#I don’t think I truly realize how much my sociology background influences me and my decisions

[forest-nature-7420]

my sociology background helps me overthink…….thats not good

[flying-elliska]

This is really random and I'm kind of a new follower, but from what I could gather you have such a strong opinion on different topics, which I kind of admire bc I find that so important but can't really apply that to myself oftentimes idk. Is it part of your personality or are you trying to be consciously aware to not just 'consume numbly'? Hope that makes sense. And you're giving such good advice?? But an anon has already stated that correctly. Have a lovely day 🎃✨

hey new follower, welcome to you then, glad to have you around <3 that’s a very beautiful compliment, thank you. idk if you were looking for advice too but here it is because it’s late and i can’t help myself apparently lmao. (with the caveat that I too am a moron frequently like anyone)

...

i am sort of a chronic overthinker, so maybe it’s natural. that said, i used to think i didn’t really have an opinion for a long time. i found it difficult to express myself. and i looked up to people who i thought did it well for guidance. so i feel you 

i went to a school where we prided ourselves on being able to talk convincingly about things we had zero knowledge about so eh (not that this is a good thing lmao) but i grew past that 

i think i realized at some point i just tend to have opinions that are very long winded because i like looking at different sides of an issue. i think part of that is me being a contrary bitch, i don’t like going for the obvious meaning (maybe it’s residual trauma from being raised by someone who had a quasi cult leader type of approach to parenting lol). we are so easily tempted to disappear into the group, or a relationship.  i feel like knowing your own mind, defining your own self image, seeing past the easy judgments and surface meanings, being able to understand reality on your own terms, is one of the deepest, most urgent forms of freedom. also empathy - which does not automatically mean endorsement - and trying to understand things and people from their own logic. 

we tend to assign error or folly or bad intentions very easily. but it’s often because of the limits of our own understanding. and well, i have a weird brain. i grew up feeling like some sort of alien, often misunderstanding people, social habits, my own mind. so constant overanalysis is to me, the survival strategy that came the most naturally. and so as not to let my brain eat itself, i have gotten pretty good at figuring out what’s relevant and what’s nonsense ( i still could get better at it tbh). but part of me is constantly checking myself so i don’t do something terrible or terribly embarassing. wouldn’t wish that on anyone tbh. i am increasingly learning not to oversimplify myself for public consumption. my mindscape is a jungle, so be it. what’s the shape of yours ?

i also grew up in a lot of different social spheres. i met people from all sorts of social backgrounds, from billionaires who owned private beaches and designed jewllery for fun to people living in trailers without electricity or in the street, from prissy heiresses who believed using the wrong fork was a sin to best friends who had to work since middle school to help their parents. from all sorts of creeds, from wayward soldier priests baptising people in streams to new age ‘shamans’ whose houses smelled of pee, from staunch atheists to adorable nuns living in stone villages in the mountains and wild mama bear witches. from all sorts of politics, from faithful anarchists to political exiles fleeing dictatorships to crypto-royalists and decrepit neo-colonialist conservatives. from all sorts of cultures too.  i think that’s the fave part of my childhood. people are just so interesting. but everyone operates within their own specific world, and you can’t judge people from your own perspective. of course there are things that are universally right or wrong but beyond that, you have to get into the world in which they move, understand its rules. see how it intersects with others. a lot of social interactions are role play. once you get that, you get the codes, you can move in any circle. (also : very rich people can be so unbelievably boring. they buy into their own hype so much, like spoiled babies. nothing to be very impressed about.) People wear façades and play different roles to different people; that’s not always a bad thing, after all parents have to be strong for their kids even when they’re scared. But now you’re an adult (or getting there) don’t let yourself be too mystified

 also : power. dynamics of power are everywhere all the time. if you’re not aware of them, that’s a mark of privilege. ( in the end, who profits ? is this building empowerment for people and communities or is it stripping it away ?) but they’re not totally all consuming either. there’s also always agency, and chaos, and possibility. and compassion.

