This was originally published as "Sermon on Stories" in Sermons for a Hot Kitchen From the Lesbian Tent Revival.

Stories are great things. Stories can be maps. They can be templates. They can be guidebooks. They can be cautionary tales. They can be mirrors. They can be latitude and longitude. They can be spiritual vitamins. They can be precious heritage. Lesbian poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” That sounds kind of poetic until you look hard at what we call reality, at quantum physics. Then it’s actually pretty scientific.  And here’s poet Maya Angelou: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Which brings me back to that great quotation from the Gospel of St. Thomas, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” 
 
Now you can bring forth that “thing that is in you” in poetry, or painting, or dance, or theatre, or music, or story. And if you bring it forth as story, it may be a story that only you can interpret, and that’s okay.
 
But stories can also be propaganda. That’s why we’re going to synapse around the whole thing of “story” today. Because the propaganda stories can get us thinking along lines that will cause us to betray our own best interests… and often, in scrubbing off the layers of falsehood in popular myths, like fairy tales or folklore or patriotic myths, we can recognize some life-saving truths that underlie the distortion or the appropriation. Kinda like when you find a masterpiece underneath that painting of dogs playing cards.
 
So that’s what we’re doing today.

We’re going to look at a very popular story in the colonization of America. We’re going to look at the story of Sacagawea. Most of us will remember that she was the Native American woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition in their efforts to locate a route across the western half of the continent, to the Pacific Ocean. She’s a big heroine in American history, and her image—or some artist’s idea of her image—is on a dollar coin, and she’s been on a postage stamp, and folks love to tell the traditional story about her, because it’s about a strong woman on a bold adventure, and it’s also about interracial harmony.
 
Now, those aren’t bad reasons for telling stories… except that in the case of Sacagawea, they aren’t the whole truth. And the parts of the truth that they are hiding are really, really important parts of the story. And there is also a story underneath that is not being told.
 
So, let’s get out those tools for scraping off those layers of cultural whitewash and mansplainery,  and see a little bit more of what’s really going on in this story.
 
Sacagawea was born into the Shoshone tribe in Idaho around 1788, and when she was eleven or twelve years old, she was in a Shoshone hunting camp near what today is Three Forks, Montana, that was attacked by the Hidatsa, a Siouan tribe of Native Americans. In this raid, four Shoshone men and four Shoshone women, and several boys were killed. Sacagawea was taken captive and enslaved. Remember, she’s eleven or twelve years old. And these Hidatsa force her to walk with them back to where they live in North Dakota, which is about five hundred miles away, as the crow flies. So here’s this eleven or twelve-year-old child who has survived a massacre of family and friends, and she’s now enslaved, and she’s having to march for hundreds of miles back into North Dakota from Montana, and when she gets there, she is—you know—she’s still an enslaved child.

And then, one night, there is this French trapper who shows up in the village, and he plays some kind of gambling game with the Hidatsa, and he wins. And to pay off their debt, the Hidatsa give him Sacagawea. Who is twelve by now, or possibly thirteen. So now she’s his slave. He already has bought another Shoshone captive girl, “Otter Woman,” from the Hidatsa. He calls these enslaved children his “wives.” It is a formalized child-rape arrangement brokered by adults.  And, sisters, remember, every single time you read or hear something about Sacagawea’s French trapper husband and you do not raise hell, you are actually participating in legitimizing this child-rape arrangement. He was her owner, her captor, and her rapist. Period.
 
Sacagawea conceived around the age of fourteen, and the reason we know this is because she was pregnant in the winter of 1804-5, when Lewis and Clark showed up in the Hidatsa village and started negotiating with Sacagawea’s perpetrator for his services as a guide. Lewis and Clark were the two men leading this expedition commissioned by the US government. They were leading twenty-nine white men and one African American man, who was enslaved. Sacagawea’s perpetrator told Lewis and Clark that the pregnant child was his wife, and he negotiated a fee for her services as a Shoshone translator—a fee that would be paid to him, of course. As her captor’s so-called wife, Sacagawea never received a dime for her services—or any form of compensation—for the work that she did.

So here we are, with this fourteen-year-old, pregnant girl, in the company of thirty-two men, most of whom speak a language she can’t understand. She is the only Native American among them, and the only female. She gave birth en route, and, according to Lewis, who attended the birth, it was a very painful and violent delivery. Afterwards, she became desperately ill with what, from Lewis’ journal notes, appears to have been a severe pelvic inflammatory infection, possibly due to her enslaver’s continual postpartum rape of her. In his journal, Lewis expressed a suspicion that she was a victim of a transmitted venereal disease. She came very close to dying, but she managed to recover. She spent the rest of the trip with her baby strapped to her back.
 
Sacagawea trekked on this expedition for two years, four months, and ten days. Sisters, she walked eight thousand miles with these white men and the African American enslaved man… with a baby on her back. She forded rivers and climbed steep mountains and crossed deserts and swamps in snow and rain and sweltering sun. She translated for the men, she foraged for them, she cooked for them, and she did the sewing, mending, and cleaning of their clothes… you know, the “women’s work.”
 
There have been whitewashing and mansplaining efforts to downplay her work as a guide, but the truth is, she was responsible for pointing out the pass they should take through the Rockies and the pass they should take into the Yellowstone basin… the Bozeman Pass. Kind of a big deal, locating these passes.

Oh, and by the way, the only reason we have the record of this expedition is because Sacagawea had the foresight and agility to rescue Lewis’s journals when they were tumbling out of a capsized boat. For her pains, she had a river named after her. But no pay.
 
One of the greatest services that Sacagawea provided was protection. By this time, Native American tribes had come to assume, and assume rightly, that any group of white men traveling into their territory probably constituted some kind of war party. They had learned that it was better to attack first and then try to figure out who they were later. But the fact that this group included a Native American woman with a baby was taken as evidence that these men came in peace. In other words, Sacagawea saved all their lives and probably many times over.
 
So, eventually, the expedition gets to the western part of Oregon, to the coast. And they set up a camp and start sending parties down to the beach to see the actual ocean. And these parties are reporting that some kind of “great fish” has washed up on the beach—possibly a whale. And, unbelievably, these men were not going to allow Sacagawea to leave the camp to go see it. Unbelievable. She had to beg and plead with them, and this was so unusual on her part, that Lewis wrote about it in his journal. And it really pisses me off that she did all this enormous work, as a child, with a newborn, involuntarily, and then when they finally reach their goal—the Pacific Ocean—where there’s this magical, giant fish, this eighth wonder of the world, they make Sacagawea beg and plead just to be able to see it. If there is ever any historical doubt about her degree of autonomy on this expedition, that should lay it to rest finally and forever. She had none.

Sacagawea was dead by the age of twenty-five. Still with her rapist/captor, she was living at a fur trading post in Montana at the time of her death. She was very sick and wanted to go home to her people. She reportedly died of typhus, a disease transmitted by a human body louse—a disease associated with conditions of poor hygiene and sanitation. But, if Lewis was correct in suspecting that Sacagawea had been infected with a venereal disease by her rapist, she may have died from a fever associated with that. We know that she left behind an infant girl, and the typhus or the venereal disease may have taken hold during postpartum weakness. The daughter appears not to have survived. The son was taken in by Meriwether Lewis, who paid for his schooling.
 
I know. It’s a horrible story, isn’t it? Sacagawea was obviously heroically strong, but she was a victim throughout her short life. From age eleven, she was separated from her people and enslaved. She was a victim of ongoing rape from puberty and subjected to involuntary pregnancies. 
 
It’s a story of endurance, but it’s not the story of multi-cultural diversity in the early years of the US. Sacagawea is not the poster woman for biracial marriage.  She was obviously powerful, but she was not empowered. If there is any multi-cultural story to be told here, it is a shameful story of the collusion of powerful men—French, Hidatsa, and Anglo American—in the exploitation of an enslaved, female child. It’s a disgusting tale of adult males bonding through the bartering for forced labor and victimization of a Shoshone girl. However divergent their cultures, these men were all in agreement in their misogyny. They all colluded in characterizing the formalized child-rape arrangement as a legalized marriage.

But, there is another story… one that is very important. It’s actually found between the lines in Lewis’ journal.  Let’s take a look… Bear with me, because we’re going to have to backtrack a little bit in the story before we get to it…
 
So at one point in their travels, the expedition ended up camping at the very place where Sacagawea was captured and abducted by the Hidatsa as a little girl. This was the place where she lost her tribe, her family, her history, her culture, her freedom... and, sadly, her childhood. This was the place from which she was forced to undertake a journey of a thousand miles with her enemy.
 
So, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at this former Shoshone hunting camp, Sacagawea told them the story of the massacre and here is what Lewis wrote in his journal: “I cannot discover that she shews any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or of joy in being again restored to her native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I believe she would be perfectly content anywhere.” 
 
