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overcoming challenges

Beating a Dead Elephant in the Room, or Closing thoughts on 2018

January 6, 2019 By Bean Leave a Comment



Forgive me for my title. On one hand I feel as if there is nothing more that could be said about any of these things that’s going to matter, and on one hand I feel the weight of lingering solutions to the problems we all (still) aren’t talking enough about.before this moon cycle ends, with the New Moon January 6th,  I would like to send 2018 a final farewell with a list of 18 things I would like to banish from the world.


I invite you to add a comment with your own contributions of things you’d like to banish!

  1. Waiting passively.
    We all keep watching Washington like it’s the only thing that can fix all of the problems. And it’s not. The government CANNOT fix all our problems. If we are lucky, they will do a couple of good things that make a lasting positive difference for anyone who isn’t already rich and white. I certainly am happy and hopeful about the diverse group of women and men who took their seats in the House on Friday, but we can’t all just sit back now and wait for things in our country to improve.

    If we keep waiting for the legislators to come in and fix everything (including some things on this very list), we will die waiting.
    As we keep ourselves uninformed and ignorant and easily manipulated by only listening to Them, They will continue to step on us….
  2. Self-Doubt, Self-Deprecation, Self-Loathing. Especially done by women.

    Please stop saying those bad things about yourself! Please listen to the things you say about yourself, and do everything you can to stop saying them. You are not stupid. You are not ugly. You are beautiful. You are learning the lessons you need to be learning. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. You cannot achieve perfection and no one is expecting you to. Please, just stop talking bad about yourself. In public, online, especially in front of children…even in private, just stop. You deserve better than that. (Try talking to yourself the way you talk to your best friend!)

  3. Saying “I’m sorry” and all the other ways We make our Self feel small or unworthy.Just pay attention in a day to how many times you hear women (and children) say “I’m sorry” when they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.I’m sorry, but can I get some help?
    I’m sorry, can you please speak up?
    I’m sorry, I have other plans.
    I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in explaining to you why I’m too busy and/or not interested in going out with you.

    Can we all please stop apologizing for our very existence? Why are we apologizing for our needs?If you are just trying to get someone’s attention, let’s bring back saying things like, “hello” and/or “excuse me.”

    I read something about this a couple years ago which said to replace the I’m sorry with a thank you; Instead of “I’m sorry I’m late”, say, “Thank you for waiting for me.” It’s a pretty subtle thing, but it might just be what it takes to make you not feel like a burden on others.

    There are times when apologies are absolutely necessary, but being human/being imperfect/having opinions/having a bladder…. Are not any of them.

  4. Food deserts.
  5. Men who fear the #MeToo movement.
  6. Racism.
    I don’t know how to say this in a way that people will listen, but here’s one more attempt: We, as a species, look for similarities in EVERYTHING. We give human traits to dogs and elephants and flowers and…even electrical outlets smile back at us. Yet, white people as a race fail to see the similarities between themselves and People of Color.Just think about that. We find similarities in EVERYTHING….why would we naturally choose to “other” other people? Other human beings who DO have everything in common with us? Here’s a hint: it was manufactured because the people in power were afraid of an uprising, so they made enemies of white and black people. Systems have been put in place every since, and around the world, to maintain power.
  7. Over consumption of meat.
    If you didn’t personally hunt it or raise it or know the person who did, I don’t think you should be eating it. I say this as someone whose father raises delicious Colorado beef (email me if you’d be interesting in buying some!) so I understand I am in a complete position of privilege and bias when I say this, but truly, that factor is the main reason that I even still eat meat. I know the animals my father raises are well treated, well fed, and well respected in their life and death, and any time that I or anyone else eats meat, I want it to be under those circumstances.
  8. White-Supremacy
    And all of the ways White People hide behind their whiteness and white saviorism and …….White Women who call themselves allies but do not raise up the voices of women of color, indigenous women, Muslim women. Women who call themselves feminists but who aren’t working on dismantling their own overt and innate racism and biases……People who hide Confederate flags in their closets, or wear them proudly on their cars…..People who make excuses for Brett Kavanaugh and are pissed at Kaepernick……
  9. Shaming others.

