spark

DASV/SOMOS 2012: the basics

Danielle, Matt, Jim, and Alix, about to head out for house calls in Esfuerzo

The week is drawing to a close and yet I'm just now finding time to say a few words about it on our last day, and that's only because I stayed at the hotel today rather than going out in the field again. 

This year’s team in Paraiso is the largest yet, including 26 people.  These can be described as falling under the auspices of either  William and Mary’s Student Organization for Medical Outreach and Support (SOMOS) or the Dominican Aid Society of Virginia (DASV)

The DASV team staffs the clinic and makes house calls in Esfuerzo. This year’s team members include:

• Dr. Mark Ryan, Richmond family medicine physician and VCU clinical faculty member
• Dr. Elisa Silverstein, Kansas city emergency room physician and mother to SOMOS student Rebecca
• Dr. Tamara Rodriguez, Dominican-trained physician and current graduate student at W&M
• Dr. Matt Harrington, Philadelphia-based internal medicine resident and SOMOS founder / former leader
• Dr. Alix Pandolfino, VCU pharmacy resident
• Kristen Agura, Physician’s Assistant based in Dallas, TX and former SOMOS member
• 4^th year medical students Jim Donecker (Thomas Jefferson U), Treván Rankin (VCU), and Bethany Morehouse (VCU); Jim is also a former SOMOS leader
• VCU pharmacy students Danielle Navalta (3^rd year), Palak Patel (3^rd year), and Nellie Jafari(1^st year)

SOMOS members participate in research and planning within the community to support public health initiatives. In addition to this, students also staff the clinic’s registration desk, serve as translators for clinicians, and help to fill prescriptions. 

• Dr. David Aday, faculty advisor
• Carrie Dolan, MPH, W&M researcher
• SOMOS co-leaders Kevin Salinas and Taylor Hurst
• SOMOS students August Anderson, Kaveh Sedeghian, Amalhyn Shek, Joanna Weeks, Lindsay Schleifer, Rebecca Silverstein, Mel Alim, Melanie Rogers, and Jeff Rhode

We are also supported this year by David, the nephew of Dr. Rodriguez, who has been serving as a translator in the pharmacy.

This year’s SOMOS team is focusing on conducting a series of sub-community meetings in which they are presenting the results of their community research regarding the most pressing concerns for the community. They are also proposing several projects; community members vote at each meeting and the project with the most community support will be selected, and SOMOS efforts during the coming 5 years will focus on this project. My main focus this week has been the documentation of their work, as they are at a pivotal moment in their history. I will wait until after the end of the trip to share my thoughts about the direction their work is taking and the results of their week of meetings with community members.

what the world needs now

seen on the wall of la Escuela de Paraíso:

How to live together:

affability
patience
group decisions
justice
interaction (?)
love
truth
support
respect
positive desires
understanding
help
harmony
communication

please, can i keep him?

I promise to treat him for fleas just as soon as I get home. 

He won't take up much space, he's not picky about what he eats, and I'm pretty sure that TSA wouldn't notice him in my luggage.

esfuerzo, redux

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! The dawn of the new year found me waking up in Santo Domingo, having returned to the Dominican Republic to serve again as the documentary photographer for the Dominican Aid Society (DASV) and William and Mary’s Student Organization for Medical Outreach and Sustainability (SOMOS).  While I spent a lot of time specifically thinking about and preparing for last year’s visit, this past fall barreled by, and in a wave of photography clients, family birthdays, school activities, and holiday preparations, the eve of the trip was upon me before I really had time to think about packing, much less review any Spanish (so much for studying all year) or form a game plan for this year’s documentation.

