As Our Foremothers Swore (Short Collection of Poetry)

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was really excited to have the opportunity to work on a creative project for my English M107A, Women's Literature course. This is not the entire assignment because some of the poems were already included in posts prior to this one, but here are a few that were inspired directly from the texts we studied in class. What I wanted to do was adapt the format and style of writing from the authors we discussed, but still give each poem my voice and my story. So in order to show you the comparisons and contrasts, I've included the original works we went over in class as well as my renditions. The title is adopted from my poem "Society" mentioned in my last blog post, "When it rains, it pours." Enjoy!

In Celebration of My Uterus

By Anne Sexton

Everyone in me is a bird.

I am beating all my wings.  

They wanted to cut you out  

but they will not.

They said you were immeasurably empty  

but you are not.

They said you were sick unto dying  

but they were wrong.

You are singing like a school girl.  

You are not torn.

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

and of the soul of the woman I am

and of the central creature and its delight  

I sing for you. I dare to live.

Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.

Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.  

Hello to the soil of the fields.

Welcome, roots.

Each cell has a life.

There is enough here to please a nation.

It is enough that the populace own these goods.  

Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,  

“It is good this year that we may plant again  

and think forward to a harvest.

A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”

Many women are singing together of this:  

one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,  

one is at the aquarium tending a seal,  

one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,  

one is at the toll gate collecting,

one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,  

one is straddling a cello in Russia,

one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,

one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,  

one is dying but remembering a breakfast,  

one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,  

one is wiping the ass of her child,

one is staring out the window of a train  

in the middle of Wyoming and one is  

anywhere and some are everywhere and all  

seem to be singing, although some can not  

sing a note.

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

let me carry a ten-foot scarf,

let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,

let me carry bowls for the offering

(if that is my part).

Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,

let me examine the angular distance of meteors,  

let me suck on the stems of flowers

(if that is my part).

Let me make certain tribal figures

(if that is my part).

For this thing the body needs

let me sing

for the supper,  

for the kissing,  

for the correct  

yes.

In Celebration of My Mind

(My rendition)

Everything in me is a word

and I am singing loud.

They wanted to lobotomize you,

magnetize you, 

shock you with 450 volts,

but they will not.

They said that you’d turn out impaired,

but you are not.

They said that you were schizo,

but they were wrong.

You are as sharp as a machete

You are not defective.

Sweet waves and impulses,

in celebration of the intellect I am

and of the human I am

and of the spirit and heart I have

I sing for you. I dare to be different.

Hello imagination. Hello unseen world.

Information center that does compute

Hello to the formation of dreams.

Welcome thoughts and consciousness.

Each neuron has a mission.

There is enough to rule the world.

It is enough to maintain sanity

and teach logic and reason

to a school of children knee deep in fantasy and pretense

Any educator, any professor would say of it

“It is essential that we establish discipline

and follow rules and structure, but question what may seem unfair.”

Many others are realizing this:

one is in a hospital having an epiphany,

one is at the doctor learning her diagnosis,

one is at a conference panel sharing her story with listeners,

one is at the therapist regaining strength from her struggles,

one is in a jail cell, receiving help for the first time

one is at home playing with her children

one is talking to herself to make sense of it all

one is in the middle of going off on a fellow employee

one is on the phone with the operator of a hotline

one is throwing the razor blades away

one is walking away from the bar

one is taking her medication before bed while writing this account

in the middle of LA and one is

anywhere and some are everywhere and all

seem to be rationalizing, although they

were called insane.

Sweet waves and impulses,

in celebration of the intellect I am

let me write a thousand poems

let me remember times good and bad

let me put up banners for the festival

(if that is my part).

Let me study the atmosphere

let me examine the tissues of our skin

let me smell the fragrance of flowers

(if that is my part).

Let me decorate the altar

(if that is my part).

For this thing the body needs

let me sing

for the evening,

for the kissing,

for the capable

yes.

La Migra

By Pat Mora

I

Let's play La Migra

I'll be the Border Patrol.

You be the Mexican maid.

I get the badge and sunglasses.

You can hide and run,

but you can't get away

because I have a jeep.

I can take you wherever

I want, but don't ask

questions because

I don't speak Spanish.

I can touch you wherever

I want but don't complain

too much because I've got

boots and kick--if I have to,

and I have handcuffs.

Oh, and a gun.

Get ready, get set, run.

