriage!
Vow To Stick With The Gym!
Five Ways To Get Organized This Year!
Three Things You Should Do Every Day!
How To Finally Lose Those Pesky 10 lbs!
10 Ways To Improve Your Sex Life!
How Yoga Can Help You Finally Achieve Your Goals!
100 Ways To Improve Your Time Management!

Well, this year I’m using the underlying sentiment for good and doing things differently. In short, I have three words for the impending barrage of how-to’s and must-do’s: Fuck That Noise.

Over the past several years, three groups in particular have provided a valuable antidote to the surface-scratching, counter-productive, clickbait listicle genre that defines the dawn of every new year. Those groups? My pragmatic friends with chronic conditions, body acceptance activists, and comics.

I have three words for the impending barrage of how-to’s and must-do’s: Fuck That Noise.
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Thanks to these superior gurus, I am now into the idea of meeting yourself where you are + not having to necessarily LOVE yourself when you’re only at the like or fine with or pretty accepting overall stage + laughing and groaning at the things a lot of us do to sabotage ourselves.

All of these things drastically lessen the self-blame that fuels the NYNY season. And all have helped me fully embrace the fuck that noise sentiment.

On Meeting Yourself Where You Are

We wouldn’t expect someone who just bought their first pair of running shoes to enter a marathon next week; why do we expect to master everything we test out or take on the moment we begin? Meeting yourself where you are is deemed excuse-making in NYNY land, where you can’t ever make adjustments, have setbacks, or measure by sliding scale. Which is, of course, the very reason why so few people stick to new year advice.

My friends suffering from chronic conditions have taught me, thankfully, that I shouldn’t hold myself to impossible expectations — and giving myself a break has become the best anxiety-management strategy I’ve found so far.

“Have you eaten today?” is a question a group of my close girl friends and I drop on each other as a loving check-in. Most of us have anxiety or a condition with anxiety-related manifestations, like the “nervous stomach” that clenches and keeps you from feeling hungry. Because we work from home, we don’t have the reminder to eat that happens at location-centric jobs where you would naturally see co-workers getting up and/or leaving for lunch. So we forget to eat and then crash midday, or have even more trouble focusing than usual.

My friend Amadi Aec Lovelace has perfected the loving, no pressure, self-care/health reminder:

It’s a busy day for many. Time for a #SelfCare check. Have you eaten? Hydrated? Medicated? Need a break? #TakeCareOfYouFirst

???@amaditalks

Thanks to my perfection-required upbringing, I’d prefer to be the kind of person who’s mastered #adulting and doesn’t need friendly check-ins, behavior modification strategies, or reminders to tend my basic needs. But considering that I am learning how to source symptoms, whether or not the current treatment options are helping, and how to coordinate care with multiple doctors — and that I’m also coming out of the most stressful year of my life — I also know that I should take the help and work on getting OK with that.

What I’ve learned, basically, is that I have to meet myself where I am — and that place happens to be very early on in the diagnostic/treatment cycle for a bevy of life-long conditions.

On Being Just OK With Yourself

“We’ve got to help people survive before we can expect them to thrive.”

When I read those words from Melissa A. Fabello earlier this year, it was the start of a revelation. She was writing about a shift for the “body positive” movement, one that could create “an in-between stage for the folks who look at body love and feel daunted by the seemingly insurmountable task.” She called it “body neutrality.” Demanding that people love their bodies sounded unrealistic, “an unfair expectation.”

The parallel for those of us who are dealing with chronic illness or undiagnosed conditions, or who are recovering from abuse/assault — many of us for the first time thanks to finally having comprehensive health care — was striking for me. I can’t expect to love myself every day. I can’t expect anything from myself every day. But finding a way to be OK with myself sounded achievable and anxiety-relieving and a great way to reduce the paralyzing self-blame that I’ve struggled with for almost three decades.