i think it’s important to accept that it’s okay not to have an opinion on everything. and also that it’s always growing, evolving, deepening. it’s possible you taught yourself, out of survival instinct or habit or something else, not to trust your own heart/brain/intuition/experience. I don't think it's anyone's natural state to just consume numbly. i’m sure you can step beyond that, everybody can. also ; learn how to embrace being destabilized. there is always this one moment between knowing something, learning you don’t really, and then getting a deeper perspective, that is scary, but it’s okay. you can come back to your center. like any sort of growth, really engaging with difference implies discomfort ; bear it, it’s worth it. 

 i think any opinion that is too static is likely to turn into bullshit in the long run. like a good wine, it should gain in complexity with age. also : read up on sociology/anthropology if you haven’t already there’s just so much good stuff in there (and a lot of bullshit too lol) about what it means to be human and cultures and how minds work and symbols and etc etc. and find good news sources because it can be very easy to feel disgusted by the world otherwise. and read as much and as diversely as you can

find things to love about thinking ? for me it’s ; i don’t believe in this binary between mind/body, feelings/reason etc, i think it’s bullshit and they all influence each other. and so does our environment. we learned to think by looking at and interacting with nature. some of our neurons are in our stomach. we’re made of star stuff. we grow by engaging with others. and not to sound like a hippie but that shit is breathtaking bro. we encoded the world with stories and symbols and use them to tell ourselves and each other stories and built community and we’re all the time engaged in this web weaving. so i see and i want to see more and more thinking like this organic, tangible process. 

in the end, what is it important for you to have an opinion about ? i think it’s about passion, and love, and justice, and truth. what do you want to be moved by ? what do you want to honor with your possibilities for learning and knowledge ? where you invest your energy and time, you invest your life.when you have something you are passionate about, it will be much easier to express the subtlety and depth of a meaningful opinion about it. and then you can apply that to other areas of your life. 

personally i want to (i have to) live like a diplomat, as a balancing act, with elegance and the ability to make tough decisions with grace, moving between all the layers of life and bearing gifts from one to the next. and i want to be able to move people, and give them the kind of stories and knowledge that are tools for them to heal and be happy and make the world better. 

 i have my work to do, like everyone else, of sorting through my shadows and making the dream stuff intelligible. in the end it’s all about finding an authentic life. your own inner logic. the bonds that nourish it, and what you want to give. 

and i think once you find that is for you, i think finding your voice, an opinion that is truly yours and not copy pasted from some one else, will be much easier to start weaving. but don’t worry ; it happens in small steps. i bet you’re already on your way. 

[pivot2thrive]

Dead to Christianity, Alive through Christ

The western church in Europe and America is dying, just look at the numbers.

And for that, I am truly grateful. Good riddance...at least to that brand of faith.

You see, the church that I got older in (I don’t say grew up because I don’t believe that there was much related to growing up in that faith tradition) influenced me (and my family and friends) to believe that while I didn’t deserve it, God loved me anyway (what kind of a parent would tell a child that they do not deserve the parent's love?). All I had to do was accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, then I’d be saved and I’d get to go to heaven. Of course, I’d have to read my Bible so I could better understand what I’m supposed to do now that I’m a servant. The Bible was the only thing reliable about understanding God since people were imperfect (that is until you actually read it and realize just how horrible it can be and that the criticisms of Christianity’s critics can be quite valid). Further, with Christ as Lord, I learned that I needed to save other people and that I was to live in a community with other fellow believers. Essentially, I learned that others were more important than me. I needed to carry my cross so others could be saved. On top of this I learned that emotions were fleeting and dangerous and not to be trusted so I was to use my left brain to consider God’s word and make emotion abated choices, so I learned to kill those pesky little buggers.

Oh yeah, and I was kicked out of the youth group for having sex with my girlfriend at 16 noting no one came to my side throughout to ask me how I was doing. Being ostracized is no pleasant experience.

For anyone with a background in human development, one can see the underpinnings of trauma, codependency, attachment issues, over emphasized left brain development, and issues with perceptions of less-than and greater-than in relational dynamics. Candidly, the framework outlined in my family template and in my faith template set the course for issues with maladaptive coping mechanisms, the first of which I believe was a process addiction to this religious way of looking at life and was later manifest in forms of relationship addiction.

