Ron Finley says that food is the problem, and food is the solution. It’s time to manufacture our own reality. Gardening is therapeutic, it’s art, it’s in our DNA. Children that grow kale… will EAT kale. Let’s get eco-lutionary, become manufactured-food renegades, gangsta gardeners… and let’s make it sexy.
“If you ain’t a gardener, you ain’t gangsta. Get gangsta with your shovel… and let that be your weapon of choice” – Ron Finley, 2013.
It’s time to #plantsomeshit.
Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA — in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where “the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.”
Imagine a world where “gay” was “straight” and “straight” was “gay”, how would we live if we couldn’t love each other?
This incredible award-winning short film by WingSpan Pictures offers to promote social change by challenging current conceptions in popular culture. By paralleling the persecution of others with different sexual orientations or gender identities, the hope is to inspire societal reflection. While the theme may be fictional, the events are tragically real. Only understanding can stop the cycle of abuse.
Remember when Oprah exposed James Frey’s Million Little Lies… er, Pieces? The latest New York Times best seller, Skinny Bitch, is following in those footsteps as public skepticism turns to anger at the self-proclaimed “know-it-all” author who is selling her biased opinion (along with misinformation) to a hungry audience desperate for weight-loss. (Can you tell that irks me?) I mean, the strong should protect the weak, shouldn’t they? Tell the whole truth, and nothin’ but? Who’s with me? I’m all for a good novel, but if it’s your opinion you’re writing about, be upfront and honest and let people know that they need to research what’s right for them. Don’t sell your opinion as the gospel of how to get skinny… that’s like waving crack under the nose of an addict. And SKINNY? Aren’t we trying to stop perpetuating the need for “skinny” to our young? Perseus Books publishing house should be ashamed of themselves (and renamed Cuckoo Books) for not vetting and fact-checking their non-fiction works. Gah!
Here’s an article titled, Setting the Skinny Bitches Straight, that made me shout Hells Yeah! after every paragraph. And it was written by a skinny bastard too.
You’ve probably already seen the video. Maybe several of them. But did you know how big the goat really is right now? It’s the top trending animal on YouTube this month. Why? Well, because they yell like humans and we have an insatiable appetite for the ridiculous. But c’mon, they’re a little funny, right? If you haven’t seen any of the goat remixes, check out this video showing how some well-known YouTubers react.
A friend of mine sent me a link to this pretty amazing project created by Andrew Cole. Andrew is on a mission to bring all his heroes together on one song to try and inspire the world to put a stop to bullying and hate. We need more people like Andrew. We are children of the earth, we are humanity, we’re in this together.
To everyone out there who feels alone, desperate and bullied—bring me your tears. Somebody is always listening.
Last night I was lucky enough to be able to speak to a large group of students studying Social Sciences at McMaster University. I’ve done many public speaking gigs before, so the size of the audience wasn’t intimidating, it was the nature of the lecture that I found paralyzing. I stood before them not as a business woman—but as a mother.
As with everything that is to be taught and learned in our lives, I behooved these students to be as objective as they could be, while listening to a subjective story-teller whose passion was animated enough to convince them the sky was green. I was speaking from personal experience and the subject matter was the single most important thing in my life. My children; one of whom is a transgender girl.
I stood before them explaining that throughout time, nature has given us two kinds of mothers. There are those mothers who will stop at nothing to protect their young, or the young of others. And then there are those who will abandon or eat their own young. I reduced this battle of altruistic versus egoistic behaviour to it’s simplest—without getting into a philosophical debate with regard to perspectives of the beneficiary—as the basis for my introduction. Although, in person… I’m not quite as refined. I can never remember, is it always cuss in front of the students or never cuss in front of the students?
So what kind of mother am I? I’m a T. Rex. Top of the food chain, baby.
I explained that in no way was I faulting the mothers who abandon their young. They are the opposite side of the maternal coin in a tricky balance of nature. In earlier periods, this behaviour was self-preservation from the world they lived in; where predators of all sizes loomed above them. With mortal danger imminent, they would sacrifice their young to save themselves. And, although the nature of those dangers have long since disappeared for us humans—the evolution of this continued fear of “being eaten alive” by predators has perpetuated the fight or flight mothering divide. Abandon your young to save yourself.
