So Wait...Why Are You in Mexico?

A statue of IxChel, the goddess of Isla Mujeres, at Punta Sur. 

I turned 34 a few days ago and have been doing a lot of reflecting on 33, sometimes known as the "Jesus" year, which certainly embodied the spirit of death and rebirth. Much of this reinvention has been around my desires, priorities and certainly my career. The most tangible part of this (ongoing) process has been my decision to trade a snowy and frigid New York City winter for a lush, tropical, beachy winter in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Well played, self.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions: how did I make it happen, why Isla Mujeres, when am I coming back to New York, where's your stuff?! A lot of serendipitous things happened really quickly and before I knew it, I was on a plane to Cancun literally leaving the snow behind.

Okay, so like what?

Picture it. The sticks, Flatbush Brooklyn, October 2013. 

Life was pretty normal. Normal at that point meant spreading myself too thin, as freelancers often do when work is (thankfully) busy. I got a nasty cold that laid me out at the top of the month. Once I slept it off for a couple of days straight, I was again “ready” to handle my PR projects, prepare for a burlesque road trip to DC and be a present board member. Even though these were/are things I enjoyed and chose to do, I couldn’t ignore my physical and mental yearning to do things differently. I was unhappy and faking the funk.

I wanted a new career where I didn’t have to be immersed in everyone else’s opinions or feminist bickering. I wanted to feel the joy of being an artist again without the stress of selling out shows and writing media advisories. I wanted to have idle time to bullshit. Time to lay around with my dude watching Netflix without worrying about missing an email. Time to play Wii with my goddaughter and BFFs without thinking I should be out networking. Time to enjoy the wisdom of my parents and my aunties, and to laugh and play with my cousins.

As much as I yearned for this, my actions were in complete contrast. I was on the hamster wheel and saw no way to get off. My body had the answer. Illness. One that attacked my skin vanity so I’d really listen.

That weird cold I got in early October never really went away. Then I got an intense case of eczema with itchy, oozing, scaly sores all over my face, neck and breasts that weren’t healing. It was miserable. I’ve never had it before but found out that stress is a main cause. While I wasn’t surprised, I vowed that I would never again stress myself out to the point of being sick.

My apartment lease was ending as well. Although I moved 3 times in the last 2 years, I no longer wanted to live far from a train in Middle Earth, Brooklyn in a perfectly-priced but poorly maintained apartment. I wasn’t feeling sticking around for another summer fly infestation. The idea of looking for another apartment in NYC gave me agita. I couldn’t process that idea of shelling out my savings for another crapshoot. Plus there was nowhere that I wanted to live…even if money wasn’t an option. Burnout.com.

At some point in my pus-filled feverish frustration, I reached out to a friend I met in Isla Mujeres at the 2013 We Move Forward conference to ask about living there. She’s an American gal on a similar journey that had been living in Isla for a while and suddenly it felt like a real possibility. It was exactly what I needed to get out of the rat race and to commit myself to myself. Within 3 days, I had an apartment sublet in Isla Mujeres for December and January, and a one-way ticket out of dodge.

As I was prepping to leave, I got better by eating a relatively strict vegan diet (with a couple of highly-recommended colonics) along with setting boundaries with work and life expectations. I put myself first. It’s not about being selfish but self-care and honoring own our needs. And most importantly, taking the time to identify those needs. It’s simpler to shirk personal responsibility and to let life happen to you. I realized that I’m the creator of my life and that being a martyr is not my responsibility. It is an ongoing life lesson.

I moved out, put my stuff in storage and prepared myself for a new chapter and new adventures. Now I’m in Isla Mujeres. It’s the greatest act of self-care that I could have ever gifted myself with.

The assumption is that I’m living it up, beaching all day and partying all night. In fact, I do pretty much the same stuff I do in NYC: answer e-mail, binge-watch TV shows online, talk on Twitter, grab a drink or bite with friends, take long walks. You've seen me on Facebook. I’m just in a naturally gorgeous island with a cheaper cost of living and slower pace. It is allowing me to regroup and rebuild without the pressures of big city life. I put in my work but trust, I do get my beach time in and I am LIVING. I am blessed.

I will be back in New York in the early spring. I miss my boos. My quick birthday trip back confirmed that “home” for me is about being around my true blue family and friends. I can enjoy any place as long as I am with my community. The friends I’ve made here in Isla are for a lifetime, no doubt, and have given me “home” here. But now I also know that within New York’s relentless motion there exists a world where I am comfortable and connected.