He seems to be describing her as someone who is kind of shallow or emotionally under-developed… “primitive” in the sense of being in some early stage of evolution or history. He appears to be comparing her affect to that which he believes he might experience, had he been in her shoes… which is as ridiculous as it is unfair. As a white, male colonizer, he has absolutely no context for understanding the trauma of her past, or the context of her ongoing rape and enslavement. He does not appear to understand that he is complicit in enabling her ongoing enslavement.

It sounds to me like Sacagawea was experiencing very severe post-traumatic stress syndromes. She sounds numb, possibly experiencing dissociation from her situation, or maybe even depersonalization… which is a post-traumatic syndrome where your own thoughts and feelings seem unreal, or like they don’t belong to you.

Depersonalization is a kind of complete loss of identity, which makes sense when you consider that her trauma was far from over. And when we consider that this is what Lewis wrote in his journal, it’s a description of Sacagawea that lets him off the hook.  Since she doesn’t seem to register any kind of emotional response to this terrible massacre and abduction… he doesn’t have to feel bad about not paying her, or pretending she’s a married woman, when he knows damn well she’s a slave. It’s kind of convenient for him to see her as someone who doesn’t feel any pain…  It’s like the way they tell you that lobsters don’t feel it when you drop them in the boiling water. What they mean is we don’t have to feel it.
 
This part of the story tells a sad truth about much of human nature. We are incentivized to see and hear what will benefit us. That is a fact. Which is why we, should spend  time working to reprogram our brains so that we can make a primary commitment to the truth. We do that reprogramming by learning to incentivize ourselves against the grain of a culture that will punish us for knowing or speaking the truth. We do this because any time the truth is not a primary commitment, we are greatly at risk of not seeing it, of deluding ourselves… because this is patriarchy, and knowing the truth, our truth, women’s truth… well, that can get you killed.

But let’s get back to the truth about Sacagawea, who is most often depicted as a grown woman making her own choices about helping these heroic white pathfinders, blazing a trail that will “civilize” the West… We, as a nation, are not much incentivized to adjust that soft-focus lens to bring into sharp definition the fourteen-year-old slave child on a mission that will spell defeat for her people. And one of the reasons why we love that grown-woman-in-charge-of-her-own-life narrative is because it tells us she is choosing—sisters, choosing—to help men. There are no other women anywhere in sight for most of those eight thousand miles. A Native woman choosing to help the white men… and even though she has a baby, she takes total, complete responsibility for him. Straps that baby on her back and never skips a beat while she does all the domestic work of caring for these thirty-three grown-ass men. And then she turns her paycheck over to her “husband!” What a fine example. Look at what she did!  Now, surely women today, with all the conveniences of modern civilization, can take those three days of maternity leave and turn their kid over to day care and get right back to work. Be like Sacagawea! Don’t be thinking of motherhood as a second job or a sacred responsibility! Don’t be missing your women friends! Don’t be hoarding that paycheck! Don’t be complaining and comparing! Do it all and don’t take any credit for it!  Be like Sacagawea!
 
Story is everything. It’s the web of synapses we weave to make meaning. As astrologist Caroline Casey says, “Imagination lays the track for the reality train.” It surely does, sisters. And a story is like a line on a railroad… like the Long Island Rail Road or the Staten Island Railway. The story is a route with a destination. We take these stories in when we hear them. We pass them along. We put them in our toolkits for how to live our lives. Story is everything. We have to think critically about the stories we are given. Who is doing the giving and for what purpose? Who is going to benefit from them? We have never had so many stories. Not just books… but Hulu and Netflix and Youtube and cable and movies and podcasts. So many stories…  But how many of them tell our truths?  Women’s truths? Lesbian truths? 

African American author and activist Toni Cade Bambara wrote an essay titled, “The Issue is Salvation,” and in it she says, “I work to produce stories that save our lives.” That’s what we should all be doing.  And if we can’t write them, then we can go into uncovering the truth about the ones they hand us.

And that’s exactly what we are going to do now. We are going to go digging for that story that is hidden between the lines of Lewis’ journal. And keep in mind that Meriwether Lewis’ journal… the one that Sacagawea dove into the water to rescue, is five thousand pages long. That’s a lot of pages. But the part that we are are digging for is just two sentences. Two sentences out of five thousand pages. Kind of like a needle in a haystack. But, sisters, if you know what you are needing to hear, if you have a pretty good idea of what these patriarchs are trying to hide… you can find that needle. It’s going to be like a magnetized needle… a compass needle, pointing us to the truth.

So here they are… Here are those precious sentences from Meriwether Lewis’ journal… the needle in the haystack…  This was on August 15, 1805. Lewis is talking about when the expedition came to the camp where Sacagawea’s people lived… where her tribe was—her family—before that massacre and abduction when she was eleven. And keep in mind, she’s been enslaved this whole time. She’s never been back to her people. This is the first time she’s seeing them in four years.

“We soon drew near to the [Shoshone] camp, and just as we approached it a woman made her way through the crowd towards Sacagawea, and recognizing each other, they embraced with the most tender affection. The meeting of these two young women had in it something peculiarly touching, not only in the ardent manner in which their feelings were expressed, but from the real interest of their situation…”

I like that Meriwether Lewis is noticing the “real interest of their situation.” And I like that, after describing Sacagawea as pretty emotionless and shallow, he is now going back on that completely and describing a scene that is ardent… which means passionate, and tender, touching and overflowing with affection. Obviously, Sacagawea had been keeping her emotional life sacred… for another female and a woman of her tribe.
 
So who is this other fifteen-year-old Shoshone girl who is embracing Sacagawea so ardently?  Well, her name was Pop-pank. She and Sacagawea grew up together, and they were at that hunting camp together when the massacre happened and Sacagawea was taken prisoner. Pop-pank had jumped into the river and, leaping like a fish, had managed to get to the other side and escape capture.
 
And here she was when the Lewis and Clark expedition showed up to try to buy some horses on their way to the Pacific. And here she was seeing again her beloved girlhood friend, Sacagawea… now with a baby and enslaved. And this is what Lewis recorded: the reunion of these two girls—and they were both still girls—embracing each other, tender and passionate at the same time.

We can hold onto that story as tightly as Sacagawea held onto Pop-pank. It is a story of an authenticity that resists colonization, of a memory that resists the distortions and erasures of trauma, of a bond that defies appropriation in the colonial narrative.
 
Let us not be fooled by the fact it only warrants two sentences in the journal of Lewis, or that it was only a few stationary minutes out of a journey of hundreds of days and thousands of miles. It is a glimpse into reality, into eternity. It shows up the colonial, patriarchal, misogynist pageant for what it is: an utter sham.
 
I think of something that 19th century feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman said… She said, “Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.” And every now and then we can part the curtain and catch that glimpse. Maybe only a glimpse, but it contains all that we need.
 
Sisters, let us hold close those two sentences that Meriwether Lewis wrote, not understanding even as he wrote them, because they illuminate the pages of history more than all the rest of the words in his journal.
 

This is the second of a two-part interview with Keita Whitten. Click here to read  Part One.

SE spoke openly about terms like “transference” and “counter-transference,” reminding us this is ALWAYS occurring. Yes, professional protocol and ethical practices of standards are important to guide our professional relationships. The truth is --when you embrace the science of epigenetics--elements and their environments are not static and they are constantly shifting, exchanging information--even in a sterile room. And, rather than ignoring this, what I now know is that every interaction with a person, an environment or an animal involves a certain amount of transference and countertransference of information through adaptation--in this case the nervous system. In reality our nervous systems are constantly responding and adapting to environmental cues, internally and externally, all the time. In contrast, traditional psychology and allopathic medicine teaches that we--the practitioners-are the experts, and that, to guard against biases, we must remain objective--distant from the other, “the client” and that  environments are to be controlled/ manipulated in order to have untainted outcomes.

I know I am veering off subject, but I think is an important divergence. I would go a step further to say, transference and countertransference are how we understand how things work or don’t work. We, people, animals, are constantly evaluating and adapting to the world around us. SE taught us how we do this through our nervous systems each day, each moment. You can’t shut it off. And when we try to, we are missing vital sensory information. For example, we all talk about cognitive dissonance, right? There are lots of explanations about what it is and why it happens, right? Let’s’ agree for a moment with the basic understanding-- it’s a mental discomfort resulting from a clash of values or beliefs. Here’s the thing: What if I said there is also sensory dissonance? No, scratch that. I propose cognitive dissonance is actually a result of sensory discomfort--a stress response to a threat in the external environment. And it shows up as cognitive dissonance when we have overridden our sensory information.

When I have worked with clients who experience explosive anger, I now call it "sensory dissonance." What that means is that they are receiving cues both internally and externally, but trying to override this with reason. Ultimately,  whatever they are trying to override with reason--fear, despair or the feelings of betrayal-- will manifest as sideways behaviors and cognitive dissonance. Working through an SE lens, I help people to identify sensory cues both inside and outside of themselves--cues that are often become overridden and lead up to these sideways expressions such as explosive anger and rage.  Here's another way to look at this: By the time one is raging, it’s usually because the person has already overridden the sensory inputs--including the role of transferences and countertransferences. Today, somatic psychology is a lens through which I observe everything, everyone--including myself.

