No Excuses

It happened again. Another week, another horrific news report of a senseless black death in America. Racism has been on violent display this month across the country amongst our men and women in blue. 

It is heartening to see calls from white Americans to white America demanding they take a stand—a stand against racism, neutrality, acceptance of the murder of black Americans in our country.  But to effect systemic change, we need to hear from another group. We need our men and women in blue to break ranks from their “thin blue line.” We need them to hold their own accountable. We need them to step up, not away. We need them to step in, not stand by. We need them to take ownership and start saying, “Not on my watch.” 

Three policemen stood by while another policeman knelt on a man’s neck for nearly nine minutes causing a fatal injury. They did not say a word against the action. The man told them he could not breathe. They did not step in to stop the action. The man cried for help. They ignored the man. The man passed out. They did not intervene. 

As time passes, we will hear of the good things each of these men have done for their community. But despite any good they may have done prior to taking George Floyd’s life, on that day, they chose racist assumption, excessive force, and callous inhumanity. On that day, their choices took a man’s life. That life deserves justice. Those choices merit punishment. 

But the undebatable truth is our system favors a violent policeman over black victims, and excuses over accountability. Those men should have gone straight to jail. Instead they were fired and sent home. As of this morning only one faces charges. Yet, over the last week we have seen quick arrests of the protestors who allowed emotions, frustration, and despair to overflow into violent protest. 

Why are  the men and women in blue not held to the same standard? The system continues to protect them. They continue to protect each other. The nature of their job becomes an easy deflection point for blame. We expect violence to protect us. We are surprised when that violence takes a wrong turn, because despite the nature of the job, we expect our policemen to exercise control. A daunting task? Yes. Being exposed to violence, death, and crime on an ongoing basis changes a person. Over time, these changes can feed a coldblooded view of the world. But not every policeman turns frustration into fists or a callous disregard for humanity. Racism is the magnifying glass that ignites those flames. 

I have family members and friends who wear the badge today. I know that my life is safer for their presence, but the same is not true for my black brothers and sisters. Until that simple statement gets fixed, the badge remains tarnished and the force remains complicit.

Policemen must take the lead on fixing this problem. They must take a stand against profiling and racism within their precincts. They must intervene when they witness the use of excessive force. They must stop making excuses and hold their own accountable.  They must stamp out racism within their community. They must lead the change our country cries out for

The truth we choose

Four months into the pandemic with 300,000 deaths reported worldwide (100,000 of those deaths our fellow Americans), there remain people who still believe that the coronavirus is an overblown hoax. While skepticism about the seriousness of the virus in the earliest days was understandable, to believe this theory now, you must conclude that worldwide, physicians and scientists are reporting false information. You must believe that globally, leaders are abetting a false narrative. You must believe the majority of journalists reporting the stories are lying. You must buy into the idea that rest of the world is “in on it.” Despite these leaps and the enormous amount of readily available evidence to the contrary, this theory continues to find life. Why?

At the heart of the problem are targeted campaigns led by special interest groups flooding our networks and social media platforms with disinformation in the form of new reports, articles, statistics, medical specialists, and economists. Journalism, once considered a reliable source of objective information gathering, has become tarnished by the rapid 24-hour news cycle pressuring reporters to take short cuts. Fact checking has fallen victim to getting the headline out first. Headlines have become sensationalized to fuel viral responses. Financial and political drivers have shaped stories. Bias has bled into broadcasting.

Social media magnified the issue. It was the ideal platform for those with an agenda to weaponize “fake news” and legitimize it.  It continues to thrive as the knowledge management tool of choice for special interest groups to reignite debunked theories and bring them back to life. With advancements in artificial intelligence and the development of Social Media BOTS, a viral campaign has become as easy as updating a software algorithm. With an overabundance of false, misleading, and bad journalism on ready display, good journalism has become hostage to bad journalism. Truth has fallen victim to conspiracy theories. All journalism has become suspect. Never has it been easier to dismiss data, overlook objective reporting, and lean toward a “truth” that aligns with what we want to hear versus what we need to hear.

At a time when our choices greatly impact the lives and livelihood of others, we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to change our behavior. We must stop rewarding disinformation campaigns with viral responses. We must stop choosing truth through our political lenses; we must start finding truth through a lens of objectivity. We need to pause and investigate before we share. We need to read more, research more, and dig deeper. We must vet sources and information for authenticity. We need to validate credentials, relevant experience, and proven experience. We need to balance the news we take in each day, by following multiple sources with diverse viewpoints, not just those whose views we prefer.