  10. White people blaming their problems on immigrants.

  11. Complaining about whatever in your life isn’t making you happy instead of doing something about it.
    We all have choices to make each and every day. Staying at the job you hate, staying in the town you despise, spending time with people who don’t bring you joy, etc. etc., each of those are a choice every single day. You have agency. You have authorship. You are in control (unless you are under 18 and living at home–in that case, wait it out, and be sure to breathe, and exercise, and eat right, and floss your teeth while you are waiting–your life is going to become completely yours soon, if you choose to make it so. It will be worth it!)  Enough with resolutions and getting down on ourselves and giving up and thinking this is just the way it is. Every day you make so many choices to do this…or that. Making one choice on Jan 6th doesn’t mean that you have to make that choice for another 359 days before you can do it differently. We have agency each and every day. We have authorship. We are the writers of our own stories.I also know that I am saying this as a privileged white person. As I write that, I think, would a single mom, a person of color, have the same agency to quit the job that she hates, that is making her unhappy? Not without getting something else first, no doubt. I know we don’t all have the same problems and that all of our problems won’t have the same solutions, but all I’m trying to say here is that if something is not right in your life, don’t just accept it. Do something about it. For more, see #1.
  12. Ignorance.
    WE THE PEOPLE have a responsibility to do better. Be better ancestors. Read more books written by and about people not like you. Support each other, stop competing with each other. And stop. living. in. your. own. damn. bubble.
  13. School shootings.

  14. Migraines and all chronic pain.

  15. Careless waste.
    Fireworks. Plastic bags. Glass jars. Wrapping paper. All the food we throw away. Wastes of time. Something I just discovered called LOL dolls. Do you know how much plastic wrap one of those things uses?We have agency in creating the world we want. We can all do a very simple thing to prevent companies from making things like this anymore….stop buying them!!!
  16. Obsession with profit over People:
    I’ll just carry on from the above: I am so tired of the profit-seeking, capitalistic, greedy-ass Americans. Upon learning that milk is not good for adults and that many of us are intolerant to dairy/lactose, something that causes inflammation and is linked to chronic pain (arthritis and IBS to name a couple), instead of these greedy, corporation owners just saying, –OK, we had a good run. Let’s take our insanely high gross earnings and invest in something else. –Maybe something healthy? -Sure, Bob,  let’s invest in something healthy and then doing that, they say, -Oh shit. We better learn how to sell an idea to the population that milk IS good for them, or better yet, let’s keep mass producing milk and mistreating cattle to keep extracting the gross amounts of milk we harvest every year and chemically treat the milk (you know, I have a friend in the chemicals business) so that it really isn’t natural any more, and tell people that IT is good for them!And that’s not the worst part—people believe it. It’s like they choose to believe it. (See #11) It’s easier to just keep spending the money on the crap and spending more money on medicine or simpler yet just to be content in our discomfort that instead of making something else for breakfast, like maybe some vegetables and protein, we continue eating overly processed grains shaped into squares with Their fake ass dairy-free milk. What is wrong with us???
  17. Big pharma over natural health remedies.

  18. Supporting the top-earning corporations.

    Ok, so my relationship with money has changed a lot in the last year. May this year be the year that yours does, too.

    People buy so much shit they don’t need (AKA lactose-free milk) and support companies whose values we don’t really believe in, (AKA companies that test on animals, or companies that, I don’t know….hire rapists as their CEOs, wherever you draw the line…) and then sit around and complain about what our world has come to.WE the PEOPLE allow, and at times encourage, this terrible stuff to happen. We MUST make smarter choices with how we spend our money when we must spend it. We must vote with our money, and make smart choices as consumers. More than anything, Money speaks, and though we all have different amounts of it, and therefore some have more power than others, we do all take a stance each and every time we spend money on something.When we go to Target or Walmart when we need a new spatula instead of to the 2nd hand store, we are telling the producers that want them to keep making new plastic products.When we throw away Tupperware every 6 months because we microwave too much in it and the plastic gets all nasty…we are telling the producers that want them to keep making new plastic products. We are telling Mother Nature that we don’t care about polluting her. Abusing her.

    When we make a decision for our company to allow animal testing because we want the additional profits by selling in China, or when we know that a company does that and we still buy their products because “it’s our favorite,” we are taking a stance, voting, condoning, encouraging these bad behaviors that are ruining our planet.

    Mother Nature is a Source of Life, not a resource. People are one of her gifts. Please, in 2019 let us all work on banishing the ills of society that we had to witness through 2018.


I could carry on and on about each of these things, but…I feel like I’m beating a dead elephant in the room, so I will just leave you with this:

WE the PEOPLE must do better. And here’s the good news….we CAN do better!