II

Let's play La Migra

You be the Border Patrol.

I'll be the Mexican woman.

Your jeep has a flat,

and you have been spotted

by the sun.

All you have is heavy: hat,

glasses, badge, shoes, gun.

I know this desert,

where to rest,

where to drink.

Oh, I am not alone.

You hear us singing

and laughing with the wind,

Agua dulce brota aqui,

aqui, aqui, but since you

can't speak Spanish,

you do not understand.

Get ready.

Abusi sui minori

(My rendition)

                        I

Let’s play abusi sui minori

I’ll be the aggressive parent

You be the innocent child.

I have many years on you,

am fully grown

and have bigger hands and longer arms

with more strength and muscle than you do

You can hide and run

but you can’t get away.

You cannot question my authority

I can punish you however I want

because you are still a minor

and have no rights under my custody.

I can hit you wherever I want

but don’t scream or cry too much

because I have the articulation

to change the story

when the cops and social workers come.

Get ready, get set, run.

II

Let’s play abusi sui minori

You be the aggressive parent.

I’ll be the innocent child. 

You have been reported to the police,

are ragged, set in your ways, and only getting older.

I am youthful, full of energy, and resilient.

You are unaware of your inner demons

I am not.

You do not know your own strength

I do.

You can’t see me,

I am no longer physically in your presence

But you can still hear me taunting you

non mi può prendere

Get ready.

The Window of the Woman Burning    

by Marge Piercy

Woman dancing with hair

on fire, woman writhing in the

cone of orange snakes, flowering

into crackling lithe vines:

Woman

you are not the bound witch

at the stake, whose broiled alive

agonized screams

thrust from charred flesh

darkened Europe in the nine millions.

Woman

you are not the madonna impaled

whose sacrifice of self leaves her

empty and mad as wind,

or whore crucified

studded with nails.

Woman

you are the demon of a fountain of energy

rushing up from the coal hard

memories in the ancient spine,

flickering lights from the furnace in the solar

plexus, lush scents from the reptilian brain,

river that winds up the hypothalamus

with its fibroids of pleasure and pain

twisted and braided like rope,

firing the lanterns of the forebrain

till they glow blood red.

You are the fire sprite

that charges leaping thighs,

that whips the supple back on its arc

as deer leap through the ankles:

dance of a woman strong

in beauty that crouches

inside like a cougar in the belly

not in the eyes of others measuring.

You are the icon of woman sexual

in herself like a great forest tree

in flower, liriodendron bearing sweet tulips,

cups of joy and drunkenness.

You drink strength from your dark fierce roots

and you hang at the sun's own fiery breast

and with the green cities of your boughs

you shelter and celebrate

woman, with the cauldrons of your energies

burning red, burning green.

Window into a Prisoner of the Mind

(My rendition)

Patient suffering in your

lonesome, patient crouching up against the

padded cell, twitching

with tremors caused by the chemicals

isolated from all of society;

ostracized

Patient

a slave to your own thoughts and desires

that no one else understands

mind running rampant

non-stop

with wicked voices eating away at your brain

Patient

you are not mad

you are not truly alone

you will not rot away in quarantine.

Patient,

there are others like you

there is hope

though they are suffering too

they will be revived

and not only survive,

but thrive.

You are a savant

you are brilliant

though your head is crowded with

heaps of what’s nonsensical

flashbacks that play on repeat

and rewind over and over

coercing you to ruminate

ever distant torment

causing you to remember at the same time you forget

forcing you to assemble

and constantly reset

that possibility that you might be a hero

but you just haven’t grasped it yet.

You are the revolution

fitted into the compartments of a single vessel

stirring with velocity

within the constraints of your specimen.

You will come out of your haze

to see better days

become as free as a butterfly

to graze the sky

and fly away.

There’s a lot more deep stuff about to come in the future posts, so stay tuned.

And as always, Thanks for reading. =) 

When it rains, it pours. . .

Hi all!

So I've started going back to "The Word on Wednesdays", a weekly, open mic night put on by UCLA's Cultural Affairs Commission (CAC). I used to go A LOT during my Freshman year, but during my second year, after I got diagnosed with the vocal cord polyp and GERD, I had to abruptly stop. But I've missed going and have so much of my writing that I'd like to share. Here's a poem I recently wrote last week that I've been eager to get out there into the open:

"Society" - February 2014

I’m tired of beating myself up

and trying to modify everything I aspire to be.