If we are to save lives and save the economy, we cannot afford to keep choosing our truths based on snippets and soundbites or Facebook folly. We must hold ourselves responsible to search, investigate, and find the honest and objective truth, even if that truth leads us someplace, we never expected nor wanted. 

There is no room for tolerance when it comes to racism

Proverbs 3:27-30 “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbor, “Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”—when you already have it with you. Do not plot harm against your neighbor, who lives trustfully near you. Do not accuse anyone for no reason when they have done you no harm.”

I am a person who has long preached tolerance and acceptance. Tolerance – for differing points of views. Acceptance – for people who come with a differing set of beliefs than I do. Understanding – that people’s actions most often stem from the unique pressures driving their daily lives. It is a belief system that has aligned well with my Christian viewpoint until this week.

This week I have found myself sickened by the news of a young black man out for a jog, accosted and subsequently killed by two people making the broadest of assumptions – a black man running equates to a criminal running. I was appalled by the fact it took two months and a released video to precipitate an arrest. Today I have a vastly different message.

There is no room for tolerance, acceptance or understanding when it comes to racism. Racism is not a viewpoint; it is a cancer. This cancer will continue to take lives if we do not eradicate every diseased cell.

Over the last fifty plus years of my life, the civil rights movement has been waging a powerful war against racism. It seemed they had made huge strides in leveling the playing field for a community of people that had previously been disenfranchised and disempowered. But like many hard-won remissions, those rewards have proven to only be temporary. As with any other type of cancer, leaving a single, tiny cell ensures regrowth. The last few years have proven that despite previous aggressive treatment this country is out of remission.

I am ashamed to admit that lulled by the movement’s successes, I moved from advocacy to complacency. I allowed myself to believe that institutionalized racism was behind us. I bought into the idea that the playing field had been leveled. I let myself believe that the racism of my grandparents’ generation was all but gone as each subsequent generation awoke further to racism’s inequities. I imagined that my grandchildren’s children would only know of institutionalized racism through a history lesson.

I allowed this complacency to bleed over into the smallest of choices. Choices to opt for silence over confrontation and harmony over conflict. A decision to let a slanted comment slide by. A choice to let a poor joke go unchecked. A call to delete an off-color email or a choice to scroll by an inappropriate meme.  I told myself that these types of comments/actions were the anomalies now. They had no power in a world where most Americans believed in equality, in fairness, in right. I was wrong.

Leaving a single, tiny cell ensures regrowth.

As John Pavlovitz so eloquently said in his recent blog posting - https://johnpavlovitz.com/

“You oppose the inhumanity, or you abide it. You condemn the violence, or you are complicit in it. You declare yourself a fierce and vocal adversary of bigotry—or you become its silent ally.”

There is no room for tolerance or understanding when it comes to racism. I was culpable. I was complicit. NO MORE.

A day in the life of my moyamoya warrior

There is much to love about May. My oldest daughter came into the world on May 6. My grandson was born on May 14. My dad, my little brother, my nephew, my cousin, my best friend’s husband and my daughter from another mother all came into the world in May. There is much to love about the month of May.

Four years ago, in May, we marked the beginning of a different type of remembrance. On May 11, 2016, my youngest daughter was diagnosed with moyamoya disease, a rare, progressive, incurable cerebrovascular disease that can ultimately lead to strokes. She had her first brain surgery May 27, 2016. We came to learn that May is recognized as Stroke Awareness Month, and in a strange twist of fate, May 6, her sister’s birthday, is recognized as Moyamoya Disease Awareness Day. Four years ago, there was not as much to love about the month of May.

If I am honest, as much as I look forward to the birthday celebrations of those people whom I hold most dear, the month of May remains bittersweet for me. Sweet—that I am blessed to have my daughter in my life to share in those celebrations. Bitter—fully understanding that her life has been indelibly changed by this disease.  For all the appreciation I feel for my daughter’s life today, I am still a Mom. As a Mom, I would erase every hardship. I would eradicate this disease from her life if I only had that power.

But the power to eradicate this disease lies with others in our medical community. One group of specialists has already risen to this challenge—the neurosurgical community that has researched and developed lifesaving surgical interventions to provide alternative routes of blood flow to brains that are dying slowly from a lack of blood supply.

