Beyond the Carpool

Books I'm (Trying) to Read

2012-02-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

A great book sitting on my bedside table is "Lessons from Freedom Summer", by Kathy Emery, Linda Reid Gold, and Sylia Braselmann. It is about ordinary people's experience in social movements; a good read for those of us with good intentions who want to proceed cautiously into community activism or who want a constructive framework for thinking about the Occupy movement.Another one I'm actually reading is "The Known World", by Edward Jones. It's a powerful story about a freed black slave who becomes a slaveholder himself. I like this story because it subverts the readers lens of seeing slavery from a white or black perspective, showing how it destroys everyone.

I'm reading this one on my new Ipad: Isabel Wilkerson's "The Warm of Other Suns" about the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North and West. She does this great job of re-creating the dialogue and thoughts of three individuals whose journeys are told in the book. This genre, called 'narrative history' or 'narrative non-fiction', is a growing trend in history writing these days. I'm truly grateful for it, thanks to crappy history teachers in high school.

Sowing Seeds of Change

2011-12-12T07:27:00.000-08:00

I can't sit back anymore and watch others do the work for me. I have decided to support the Occupy movement and the December 12th Oakland Port action.

My list of reasons is long and perhaps still vaguely defined but I want to celebrate the fact that myself and Dominick Mortarotti, age 15, co-hosted our first neighborhood organizing meeting yesterday. We were ten adults (40 yr old +) and three teenagers.

Over cookies and hot chocolate we agreed on the need to open up the conversation to others in our neighborhood. They are many of us (Tea Party or Occupy) who question the "system" of haves and have nots, the 99% and the 1%, the corrupt financial sector, the decline of ethics in politics and business. But we don't how to change it or are don't want to be associated with Occupy's radical/anarchist mainstream media reputation. Most of us were against the encampments.

We plan to host one more organizing forum, identity 4 to 5 issues that concern us (public school financing, jobs, for example) and strategize for a larger 'town hall' event to bring a broader spectrum of folks.

White Privilege Conference - Coming to a Close

2010-04-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

A list:

1,600 people are attending the White Privilege Conference.

Dr. Joy De Gruy speaks about her life work: to prove and explain PTSS (Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome).

On main street of the little town of LaCrosse, WI, our host, is as an LGBT Welcome Center.

The Conference Center sits on the sandy banks of the Mississippi, appropriated land where the Ho Chunk people once lived and played its games. The Ho Chunk Nation is a thriving and important part of the LaCrosse community.

The Shabat dinner was totally sold out (750 people?) and the Eddie Burns, the Conference founder, apologized for his Christian Privilege in scheduling the Conference during Yem Hashoah, the Days of Holocaust Remembrance. We heard a Jewish, Islamic, and Native American prayer, broke bread, and listened to live klezmer and Russian Jewish classical music while we ate.

In a Storytelling Workshop a white woman facilitator from Georgia told the story of how her great grandfather was involved in a false rape case and the lynching of a young black man. It's important to learn our family histories.

Oakland's own Ariel Luckey performed a hip-hop piece, "Free Land", about his family's homesteading land-grab story in the Dakota Hills, death, and Emeryville's own story of Native desecration to create Bay Street (how many times have I taken my kids to Bay Street and stepped callously on this ancient burial ground?)

Dissonance/Confusion leads to justification leads to dehumanization.

What is culture? What is whiteness?

Lee Mun Wah (from Oakland/Berkeley) facilitates his film "Last Chance for Eden" about a group of 8 people who talk over weekend about race, white privilege and communication. He's taking his group-work methodology on the road for a national tour of live town hall meetings where people can observe and practice courageous conversation.

White Privilege Conference: Day 2 & Confused

2010-04-09T05:23:00.000-07:00

I'm putting it out there that I'm no expert, nor will I be when I emerge from this conference. If anything, I'm getting more and more confused - which is certainly a good thing, since I'm tired of always thinking I need to be the best, perfect, smartest, and most articulate. Is that a learned attitude or a learned "white attitude", an unconscious culturally-learned trait passed down from my parents and society?...this idea of always needing to be 'on top'? I'm not passing judgement, I'm just wondering.

Also, I know some family and friends are reading this and some are perturbed that I'm going to a conference whose title (White Privilege) suggests I'm going to a white supremacist gathering. It's definitely not a conference about the superiority of the white race. It is a conference about education and action regarding systems of oppression that we've learned, been born into, and continue to participate in (racism, sexism, homophobia, religious, etc.). Not only do we live in a white-dominated society demographically, but all of our societal structures are predominantly white as well. I'm coming to this conference because I don't yet truly understand what 'whiteness' means. I do know it is something created by society. It's "socially constructed" as they say. So what makes me white? What allows me to live and move and grow so that I never have to think about my race, while others are forced to live by it?

Other words get in the way sometimes. Well meaning, good white progressives like me attempting to truly embrace the title 'racist' - it gets challenging. On an individual level I'd like to believe I'm not causing any harm - just going about my business, doing my part - that I'm even helping - but by the fact of having been born into the U.S., I'm part of a system. Then there's the owning up part: what makes me "white" in good ways and bad? Is my ambition a bad thing? Is my wanting to hear African Americans tell their stories a bad thing? When's it OK to "go first" or "last" in a meeting where there are mixed races? Who sets the agenda? I wonder about these things. One thing I've learned is that white people tend to stay very often "in their heads", analyzing, talking about race at the level of ideas. That's sort of what I'm doing now, isn't it? My intention for this next day of the conference is to focus more on my inner state, to see if I can really stay in touch with and name, what happens to me inside but not just in my head.

Heading to the White Privilege Conference: Starts Tomorrow

2010-04-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

~Maya Angelou

It's Tuesday night and I've arrived in LaCrosse, Wisconsin for the 11th annual White Privilege Conference, a gathering of educators, organizers, activists, and regular folks like me. I hope to come out of this conference with an ability to explain in words that will be heard - to friends, family and members of my community - what I mean by a system of "white privilege", why it's worth talking about at the dinner table, and ways we can all work to change it.

It is rainy and dark but my hotel is a stone's throw from the confluence of three rivers one of which is the Mississippi. The Mississippi!. I've read so many stories about this famous river that it's more of an idea/symbol (of freedom: slaves escaping or getting caught), (childhood: Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer), (or discovery: Lewis and Clark) than an actual body of water. Tomorrow I will see it for the first time.

The charter bus from the Minneapolis airport brings about 15 of us, mostly white women, a couple of African American women, and two white guys for the 2.5 hour drive to LaCrosse. Yes, I'm already noticing and keeping track. Tired from lack of sleep the night before, I sink into my sweater and try to sleep but can't. The people in the bus are quiet. The wipers go thud-thud-thud. My self-deprecating mental "race tape" has already begun its inevitable churning. This thought: "If this bus had had more African Americans on it, it would definitely be more louder and more jovial. We white people are so boring and subdued..." Yes, there it is - my white mind so well-trained to identify, group, and judge. And so quick (already!) to criticize my 'whiteness'.

Part of why I'm here is to explore all of this inner chatter, understand how it operates, become more conscious of it, perhaps even reclaim a more positive relationship with my identity as a white person. Also here to take classes, network, and learn how to be more effective in my community. Typical of me, I'm already anxious about what workshops I may miss out on - there are so many great choices.

Tomorrow I'm taking an all-day 'institute' called "Navigating Trigger Events: Becoming a More Effective Communicator in Conversations about Race".