In the weeks leading up to this trip, several  people asked me what my goals are, now that I have a better understanding of SOMOS and the DASV, the places where they work, and the people with whom they do that work.  My answer was rarely more specific than “be more focused.” Be more focused on what? I’m only partly sure. Regarding the specific public health issues in Paraíso/Esfuerzo, I would like to spend more time thinking about waste management and potable water. Regarding the organization as a whole, I’m interested in the ways in which we communicate amongst ourselves and the ways in which we interact with the residents of Esfuerzo – by which I mean the communication styles employed and approaches to interpersonal relationships, rather than literal modes of communication.  And of course, I continue to talk to my compatriots about the ethical issues we encounter as (mostly-white, mostly-affluent) citizens of a “first-world” country visiting a marginalized community in a developing (formerly referred to as “second-world”) nation.

For those of you new to my blog or to DASV/SOMOS, I would like to encourage you to read about my previous trip, especially my first entry, which covered many of my ethical concerns.

Perhaps my largest goal for this trip is to challenge DASV/SOMOS to think about how they communicate their experiences and intentions to our communities at home in the United States.  My questions for my fellow teammates would include:

• What information do we want people in our home communities (local/regional/national) to know about DASV/SOMOS?
• What do we want/need to receive from our home communities (discussion, monetary support, participation, etc)? How do we recruit these things?
• What role does photographic documentation of our work play in this communication?
• How can photographs help to illustrate our thoughts and experiences?
• What types of images do we need?

While the group as a whole probably gives the most thought to communicating with our own communities in the months leading up to our visits and the months following it, and their attention is focused on the work at hand during the visits themselves, the nature of my work requires that I be thinking about what and how to communicate something just before and while it is happening.  My continued participation in future DASV trips will depend largely upon how these questions are answered. Does the team need a documentary photographer every year, or only once or twice a decade? It should come as no surprise to you to learn that as a documentarian, I think there can be a role for myself or another photographer in every visit. The question is, what does the team perceive as their needs, and how can I best fill those needs? 

 

A couple of other links to follow during our stay in the DR:

blogs from W&M Professor Dr. David Aday
Dominican Aid Society tumblr
follow DASV on Facebook

gratitude

All month long I've been planning to post a series of gratitude / grace in small things posts as we grow closer to Thanksgiving. And all month long some not-so-small things have intervened. Today I feel grateful for those big things, for the challenges they present, for what they show me about what is good in my life, and for what they teach me.

See the watermark in the lower right hand corner of this photo? 

During the past month, I finally took the leap into owning my own business, and I. am. loving. it. At 5:30 in the morning, driving to Maryland to meet with my first official client, I was shocked by how awake and excited to be alive I was, and I realized that it's because I'm doing something I absolutely love, and I'm getting paid to do it, too! It feels almost criminal to receive money for something that I enjoy this much. And it's more than just the chance to flex my photography (which would be enough in itself!) - it's getting to meet new people, pushing myself to be more extroverted and daring, the physical exertion that comes with a shoot. It's having the honor of being invited into a family's personal space for a little while. It's the chance to continue to develop my eye and my technical skills. 

I'm grateful for courage, and for beautiful October and November skies, and for brilliant trees, and for the gorgeousness of each client's eyes and smile. I'm grateful for a husband who supports me and for kids who are doing their darndest to get used to weekends with less of me around. I'm grateful for the luxury of being able to ease slowly into a business. I'm even grateful for the overwhelmed, scared feelings that accompany this adventure.

Just as the biz was getting busy, this happened:

Those are the foot and lower leg of my youngest, whose foot became entangled in a "spiderweb" made from ribbons tied between the top and bottom bunks of his older brothers' bed. This is the price I pay for not stifling their creativity, eh? According to the latest version of his story (this child is also the most inventive storyteller of the lot), he was "trying to fly." Ok. Whatever he was attempting to do, the result was that he couldn't put any weight at all on his right leg, so off we went to Ortho on Call, where they x-rayed him, said it was possible that it was a sprain or that it was a growth plate fracture that couldn't be imaged at this time (aack!), and gave him a boot. The next day he was still in pain and still wouldn't stand on the leg, so we visited the pediatric orthopedic practice, where the nurse practitioner said that it's likely to be a tibial fracture, and put him in a cast. A tiny, blue, adorable cast. 