The challenge, however, is that outside of the neurosurgical community, the remainder of the medical community has little to no exposure to this disease. Moyamoya is considered “rare” across the neurological community, but it is virtually unheard of across the remainder of the medical community. The brain is the organ that controls messaging to the rest of the body. When the brain is injured, the rest of the body can feel that impact in some other way. Neurosurgeons do surgeries. Neurosurgeons are not meant to manage lifelong chronic diseases that impact other systems within the body. This leaves a tremendous gap in care for moyamoya patients and is a primary driver for my ongoing efforts to raise awareness.  

As we approach my daughter’s fourth anniversary of her diagnosis and our third year supporting moyamoya awareness activities, I decided the best way to spread awareness this month was to share a day in my daughter’s life. Four years later, she has found her way back to a new normal. It is not the normal we imagined in our earliest days after diagnosis, but it is a life that still manages to bring her joy despite her physical challenges. It is a life we are incredibly grateful for.

A day in the life of my moyamoya warrior

My daughter awakens on an average day around seven AM. Mornings are not easy for her, because sleep is not easy for her. She wakes after most nights still feeling tired. On good days, she can rise, take her blood pressure (laying and standing) and take her morning medications, before she starts the rest of her day. On more challenging days, she needs her husband to bring her medications to her and take time for them to start to work before she can start moving. On bad days, the act of rising from her bed triggers a transient ischemic attack (TIA). On those days, she typically will have to spend the rest of the day in bed or on the couch.

On a good day, she will check her calendar to see what activities need to be done that day. Her calendar has become the bible that helps her stay on track. After two strokes and two brain surgeries, she has both short and long-term memory deficits. Working with occupational therapists, she has developed a system that relies on notes in her calendar and alarms on her Apple Watch to ensure that she meets her tasks each day. She has alarms set to remind her to take her medicines; alarms set to remind her of all family appointments; alarms set to remind her to eat; alarms set to remind her to take and pick her son up from school; alarms set to remind her to pick up laundry, get gas, get groceries. These tools have proven invaluable in helping her stay on track.

The calendar provides a dual purpose. Not only does it work as a visual reminder of her day. It allows her to look ahead to plan out her day physically. She does this to ensure that she does not burn out early in the day which could force her to miss a more important event later in the day. If she has multiple big events in a day, she often needs to pick and choose, knowing that her body will only cooperate for so long.

Overstimulation to her brain in the form of crowds, activities that require intense concentration, or high stress activities both good and bad, are important factors in her calculations. These types of activities can trigger headaches and brain fatigue, which also translate to downtime. Her life has become a study in balancing her wants with her abilities. Some days she manages that balance better than others. A miscalculation can result in multiple days of forced down time. Over time we have come to understand that there are times she needs to choose joy and emotional wellbeing over physical well-being. She may pay for her choices physically, but those choices bring the intangibles that still make life worth living.

On a good day, she takes her son to school (which right now means she is teaching him, too), plays with her son and helps with his homework; she walks and feeds the dog; she does laundry; she helps pick up around the house; she does arts and craft activities; she volunteers at her son’s school; she does the dishes until somewhere between 4 and 5 in the afternoon.

Late afternoon is her witching hour. It is rare she has energy left at the end of the day to cook a meal, to play a game, to get her son in his pajamas. Some evenings it is even hard for her to hold a conversation. Evening is not her friend. On the days her calendar shows an important evening event, she has learned it is wisest to leave the rest of her calendar empty. That does not guarantee she will physically make it through a dinner with friends, a date night with her husband or a family dinner gathering, but filling her calendar almost definitely assures she will not be able to make it.

On a challenging day, she puts her energy into only those things needed to care for her son. Her husband remains the rock who steps in where she leaves off. On a bad day, she has a village of loved ones (myself, her dad, her sister and in-laws) who also jump in to lend a hand. She struggles with unnecessary guilt for needing additional help. The guilt of not doing enough or being enough for friends and family has often been the impetus for making decisions to push forward on activities that ultimately set her back.

There was also a time when it was far harder for her to see the blessings in her life. As she struggled through a long period of continual bad days, it was understandably hard for her to view her life through any other lens than loss. Four years in, while I know her heart still longs for so much more, she has worked her way into a rhythm that has allowed her to move from anger to acceptance and from grief to wellbeing. Her good, challenging and bad days are evening out. Four years in, she has found her way back to a new sense of “normal.”