Pre-sleep feelings: wondering if I'll be able to stay honest with myself, hold myself with integrity, not posture and pretend out of defensiveness or fear.

Haiti: Between the Earth and the Clouds

2010-01-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

In last Friday's NPR interview with local businessman Pierre Brisson from Petionville, (the "Upper Rockridge" of Port-au-Prince), the man described his view of the city minutes after the earthquake as if the city were "floating between the earth and the clouds".

As I listened to the interview, driving home from my son's tennis lesson, the Eucalyptus trees whizzing by on the hillsides, the freeway monotonous and smooth beneath my wheels, I recalled a small painting that hangs in the entry hall of my house. It is not a valuable painting, but I fell in love with its color and composition. It was painted by an artist of the Jacqmel School of Haitian painting which often depicts mountain scapes with Heaven meeting Earth in a gravity-less world.

I remember the day I bought this painting. I was alone and a little lonely. It was at the end of my 6-week Creole language training program in Port-Prince and shortly I would head south for the CARE job that awaited me. I was told the best person from whom to buy art was local art dealer, Issa el Saieh. Issa's shop was amazing. You walked into this cinder-block and cement room toward the front of his house after climbing up a set of stairs extending from a crumbling driveway. It was a tall, cool, and slightly dark, loft-size room - paintings hung all over the walls, were piled up in stacks, leaning in precarious angles against walls, with barely space for one to move around. I loved the smell of all that oil and acrylic- it spoke of possibility, the romance of art, the lure of beauty. Issa offered me a seat by the window and a cup of strong Haitian coffee. In his kind yet slightly grumpy way, he would help me search for paintings he knew I could afford. On this particular visit Issa helped me find the painting you see here.

Recalling Issa and my experience of Haiti brings back tears of things lost. Issa, I now learn, has been dead since 2005. A part of my past is dead too: time has passed, I've grown up and moved on to pursue other things. But the painting reminds me to stay present: it speaks of the beauty of the Haitian imagination and the depths of Haitian creativity and hope. Haitians will no doubt rise to survive this catastrophic tragedy but in the mean time, I cry for the unspeakable pain and suffering this nation once again must endure. Click here for information on donating to CARE's earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

Diana Kapp, Mommy Wars, More Voices

2009-12-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

(I'm grateful to guest contributor Allison Farber-Cheston's enthusiastic, practical article about the benefits of women going back to work and how to get started. If you missed it, check it out here.)

Returning to the topic of transition...I already feel the future opening up, the pull of new professional work even if it's still an idea, a goal. I'm anxious, excited, and sad. I wonder about pulling together my resume, the interviews, and rejections, logistics, childcare, etc. I grieve my children's growing up and needing me less. While I am tender and respectful of these feelings, I also seek compassionate allies. I need articles that speak to this complexity of feeling, that make me feel connected, that inspire me to action.

I don't actually read San Francisco Magazine that much, but when I do it's often because Diana Kapp has a new article. She decides on a story idea then, like a bull dog/race horse, grabs it with all her might and, not unlike her penchant for extreme physical training, goes for it with blinders on, heading to the finish line. Such was the case in her recent article, "The Mother of all Recessions" (cover title: Did Stay At Home Moms Get it all Wrong?").

I was interviewed as part of Ms. Kapp's research. She said it was going to be a story about the cultural expectations of women transitioning back work whether they'd been out for a few months or a few years. For 1.5 hours I talked about my experience of choosing to stay at home and the trade-offs for marital roles, self-esteem, and personal identity. It felt great to speak and feel heard. I had no illusions that Diana's story would be a love-fest but I felt it was important to say my piece; at the very least, in honor of my feminist mother who had struggled with being an artist and a mother, as I've written about elsewhere.

Long story short, Diana Kapp's piece was published. It suggested that stay-at-home mothers weren't contributing enough to society or themselves, that perhaps the recession would finally drive us out of the paralysis (my word, not Diana Kapp's) of motherhood. People were offended and wrote in. Some people liked it. Lots of stuff about class and privilege and the responsibility of journalists to keep themselves out of the story. Yet another WHITE chapter in the "Mommy Wars". Why do I say white?

I recently read a blog post in Love Isn't Enough by Deesha Philyaw about the predominance of white women writers in the mainstream market of motherhood memoirs and why that provides women readers with a limited perspective on the issues of work and family. The article was originally published in Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, no. 40, Summer 2008. With permission from the author, the article is re-printed here:

Ain't I a Mommy?

by Deesha Philyaw

"The absence of black mommy memoirs mirrors the relative absence of black women’s voices in mainstream U.S. media discourse about motherhood in general. In particular, this discourse is concerned with how women balance the demands of family and careers, and with the decision by some college-educated women to opt out of the labor force altogether and remain at home with their children. When this discourse ceased to be polite, the explosion was dubbed “the mommy wars.”

The genesis of the mommy wars can be traced back to the “cult of true womanhood” (also known as the “cult of domesticity”), the 19th-century view that delicate white women bore the sole responsibility for housekeeping and childcare, and were to be placed on pedestals at home and kept out of the public sphere. By contrast, since 1619 when the first slaves arrived on the shores of what is now the United States, most black mothers have had no choice but to work. Instead of being placed on pedestals, black women watched as our babies were placed on auction blocks. And yet, we pressed on through the most dehumanizing conditions, working on the plantations, and caring for the children who remained.

Speaking at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851, abolitionist and former slave Sojourner Truth reportedly asked the assembly of white men and women where her pedestal was. Over the objections of the white women’s-rights advocates who sought to silence her that day, Truth spoke of the brutality she endured in slavery and wondered aloud why she didn’t receive preferential treatment as a member of the fairer sex—asking, famously, “Ain’t I a woman?”

Shortly after Emancipation, most rural black women attempted to adopt the cult of true womanhood, tending to home and hearth with the blessing of their husbands. But this experiment was short-lived, as white politicians and plantation owners sought to rebuild the cotton economy in the post–Civil War era. With the 1865 enactment of the federal Black Codes (a precursor to Jim Crow segregation laws), the labor of newly freed slaves was once again controlled by white people through exploitative sharecropping arrangements. As a result, black mothers and their children were forced back into the fields.

Less than a century later, when World War II moved record numbers of married white women into the labor force to take the place of their deployed husbands, the cult of true womanhood mostly died in practice. It left in its wake decades of public and private debate over whether women—white women—can be good mothers while also pursuing successful careers.

The current mommy wars resurrect this hand-wringing for a new century. Profit-seeking magazines, book publishers, and talk shows capitalize on the guilt and fears expressed by some working mothers, and on the “Should I go back to work?” doubts of some at-home mothers. From Dr. Phil to the New York Times, the media shamelessly pit the two camps against each other, fueling the flames of their anxieties. Never mind that after a year or so of maternity leave, most women return to work, and 75 percent of mothers with school-age children work—most doing so because they have to. Never mind that most at-home mothers aren’t interested in bashing their working counterparts.

Magazine articles begat inflammatory books begat appearances on tv morning shows. In 2004, Caitlin Flanagan turned a New Yorker article into a book, To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife, in which she—a wealthy, white, self-described antifeminist who once employed a nanny and a maid and has never changed her own sheets or cleaned her own house—had the nerve to write, “Women have a deeply felt emotional connection to housekeeping,” and therefore, should stay at home. In the other corner was Linda R. Hirshman’s Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, which also began life as a magazine article (“Homeward Bound,” published in the American Prospect). Released in 2006, this book speaks mainly to affluent, highly educated women, essentially arguing that the only worthwhile life for them is one driven by professional ambition. By staying at home, a woman is creating her own glass ceiling and harming society as a whole, says Hirshman. The book was re-released last year in paperback with the kinder, gentler title Get to Work…And Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late.

