Tag Archives: love

A Letter to a Friend from Houston

7 Sep

Dear Friend,

I can’t stop thinking about you. I think of you every time I turn on the news and see people plucked from rooftops by helicopters, rescued by neighbors on boats. I think of you every time I see a highway that was passable a few very long days ago that is now indistinguishable from an ocean if it weren’t for the drowned exit signs and street lights that won’t see power for days if not weeks. I think of you every time I see people crammed into convention centers and furniture stores and churches, not knowing the status of their family and friends or their homes, schools, jobs, churches; not knowing anything about what comes next. I think of you every time I contemplate the long journey back from here. I think of you always.

Because, in a way, I know what it is. I know what it is to come home to a place you understand with every inch of your being and have it be forever changed, forever scarred. I remember when the towers fell. I remember the fear of waiting for phone calls from family and friends, of returning home and seeing my city smoldering, of arriving back in my small town and seeing the cars left abandoned at the train station by people who never came home for them. And of course you know that, too, because you were here. You were here for all of that and I am sure it left a mark on you like it did for the rest of us. That mark of knowing what once was will never be again. That knowledge that nothing will ever be the same, that you will never be the same. That something happened that has changed the world, your world and the world at large, for a very long time. Like September 11th changed everything about the way we interact with our fellow humans whether by choice or through the force of law, these storms – one after another after another like clockwork – change our collective feelings of safety and security in our environment, make the need for action even more dire. This storm will be a mainstay in our conversation about the imminent dangers of climate change, and it will be a marker of time in your conversations about your city.

And so I think of you flying over your city for the first time and having to take that in alone. And I so wish I could be there to hold your hand. And I feel in some weird way that it is a gift that I will be there to meet you at the airport, that I will be in the car with you as you see it all at ground level for the first time, so I can be whatever support I can be. If you cry, I will cry with you. If you need to laugh, I will come prepared with jokes and stories and memories like that time we hitch hiked with priests in Guatemala; that time our car broke down on the freeway; that time we were walking through Houston and a dog ran at us and you puffed yourself up and yelled NO in a voice so grounded, so powerful that he ran away with his tail between his legs and we were safe. And then we will take a deep breath, stand up straight and head out into the world and help as best we can because all we can do right now is offer ourselves to others as support and love and relief. And I hope I can be that for you.

I am here for you. I am thinking about you. And I love you.

Love always

Rebekah

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An Open Letter to the Women in My Life

31 Jan

Dear Women in my Life,

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are my sanity and my strength. You are why I get up in the morning. No, you are how I get up in the morning. You are my sounding board and my support; you are my protection and my reinforcement; you are in my corner pretty much always and when you aren’t, and for good reason at times, you explain why in the most compassionate ways to make me understand my mistake, but to still ensure I never feel abandoned. With all of you, I am never alone.

These past few months have been tough, for all of us. Every single time I open my eyes it feels like a brand new affront, a brand new injustice, another way our government is being taken from us, used against us; its intentions hidden under layers of lies, or alternate facts, or fake news, or whatever the fuck they are calling it today. And for a moment I feel like it is too much, like it is me against everything, like I am living in this world where up is down and injustice is being legislated and a plagiarist is running the Department of Education. (Because, actually, that is the world we are living in excuse me while I scream.) But then I remember the women I am lucky enough to call friends and family and I breath a sigh of relief knowing that you are all there, that we are all going through this, and that we will somehow get through it with the love and support of one another.

So let me say this again: thank you. Thank you for your support, for your ears, for your understanding, for your analysis, for your dismay and anger and sadness and disbelief about all that is happening around us. I feel that too. And I hope that I have been able to provide even a small percentage of all that you have provided me. Because here’s the deal, ladies, we have a long haul. And women do a lot of emotional labor.

A lot of emotional labor.

A fucking lot.

And that emotional labor is unpaid and, more often than not, expected but underappreciated. And so let me say that I appreciate that emotional labor, that work, that we are all doing for one another. I notice it and I would not be able to live without it. But let us all remember that in the midst of all of this work, and all of this struggle, and all of this pain and disbelief and heartache, to take care of ourselves. Let us not forget to ask for the support of those around us. There is nothing shameful in it. Believe me there is more than enough emotional work to go around. And it is okay, too, to take a step back and say

Hey, this is all too much, I need a minute.