Through this, I've learned just how grateful I am for good health insurance, and also how grateful I am that this child normally goes to preschool 5 mornings a week. I'm grateful for the chance to give him extra snuggles, and for how healthy we all really are. I'm grateful that really, truly worrying about a child's health is a pretty rare thing for me. I'm grateful for tylenol with codeine in pediatric doses, and for arms strong enough to carry a 4-year-old everywhere, and for Netflix episodes of Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, which permitted me to get some client work done.

Upon entering week 2 of crippled-kid-at-home, this happened: 

Those, my friends, are lice: an adult in the bottom right and a nit in the upper left. They came from the head of my firstborn, whose class has been battling these super-fun parasites. Finding them yesterday was just an extra-special message from the Universe to me: "You really don't have enough to do. I think I can spot a little free time in there. I think combing hair for two hours straight and washing all the linens in your entire house at once should fill that nicely. Here you go."

And so now I'm grateful for patient clients, and for supportive friends who called and Facebooked and emailed their experience-derived advice to me. I'm grateful for an evidence-based approach to treatment that saved me the extra work of some of the voodoo methods out there. I'm grateful that my own head and the heads of the other 3 members of our family are clear. I'm grateful for the Nit Free Terminator comb, and that I had already ordered it ahead of time, just to be sure. I'm grateful for younger kids who are grossed-out enough by bugs to sit through the tedious combing. I'm grateful for a macro lens that lets me capture and examine what these creepy crawlies look like, and for my hard-working washer and dryer. I'm grateful for the opportunity to, as a friend put it, "say 'I love you' in monkey."

Here's to the big things that lead us to realize how many little things are right in our lives.  I'll be even more grateful when the cast comes off and the house is nit-free. 

opting in, not out

look both ways, by Griffin

I was just reading a post from Alex, author of Late Enough, regarding her choice to be her children's primary, full-time caregiver (also known as a Stay-at-Home-Mom...we really need better names for this stuff) instead of completing a residency and practicing medicine after graduating from med school. My reply to her got long, and became a post here, instead. 

I'm also a doctor's wife, and a stay-at-home mom, and while I own the choices I have made and know why I made them, and would make them all over again, I hate hearing "what do you do?" Um, chase three boys? Keep all the balls in the air for all five of us? Generate the family vision and see it to completion? 

Yesterday one of my sons said "Daddy is a daddy AND a doctor."  I asked, "and what do I do?" He said, "go places with children." Sigh. To my kids, I'm a mommy. No AND. I don't leave home to go to an office, I don't collect money to support the family.  I hate that I can't hear this from my kids without putting a layer of feminist guilt over it.  I hate being a member of the much-scorned "opt-out" generation. I still chose it, though, and I choose it every day. 

I have a master's degree in audiology. I was a PhD student before my son was born and just before he was born, I decided to get an MA instead and maybe pursue clinical practice instead of academia. I think I knew at the time that I wouldn't ever do that, that I was leaving audiology for good. I pretended to myself that I would do my fellowship part-time and get certified. 

There are benefits to this route. I will never have the regret that my mother had regarding not getting a graduate degree. I got it, I answered that question for myself. Because I fully, freely chose to be a SAHM, I have the luxury of knowing that I was not victim to circumstance. I wanted to do this, and I still want to do this. And because I'm not working in my degree field, I also have the luxury of reinventing myself more easily than I might have otherwise. 

I am also in an interesting position, as a post-women's lib housewife. I am able to show my children a new paradigm, one in which generativity isn't measured in earnings, and one in which career isn't necessarily something you engage in across your entire adult life. Career might be something that comes in phases. Generativity might come in the form of giving time and energy to causes that don't give you a paycheck. 

The reason I cringe when hearing "what do you do?" is because I feel like so often, what I do isn't considered a valid choice. It's considered a betrayal of the feminist movement, a cop-out, regressive. I hope that when my sons are adults, they are able to construct family lives that work for them without concern for social norms. I hope that they don't feel like they are opting out of something, but rather opting into a lifestyle that feels rich and right. 

love is...