Last year saw the release of Leslie Bennetts’s The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?, which, like Get to Work, predicts doom and gloom for educated women who opt to stay home with their children rather than stay in the office. Bennetts warns of long-term loss of income and retirement funds, difficulty reentering the workforce after a long absence, and the risky venture of total financial dependence on men.

While these book-length volleys in the mommy wars tended not to be bestsellers, they still managed to capture the attention of media outlets hungry for ratings, magazine sales, and website hits. Despite selling only about 4,000 copies (as of April 2007), Hirshman’s book landed her on The View and Good Morning America. Flanagan’s book only sold 5,000 copies more than Hirshman’s, but she got to hawk it on The Colbert Report and whine about her critics in an essay for Time.

The abundance of ink and airtime devoted to a vocal minority of women promotes the idea that this minority’s experience is somehow universal. Low-income and working-class women, black women, and other women of color don’t see their mothering experiences and concerns reflected in the mommy media machine, and we get the cultural message loud and clear: Affluent white women are the only mothers who really matter. Further, media overexposure of these women bolsters the perception of them as self-absorbed brewers of tempests in teapots.

Thankfully, there have been some more temperate voices in the wilderness of all this judgment about motherhood and work. Though still mommy-centric, books like Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety and The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels do not shove women into boxes labeled “stay-at-home” and “working,” respecting the fact that many mothers move in and out of full- and part-time employment throughout their lifetimes.

Two anthologies, The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and Marriage and Mommy Wars, also steer clear of the finger-pointing. The former includes essays by at least two women of color, though neither appears in the book’s “Mommy Maddest” section. Black writers Veronica Chambers, Lonnae O’Neal Parker, and Sydney Trent contribute to Mommy Wars, a collection that explicitly seeks to bridge the gap between alleged “warring factions.” And yet Random House subtitled it, over the editor’s objections, with the mommy wars-ian descriptor Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families.

That black mothers were not among the combatants on the fake battlefield of the mommy wars is not coincidental. This simply wasn’t our fight. In her book Having It All: Black Women and Success, Veronica Chambers notes, “Guilt just isn’t a currency in our lives the way it is in the lives of white women.” Further, as economist Julianne Malveaux observed in USA Today, “Some African-American women want to yawn at the angst about shouldering multiple burdens and juggling multiple roles. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt so long ago that I recycled it.” Since the 1940s, black women have outnumbered white women in the labor force. According to some reports, the black middle class owes its existence to black women’s presence in the workplace.

After Emancipation, those black women fortunate enough to pursue higher education took advantage of the professional opportunities available to them. Many of these middle-class, college-educated women embodied the “lifting as we climb” motto coined by the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. The NACW and other organizations in the black women’s club movement served on the front lines of the antilynching crusade, advocated for workers’ rights, and sought to improve the quality of life for their impoverished brothers and sisters.

Fast forward to the present day and this “we’re all in this together” legacy lives on. Professional black mothers can generally count on other black women they know to cheer them on as they advance in their careers, and they in turn may lend a financial hand to extended family members who need it. Mocha Moms, a support group for at-home mothers of color with more than 120 chapters nationwide, lobbies for quality childcare for low-income working women. Instead of deriding working mothers, the organization makes this statement on its website: “We support the choices our members are making…but respect every parent’s right to make different decisions.”

I asked one Mocha Mom I know, Jennifer, what she thought about mommy memoirs and the mommy wars. She responded, “Historically, we’ve had to take care of our kids and their kids,” referring to black women’s roles during slavery and as domestic workers in white households after slavery and throughout the ’50s and ’60s. “Now we only have to take care of our kids, and we just don’t have the same level of angst as white women do. Definitely not enough to write a whole book about it.”

Jennifer, a married mother of two with an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a law degree from Columbia, adds, “I struggle with the daily demands of mothering. But I also remember that I’m standing on the shoulders of my great-great-grandmothers who were enslaved, beaten, raped, and they pulled through and made it. My existence is proof of their survival, their victory and perseverance. So how can I have a meltdown because my kid is having a tantrum when I’m trying to cook? Of course our grown-up needs have to be met, too, but still. We do what we have to do.”

Of course, black mothers are not endless founts of strength. Nor do we live charmed, guilt-free lives. Some black at-home mothers are asked by family and friends to justify the decision to “waste” their educations. Professional black mothers may have to forego material comforts and greater financial security in exchange for more flexibility and time at home with their kids. But all this struggling and striving happens in the context of our history. If a black mother’s household income is such that she can afford to stay at home with her kids or opt to pursue a career full-time instead—either way, we’ve arrived at a profound historical moment. Either way, she is living a life her foremothers could only dream about.

So if black women haven’t beaten down publishers’ doors with manuscripts about mothering or about pulling second shifts, it’s probably because this is what we’ve always done, without fanfare and without the luxury of “what about the children?” pearl-clutching. Perhaps because many of us are only a generation or two removed from poverty, we can’t in good conscience write unconcerned screeds that ignore the hard realities for poor women and children. Maybe we look at our girlfriends—working women who aren’t mothers—and are reminded that it’s not all about the mommies. Maybe we realize that mommy-centrism lets employers and policy-makers off the hook with regard to family-friendly workplace changes that would allow mothers and fathers to work more flexible hours without sacrificing their careers in the process.

This is not to say that black women never sweat the career-family stuff, nor is it to say we aren’t writing about motherhood at all these days. However, the number of such books is woefully small, and the results are not as shrill or as navel-gazing as the typical mommy book tends to be.

Said navel-gazing was what motivated Washington Post reporter Lonnae O’Neal Parker to write her first book. In 2002, Parker penned an article for the Post called “The Donna Reed Syndrome” about her decision—reached when she fell asleep in her driveway one night after covering an event for work—to take a yearlong break from her job in order “to have gleaming hardwood floors and to hang out with the kids.” Parker recalls, “I wrote about what that year meant to me, and how at the end of it, I returned to who I was—a reporter. I returned to my career…with a better set of tools in place to give myself more rest and a greater ability to do what I do.”

Among the responses to that piece was a letter from a woman who wrote: “I suppose you think I’m pathetic. I have stayed at home since the birth of my son three years ago.” Parker was floored. “As if what I wrote was an indictment of her! The total obliviousness to black women’s history, and that it had always included work, was just galling.”

The encounter led Parker to write I’m Every Woman: Remixed Stories of Marriage, Motherhood, and Work, a book that combines memoir with the stuff good U.S. history texts should be made of. In it, Parker presents her personal experiences as a mother, wife, and professional woman, as well as the larger historical legacy of black women and work. Of the mommy wars, she writes: “Understand, it’s not that I think that black women have all the answers—only that we have struggled with the questions longer and that sometimes our tool sets are more expansive. I am clear that in all cultures there are other committed women who deeply believe they must stand on one or another side of a work-family divide and agitate in order to create a better world for their children. And really, I can dig it. I’m actually quite grateful that I can skim some of their best parts off the top. But these women must never, ever try to give me any of their excess baggage.”

Parker approached three publishing houses about her book. Two immediately “got it” and, of the two, Parker ultimately chose Amistad because the head of that HarperCollins imprint was living a life parallel to hers: a black woman and mother who recognized the book’s cultural touchstones. “Both houses were enthusiastic about the book, but there was a layer of translation that I didn’t have to do with [the Amistad head].”

