Tag: hugs for all

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via oliviacirce)

lagonegirl:

Bushwick 6th grader Ciro Ortiz has been spending the last few Sundays with a stand at the Bedford Avenue L stop, giving straight talk advice to straphangers the way only an 11-year-old can.

Like any superhero, Ortiz has a tragic backstory, which in this case is that he’s bullied by asshole kids at his middle school. Even in the face of that though, Ortiz’s mother says that he takes his profits and buys food and snacks for kids who can’t afford them. Truly, this is a child too good for both middle school and this Earth

source

Be the change, Ciro. From one bullied kid to another, you are doing the exact right thing. I love seeing young POC doing things like this. Proud of you! 

#LatinoKids #POCbusiness  

euclase:

hobbular:

marmotsomsierost:

skarchomp:

Talented people doing art: lol just trying out some new techniques with this advanced program I downloaded, I think it’ll really help with my use of colors and composition! 🙂

Me doing art:

since I just heard Mrs Hess’s voice echo thunderingly around me like the greybeards, she would like to amend this with ’practiced’ in place of ‘talented’.

her Talent Rant was a thing of beauty and I wish i had a recording of it. i get the feeling expressed here, i do! and i do agree that people are differently good at different things, if that’s how we’re defining talent.

but i was surrounded by some incredibly talented artists growing up, and i looked at their art, looked at mine, and went ‘welp i have no talent for drawing.’ but what my friends hadn’t had was an abusive first grade teacher who flat-out told me that i had no talent for art, i had no business wasting my time writing and drawing, and i was a terrible child for wasting my parents’ hardwon money on such fantasy.
and i stopped. the only time i drew was when it was demanded of me in an art class, i wrote stories only in my head.

my sixth grade art teacher tried really hard to pull me out of that, but it wasn’t until i had her again in eighth grade that i started to listen to her.

even then, i would say ‘i’m not good at drawing, but that’s ok, nobody’s gonna see it anyway’ and i would never accept any compliment on it. ‘oh man you should see (insert friend here) they’re so much better than mine’ etc. their art came from talent, in my eyes; i couldn’t make art like theirs, so i didn’t have any talent.

enter Mrs Hess.

Mrs Hess, slightly terrifying, very intimidating, kind of the McGonagall of the art department at my high school, somehow got that whole sob story out of me on like week one of the art fundamentals class. i remember sitting at my desk crying because i’d cried on my paper and wrecked a piece of nice paper and upset my teacher. She took me to the nurse’s office, told me she’d sign me off if i wanted to go home, or i could rest for the remainder of the block.

She took attendance a few days later like normal and then sat on her desk (which she Did Not Do) and gave us the Talent Rant.

it started with holding up Will’s self-portrait. Will was well on his way to photorealism. his looked like a black and white photo. She asked us how we thought he’d drawn it. talent, we decided. Will was just better than us. she then said “Will is becoming a very skilled artist, but his talent is not what is making that possible.” and asked him when he first started drawing. Will shrugged and said he didn’t remember, but he’d gotten in trouble for drawing in class since ever. she nodded. “and you’re sixteen?”
he agreed. “so you’ve been practicing drawing with pencils for more than ten years, then.”
we were all kind of taken aback. she looked at us and said “you’re five or six when you start school, right? and he’s sixteen now. sixteen minus six- i know I’m your art teacher, but i still know that’s ten.”

then she asked Stephen if she could show his. it was obviously a beginner’s effort. she then asked for one of his caricatures (he drew comics, caricatures of teachers and events for the school paper & stuff.)

she held them up side-by-side and asked us if we would say this was a talented artist, if we didn’t know they were both from the same person. before we responded, she asked Stephen how long he’d been making comics- his answer, similar to Will’s. “and how long have you been making drawings like this (showing self-portrait)?” Stephen: “uh, when did you assign it? like a day after that.”

she held forward the caricature. “ten years of practice.”
then she held forward the self-portrait. “three days of practice.”
she gave his stuff back and sat back on her desk, just kind of watched us in silence for a moment.