When I was an early teen, I was opted out of the public school sex ed section and listened to Dobson's "Preparing for Adolescence" tapes with my mother instead. There are three things I remember from those tapes:

1) Dobson pronounces "puberty" like "POO-burr-tee" and he was the first person I ever heard say "maTOOR" for "mature".

2) For reasons I can no longer remember, he told a story about a mean letter that one schoolgirl sent to another:

To Awful Janet.

You’re the stinkest girl in the world. I hope you die. But of course, I suppose that is impossible. I have got some ideas: 1 play in the road. 2. cut your throat. 3. drink poison 4. get drunk. 5. Knife yourself. Please do some of these you big, fat girl. We all hate you, you big fat girl. I am praying, "O Lord, please let Janet die. We’re in need of fresh air. Did you hear me, Lord, because if you didn’t we will all die with her here.”

From Wanda Jackson

Wanda had actually written "cut your throad" (I picture it scrawled in crayon), and my brothers and I used to sing the list of suggestions as a rock ditty, complete with air guitar and nahnah-nahnah-nahnah-nah. 

3) He really, really hated a song by the Doors. Hated it enough, apparently, to diss it not only on his adolescence tapes but also in a self-help book for men:

Finally, a rock group of the sixties called The Doors takes the prize for the most ignorant musical number of the century; it was called, "Hello, I Love You; Won't You Tell Me Your Name!" 

His ire was due to his frustration over people conflating infatuation and love. I believe the goal was to impress upon preteens that they absolutely aren't in love with each other (and therefore shouldn't have sex). 

This morning I was musing on the meaning of love, the many ways it's used, the way people determine whether or not they feel it, whether or not another person feels it, whether or not they are receiving it. I've previously mentioned Alfie Kohn's statement that "how we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them."

What is love?  Is it a feeling inside of us? What if the object of that feeling doesn't know we feel that way, are they loved? Does feeling that feeling make up for a lack of loving actions? Can you feel love for somebody but treat them badly? If so, is there a critical balance between loving feeling and loving actions, and when does the balance tip from "reasonable mistakes a loving person can make" to "this person doesn't really love you"?  Can you love somebody whom you don't like and/or respect? 

I used to think that you could dislike somebody but still love them. Now I'm not so sure. I'm sure you can have a basic sense of that person as a member of the human race, worthy of rights and respect, but I don't think that's the same as love.  These days, I'm much more in the camp of "love is a verb." It's something you do, not just something you feel. And if you don't do it, maybe it's because you don't feel it.

What is love to you? What does it mean to be loved?

the help: mammies and memorabilia

Flit pesticide advertisement, circa 1923-1928, via Chuck Coker

I spent an hour in an antique store last week, looking for mirrors, frames, and jars. I didn't find any, but did find two items that gave me pause: a pickaninny doll and a mammy kitchen canister. I don't like finding this kind of racist memorabilia in antique stores because, regardless of where the items end up, somebody is turning a profit from their sale. My thoughts about these items merged with my recent musings on the book The Help, which I read last year, and the new movie based on the book. Lauded by many as "pitch-perfect," "hilarious," "thought-provoking," "powerful," "optimistic," and "uplifting," I found it uncomfortably steeped in privilege-based blindness regarding the actual lives of the maids and the prejudices of the main character, Skeeter. The author's own "like family!" reminiscences about her family's maid in the back of the book only compounded my concerns. I objected to the way Skeeter was cast as a Great White Savior - one who, at the end of the story, goes off to a glamorous life in NYC as a writer for a popular magazine, supported by her trust fund and the reputation she "earned" by typing stories that thirteen maids dictated to her.  

The book was breezily and sometimes amusingly written, a page-turning read perhaps well-suited to the beach. I'm sure there are many people for whom it brought to light race-related ideas that they had never considered. And that, right there, is a crying shame, because in the 21st century, we really should know better. Kathryn Stockett doesn't cover any new territory, and what she does cover is rather poorly done, a romanticized, sanitized, historically and socially inaccurate tale with just a smidgen of Civil Rights drizzled over it. Is it better to present a distorted, white-privilege-soaked fiction to readers, or not to present anything at all?  Is the book, and now the movie, just another Mammy cookie jar, and if so, do we really want people making money off of it?