Black women readers embraced I’m Every Woman, hungry for a perspective different from that found in the usual mommy-book fare. And, as Parker had hoped, some white women “tired of the echo chamber” are now teaching the book in university classrooms. “This isn’t just about the mommy wars,” Parker says. “It’s…necessary to hear other voices. It’s human, it’s sisterly, it’s progressive.”

Going Back to Work: Why and How to Make the Transition

2009-11-24T15:52:00.000-08:00

Guest Blog for Anna Edmondson

By Allison Cheston, Career Advisor

One of the things women frequently approach me about is the idea of going back to work and how to get started. I am always very encouraging, because I strongly believe that everyone should work, regardless of financial circumstances.

Why do I argue that people should work? Because if you read the studies about happiness you will understand how critical it is to continually reach and attain specific goals. It is the reaching, followed by the pleasure of achievement, which enables human beings to feel most fulfilled. And this cycle needs to continue throughout ones life. Work is a place where you can create and meet challenges regularly; (ideally) growth is built into the culture.

If you are a well-educated woman living in a major city, the pressure to return to work can range from subtle to intense--especially if you left work to stay home with children and they are now in school full-time. You have noticed that more women work than not, and regardless of whether you have pressure to make money, you may feel you are not fulfilling your potential.

Another turning point for women is when their kids are about to leave for college. They may be questioning their identities, wondering what their next phase will be. If work seems like the best option, the hurdle is that they haven’t held a job in 15-20 years, which makes the process of planning a job search even more daunting. But I’m happy to say there is light at the end of the tunnel.

First of all, the world of work has changed dramatically in 15 years, and many worthwhile positions can be configured for part-time work or telecommuting. Secondly, women returning to work can make ideal, and cost-effective, employees. They are highly-educated, excellent at multitasking and frequently decline insurance since they already hold coverage. Motivated women returning to the workforce typically work more efficiently and command lower salaries than those who have maintained their careers. Employers already know this, and despite the dismal job market, if you work hard to identify the right role and organization, you may be able to create an ideal work schedule that provides the right amount of challenge and growth opportunity. But you need to be strategic about it.

So how do you go about writing a resume, for example, if you’ve been out of work a long time? Think hard about the kinds of things you’ve been doing while you’ve been out, which have built your skill-set. Many women do volunteer work, which can make you attractive to non-profit organizations or companies that need event planning or sales experience. List everything you’ve done, and identify the skills you’ve added with each activity.

Now is the time to conduct your research to identify the roles and companies that would benefit from your skills and expertise. Use job boards to identify titles and companies, but don’t spend time applying for specific positions; this is not a good use of your time.

It’s also time to activate your network, if you haven’t already done so, using sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Write a punchy profile that describes what you can do for organizations and reach out to those in your network asking for specific help.

Create a functional resume, which highlights your skills, and add a section featuring your unpaid work experience. Be ready with a brief, unapologetic story about your time off, and move on to what you can do for an employer. Have business cards ready with your name, address, phone and email address, and a couple of terms describing what you do.

When you do find an organization and position that seems right, be upfront about what you can do for them and what would be the ideal situation for you. Present your case in business terms, and don’t be afraid to negotiate—employers respect that. If you need help with negotiation, here’s a wonderful book.

If you don’t want to hire a career advisor on your own, gather a group of likeminded women and hire a coach to moderate your weekly discussions. You can help and motivate each other as you navigate the new world of work.

For more information, you can reach me at www.allisoncheston.com.

We need practice promoting ourselves

2009-10-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

What I need is a nice, succinct schtick, my own, 3-line set of ad copy. A friend came over for dinner last night. She doesn't have kids. She has an important job with food policy advocacy and like all of us, her various life quandries. Toward the end of the evening, sitting together in my living room with my son on the couch across from us, this friend asked me about my own personal ambitions. It took a couple of tries. The first time, my son interrupted and wanted to share an anecdote about a new soup recipe he'd recently discovered. My friend asked me the same question again. I asked my son to either listen respectfully, or go hang out in his room. He decided to stay.

The second time I was able to describe my growing focus in communications for progressive causes, that I wanted to work part-time. "That's great!" she said. She reassured me that she'd keep me in mind if she heard of anything. "But," I said, "raising the kids is still the priority with one entering high school next year..." my voice drifted off, betraying the unresolved conflict I still felt about home and work.

At this my friend said, "So what do you actually do all day, what are you doing tomorrow for example?" She seemed genuinely curious if a bit nonplussed. I forgave her. I had a huge mental list for the next day, nothing do with the Afghan crisis or health-care reform, but practical things: food shopping, high school research, chores, email, carpooling, writing, scheduling. Perhaps because she wasn't a mom and her work didn't involve kids in any way, because she was who she was, I found myself going blank, shutting down, unable to explain myself in an orderly fashion as if I had to ask myself the same question, "What do I do all day?"

One reason I struggle with these situations is because I take myself too seriously. (I can see you all nodding your heads in agreement). Perhaps I don't get out enough, mingle at enough parties to hone my wit and wax ironic about being a mom in the 21st century. But it's more than that.

To get my shtick I need practice. All stay-at-home women transitioning back to work need to practice talking about themselves, to promote themselves, to balance the 'talk' about who we want to become with who we are now, in honest, hopefully funny, positive language. It takes a lot of stumbling. It's easy to avoid. But I call on all of us to try this as often as we can; to stumble through, to treat our listeners with compassion, to let ourselves be teased, as we slowly and importantly, define who we are in the best of terms.

Children and their questions!

2009-10-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was driving my 11-year-old son to practice recently when he asked me,"Mom, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grow up and did you become any of those things?"

In those fleeting seconds, all I could think about was that I absolutely couldn't remember a thing about what I wanted to be. Among my siblings I was the least able to remember the past. I was the kind of kid who was bursting with an outward-focused energy, the one who always wanted to play outside and throw the ball with my dad or jump into a pile of leaves and be where the action was. I would go and go and go until I was exhausted, then at night collapse into bed, to my father 'Papi's' make believe stories about Pajama Jack and Willow Tree. As a child I didn't reflect much, but if I did, it was more of the daydreaming variety where I'd lapse into fast-changing, emotional reveries of landscapes and colors and images of people doing things.

But what did I want to become?

At first I must have wanted to become some version of my parents. Who they were and what they did were complicated and mysterious. Papi was some sort of lawyer-ish person who, from an elegant office in downtown D.C. helped people in really poor countries buy houses for themselves. And twice a year for two or or three weeks he would travel half-way across the world, to Botswana or Bangladesh and other places. His post-trip slideshows of baboons-in-the-savannah, squatter settlements, and street-lepers were like reading a National Geographic magazine- his job seemed really cool and exotic but a little too abstract.

My mom's job was even harder to make sense of. She was clearly not going to an office anywhere. As a 70's feminist, she never said her main job was raising her children. She called herself an artist and when she wasn't taking care of the 4 of us (the kids, and my dad), she was up in her studio making pen-and-ink illustrations for magazines and someone's company logo. And she was writing essays. But this "career" of hers seemed to make her feel lonely and restless. I definitely did NOT want to become THAT. However, I was in awe of her talents and spent many hours trying to draw horse's heads and making little home-made blank books with construction paper and a stapler.

In answer to my son's question, I told him that in fact I did, for a while, want to be like my dad and help poor people in other countries and I did in fact become a city planner and live and work in countries to help poor people. If we'd had more time I might have told my son I had sort of wanted to and eventually did become something of a writer. I threw something in about doing what you like and are good at and not to focus on the money too much (this to a child who wants to become a millionaire and environmental engineer).