Humans could not have survived in nature without the charity and reciprocity of a group or individual. For the young that have been kicked out of the nest, that’s where these students will come in. One day they will be part of the necessary support system that will show these individuals that altruistic behaviour does exist. They will help these people understand that they are loved, accepted and necessary—regardless of the reasons they were abandoned by their mothers. The mother’s choice to abandon is ALWAYS about the mother.
Part of the adaptation into a happy and “normal” lifestyle for all those condemned as different will be based on how they are treated. How we react to the needs of our youth—right here and now today—will set precedents for future generations. Do NOT segregate people into boxes of conformity. Do NOT place labels of identification on our young that will later be used for discriminatory injustices against them—and Do NOT fix what isn’t broken. (Can I get a hells yeah?)
This is the opportunity to re-define “normal” and trip the natural balance to praise the uniqueness of ALL people, instead of pointing fingers at the differences. Let “normal” become the outcast. Burst forth into your lives with passion and focus your educated eyes of therapy on those who need it—the mother who abandoned her young and the judgmental predators who stalk her.
Many thanks to Will Rowe of The Well, who invited me to speak to the students and also for all that he does in his work in social services and support of youth. The force is strong my friend, the future is ours.
For some reason or another, my blog has become less personal over the last few years. I’ve shared stories, news, videos and pictures, but nothing that is really personal—from the uberscribbling heart—so to speak. That’s about to change. The uberscribbler is more than just an author, public speaker and social media junkie. There are more stories to share, things that need to be said, and thoughts that I need to send out to the universe via the world-wide web. And so with a deep breath…
On Feb 9, 1998 I was in a delivery room at McMaster hospital in Hamilton. I was 26 weeks into pregnancy and wildly distraught that I was losing my baby. After a blur of white-coat activity, my second child came in to this world weighing 1121 grams. The celebration of life was announced to the room with three simple words. It’s a boy.
15 years later, I find myself reflecting on that moment quite often. Announcing the biological anatomy of a baby at birth seems like a misnomer. It has become a delivery room habit—almost a rite of passage for new parents. The sex of that child can mean different things, to different walks of life all over the world. For some parents, that determination can be crucial to their lives and that of the child. In delivery rooms around the world, the air is thick with anticipation, until the obligatory sex declaration has been uttered. It is then that life for that child begins—in an assigned role.
Sometimes nature gets it right and we don’t think it has—so we fix what we think it broke. In this day and age, it is estimated that still more than 30% of the world’s male population (aged 15 and over) are circumcised. From infancy. Not from infection, or medical conditions, but just because—and without their consent.
Sometimes nature gets it wrong. And I don’t blame her. With all that we’ve done to her planet and the environment, it surprises me that we don’t see more birth anomalies as she digs in to protect herself—letting us know the only way she knows how.
It was 15 years ago my child was born with just such an anomaly. It wasn’t club feet, cleft palette, fused limbs, missing digits, dwarfism, intersex (hermaphrodite), down-syndrome or anything else that you could identify through sight alone. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1 in every 33 babies is born with a birth anomaly (defect). For as technologically and intellectually advanced as we believe ourselves to be, we still only count what we can see with our own eyes and observe through biology. Anything that doesn’t match the majority is considered defective, like we’re some sort of assembly line where all end product must look and act the exact same way or it’s scrapped as faulty goods. We’ve instituted our own quality control on what it means to be human.
But what about the anomalies that you can’t see right away? The ones that require the collection of your other senses and the ability of the child to communicate?
“Mommy, when I grow up… I want to be beautiful.” – Mackenzie, aged 3
I knew from a very early age that my child didn’t fit the mold. I suspected that my son was not my son at all. But this made me afraid. I angrily blamed society and its narrow acceptance of gender roles and made excuses to others who bullied and pointed fingers at my “sissy” feminine son. Why is it OK for young girls to be a tomboy but not the other way around? I wrote letters to the President, the Premier, the UN, McDonald’s Corporation, and Mattel Toys asking them to use their positions of corporate power to stop perpetuating gender stereotypes. All the while, I ignored the pleas for help from my child and made assumptions that inevitably cost my child 14 years of true comfortable happiness. I violated my oath as a parent, which was to love unconditionally and do no harm. Sometimes… doing nothing IS the harm.