Over the years I’ve come to find just how highly unrelational this brand of faith is and was. I was inculcated into an environment of sin management and performance-based acceptance. Only if I carried my cross and didn’t act outside of the boundaries would I fit in…a tough task for any adolescent or teenager. In fact, any reference to having a relationship with God was only partially understood because my upbringing did not provide me with the tools to engage the relationship outside a pharisaical, left brain, performance modality. Sounds like work not a relationship.

Psychology, neuroscience, sociology and their converging viewpoints have made me aware of various unintended (sometimes intended) consequences of me interacting within the circles I did growing up. And with these I’ve been able to piece through the traumas of my past, develop a coherent narrative of the goods and bads, and have been able begin to integrate the various parts of my self to transform the way I think and feel, in ways that are more beneficial to me and others.

Now, as I look back at the faith environment of my youth, I am saddened by just how damaging it was. As I now have children, it will be a cold day in hell before I allow them to be damaged by these kinds of belief systems (and the people committed to carrying them out).

It looks nothing like the relational core of the message of Christ nor of the great commandment of the Judeo-Christian tradition to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The message I got growing up was that others were better than me and I had to perform in order to get favor (from God, parents, etc.). And because my neurological templates were formed in the way that they were, even if I heard a more relational message, I could not internalize it. There simply was no experiential context for that.

As I look through the overarching narrative of the Christ story, I’ve come to see Jesus as the great catalyst that started a movement toward fully integrated well being (a precursor to the revolution of our efforts in science). The arc of the story is one of disconnect, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation (with God, self and others). It does not go unnoticed that God is represented in multiple persons connoting the relational nature of God. In Christ’s death and resurrection we see the elements to help each of us re-narrate our ways of thinking and feeling that lead us to toxic levels of shame, guilt and fear. God covers all three in the death and resurrection of Christ.

But, more importantly, I’ve come to see a view of a loving God that cares about the growth and development of his kids. It is in good and healthy relationships that we humans thrive. It is in isolation and unhealthy relationships that we learn the habits that tear us apart. We are not “totally depraved” sinners that are abhorrent but rather we are children learning through our trials and errors on how to grow up into joyful, peaceful, loving humans. For all of us, our “sins” are evidenced in haywire neural programming but for some of us, these haywire circuits result in much more pronounced problems. Like a good and loving parent, God provides the grace, encouragement and challenge to help us breakthrough our neural programming gone awry. In Christ, God gives me the message that I’m worth it, that my past mistakes do not define me and that I do not need to fear my future as all will be made well. If Christ’s followers embody these principles, the ongoing reprogramming efforts take a monumental leap forward, after all, our minds are programmed to connect with people in relationships much more effectively than with some book, no matter how much wisdom it imparts.

What is grace?

It is the invitation to have a meal with someone who has been able to navigate their life with similar pains and sufferings, has come out the other side, wants to show you how you can do it too and is patient with you as you stumble through trying to get there. It is the gift of intent and freedom to learn a new way to live.

To the chagrin of many institutional churches, grace abounds…just not in their doors. Some of these churches do the feed the poor part really well but miss the relational component (many Christians do the same thing). Others simply haven’t broken through to the other side and so they focus on what they can…and this usually manifests itself in the rules, dogmas and beliefs to enhance sin management.

What is grace? It’s messy. If churches truly got grace, they’d be a lot messier, a lot more authentic, and would use the tools of Christ to invite others to clean up the inside of their cups. What does messy look like? Try attending an addiction support group.

[janiklandre-blog]

Friday, March 24, 2017

9:30 a.m.  in the computer room - grateful to have a working computer at my disposal - grateful for the quiet of being alone with 10 computers - nevertheless struggling with feelings of weirdness - worry that my energies are waning - feeling so helpless over the vagaries of my energy levels - and so angry with the heartless people who are unwilling to learn anything  - and can be brutal - totally unaware of their brutality. Feeling helpful and saintly pointing to all the wonderful pills that offer control - ignorant of their side effects and why so many people say: these pills make me feel like not myself - they make me gain weight - they make me sleepy - and I am grateful to never have gone near "mother's little helper".