The question I have to ask myself is: what happened to the little girl who was too busy living and jumping in the leaves, the little girl who couldn't get enough out of the day, who needed people and action so much of the time, that she had no time to think about 'becoming'? This is who I'm in search of, that raw, curious part of myself that embraces life with such joy, passion, and inexhaustible energy that the labels and ideas of who I'm supposed to be become irrelevant.

Don't Believe Everything You Think

2009-10-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is from a bumper sticker on my neighbor's car. I love it! I only wish I could actually do that. My last post ("Is it Racist to Be a White Stay-at-Home Mom?) got some strong feedback so I'm going to keep the topic on the table here a bit longer. One working friend commented how much she'd LOVE to be able to quit her job and stay home with her kids but she has no choice. She had a hard time relating to my discontent. Her point was also that we're all muddling through the best we can so what's the point of fretting over other people's opinions of us?

Another person said she felt that race has nothing to do with whether or how one chooses to stay home and raise their kids other than the gender and socio-economic factors that determine our ability to choose. On reflection it's clear I worry about stereotypes I think other people are projecting onto me (kid-centric, shopaholic, snobbish & uptight, controlling). More than likely it's I who is projecting stereotypes/attitudes onto other people, making assumptions about their points of view (hostility, envy, distrust). I'm one of those white people who might as well carry a sign on my chest that says "Beware! Guilt-Ridden White Person".

And back to the privilege issue (for "white privilege" includes economic privilege). Yes, it's a privilege to stay home and raise the kids. I'm searching for an acceptance of myself in a role I never expected to have for this long. Now that I've been out of the workplace for over 10 years I'm starting all over again as I gear up to find a new role. I've always done what other people (parents, teachers, experts) suggest I do. Now it's is up to me to choose and it is scary and confusing but somehow authentic. That in itself is a feminist act, choosing one's own next steps beyond the carpool.

Is it Racist to be a White, Stay-at-Home-Mother?

2009-09-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

You know what bugs me? In some ways I am comfortable where I am, staying at home raising the kids. Maybe about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time when doing or thinking about the never-ending list of domestic drudgery I carry this existential cocktail of shame, confusion & doubt that the "world out there" in my American cultural context of smart, successful friends, judges me for choosing motherhood over career. Maybe it's that I feel guilty for having the privilege of being able to stay home. Am I scared that I reflect a stereotype of white racial privilege, the sort of liberal, well-educated version of the white housewife on TV commercials happily selling Swiffer and Dove?

Maybe so. I abhor the stereotype of the white, well-kept housewife (doing the dishes in pearls) because deep down, I'm scared to admit that maybe I really am that woman. Why does it terrify me? Because the idea of that stereotype conveys

- subservience to men
- passive material comfort
- relinquishing financial power
- relinquishing greater ambitions in deference to others
- passive acceptance of white, male-dominant culture

So is my choice to stay at home as a white woman a racist act to some degree? Perhaps, depending how I choose to talk about and live that life and with what people.

On the other hand, what's wrong with nurturing? Raising kids these days you have to practically have a PhD in Childhood Development. It's complicated and you have to upgrade your thinking about as often as your laptop. There's a noble, ironic justice in that. And what of all the women out there who don't have higher degrees and simply choose to raise their kids with honorable common sense? What of the women out there who do NOT have the freedom to choose and have to go to work and would give their souls to stay home and raise their kids but can't for the life of them, figure out how, financially? None of it is fair. None is clear cut.

But what is true and fair is that I can live the stereotype and tweek it to some degree. I can play the game and change the rules. Do the dishes and go hear an interesting talk. Make dinner and participate in Diversity Expert Carmen Van Kerckhove's discussions on Race and Expressing One's Authenticity.

None of it is perfect, nor clear-cut, but it's a step forward toward living a more authentic life.

School Volunteering as Career Training

2009-09-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest lesson for mothers returning to work is slowing down and taking small, achievable, high-value steps toward the goal of meaningful work. I tend to think big (grad school, kids grown-up) when in fact there are small things I can do to get training and experience in the mean time. In fact, I may find that if I take the baby steps first - a stimulating volunteer position or internship - these will likely inform a smarter decision down the line about grad school. The Director of Communications at my children's school suggested I help start a nascent student newspaper. That way I hone my communications and project management skills and learn my likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. It's a win-win situation. It may be unpaid, but it's flexible, educational, meaningful, and directly feeds my ultimate goal of a job in the Communications industry. I can still plan long term (apply to graduate school) but I'm being proactive in building my skills today.

An Uneasy State of Mind

2009-09-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

NYT columnist Maureen Dowd wrote earlier this week about women and happiness but it was this excerpt from a reader's 'letter to the editor' that really hit home:

"All professionals have to make decisions — sometimes hard decisions — in the course of pursuing a career and raising a family at the same time. But women tend to perceive these decisions not only as time-management choices but also as existential choices.

Every hour spent at work or at home is not simply an hour, but a testament to what makes one happy — and what one is willing to sacrifice for that happiness. As long as women feel that their decisions carry such freight, it won’t be surprising if they continue to feel uneasy about making them.

Zaahira Wyne
Fredericksburg, Va., Sept. 20, 2009"

I don't know what the answer to this is, but it has to do with our society's cultural expectations of women's primary role as "the good mother". Corporate culture, government, the media all feed into this framing of women's experience by devaluing parenthood and placing the burden of the "cost" (or sacrifice) of parenting onto the private individual.

Why Career Jealousy is Useful

2009-09-01T13:49:00.000-07:00

"If you worked in a plant nursery and met a customer who's job you found so interesting it made you jealous, what job would that be?" asked my friend Kiersten as we sat on the beach, our kids splashing in the cold, clear water of Lake Tahoe this past summer.

I found this question both brilliant and daunting. We had been talking about how there's a part of me that just wants a regular paying service job. Nothing fancy with lots of bells and whistles and promises of career advancement. Just a simple, down-to-earth paying job that allows me to put my over-thinking parenting brain to rest for a few hours each day. My friend said I was copping out, that I was avoiding hard truths about myself.

"What is it you, a highly intelligent, well-educated woman, really want and what are you so afraid of?" she asked. I replied with the familiar rant that I wanted a creative job in media management that was flexible and paying but that I had inherited my mother's perfectionism, pessimism, and insecurity. Kiersten interjected once again with "...get some seriously good therapy and get over the mother thing once and for all."

What I'm afraid of is that my husband and family will let me down, that the family structures we've built will far apart and we'll all be fighting. Summers will be mad, panicky weeks of struggling to find coverage for the kids after camp, I'll never get to go to Poland to visit my cousins and write my memoir, and my kids will start to feel neglected and become detention hall drug addicts.

What these thoughts tell me is that I need to start somewhere small. I need to practice going to work, even for 1 or 2 days a week only, just so I can know that we'll all be OK.

Networking and Setting Priorities

2009-04-20T11:41:00.000-07:00

I'm a social creature and even I find networking challenging. This is because I still tell myself that 'networking' is 'fluff' work, not serious enough to merit being calendared in the ol' date book. If you, like me, are in transition professionally, we must accept the critical importance of networking. Especially now. No matter how hard it is to climb out of that shell - whether it's due to shyness, inertia, habit, or fear - connecting with other people is KEY to finding work you love.