Take that minute. You deserve it. We all deserve it and more than that, we all require it. I had a conversation with a few of my core women today about the importance of self care and the importance of remembering that we cannot put in the work, we cannot be the best us in these horrible times, if we don’t take care of ourselves, and of one another. If we don’t ask for an ear or extra support and love on an especially tough day. If we don’t say,

Hey, friends, I need you to just check in on me today. Today the hurt is too much.

Because sometimes it just is. Our strength comes from our ability to admit when it is all just too much to handle alone. That’s when the rest of us can come in and be reinforcements, that’s when the rest of us can give you what you need – be that an ear or a drink or a joke or the biggest most heartfelt hug we can muster or some shared tears.

So again, thank you. For everything you have done and for everything you will do going forward. Because as I said before, there is a lot to be done, a lot to be endured, and we will need one another more than ever. And let me also say this: I am here for you as best as I know how. And every day I try to be a little more here, a little more supportive. I am trying to be the friend you all have been to me. I am trying to recreate for you the support that you provide that I could not live without. And I am trying to remember to say thank you, and to say it louder and more often.

And so thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul and the recesses of my brain. Thank you. I survived these past few weeks because of you and I will continue to learn and to fight and to be part of this amazing team of women for the next 4 years (chaos butterfly help us) and then beyond.

I love you. For all you are and all you do.

Forever grateful
And with open arms ready to give a giant hug,
Or a tissue to dry a tear,
Or some pointed words directed at the asshole that made you feel shitty,
Your friend,
Your Support,
Your Cheerleader,

Rebekah

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These are scary, scary times

10 Nov

Friends. As many of you already know, today I am embarking on a journey. Today I leave, my trunk full of clothing and books, my heart heavy, and head down to New Orleans for a short but important new chapter. A time when I can reflect on who I am and who I want to be in this world. I time when I can just sit back, far away from family and many of my friends, far away from where I have called home for my entire adult life, and start building. I want to start building a me that makes active choices and decisions for where I want my life to go and becomes a more vocal person within my community, where ever that community may be. This is more important now than ever.

I thought that I, along with one of my closest friends, would be driving South in a different America than the one we find ourselves in today. I thought we would be driving in the spirit of celebration and safety, not feeling as though we are in a high-speed train, breaks failing, hurtling into the darkness. Clearly we, along with millions of others, were out of touch with the degree to which people are hurting all over this country, to the degree that people feel ignored and left behind, to the degree so many disdain the cities and the people that live within them. And I get it. Shit is hard. And I am sure I am going to be seeing a lot of hard shit on this ride – a different kind of poverty and destitution than I see day after day in my beloved New York City. And that is unfair. I truly believe we all deserve opportunity, that we should all feel as though we matter. But more than anything else, I feel as though we should all feel safe and at home here in our America. In our beautiful, diverse, America. And so, in keeping with my post from yesterday, albeit with slightly less swearing, I have just a few things to say.

I am having so many feelings right now. I am angry, I am shocked, I am saddened, but more than anything I am afraid. I spoke on the phone with my father last night and he who lived through America during the Vietnam War, through the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, through the on-air killing of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, through the resignation of Richard Nixon, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the horrors of the Cold War and September 11th and everything that has come before, in between and after, he told me that he has never felt so unsure or afraid for and about the future of our country. These are scary, scary times. Scarier than ever before. And I remember speaking to my mother in the days and weeks following the 2001 attack on our country, myself in tears and her with a strength she always manages to find, and having her assure me that there are always these moments, always these times, that give us uncertainty but that we must have resolve and move forward and know there is more good than evil out in the world. That although things will never be the same, we will adjust and we will learn and we will get better. When I spoke with her at 10pm on election night, as we were understanding the reality of where we stood, her voice cracked. These are scary, scary times.

And in the past few days since Donald Trump’s election, things have become clear: we are living in a moment where people are angry and this outcome has, for some though certainly not for all, legitimized their feelings of closed-mindedness and has emboldened them to behave in ways that openly threaten those around them. My friend Ashlie shared this story:

Tonight we were at a bar, celebrating Leon’s fantastic film screening. A man came up to our table behind my seated friend and proceeded to, without greeting or warning or any words at all, put his arms around her, hug her, and kiss her cheek. We all assumed it was an old friend, and she squirmed around to see who it was, and it was a complete stranger! I said, “Do you know him?” and she said “no! Not at all!!!” We all started telling him in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t get to do that, just touch and kiss anyone whenever he feels like it, and he responded, “but Trump just won the Presidential Race.”
I am not kidding, lying, or being even the slightest bit hyperbolic. That is what happened, and that is how he defended his actions. So, know that.

