Today marks the day that I officially begin working with Viking to publish an inspirational memoir in September 2010. My heart is filled with love and thanks to all of you for making this a reality. I would not be here without all of you!
In my heart I always knew that this would happen. I always had love, and I always knew that I would have a chance to give back in a big way. I believe I am meeting my potential! Exciting things are happening…as I am learning more about how we are all connected.
A new journey starts next week. I will be moving to a new place to write. Two years ago I returned to Fresno following my heart. I leave here doing the same. I thought I would be in Fresno for ten years. I am grateful for the time I had in Fresno, and especially for the people that I met here.
CARISSA the 23 minute documentary by David Sauvage has made it to television.
Barring a last minute change, the film will be airing on Current TV tonight, June 17, at 8:30 pm PST / 11:30 pm EST. It will be re-airing several times throughout the week www.currenttv.com
Current’s channels are listed here:
DirectTV: 358
Comcast: 107 or 125
Time Warner: 103 or 142
AT&T U-Verse: 189
Verizon Fios: 192
You can check out the full film online at: http://tr.im/oH1l. You can also purchase a copy, with deleted scenes and director’s commentary, on Amazon at: http://tr.im/oH4Y.
I had a big week last week. It started with a visit to Homegirl Cafe on Monday afternoon…which was terrific! It included a Girl Scouts sponsored visit to Utica, NY where I conducted four inspiring WhyTry workshops with junior high school girls at Comfort Zone. Finally, the entire week peaked on Friday when I watched my youngest brother graduate from Fresno State with honors!
The week was so full that I needed a long weekend to relax. I actually needed an extra long weekend because in anticipation of finally having “nothing to do” I missed a couple of things…among my misses this weekend that cannot be made up: a very important friend’s going away party, and calling my writing partner for her birthday.
(If either of you are reading, I really appreciate you both and wish I had not missed out!!!)
I don’t have any big advice. No big memorial day celebrations here either, though I thought about keeping the memory of those that sacrifice the most. I hope that in the future, when I have children, that they enjoy the freedoms that I enjoy. I hope that they get to know an even better America, and that their politicians face differences in the world with a healthier curiosity and appreciation. For all the progress we’ve made in the US we have also taken a few major steps backward. This should be familiar to most of us — it’s a growing pain. Making progress in life, personal life, career life, or family life, it’s all filled with ups and downs.
What I’ve realized in my own life is that as I make “progress” I also create paths to stand in my own way. As I get more busy and successful in work, I miss family. As I take time for family, I miss friends. I seek “balance” but on a certain level I know that there are always sacrifices. As the world grows closer, as we make “progress” we might think in advance about what we sacrifice and what we gain. It will help us plan our route more carefully.
With great respect and love for those that are young, for the graduates, the girls scouts, the homegirls, and all of the soldiers…I wish I could instantly give you hope. I wish I could give you an answer. But all I can say is appreciate where you are now and hold on tight to what you love because you will change, things will change, and some day years from now you will remember and long for the comforts you found last week or this weekend.
Intern for the DOJ. The Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), hires four current law students to work as Legal Interns each spring, summer and fall. These positions are volunteer (i.e. uncompensated positions for course credit) and are open until filled.
CEOS is currently accepting applications for Summer 2009 intern positions. The application deadline is January 30, 2009.
Eligibility
Second-year and third-year law students are eligible to apply. Prior to finalizing an appointment, all interns are required to undergo a security check, which includes a name and fingerprint clearance with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a determination of suitability for employment based on the information a candidate provides in the security form.
Date Position(s) Available
* Fall Semester (September - December)
* Spring Semester (January - May)
* Summer (June - August)
Responsibilities
Legal interns work directly with the Section’s trial attorneys on a variety of assignments, ranging from conducting legal research and writing to assisting in the investigation and prosecution of child exploitation and obscenity offenses.
Application Procedure
Is social inclusion the answer? I’m fascinated by a whole field of research that I’m just learning about, (it’s new to me but I feel like I know it b/c lived it) …
“Sociologists have observed that excluded classes of persons in many societies exhibit various undesirable patterns of behavior, including aggression, poor intellectual or academic performance, lack of pro-social behavior, self-destructive indulgences, and poor self-control. Our research suggests that these are not necessarily inner traits of society’s downtrodden, so much as normal reactions that all sorts of people exhibit when they find themselves to be excluded by others.” (Baumeister et al. 2007)
Passing the bar is great, but I continue to wonder whether and when I will feel like I “fit in” with “them” but now “them” is “me” and I still don’t really find myself wanting to belong.
What I’m realizing is that this is an old feeling. We all need acceptance. When we are not accepted, when we are not allowed access, when basic rights are denied, we have no motivation to participate. I have been wondering myself lately what would make the office, and the comforts of a full-time job worth it? Those who love me are urging me to take part in a system that I don’t fully buy into. But why don’t I buy into it?