Part of networking is setting priorities for ourselves so when we meet people we can talk about our short, medium, and long term goals. I just received an email from a friend, Normandie Ramirez, looking for work and she listed her priorities so well that I thought I'd share these with you. She writes:

"My search is three-fold:

1. Long-term goal: Full time position with an established organization where I could build the next chapter of my career.
Titles might be: Communications Manager, Executive Producer, Media Relations. Companies: Kaiser, Pixar, Lucasfilm, non-profits such as The San Francisco Food Bank and The Exploratorium interest me as well.

2. Mid-term: Project based work.

3. Short-term: Interesting work with good people working towards a valuable mission. Anything "green", humanitarian based or just plain fun. No ego here. I do want to be paid for my services but the rate of pay is irrelevant. Discovery, learning and networking is the payoff in this category."

Remember, network and set your priorities. With short, medium and long-term work goals, your networking contacts will have more to work with and more contacts to pass on.

This Mom is Trying to Let Go

2009-04-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

In my last post I talked about feeling addicted to stress. At the root of this craving for "busy-ness" is a wish to avoid difficult emotions like sadness and anger. With less stress or work I have more time to actually feel. And right now, with one child entering puberty full-on, I'm struggling with letting go and losing control. My 13-year-old son is not the perfect student, nor the amazing social mover or shaker, nor any other mold of a kid I've projected onto him. He's becoming himself and it's not always pretty watching myself struggle to let go. As a woman re-inventing herself, defining a new career path, I am also defining a new relationship with my children - one of greater autonomy and independence. If I can become less controlling and more independent of them "needing me", my kids will learn how to be more self-sufficient as well.

Addicted to Stress

2009-04-14T12:21:00.001-07:00

It's the second day of my older son's Spring Break. He's gone for the week and so my usual 3:00pm deadline is suspended. No more mad rushing around to do a zillion things before the rush of carpool, homework and dinner. I have more time! You would think this would be liberating but I feel sluggish and off my game. I've been trained like Pavlov's dog to function within a 9-to-3 mindset. With more available time this week I'm working less efficiently and moody. I'm a deadline-driven, collaborative personality who thrives on the adrenaline-induced high of stress. How do I get over this addiction to stress and create healthier work habits that feed my need for achievement and accomplishment? Stress expert Debbie Mendel, offers some good advice.

Banff Mountain International Film Festival

2009-03-07T22:36:00.000-08:00

Tonight I was initiated into the adventure film sub-culture of the Banff Mountain International Film Festival at UC Berkeley. It was amazing: from a film about copper mining in the Sock Eye salmon home of Bristol Bay, Alaska, to a flick about a little girl dancer in Peru preparing for her father's death, it was such a wild ride around the world. Lots of wholesome, handsome young men and women in the crowd. Lots of great outdoor-wear watching. Lots of healthiness all around. I want to go out right now and by mountain bikes for my whole family and move to Alaska for the summer. The event made me feel very "urban" and high strung - which I am - but it also inspired my love of nature and my New Year's resolution to get out into the wild more in 2009.

God's Party

2008-11-13T12:32:00.000-08:00

In this season of birthdays and holidays I've been contemplating parties and self-identity. Parties big or small bring out the most intense aspects of human nature. Ritualistically we ponder our guest lists and what this says about who we are, we provide food and drink, worrying whether there'll be enough, we stand in the mirror weighing what image to project. But what if God were hosting the party? How would the experience be different? Read guest-writer Melinda Clemmons' beautiful riff...

'If god invited you to a party....' --Hafiz

"If God invited you to a party, would you worry about what to wear? Would you stand in front of the mirror, peeling off one idea after another? Or would you just go, not even bothering to look down to see what you had on, just go, heading straight to the bar for the best drink of your life. Would you look anxiously around to see who else was there, or would you trust God not to tolerate cliques, and just walk right up to the other partygoers and fall into their conversation? Maybe you’d slip your lipstick out of your pocket and run it across your lips, drag your fingers through your hair. If God invited you to a party, you’d see everyone you’ve ever known, loved, avoided all right there on the marble sky-high glittering dance floor, and it would be okay. You could hold out your hand to your mother-in-law and take her for a spin. If God invited you to a party, the night would go on and on, repairing all the old wounds, nurturing all the old loves. Everyone would wind up in God’s kitchen, huddled around the stove, ice clinking down into glasses, feet shuffling. All around you’d hear exclamations, praise and surprise and reinvention. Someone would ask where God was, and the kid in the corner would say God went upstairs to bed, and someone would open another bottle and pass it all around the room." - Melinda Clemmons, mblackorby@gmail.com

Barcelona: An Insecure Moment

2008-08-04T01:22:00.000-07:00

Yes this is a very child-friendly place and all that. But, yesterday evening I ventured out alone with the kids up to Park Guell, the park famous for the ceramic lizard designed by the architect Gaudi. The park was great even if the kids balked, yet again, at the aimless walking. They have got to learn HOW TO STROLL. This is a foreign concept to them. After various ice cream and soda-related threats, they sucked it up and went along with my meanderings. We explored the park for maybe 20 minutes then headed down into the Soho-ish neighborhood called Gracia which was supposed to be this remarkably happening place but so many stores and restaurants were closed and I figured this was due to it being August. I had honed in on this cool tapas place called Sol del Solar, culled from guide book recommendations, but without Peter, I developed cold feet - there were absolutely no kids in the place, all the cafe tables were taken- and I just felt self-conscious. We walked from "placa" to placa (little plazas) searching for more family friending dining to no avail - everyplace was either an ice cream joint or a hang out for young adults. I felt disappointed and wimpy, like I'd failed some idea of myself as the sophisticated traveler. Together we hopped into a taxi and returned closer to home where I took the kids out for pizza to a little outdoor restaurant right near our apartment. We were home by 10:30pm. My instincts tell me it´s time for Peter and I to split off for a day and do some independent exploring.

Barcelona Diary: End of Week 1

2008-08-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

It is really hot here. I mean seriously moy picante HOT! So on Wednesday we packed up the van and headed north up to the Costa Brava (which means ´wild coast´) for some needed ocean breezes to the town of L'Escala. This was a great choice. We ended up staying at this 100 year old hotel set right on the beach adjacent to an amazing archaeological site of a Greco Roman city. As soon as we pulled into the dirt road parking lot of the hotel, I felt like we'd finally found our groove. The kids plunged right into the beautiful blue water and discovered snorkeling. The big highlight was Sean seeing an octopus eating a crab under a rock. The beach was packed with tourists from everywhere other than the U.S. and I, lying in the still-boiling heat of 6pm, soaked the ´foreigness´up like a balm. Julien soaked up the toplessness of the women (all ages) with some interest. Sean expressed initial disgust and then after a day, it wasn´t very interesting. Both kids continuously comment on how many people, especially young people, smoke here. They just can´t comprehend it.

Food highlights: gaspacho soup in the heat of the day, anchovies soaked in really tasty olive oil, mashed tomato on whole wheat bread w/olive oil and a little salt for breakfast.

After L'Escala, wanting to honor Peter's desire to have a little taste of France, we drove across the border, perhaps an hour as the crow flies, to Coullioure, a royal medieval outpost from the time of the Hapsburgs in a time when the land was called Aragon. Very fairytale like, this place. Now it´s a popular vacation spot, packed with tourists of course, but soooo beautiful that painters like Derain, Matisee, and other Fauvists had come here to paint the famous "light of Coullioure". I couldn´t stop taking photographs. Peter was in heaven sipping his rose wine in one of the outdoor cafes right on the water. We ate local anchovies and caught up on our salad intake since Spain is not big on vegetables or salad dressing. Great croissants and baguettes. Enjoyed being able to communicate really well.