Coming back to your question, SE and Yoga were ways that helped me frame an embodied holistic approach with the science to back up how it worked. Teaching yoga taught me the importance of mindfulness, the ability to slow down and to practice awareness of our embodied consciousness. With SE, I now had the science to demonstrate these connections between embodied consciousness with stress responses and how to support the body’s own healing process. Early on in my practice, I  learned this level of practice would ultimately uncover an adversities and traumatic experiences. In the ACEs study with Kaiser Health and the CDC, they found that, out of 17,000 participants (white and upper middle class with access to private health care), about 70% had like  adverse experience scores before the age of seven.

Dr. Nadine Burke, now the first appointed Surgeon General for the state of California, educates about the vital health implications of toxic stress and the wear-and-tear on the immune system, when we do not address trauma and ACEs from a biological, embodied approach.  

This data made me pause and think for a moment. I then started to realize that the way we diagnose people is all wrong--the DSM5 is wrong! And, we (therapist, counselors, psychiatrists, all of us) are continuing to prescribe pills, diagnoses and apply psychology like all Western allopathic medicine--WE TREAT SYMPTOMS, not root causes.

For example, one of my clients taught me a different way to understand bipolor disorder. Assessment took months to uncover contributing external factors like the fact she was exposed to longterm neglect before the age of seven, manipulation like gaslighting,  and rape and other sexual abuse--and therefore the needed treatment was not pharmaceutical (in some cases medication may be required initially to calm/stabilize a “wacked” nervous system), but required a holistic approach based an understanding of ACEs and  mind-body-soul synergy to support the creation of balance/homeostats. Over time this client began to discover the need for changes in her lifestylem including proper rest, diet changes, and letting go of toxic relationships. With these changes, our sessions, and additional support from homeopathy, she was able to lower her lithium dosage, and her symptoms--including manic flares--began to minimize, which were possible due to her new understanding of the "pain body." The difference was this: These behaviors were there, but less intense, so that she was able to build the capacity to recognize the buildup before the flare-up, allowing   the pain body to chillaxe  and begin to heal its soul wounds.  

Then I realized, another profound aspect of the ACEs study: What about ALE (Adult Lived Experiences)? If the ACEs study surveyed a majority white population, then what would be true for people of color, women, and women of color? What would external stress factors such as poverty, racism, and oppression-- including substance abuse and domestic violence play in the role mental /physical health and dis-ease? While genetics does not determine health and emotional well-being, epigenetics does!
 
You  asked about my new THRIVE initiative for 2019. Based on this new understanding, I knew then I could not see all clients because I no longer wanted to do "bandaid work." I wanted to help heal soul wounds. I instantly became aware I had to change how I practiced, including who I saw. And this why today I only work with trauma. Back to the original ACEs population study: With all the recent research about health disparities for communities of color, including women, I realized I wanted to serve the most vulnerable populations--that is, girls and women of color.

CW:  I am seeing more and more healers who are not taking insurance. Can you talk about that?

KW: Why don't I take insurance? The simple answer is, SE a, like acupuncture, reiki or homeopathy does not provide enough “empirical” evidence to support how it works for insurance companies to pay for our services. Insurance companies need justification to pay for services. With this justification comes the demand for qualitative, evidence-based practices using levers of variables to determine outcomes. Clinicians have to provide a diagnosis during your first visit, then write up goals and objectives that support the diagnoses, and the come up with arbitrary phrases like, "Client/subject will manage emotional outburst by 50%, by learning how to express their feelings."

We clinicians spend numerous hours trying to add it all  up to justify services, and  many make it up, and we all know it's BS--but it’s the only way one can get paid. There are insurance discrepancies in terms of what gets paid out, based on what is called "pay-out tiers," which are different with every company.  For example, one company might pay you $99 while another might pay you only $65--for the exact same service. And confidentiality? There is no confidentiality with insurance companies.  Your information belongs to them to use to qualify or disqualify you.

When I was taking insurance, I received a notice stating  I was over-using a diagnostic code based on the demographics of my colleagues who practiced in the area! Can you guess what it was? The code for trauma. This was  a real eye-opener! Apparently my colleagues in the field really do not have an informed lens on ACEs and trauma. To be fair, it's probably more of a billing issue, but this means I can't record what I see and suspect, because I will not be paid, and I will not be paid for using a model like SE, because it’s not  sanctioned by Big Pharma and the medical communities.
 
When I feel doubt about what I do, I like to recalled the words of one of my clinical supervisors, “You may not have chosen to work with trauma, but trauma has defiantly called you!"  Looking back on my life, I would agree. Each experience has been very informative. And because of my story, I feel I am able to relate to people’s pain, which disarms the power imbalance very quickly.

Nadine Burke says that when people ask her how she can you work with trauma,  she gets excited and replies, “because its fundamental hopeful work.” I would agree, and this is especially so working with women of color.  I’d like to end with a reference to the works of Anne Wilson Schaef’s book, Meditations For Women Who Do Too Much.  Her daily affirmations are a reminder of the vitality of why I do what I do. I  know intergenerational healing will take two generations. I will not live to see it, but through the work I do I have hope my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will experience healing through collective and conscious community parenting. I am still unpacking fifty-three years of experiences,

Ashe

Redefining Therapy website

Keita Whitten…  one of the most amazing women I have ever met, and it’s my privilege to interview her today! Keita is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Masters in Social Work, specializing in trauma. She is launching an initiative in her practice to focus on women and girls with trauma/PTSD history, especially women of color.
 
What is so radical and so powerful about Keita is that, in an age of hyper-specialization where every malady must be micro-coded for the insurance companies and superficial resolution, she is conscientiously doing the opposite—slowing down and widening the concept of diagnosis to look at all aspects of the mind-body-spirit connection, as well as the socio-politico-economic-environmental contexts that are impacting her clients.

CG: So… Keita… I love the description of THRIVE, your new healing initiative with women and girls. But before we get to that, can you fill us in on your journey toward finding your niche in the world of counseling and healing.  It’s been a journey with some seeming dead-ends and detours, and I think that these are an important part of your perspective today.
 
KW: Yes, and you’re right the journey of how I have come to build “Thrive” is a personal journey which is also reflected in how I approach my art and my writing. The reasons I shifted from a traditional therapy practice to a practice that involves healing includes a very personal journey of unpacking and healing my own soul wounds.
 
The idea of focusing on women and girls started in the late 80s, after I suddenly found myself violently divorced after just 3 years of marriage. I was living in the bohemian artist community of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York.  Looking back I now realized I had severed these ties, because I had bought into the belief I had to grow up- “Adulting” is the term my second son (now a Man) uses to describe putting his own art on the back burner to “be a responsible productive adult.” I cringe every time I hear him use this word. It’s a word I still struggle with to justify why I do not embrace my own art.

I can recall the immensity of the financial stress, we were shouldering as new parents. We were not making it on his electrician’s apprentice salary. And I remember feeling personally responsible for our financial situation. After all, I was a stay-at-home mom. I remember thinking I could be like the frontier wife from The Little House on the Prairie. She did everything by hand. She took care of their home, never complained, while he built their home, hunted worked at the mill. They were partnering, a team. I so desperately wanted them to be us—a team. In addition to the night feedings, cloth diapers, homemade baby food, all domestic duties- involving a 3-story walkup each day (with an infant and stroller), carrying laundry to the laundromat, going to the grocery store, getting up at 5 AM to prepare his breakfast, packing his lunch (with little notes of appreciation and encouragements tucked inside), planning and preparing dinner, and then cleaning up afterwards! I began searching for ways to bring in extra income to help alleviate my husband’s erratic mood swings. I discovered I could take in other people’s children – so they could go to “work”—to help provide extra income for my family.  Deep inside I wanted to pursue my art too, but it was a luxury “we” just could not afford.

Adulting meant I had to continue to prove I could take care of myself without being a burden. I keep searching for options. Around this time, I began attending Boricua College. One of our required classes was called “colloquium.” Looking back, I now realize this class was designed for student success and retention. I enjoyed colloquium. It was the only place I could connect with other adults and check in about our experiences in school and lives outside of school. A couple of times after class my instructor would pull me aside, asking me about comments I had made about my home life, and husband. One day after class she handed me a Domestic Violence Wheel. I had no idea what it was. This was the first time I had ever heard anything about domestic violence. I didn’t even know there were names for the things I was experiencing.  I just thought the sudden violent moods swings, the yelling, the drunken episodes, and disappearing acts were all part of normal everyday married life. I can recall thinking I had to hide this wheel at home and read it when he was not around.
 