“Talent is bullshit. What you think of as Talent is practice. Don’t ever write yourself off as being bad at something because you can’t do it well the second you pick it up. If you don’t want to put in the time to train yourself in something, don’t. that is entirely okay and entirely your choice. but giving up solely because you don’t think you’re talented enough to pursue something is a great disservice to yourself. if you take one thing from this class, i want it to be that.”

she had a longer, more nuanced version of it, of course. the only part i remember verbatim is the start of ‘talent is bullshit’ because it’s always shocking when your teachers swear for the first time.

but i had never considered the idea that i was so many years of practice behind those friends whose art i admire so much.

We don’t teach kids how to read and then expect them to read War and Peace- that doesn’t mean that there aren’t seven year olds who can read War and Peace, but we don’t tell the rest of them that they have no talent for reading because they can’t yet do so. when a kid says ‘i’m no good at reading’ we say ‘you just need practice’ but when a kid says ‘i’m no good at drawing’ we say things like ‘everybody’s good at different things, and that’s ok.’ which, yes; that’s a good sentiment to teach. but we have this view of art and music like it’s a binary- either you’re good at them or you’re not, and we don’t challenge it the way we do with other things.

I feel like I need to tag @euclase in case she somehow hasn’t seen this yet.

Talent is indeed bullshit.

I mean listen. All of that reply above is right on the money. 

But not even portraits—if you can sign your name, you can draw. Because what is signing your name? It’s a practiced movement, done hundreds of times. It’s putting pen to paper confidently and with personal style in order to communicate and express yourself. When you sign your name, you don’t worry, you don’t hesitate, and you don’t compare it to what other people are doing.

“But signing my name isn’t drawing,” you argue. “It’s just my signature.”

It’s literally the same thing.

And you can do it because you practiced.

rainbowautie:

rentboy-tony:

Shout out to people who have a hard time controlling their volume when talking, and who always speak too loudly or too quietly.

Whether you are teased for being too quiet but it’s really nerves/anxiety/shyness, and/or you have a hard time talking in an “indoor” voice when excited so people are constantly telling you to quiet down and “chill out”.

You’re okay. I know you try hard. I know you mumble incoherently when scared and yell when talking about something that excites you. It’s okay. I do it too.

can I say as someone who’s actually somehow both I really appreciate this post

nestofstraightlines:

bettydays:

the-good-lemon:

beanarie:

raeseddon:

elvenclub:

roane72:

geekyangie:

brolinapproved:

rawdibunu:

phantasmsystem:

armadillo:

its kinda scary how your whole life depends on how well you do as a teenager 

oh my god No it doesn’t don’t put this kind of pressure on people?? you can absolutely fuck up in your teen years and continue on to a good life just fine. you can drop out of school, get a GED, still go to college and finish your degree as late as you want. i know people in my school who still haven’t graduated and they’re 26. some older. you can always transfer someplace else, always build yourself up from the ground. after a certain amount of college credits, a lot of schools really don’t care about your high school GED or your SAT scores anymore. if you fuck up in your teenage years you are not a failure!! you can ALWAYS re-invent yourself, always start over. there is always a second chance.

Reblogging this for my followers freaking out over art school/college. I dropped out of high school and never thought I’d get into college as easily as I did. You will be fine!

Fun story my biology professor just told us:  When he was 23 he was married to his wife and worked two jobs to support them since she was in college: gas station attendant and construction worker.  He worked these two jobs because that was the only work he could get since he was at the reading level of a third grader.  

One night he was writing something and his wife noticed he was writing from right to left.  Since she was studying occupational therapy she realized he had a learning disability and started working with him.  He slowly began to learn to read, and at 26 got his GED and went to college.

His first year of college he took the lowest level math course he could take, 001.  Over the years he worked on learning what he needed to, ended up graduating with a biology degree.  He then went on to get his masters and PhD, graduating at the top of his class.  He is now an extremely accomplished biologist and professor.

So don’t let anyone tell you that you’re future is based on your choices as a teenager.

Seriously.  Do not believe this.  You aren’t even stuck with your choices you make in your 20s.  I didn’t start working in my current field until just after my 30th birthday.  It has nothing to do with what I went to school for in my 20s.  My husband has a political science degree, and he’s a sports journalist.

You are not tied to anything.  Go.  Be.

My day job did not exist when I was a teenager. And the idea of trying to be an author was a distant thing on my radar. I thought I was going to be an English teacher. And then I thought I was going to be a music teacher. And then I thought I was going to be a drama teacher.