If you’d like to talk more about any of these “to be banished” items, or want to add your own to the list, just comment below!

Filed Under: News Tagged With: banish, learning, overcoming challenges, support

Be Not Quiet

October 30, 2018 By Bean 1 Comment

More than one of my family members–the people who raised me, encouraged me to spread my wings, watched me bloom into this magnificent woman that I am–would like for me to just be quiet. They have unfollowed me, disengaged from me, are disappointed in me, afraid of me. 

I will not be quiet about my disgust about what is happening in my country right now. I will never be quiet about the ideals I wish my country to uphold. I will never be quiet about demanding respect for the disenfranchised and marginalized.

I will not be quiet. Even if you aren’t reading this anymore.

I will not be quiet.

Bystanders are quiet. Quiet is how genocides happen. Polite is how holocausts happen. Nice is how evil gets in. We fight evil with love, not with nice. For anyone who has been a parent, you know that love does not always mean nice. Tough love. It’s not only hard on the recipient.

You should be ashamed of yourself if you aren’t speaking out about the horrors happening here in our country. Students resuming classes the same day a fellow student is killed. Jews being shot and killed in their place of worship. Black people continuing to be murdered for being black. Fuck this shit.

You should be outraged about the things our people are doing to others. We destroy each other in so many ways over and over again. We have to stop. We must be better ancestors.

I don’t care if I make you uncomfortable or if you stop following me, or whatever. I will search for every single way to say this until people start to listen. I will not be ashamed for my actions. I do not feel shame to tell every single bit of my truth. I have made the offer before, and I will do it again. Ask me anything. I am an open book. We have to be open to telling the truth to each other. I believe that is our only way forward. I know I am nobody from nowhere, that people don’t know my name yet. Why should you care about my truth? I admit that I am fallible, and making mistakes is normal, but that we must always do our best, for that is when goodness is returned to us.

When I say goodness I do not mean politeness. I do not mean niceness.

I mean honesty, kindness. Fucking dignity. Polite is bullshit. Polite is what got so many of us to think Obama’s being President meant we weren’t racist anymore. Polite is what drove those KKK motherfuckers, those fucking neo-nazis underground so the rest of us could not HATE on them. Instead, they have been infiltrating our system from within. They have had the time and space to redesign their brand to make it more palatable. 

Being nice can suck my balls.

If you’re reading this, you have one week to get your ballot in. We must put an end to this nonsense.

Vote for black women in this coming election. Vote for women of color, Indigenous women, Mexican-American women, trans-women.  

Follow black women. Support businesses owned by black women. Invest in them, personally. You say you are too busy and don’t have time to get involved, but would just ”write a check”  if you could. Here’s a link. Did you donate? 

Here’s another. 

I know I’m being bold right now, and if you’re reading this, maybe you are nodding in agreement, or maybe you don’t like my tone, but fuck that shit. We women have been too polite, and it costs us too much; We need to speak up and say every. single. Thing. We need to do a better job of educating everyone about their options and make participating in this so-called democracy easy. We are at the place in history when it is time to get America right. WE, The PEOPLE are stronger than The government. The government is broken. I think most of us can agree that neither “SIDE” has it right.

The system is broken.

Don’t be part of it by subscribing to “your party” without thinking about what they really represent, who represents/sponsors them. Choose people who will support democracy, will support your values.

The most fundamental part about being American is WE THE PEOPLE.

THAT’S why we have the 2nd amendment, so we can defend ourselves against our government. Not against our neighbors. 

Let’s make sure to raise up the people who are going to be best for each state government and come together to make real changes happen. There are so many ways to support leaders, and now, when we can activate and engage and elect the best leaders for the future of our nation. The future we want our children to be brought up in (not the one our parents were brought up in.)

People want us all to  be polite and PC instead of being honest and kind. Fuck that shit.  You know what honest and kind leads to? True compromise. Uncorrupted compromise. If we were all honest and kind, (instead of hiding behind being nice and polite) we could actually promote and achieve equity in our society,…….instead we are encouraged by our leaders (in both parties) to to be mean and cruel and evil and unhealthy. They want us to fight with each other. They want us to feel desperate so they can control us with their money and their hidden agenda. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!!! Take our country back from career politicians, white nationalists, from old men.

I believe so much in a better world. I can see it. I daydream about it. I write about it. Yet, when I check in with my body, I realize my shoulders are up next to my ears in stress or my breath is caught in my throat with worry. When I look at the world around me, the society around me, I know that we are a far way from that world of my dreams…when I think about our history, I see that we have changed, but I am not convinced we are better, so maybe it’s just that we are still changing. Still evolving.