I want to fast forward for a moment. In my field of somatic trauma phycology, we identify 4 responses to threat, AKA “adverse and/or traumatic experiences.” Most only know about “Fight or Flight.” There is also Freeze and Fawn.  Today I will focus on Fawn because I view Fawn as an opposite response to Fight with gender specific implications. For example, in traditional forms of psychotherapy Fawn responses are often people who are misdiagnosed as codependent or victim. Characteristics include Appease / Submit / Resignation /Befriend. Fawn people adjectives include pleasing others, scared to say what they really think/feel, talking about others instead of self, are Angels of Mercy, overcaring, suckers, easily exploited by others, hugely concerned with what others think of them, a yes person. A collage of mine describes Fawn this way: It [Fawn] has also been referred to as the Stockholm syndrome, and historically more females respond in this way than males, who tend to have the physicality to fight or flee more easily. It takes self-blame and shame out of the equation, for example, when the victim is befriending and going along with the abuser/ perpetrator and not understanding later why they acquiesced in the situation and didn’t respond with  fighting or fleeing.

Looking back to my experiences today I realize how sad it was to know back then I had no realization, no connection to what I was feeling inside me—or around me—and how living this way was guiding my actions, my decisions about life and related behaviors. I was simply in survival mode. It wasn’t until about 20 years later, living in Maine, training with the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (when we as students were required to unpack our own lives), I started to understand my lived adverse experiences with trauma and abuse were also shaped by the intersect of gender, race and heteronormativity. The holding pattern of Fawn reminds me of the macro shift out of the Goddess era in response to rising concerns regarding “male fragility”. This shift fueled by misogyny gave birth to patriarchy as a means to secure male leadership and dominance. As a society we continue to pay the high price of this legacy.

So how did you get from "super mom/abused woman" to the amazing healer that you are today?
 
I arrived in Maine in 1995 with a five-year-old, broke, pregnant with my second child, homeless- fleeing another abusive relationship. I decided to try college again for the third time.  I just had to get it right. There were two children depending on me. And I despised the shame of public housing and welfare. I had an opportunity to go to school under the Parents as Scholars Program (PAS). [PAS was a Maine initiative in response to the 1996 Personal Responsibility Act (under the Clinton Administration) championed by a Republican Olympia Snowe (go figure!) to create educational opportunities for TANF (welfare) eligible recipients.] Even with transferable credits, it took me six semesters—not including summer school—years to finish. I was excited about my BSW—yes! No more welfare! However, my first professional social work job was a child protection agent. (Yep—we even had badges) This lasted only eighteen months before I realized I could not stomach the work.  Colleagues who managed to survive for decades did so using anti-depressants or drinking,  or they suffered from a superiority complex. I knew I wasn’t actually helping “these” mothers or their broken families (who also came from broken families). Instead, what I did see in them were bits and pieces of me. So decided I needed to go back to school to get a better degree.

Needless to say, grad school was disappointing. I found myself taking expectational notice of the language used to teach “human behavior” and psychology, which ultimately blamed and pathologized people—especially women—for their current circumstances. These were the same words (language) used in macro and micro economic classes to describe poverty and who poor people were. I remember having a visceral reaction to a male instructor who glorified himself for his work with “welfare (black- single women) families” back in New York City, as if he was the great White Hope for these poor black families. The more I would try to question  these perspectives as points of concerns, the more hopeless, frustrated, and sickened I began to feel about wanting to “now” become a therapist. And forget about trauma—trauma was not even in the syllabus. I didn’t even know about trauma until my therapist diagnosed me with PTSD—whoa! Looking back, I guess it was naiveté on my part to expect a school of social work to be exempt from the willingness to explore the significance of race, gender, class, and white privilege as crucial underpinnings informing identity politics, juxtaposed against the backdrop of continuous and laborious debates concerning the rights of “the deserving” vs the “undeserving” poor. Having had multiple experiences of being that “population” on the other side of the table, I decided I could not participate in good conscience being yet another “good intentioned” practitioner. I vowed if I made it out of my MSW program, I would not practice therapy.

The reason I am an LCSW today is because of Yoga. After my graduate school experience, I took up adjunct work and Kripalu yoga. And surprisingly I found both very healing. One day in yoga class I literally sprang off my mat and announced to my instructor I wanted to teach, and next thing you know, the resources I needed to attend found me and there I was at Kripalu undergoing my teacher training. When I began to teach yoga I started witnessing emotional shifts occurring within my students on the mat. Some would begin to weep, others would burst out in laughter. I wanted to understand not only what was going on but how could I use “it” to help other people.
 
This led me to rethink my LCSW. However, 3+ years had passed since graduation, and trying to find a clinical track to be supervised proved to be more difficult than I imagined. I was bummed but determined. I had to work my way back into the field starting with BSW entry positions. Finally, I landed a grant position with Community Counseling Center who agreed to supervise my LCSW. This was the same time I heard about the work of Dr. Gabor Maté When The Body Says No and Peter Lavine’s Walking the Tiger: Healing Trauma and brought these two books into my interview stating how I intended to explore these concepts as a therapist in training. My supervisor at the time chuckled, you may not have chosen to work with trauma, but trauma has definitely called you! Little did we both know at the time, she would be spot on. About six months later I found myself registered in the first session SEP training session.

 You see, what I really believe is, it was divine interference through yoga coupled with my graduate school experience and Somatic Experiencing Trauma trainings that called me back to work with people to support their trauma healing journey.

CG: When you were talking about your work, you named Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot and her influence on your thinking. Who is she and what was it about her work that inspired you?
 
KW: Oh yes, one of the requirements of my master’s program was to create a research project. Knowing me, I couldn’t just do a simple quantitative study—no! LOL— I had to explore things, probe and search for deeper understandings. Besides I hated statistics and SPS! I needed something tangible, relatable and alive. When I heard we could conduct a qualitative study, this peeked my interest. My core instructor however was mired in the postpositivist approach to research and told me something to this effect, “qualitative research is merely a quasi- form of research conducted in the field that is not reliable due to the fact that the environment containments the findings unless its conducted in a controlled environment…” I then proceeded to the department dean who tried to reframe what “He meant”. I paused and then announced I would consider a quantitative study if I could explore the implications of psychoimmunology as a lens for clinical intervention in social work. She stood speechless for a second, rolled her eyes and proceeded to tell me that it would be too hard for me, and besides I would have to be a medical student to do that type of analyses. I pouted. I felt like the cat who just lost its prey (huh, looking back on this I can now see how this would have begun a preliminary exploration into what we now call ACEs—“Adverse Childhood Experiences.” No longer feeling enthusiastic about research, I dropped the course until the following semester.

Little did I know there were new instructors recently hired who heard about my research ideas and wanted to support my qualitative endeavors. This is when I was introduced to feminist and womanist ideologies and participatory action research and deconstructing methodologies, which lead me to a qualitative style of research called Portraiture by Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot.  Her method is a social science inquiry that is able to blend art, environment and science, “capturing the complexity, dynamics, and subtlety of human experience and organizational life.”  Of course, that made sense to me—I am an artist, right? Needless to say, I created an elaborate explorative thesis that took more than two semesters to complete, documenting the results of a multicultural program called Dialogues in Diversity at the University of Southern Maine by attempting to combine all approaches. Oy vey!

All this to say, what I took away from this experiment is the fact that Portraiture provides an in-depth layering of how to approach any subject and debunks the idea that environments are sterile. In fact, the researcher is a major part of an environment too, who views and makes meaning of the world based on her own schema, which can and does influence the outcome.  Portraiture taught me to always view things from the eagle’s eye down, the from-the-ground-up view of an ant, and the surrounding context one one’s environment including culture, his-story, art, religion, sociostatus, and geographical location, including climate. And now with my SE training I also include the internal environment of the nervous system. This is what I mean when I say I take a holistic view of trauma and ACES.
 
End of  Part 1
Click here for Part 2

Redefining Therapy website

I wrote The Princess of Pain as an act of solidarity for a friend of mine who had a condition which, back then, was called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. It’s now referred to as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). This is a chronic illness characterized by severe burning pain, usually in the extremities, and extreme sensitivity to touch. Nobody really understands CRPS, and there is no cure. My friend told me that so many members of her support group had committed suicide, she had to stop attending. She told me how some victims of CRPS went so far as to have their limbs amputated in an effort to stop the burning, but even with the limb gone, the pain would persist. She was no longer able to tolerate painkillers like Ibuprofen, because chronic use of them had damaged her liver. Confined to a wheelchair because the pain had impaired her mobility, my friend was living a constricted life of extreme suffering, with no prospect of relief.

Struggling with my own chronic illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis (aka Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or ME/CFS.), I wanted to be a supportive companion. My burdens seemed light in comparison with hers.
 