I do talk to a lot of people - I do try for an open mind - and have also by my psychiatrist friends enlightened to the fact that I am fortunate to be able to deal with waning and waxing energies without any medication and yet that there are many people who are indeed helped by medications - whose lives are made possible with the medications.

Much has been written about it by now - countless first person accounts many of which I have read - often remarking though that accounts thast end by praising medications seem to have a better chance of being published by big name publishers. Names do not come thst readily to my mind - but there are a number of people of fame and fortune who are "open" about their wild mood swings - they do the craziest things - and often do have the good fortune of an understanding surrounding - the Episcopalians often seem very understanding, helping members of their church to keep high positions and hiding some wild outbursts. Often it is also the upper classes - often members are given to great madness - who do have understanding and means to keep their members in good standing. What we call "simple people" with little what we call formal education - but with the true education of the heart - often by the suffering Tolstoy praised as an educator - who show much tolerance.

America has praised itself on it's classlessness - claiming all are born equal - of course we are not. There is the French term: petit bourgeois - occasionally used by Americans - in Germsn: Kleinbuerger - klein is small, Buerger is citizen - same as petit bourgeois - is used often - and behavior called: kleinbuergerlich - this is the class of social climbers, narrow minded, judgemental, intolerant, discontent and given to liking Hitlers and Trumps -a true menace. They are often a laughing stock and made fun of - there is a British Saturday night TV program on channel 13, I've watched it occasionally - can't think of the name - showing how sadly hilarious these people often can be in their aspiration to be what we call "Grossbuerger" - or better yet, aristocrats.

Sociology - I much enjoyed my two years of studying it - is based on philosophy - German philosophers Google will be much more helpful than I if you want to find out more about the history of sociology - in any event, sociology, psychology, anthropology all are very new sciences and trying to help us deal with that weird creature Homo Sapiens - the wise man, who alas is not very wise and right at this moment we are once again faced with dangerous lack of wiseness. Have not yet read Krugman today, nyt columnist, economist - only glimpsed at it - I believe he writes about the sad lows to which so called statesmen, politicians have sunk. A great lack of wise leaders - and many point to the assassinations and  now more and more good people are getting assassinated.

So while in America we are said all to be equal - as the European I still feel myself to be - I openly admit to class consciousness - and since my time now allows me to ponder such matters, I sadly see how much of my life I have come to spend with the petit bourgeois and suffering from their utter lack of understanding for me - and often being judged and scorned by them - for what they call excentric - and yes, I am excentric. I most certainly am not part of the "center" - "they" are so proudly part of - and know exactly how people are to behave - and now all these producers of pills and hordes of "therapists" thrive on making everybody - even tempered at all times.

Since I spend so much time reading and dwelling on these topics - for sure boring many - one of many many studies remains my mother (and also myself) - my mother who was born to two people from very diffrent background who both had in many ways risen above their background - were of a group much influenced by Marx - perhaps even read him - and referred to themselves as Proletarians. Also a group wanting to make all people equal!

My Jewish grandfather - coming from merchants - had become a locomotive engineer - not the lawyer or doctor he was supposed to become. My grandmother, born to an illiteraste, almost certainly Catholic maid - studied alongside my mother, by choice heer only child (perhsps not the best choice) - and later came to read the German philosophers (my mother snd I never did). Early my mother tutored Emmi von Uhle - minor aristocracy in her provincial town - and wanted to model herself on them - and a great virtue for aristocrats is: self control. I hear my mother saying to me: control yourself - an issue to this day - realizing by now how hard it can be at times to control myself, yet striving for it.