Now we're back in Barcelona ready for the second half of the trip. More to come...

Barcelona Diary: Day 3

2008-07-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Today, Tuesday and 3 days since our arrival in Spain, we are still adjusting to the time difference. The kids were up from 3 am, on and off until 7 - not so fun - but we rallied and got an early start to see the Gaudi church, the Sagrada Familia. Julien (12) has declared his new-found fear of heights - walking down through the maze of steeples was not so much for him - guess the paternal genes are appearing because Peter has a small fear of heights as well. We've been using these multi-use Metro passes and that has been an excellent choice. We use the metro a lot. After the Sagrada Familia, skateboards in tow, we ventured beyond the city center to the port-convention area and found an excellent free-style skate area that Julien and I had googled from Oakland. In a post-apocalyptic setting of giant blocks of concrete and pavement, small concrete and wood beaches have been created. We saw life guards and old ladies, all kinds of people sleeping on these stone and cement paved patios that plopped right into the water, no sand. Eventually we took a seaside bus that got us closer to the city center but even there we felt like we were in beach resort filled with topless bathers and people walking the boardwalk and eating leisurely lunches on beach side cafes. I tested the water and it's as warm as the Atlantic. This is so different from the northern California climate. Our "home trade" family headed to California today (we met the whole crew yesterday and Sean and Julien had a chance to go outside and skateboard with the 2 boys) and we´re worried they´re going to be really annoyed by the lack of public transportation and the foggy, cool summer of the Bay Area. Around 9:30pm Peter and I left the kids for 20 minutes to do a food run at the corner store - kind of like 7-11 and Village Market. Prices not super high or low, but lots of people there and we realize that people here have more money to spend on food because they don´t own cars or big houses. At dinner Sean said "why don´t we rent an apartment for a year in Europe some time?" (this coming from the kid who hours earlier said he was having the worst time). Anyway, it is now nearly 11pm and everyone still wide awake after too-long naps. Tomorrow we attempt the driving experience up the Costa Brava to the town of LÉscala and the Roman ruins.

Barcelona Diary: First Days

2008-07-28T01:05:00.000-07:00

These first days feel like we're learning to salsa - the rythym is apparent, fast yet sultry, but we´re beginners and either keep stepping on each others toes, or missing the beat. Our 2 boys are now on Spain time, staying up late with us so we can eat out and beat the heat. But then we all wake up late and the tourist sites feel daunting and all we want to do is walk, somewhat bleary-eyed, until it´s time to eat again. I guess that´s alright but I feel like this 2 week timeframe is so narrow and there is so much to do and it´s so hot! Yesterday we discovered Montjuic Park, walked a huge portion of it, and came upon an amazing synchronized swimming performance in the Olympic Pool worthy of the actual Olympics. I snuck off to explore a small botanical garden for some much needed serenity and discovered all the plants were exactly like those in our own California neighborhood. The Miro Museum was great. What a genius of early "graphic design" in its purest, most balanced, minimalist, and creative form. On the way back home, walking through the Poble Sec - a neighborhood of old buildings and narrow alleyways, I discovered 2 wild parrots hanging out in the trees overhead, just like the "parrots of Telegraph Hill" in San Francisco. I felt moved by this small natural discovery. The Sunday streets are quiet except for the perpetual honking of cars echoing from everywhere (like a house without carpets, this city echoes its footsteps loudly and makes one think of the need for more green space to soak up the noise).

Beginning-of-Summer Blues?

2008-06-13T12:16:00.000-07:00

Stress and beauty salons don't mesh. You go TO the salon to get rid of stress not make it worse. Imagine these two images merged: a TV news room and a harem of reclining women eating grapes. You get cognitive dissonance, the color brown, static. That was my brain - the color of fuzzy brown static, kind of like my unwaxed calves. I had to pick up my son in 40 minutes but one of my best friends talked me into an end-of-year appointment at the beauty salon. She had just finished a long year teaching art to middle schoolers and was ready to switch gears and slow down. I had just finished a kids carpool and would be continuing on with my role as stay-at-home and writer, not particularly thrilled to face a house full of bored children and no homework. I wanted this "girl-y" time with my friend but as soon as we walked in the door it was clear I should have listened to my better judgement.

Apologetic that our appointment had to be delayed, the salon owner agreed I could get my eyebrows waxed while we waited. "Could we do my legs first?" I asked the handsome salon-owner's husband who was manning the reservation book. His wife, standing protectively by his side quipped, "No way. That thing will take 25 minutes" tilting her head downward then scurrying off to check on her other customers. "That thing?! That thing you're talking about are my legs!" I said, teasingly to the husband. I was miffed by the faux pas but also knew this whole thing was unrealistic. Perhaps fearing I might run off with him the salon owner returned, ushering me into the waxing room. "Let's do your eyebrows while you and your friend wait for the pedicure. RELAX!" she exclaimed. Her efforts at soothing talk were lost on me.

I lay on the white-sheeted table-bed staring at the turquoise walls, my thoughts stuck on a treadmill of time-and-children, time-and-children. After she glanced briefly at the door behind her like she was checking on something, the salon owner began ripping out the extraneous hairs above my eyes with small strips of warm, pressed wax. What do you do to relax? I asked, eager to see the end result. "I do yoga and deep breathing every morning" she answered. Rip!, went the velcro-like sound of wax separating hair from skin. Rip! Minutes later, facial skin puffy under a layer of aloe vera gel, I was ushered to the pedicure area. I had exactly 20 minutes to spare. Skeptical, I raised my newly shaped eyebrow at the pedicure lady. "I shouldn't do this" I muttered. "Sit down! Sit down! You're too stressed out!" said the salon owner. Meanwhile she excused herself to argue with the contractor about the A/C. She returned to my feet and starting scrubbing the soles emphatically, hell bent on finishing the job.

I began making cell calls to deal with my waiting son. My friend began invoking positive affirmations about the rest of her afternoon, sworn to not let my stress affect her.(I'll go to the book store! I'll walk home by myself, It'll be nice! I'll call B--- and maybe he'll pick me up!) I felt bad. Our timing had been so off. I had so wanted to feel relaxed, so wanted to feel good about the beginning of summer like my friend. Thirty five dollars later I was racing down the hill in my van, my silver-painted toenail feet pressed pedal-to-the-metal. Just relax, I said to myself. It's summer!

Cat Memorial

2008-06-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

The treatment room of the vet's office was like any other antiseptic exam room except it included a trickling fountain, a Chinese-style, faux rice-paper lamp, an automatic Febreeze scent dispenser, and on the fleece-covered exam table, a giant plastic puppy-head Kleenex dispenser. As soon as I walked in the door I started weeping and went for the puppy-head.

This week we said goodbye to our cat, an 8-year old Russian Blue named Pavlova. She had suffered from gradual kidney failure and the time had come. She was not the most affectionate creature but had mellowed over the years, allowing us to pet her on her terms so she could make a quick escape if necessary. She liked to sit in my lap when I worked at the computer. We have two young boys, 9 and 12, so the preparations required some thoughtful consideration: do I bring Pavlova's body home and bury it in the back yard? do we have her cremated and bring home the ashes? I had the vet put her to sleep, cremate her, then scatter her ashes on the memorial park in Monterey.

Back home, our dog Maisy, fully aware of the new absence in her life, moped and slept on her pale green dog pillow. In the garden I saw shadows in my peripheral vision that made me turn and think it was Pavlova quietly making her presence felt as she always did, at a distance but close enough so you knew she was there.

