As I write this last post for this class, I am both sad and excited for what the future may hold. I am not sure I will ever get to be so vulnerable again on an open  platform like this. It may not mean as much to you all, but I cherish these posts, and I am very excited about the people we are all  growing to be. These last 2 weeks of class stirred many thoughts in me, I hope you find them useful. 

.It is no secret why the many industrial complexes exist; some saw money in places where change should be.They saw the capability in our bodies and knew only one thing, to create a world where it can produce, and convinced us that is what we wanted. Our limbs became a commodity.  All those caught in the cycle are compelled by living, to live today is to need money, and all other opportunities dim in comparison. We are all desperate to survive, there is no focus on what could be different, only what is. Things seem almost impossible to change. And yet,they will.  Our knowing and learning, critiquing and scholarship, or continued efforts to know is the result of that change. Our experience here in higher education is evident of that change. This will change, if we have the continued heart for it, the continuation of efforts from people before us, people with us now, and people we will pass it to in the future.  

The close of any worthwhile venture has always been the hardest part of anything. This is why cliffhangers irritate the soul, bad endings ruin great shows, and poorly written conclusions ruin great essays. In short, I hate endings, I can never finish them, but I will try to sum up things here the best I can.  The process of becoming can be likened to a symphony; Your body sets the tone for growth.  Each time you have found something worthwhile, another instrument begins to play, growing louder the more you feel you know. As you shift, so does your sound, your body moving to different rhythms: pacing you, pulling you, stopping you.  You make sense of the noise of the world as it comes to make up the parts of you. That is why we find music so valuable, it puts into action our humanity; it is us, laid out for everyone to see, and a great musician or song can unite even the most polarized of people. The feeling of finding a song that moves us to cry, to jump, to stretch our hands in the air, to be content; that is resistance in its best form to all that tries to encompass us.   This experience of being here, writing these posts, reading your thoughts, sitting in class has added to my way of knowing myself, I feel I can see things clearer for what they are. I suppose what I’m hoping to say in all of this is thank you (I have learned something), thank you (I have grown somewhere), thank you (for your time reading this post), thank you (for helping me see myself more clearly).

To preface this post, I’m sorry. I had hoped, by now, I could write something easier and more digestible; something that could get you all your two comments and we’d both be on our merry way. Instead you all have been subjected to learning about me, my family, and the things I keep in my mind whilst we are on this process of discussing the body. I hope you all don’t mind. 

To begin, as I’m typing this, I am racing through so many thoughts. I’m flipping through my journal, trying to string together thoughts to say. I want to talk about my family. I want to say how we never talk about chronic illness. In our home, it’s akin to cursing, to say you are sick and need care means more defeat than strength. As I was thinking about how to write something, I found a poem that gives me comfort, When You Believe Your Body is Your Enemy by Andrea Gibson. I could not tear my eyes away from these lines: 

The soul misses every single day the body was sick,the NOW it forced,the HERE

It built from the fever. Fever is how the body prays,

How it burns and begs for another precious day.

When I read it, I am reminded of the courage it takes to face illnesses; to persist regardless of ability.  I hope you can read this poem, and find something in it too. 

I am lost. I want so badly to live in this ideal world we create in class during discussions; radically shifting the nature of society. How nice would it be to have a campus built for accessibility: ramps instead of stairs, class preferences that work for everyone, universal understanding of neurodiverse needs. To know all the answers to everyone’s problems, to find ways to solve them. In our class world, spoon theory has no place; everyone has more than enough spoons to handle whatever it is they need and still have more leftovers. The dismantling of systems of oppression is done; everyone sings, and we all go home. The most unfortunate thing is, this is not reality. We all have to face it and go through; the important thing to remember is that we are all facing it and going through it. People are not as cold as we perceive them to be. There is light somewhere, if you’re willing to see it. 