Reading through the comments on her post revealed to me that there were many women who had the same exact experiences. Men walking up to them and touching them, grabbing them, kissing them and saying that because now that we have a President Elect Trump it is within their rights to do so. And then, of course, there was the one man, the one white man, who called all these women liars. These are scary, scary times.

And my younger sister, a graduate of Wellesley University, shared with me a story recounted by Sydney Robertson:

Today, Wellesley women, like a lot of America, were in mourning.

Edward Tomasso and Parker Rander-Riccardi, two students at Babson College, decided to drive around our beautiful campus with a Trump flag in a pick up truck. They laughed, screamed and sped around campus. Then, they parked in front of the house for students of African decent, and jeered at them, screaming Trump and Make America Great Again. When one student asked them to leave, they spit in her direction.

This is not my America, this is Trump’s America filled with hatred and bigotry. This is what he has provoked. Please help us get these faces out there, they cannot get away with this.

And this is just the tip of the ice burg. There are women afraid to leave the house in the hijab; women making appointments at Planned Parenthoods to get IUDs before our access to birth control, and our rights to choose, are further threatened; one member of the North Carolina LGBTQ community woke up to find a note on his car that read “Can’t wait until your ‘marriage’ is overturned by a real president. Gay families = burn in hell. Trump 2016.” And this is just the beginning. This is just 36-hours in. These are scary, scary times.

And so I head south. Away from a New York that no longer feels safe and into the unknown. I’m sure I will be fine but still, the nervous butterflies in my stomach are a little more active than the were just 2 days ago. Things seem less certain, more foreboding, and just, I don’t know, more treacherous. We all need to be more careful because a dragon has been awoken and that dragon has found his and her voice within mainstream media and our government, on the streets of our cities and our towns, and things will be a lot less safe for all of us. Every single one. Because if there is a Trump supporter who is reading this blog, and if that Trump supporter happens to be a white female (as so many maddeningly were) or a person of color, let me just tell you this:

Your vote will not save you. You cannot wear your vote as a badge of honor or protection as you move through your life. You might feel as though you are one of them but you are not. You are not part of their America. You are not equal. You are not free. And you are not safe. And so, though I might be angry and though I might not be ready to try to love you and embrace you in order to move forward, I hope that this horror blows over soon for all of us. Although honestly I doubt it will. We have a long uphill battle. And though on November 8th and the days immediately after you never thought you would be walking alongside us, you will be. Your pussies are just as grabable, your ethnicity and patriotism just as questionable, your skin color just as threatening.

I know that not all Trump supporters are awful or full of hate or voted for anyone else but who they believed would be the best person for the job. But the loudest ones, the ones in the corners of the internet, the ones touching women and threatening people of color, they are full of hate. Those are the bad ones. And so for those who voted not from a place of hate but from a place of fear and hurt, a fear and hurt that so many of us have been experiencing, you know what? We will be here. We will be here waiting for you because no one, no one deserves to be treated as lesser than. And we are, truly, stronger together.

So I’ll be seeing you, New York. Stay safe out there everyone. No matter where, or who, you are.

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A Letter to my Dad on his Birthday

9 Mar

Sorry my blog has been so quiet as of late. It’s been a stressful few weeks and also I just got back from a week long trip in Peru!  It was so fun.  Stay tuned for some adventure stories but for now, I have someone important to write about.  My dad.  Today is my dad’s birthday, AKA the second best day of the year (the first best obviously being my birthday which, in case you were wondering when to send gifts, is on July 19th), and so I figured I would write him a letter.  So, here goes.