But here’s the thing:  Processing trauma is just that—a process. Even though I knew better, I still found myself compulsively suggesting things that might “fix” my friend: changes in diet, nutritional supplements, different forms of meditation, counseling focused on unearthing hidden memories, a spiritual reframing of the experience…  as if my friend, in her agony, was not sufficiently motivated to have explored everything on the planet that held out even the remotest hope of relief. As if I, with my recent and superficial understanding of her condition, was somehow more of an expert than she! But still, every time I saw her, I would be overwhelmed by a desire to offer unsolicited advice.

What was going on? I hated it when people did that to me, and, believe me, with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome you hear it all. Everybody is an expert. They are especially big on the psychiatric theories about the disease. Crazy and lazy. Control freak. Narcissist. Malingerer. Diseases that are poorly understood provide ripe fodder for the ableists of the world.

So I knew that what I was doing was oppressive to my friend. What I was really communicating with all these brilliant suggestions, was that I could not accept her truth. I really could not accept her. I was letting her know that I thought she wasn’t trying hard enough, that she was giving up too soon, that she was trusting unreliable authorities. I was telling her that she needed to… to what? What was it I thought she needed to do? In fact, she had done and was doing exactly what she needed to do. She was accepting every minute of every day a grossly unfair, undeserved, unrelentingly cruel and vicious life sentence of literal, physical torture.
 
I was the one in need of fixing. I wrote The Princess of Pain as an apology and as an amends to her, to acknowledge her strength and courage and to acknowledge the work I still needed to do.

The Princess of Pain is about the fundamental conundrum of trauma: “It has to be accepted; it cannot be accepted.”
 
The answer for “How do I do this?” is not a simple one. Everyone’s journey with trauma is different. Maybe we cover much of the same ground, but we all cover it differently, in our own way and in our own time, and we cover parts of it over and over again. “How do we come to terms with trauma?” Daily and never.

The Princess of Pain has her confrontations with the Powers That Be in her cosmos. They may distract her, or soothe her, or misunderstand her, or frustrate her, or torment her, but they never provide her with the answers she wants. That’s the truth about trauma. 
 
The Princess of Pain is my fairy tale to end all fairy tales. Life is filled with injustice and meaningless suffering. They are not manifestations of some mysterious will of God, where all things work together for good and we are just too limited to see the Big Picture. They are not the result of some manifestation of karma from an unremembered criminal past life. They are not the result of some prenatal contract that our soul has made in order to learn the great lessons and glean the beneficent gifts of experiencing overwhelming pain and horror.

I don’t know that I have ever made my peace with the trauma in my life, but I consider it a huge victory to have abandoned many of the seductive ideologies that used to give me a fake sense of control over random events in my life at the expense of authentic empathy. I have acquired a deeper appreciation for the courage it takes to resist the strategies of denial and the callousness of cynicism, to take on a quest to accept the unacceptable.

            ___________________________________________________

Much gratitude to Sudie Rakusin, for her exquisite illustrations, and to Mary Meriam and Headmistress Press for publishing The Princess of Pain.

Click here to order.

CW: Today I am interviewing Dr. Janice Liddell, author, playwright, and retired professor and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Coordinator of Faculty Development at Atlanta Metropolitan College. She also served on faculty at Clark Atlanta University for nearly 35 years, as a professor of English, department  chairperson and director of faculty development. So...  Janice, you and I met online about fifteen years ago, I believe… on an international chatlist of women playwrights.  And I remember you wrote a play titled Who Will Sing for Lena?  This is a one-woman play that gives voice to Lena Baker, a black woman who killed her abusive white employer in self-defense. Using the actual actual trial transcripts, you wrote a play that would enable audiences to understand her background and her motivation. That play has had a strong track record… and even a film?

JL: Yes, Carolyn we met on the ICWP chatlist and, as I recall, we left the chat about the same time for some similar small “p” political reasons related to our respective identities as minorities on the list. I guess it would be in bad taste to go into any more detail. (lol)
 
CG: Well, not to keep readers in suspense, we were frustrated in our respective efforts to confront racism and homophobia. And, in fairness, it was fifteen years ago.
 
JL: And yes, I had written Who Will Sing for Lena? around that time and since then, it has done fairly well in various places. But the film was a totally different project; it was, of course, related to Lena Mae Baker, but not at all related to my play. Believe it or not, the two are very different perspectives, even of Ms Baker. But as I have always said, Lena helped me to write my play and I told it the way she told it to me.

CG: I just want to tag onto that last comment. YES! Working with historical figures, and especially those in what I call “unquiet graves,” I have had that experience of a presence outside of myself standing by my side and nudging me to tell her story. Practicing theatre as a sacred art… full of miracles. So I just want to say that this recent play of yours, The Talk, is absolutely brilliant, and I would like to see every community in this country mount a production of it. It’s packed with so much… history, politics… but the characters are believable, the dialogue is spot-on, and I had chills over and over reading it…  Beautiful craftsmanship, deep humanity…  just an amazing piece of theatre… but also a tool, a social justice project, a  powerful, powerful way to bring communities together. I was so deeply moved by it.
 
JL: Wow, coming from you as a brilliantly successful playwright yourself, that is quite an endorsement. I am glad it affected you because, truth be told, it affected me even as I wrote it. But I’m sure you know that experience—of being carried away by the work as though you are channeling it. That’s a bit how it was for me.
 
CG: So…  “the Talk”…  First off, before we get into talking about the play specifically, can you tell us to what “the talk” refers?

CG: In The Talk, you have four generations of an African American family, on a Saturday morning… and there is a lot of conflict, because the two youngest members of the family, a brother and sister, want to attend a Black Lives Matter march and their parents don’t want them to go.  Can you talk a little bit about that conflict. They even make their son take off his Black Lives Matter tee shirt.
 
JL: This is a highly successful Black middle-class family and in their eyes, as in the eyes of many “highly successful Black middle-class families,” their success has resulted from them pulling themselves “up by their bootstraps.” They would likely never admit they went to university on an Affirmative Action program (as did I), for example. Additionally, they desire to separate themselves from the more “common” element of Black folks—separate themselves in every way they can. In fact, they tend to look down on the experiences of Black folks who, in their middle-class eyes, are financial, intellectual, educational, etc. failures in life. These parents have tried to shelter their children from these “failures” and serve as models for the successful route of Black people from poverty to wealth; from the ghetto to the suburbs. However, their middle-class Black children are highly influenced by the world outside of their “burbs.” Quincy Jr. is in college with youngsters from all walks of life; Miranda is so attached to her tablet and research on it that there is nothing that gets by her. The children and their parents are in totally different “realities”—and at this point, never the twain shall meet.
 

CG: But the whole power dynamic shifts when the grandparents and great grandmother show up for the brunch.  We see such a panoply of African American history in this family. It’s just wonderful.  Four generations… up from poverty to affluence… but the lynching remains a constant.  Can you talk a little about your process in writing this? Where you got the idea? Early drafts that needed changing? Is any of this autobiographical?

The play is a tad autobiographical in that my Mom is 94 years old and has dementia. My Mom’s parents were sharecroppers, and Daddy and one of my uncles served for a short time as Pullman Porters travelling from Ohio to Canada. One of Dad’s cousins was a career Pullman Porter and we were awed by the few stories we heard about their work on the train. Also, Dad and Mom’s families both migrated to Ohio from Mississippi, but not at all under this kind of duress in the play. So, some parts of the play come from stories I’ve heard or read and much from the tapestry of the Black experience and some just from my imagination.
 
CG: So you have a production coming up in January in Brooklyn… MLK Day, right?  What’s going on with that? 

JL: I am so fortunate to have had my play chosen for a coveted slot in the NYC Frank Silvera Writers Workshop. Of course, true to form, I didn’t do much to get it there; I have my dramaturg and now director, Byron Saunders, to thank for that. He is good for me. He pushes me to do more with my plays beside just finishing them and exerting that proverbial sigh of relief that they’re done. In fact, we have spoken about publishing a collection of all my plays… We’ll see how that goes. Initially The Talk was selected as the first play of the monthly Workshop series (I think there are only five in the series), but I had already made international travel plans for that date. We couldn’t find any other date for 2018 that would fit, so they came up with January 14. Of course, I found this selection very fortuitous when we realized it was MLK Day. To commemorate Dr. King’s birthday with a focus on the progress and process of Black protest movements seems so appropriate. God works in mysterious ways. I certainly hope we can fill the Billy Holliday Theatre (Brooklyn) for that one-day free performance/reading. Of course, I’ll be travelling to NYC as playwright to participate in this exciting spectacle. I can’t wait!!
 
CG: I would like to see this play done in every community… Maybe see about getting some touring productions that are funded to go to different cities.  What are your plans for marketing the work, and do you have any plans to film it? 

CG: Can you tell us about your other plays?  In the past, African American playwrights have had a difficult time getting mainstream productions, unless they were August Wilson and it was Black History Month…  Have things changed? How? Do you feel it is more difficult being an African American female playwright?
 