For the funeral I made a big pot of soup and heated up some sausages. Our housemate built an outdoor 'puja', an altar to the Hindu god Ganesh, remover of obstacles. On the altar was Pavlova's collar, a burning candle, and some nasturtium flowers. One son helped carry wood for an outdoor fire. We sat around a fire pit on our patio and shared a short round of memories and a Hindu chant. The other son's boundless, squirming energy made us laugh; his face while serious, was covered with a dozen little plastic stick-on eyeballs. Later we sipped hot mugs of soup and the kids bounded off to play basketball until twilight.

The next day two sets of turtle doves landed on our dry, hillside garden searching for seeds. I knew those doves, used to see them every day on the telephone wire crisscrossing overhead, too scared of Pavlova no doubt. Now that she was gone the doves were finally free to explore closer on the ground. Other birds became more apparent - robins, chicadees, and sparrows, newly pecking at the fertile ground, gorging on seeds they'd been eyeing for years.

The Gestalt of It

2008-05-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

My son has a small condition in his brain that affects his pituitary gland. He's been getting MRI's and blood tests every 4 months for the last 1.5 years. I have quite a medical vocabulary now. This can really impress people who've never traveled the road of serious illness.

But what really impressed me was something my son's doctor's said at our most recent follow-up visit.

Dr. Kim is a Pediatric Neuro-Surgeon at Kaiser, someone who decides when the odds are in favor of "going in" and operating on a child's brain. This is a huge responsibility. That's why he has it and I don't. So he says, "Before I look at anything specific, any singular piece of data, I look at the gestalt of it."

"The gestalt of it?" I say.

"Yeah, the whole thing, all together. I get a feel for the whole situation, then I make a judgement call," said Dr. Kim.

Hearing these words, this uber-psychological term, a term I grew up with in my house where my parents were constantly trying new therapies and forms of self-help, I felt like I had come home to a place I knew so well.

"And what did the gestalt of it all say to you?" I asked Dr. Kim, eagerly leaning forward on the chair in the exam room, Sean's naked muscular legs dangling in front of me from the exam table.

"The 'gestalt' says Sean's condition is normalizing, it's starting to heal itself, and we can rule out cancer" says Dr. Kim.

I had known the last test results were better, but not this much better. I wanted to get up and hug Dr. Kim, I wanted to stand up and do a jig. I felt so vindicated, so thrilled that things were finally going in a positive direction.

"Sean's clinical condition - the hormone replacement therapy - he'll probably need to to do that for the rest of his life - yes, there are rare exceptions - but at least we know that he's getting better. Cancers usually get larger before they get smaller."

I've been prepared for the fact that Sean may have a life-long chronic condition. But it's reassuring to know that things are unlikely to get worse.

The gestalt of it? Things are looking up.

Sun's Out

2008-04-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

The sun's out and it forgot to send me an email reminder ("Don't forget: Meeting with Sun, 9:00am"). It's not on my schedule to be outside but I can't resist. I'll shift everything forward half and hour for a quick face-to-face. On-line Traffic School can definitely wait although it really can't, due yesterday. The book project sitting patiently in my dark home office downstairs, will have to understand. The sun in the peak of Spring is a goddess to be worshiped. It flits through the darkest, most shadowed corners of everything, casting a brighter, longer light. New leaves in the garden glow a phosphorescent green. Children stay outside to play past seven, almost eight. How do we take full advantage of this moment - this fleeting, optimistic time of new beginnings - to survive the rest of the year? Perpetual spring would eventually become trite, predictable, not without its own set of complaints (too much green! too much color and youth!) Better to have one, finite round of it, one concentrated season of vivid colors, smells, and temptations. Still, I wish I could bottle the sensation, store if for winter or a rainy day.

Hard to Swallow

2007-11-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

I receive an email from a friend this morning in reply to a query about a health condition I have. The friend replies that I need to think about "what is hard for me to swallow?" She says that if I can answer that question, then I'll have a clue as to why I have chronic heart burn. Huh. The first thought that came to mind is "Maybe you can't admit to yourself that you can't write and you aren't a writer". The second thought was "Maybe you're turning 46 today and you can't swallow that!"...and then it was time to get moving on the day and I put the exercise on hold. So there was the usual doubt, for a second or two. What if this has all been a mistake? What if I just dropped everything having to do with writing? What is the worst that could happen? I put these questions out there to all of us who write and have periodic bouts of self-doubt. The worst that could happen is....I would be called a flake? A fake? A quitter? A loser? My family would chuckle and mutter with affectionate, humored teasing, 'there goes Anna again, being dramatic and moving on to something new'. My friends would still be my friends. My partner would say "whatever makes you happy". The spirit of my dead mother would say, "Good, it's time you listened to my advice" but she would still love me. So, what's "hard to swallow" is that yes, I'm scared to do things that might affect other people's opinions of me. It's hard to accept that this process is going so slowly. And yet. It's going as fast as it's going. Patience is what is hard to swallow.

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

2007-10-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's time to get down to business, stop pussy footing around, and do a little preparation in time for November 1st, the start date of National Novel Writing Month. I'm using this opportunity to try some new approaches to truth-telling. Even though I'm not writing a novel this is a chance to get loose and wild without judgement. The memoir has been simmering on the back burner for a while. And while it's been simmering, I've been reading, reading and reading. Now it's time to get down to some outlining, some list-making, some character and place-setting, and some plot-creating. First thing I want to do is make a list of those qualities of novels and memoirs that I love and post it on my wall. For starters: international, evocative landscapes (urban, rural, and domestic); great dialogue; lyrical use of metaphor (both dramatic and subtle); magic-realism grounded in believable, sympathetic characters; complex characters with contradictions; humour in awkward or weird situations; emotional progression; feisty women; passionate men; romance; letter writing; death....(just doing this exercise helps me see some possibilities for the upcoming month!)

Accept What Comes at You

2007-10-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

I take a weekly writing class with Word Wrangling's Laurie Wagner (www.wordwrangling.com), in Alameda. In this class I'm invited to let loose and write without editing myself, prompted by a line or phrase in a poem read out loud. Over the last two years I have used this class to create material for my memoir or for personal essays. When the memoir began delving into territory that was too raw for me to explore for more than a month (like the death of my mother, for example) I took a break from the whole project, preferring the satisfaction of shorter essays that chronicled my daily adventures. Now, since September when I hired an East-Coast mentor through the Creative Non-Fiction Mentoring Program(www.creativenonfiction.org), I have hoped to return to the memoir. But despite the ability to make lists of where I need to go, despite having the time to freely explore "ways in" to various sections written months before, I feel terribly blocked. In class today I had to leave the room because I had to cry. It was difficult, feeling this way and having to fess up to it: the classic writer's self-loathing, frustration, and the wanting for something true and pure to come out. It's about expecting too much too quickly, wanting perfection before the mistakes. It's a hard road, the one we must create for ourselves.

Creating a Memoir: The Mysterious Season

2007-10-18T14:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog about a memoir in progress. This is where I share my thoughts and ideas on one of the most challenging projects I've ever taken on - writing about my relationship with my mother. Like the dark woods of Eastern European fairy tales, this project is about mystery, trust, and magic. Join me as the road unfolds. Maybe you'll discover something in your own life's journey that begs to be told. Let's enter that dark forest together. See the sunlight peeking through the branches? That's our heart. See the criss-crossing lines of the empty branches overhead? Those are words. See the sky? That's the page of a book. The story is written. Now we need to find it .