It’s like the United States is a person in their late teens/early 20s, someone just beginning therapy, trying to break their bad habits/survival techniques while simultaneously finding new ways to self-sabotage and occasionally relapsing back into some truly terrible behaviors like being a racist, and realizing that they were abused by their uncle (Sam) and might have sort of pushed someone too far by not taking no for an answer soon enough. (Kavanaugh, cough, cough)

I’m a pretty fucking positive person, but I also have some dark/morbid fears about our world. I’m a realist, and my door is cracked open to conspiracies; People are fuuuuuuucked up. I’ve been through some shit, but I don’t let it get me down. I carry on with my head held high. Some say high-horse high, but all the better for them to kiss my ass. I’m tired of being polite. Let’s be real.

I am positive it’s the only way we are going to get over this shit. I could carry on about my ideas to save the world all day, but I’m out there trying to do it instead. Sometimes it doesn’t look how we expect it to, but one thing I’ve learned is to let go of expectations and follow the path. I know my path has been far less difficult than many because I was born a white woman in the U.S. I know most people can’t take time off work to explore their path and recharge after just 8 years of teaching. I worked very hard throughout school and won many generous college scholarships. Because of these awards, as well as need-based assistance, I was able to graduate college with far less debt than most people of my generation. I have no children and no pets (though I really want both!). I don’t own a car, so no car insurance, nor any property, and I live in a small apartment that’s attached to my father’s workshop/garage (he’s a farmer), so my expenses are quite minimal.

After Trump was elected, I fell into a depression. I didn’t think it was really going to happen. I really thought Hillary Clinton would beat him. A fear nestled and an anger hatched inside me that morning. I had moved to Brazil just 4 months before the election, before President Trump happened, and after I got through the sadness and the denial, I got angry, and I wanted to move back to the U.S. to take action. I couldn’t though, because I was there on a two-year contract which I would not break. I made the most of my time there, but I felt very far removed, far away from a great many problems which I wanted to….want to… be a part of solving.

I wanted to be there marching on Jan. 21, 2017. I wanted to attend the Black Lives Matter meetings, the NoDAPL protest, all of it.  I wanted everyone to understand how terrible I felt about a country which could elect just a bad man. I don’t care if you don’t like Obama, but you cannot honestly say that he was bad unless you are brainwashed.

He had to be extra good in order to win that seat because no black person could get anywhere in this country with a record like Trump’s.  

There was this illusion that the U.S. wasn’t racist anymore. Hooray. And then we turned around and gave the seat back to a bad white man, whose past we would have never forgiven on the transcript of a black man. Black men have been murdered for doing far less disrespectful things to white women than Trump has done to his own daughters and wives.

If you do not support Kaepernick’s stance, you are a coward who would have also probably supported slavery. Punishing a black man for a peaceful protest and calling it protesting disrespect of the flag/soldiers when white people break the flag laws all the time, is downright racist.

Punishing black people or any people of color more harshly for anything a white man does is racism.

Insisting Kavanaugh was just a kid at 17 and shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions but consistently charging black youth as adults for a variety of broken laws, is fucking racism.

I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired of the polite people who have paved the way for the world we live in now. Wake the fuck up. Get engaged. Vote those racist assholes out of office. Take back the House. Speak out to and against the racist and bigoted people in your life. We must stop them.

Be not quiet.

#vote #votethemout #fuckingvote #fucktrump #fuckwhitesupremacy #votefuckers #notyourmamaselection #trump #blacklivesmatter #supportwomen #democracy

Filed Under: Allergies & Annoyances, Thinking Tagged With: democracy, overcoming challenges, support, women

Growing Pains Ahead

August 18, 2018 By Bean 2 Comments

I didn’t know when I set off on this Tour of Hope, self-defense for Native women mission that it had to start with my-self. Here I am one month on the path, and facing some of the biggest challenges of my life. I’m here to tell you that changing your life can be done AND growing pains should be expected!

Despite the anticipated benefits to myself and Mother Earth, it is truly difficult to change so much so fast. Some people might not recommend doing all I have in just one month’s time, but I say, there is no time like the present! In my new routine, I have felt discomfort, doubt, pain and fear: fear of failure, fear of “more different than I’m ready for,” and fear of the judgment that can come from others.