While thinking about The Help and about racist memorabilia, I came across several interesting articles and videos:

"Onyx M" writes a blog titled A Critical Review of The Help. I'm not crazy about her organization - both the site and her writing are rough and in need of a bit of polish - but her compilation of source material and critical insights makes her blog an effective place for one-stop shopping when it comes to unpacking the race problems with the book and movie. I was especially taken with "Blonde Ambition: Skeeter as Mary Sue, Kathryn Stockett as Skeeter".  (A "Mary Sue" is an idealized character who is a stand-in for the author. She's an ego-gratification vehicle.) The site also raised my awareness of a lawsuit filed by a woman who works for Kathryn Stockett's brother, claiming that the author appropriated the woman's name, image, and other biographical details for use in the novel. 

Tulane political science professor and gender/race expert Melissa Harris-Parry is no great fan of the book, and has now weighed in on the movie. Give some thought to her comments on MSNBC this past Wednesday and find out why she finds the book and movie "ahistorical and deeply troubling". 

The Association of Black Women Historians have also released a statement addressed to fans of The Help, to provide "historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel".

The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.  Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them.  The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

But hey, the book was fun, right? It's fiction, it was created by a woman who thinks fondly of her childhood maid, and the movie is full of talented actresses and humorous moments. So it's all good, right?

The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities.  Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.   

As a Jezebel reviewer puts it, "stories like The Help allow white audience to feel like they are facing ‘the race problem,' without actually doing so." Mammy is a myth, the myth does harm, it's not ok to build your fun on the back of harmful historical inaccuracy. 

This brings us back to the antique store Mammy. There's a tendency, especially among privileged white people, to dismiss concerns about racist memorabilia because the ideas they represent are in the past. Hey, this is 2011, there's a black man in the White House, this is post-racial America! Or even worse, many people deny that these items represent racist sentiment at all. Aunt Jemima? She's so lovable! She represents people's affection for their maids / nostalgia for the romance of plantations / the deliciousness of pancakes!!

Not so, says David Pilgrim, Ferris State University sociology professor and founder/curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. His essay, The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects, is a moving and informative piece that takes the reader through his own personal history, the history of racist memorabilia, and the history of his museum. In this essay I found one line, a quote from artist Robbin Henderson, that is the kernel of my feelings when I find these objects in antique stores (or worse, reproductions online or in modern shops):

derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism

This is the heart of the matter, the reason it bothers me that many of these items are purchased to be used as quaint decorations, without tackling their background as racist propaganda. You can read more about the mammy and pickaninny stereotypes, as well as others, on the museum site.

What does Pilgrim do with the items he collects?

The mission of the Jim Crow Museum is straightforward: use items of intolerance to teach tolerance. We examine the historical patterns of race relations and the origins and consequences of racist depictions. The aim is to engage visitors in open and honest dialogues about this country's racial history. We are not afraid to talk about race and racism; we are afraid not to. I continue to deliver public presentations at high schools and colleges. Race relations suffer when discussions of race and racism are verboten. High schools that "sincerely" include race, racism, and diversity in their curriculums increase tolerance for others. It is relatively easy to identify those high schools that are afraid or unwilling to honestly examine race and racism. There you will find a 1950s-like pattern of everyday race relations. Racial stereotypes will dominate, though they may go unspoken. Inevitably, there will be a "racial incident," -- a racial slur hurled, a fight blamed on "the other," -- and there will be no relevant foundation laid for dealing with the problem, other than hiring me or a similar "diversity consultant" to restore order. The Jim Crow Museum is founded on the belief that open, honest, even painful discussions about race are necessary to avoid yesterday's mistakes. 

