Boston Globe's Photos in Memory of Tiananmen Square

I found this page utterly riveting (remember so vividly watching the television in horror...).

Remembering Tiananmen 20 Years Later

Tiller, "Operation Rescue" and Bonhoeffer

The Tiller murder has caused the pro-choice movement to legitimately question what the label "pro-life" means. Meanwhile vocal pro-lifers are screaming: "That's not who we are!" But I wonder... because in a cold, calculating logic, killing abortionists makes a kind of sick sense if you believe that abortions kill innocent babies.

I've spent years next door to that kind of conviction and so did Jon... We explored the edges of what it meant to really believe that abortion was murder (similar to how I really believed people were going to hell and couldn't sit home comfortably in America while millions of Muslims were flashing Fastrak passes to hell). I mean, if babies are being killed in the womb through no choice of their own, isn't that... murder? Wouldn't killing an abortionist be "defense of an innocent life"?

Jon and I were active in Operation Rescue back in the late 80s and early 90s. Jon spent Easter weekend (1990) in jail along with 300 Christians for blockading an abortion clinic in downtown Los Angeles. I stood with picketers on the sidelines with a baby in a backpack and a toddler in a stroller. An angry pro-choice woman walked by me, pointed at Johannah in the pack, and said to a friend of hers (so I could hear her), "There's one that should have been aborted."

The protest that weekend was peaceful. Think of "sit-in" and you'll have the right idea. Hundreds of men and women sat down on the steps and across the front of the clinic, singing worship songs, mostly, and praying. We'd been instructed to not shout epithets or to engage in verbal battering or debate. The idea was to follow the lead of Ghandi or MLK Jr. Civil (meaning "with civility" in addition to "civic") disobedience meant we would not create violent conditions of any kind and would receive without retaliation any violence dished out against us.

The protesters were rounded up and arrested, of course. The police used num-chuks to wrench the arms of the OR participants behind their backs, for the cuffing. Jon had a strained wrist for years following.

I still remember going to court for the arraignment. Jon had been front and center on the cover of the Orange County Register with his arms raised in worship in front of a clinic. The court found him guilty of trespassing and let him off for time served (LA County jail for a weekend with 300 others who worshiped God over stale burritos).

The heyday of Operation Rescue resulted in little rescue. I mean, we heard about women who turned back from particular clinics. But that wouldn't have prevented them from seeking out other ones. Over time, the arrests led to longer record sheets and fathers in particular, who had families to feed (usually large ones created without birth control), found it harder and harder to risk their jobs (jail time especially created a tension between convictions and practicalities) in order to stop abortion.

Yet the zealously committed (the ones who really did to their very bones see abortion as the murder of an innocent child) couldn't bear that all this effort resulted in... well, nothing. No changes in legislation, no awakening in the culture, no real shift in values among those who professed to be pro-life (you'd be astonished how many pro-lifers have either had abortions or have paid for them secretly).

The first tentative conversations I heard about murdering abortionists happened over dinner at one of the Operation Rescue leader's homes. Jon and I sat among the large family of kids with our own growing one (there were at least 9 kids among us) and Jeff (staffer) said that clearly the movement needed to escalate. Passive resistance was not effective. There needed to be graphic symbols and social/shaming pressure on abortionists to make them give up their abortion practices. This is when picketing abortionist homes became popular (using those graphic signs of aborted fetuses). But Jeff went further. He said if that didn't work, he could understand the need to take this cause all the way to murder (though quickly added that he didn't yet feel led that way himself).

It was a breath-taking statement followed by breathtaking reality when we heard of the first abortionist murder not many months later. Jon and I were rocked back on our heels. The leadership in OR was quick to distance themselves saying they didn't approve of those tactics.... but really? One of our best friends, an avid pro-lifer and missionary, shared on the QT with us that he felt this act was justified, and used Bonhoeffer to defend the position.

From there, I began to hear the drip drip drip of private, quiet support for these heroes, regardless of how the publicity from the pro-life camp was framed for news media and pro-choicers. Behind the public statements of 'we condemn this activity' was a deeper sense of 'this is what it comes to when you follow Christ' and Bonhoeffer served the purpose of theological support very well.

During my thesis writing, I ran across numerous articles about Bonhoeffer and how he did or didn't relate to the pro-life movement and their choices to oppose what they see as immoral (as evil). Most scholars decried the Bonhoeffer connection (saying that those relying on his example hadn't really bothered to study his theology or to examine his historical context or even his role in the resistance!).

Since Bonhoeffer is my main theological squeeze, I thought I'd share a bit about what I learned and read as a way to off-set this erroneous connection between being "pro-life" in an act of civil disobedience, versus being pro-life in an act of "conspiring to overturn evil in a nation."

First of all, Bonhoeffer's mission to overthrow the Fuhrer was philosophically supported by the similar objectives of a concert of nations in the war effort. Bonhoeffer didn't act as a lone agent of justice, but rather cooperated with a consensus of justice-seeking governments, individuals and organizations bent on ending the evil plot of the Third Reich (a mission created by one individual leading a nation and abusing his power to coerce the extermination of entire races, as well as taking over sovereign nations through acts of war).