Maybe if I knew that I could have it and not give up who I really am? Maybe if I knew that I would be accepted…not left behind or looked down upon for being different? The answer for most innovators, for those that feel like acceptance in the status quo is impossible is entrepreneurship. We do it our own way. This has been the informal approach I have been taking — and now it’s time to formalize it. I am forming a start up.
Practicing social entrepreneurship is a way to participate without needing to be accepted by a system that I have not fully bought into yet. More to come about this venture in the next month or two…
During Yoga my instructor shared this quote…then she even photocopied it for me! THANKS!
“As we are all human beings living on earth among [6.7 billion] other human beings, our happiness is intimately connected to that of others. It is hard to imagine personal happiness detached or separate from the happiness of others. For it is certain that if we aspire to happiness, we must be deeply concerned about the happiness of all humankind.”
Happiness is for everyone. It’s better than money because (1) there’s plenty to go around; and (2) we assign our own value to it!!! If you believe in happiness then it makes sense that you’d want to give others a chance at it to.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE CARISSA PROJECT?
I am working with youth that are constantly rejected by society. It’s so bad that when they try to get jobs they get turned down. When they apply themselves they’re told they are just not good enough! It’s not just because they lack skills, but because they have “attitude problems” or they don’t dress or speak “appropriately.”
Would you be able to achieve happiness if your best efforts were rejected???
I love programs that give everyone a chance at happiness — they accept & meet people where they are. If we need to prepare young people before they apply themselves then let’s do it. It’s amazing how much more young people will grow when you accept them where they’re at.
Remember not to expect miracles from anyone, unless you apply miracles!
Here are two miracle workers that meet young people where they are at:
THERE IS SPACE AVAILABLE FOR A SIMILAR PROGRAM TO SERVE YOUNG WOMEN IN FRESNO, CA.
Last week I realized that there is not a specific program for work readiness for young women in Fresno. I hear GREAT things about Hope Now for Youth, so I’d like to borrow from their model, as well as Homeboys, and start something for young women. There is a need! I was mentoring a young woman at a transitional living center when I realized the need!
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO ENSURE YOUNG WOMEN IN FRESNO ARE NOT “ON THEIR OWN”?
Make a major contribution or help with time or efforts on this project! If you’re interested in the success of young women in Fresno please email me at: hopenowforgirls@gmail.com
{that’s just the idea not the name of the org! we’ll probably leave the name more open so that boys that want to join feel welcomed.}
If you can’t do a lot then buy “On My Own” or share this link. 100% of proceeds go to helping kids that are/were in situations like mine:
3) Sleep better tonight knowing you helped keep a young person off the streets.
All proceeds from “On My Own” will be used to provide services and shelter to homeless and runaway children, who have been bought, sold & raped, while looking for a better life on the streets of America.
More to do when you’re broke…
RALLY YOUR FRIENDS
The 10 by 10 effect — is when 10 friends donate $10 each. Choose any multiple and feel how good it will make everyone feel to give to a single cause as a group.
GET THE FACTS
Children of the Night can’t run at full capacity without donations — they’re having to turn away children that are in desperate need of services & shelter. COTN is a unique program, and is one of only a few shelters for prostituted children in the U.S. It is privately funded, and it is going to have trouble staying open without donations.
Check out Jennifer York’s interview with myself & Dr. Lois Lee. Lois runs Children of the Night, and in this interview she talks about her work with the shelter, and my work in Fresno. http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/462222.aspx
3) Sleep better tonight knowing you helped keep a young person off the streets.
All proceeds from “On My Own” will be used to provide services and shelter to homeless and runaway children, who have been bought, sold & raped, while looking for a better life on the streets of America.
My favorite picture of me is a school picture. My hair is messy. My tooth is sticking out. But my eyes are shining because I am so proud that I remembered it was picture day, and I wore my favorite shirt!
I love math! And the amazing thing is that math has loved me back. When there were no answers, no reasons, no explanations, a problem could still be solved. A solution was present, you just had to work hard to find it.
Here’s an experiment for people who can sometimes feel like a swinging mass on a wire has a lot in common with their emotional life.
Do you know how pendulums work? It seems simple enough when you look at a clock, but did you know that the pendulum swings faster (with greater frequency) when the wire it hangs from is shorter? Did you also know that the weight of the pendulum does not determine how fast it will swing?
Instructions:
Step 1: SCROLL DOWN TO CHANGE LENGTH
Step 2: HIT START
Step 3: NOW CUT THE LENGTH TO .5 (HALF THE ORIGINAL LENGTH)
Step 4: HIT START AGAIN See how fast it moves when you decrease your support network.