Dear Daaaaad,

First thing first: happy, happy, happy birthday.  Since you are not having a big birthday party this year and I therefore don’t get the chance to bail you out of a botched speech with my own impromptu genius, I figured the next best thing would be to write you a letter.  You, Dad, are one of my favorite people in the world.  I’m sure there were times growing up when I was mad at you or when we got in fights or maybe when, in the heat of the moment, I told you that I hated you, something which all children do at some point I think, but sitting here at my computer right now I cannot conjure a single negative memory.  There are plenty of things that I do remember, however.  I remember us watching PeeWee together and am still sad I couldn’t get us tickets to his one man show on Broadway.  I remember us going to the car dealership to buy something moderately practical for a family of five and ending up returning home with a Mercedes convertible with only two seats.  I remember us, year after year, going shopping for mom’s presents at the last possible moment and always coming back with something awesome.  I remember watching that episode of Ren and Stimpy where there is a fire in the building and this woman is throwing all these things out of the window – an elephant, her huge baby, a walrus, herself – and laughing so hard that we cried.  I remember the countless pep talks you have given me over the years when I have had a hard time and doubted myself.  I remember sock puppet which, I believe, is still stuck in the pocket of one of your jackets, just waiting to make another appearance or brag about another trip to the Bahamas.  I remember us sneaking off in Disney World and going to eat sushi, coming up with the genius code word “the booths” so Mom and Lucy wouldn’t know where we were.  I remember your swordfish license plate.  I remember labeling all my leftovers “Dad: Do Not Eat!” so I wouldn’t come home with expectations of delicious food and find, well, nothing.  More than anything else, I just remember laughing.

I know that there are other dads in the world who are great, but I think Lucy, Aaron, Claire and I really got the best one.  There are so many people who didn’t have fathers, who didn’t or don’t have good relationships with theirs, and I really cannot imagine what that must have been like for them, what that continues to be like.  I just feel so god damn lucky.  When I think about the things that I have done and the person who I am, a person that I am proud to be, I really think that so much of the credit for all of that has to go to you and to Mom.  You guys created such a loving and supportive household, a place I am still so happy to return to.  You guys created an environment where, as long as I was trying and as long as I was kind, you would always be proud.  I know, no matter what I do in life I will always have the two of you in my corner cheering me on when things are great and cheering me up when they aren’t.

So, thank you, Dad. I know you know how much I love you, but sometimes it is just nice to have it in writing.  You are the best Dad, and one of the best people, in the entire world.  So happy birthday, Dad.  Here’s to so many more years of laughter.

Love always

Bekaaaaaah

PS  King Triton doesn’t have shit on you.

PPS  Where is that star tie I gave you for your birthday in the 2nd grade?  Best tie ever.

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April, You Stink

25 Apr

April is not my month, never has been.  For some reason, however, I always forget what bad luck April seems to bring.  All I can do is think about the sun on my face, the trees in bloom, the longer and longer days, the coming of summer.  I plan visits to the beach and a good vacation.  I put my winter coats away, vowing to not wear them again until the cold returns in the fall, not caring if this means I am a little chilly here and there.  I always approach April with so much optimism and am so shocked when April, once again, fails me.  What is it with April?

April was the month, three years ago, when I had my heart broken.  Rather than being out enjoying the beautiful weather, running around the park, eating outside, I spent days crying on my bathroom floor.  I remember walking outside the day after it happened, the day when I felt like the floor was ripped out from under my feet, and being angry at April.  Being angry at the perfect weather.  I felt resentment towards the warm breeze and the beautiful flowers.  How can they all be so pretty, so alive, when I felt so miserable?  How can the world just, continue?

April is also the month of horrible (domestic) things, most recently the Boston Marathon bombing.  But there’s also the Virgina Tech Massacre, Waco, the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Something about April, I don’t know.  Maybe all the energy people had stored up over the winter, maybe all the anger, just comes barreling out at this first sign of Spring and optimism.  Maybe all the time spent cooped up indoors was spent planning out evil rather than dreaming about warmer days.  Maybe it’s a resentment towards the happiness of others.  Who knows.  But there is something about April.

This April for me has been tough.  It always seems to be.  It’s been topsy-turvy and unpredictable.  But it has also been great. I had my best blog day ever, albeit a blog written about an event I wish never happened, a blog I wish I never had to write.  I participated in a conference at school and, at the risk of sounding self-impressed, I killed it.  I started making some serious progress in my thesis and have started to believe I might actually be able to finish this thing. I discovered that OB has started selling the Ultras again, which basically improves my life exponentially.  Bought two boxes yesterday.

So, April, I am glad you are almost over, I’m not going to lie.  But this year, I think I will remember you for the good you brought rather than the bad and maybe that change in outlook towards you will change your treatment towards me. I will approach you with optimism, tempered with trepidation.   I won’t forget the bad, like I sometimes do, but I will choose to cast it aside.  We’ll see how this works.  Guess we’ll have to wait until next year to find out.

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