How about turning it around

and beating up society?

I’m perfectly innocent,

but they act like I’m a criminal

just cause I’m content,

I’m comfortable with who I am.

Just cause I can’t conform

to what? What’s conventional; the norm?

F*ck that, I will not repent

Just cause I’m nontraditional.

I am an original.

I saw a picture on my Facebook newsfeed

while I was carelessly scrolling along

it had the worst advice that I’ve ever seen

it said “keep calm and carry on”

but excuse me

why should we when everything is wrong?!

No, I refuse, that goes against all of my hopes and dreams,

but while still on Facebook, I saw, yet, another meme

it read “don’t keep calm, go change the world”

and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do with this spoken word.

Cause as our foremothers swore

with their immortal folklore

The PenDragon needs no sword

for its weapon is the word.

And just like Audre Lorde conceives  

“Poetry is Not a Luxury”

and to me, this is a firm belief

Because she’s right, it’s not, it is a necessity

And it flows through me

Just like electricity

For within my poetry

lies my legacy

it will continue to live on

long, long after me.

If I can use my inspiration, innovation to create

it can facilitate our efforts to derange

society’s reigns

with the restrictions and constraints that we abstain

we can celebrate our differences and grow from our pain

we can animate the images and stories to which others may relate

and therefore form a community connected in producing social change.

‘Cause as the minority

up against the majority

we’re faced with blatant poverty

and animosity

evident in the discrimination

perpetuated by our nation

that goes as far back as the plantations

where nothing but cruelty and subordination

were passed down from generation to generation

with race, class, religious denomination

body type, ability, undocumentation

gender, ethnicity, even sexual orientation

We assert ourselves as powerless.

But that’s just what they’d like us to think

So they can sail the ship away while we are left to sink.

Like Freire says in his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

we become our own oppressors

and we become obsessed

with keeping each other down,

But if we were to turn it around

we can reverse the pyramid

that leaves us limited and inhibited

destruct the patriarchal ties

the hegemonic hierarchies

Bring truth to the lies

and have the opportunities

to finally achieve

true equality.

No one should go out casting stones

When there isn’t a single one of us without sin

And if we really wanna make the world a better place

We must learn to embrace the lasting change that comes from within.

Cause these ideas, rhymes, repetitions and visions are my child,

but I just have muster up the strength to bear it

and we all have so much cultural capital

but we have to be open and willing to share it.

So let’s deconstruct

this reality established by society

to reinvent

one with unity

that won’t relent

to make its priorities

not what’s best for the only the one percent

but for all of humanity.

This is all I have to say

Thank you for listening to all of the thoughts I worked to arrange

But remember the message I give you to take away:

We are not done, we never are. There is always room for change. 

And because it is finally raining after all of this time, I thought I'd add another one of my poems that's relevant to the weather: 

"It Rains" - June 2011 

It rains.

 Ten trillion droplets of my pain.

Down

  pour gallons of my sorrow

Desperate for the sun to come

  and dry it all tomorrow.

Storms of misery and tragedy

The lightning strikes with agony

The pedestrian stops to stare

everyone has become aware,

But you

   are the

     exception.

Do you even notice?

Or take me in vain?

the falling droplets of my pain

my emotions burst with me into tears

and then,

           It rains. 

It's not a secret that I hate the rain. I really do. In SoCal, I seem to be one of the few people (usually the only person, in most occasions) that hates the rain with a passion. Everyone seems to like it and enjoy it, since it's so rare here, and currently because we're in a drought. People find it romantic and calming, they like to fall asleep to the pitter patter of rain drops falling on the ground or tapping on their windows. But I don't care, I will always hate the rain. And that's hard to say because I honestly don't hate anything. I don't have the energy for that. Who does? But the cold, wet, winters have never been kind to me.  .  .