Also in there: therapist, early childhood educator, then finally: web developer–because by then it was an actual thing that existed. I didn’t actually figure out what I “wanted to do when I grew up” until about eight years ago, when I was 36. I tried pursuing writing when I was 30, stopped, then started pursuing it seriously again when I was 40. 

There is always time to change. And don’t let anyone tell you that high school is “the best time of your life” either, because that’s bullshit too.

Reblogging for my followers. My high school teachers didn’t know what to do with me, and I failed everything but a low photography grade. I thought university wasn’t for me, and settled for marrying a mediocre man who spent all day on Warcraft. Then I went to community college. Now I’m in uni doing a double English and philosophy degree, just back from America. I am also single.

Also important: College is not the only option. Don’t let anyone try to tell you it is. If you’re not academically inclined, the trades are an option and they are a good option– if the only thing you think you’re good at is make-up do that. There are people who can live comfortably just doing make-up. We have this idea planted in our heads as teenagers (and younger) that not fitting into an academic mould of some sort means you’re failing at life and this is bullshit. There’s no reason to feel like you’re “failing at life” because you don’t like school or were never good at it. We need skilled workers in the world, and the thing they don’t tell you is all work is skilled work. If it’s work, it takes skill. Yes, this encompasses “service” jobs, it encompasses all jobs. Please don’t think that what you do, or what you have an interest in doing is of less value than something that requires a college education. This coming from the college-educated white girl who is a seamstress because it’s what I enjoy. If college isn’t going to get you where you want to go, than you don’t need to go! It’s that simple. Take whatever path you need to get to where you are happy and comfortable and fufilled. If you’re doing what you love you are sucessful.

i didn’t graduate with my bachelor’s until i was 26 and life took a few turns along the way but now, at 37, i have a job that makes me genuinely happy. and it’s got nothing to do with how well i did in high school.

This! This make me cry… I’m 23 and I really don’t know where I’m going, so reading this kinds of storys makes me feel hope!

listen i did everything right. i did everything i was told. i got good grades in high school and went to a good college and dated a good boy and graduated with honors and got a good job and bought a good house and a good car. 

but dear god, let me tell you. there is no finish line. it just keeps going. you think you’ll feel accomplished but i just ended up working myself to death to hit a brick wall of utter boredom. i broke up with the guy. i got a few promotions but the job was still Just A Job, just a way to make money to pay for the house that i had nothing to do inside of but cook dinner and watch tv.

so yeah, go at whatever pace you want to set for yourself. enjoy every class you take, hang out with your friends, try new things and make mistakes. exercise your creativity. pursue your interests. take. your. time.

Life is not linear and it’s only in retrospect you see how the pieces add up.

The only mistake you can make is to let the pressure freeze you. Go on and do what seems like a good idea at the tube. Screw up. Try stuff out.

There’s no goal, no finish line, no objective you reach where everything clicks into place and you are an Adult and Happy. Teenagerhood isn’t a test that if you pass you get to be a successful and happy adult.

You are early in a journey you’ll spend your life making. The older you get the more perspective and wisdom experience gives you. You will realise no one thing is the last word on anything. No exam, no breakup, no change of plans will define your life.

inkskinned:

sexual history does not define purity. i have seen pure. it is my friend silently moving things so her blind girlfriend doesn’t have to grope around for them. it is the seven year old student i had who learned how to sign “want to play” so he could talk to his deaf neighbor. it is the morning i woke up to find my dog and two cats all sleeping next to each other. it is in small beautiful moments: holding someone’s hand so they can work through a panic attack, giving someone a smooth rock from the ocean, a little boy being a princess, the look on a child’s face the first time they read a book on their own from start to finish. pure is paying for someone’s coffee, is giving up time for soup kitchens, is staying up late to help a friend work through things. it’s saying “yes, i’ll help,” even when you’re dead tired and you need help yourself. 

this world is full of terrible things people can do to each other and yet we don’t see “pure” as the moments that matter. we see it as one black or white possibility: either you are a virgin and holy or you are unclean. but people are not blankets of snow. we don’t dirty for letting people in. no. when we love, we only become more beautiful.