Other lessons: 

It’s easy to blow money anywhere. Pandora.com doesn’t work down here. I depend on the Internet a lot for entertainment. Pan dulce with queso Philadelphia is Isla’s equivalent of a bagel with cream cheese. I make a lot of judgments about people. Bumber cars in Spanish is “carros chacones.” Most importantly, I am a writer and always have been.

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Goddesses Rising Gets Active With Momma's Hip Hop Kitchen

Goddesses Rising is taking the show on the road and we'll be having a table at Momma's Hip Hop Kitchen Vol.4 "Let's Get Active!" We're really excited to be surrounded by fierce females all day using Hip-Hop culture to empower and uplift our sisters. There will be performances by female emcees, djs, b-girls and just all around positive vibes.

This year's theme is all about health so we will sharing some sexual health and reproductive justice resources, in addition to a fun goddess pack giveaway for stopping by. Looking forward to see you all there!

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Health Care Reform, At Whose Expense?

Despite the headlines and excitement over the signing of the health care bill, yesterday was not a great day for many of us. After months, and let’s be honest, years of struggle to reform America’s decayed health care system, we got…what, exactly? Yes, young people can now stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26, assuming that their parents have insurance. The legislation expands Medicaid to cover family planning and other preventative reproductive health care. Insurance companies will no longer be able to charge women more than men or deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. So, yes, women and our families gain a lot from the passage of this bill but at what cost, and at whose expense? This law makes the most vulnerable among us – young women, women of color, immigrant women, low-income women, and transgender women – more vulnerable. And I don’t consider that a victory.

I have already heard it argued that this bill was the best progressives could get. I absolutely reject that. The President was elected along with majorities in both the House and the Senate to pass health care reform that removed barriers and improved access to health care, for all of us, not just the most politically palatable. Many of us who believed in the ideals of hope and change thought that we could achieve universal health care, if not in policy, then certainly in practice. That didn’t happen. Poor people, immigrants, and women, among others, were all used as bargaining tools from the very beginning.

As often is the case, women’s bodies and health, was the ultimate battleground. The Stupak Amendment and then the Nelson Amendment in the Senate banned the use of public funds for abortion. Both were unnecessary and redundant because the Hyde Amendment (http://www.hyde30years.nnaf.org/), which has been renewed every year since it was first introduced in 1977, remains in place. But that wasn’t enough. Stupak and Nelson went further by also barring women who would use the exchanges from getting insurance that would cover abortion. When that still did not satisfy Stupak and his anti-choice cronies, the President agreed to sign an executive order barring public funding of abortion in return for their support for the overall bill. Women’s health was traded away for a handful of votes.

Some people contend that these funding restrictions are not new, but rather they reinforce the status quo. That thinking lends legitimacy to the idea that the long-standing bans on federal funding for abortion are just. The status quo is immoral and it is wrong. Hiding behind that argument as the rationale for including it in health care reform and then expanding it, is not only craven, it is also unjust. These restrictions are harmful to women and their families. They will limit access to abortion for low-income women, who tend to be disproportionately women of color, immigrants and young, as well as women who may purchase insurance through the exchange. These funding bans will further codify discrimination against poor women for being poor. Finally, they will continue to stigmatize abortion and isolate it from women’s overall health care, because let’s be clear: abortion is basic health care.

Other colleagues and allies in the reproductive health and progressive movements contend that the executive order will have very little impact; that it is largely symbolic. Well, symbols matter. And what this symbolizes to me is that as a woman, my health needs are less important, my ability to make my own health care decisions is suspect, and my vote for who I believed was a pro-choice President certainly doesn’t amount to much. Our political leaders in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives sold out women not just in the legislation, but in the process itself. There remain many questions about the implementation, oversight and real-life effects of this health care bill. However, one thing is clear. Until women’s lives and women’s health are not used as trade goods for votes, we will remain vulnerable and invisible.

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Growing Up With Roe

I first became aware of abortion around the same time I became aware of many things related to sex and sexuality – during puberty. It was 7th grade, and I was nursing both a broken heart and raging hormones. One day during a break between classes, my best friend slipped me a piece of paper. On it were the names and numbers of every family planning clinic in NYC. Neither of was us was sexually active – YET, but we both understood the risks of becoming pregnant at such a young age. Although we were aware of HIV at that time, an unplanned pregnancy still posed the greater risk to our educations, happiness, and possibly our very lives. We all knew of girls who were beaten, forced to drop out of school, thrown out of their homes, and expected to get married because of an unplanned pregnancy. When we became sexually active, we needed to know where to go for information, advice, and yes, abortions.