The museum also has two traveling exhibits, "Hateful Things" and "THEM". I wonder, how would Richmond receive one of these exhibits? When is the right time, where is the right place?  Pilgrim talks about learning to use racist objects as teaching tools; how does one successfully do this, so that we can move beyond mammy caricatures and toward a deeper understanding of race and society?

Rusted Racism, John O Dyer

on parables and jellyfish

Visiting the lighthouse beach at low tide on Sanibel island, it wasn't long before we noticed hundreds of comb jellies floating in the receding waters around our ankles, and then realized that hundreds more were stranded on the sand.

Griffin scooped up one, than another, releasing them back into the water. I coached him to take them out at least knee-deep rather than placing them in withdrawing waves, but all the while, I inwardly recognized the futility of returning them to the sea. Even supposing they were not already too dessicated or too squashed to survive, or that the rescued jellyfish didn't immediately wash right back up on the beach, it seemed naïve to imagine that the recovery mission would make a significant impact on the jellyfish population at large, and even more naïve to think that humans even should rescue creatures for whom being stranded on a beach at low tide is simply a natural part of life (or death, as it were). Is feeling sad about something normal and unavoidable compassionate, or excessively sentimental?   

I kept my jaded thoughts to myself. Soon all three brothers had banded together to save the jellyfish. I felt proud of their compassion, and a bit condescending regarding their innocence. 

Dan hung back with the rescue squad, who had started to realize the magnitude of their task and were beginning to compromise between saving every jelly and making forward progress along the beach. Meanwhile, I explored the shoreline ahead. Soon I rounded the bend of Point Ybel, and was dazzled and dismayed by what I saw:

Thousands of jellyfish had been washed up. They were actually quite pretty, sparkling in the sun, but at first sight it was also slightly horrific to witness such a massive number of animals beached at once. Still, death by low tide is par for the course, why should I mourn it any more than I mourn the coquinas gobbled up by ibises or the cicadas at home that are starting to slow down and die now that summer is winding down? 

Dan caught up to me; like me, he was waffling between feeling touched by the heroic efforts of the children and recognizing the futility of human intervention.  Then he uttered the parabolical quote:

"It mattered to that one."

Do you remember the story of the starfish? If not, here it is in a nutshell: a man is walking allong a beach that is deserted save for himself and hosts of beached starfish. Everywhere he walks, stranded starfish. At length he comes upon a boy who is stooping and picking up one starfish at a time, throwing them back into the ocean, then repeating with the next starfish. The man asks him why he's doing this, since it's far too great a task for the boy to make a difference. The boy stoops again, picks up a starfish, throws it into the water, looks at the man, and replies, "it made a difference to that one."

I felt momentarily chastised, and a little sad that I no longer possess that hope of saving the whole world via salvaging a few jellyfish. I wondered, is it wrong for me to pass the jellies by without saving them, or is there value to accepting their fate without stress or sorrow? I have noticed that some people are able to be dispassionate when confronted with animal remains, unaffected by sorrow and merely interested - even fascinated - in what can be learned from the animal as is. Others feel intense pain and sadness and do not wish to examine animal remains. There are positive sides and drawbacks to each, I am sure. 

Each of us also has our pivot point, too - the bug that we cannot squash, the jelly that we cannot save. Griffin found that critical nexus when he rounded the point and saw the stranded thousands. First daunted, then accepting, he moved on from dying eumetazoans to wading on the sand bars, examining healthy mollusks, crustaceans, and echinoderms.

For me, the parable of the starfish is too simplistic. Like the plight of the comb jellies, it only brings more questions for me:

When does life have value? When does it have more value or less value? 

When is it right/ethical/necessary/good to promote life and when is it right/ethical/necessary/good to allow life to end?

How do we recognize an acceptable tipping point? What makes it acceptable to save the life of one animal but feed another to it? When do we give up on saving jellies, and when do we persevere?

Is there value to feeling sorrow about something that cannot be prevented or changed? Is there value to not feeling sorrow about something that has already happened, like the frog hit by our car or baby birds killed by a cat, or something unavoidable and natural, like a beached fish or the stranded jellyfish? 