Were You Born Under The Gaslight?

v–i–c–t–o–r:

When applied to a family, the gaslight treatment is a special form of dysfunction. It happens when you, a child, receive messages or encounter experiences within the family which are deeply contradictory. Messages which are opposing and conflicting; experiences which can’t both be true. When you can’t make sense of something, it’s natural to apply the only possible answer:

“Something is wrong with me.”

Today, scores of children are growing up under a gaslight of their own. And scores of adults are living their lives baffled by what went on in their families, having grown up thinking that they, not their families, are crazy.

I have seen gaslighting cause personality disorders, depression, anxiety, and a host of other lifelong struggles. Receiving contradictory messages that don’t make sense can shake the very ground that a child walks on.

The Four Types of Child Gaslighting:

1. The Double-Bind Parent: This type was first identified by Gregory Bateson in 1956.  The double-bind mother has been linked by research to the development of schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder. This type of parent goes back and forth unpredictably between enveloping (perhaps smothering) the child with love and coldly rejecting him.

The Message: You are nothing. You are everything. Nothing is real. You are not real.

The Gaslight Effect: As an adult, you don’t trust yourself, your validity as a human being, your feelings, or your perceptions. Nothing seems real. You stand on shaky ground. You have great difficulty trusting that anyone means what they say. It’s extremely hard to rely on yourself or anyone else.

2. The Unpredictable, Contradictory Parent: Here, your parent might react to the same situation drastically differently at different times or on different days, based on factors that are not visible to you. For example a parent who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs one day and not the next; a parent who is manic at times, and depressed other times, or a parent who is extremely emotionally unstable. Whatever the reason for the parent’s opposing behaviors, you, the innocent child, know only that your parent flies into a rage one moment and is calm and seems normal the next.

The Message: You are on shaky ground. Anything can happen at any time. No one makes sense.

The Gaslight Effect: You don’t trust your own ability to read or understand people; you have difficulty managing and understanding your own emotions, and those of others. You struggle to trust anyone, including yourself.

3. The Appearance-Conscious Family: In these families, style always trumps substance. All must look good, or maybe even perfect, especially when it’s not. There’s little room for the mistakes, pain, or natural human shortcomings of the family members. The emphasis is on presenting the image of the ideal family. Here, you experience a family which appears perfect from the outside, but which is quite imperfect, or even severely dysfunctional, on the inside. This can stem from Achievement / Perfection focused parents (as described in Running on Empty), or from narcissistic parents.

The Message: You must be perfect. Natural human flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses must be hidden and ignored. You are not allowed to be a regular human being.

The Gaslight Effect: You feel deeply ashamed of yourself and your basic humanness. You ignore your own feelings and your own pain because you don’t believe it’s real, or that it matters. You tend to see and focus on only the positive things in your life, which fit into a particular template. You are extremely hard on yourself for making mistakes, or you put them out of your mind and simply pretend they didn’t happen. You may be missing out on the most important parts of life which make it worthwhile: the messy, real world of intimacy, relationships and emotion.

4. The Emotionally Neglectful Family (CEN): In this family, your physical needs may be met just fine. But your emotional needs are ignored. No one notices what the children are feeling. The language of emotion is not used in the home. “Don’t cry,” “Suck it up,” “Don’t be so sensitive,” are frequently uttered by the CEN parent. The most basic, primary part of what makes you you (your emotional self) is treated as a burden or non-existent.

The Message: Your feelings and needs are bad and a burden to others. Keep them hidden. Don’t rely on others, and don’t need anything. You don’t matter.

The Gaslight Effect: You have been trained to deny the most deeply personal, biological part of who you are, your emotions, and you have dutifully pushed them out of sight and out of mind. Now, you live your life with a deeply ingrained feeling that you are missing something that other people have. You feel empty or numb at times. You don’t trust yourself or your judgments because you lack your emotions to guide you. Your connections to others are one-way or lack emotional depth. Even if you are surrounded by people, deep down you feel alone. None of it makes any sense to you.

Were you born under the gaslight? If so, you are not alone. You are not invalid or crazy or wrong. it’s vital to realize that you have been, by definition, deeply invalidated. But “invalidated” and “invalid” are not the same. “Invalidated” is an action, and “invalid” is a state of mind. You can’t change what your parents did and didn’t do, but you can change your state of mind.

SOURCE: [ x x x x ]