Nevertheless, I am moving ahead with my personal transformation, and I invite you all to be a part of the conversation–just comment below with any tips, questions, or any dang thing that pops into your head! I’d love to talk to you!

In my last post I announced that I would only eat: local, organic, and unpackaged foods, with the exception of eating food that would otherwise go to waste. Well, the parents went on vacation and left a fridge full of leftovers, so I mostly lived on that for the week, and you all know my weakness for fine cuisine, so when I went out with friends one night I couldn’t help but order some tasty things (which didn’t strictly meet those 3 criterion, but they made me happy). I will continue to try my best, and I will certainly continue to make “mistakes.” The point is not to be perfect, just to be better.

Once it was time to restock, seeing that Z and I are both living on a tight budget, we checked out the local dumpster scene! 

One morning, we gathered 17 pounds of free food: apples, melons, peppers, and organic whey protein (had “expired” a few days before–still totally fine to eat), about 20 individually packaged.

This all came from two dumpsters in the neighborhood (most dumpsters we met were locked.)

Z returned each morning for the rest of the week and found empty or locked dumpsters until yesterday, when she came home with probably 40 pounds of produce. Melons, bananas, summer squash, onions, broccoli, peaches, grapes, tomatoes (organic!), potatoes, lemons, mangos, pineapples…oh my gosh! It was a real cornucopia!

So that, along with a few local, organic and unpackaged pantry items, will feed us nicely this weekend and into the week. I made applesauce, we’ve had some fine salads, Lin made banana bread, and Z is making soup as I type! Amazing, right!?

I’m not saying everyone should go out and dig in the local dumpsters for free food, but….well, why not!? Ha!

Other than that, I have been doing a decent job of biking, though many of the free fitness classes we’re taking are too far away to bike to yet, so we’ve still been using the car. I have been to three boxing classes, my first Qigong class, and kickboxing and a mixed martial arts class will start on Tuesday. At the first of the month I completed my first 3-day fast, and I’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors, mediating, reading, walking, etc.

We rinse all produce in a baking soda bath and a vinegar bath and give them a good scrub.

These changes have made me super sensitive. I have had some strange physiological symptoms like cramps and headaches, and I am highly emotional right now. I am on a spiritual journey, for sure, and am so happy and grateful that I get to spend this time really taking care of myself right now, in order to be better prepared to take care of others when the time is right.

Filed Under: Food, Health, News, Self-Love Tagged With: challenges, eating, food, growing, happiness, learning, overcoming challenges

About Mental Illness and the Need to Break the Silence

May 1, 2017 By Bean Leave a Comment

Recently, the series Thirteen Reasons Why was released on Netflix. This is based on a book my students have been reading for years. The tough subject matter encourages them to talk about the very serious issue, and since its release, every teen I know has watched it and is talking about it. Some people believe that it’s not good for them to be talking about suicide. That it is too heavy of a subject for them to confront, but since it is the second leading cause of death for teens and young adults, I believe people should be talking about it more, adults should be talking about it with them, and talking about how we and they are going to change that statistic and improve mental health in general.

Talking about real life stuff is good. We need to talk about things: mental illness, gender, culture, suicide, the past, the future, sex, love, hate, abuse, poverty, racism, sexism. We need to talk about it all. Everything. Talking is how ideas are formed, how good ones are embraced, and bad ones are dismissed. Talking is for building trust and community. Talking is how we gain perspective and learn that not everyone feels the same way about all things, and that that’s ok.

Not talking about things is for cavemen and cavewomen. Not talking about things is what keeps things from moving forward, what keeps us in the dark. Not talking about things is why some people are still treated badly, why some people don’t get the help and support they need, why some people kill themselves over things that can be overcome. Not talking about things has innumerable negative consequences on our world and the people in it: It makes people unable to fully understand things, it sends the impression that they are wrong, and it puts people in danger.

Despite how uncomfortable this topic makes some people, I’m not being overly sensitive, hyperbolical or dramatic by saying ignorance (i.e. not knowing things as a result of not talking about/learning about things) is the root of all pain and suffering. Ignorance is like living in a dark room with only saltine crackers and water when just beyond the door there is an all-you-can-eat buffet with attractive servers walking around with trays of freshly-squeezed juice. Ok, let me give this some context:

Mental illness reared its ugly head in my life before I knew what it was. My parents’ level of ignorance to the mental illness which afflicted my brother caused it to be a bigger problem than, I believe, it might have been had their parents talked to them about the mental illness in their families. I understand that it’s scary, and that talking about it, putting words to it, meant admitting it was real, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Not dealing with it is wrong. Despite how it may sound, I don’t blame my parents for ignoring his behaviors or not getting him professional help many, many years ago. I blame society.