People always ask me "Why don't you like it?" and I have to say that it's a number of reasons. I grew up very poor, and I never had a car to go places with. My main source of transportation was riding a bicycle (as I've mentioned before in a previous post) and that was all I had to get to school with and go shopping for groceries. Well, whenever it rained, my mom, uncle and I would get drenched by the storms, leaving the roads slippery and tough to navigate with the weight of food hanging in bags on your handlebars and the difficulty to see the oncoming traffic with the foggy haze corroding your eyes. My immune system was never strong as a kid, especially since I grew up with malnutrition and second hand smoke that permeated my entire house at a certain point, so much so that our white walls were stained yellow and people complained of leaving our house with the smell of cigarette smoke absorbed into their hair and clothing. In fact, I lost several friends when their parents said they could no longer visit me or talk to me because they were disgusted by the living conditions that were a normative reality at my house. Anyways, I already got sick several times, as is seen throughout my diaries. My younger cousin and I recently read through the old diaries I kept from 4th grade till 6th grade, all 11 of them, and it wasn't hard to conceive that I was sick at least every 3 months, no exaggeration. That's how bad it was. I'm  pretty sure I've had every cold germ known to man EXCEPT for pneumonia, thank God. And when it rained, I got even sicker and had to miss days of school that I really shouldn't have. Not to mention the horrible process my mom would make me go through whenever I got sick. She would shove cloves of  garlic and onions down my throat instead of giving me conventional medicine, chicken noodle soup or tea, because she was and always has been into "alternative remedies" that really don't work for sh*t. That was traumatic in itself. But the rain never made any of this better, and like I illustrate in the poem, it only represented if not added to my pain. So I hope that you can at least find comfort or an instance of empathy within my words, cause I know I do.

And an exciting poetic adventure is up ahead for me! For my current English M107A, Women's Literature, class, there's a creative writing option for the upcoming assignment, so I'm going to present a collection of newly inspired, fresh poems! Stay tuned for that!

Thanks for reading. :)

Cheated Out of Childhood: Chapter 1 - Only the Beginning (The Letter "A")

Was I that mistaken? Deserving of such a brutal punishment for such an innocent mistake?

Before I delve into this post, I would like to start by making two separate shout-outs:

The first goes to my girl Kaleef Starks (AKA Kaleef Marcille) who is so strong, stylish, and brave in telling her story of how she is transitioning into the beautiful woman that she is. She’s actually the inspiration behind my blog, especially since I’ve always been working on my autobiography and looking for an outlet to share it. I think it’s important I give credit where it’s due, so if you’re interested in learning more about her fabulous self, check out her tumblr and blog here: http://kaleefmarcille.tumblr.com/ and know-direction.blogspot.com

The second goes to one of my closest friends, Maribel, for always supporting my work and promoting me in her very own blog: ihadyesterday.blogspot.com  Thanks for always being there for me! Check her out too!

Now, I want to begin this one on a positive note (or a few, at that):

^^^So as you can see in my recent Facebook posts above, I’m pretty darn happy and things are going pretty good. But let me tell you, it was not always this way.   .   .

I feel like in all the talking I’ve done so far on this blog, I’ve done a whole lot of telling but not enough showing. Like any good ‘ole English teacher will tell you, in order to make any paper good (or acceptable, really) you have to use imagery and describe your examples well, grounding them in solid evidence. You can’t just make a bunch of claims and have nothing to back them up. So it’s time I start providing you with the substance.

Ladies and gentleman, like I said previously in my Gender Studies course on Race, Class, Gender and Work before presenting my autobiographical Johari Window Project, This is where S*@% gets REAL.

They say you can only remember so far back, like perhaps up until 3 years old. Some people even report remembering things as far back as living in their mother’s uterus, but for me, it’s definitely since the age of 3. The initial instances of child abuse I’ve experienced were very violent and physical. From the very early age of 3 and onward, I can remember my Grandmother Esther pushing, punching, and pinching me along with the occasional cigarette butt she would die out on my arm or the picking me up directly from the hairs on my scalp she used to do to carry me around. I can remember her picking me up by the hairs on my head because I would hide from her under the dinner table when I was very little, and she was still strong enough herself to grab me by my unruly, thick, long, dark, curly hair, carry me to the living room, and throw me on the floor. I can recall one time where I was hiding under the table from her, and she found me, so I ran away to the living room before she could get to me, and when she did, I hid behind a puffy, blue rocking chair we had which swiveled around, thus making it very convenient to use as a shield to protect me from her as I could just swivel it away from her and use the front of it to block her. Well, when I did that, I somehow got attached to the chair and couldn’t get up. I looked down to realize that one of the metal rods which held the fabric down had penetrated my knee and was stuck in my skin. I had to yank it out the way a person impaled by an arrow or stabbed by a knife would, and when I did, the wound gushed out a trail of blood that ran down my entire leg. I went to show my mother in the bathroom and she just told me to clean it with soap and running water while applying pressure to stop the bleeding. Yep, that’s about the kind of neglect I faced. My own Grandma would chase me around the house and threaten me with her fists while my own mother wouldn’t even take me to the hospital to stitch an open wound gushing blood from my knee. I still have the scar on my right kneecap to prove it. (And speak of the devil, my mother’s birthday just passed, 2/19, making her 66. Yep, she’s THAT old with only one kid she tortured, SMH)