Suddenly, I had a self-talk that allowed me to celebrate something like putting on real clothes and getting to the post office or grocery store. I started giving myself awards for what I allowed our culture to tell me were “the basics” — things any adult should be able to handle. When I forget to do this, I pull up Anna Borges’s list, “19 Small Awards Anyone With Anxiety Deserves To Receive: Some days, you deserve a medal for getting out of bed” and award myself for doing that instead of giving up or checking out.

Fabello’s suggestion may seem narrowly-aimed, but actually hits a very broad target; her hope for creating this “in-between stage” or “base camp” works with nearly any word/issue you swap for “body”:

“And maybe if we propose this to people — if we give them the option to inch toward body love, rather than implying that the only way there is a catapult — they’ll (more comfortably, daringly, courageously!) feel empowered to leave their body hate behind.”

I’m here for it . . . and I’m totally waiting for you at base camp should you want to join me.

On Laughing At Life’s Woes

We are all masters of screwing things up beyond repair — it’s how the colloquialism “you’re only human” came about. The best way I’ve found to date for accepting my failures big and small is to laugh at them, so it’s no surprise that therapy through comedy has been my go-to strategy since I was a kid. Laughing at myself and others constantly gives me perspective and anxiety relief.

The most all-encompassing — and refreshingly cringe-free — source for laughing at life on my current reading/watching list is Josh Gondelman and Joe Berkowitz’s new book You Blew It: An Awkward Look at the Many Ways in Which You’ve Already Ruined Your Life. Because advice books are impossible to write without sounding like a pompous jerk bag, and sincere jerkiness is inherently unfunny and unapproachable, Gondelman and Berkowitz instead tell you how to best and most efficiently wreak havoc on your life.

We are all masters of screwing things up beyond repair.
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Considering I was starting to write the #ItsTotallyMe dating series as I opened You Blew It, it’s little wonder that the “Love and/or Sex” section hit me with full force. Frankly, they had me at the opening line: “It would be nice if you could bypass dating entirely.” Throughout the book, moments like that attributed what I thought were my off-putting idiosyncrasies to the Human Condition, and created a lot of relief laughter.

Amidst all the venting and self-deprecation, the book also delivers some very good life philosophy that’s a perfect combination of 1/ obvious observations we all miss and 2/ silliness.

For example, the authors ask, why do we treat dating so much differently than a burgeoning friendship?

“Remember making friends? It’s what we did when we were frightened children who hadn’t met other people yet. Try more of that . . . [A date is] less about impressing the other person with qualifications and secret clerical superpowers than it is about determining compatibility. It’s a night out. Have some good old-fashioned fun with your new friend.”

Right. Yes. The juxtaposition of admitting dating sucks and that it’s supposed to be fun had me all in.

By the time I finished “Relationships: The Champagne of Compromises,” the 40-page dating section conclusion, I physically felt better about the #adulting activity that has been my biggest source of self-blame and feelings of failure over the past 20 years. Laughing is mad powerful, y’all.

Gondelman and Berkowitz take on your family, your roommate, your boss, your co-workers, and the people you have to deal with when you leave your house: the general public. They also take you on in a way that makes your flaws digestible and, at times, borderline charming. And while I realize their style is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (though I’m not sure I want to be friends with those people), sailing through a cathartic breakdown of all the major parts of life reminded me to incorporate humor into my day every day.

Laughing at life may not prevent you from crying at life, but it will feel damn good, and it’s something you can do both on your own and with others. The possibilities are endless.

Mark the end of the year in whatever way is satisfying to you — saying thanks or wishing it good riddance.

If you’re a resolution person, make the resolution most on your mind rather than the one that seems popular in listicles or Facebook groups. Tell New Year New You season to take a flying leap. Buy a guilty pleasure novel and put down the “self-help” book your mom proudly and expectantly put under the tree for you. Take up knitting instead of jogging if what you actually need is an excuse to relax.

In short: you do you instead of listening to others try to fix you.