I am looking at the watch - the topic I wanted to dwell on was the term: offend, in German beleidigen - Leid is is sorrow, causing someone sorrow. I had to be sorely offended by Martha H. myself to come to think about all the offending that does go on at the CW - and also thinking who does freely and happily offend people - and having watched over the years how people react to being offended - many leave permanently and many temporarily. One of the much offended is Robert T. (I'm strictly forbidden to ever mention him) - who - after I said one wrong word to him did not speak to me for a year - would not even look at me - and yesterday on the phone begsn preaching to me the need for forgiveness and praying for the person for the person who offended me - he is a convert to Catholicism - a much tortured soul, who has done a lot for me - realizes I am one of the very few who truly appreciates his wondeerful qualities and accepts his lack of social skills. Would love to teach him some - but - by now it is accepted that he talks and I listen and he does not want to hear anything I might have to say. His loss. Still what I told him yesterday was - I am not a Catholic. I forgive a lot on the motto of tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner - to understand is to forgive - but - all this forgiving can also lead to stewing in our juices - which can lead to depression - anger turned inward - and also to aggression turned outward. All this aggression we see now all around us are angry people - acting out their anger in murderous ways.

We see far too little understanding - for the many ways anger is created - by a powerful highly armed empire - creating the terrible danger we live in. I do realize thst the woman who offended is much younger and very powerful in the group where I am marginal - feels entitled to offending me - and all I have is this here my computer to talk to and trying to figure out how I can channel my anger constructively.

Yesterday - tai chi at the church - a Chinese teacher - much geared to to many Chinese students - not terribly satisfactory to me - lunch, hard on my teeth - came home and fell asleep, a bit too long, worrying me (waning energies?) - off to Washington Square - a young man with a sign Deep Listening and some more words - 2012 Brandeis grad, sociology, grew up in Tribecca - lower Manhattan, totally unaware of anything that has gone on in the city, environment his intrerest, lived until recently in Boston, where he also tried to make money by listening, found a kinder environment - he does have a teaching job at an elite public high school, I think called Chealsy Latin prep - he made a few dollars from people taking photographs of him - the two lovely young women just in from Colorado began talking to him - at that point an angry man of color appeared, loudly cursing him out, the two young women fled - he stayed - I guess New York is tougher than Boston. In Boston he told me he had done very well.

Came home - find myself talking on my cell phone while my land line rings - I have no gizmo that tells me who called on my land line - so quickly pick it up and say call later - not very good - how do you handle having two phones? - then hurried to this here computer to answer my emails - I do try to be as polite and good mannered as I possibly can - ate some weird dinner - my teeth! - and then my friend still came - I had been invited to attend a baptism at the CW - some baby no one really knew - cannot say that intererests me - also don't want to see the woman that offended me - did sleep fairly well in my overheated apartment - here, sitting in a back apartment I am wearing a down jacket - in any event, it is 11 a.m. - thank you computer from doing some deep listening - I think I'll be off to the church - hope they have fish on Friday - I don't eat enough fish - yesterday in the nyt food section long story of woman fighting dementia with food - also with money and a great husband - in Columbia journal story of journalist going strong at 98, never exercised, never ate the right food - no one yet knows who gets hit by dementia and who does not. At this moment - all we can do - is pray - and thank God that while I have slowed down, don't walk well, can't eat most food, don't eat the right food, don't exercise as "they" say I should - I always say I am thankful to my parents to taking as good care of me as they could - endowing me with intelligence, good looks, social skills - and being able to function not as well as some - still a lot better than many my age, who are still alive. Marianne

[multiracialmedia-blog]

Missing a Peace

Missing a Peace

  Growing up in a single parent home is difficult…growing up in a single parent home as a biracial black child, with your Jewish, Eastern European mother is layered with even more difficulty—it’s like missing a peace. Of course that’s not to take away from anyone else’s experiences, but I believe I had a somewhat unique challenge while wading through the issues of being raised by a single parent, as well as dealing with the nuances of my biracial heritage.

My mother loved me, I feel I need to say that right off the bat because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m bashing my mother or calling her out for bad parenting or something. I loved my mother, and even idolized her at certain points in my life…so this is not a story about a hateful mother-daughter relationship. And though we did have some tense points, that stemmed from other issues she dealt with in her life, none of which I think are relevant to my story.