Step 5: INCREASE THE LENGTH TO 2 (TWICE THE ORIGINAL LENGTH)
Step 6: HIT START AGAIN You can slow the emotional pendulum down by increasing your support network.
ANALYSIS
How you describe and relate the pendulum to your life is up to you.
If you did the experiment you understand why I say that my wire is what keeps me connected. It’s my friends, my family, and the activities that make me feel grounded. I know that the shorter my wire is the faster my emotional pendulum will swing.
HOW MY SCIENCE EVOLVED
In the past I’ve found comfort in knowing that the degree of pain that I experienced would provide an equal degree of happiness — I thought when the pendulum would swing toward the positive (happiness) it would hit a super high point to counteract the negative (pain). It’s true that the mass swings the same distance in the opposite direction — BUT the damn thing swings back too!
Just as life goes on after our defining moments, the pendulum keeps swinging. And even though “my science” meant I would have a great upside — the downside was that I risked going back to that deep painful place.
PAIN
I kinda figured out that feeling sad is inevitable, but I did not want to feel like I was going to swing back to where I started. So I did what every great scientist does — I changed the axioms — the self-evident truths, so that I had a better outcome.
Now I define pain as the mass, the weight of the pendulum, instead of the degree that the pendulum is pulled back. You see the mass of the pendulum does not determine frequency, but without some mass we can’t feel anything. Pain is necessary. It’s almost a requirement to life.
My new axiom: I exist therefore I must feel pain. But the degree of pain I experienced in the past does not have to be experienced again and again in order to live a fulfilling life.
SWINGING
The solution to an emotional life that is swinging with high frequency is to: (1) add reliable friends, (2a) connect with family or (2b) if your family is swinging out of control, build a support network that acts like a family, and (3) increase activities that make you feel grounded, like walking around a lake or visiting the ocean, or hiking, or laughing.
WHAT GROUNDS ME
Even though my science wasn’t perfect, I began lowering the frequency of my emotional pendulum a long time ago.
First with Barbara, who taught me what a home was, and became a strong mother figure in my life. Giving me the support I needed to get grounded. Next, I added friends. Long lasting ones. There were only one or two, but they changed my life. Today I know the value of friendship because of that friend that (for two decades) has never judged and always let me be me. Thanks Melisa!!!
The steps I take now are incremental to keep the pendulum steady. Over the last decade I’ve seen a lot change in my life that might have hit me like a tornado, but I was always able to get back to the basics. To laugh with my friends, to get support from my family (the one I was granted and the one I created)…the point is that I had steady people that I could connect to when life started feeling a little out of control.
I’ve also been able to build new friendships. My best friend in Los Angeles inspired me to write this blog in the first place! He might look like an unlikely match for me, an Italian producer with a great family and a wonderful happy childhood. Riccardo grew up in Milan, Italy and his life experience reminds me that life is a blessing. He has a great frequency and I enjoy being near him — he acts like a force to center my life and he also increases the length of my emotional wire.
THE LESSON
The lesson that I’ve been learning over my lifetime is that I don’t have to act or re-act based on my past experiences. I can slow down my emotional responses and even reset the degree of ups and downs that I feel. I’m sharing because I think some of us feel like the pendulum is out of our hands.
It is in fact in our hands — we live life by our own science — our own axioms, rules, and definitions.
We can all get back to the center, if we know what to add and what to take back AND all that means is GETTING BACK TO THE BASICS!
WHEN AXIOMS FAIL
Sometimes our science fails us, and things don’t make that much sense (like the video below). It’s usually our minds playing tricks on us, but it could be serious. I’ve seen too many kids reject therapy (and even evaluations) because there is still a social stigma among our street culture to not admit that we need some help — my only advice is that we all need a wire — and the tougher things get the more you need safe (grounded) people you can talk to.
It’s your ride! In this picture things are out of control. There are actually hidden magnets that make the pendulum swing out of control. When life feels like this first identify the energy forces (peers or even family) that are throwing you off…then decide if you should distance yourself from them by saying “goodbye” to bad friends, or when it’s family you might want to increase the length of your wire by getting better friends and building a stronger support network.
Kids aren’t the only ones that have a stigma about getting help. If a doctor recommends more to get your emotional pendulum in order then consider it. I could see that sometimes when we’re swinging out of control it could be necessary to take a pill. BUT remember the goal is to get back to a regular frequency, so let the meds help you get back to the basics.
Regular maintenance is necessary, so when life is just a little out of control try thinking about the pendulum. Think about who or what increases the length of your wire, and remember that no matter how heavy it all seems you’ll get through it — in my science the weight of what I went through in the past does not determine what I experience today!
CARISSA is showing as part of the Ace Film Festival, a celebration of American cinema. It’s part of an hour-long program of shorts. Over 800 films submitted; 40 taken. There will also be a Q&A with the director (um, me).
