Aware

I had planned to publish a post with a cookie recipe, because I wanted to write something lighter and fluffier after my last post. And I will still finish that post, because it's a mighty good cookie. But in light of what has happened in the past few weeks, I would like to go in a different direction.

I would like to tell you a story.

(Okay, maybe more than one.) 

I am five years old. My parents are taking me to the library, where I always do my favorite puzzle that has fruits and vegetables before I chose more Berenstain Books to check out. We are walking towards the entrance when a car pulls up. It looks like the car in the Victory Auto Wreckers commercial that plays between my afternoon cartoons: old, rusty, and dingy. The driver rolls down the window, and my mother asks how she can help him, ready to give directions. He responds with a hiss, "You ugly Indian" and throws a dented soda can filled with used plastic baggies at her. My parents call the police. They do not care that someone threw garbage at my mommy. I learn that some people believe that my race makes me unworthy of kindness and respect. I learn that it makes it okay for them to treat me like trash. 

I am eight years old. We are studying first aid in third grade health class, where we learn how to tell the differences between the kinds of burns. If I have a first degree burn, my skin will be red. If I have a second degree burn, I will have blisters. If I have a third degree burn, my skin will be darker - almost black - which means it is permanently damaged. After class, we have recess and go outside to play on the playground. One of the mean girls comes up to me and says, "Your skin looks like it's covered in third degree burns. That means you're permanently damaged." She smirks. Later, my teacher finds me under the orange slide, crying. That same girl lives across the street from me during my freshman year of college. I avoid eye contact with her while waiting for the bus nearly every morning. Instead, I relive that moment on the playground: the moment I learned that the color of my skin means that there is something wrong with me. I learned that the color of my skin makes me ugly.

I am 18 years old. I finish performing at the last dance show of the school year, and I am so proud of myself - even though I am only a freshman, I was complimented for my choreography and dancing. I am going to celebrate with my friends at a post party, and I am excited to go to a club for the first time, because OMG A CLUB IS SO COOL. The DJ is playing all of my favorite music, and I am happily dancing and singing with my friends. Suddenly, I feel someone's hand grabbing and squeezing my butt. When I turn around, I see a guy, who is very drunk, laughing with his friends. My happiness quickly dissipates, and I feel ashamed and cheap. Now I just want to go home and sleep. I learn that my body is not my own. I learn that I won't always have a say in what happens to it.

I am 19 years old. I am going to a bar in Champaign to celebrate my friends' birthdays. A guy asks me to dance. I am not impressed to find that this guy believes dancing means moving the way lime green Jello would move (reader: if you so please, I will demonstrate what lime green Jello dancing looks like the next time I see you). I continue not being impressed as he tries to put his hands on me, which I push off. I do not know him, so I do not want him to touch me - period. He keeps trying to put his hands on me, and I keep pushing them away, until I finally decide that I am no longer interested in misbehaving lime green Jello. I dance with my friends instead. As I leave the bar, he drives by and curses me out, calling me names that I will not repeat. I learn that I should know better than to set limits. I learn that when I am reckless enough to exercise my rights, I will be punished. 

Throughout my childhood, I was readily aware of my race, which made me a target for bullying and ignorance. My well-intentioned parents had moved to the northwest suburbs so I could attend a good school. The neighborhood was white, rich, and Jewish, and they made it known that since we were none of those things, we were not welcome. During parent teacher conferences, my kindergarten teacher talked to my mother loudly and slowly, never realizing that my mother had learned English long ago in grade school in India; at my first job at a local grocery store, one of the cashiers did the same thing to me. My second grade teacher thought it was appropriate to call me "the Indian one" to her colleagues and often singled me out and harassed me in class, to a point where my parents were forced to intervene.

Once I was in high school, there was a shift. My high school was huge: five junior highs fed into the district, and my graduating class had nearly 1,000 students. In such a large crowd, it was easier to find teachers and classmates that were more willing to see beyond how I looked and instead appreciate who I was. I began to believe that in spite of what I had experienced in my childhood, what I brought to the table - a desire to learn, a Beyoncé-esque work ethic - was more important than the color of my skin. 

I was in college when I became aware of my gender and its disadvantages. That realization took longer, because I was raised by a feminist: my father. He watched his mother, who was so gifted, be confined by the cultural expectations of being "just a housewife and a mother," leaving her helpless and the family penniless after his father passed away. Dad was determined that would never happen to us: his wife, his sister, and his daughters. He pressed upon us the idea that not only should we stand on our own two feet, the way a man is expected to, but that we could - and we do. My family raised me to believe that my value and worth is derived from my personal ethics, my professional accomplishments and goals, how I chose to treat others . . . Essentially, who I am has always been about more than the fact that I am a brown girl, which is what I have believed for the past decade.