I can remember the cigarette burning especially because Grandma did it to me once when I was wearing my favorite pair of shorts. I had to be 6 or 7 at the time, and I had a pair of white and blue, silky short-shorts on that were made of light, luminescent jersey fabric. They fit me well and were really comfortable, which made them great for playing outside in. I just remember my Grandma calling me to get something for her or to put some sheets away I was making a tent with, and when I didn’t listen or politely turned her down, she smashed the lit cigarette into my forearm, which caused the fiery ash to fall onto my shorts and burn a hole through them. I had the shorts for many weeks after that until I grew out of them, and I remember always looking at the black rimmed hole that left a trace of my punishment, and I knew not to disobey Grandma ever again, until I was older of course, and she was older herself and no longer a threat to me.

But one incident I remember very vividly has to do with my mother and with The Letter “A”.

I was 5 years old. I hadn’t started school yet as my mom didn’t allow me go to pre-school or kindergarten. I don’t know why, perhaps she was just too lazy to enroll me, take me, or didn’t trust the teachers. Her paranoia probably led her to believe everyone in those industries were pedophiles or rapists who would “greatly endanger” me, as usual. (and as everyone else in the neighborhood and world, go figure) But she decided to home-school me instead, prep me for first grade, which was a living nightmare. I think she’s the reason why I’m always too nervous to ask for help. I mean, I’ve dealt with this problem several times in the past, and it’s receded much in present days, thank God, but it was most likely caused by her. (as all of my problems. Everything is her fault, what’s new?) It was horrible. I would try so hard to write/draw my ABCs correctly, and I always made a lopsided A. It looked pretty bad, I’ll admit it. It was never perfectly pointed and always ended up looking like a falling bridge, an uneven arc that was misshapen and hopelessly crooked, but everything else came out fine and I tried my hardest. I tried! But it was never good enough for her! I would ask for her help and she would demand I draw it again. Repeatedly, encouraging me to get it right. Her idea of encouragement was a persistent “Do it again!”, first stated calmly and sweetly until it eventually became a palpitating scream that rendered me inanimate. (NOTE TO SELF: Yep, this is probably the reason I’m a perfectionist nowadays)  I kept trying, and kept struggling, and kept failing, and instead of supporting me and letting me move on, or even acknowledging how nice my other letters were (or even congratulating me for trying so hard and doing a good job), she just leapt into my face and yelled at me. The pores on her nose and cheeks enlarging, her skin becoming flushed red with profound anger, her lips protruding so harshly to shape every, single word and belching out drops of spit to spray all over mine. It was horrendous. I was so frightened. All I wanted was some help so that I could perfectly draw the letter A. But it was never good enough, ever. I tried so hard. I remember shifting the pencil between my fingers to attempt different techniques. “Maybe I would get it right this time. Maybe if I hold it this way, it would work better,” I remember thinking to myself. But she was never satisfied. Her level of irritation just kept elevating even higher and higher until it became gushing out like broken water pipes bursting and her temper exploded into fits of slapping my cheeks repeatedly and pinching thick grasps of my skin. I was thoroughly traumatized.