My issue with how I was raised was not due to any malicious intent on my mother’s part, but more out of a complete lack of awareness. My mother, as a white women, did not know how to teach me how to be black or love and understand my black side. She did not know how to explain the subtle racism I would deal with, some at the hands of close family friends and peers, and she did not understand that I struggled with my identity, because to her, I was black…there was no question to her, again, I think this lends to her being naive at most. She couldn’t have understood that having darker skin color was not enough to bring me cultural acceptance, I needed to SEE positive examples of both sides of my race. I did not have those examples, and I suffered greatly through years of self-loathing, having only gained confidence recently.

I feel I need to give some background here in order to better explain how I was raised. My white mother and black father married and had myself and one younger biological brother. Other than that, I had an older white half-sister, from my mother’s previous marriage, and much later on, five younger adopted siblings, all of mixed race including Mexican and white, Mexican and Native American, black and Mexican, and full blood black. My parents divorced when I was around 5 years old or so, and I had only faint memories of my father during those times. We visited over the years, he lived in Texas, but I did not see him very often until after I had graduated high school, certainly well out of my formative learning years.

The importance of my family background probably tells you a little about my mother’s “color blindness” when it came to love. I know, I hate the word color blind as many of us who have immersed ourselves in racial constructs do. But I can’t think of any other word, because I really believe that she was naive in thinking that race, while acceptable to mingle, was not plagued by cultural differences that needed to be discussed and confronted, especially in a biracial child. For example, when I was younger, I was asked by a boy at school why I didn’t “like” him, and whether or not it was because he was black. I had been raised surrounded by my older sister’s love of 80’s boy bands, New Kids on the Block, Bon Jovi, Guns and Roses… I idolized her and the blond haired, light eyed white boys of the teen magazines. I was never shown black love, I had no idea how to be attracted to black boys, I even believed white people were a better pick at that age… In the 5th grade I had learned that white boys were cuter (see better) than black ones and I can’t even explain to you how. I went home and told my mom of the encounter, she was surprised when I brought it up and responded with “why wouldn’t you like a black boy, you are black?” She couldn’t know that I didn’t agree with her, that I rarely accepted being black myself and that I tried to be as least “black” as possible. I would tell people I was only half black, I would straighten my curly hair, I would surround myself with little white friends, and crush on the little white boys in class. So you see, I truly think she was “color blind,” but I also know that it was incredibly harmful to me and probably to many others around me.

By not acknowledging the other side of my race, by not teaching me about black love, black art, black education, and black minds, I was swallowed up by society’s negative portrayal of black people. I saw less in being black. I tried to stay out of the sun in the summer, so as to not darken my already brown skin. I dated white boys, I listened to classic rock, I laughed and agreed when white guys who loved hip hop told me they were “blacker” than I was. I even allowed people to mis-identify me as Puerto Rican or some other race…anything but black! And I made the most self-deprecating jokes about myself, from joking about not being allowed in a person’s house because I was black…to not being allowed to sit in the front of the car, or not being seen outside at night. I joked that I wasn’t THAT black because I didn’t “talk” black or “act” black. I fed into the preconceived notions that the only way to be black was to fit into stereotypical cliches. I had even experienced racism many times as a teenager, but because of the fear that came along with “pulling the race card,” convinced myself that I was just overreacting. All these actions I now see very clearly as self-hate, self-hate that was so incredibly sad and detrimental to my healthy growth from a child into an adult. I had been taught, or really, I had been influenced by no effort but society’s pressures, to hate a part of myself that I should have been taught to LOVE and to incorporate into my identity as a biracial person. So, you might be asking what changed, did my father pop back into my life to become that awesome example I needed? Did I get to spend time with my amazing Aunts on his side, all educated, strong black women that I could’ve learned so much from? Did my mother finally see my struggles and sit me down to explain to me how to love myself? Nope…I went to college and took a class that I can only describe as life changing.