JL: Well, I have about six completed plays, including one for children, so I guess you can say I actually have “a body” of work. All of my plays are located on the New Play Exchange (shout out for NPX!). So anyone can review them and contact me if they are interested in seeing a full script. Putting them on NPX might be called my one passive stab at marketing (lol). Regarding being an African American playwright, I can’t speak for African American playwrights generally, but of the ones I know up close and personally, it’s rough out here. What I and my playwright friends lament about is that there are so few theatres interested in Black plays or plays written about the Black experience. And the ones that exist seem to want recognizable names or plays that have already proven their value. There are a few stars—August Wilson, of course, and a few others like Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori Parks, the recently deceased Ntozoke Shange and a precious few others. So, I do think it is difficult being an African American playwright, especially an African American woman playwright primarily because our experiences are just not considered universal enough to give theatres confidence that their audiences will turn out for them.

My experience as a playwright is further complicated by two factors: one is that I am 70 years old. I wrote my first play when I was 50--Hairpeace –and it earned a spot at Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre’s New Plays for the New South Theatre Competition and Workshop. I loved the writing experience, the workshopping and hearing my words on a stage; I had found a new love! But I’m a senior citizen and nobody knows my name. Further, the second factor connects directly to that one--I didn’t come through an MFA program or some other training ground that connects one to the powers that be in the field. I learned the art and craft of writing plays from reading plays and teaching plays. I was an educator—an English professor, chair of an English Department, a university administrator and wrote plays in my “free-time” so as far as the theatre community is concerned, I guess I haven’t earned my stripes in the field; maybe I don’t even exist. Actually, it took me a decade and three or four plays before I could call my own self a playwright, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the perceptions within the theatre community. I believe my work is good and at this point, I guess I’ve been satisfied with that comfort. When my work is produced, I actually feel I have hit a huge bonus. However, thanks to Byron and now you, I must admit, I’m pretty excited about The Talk and its future.

CG: To get a review copy of The Talk, email Dr. Liddell. She is in the process of publishing it, but can send a PDF copy until such time—hopefully by January. She says, of course, she's waiting now for that World Premier. Producers, go for it! It's going to be The Talk of the town!

This week there are lots of folks weighing in on the hearings about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court… political pundits, women’s rights advocates, lawyers, and so on. So I thought I would throw in my two cents as a professional actor. Because it was quite a performance.
 
So, one of the first principles of acting is “Don’t play the problem. Play the adjustment to the problem.”  In other words, don’t worry about impressing the audience with what your character is feeling. Focus instead on solving the character’s problem. That’s what makes a performance believable, because that is what people do in real life… and audiences recognize that.
 
Let’s say you want to portray an innocent person who is being accused by a powerful group of people of something they did not do. That’s a serious problem. It’s a dangerous situation. The innocent party needs to tread carefully, be thoughtful, weigh her words. Because she is innocent, she has the truth on her side, and her best defense is a straightforward presentation that allows the facts of the situation to come through, untainted by emotions or editorializing.

Seriously? This is just plain bad acting. Kavanaugh is showing us indignation, attitude, and outrage, instead of taking the actions to solve the problem. Why? Because, unlike Anita Hill, he is actually guilty. He imagines what an innocent person in his shoes might do. In his mind, that person would be feeling angry and oppressed, and so he is showing us that. Again… the difference between a trained professional and an amateur. I have no doubt that Anita Hill felt angry, facing that brotherhood of wealthy, arrogant, white men… men who had passed specific legislation to grant themselves, as Senators, indemnity from sexual harassment charges.  But, as I said, she was focused on solving the problem. Displaying her outrage was only going to taint the presentation of her facts and be seen as evidence that she was unstable. It would have been counter-productive. Displaying outrage is a function of privilege, and a luxury that few falsely accused folks can afford.
 
But Kavanaugh chose to perform indignation, attitude, and outrage, because the truth was not on his side and also because he was vulnerable to fear, guilt, and shame.

And here let me interject a word about outrage. It can be very, very useful in overriding and masking less flamboyant emotions. Outrage pretty much trumps them all. I learned this hitchhiking. If I was in a car with a driver who began to behave in a threatening manner, I would erupt into an emotionally violent tirade against a fictional boss, and I would keep this rant going until I was able to get away. It kept those icy fingers of fear from making inroads into my psyche. It gave me the floor. It shut down whatever scenario he was attempting to initiate. Let me be clear: a performance of outrage would not work on a Ted-Bundy-type predator, but, at least in my experience  with more garden-variety potential perps, I found it effective.
 
So Kavanaugh played outrage. And so did Lindsey Graham. In fact, Graham’s performance was even more transparent, as he used the display of anger to derail a specific line of questioning that was not going well for Kavanaugh. Because outrage carries the overtones of emotional violence, it disrupts discourse.  People confronted with outrage have a visceral response. Their choices become “escalate” or “appease.”
 
Kavanaugh’s display of outrage worked to solve his problem:  that of a guilty man attempting to defend himself when the facts do not support his case, when he is under oath and afraid to lie, and when he is fending off tell-tale emotions of guilt, shame, and fear. To a trained actor, Kavanaugh's performance of outrage was an admission of guilt, pure and simple.

This week Serena Williams, seeking a 24th Grand Slam title, reached her breaking point with discrimination, and it appears that her breaking point is now becoming a tipping point for the professional world of women’s tennis.
 
She was playing the US Open women’s final, when the chair umpire issued a warning for a code violation for receiving coaching. Her coach later admitted that he was signaling, but that she had not seen him. She and the umpire had a civil exchange, and it seems that Serena understood that he had rescinded the warning. He hadn’t. A few games later, when she broke her racket in frustration over a play, she was shocked to receive a second warning, with a point docked at the start of her next game.
 
She stalked over to the chair, demanding an apology:  “I have never cheated in my life! I have a daughter and I stand [for] what’s right for her! I have never cheated. You owe me an apology. You will never do another one of my matches!” She continued to challenge the initial warning for coaching, accusing him of attacking her character and demanding an apology. She called him a liar, and then she called him a thief. And that was when the umpire issued the third code violation, resulting in the loss of a game.

Serena stood her ground at the post-match press conference: “I’ve seen other men call other umpires several things…I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality… For me to say ‘thief’ and for him to take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark. He’s never taken a game from a man because they said ‘thief.’ For me, it blows my mind.”
 
To put Serena’s outburst into context, she was returning to the game following a harrowing birthing experience. This is something that male athletes can never understand. Here’s a recap on the difficult delivery and the life-threatening post-partum:  After her contractions began, the baby’s heart rate started falling and an emergency cesarean section was performed. Not exactly the ideal scenario, but a common procedure that went smoothly. The baby was born, the cord was cut, and little Olympia was laid on her mother’s chest. Then, in Serena’s words, “Everything went bad.”
 
Serena has a history of blood clots, and because of this, she takes blood thinners. She went off these after the C-section to facilitate the healing of the surgical wound. The day after delivery, she began gasping. Flagging a nurse in the hall, she requested an IV with a blood thinner and a CT scan for clots. The nurse just thought she was confused. A doctor arrived and did an ultrasound. Serena reiterated, “I told you I need a CT scan and a heparin drip.” At this point, the scan was performed, and, indeed, she had clots in her lungs, and the appropriate medication was given. 

Well, her coughing from the clots reopened the C-section wound. She had to return to surgery for the lung clot, and then they found a hemotoma—clotted blood—in her abdomen, from the resumed blood thinner. Another operation, this time to put a filter into a major vein to keep clots out of the lungs. Finally, a week later, she was able to go home. Debilitated from all the crises, she had to stay in bed for six weeks, unable to care for the new baby. She describes the rollercoaster of postpartum emotions: “(The) incredible letdown every time you hear the baby cry ... Or I’ll get angry about the crying, then sad about being angry, and then guilty, like, ‘Why do I feel so sad when I have a beautiful baby?’ The emotions are insane.”
 
So this was just last fall, less than year ago. In July Serena spoke out about the fact she is being drug-tested as much as five times more frequently than any other star tennis player.
 
And then, there was the issue of her tennis outfit. She stepped onto the court at the French Open in a special, full-body compression suit designed to prevent blood clots. Serena explained, “All the moms out there that had a tough pregnancy and have to come back and try to be fierce, in the middle of everything. That’s what this represents. You can’t beat a catsuit, right?” The French indicated she had gone “too far” and banned  her from wearing it. She responded with a one-shoulder-bared, black tutu and compression fishnets.

So here she is at the US Open, not believing that her coach could have been coaching during the game (yes, he admitted he had), and thus began the escalation of outrage. 
 
It was the personal breaking point that became a cultural tipping point.
 
Tennis legend Billie Jean King agreed with Serena, tweeting,  ‘‘When a woman is emotional, she’s ‘hysterical’ and she’s penalized for it .’’ King noted that male players with similar outbursts are characterized as ‘‘outspoken,’’ with no repercussions.
 