On Election Night, I sat on my bedroom floor while frantically refreshing CNN's website for updated election results, hoping and praying that the battleground states would move in the previously predicted direction. Near midnight, I realized that Hillary Clinton would not be our next president, and I began to shed horrified tears. I cried into the wee hours of the morning while texting like-minded family and friends. I cried again the following morning while watching Hillary bravely deliver her concession speech with my coworkers and the youth we support. Initially, I thought I was crying to express my disbelief, my fear, and my sorrow. I ache for my family, who were stopped by TSA agents at an airport, questioned on their birthplace and patted down until I snapped at them for racial profiling. I ache for some of my closest friends: girls who paid for my dinner while I was a struggling graduate student, who showed up at my door in the middle of the night because I was crying over a dumb boy, who are now fearful that they will be hurt because they love their girlfriends and wives. I ache for the youth I work with, who have been victims of police brutality and have overcome damn near everything - abuse, neglect, community violence, lack of legal status - and now question whether their efforts to make something of themselves was for naught.

But as the weeks have progressed, I realized that my tears were rooted in anger. I am furious that someone so knowledgeable and experienced could lose a job to an orangutan. I have no doubt that if a man had run with the same credentials, there would have been no contest. An article in the Washington Post noted that the president elect's rise to power could be attributed to the fact that many people are not okay with a black man as president; the idea of a woman as our commander in chief pushed them over the edge. More subtle, though, is my anger with myself. I am mad that I was naive enough to believe that the racism and sexism I had experienced in my childhood was a thing of the past. I feel like I should have known better.

Do you feel like I am overreacting? I understand that in many ways, I am a minority with privilege, that my story has never been in the headlines. I would never dream of comparing my experiences to the traumas that are reported far too often. However, if I denied that my story has had an impact on me, it would be a bald faced lie. Do you still think I am making too much of a fuss? Then read this: two days after the election, I was in a meeting when I received a text message from my sister. She is a senior in college in a battleground state that went red. She was on her way to work when she needed to stop at a gas station. While there, a man who had followed her threw trash at her car. Scared, she ran inside to wait him out. It is nearly thirty years later, and it feels as though I am five years old all over again. We haven't left the library parking lot. It's still happening. It would be so easy to lose faith in humanity now.

After receiving my sister's text, I excused myself from the meeting to check on her, telling myself that while I talked to her, I would also take a short walk to get some tea. I am friendly with the barista at the local Starbucks, who asked what was wrong. When I told him what happened, he simply shook his head and silently made my drink. As I waited, the woman behind me (a coworker I had never met but had overheard me talking) gave me a hug and told me that I was welcome to stop by if I needed anything. As I left, I looked at the receipt and noticed the barista charged me for a tall when I had ordered a venti. I had thought that I was just going for some fresh air and a hot chai, but instead, these random acts of kindness reinforced my belief that people are inherently good, a very much needed and welcomed reminder.

I have struggled greatly with how to conclude this post, because the truth is, I feel somewhat helpless - I'm not sure what I can do to help protect those vulnerable to the policies of the incoming administration.

But what I do know is that awareness is the first step.

And in sharing my story, I hope that you are more conscious.

Much love,
Kavi

I hate yoga

** Warning: this is a longgggg post. **

Yoga makes me cranky.

I am aware of how ironic that is. But it's true: I would rather sweat buckets on any machine at the gym than do yoga. Whenever I do yoga, I end up more agitated afterwards. Strange, no?

Nonetheless, when my friend Heidi recently invited me to take a class with her, I agreed to give yoga another whirl. To be honest, I went because she mentioned we could get ice cream afterwards, and I do love me some Dairy Queen. 

And you know what?

I HATED EVERY MINUTE OF IT. In my head, all I could keep thinking was, "This room is too hot . . . the instructor is moving so fast . . . I have no idea how to use these stupid blocks . . . why did I agree to do this? . . . Ice cream. Remember the ice cream."

The only moment this inner commentary (okay, whining) stopped was when the instructor was guiding us through a stretch, during which she provided alternatives to make it as beginner or advanced as necessary. As she noted the options, she commented, "Listen to your body. It is always telling you something."

And that is when I completely froze. My eyes welled up, and I was suddenly grateful for the sweltering temperature, because I could disguise the tears rolling down by face as sweat.

Because that instructor was right. For over a year, my body has been trying so hard to tell me something, and I haven't been listening . . . until now.