There is a long history in our world of mistreatment of those afflicted by mental illness, of professionals performing cruel experiments and socially accepted treatments on mentally ill people, of treating them like outcasts. I think that especially in small, rural, conservative communities people just don’t talk about mental illness. Just like Rachel Hollis says in her blog post from 2013,  admitting there was something wrong with a family member was too sad and embarrassing. Instead of there being an outpouring of support and suggestions on what to do like there would have been for a child with a learning disability or a cough that wouldn’t go away, the reality of a mental disorder that caused enraged and violent outbursts wasn’t something people brought up at the reception hall over coffee and donuts. Depression, addiction, manic-depressive disorder, these were (are?) regarded as things to deal with on your own, in the silence of your prayers, or at least behind a partition. Talking to a therapist didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar. Talking about it in general was too much of a taboo.

I, on the other hand, who felt the force of my brother’s fierce mental clamoring first hand, (when my parents were at work or when we were left alone in a backroom of Grandma and Grandpa’s house or anytime we were away from adults) I tried to talk about it all the time. While my brother is funny, intelligent, has a great energy to him that can cause others to share in his excitement about things, he also has an alarmingly violent vocabulary, a tendency to hurt living things, the strength of a bull, and an unpredictable nature to go from laughing with you to having his hands around your neck. For people who knew the funny charismatic side of him, believing the other side existed was difficult; it was far simpler to dismiss the sisters’ complaints or chalk it up to “boys will be boys.” Admitting that his impulse to kill frogs might mean he was mentally, chemically unbalanced wasn’t something my parents seemed able to do.

I get it now, that what was going on inside his brain was uncontrollable and caused him to do things a healthy person wouldn’t do. I got it the first time I heard the term “bipolar disorder” in my high school psychology elective. He wasn’t just super mean and violent and unpredictable, he was sick. Knowing this alone didn’t make the moments more tolerable or less painful, but the knowledge gave me perspective, and it allowed me to eventually forgive him for his actions.

Which leads me to this post: to encourage people to talk about, and talk to, the people in their lives who are suffering from things out of their control so we can prevent terrible things from happening to them and others and as a result of their mental illness. I was physically in danger more than a few times in my life because of my brother’s mental illness. His children have been in danger because he did not ever learn to manage his mental illness. Not talking about things, therefore remaining ignorant about things, puts people in danger. It’s time we stop that.

I always used to say, “he’s going to end up in jail or killed if he doesn’t change,” referring to his tourette’s syndrome-style outbursts of cruel and unusual insults and behaviors. The better of these two possibilities has happened, and I would do anything to prevent the latter, but I know that it isn’t in my power to do that. Since he is an adult now, he has to be the one to elect to get the help he requires to be able to save himself. I also know that I am not going to be someone to sit by silently and pray instead of taking action to change how people see and talk about mental illness. The first step to changing that, is simply by talking about it.

A couple of years ago he asked me to attend a group therapy session with him, as far as I know his only attempt at getting professional help. Supporting the person who abused me, physically and mentally (though I will tell you right now the mental abuse had a more enduring impact on my life) was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, and one of the best. At this session, I heard my brother take responsibility for his actions, and while the lessons learned there did not seem to last long in his life, it taught me that there is hope, that he wants to be better, but that his mental illness is in the way. The doctor there called it a dis-ease. He described what was going on in his head, and others who also suffer from mental illness, as a disruption of ease. That what a typical person sees as easy is not easy to them. I’ve also seen this dis-ease in many of my adolescent students, in friends and colleagues, and in other members of my family. It needs to be ok to say, have you tried therapy? in the same conversation where we tell the person we are here for them. You wouldn’t tell someone with cancer to keep thinking positive thoughts and expect it to go away; we need to deal with depression and other more serious forms of mental illness the way we deal with any serious illness: by getting professional and medical help for it while showing them love and support.