            I practiced every day. I still wanted to draw the perfect A. “She would see it and be so proud of me!” I think I spent hours re-writing it, erasing it, and writing it again until my method was perfected and my written alphabet looked flawless. I was so happy! I had finally replicated the “perfect A”! “Mommy would be so happy! All I have to do is find some paper,” I thought to myself. I looked all around until I found an envelope. My mother was always into doing those stupid mailing scams. Like Publishing’s Clearing House Sweepstakes, Australian “lotteries”, “Work-In Home” applications, you know, pyramid scheme type establishments because she was gullible enough (and dumb enough) to believe them. I think I actually comprehended this at that age, but I didn’t consider it because I was so relieved to have finally discovered the way to make the perfect A and I wanted to show her! I was so eager. I took the envelope because it was the first piece of paper I saw and wrote down my entire alphabet with that “perfect A” I was so proud of. I overheard her talking with Uncle Frank in the next room and jumped to run over to her. I begged and begged her to look, trying to get one minute of her attention. I must have called out “mommy” a hundred times until she looked down to notice the line of ABC’s written crookedly on her precious envelope. She looked down in contempt, driven with rage and snatched the envelope from my hand. My smile turned into a flustered frown and she began viciously slapping me, recurrently. I felt like each word she uttered came out individually, unattached to the others. “YOU. STUPID. LITTLE. IGNORANT. PIECE. OF. SHIT! HOW. COULD. YOU. DESTROY. THIS. ENVELOPE. FOR. MY. WORK. AT. HOME. POSITION? THIS. WAS. MINE. AND. YOUR. UNCLE’S. ONLY. HOPE. FOR. AN. INCOME. YOU. STUPID. LITTLE. FUCKING. BITCH. HOW. COULD. YOU?”  Every word followed by a slap to the cheek. I felt my face redden as the blood forcefully flowed to the pigments of my cheeks and they swelled as my eyes did with tears. I was so confused. I didn’t know I had done anything wrong! I didn’t mean to! I just wanted to show her the beautiful letters I worked so hard to write! To make her proud of my improvement! To make her proud of my effort! She slapped the shit out of me, and I stayed there, perplexed and shocked. At disbelief of what she had just done to me. I was scared out of my wits and after being stunned for a minute, I ran away to the old, musky roll up bed she kept for my father and cried myself to sleep. I don’t know if my gauge of time was accurate as a kid, but it felt like I cried for hours before I fell asleep. I just felt so hurt that she would jump at me like that. That she would become so angry over a stupid envelope when I didn’t mean to ruin anything for her and just wanted to show her what I worked so hard on. I just lied there, face smushed into the dirty, brown, itchy, coarse fabric that was bound into a bundle on the carpet. I dug my face into it, red and wet from my tears that it soaked, and cried until I fell asleep. I remember feeling so bad. I blamed myself for it! I was beating myself up about it. I kept thinking, “I should have waited until she wasn’t busy with Uncle! I should have gotten a different piece of paper! I’m so stupid!” Perhaps my actual thoughts weren’t so concise, predictable, or grammatically correct, but that was the idea of what I thought. I didn’t at all consider her actions to be unwarranted. I thought I deserved what I had gotten. How horrible is that? And sadly, readers, this is quite common. This is what little kids all around the world, as I once was, think when they get abused a majority of the time. They blame themselves and internalize it as if they deserved it. Sad, but true. It’s a sick case of Stockholm syndrome and the way we interpret reality.

According to ethnomethodologists Mehan and Wood[1], there are five features of reality, which include reflexivity, coherence, interaction, fragility, and permeability. I’m not going to go on a long spiel and give you an entire Sociology lesson, but the essential point is that our notion of reality exists with incorrigible propositions which are reflexive. This means that we have certain beliefs that are set in stone and everything we perceive in the world is used to build the foundation for these beliefs and prove they are true. However, if we interact with others or come into contact with counterevidence, our entire belief system can collapse and become rebuilt for potential change. Like Karren Warren argues, “severe abuse in the family continues because the family members learn to regard it ‘normal.’ A victim of abuse may come to see that her abuse is not ‘normal’ when she has contact with less abusive families.” (Smith, 17)[2] This is why so many young children are fooled into thinking that their parents’ extreme disciplinary actions are acceptable and that they are at fault for the dysfunctional behaviors of their family. Especially since they are so young, their judgment is very clouded. Until they grow older, mature, and interact with other people outside of their home, they will continue to blame themselves for the abuse their parents dole out onto them. And just like every other kid who deals with a messed up family, it took me years to realize mine was nowhere near “normal.”

            So folks, this is just the beginning of it all. There is much more to come, but I think that’s enough depressing stuff for now.

---

[1] O'Brien, Jodi, Hugh Mehan, and Houston Wood. "Five Features of Reality." The production of reality: essays and readings on social interaction. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2006. 379-395. Print.

[2] Smith, Andrea. "Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide." Conquest: sexual violence and American Indian genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005. 7-33. Print.

 To lift the mood, I’ll leave this little gem of a pharmacy mishap for laughs. It’s hilarious!

Thanks for reading. : )