A little over a year ago, I finally received an internal promotion that I had fought tooth and nail for - and I do mean fight: one director threatened to fire me for considering applying, and her replacement thwarted the transition for months. But finally, I had the role that I had wanted for years. I was going to be a therapist at a residential treatment center, counseling women with histories and symptoms of eating disorders, mood dysregulation, and/or substance abuse. That girl from a year ago was delighted by the prospect of doing that work and was eager to dive. right. in.

Now I can say that girl from a year ago was naive. She didn't know what she was getting herself into.

Like any other aspect of healthcare, the mental health field has been impacted by the Affordable Care Act. Without making this political, I believe that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. However, in making healthcare more accessible without increasing regulations on insurance companies, they engage in unethical and potentially life threatening practices to ensure their profit margin. Basically, in order to receive approval from an insurance company to seek residential treatment, a patient must be much sicker than before, and their length of stay will be much shorter than before. Imagine a woman who has struggled with for years with her disease, and as a healthcare provider, you have maybe 3 weeks to provide her with treatment. As a therapist, I knew the time frame was unrealistic. I also knew that my resident could die. No pressure, right?

But the health insurance companies and incompetent management were nothing compared to the stories I heard from my residents: the vast majority were victims of tremendous abuse and neglect. To protect my patients' confidentiality, I won't go into excessive details, but I will say that I have lost track of the number of times I was told, "my father raped me, and it's all my fault." Usually, I would hold it together until I could go back to my office, where I would bawl until my eyes were swollen. I have always believed that people are inherently good, and while I still do have that faith, doing this work made me question the state of humanity. I mean, what is wrong with people?

Post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was created as a diagnosis to describe the symptoms that war veterans experience upon returning from combat, but as research has demonstrated, similar symptoms are present in individuals that experience any trauma. Therapists that provide treatment to those survivors are at increased risk for vicarious trauma, which is experiencing second hand trauma and PTSD symptoms themselves. And man, my body tried its damned hardest to tell me for months that this was happening to me. I could not fall or stay asleep at night, requiring daily venti Starbucks to function. I lost my appetite. I used an obscene amount of profanity - that's really saying something - and would cry often. I felt hopeless in my clinical abilities and trapped in my professional path. And the intrusive thoughts were nothing short of a nightmare. I remember standing on a 19th floor balcony to watch fireworks, and instead, all I could think of was, if one of my residents jumped from here, where would the ambulance go to rescue the body?

That is not normal.

In February, my chronic migraines became unmanageable in a way they hadn't been in over a decade, forcing me to take medication with dreadful side effects. Compromising my health was the last straw. I had just accomplished the necessary goals for me to move forward: I passed my licensure exam, received my license as a clinical professional counselor, and earned a promised raise. I knew it was necessary to find a new job. In my search, I discovered that a position I had interviewed for 4 years ago had opened again. I took a leap of faith and called the organization to see if they remembered me. Long story short: they did, and with a couple of bumps, I got the job. I was so relieved, thinking my symptoms would subside.

It didn't quite work out that way.

During a mandated training for new coworkers, I had to leave the room multiple times, because I was so triggered and couldn't stop crying. After a couple days of this, I finally spoke with the trainer, who gently told me it was more than okay for me to do whatever necessary to stay calm (I colored) and suggested that I meet with the clinical director for resources. The clinical director skipped a scheduled conference call to talk to me, encouraging me to seek support. My boss echoed her sentiment, noting it was critical for both my personal and professional development. Never have I worked in an environment that has been so encouraging and understanding, for which I am grateful.

I have been working with someone who I met through my first job in the field. He is a social worker that specializes, among other areas, in vicarious trauma. I was afraid this would feel like a burden - yet another thing to cross off on a never ending to-do list - but it has been healing. Our focus has been simple: self care. He gently reminds me to listen to my body, which has been craving physical outlets. I have been working out in the morning, leaving the gym with a soaked-thru shirt. I started boxing, where I allow the trainer to gently wrap my hands before pummeling a speed bag. I take walks throughout the West Loop, always with my iPod in hand. Beyoncé no longer dominates my playlist, because I also want to listen to the soundtrack of my childhood: the Beatles, CCR, the Stones. I usually start my day with Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." The hopelessness that I experienced before has subsided. I have dance parties again while I bake. I read every night before bed and drift off easily.  I like candy again! It's nice.

My body has also been telling me to write - so I want to blog more consistently. And hey, as long as I post more than once a year, that's an improvement, right? Ha.

Much love,
Kavi