This reality of dis-ease cannot be ignored. It needs to be talked about. We need to make it acceptable in society, on social media, in schools, at home, in church, to talk about that which afflicts one in five adults, (one in seventeen for more serious mental illnesses like my brother has).  The topic is gaining more exposure, thanks to celebrities like Lady Gaga and Prince William’s Heads Together project ; Robin Williams’ suicide also kindled compassion and conversation about the topic; and amazing student organizations like Brighton, Colorado’s (Brighton Youth Commission) BYC’s annual SPEAK Week is building momentum in getting people to speak up about life’s challenges. But we still have more work to do.

 

Please leave a comment about your experiences with mental illness, what you did to get help or help others through it.

 

Update, 6 May: A family friend shared this link with me if you’d like to do some further reading: http://lineacinda.com/

 

Filed Under: Family, Health Tagged With: ignorance, life, mental illness, overcoming challenges, talking, therapy

Oh, the challenges…

November 4, 2016 By Bean 1 Comment

Dear friends and family,

To be honest, part of my not writing since my last post was because the silence I received about an issue I care deeply about made me pretty sad. It’s ironic that the time I move away is when I am most passionate about the politics in the country I left. I don’t WANT to be making political posts on facebook and sharing about the inequality and unfairness I continue to see, but I feel like I have to. Just like I have always felt the need to stand up against the kids at school who make fun of the underdogs, against the foul words flung at friends who are different than others, against the bullying towards my mother from my little brother, against the slurs I hear from colleagues towards strangers, against the hurtful comments I hear from family and friends. I WILL NOT be quiet about my feelings, and even if I’m not the voice that all others agree with, I will always let my voice be heard, and I will always listen to other’s voices–And I hope that through these interactions that there will be growth and that kindness, empathy, and compassion will be the result.

This isn’t going to turn into another post from a soapbox, as I guess my last one must’ve come across when you’re all expecting to hear about my adventures and growth, but the lack of reaction made me continue thinking a lot about where I am in this life of mine. Life abroad has been a wildly exciting adventure….but it has also come with so many challenges, ones I never expected but am trying to overcome with a bit of grace. Here’s a deeper look into my life in the big city, three and a half months into my two year commitment.

Going from being a fairly competent adult on her own two feet, someone who feels absolutely comfortable doing things on her own (from completing basic tasks like cooking, to enjoying privileges of a single adult without children like going to dinner and a movie alone, and absolutely adoring my time and my own company) to feeling like a child again (in SO MANY WAYS) has shaken me. In fact, I was not only JillyBean
comfortable
with this lifestyle, peppered with an occasional lunch date with an old roommate, dinners with friends and family, and nights hanging with my niblings, but I was learning to really love it. Take a few days off work to go on a trip to NYC for a Broadway show? Hell yes! Hop on a place to fly to see my sister’s family on the west coast? Of course! Treat myself and little sister to a jazz show, enjoy a few martinis, then bacon maple donuts the next morning? Absolutely! Drive an hour for a dinner party with people I’ve never met–why not?!

Life was finally, and peacefully, totally in my control (aside from having a full-time job and real-life adult responsibilities, too, of course 🙂 )

Then all of that stops. Suddenly– though decisively and through a series of carefully considered alternatives–I’m in a brand new place. Those friends, whose availability, and that family, whose proximity, wdeathtostock_lonely_commute-09ere a great comfort, are suddenly no longer there. My ability to navigate anything from a neighborhood to a grocery store to my way around a museum, a mall, whatever—–all gone–right out the window along with my basic ability to communicate more than “good morning” (bom dia), “Is everything okay?” (tudo bem?), and “Everything is fine” (tudo bem.)

img_3335

My free lunch at the hospital cafe after getting blood tests.

There have been COUNTLESS situations where I’ve had to depend on those around me to communicate for me here. Do you know how frustrating that is? To not be able to SPEAK for yourself? Order food/drinks for yourself, go to the doctor by yourself, ask for a prescription by yourself? After spending the last two weeks quite ill from a virus and sinus infection, and having to be taken to the doctor’s office more than once by people pulled from their jobs to translate for me, I am more determined than ever to learn the local language. Despite classes two days a week, daily Duolingo lessons, and Brazilian TV on in the background, learning portuguese is not happening as fast as I’d like, which must mean I’m not doing enough. Despite the challenge, I know it will be worth it. The ability to communicate is something I will never again take for granted.

I am so grateful for all the people who have stepped up to help,  but it is challenging to have people always doing you favors, I think. I know that makes me sound like a privileged white person (oh yeah, I am). It’s easier when it comes from friends, but when the people going out of their way to thank you hardly know you, it feels like I’m a burden, and it makes me feel like a child.

