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Exercise or Zoloft .. both

I just came back from a visit with my PCP. He’s generally a pretty nice guy who I chose because he went to the same program my brother-in-law did and I like the way they practice. Today, I was in for my 6-month refill of Zoloft. I have to see him every 6 months for the Rx because the therapist who I see every week can’t prescribe medicines. Prior to getting the Rx from my PCP I had to visit a psychiatrist for a grueling hour where they ask me if I am feeling depressed or anxious in many ways for an hour and when I say, “no,” they say, “Then why do you need the medication.” BECAUSE IT WORKS! If I go off I will likely feel those things again. But I digress...

Today my PCP asked me the usual questions and was happy to hear that I am keeping up with aikido and generally staying active. I said that I definitely notice if I miss a week of aikido. Then he said something about never missing a day. I responded, “The dojo isn’t open every day.” To which he said he only misses a day of exercise a month because exercise is his Zoloft. It seems like an innocent statement and I know my PCP supports me taking the medication because he continues to prescribe it and he has had long conversations about it with me. But this comment stuck with me. 

When I first got to the current institution where I teach, I heard things like this all the time: you just need exercise, you just need to meditate, you just need sleep, you just need to eat well. And while these are all things that are good and helpful, they are simply not enough for me or for many other people. And statements like this only create further shame around taking medication for mental health issues. 

When I went back on Zoloft seven years ago after being off meds for six years, I was the “healthiest” I had been in ages: I was cooking all of my food and shopping at a farmer’s market and I was practicing Bikram yoga 6 days a week and riding my bike to most of my commitments. I was meditating daily in addition to yoga. But I was still falling on the floor in a heap of tears regularly and finding it very difficult to do much more than these self-care practices and sleeping. Now, with Zoloft, I still do many of these things like meditating daily, practicing yoga on my own at home, and going to aikido every Sunday. But the difference is I can still go about my life. I get out of bed and do things. It doesn’t replace self-care, but it allows me to be in a better place so that self-care works.

I hope people will start thinking more before making statements about how they do x, y, z, so they don’t need meds. Because that is a value-laden statement and it depreciates the value of meds for the many people who do need them. Different people need different solutions and there is already so much stigma around mental health. 

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If only we could all be so gracious. #gratitude

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Sure, you can get a koláče without work...

I’ve been thinking about the title of this blog, which I also have tattooed on my arm. It translates to, “Without work there are no koláče.” Koláče are pastries/pies/cakes... you get the idea. No pain, no gain. And this is something I have always believed in. Maybe because I have always seen myself as a worker and I have believed in really working hard, digging deep, thinking critically, and doing this with the whole self to be a reward in and of itself, but also a step towards a much bigger piece of the proverbial pie. But I’m starting to wonder about this. And more, I am starting to wonder about the ways adopting this phrase as a motto, as a sort of salve in rough times of great labor, has influenced me and my relationship to myself, work, relaxation, illness, activism, pain, and the list goes on. To be continued...

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performance research

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BREAKING: “Vice President Pence cast a tie-breaking Senate vote Thursday to advance legislation that would allow states to withhold federal funds from Planned Parenthood and other health care providers that perform abortions.

The Senate, after a procedural vote, will now proceed to a measure that would dismiss an Obama-era rule banning states from denying federal funds to such organizations.

Pence’s vote was needed for the Senate to agree to bring the resolution to the floor. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska broke with their party, voting against the measure.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., called the measure a “shameful, dangerous resolution.”

“We are not going to give up,” said Murray, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We are going to keep making sure that women’s voices are heard.”

Since 2011, 13 states have restricted access to such grants, disrupting or reducing services in several instances.

Read the full piece here

#StandWithPP - THIS IS NOT A DRILL 

DONATE OR VOLUNTEER HERE: https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/

My post on the 100% hypocrisy of the so-called “Pro Life” movement

U.S. READERS, REGISTER TO VOTE HERE

[bezpracenejsoukolace]

Election Harassment

Today I got harassed. By a white bro on the A train. I saw him from afar kind of squinting to read my sign. I had been at the #HereToStay rally at Columbus circle that went across Central Park South and looped around down fifth avenue to Trump tower and then back up. I had a great time. Met a cool new friend. Ran into my union president who gave me a union sign, that I happily and proudly carried throughout the march. Unlike many of the signs, this one was fairly innocuous, reading only:

Professional Staff Congress/CUNY -- In Solidarity -- NYSUT/AFT Local 2334/AFL-CIO

There was a mortar board on the sign as well and it was in simple black and white letters on a red background.