Dr. Jerome Rabow taught a class called “Sociology of Race” at California State University of Northridge, and it opened up every single wound I had inflicted on myself as a youth. We read books on Latinx, Asian, Native American, and black culture, read stories and articles meant to open our eyes and create empathy to the struggles of other races, sexes, ability and cultures. We discussed alcoholism, drug abuse, and neglect in family units and how none of us were really alone in our experiences, because many of us had shared these experiences. One of the first articles I read discussed how we sometimes “paint” ourselves with the traits of the dominant, white race, in order to fit into society’s expectations, and we were asked to write a short paper on an experience in which we had “painted” ourselves. My first thought came to my hair, which of course I had worn straight and had chemically straightened, since high school. And in writing that paper, and presenting it to the class, I found myself bawling my eyes out in the middle of 30 some odd strangers, because the realization of my emotions and of my own hate were so strong. This was the beginning of my healing, but also, helped me to understand that much of what I went through could’ve been avoided had my mother been a little more aware.

If I look at myself now, I am reminded that I am a work in progress, like my mother had been before me, but perhaps I have a little more understanding of racial nuances than she did. There were things I didn’t know, that I do know now. As of now, I identify as a black, biracial woman, but I now feel identity is fluid, and can change with an open heart and an open mind. I have already changed so much in myself, I can only grow from here. In calling myself black and biracial, I’ve had people ask me how I can identify as both, and I tell them that I feel I must acknowledge my mother’s side, because it is part of my story, but that I am also black by my own admittance and acceptance, as well as how society sees and treats me. And I don’t wish to ignore either side.

My mother has early onset Alzheimer’s disease and has been suffering from the effects since around 2014, she can no longer speak, and was not really able to discuss the racial journey I went on to get to this place where I feel a bit more at peace. But, if I could go back and give her some advice…I’d tell her that she should have surrounded me with positive influences from both sides of my culture. I should have had regular interactions with black and white children, adults, etc. I should have visited black history museums, black art shows, black cultural appreciation festivals, read books with black heroes and heroines. I should have seen what amazing things black people were capable of. I should have been kept as far away from a chemical straightener as possible, I should have been told my curls were unique and beautiful, and been taught how to maintain them! If I’d had the chance, I would’ve told my mother that it was her responsibility, having brought a biracial child into the world, to have learned about all the things I was going to need to navigate the world…she should have learned that I was going to be a target for both subtle and direct racism, and been able to teach me to combat it. I don’t know if that would’ve changed the struggles I went through, I don’t know if I’d have dealt with the same issues regardless, but maybe, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard in learning who I was when I finally reached adulthood.

Still, she loved me, I never questioned whether or not I was loved, but it wasn’t enough to protect me from the societal pressures that, to this day, support white supremacy as the default in literally every facet of life. I can only hope that my story will be read by some concerned single, white mother(or father) of a biracial child, and she will do what my mother failed to do, and not only be mother and father, but be learn all she can about the missing piece of their child’s culture. Because if nobody is there to teach them how to love all parts of themselves, then they just might miss out on the incredible history that makes them so unique.

Rochelle Lott was born in 1983 in a suburb of Los Angeles, CA called Northridge to a white, Jewish, Eastern European mother (a naturalized citizen) and black, Texas native father. She was moved after around 5 years to Lancaster, CA where she attended elementary, junior high, and high school. Rochelle is the second oldest of 8 children, 3 biological, and 5 adopted and is very close with her family. She graduated from California State University of Northridge (CSUN) in 2008 with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations, as well as a minor in Gender, and Women’s Studies. In 2016 she returned to CSUN to earn a Master’s degree in Public Administration with an emphasis in Leadership and Management. One of her many passions is research and “knowing” things and she is constantly reading new books, articles and expanding her knowledge, specifically in regard to race, history, and cultural relations. Rochelle likes to spend her liesurely time reading, playing soccer, going to the gym, and attending comicbook conventions with her family. She has recently taken her interest in education and knowledge into activism and is looking forward to making a small difference in whatever capacity she can. She also loves cheese and a her awesome dog Jake.

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