And onto the ever important topic of friends…..having to make new ones as an adult isn’t fun, and it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s a lot like trying to make friends when you’re an adolescent, only stranger. I’m not talking about making A new friend occasionally as an adult–You meet a new person and click and soon you’re having coffee and he or she fits right in with your group of friends who go out from time to time when schedules aline–I’m talking about forming a new group of friends, new friendS to spend your time with, because when you can’t so easily do things you enjoyed doing on your own any more, having people around can be an excellent way to deal. A security blanket. A comfort shield. And when you learn that the people who you first formed your blanket with don’t end up having the same values as you, it’s hard to make that shift again to realize that company is great and all, but it’s never OK to change yourself to fit in–not as a kids, a teen, or an adult. We must be who we are. I am amazed at the pressure I felt to fit in, when back home I was finally confident being me.

deathtostock_lonely_commute-01

I want to get more comfortable being on my own again. I’ve taken baby steps–like to the mall, the grocery store……but when I mentioned going on a small trip by myself, something I’ve been doing since I was 16 years old………a colleague looked at me like I was crazy and continued to tell me that I wouldn’t be safe doing that. Uncomfortable? For sure. Challenging? Oh hell yes it will be. But when have people ever grown by sticking to what they know and taking the easy road? Safety precautions are a must–but living in fear didn’t get me here, and it’s not going to keep me here.

And that’s not it with my list of challenges! Have you ever been on a date with someone who doesn’t speak your language…literally? The dating world I had only just gotten a taste of, filled with deep intellectual conversations about literature and theology and politics and world travel, etc. etc. is now ever more important to me, and something I long to have again. In my current dating world, conversation is kept to a much more elementary level: What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite fruit? Do you like to cook? What do you like to cook? It’s no one’s fault. When you are attracted to someone and speak a little bit of each other’s language, I think it’s exciting and fun to put in the effort to communicate what you are able–but I certainly don’t want to be stuck in some strange 3rd grade dating world when you call a person, ask them how their day was, then breath on the phone together. img_3421OK–I better get back to my portuguese lessons! Haha.

Love to you all!

Jilly Bean

Filed Under: News, Self-Love, Travel Tagged With: dating, growing, overcoming challenges, Portuguese

The Things Bean Carried

July 22, 2016 By Bean 6 Comments

 

Inspired by Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried*

*I’ve never been to war, and I am not in the military; I have a lot of fight in me, and I’ve been through some battles. Love is a battlefield, sure. The classroom. The house I grew up in. The marriage I left; I’ve had my share of battles, but like a warrior (my high school mascot) I carry on.

She carried her laughter, her lightness, and something quite new: skepticism. Just enough to keep her safe, yet new enough that it felt heavy, like a pair of boots that haven’t yet been broken in. You’re aware of them because they are a little bit uncomfortable both because they are new, but also because you wish you didn’t need boots. You wish you could just go around barefoot, but you can’t anymore because you’ve stubbed your toe and stepped on stickers too many times.  But the boots also meant she still had hope and that she was able to learn. She carried her hope proudly. She carried just enough hope to keep her happy, and she had been carrying that for as long as she could remember, and it kept her light. And it was caused by years of witnessing goodness, by watching people in public treating others with kindness, by seeing an outpouring of support in times of need, by all of her students who she’d seen do incredible things, by her family members who also hoped for the best. Hope was like a rainbow: You knew it took a storm to create, and that made it even more beautiful. She carried laughter with her always. And she was learning to take it out even more. She laughed at herself all the time. It was the best way she found to deal with things. She would always carry these things: hope, lightness, laughter, and caution….

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Filed Under: Favorites, Travel Tagged With: life, moving, overcoming challenges, travel

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Jillian. Jill. Jilly. Jilly Bean. Bean. It helped that I was all legs and full of energy. String Bean, Bouncing Bean. I liked keeping secrets but I loved to spill the beans. Bean Carries On is my garden. A place to cultivate thoughts about the things I care about. I’m a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a teacher, a gardener, a reader, an artist, a cook, and an empath.

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Jillian. Jill. Jilly. Jilly Bean. Bean. And like a seed in soil, "Bean" stuck. Bean Carries On is my garden. A place to cultivate thoughts about the things I care about. I’m a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a teacher, a gardener, a reader, an artist, a cook, and an empath. I want this to be a place where we can learn together, so please leave comments and if there's anything you want to know, please ask!

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