At the time, abortion represented survival to me. As a little brown girl from the Bronx, I knew what the statistics said about girls like me and our chances of “success”. If I knew one thing, I knew this: I was not going to come home and tell my mother that I was pregnant. I was not going to have to tell my father that I was pregnant. And I would do anything to make that true. So I was always practiced safer-sex (my first boyfriend, poor guy, had to wear two condoms the first time we had sex). I limited the number of partners I had. And for years, I kept that piece of paper Selene gave me. For me, abortion meant a chance to go to school and get a job – to create the life I had dreamed of. Abortion gave me the chance to be a mom when and if I wanted to be, not just because my body said it was time. Abortion represented the chance to live.

During high school and college, abortion represented the awakening of my social and political consciousness. I argued on behalf of women’s rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination. I raged when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court for many reasons, the foremost being his opposition to abortion rights. In fact, for a great deal of my life, abortion was an IDEA. I placed a lot of my identity, political, social and cultural onto my support for abortion rights. In my view, if you didn’t support a women’s right to safe, affordable abortion, then you didn’t support women. No discussion needed. That line was drawn in not in the sand, but in concrete. That was my one non-negotiable.

As I began my 30s and my work in the reproductive justice movement, I carried all the past history with me. And I realized for all my ranting and raving, I had lost sight of the most important part of the abortion experience – the woman. On any given day, I could count more than two dozen women in my life that had had abortions: family, friends, acquaintances, sorority sisters, classmates, co-workers, and neighbors. Each experience was unique, and I was deeply thankful that each had legal access to abortion. My focus shifted from abortion as survival or political to abortion as a lived experience. The innovative work of Exhale and the life-saving efforts of the National Network of Abortion Funds and many other amazing organizations, reminded me that ultimately abortion is about each woman doing what is right for her.

Despite the barriers to access, the constant legislative and legal challenges to abortion, and the ongoing cultural warfare over abortion, I remain grateful for the rights granted under Roe v Wade. And as I approach my own 37th birthday I am more committed to Roe than ever before.

Originally posted at

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Breast Cancer Awareness…#FAIL

Did you know about that amazing viral campaign that raised awareness about breast cancer? Of course you did. If you are a Facebook user, then you probably noticed a curious phenomenon last week. Rather mysteriously, women were updating their status with colors. There was beige, lots of black, red, some purple and pink, even stripes. Nothing else, just colors. The point of this was to raise awareness about breast cancer. Now let that sink in. The point of this exercise was to raise awareness about breast cancer by women sharing what color bra they were wearing that day. What? You didn’t know that was actually about something serious? Yeah, well, join the fucking club.

This was such an obvious educational campaign FAILURE, let me count the ways An educational campaign can’t lay claim to raising awareness if no one knows what the campaign was about or even that a campaign was underway. Most people I know thought this was a joke. And to a certain extent it was. The message that I got on Facebook was this, “Some fun is going on.... just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls no men... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. See how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.” The problem was, is and remains that most people were not in on the joke. Women were changing their status and friends were reading them without necessarily making the connection to breast cancer. The “campaign” (I use that term loosely here) didn’t provide enough context for people to make that leap from beige (or pink or purple) to breast cancer awareness.

I ‘m not criticizing the campaign for trying to be different, fun or flirty. Or that even guys got into the act. I wasn’t concerned about women objectifying themselves by sharing the color of their bra. My issue was with the lack of any genuine awareness-raising or educating about breast cancer. As a next step, the campaign could have asked women to post statistics about the prevalence of breast cancer or steps on how to conduct a self-breast examination. Organizers of the campaign, whoever they were, could have suggested that women follow-up with blog posts explaining risk factors for breast cancer or first–person narratives from breast cancer fighters and survivors. In fact, among all these status updates the words “breast cancer” didn’t appear. Not once. And so we lost a major opportunity to educate millions of people, especially young women, about a disease that will strike 1 in 8 women over the course of her lifetime, including my best friend’s mom who died from complications due to breast cancer in 2008.

Another major failure of the campaign was raised in this post, by WHYMOMMY. How many people stopped to think about the fact that many women could not participate because they longer wore a bra, because of breast cancer? In trying to raise awareness about breast cancer the campaign managed to isolate and silence the very people who are MOST impacted by this disease. The campaign cannot claim to stand in solidarity with breast cancer fighters and survivors, if the effect was to do so at their expense, further marginalizing them and adding to the tremendous stigma that still surrounds the disease.