The Women’s Tennis Association backed up Serena’s claims of sexism with this statement: “The WTA believes that there should be no difference in the standards of tolerance provided to the emotions expressed by men v women and is committed to working with the sport to ensure that all players are treated the same. We do not believe that this was done.”
 
The president of the United States Tennis Association also backed Serena: “We watch the guys do this all the time, they’re badgering the umpire on the changeovers. Nothing happens. There’s no equality. I think there has to be some consistency across the board. These are conversations that will be imposed in the next weeks.”

Serena was aware that she was playing a different game for higher stakes:  “… I’m going to continue to fight for women and for us to have equal. ... I just feel like the fact that I have to go through this is just an example for the next person that has emotions, and that want to express themselves, and they want to be a strong woman. They’re going to be allowed to do that because of today.” Her voice began to shake. “Maybe it didn’t work out for me, but it’s going to work out for the next person.”
 
And all of this reminds me of another Black female athlete who was the subject of massive discrimination, and her breaking point—which was, sadly, so far ahead of her time that it did not result in a tipping point. Except for those of us who have used her example to arrive at our own moments of transformation.
 
I am talking about French former competitive figure skater Surya Bonaly. Originally a competitive gymnast, she began skating at the age of eleven. She eventually became three-time World silver medalist, a five-time European champion, and a nine-time French national champion. She was a three-time Olympian.

Bonaly was coached by her mother, who was not a member of the elite world of skating. They were outside of the network. And Bonaly was Black. Throughout her career, Bonaly was criticized for the athleticism of her skating. She was characterized as a gymnast instead of a dancer. One of her critics made this snarky remark: “I’d like to see her stop jumping for six months and learn to skate.”
 
The “jumping?” Practically unmatched in ambition. Surya was the first female skater to attempt a quadruple jump in competition, even though they were counted as triples, because they fell just shy of four full rotations. But the jump that really put her on the map was the “Bonaly backflip,” which is a backflip landed on one blade. Banned in competition, but a huge crowd-pleaser. In other words, Surya was muscular, daring, and athletic. Figure skating evolved in the late eighteenth century in Europe, incorporating elements of the ballet into circles and figure eights. These balletic roots led to an aesthetic that privileges elegance, lithe physiques, and a feminine ideal reminiscent of ballerinas. Surya’s skating is unapologetically powerful. The same kind of body-type prejudices that kept African American women out of classical ballet companies were applied to Surya.
 
Also, her costumes were usually showier than those of her competitors. She favored bold and unusual colors, with lots of sparkle. In spite of the fact that the judges favored tights, Surya skated barelegged. Possibly the tights she needed did not come in her skin tones.

But I was talking about her breaking point. It was at the 1994 World Championships in Japan. Surya was twenty-one, and, with three Olympic medalists not competing, she had good reason to be optimistic. Bonaly’s final overall score was equal to that of Yuka Sato, who was skating in her home court. There was a 5-4 tiebreaker decision in favor of Yuka, but Surya was not having it. At the awards ceremony, she stood on the floor beside the second place platform, refusing to mount it. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. One of the officials literally manhandled her up onto the platform, but when they hung the second-place medal around her neck, she immediately took it off again. The crowd began to boo.
 

According to the Los Angeles Times, “It came down to a choice between Yuka Sato’s artistry and dynamic footwork and Surya Bonaly’s gymnastic jumping.” Is that coded racism, or  the favoring the home team… or was Bonaly’s program just not as polished, as some would claim? Reviewing the videos later, it’s not all that clear that she was a victim of discrimination, but, for Surya, suffering through years of biased criticism and personal attacks rooted in racist values and traditions, it was the breaking point. She was sure she outskated Yuka Sato, and she was not going to participate in her humiliation by taking that step up to the second place platform and she could not allow that badge of discrimination to hang around her neck. It was an unforgettable moment. She refused to give a press conference and her only statement after the ceremony was “I’m just not lucky.” They could take or leave the sarcasm.
 
Unlike Serena, Surya’s breaking point had come decades before the #MeToo movement was exposing the institutionalized misogyny in the entertainment industry, and also decades before Black producers began to gain control over the representation of their culture and icons in the media.

But after her breaking point, Surya did get the last word. She entered her third Olympics in 1998 with an Achilles tendon injury that kept her from executing her planned routine. She knew she had no chance of medaling, and she was also planning to retire after the Games… so she “called an audible”—that is, she changed the play at the last minute. Three minutes into her free skating routine, as she was coming in backward for what looked like a jump, she suddenly raised her hands over her head and flipped backward into the air. Her legs flew up over her head, and she landed on one blade.  The crowd went wild.
 
It was totally illegal… and legendary. As one Canadian newspaper put it, it was “the most elaborate expletive in Olympic history.” The Washington Post was even more explicit: “Bonaly was making a statement not only as an accomplished skater, but also as a black athlete in one of the world’s whitest sports.”
 
Here is what I wish for all the underrepresented women in the world: May your breakdowns become tipping points, and whenever your excellence lies off the visible light spectrum of  institutions obsessed with color, may you never be afraid to show off and celebrate your brilliance… because you can, and because history will catch up and remember.

I am thinking about children being torn away from their mothers this week. And I remembered a story told by one of my playwriting colleagues, Eva Knowles Johnson.
 
I met Eva in 1989 at the second conference of the newly-formed International Centre for Women Playwrights. It was in Toronto.
 
Eva got up to speak in a large auditorium filled with women playwrights and lined with representatives of the international press. The first thing she did was demand that all the men leave the room. She said that the story she was about to share was “women’s business.” She would not tell it in the presence of men.

I have never forgotten that moment. I had never seen a woman exercise so much authority in my life. She ordered the men out of the room. And they went.
 
Eva Johnson is an Aboriginal Australian poet, actor, director and playwright. She belongs to the Malak Malak people of the Northern Territory, and she is a member of what is known as the “Stolen Generations” in Australia.
 
Between 1910-1970, the Australian government forcibly removed indigenous children from their families as part of a policy of “assimilation.”  Some of the children were adopted by white families, and many remained in institutions. They were taught to reject their heritage and forced to adopt white culture. Eva was taken from her mother at the age of two and placed in a Methodist mission where she was kept for eight years. At the age of ten, she was transferred to an orphanage in Adelaide.

After the men had left the room, Eva told a harrowing story of her abduction. She remembers, as a toddler, her mother running through the bush, holding her in her arms. An Australian soldier on a horse was pursuing them. He bent down and grabbed her, and she did not see her mother again for three decades.
 
She told us about this reunion. The children from the Stolen Generations were never intended to reunite with their families. Neither the parents nor the children were given information about each other, and the children had been renamed.
 
Eva’s mother was in a nursing home watching television, when she saw Eva on television. She may have been watching the acclaimed series “Women of the Sun,” about the lives of four Aboriginal women in Australian society from the 1820s to the 1980s. Eva recognized her daughter on the screen. Even though she had not seen her daughter since that day in the bush, she recognized her. That was the story of how they found each other.

Eva wrote a poem about this reunion, “A Letter to My Mother.” The poem has been widely published and is included in curricula of Aboriginal literature.

“A Letter to My Mother”
 
I not see you long time now, I not see you long time now
White fulla bin take me from you, I don’t know why
Give me to Missionary to be God’s child.
 
Give me new language, give me new name
All time I cry, they say—‘that shame’
I go to the city down south, real cold
I forget all them stories, my Mother you told
 
Gone is my spirit, my dreaming, my name
Gone to these people, our country to claim
They gave me white mother, she give me new name
All time I cry, she say—‘that shame’
 
I not see you long time now, I not see you long time now.
I grow as Woman now, not Piccaninny no more
I need you to teach me your wisdom, your lore
 
I am your Spirit, I’ll stay alive
But in white fulla way, you won’t survive
I’ll fight for Your land, for your Sacred sites
To sing and to dance with the Brolga in flight
 
To continue to live in your own tradition
A culture for me was replaced by a mission
 
I not see you long time now, I not see you long time now.
One day your dancing, your dreaming, your song
Will take my your Spirit back where I belong
 
My Mother, the earth, the land—I demand
Protection from aliens who rule, who command
For they do not know where our dreaming began
 
Our destiny lies in the laws of White Man
Two Women we stand, our story untold
But now as our spiritual bondage unfold
We will silence this Burden, this longing, this pain
When I hear you my Mother give me my Name

I not see you long time now, I not see you long time now.
 

Eva spoke about her work as a director in Australia. I remember her talking about producing a play about the colonization of her people. In her production, all the white male roles were performed by Aboriginal women. She told us that she had been challenged for this casting choice. I have never forgotten her explanation, when she asked who better understood the mind of the white male colonizer than the indigenous woman.
 
Eva Johnson’s work reflects her identity as part of the “Stolen Generation,” and it also addresses cultural identity, Aboriginal Australian women's rights, land rights, slavery, sexism and homophobia. An out and proud lesbian, she lit up the conference with her joy and her exuberance, which was inextricably connected to her awareness of her history. She is a living embodiment of Alice Walker’s affirmation, “Resistance is the secret of joy.”