The train got to the 145th street stop and the guy who had been squinting at the sign started to exit. I moved to an open seat that had freed up. As I got comfortable this dude, on his way out the door of the train, looks at my sign again, and put his fists to his eyes, like he is rubbing his eyes like a baby, and said directly to me “Oh cry me a river,” and then left as I yelled at him “Well aren’t you an asshole” and then apologized to the two children entering the subway car that I hadn’t seen. I got supportive and reassuring nods and smiles from lots of people. Nobody admonished me for my response, except me. I could have come up with something better. But he didn’t stick around to hear it anyway.

And that’s what is bugging me. He didn’t want to talk to me, or have a conversation, or ask what my sign meant. He wanted to yell at me, like a sports fan at a football game. He wanted to show me that he had won and he could do whatever the fuck he wanted and leave before there would be any consequences. And that is so not what this is about. It was as if he was trying to blot out my existence. My concerns. To dismiss them and make me shrink down to the small piss of shit he thought I was. He felt so emboldened that he attacked me in public as I minded my own business. Even if I had a sign that said, “Fuck You and Fuck Trump,” harassing me in that way would be unnecessary and unproductive.

There is nothing about me carrying my union sign that means I am a baby or a sore loser. What it does show, is that I am a person who works for the City of New York. That I am a civil servant who has dedicated my life to serving others. That I am part of an institution with the mission of providing opportunity to immigrant, low-income, and underrepresented students who have made this city what it is through the contributions of their talents, ambitions, and dreams.

And, on another note, I’m a hetero-passing white lady. I have tattoos, but it’s cold in New York City in November and you can’t see them through my coat. So if I am getting harassed like this, imagine what it is like for people of color, gender nonconforming people, people who read more obviously as queer, or Muslim, or Jewish. 

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#pinkoutthevote #ivoteppaction 77/#365feministselfie #imwithher #debates2016 (at Planned Parenthood of New York City Action Fund)

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46/#365feministselfie #nope

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Great panel experiment! #ssca16

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(beeareeye) This is a first edit of a piece I am working on and sharing at Southern States Communication Association tomorrow. This is about 10 minutes of interview materials from about 45 minutes of material. There are more stories, but I have time limits for this round. I think this will become something more eventually.

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slow blow pillow 

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Magin Schantz and I are taking our talents to South Beach on Thursday for a modified version of our performance piece/project in process “Survival Party.” We have two workshops: one at Florida International University and another at Lotus House, a rad org that works to improve the lives of homeless women, youth, and children through all kinds of cool programming, graciously including us. We are also going to be performing guerilla style in Wynwood and nearby. Here’s a video of me unwrapping a recent delivery of some recent portable toys for our trip...

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(beeareeye) Finally made time to play around with the new equipment I got in July. 

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Last weekend, at my sister’s birthday party, I saw this accordion in the corner. It had belonged to the great uncle of one of the residents of the apartment where the party was. It was fascinating to pick up and begin figuring out how it works. Though this video doesn’t really show it, I kind of figured it out and, along with another intrigued party-goer, played with it for awhile until it made some sense.

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New performance character that's gonna basically be me as I was in the 90s with a greater understanding of intersectionality and queerness, but presented now, as a woman in my late thirties...maybe.

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Rest well, pants

John and I had planned to write something; this manifesto on devising. In November we had a great planning happy hour or few. This was good and fun and it was so wonderful to have some time just the two of us. I love having times with John like when I went to see him in the hospital in February and we hung out and sometimes Sarah was there pumping her breasts while I told tales of pooping my pants and we laughed and Holley kept us all on schedule. And the afternoon where I gave him reiki and he responded so well and we sat and talked past visiting hours. And when he and Dre got stuck on the horse sculpture outside the Louisiana Museum and called me to help them, but then I climbed on and we were all stuck. I love John. I miss him. Today, about the time he transcended, I was having a scotch and soda in his honor and realized I’d been taking notes all day with a hound dog’s pen. And the Indigo Girls song “Closer to Fine” came on. I love that song and have belted it at the top of my lungs on the front porch of a certain pink house in Baton Rouge with a fantastic  group of drunken women. But John, I think, would have hated that song. And Ben, who was having the drink to John with me, who also hates the Indigo Girls, sang along with me to the jukebox for a little while. It was actually a beautiful day full of emotions, and sunshine, and nice weather, and love, and friendship, and John.