I have no answers to these questions. They wash up at my feet and sparkle like so many jellies, and I don't know whether to pick them up and throw them back, to study them on the sand, or to walk by them entirely.

we are not weeds

weed, n.

• a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants (wikipedia)
• a plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden. (answers.com)
• a valueless plant growing wild, especially one that grows oncultivated ground to the exclusion or injury of the desiredcrop. (dictionary.com)

 

Wild, undesirable, unattractive, troublesome, valueless. The qualities of weeds. All such subjective terms, all from the point of view of the person who doesn't desire or value them. Really, what makes a weed a weed is that it isn't what the gardener expected or wanted to grow. It wasn't what they had imagined when they tilled the soil and planted their seeds.

I took a walk in our alley, thinking about what is typically considered beautiful and what is not, and my eyes fell on some plants that I called "foxtails" when I was a kid. Are they beautiful? They are to me. I've always loved their shape, their brushy texture, the tiny seeds that fall out of them, the squeak they make when you pull the sections of stem apart. I imagine that to somebody trying to maintain a perfect, golf-green lawn, they may be ugly or irritating. Weeds. 

A few days ago, I mentioned a sensory processing checklist to a pair of friends while we ate dinner. I brought it up in the context of talking about my middle son, who was a frustrating mystery to me at ages two and three. Even more frustrating than trying to figure out how to parent him was dealing with the reactions of people around us, who encouraged me to punish him when he was upset, or acted like there was something gravely wrong with him, or assumed that my parenting was crappy. There's a strong tendency to think of averageness - average tactile sensitivity, average social wants and needs, average physical energy - as normal, and therefore desirable. Anything outside of a narrow window of averageness, or outside the parent's or society's ideas of what and who they expected this child to be, becomes strange, worrisome, broken, bad. When we see a child who isn't average it's tempting to think of them as deficient in something - basic cognitive skills, manners, parental discipline, perhaps.  The child becomes a problem to be solved, a garden plot to be controlled. We water on a schedule, till the soil, pull out the unwanted behaviors. We miss the opportunity to see the child and his behaviors as a whole, functioning individual. In doing so, we tell him that he is wild, undesirable, unattractive, troublesome, valueless. He - along with the things he does that we don't like - is a weed.

During this conversation, I pointed out how getting a picture of human sensitivities as a broad spectrum, and some examples of some of those sensitivities, helped me to understand and recontextualize some of my son's quirks. The women with whom I spoke showed the same "aha" moment that I had had when I first read the list - they identified some of the quirks in themselves and in their partners. So wait, needing a lot of touch, or not wanting much touch, isn't a sign of weakness? Being somebody who experiences things with their hands versus somebody who relies more on their sight for information isn't aberrant? Needing alone time isn't a character flaw? We talked about how these different modes of experiencing the world and being in it can differ from person to person. Knowing about how we differ from dead-on average helps us to meet our needs. Knowing how the people around us vary helps us to avoid demonizing and dehumanizing them. 

How many of us have heard, occasionally or frequently, that we are undesirable?

too fat
too skinny
too talkative
too shy
too bossy
too avoidant
too passive
too dominant
too sensitive
too aloof
too serious
too jokey
too private
too public
too loud
too quiet
too prissy
too plain
too girly
too boyish
too strong
too weak

Our quietness or loudness, our seriousness or jokiness, are, perhaps, not the crop that was our parents intended to grow or that our friends would like to see, but aren't those traits awesome in themselves? Who sets the limits on how girly, or how strong, or how neat or messy a person should be? Those qualities in you, in me, in our children are not something unattractive and undesirable, but rather something to be understood and nurtured.  

I am not a weed, and neither are you. We are exactly who we are supposed to be. Our traits are not bad or good in themselves. They are simply the things that make us uniquely us. Our job is to discover and nurture our children's traits, to understand and coexist with our friends' and partners' characteristics. We all have needs, we all have feelings, and that's ok. We all have different ways of meeting our needs. Our challenge is to do that while nurturing each other, not weeding each other out.