I spend a lot of time thinking about cancer. Since my Mom was diagnosed fourteen months ago, not a day goes by that I don’t think about cancer, the 12 million people around the world that will be diagnosed with it this year or what I can do to fight it. But if we are going to really educate people about breast cancer, this bra campaign isn’t going to get us there. We need information, resources, and services. Otherwise, it’s just a joke that most of us aren’t in on.

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Women's Bodies, Worldwide Battlefield

When you destroy the women, you destroy the nation. Congo is our most current example of the desecration of women's bodies as a tool of war. There have been numerous documentaries highlighting the courage of survivors of rape and assault of Congolese women and the excruciating process of regaining their health and their spirit. Lumo and HBO's The Greatest Silence: Rape In The Congo offer a look inside the hospitals that treat these women how travel from all over the country, not only for reconstructive surgery, but for a community of other ostracized survivors.

Tomorrow night in NYC there is a photo exhibition featuring the work of 4 photographers who captured the anguish and resilience of these brave warrior women. If you're not in the New York area, visit congowomen.org to sign the visual petition to stand with women and girls. Details are below...


Congo/Women
Portraits of War:
The Democratic Republic of Congo


Congo/Women
Photo by Lynsey Addario

Monday, March 16
James Cohan Gallery
533 West 26th St
New York, NY

6-8pm: Reception & Program
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Hosted by:
Jane and James Cohan

Speakers:
Marcus Bleasdale
Exhibition Photographer

Carroll Bogert
Associate Director, Human Rights Watch

Noella Coursaris Musunka
Founder, George Malaika Foundation, Empowering African Girls Through Education

Pamela DeLargy
Chief Humanitarian Response Branch, The United Nations Population Fund

Ron Haviv
Exhibition Photographer

Lynn Nottage
Playwright, "Ruined" and MacArthur Fellow award recipient, and Institute-Goodman Fellow

Jane M. Saks and Leslie Thomas
Co-Directors, Congo/Women project


Congo/Women Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo is an international photography exhibition and educational campaign that raises awareness of the widespread sexual violence facing women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The exhibition features powerful life-size photographs by Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv, and James Nachtwey that convey the strength and courage of Congolese women. Accompanying essays contextualize the impact of the crisis from a range of perspectives. An advocacy partnership with the Enough Project's Raise Hope for Congo campaign provides tools to demand action and involvement from the global citizenry.

Over the next two years, the project will tour selected venues throughout North America, Europe and Africa, visiting universities and community centers to build awareness among as wide an audience as possible. Throughout the tour at each exhibition venue, local advocacy organizations working on gender-based violence will be engaged as collaborators to contextualize this issue locally as well as internationally.

Additional Major Launch Dates:


Fall 2009
United Nations Lobby Exhibition Space
405 E. 42nd Street
New York NY


For a touring schedule and more information:

congowomen.org
artworksprojects.org
colum.edu/institutewomengender
Tel: 312-369-8829

Produced by:
Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago, and Art Works Projects.

Major funding by:
UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund, and Humanity United.

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Knockin' on Heaven's Door

I've said before that John McCain looks like he's already been embalmed. He looks a mess! This is not to be mean or ignorant but it's true. He looks sickly; and yes it's understandable and sad considering he's been tortured. However, this country should push empathy aside and honestly assess who could be voted into the White House.

Ol' ass Johnny refuses to give up his medical records, giving reporters only 3 hours of access to stacks of hundreds of papers in a monitored room, allowing no electrical devices and no copying of documents. Essentially he is the walking dead, or basically a ticking time bomb, with recurrent cases of melanoma, along with general problems of old age, like Alzheimer's and high blood pressure.

I'm obviously disturbed because this magnifies the reality of Palin as a VP pick. She is much more extreme than McCain, who appears to sway with party opinion and say whatever he needs to say to please the GOP powers that be. He gives me the heebie jeebies.

Hillary, where for art thou? I halfway want to see her dig her claws into Palin; but on the other hand, I don't know how helpful it would be to Obama's campaign. It could backfire, but at least we would be on the offensive and not the defensive all the time. I also don't want to advocate 2 women fighting each other and being catty, but sometimes a bitch needs to set the record straight.

Peep this video about McCain's medical records for I start a new digression, followed by a musical epilogue.

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