It did not matter to my child if the world accepted them—only that I did. I adopted a new oath, “Love your child unconditionally, do no harm, and let them lead the way.“
I’m not the kind of person that subscribes to labels. I’m not racist or prejudice and I don’t put people in boxes. I don’t like segregation. People are just people—although I know as a society, we have a long history of unnecessary evil against each other. I also don’t like the term “trans” (Latin for ‘beyond’) assigned to people. There is nothing good, decent, or “right” about treating or referring to someone as beyond gender. Giving them labels, and segregating them to their own groups does just that. It points a finger at their different and unique individuality and infers that they are sub-human. Not cool. We don’t use the term transgender in our family, it is irrelevant. Just as I don’t walk around the house referring to each other as Caucasian. We are what we are—and that is refreshingly unique.
It turns out that my son is actually my daughter, with a biological anomaly. She was born with a hormone problem—too much testosterone in utero—which consequently led to the growth of testes and a penis. Her brain, personality and personal identity are all female, and always have been. How did this happen? I don’t know, how do any birth anomalies happen? All I can say is that we judged a book by its cover.
My daughter is so much more than just the sum of her biological parts. And I don’t want the cover to be her story. It’s time to move forward. As a parent, I have had to make some difficult decisions for the benefit of my child. I medically halted her puberty at 14 years of age, and I introduced her young body to estrogen. When she is old enough, she will undergo surgery to correct this birth anomaly. (Currently covered under healthcare in some parts of Canada.) I have received a lot of criticism over this, but I understand that people fear what they don’t know. Fear and ignorance is the stuff that bullies are made of. I realized early on that any trouble I had with what my child was telling me, was more about me then it was her. I can never let my selfishness stand in the way of the absolute love and acceptance that my children deserve from me as their mother. This was not a choice—for either of us.
We are almost one year in now from her diagnosis. She is 15 years old, a junior in highschool, and she is a happy, confident, and self-aware teenage girl. She continues to teach me the value of courage, and I hold that lesson very sacred. She is willing to lose everything to be true to herself and to help teach understanding for the acceptance of others like her. What could be more selfless than that? It is with her encouragement, that I begin to tell you our story.
This is my beautiful girl in her own picture video showing her transformation. Please feel free to offer her your encouragement and support on her YouTube channel, but please remember to be age appropriate in your comments. ( I will never stop being her mother.)
Sometimes, when I’m lost in YouTube—and not the OMG-I-can-never-unsee-that weird part—but the part that accidentally educates, I’m reminded of how important it is to SHOW your awesome.
Thank you to the ancient Lyre bird of Australia for its magical and Rich Little-like impersonations of all things it hears in the forest—including a camera shutter and a chainsaw. I bet your vocal repertoire gets you all the babes.
“I have never read anything like this before. Everything about this book drew me in. Catherine Thorpe has put a tremendous amount of thought into her amazing novel to keep you guessing till the end. It was creatively written and lacked nothing.” – S.W. – Lindsay, ON
“In a Celandine World presents a fascinating search for an intriguingly powerful love, with shades of Alice’s rabbit-hole guiding the path.” – S.D – Beaverton, OR
“It was so refreshing reading a story that kept me guessing with each page.” – J.D. – Powell, OH
“A wonderful piece of work that manages to mix Celtic myth-lore, religious thought, with Arthurian legends and Lewis Carroll, the Voynich Manuscript and a smattering of quantum mechanics and present a fascinating tale of paranormal love.” – G.M. – Pennsylvania, PA
“The concept of a "Boogeyman" in a novel with romance may appear a little strange, but it worked perfectly. The Boogeyman represented the unknown rather than the scary guy in your closet.” – K.L. – Lake Zurich, IL
“This story is a page turner that will have you asking questions throughout and be totally satisfied with the outcome!” – L.C. – Hamilton, ON