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-prize-winning classic, is headed to Broadway… or, at least, it was headed for Broadway.
 
The author’s estate has just filed a lawsuit against the producer, Scott Rudin. At issue is his adaptation for stage. The estate attorney claims that it deviates too much from the novel and that this is a violation of their contract, which specifies that they shall not “derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the novel nor alter its characters.”
 
As a playwright, I find this case fascinating. As a lesbian, I think that both sides are overlooking the obvious.
 
To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, was considered radical in its day. The protagonist, Atticus Finch, is a white attorney who stands up to the prejudice in his small Alabama town, defending an African American man who has been falsely accused of rape by a white woman.

Today, however, the book is seen—rightfully—as exemplifying the racist trope of the Great White Savior.  In a silent tribute to their white champion, they rise spontaneously as Atticus leaves the courtroom. His head bowed in defeat, he neither sees nor acknowledges them.
 
This was the book that Harper Lee wrote. It is an artifact of its time. Although African American authors were writing and publishing, the white-dominated mainstream market was not ready to identify with their perspectives. Lee’s book was an immediate bestseller. It’s my opinion that the popular embrace of the book is contingent on the fact that Atticus loses his case and that the defendant is killed in attempting to escape. Like the trope of the dead lesbian, this reification of the status quo invites self-satisfied expressions of compassion from mainstream readers who are spared the more difficult work of embracing an ending that signals social change.
 
Today the Great White Savior narrative is widely acknowledged as offensive, and one not likely to repay the investment that goes into mounting a Broadway production. This is why, in this dramatic adaptation by Aaron Sorkin, Atticus is portrayed at the outset as a man in denial about the racism of his town—an apologist for prejudice, unwilling to believe that an innocent man can be found guilty.  The role of Calpurnia, the African American woman who cooks for the Finch family, has been rewritten as the agent for Atticus’ awakening. Through a series of confrontations with her employer, she manages to win over the white attorney, mentoring him into the reality of Southern rural racism in 1936. By the end of the play, he has become the Atticus with whom we are familiar, the righteous hero standing against the masses for social justice… but he owes it all to a woman of color.

Actor/musician Evadne Bryan-Perkins notes that this rewrite swaps one racist trope for another--that of the "Magical Negro." This trope relies on a supporting stock character coming to the aid of the white protagonists, helping them discern the error of their ways. (This term was popularized by African American film director Spike Lee in 2001, during his lecture tour of universities, where he was criticizing the unrealistic and stereotyped depictions of African American men in Hollywood cinema.)

But Rudin, the producer, is not just responding to the datedness of the Great White Savior narrative. He also knows his dramaturgy. In theatre, the main character needs to have what is called a “narrative arc.” The protagonist must go on a journey of transformation, starting out at Point A and, two hours later, ending up—ideally—at Point Z. (A dramatic trajectory from Point A to Point B is not likely to carry a play with the gravitas of To Kill a Mockingbird.) The Atticus of the book, tried as he is by circumstances, nevertheless begins with sterling character and social conscience and ends in the same state of  grace. He goes from Point A to Point A.
 
As a playwright, I sympathize with the producer.  He wants a play that is going to work. However, as a playwright who is zealous about her own copyright protections, I have to side with the Harper Lee estate: It is clear that, in giving Atticus a narrative arc, the producer has deviated substantially from the character in the book. In rewriting the role of Calpurnia to be a major voice in the play, the producer has essentially created a new character.

As of the writing of this, neither side is making concessions.  Rudin, from his corner, maintains, “I can't and won't present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn't be of interest…. The world has changed since then."
 
Attorney Tonja Carter, representing the Harper Lee estate fires back that the new Atticus “is more like an edgy sitcom dad in the 21st Century than the iconic Atticus of the novel.”
 
So that is the current standoff.
 
But I think both sides are missing something. It’s not about Atticus. It’s never been about Atticus. The voice of the narrator in the book is a gender-non-conforming girl named Scout. Atticus is her father. Harper Lee, a lesbian, has created a character that is her alter-ego, telling a story that was inspired by an actual event that occurred near her hometown in Alabama when she was ten years old. The plot and observations in the book are loosely based on her own experience. The model for Atticus was her own father.

Scout has a huge dramatic arc. In fact, Scout’s coming-to-consciousness about the socials evils of the adult world is the point of the book. She goes from being a naive child who has absorbed the prejudices of her peers, to someone who can break away, incorporating perspectives of the under-represented and standing with the outsiders of the world. Scout watches the trial, literally, from the colored section of the segregated courtroom. At the end of the book, she has traveled from fear of a developmentally disabled neighbor, to recognizing him as an ally and friend.
 
Why not make Scout the central figure in the Broadway show?  In the book, she is six, but she was older in the film. If the play is refracted through the adoring eyes of a child, wouldn't that explain her idealized experience of her father? In the book, Scout accompanies Calpurnia to a Black church, where she has a massive awakening as she sees Calpurnia's transformation of status among members of her own community. No need to violate the contract. Just allow the woman the full and radical context of that scene.

Can a Broadway audience identify with a gender-non-conforming little girl. Why not?  It wouldn’t be the first time. Member of the Wedding, another best-seller by a Southern lesbian author, was adapted for Broadway. It opened in 1950 and ran for more than five hundred performances. A historic production, the cast included Ethel Waters and a young Julie Harris. What is significant here is that the author adapted the book herself, and the character of the tomboy, Frankie, remains as central and unaltered on the stage as she was in the book. 
 
Yes, there will be a problem if Aaron Sorkin stays on to attempt a Scout-centric adaptation. Sorkin’s writing credits include the television series The West Wing, and a roster of tough-talking, political films including A Few Good Men, The American President, Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. He has already been questioned about his ability to write dialogue for Harper Lee’s juvenile characters. Asked if they will be expected to “speak Sorkin,” he responded, "Well, they're gonna have to, because I didn't write their language like they were children."
 
As a solution to this author-producer deadlock, I would like to put my name forward as an alternative writer. My credentials include thirty years of creating and performing lesbian roles for the stage, including more than a dozen gender-non-conforming roles for little girls. I invite Mr. Rudin to the webpage for my Butch Visibility Project. I really believe this might work.

The #MeToo campaign is causing a revolution, and I want to make sure that the other, huge percentage of women impacted by these sexual predators are not forgotten. I call us the "#MeNeither women." Read on!

In October of last year, the online #MeToo campaign went viral on international social media sites. The hashtag phrase was created by Tarana Burke, an African American civil rights activist, who coined it in 2006 to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and assault in the culture. Last fall, white actress and activist Alyssa Milano boosted the signal by posting a message on her Twitter account, encouraging survivors of sexual harassment and assault to post #metoo as a status update. She did this as a supportive response to the actresses who were coming forward with their stories of harassment and assault by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

t#MeToo marks a cultural watershed. In a nutshell, women are being believed.
 
Suddenly immediate action is being taken to remove and replace these predators, without the women needing to win a case in court. For decades powerful men have gotten away with rape and harassment, because they could count on their victims having fewer resources and connections. They could tie up these women in court for decades with costly litigation, as well as smearing their names and destroying their careers. In fact, Weinstein hired private security agencies to collect information on the women who accused him and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. These agencies included Black Cube, a business run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies, with branches all over the world. According to the New Yorker Magazine:

But in October, all of this changed. Women are being believed. We celebrate their courage as well as the international housecleaning that is going on as these predators are being fired and replaced.
 
But there is a hidden side of #MeToo. I call it #MeNeither, to include the victims who are currently not being included in this historic moment. Not all the victims have been assaulted or verbally harassed. In fact, the #MeNeither victims, like myself, are the ones the predators would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

The men who were/are busy raping, coercing, groping, and blackmailing their victims were/are not going to green-light any films about strong women standing up to perpetrators and winning. They were/are not going to fund narratives in which men like themselves are depicted as the bad guys. They were/are not going to foster a culture where they will be called out for their criminal appetites and activities. They did/do promote pornographic narratives where women are objectified, raped, tortured, and mutilated. They did/do promote romantic comedies where the heroine will sacrifice all to stand by her man. They aggressively have/do propagate male supremacy in their enterprises. These predators have colonized our collective imaginations.
 
Here is a partial list (out-of-date the day after posting!) of these mogul predators who have been busted just since October. It speaks for itself. These are men at the highest echelons of the top entertainment and media institutions in the US. Some are also in our government:

So most of these are gone or on their way out. What's next? Nature abhors a vacuum, so let's make sure that their replacements are not just "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Let's make sure that their replacements are drawn from the vast #MeNeither pool, packed with women whose talents have gone unnoticed for lack of opportunity and lack of resources. #MeNeither women have the narratives that are currently missing... and these narratives hold the promise of saving the planet.