I wanted to include here a note I had on Autism; A short defense of Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy. I don’t really care too much for the practice myself, but it is helpful. You do not typically take your child straight to ABA; they are tested, referred, and treated according to their individual needs. It is therapy like any other, and comes with all the same complications as finding an appropriate therapist and dealing with the burdens of insurance. It is easy to forget that not everyone knows as much as we do; it’s a privilege to be here in college with access to resources but parents need grace. To be in the process of unlearning harmful stigmas about their child, learning processes to better support them, amidst all the other things that come with supporting a child in one area of the spectrum is hard. It is daunting. I have watched it first hand, and support my own family in navigating this process with my own sister. I must reiterate it as many times as I can: this is hard, ABA is not the best, but it helps in treating severe functioning issues. Functioning, in my mind, is not exactly synonymous with normalizing. To be normal is to conform with societal standards. To function is to be able to take care of yourself and communicate your needs.

The title of this post is a lie, most of the time. Usually I’m happy to write more open-ended things; dealing in the land of theory and abstract. I enjoy the many little things, as many creatives do, and want to make sense of all that life has to offer. I make use of myself to help others see things; holding up mirrors and windows for people to look out in and in. This past week though, I am continually reminded that we aren’t taught what to do when we see ourselves in the mirror; facing the you inside of you, our underneath truths surfacing in the expressions of our faces.

I didn’t want to write this blog post because I could not bear to face my grandma. Her life was cut short by the very industry she gave it too; years worked as a nurse in the same hospital, only to pass there too. Helping black women and children through years of health, and yet she could not help herself. Working constantly by the condition of her upbringing; she avoided the aches in her body, the tiredness in her face, her hands battered by years, her mind overwhelmed with worries. She was alone in her struggles; I was still too young to help nor understand when she went. I am thinking of her voice when I hear the way the medical complex treats black women and I sigh a deep sigh, one I’m sure I share with ancestors long past my time .

I didn’t want to write this blog post because I could not bear to face my mother. Her aspirations were dimmed with my birth; she worked herself so hard inside and outside the home to provide for her kids, resulting in a myriad of medical issues she left undiagnosed until now. The worry she has when getting new doctors, praying the next one will believe her and continue her medicine. Glossing over minor hiccups because what other choice could she have? Health hinders progress; A lesson she’s finally beginning to reverse.

I didn’t want to write this post because I couldn’t bear to face myself; a culmination of the experiences of the women before me. How much have I learned? I avoid the horrors of reproductive thoughts, only to fall into the trap of overwork again. “Health does not hinder progress!” I say. But I know that if I go to the hospital for that ache, how much of my life will I lose? If I so choose to start a family, how much of the work will fall on me?

Eyes are weird. Most of us are (usually) born with two; nestled gently on either side of our noses, shaped in all kinds of ways, colors, etc. Millions of little cells working in tandem to handle the brightness, making sense of the the light waves, determining sharpness. The very complexness of it demands an entire section of our brain to develop over time! But we see things, eventually. Some of us more than others.

I wanted, at first, to write about hands, and how they guide us through space, making sense of the world in a odd way. We learn lessons (physically) about the world through touch, translating little neurons across complex wiring into feelings about something that has happened to us. Or about smelling, where the small cilia of the nose work, along those same complex wirings to give us information about the pleasant unpleasantries that come with life. But the eyes have come to be more special in my mind. They see what is meant to be experienced and relay it back two ways: the mind to be processed and the body to be judged.

I think before this class, I could not understand what Phenomenology meant. In my mind then, thoughts came first to determine the self; the body a separate process after thoughts have developed. Its then that we find consciousness! An old me might have said. Even as I sit to write this blog now, I still find myself not fully sure. But of all the many neurons working (mostly) the same across many different people, what determines the ultimate difference in experiences? Some might suggest another sophisticated science; to which I may not fully disagree. I’m saying here, that now I understand that there is much more that we learn from our bodied experiences than we give them credit for.

This course of thought, of realizing, of seeing the unseen, is a process I have been experiencing for many years now. Of becoming aware of things, of myself, of the ways my race and privileges that have mapped my path forward into a kaleidoscope of experiences. I am grateful for it, and I hope, as you age you will become grateful for this process too. This, of course, depends on how you see it.