Though erroneously called "the culture wars," the debate about abortion is not a war! It isn't even war-like. The right to an abortion is rooted in respect for the individual's ability to exercise choice at the deepest level of personal conviction. The choice to have an abortion is not coerced by a tyrant, but is made within the privacy of an individual woman's heart, in concert with her beliefs, her physician's recommendations and her spiritual/ethical values. To prevent this "choice" is to coerce. Certainly the baby (or fetus - you choose) has no choice and is coerced into birth or death based on that choice (the crux of the debate is really - does the fetus/baby have rights? Not, is it a baby or is it alive?). Still, the question isn't about the abortionist. It's about what individuals believe about conception and pregnancy (which is nothing like the death camps of Nazi Germany!).

Whether or not you agree with abortion, and even if you see the fetus as a baby from conception, abortions are not required of any woman and therefore, it is within the context of freedom that she makes that decision (even if it disagrees with your point of view).

Hitler's Germany coerced Jews to be exterminated, required ordinary citizens to participate in their executions and eliminated the possibility of difference of opinion on the topic of the "Jewish question." There is nothing even remotely similar about the conditions in Germany versus the conditions related to the abortion debate in America today.

Secondly, the enemy in World War 2 was a specific target with tyrannical power. Bonhoeffer didn't get a gun and stalk concentration camp guards. His participation in the assassination plot had to do with cutting off the source of power, not merely targeting local neighbors caught in the program of destruction. Killing prison guards would not have resulted in the end of the war or the death camps.

Killing abortionists is like killing a prison camp guard. It doesn't actually eliminate what a pro-life person sees as evil. It may stop abortions that day, but it doesn't change the nature of the laws, or address the reasons that abortion exists. To identify with Bonhoeffer's theological convictions means to wrestle through the complexity of what the topic is, rather than glossing over differences and justifying the murder of individuals acting in freedom.

For the record, I am pro-life. That does mean all life: including the lives of doctors who provide abortions as well as the young women who are overcome with the deepest of agony in making such a difficult decision as well as the babies (that's what I call them) in utero. Bonhoeffer's admonition to future generations was to wrestle through the ethical dilemmas of our time and to take full responsibility for our actions in shaping history. Killing a few abortionists over a thirty year period has more in common with vigilante justice than deeply explored ethical dilemmas and risk taking action for the common good.

The path to authenticity

is paved with lies, betrayals and broken hearts. Harsh words, but I'm not even talking about the people who do that stuff to us. I'm talking about the lying, betraying and breaking of hearts we do to ourselves. It seems like an inordinate number of my friends are in relationship crisis right now (like attracts like), so I'm thinking about what it means to be healthy, authentic, rightside up in all of our lives.

Awhile back I realized that I spent a good deal of my time lying. Oh, I'm not the kind of person who would lie about something like, "Did you leave the milk out to spoil?" I'd say, "Why yes I did. Sorry." I'm talking about this other kind of lying where a person you're afraid of says, "I expect this of you" and you go along with it, not because you want to or believe in it, but to appease that person, to stay on someone's good side. I'm talking about lies like, "I"m happy for you" when really, your heart is being ripped into tiny pieces and you're pretending to be brave when you really want to put dead rabbits in their mail boxes. I mean the lies where you protect or hide part of yourself chronically, secretly.

When you get into the habit of lying, you even start to believe you're telling the truth. You convince yourself that you do want to be inconvenienced, that you're a generous person offering care and support (not that you're a weak person who has no boundaries). It gets even more complicated when you mix in some positive results. You compromise on one issue (because all relationships require compromise, so we're told) and believe you did it out of sincerity and a desire to be loving, when in fact you were hoping to buy some kind of "free from abuse" pass instead.

Compromise birthed from a desire to avoid being punished is not love. It's not even compromise - it's capitulation. Love, in healthy relationships, is genuinely recognizing someone else's needs/likes/habits/desires are different from yours, and that you can celebrate and support those choices, even while possibly not embracing them for yourself. Love is not giving up what you need or violating your conscience or hiding your true self as a way to keep the peace, to paper over differences, to keep the sex good, to preserve the intact family, to avoid ruining your public reputation, to outrun criticism.

Authenticity has such a ring to it, though, doesn't it? Like, who doesn't want to be known as "authentic" or "genuine"? Still, it takes a lot of work once you're in a relationship to preserve your "self." I remember Mira Kirschenbaum wrote that you live a lifestyle, not a relationship. The relationship is a support to a life, not the other way around. When you find that your lifestyle, your life's investments and interests, your values and aspirations, your habits and intentions don't match up to your mate's, the strain to the relationship can be profound.

In a healthy space, those differences are not up for negotiation. They need to be looked at squarely, then taken seriously. If you have a significant overlap in basic outlook and lifestyle, the finer points can be negotiated from the point of view of how to help your mate get what he or she wants out of life even if it isn't what you want. That can't happen if one is a controller, or if what you love/like fundamentally clashes with the value/belief system of the other person.

What I notice in me is that relational peace has been such a driving concern of my life, I've not known where I begin and end. My yearning to extend grace (believing it would be reciprocally extended to me) has led me into lying to myself, betraying some of my deepest felt convictions, and even to heartbreak (not attending to myself well enough for the sake of what I thought was love). I'm noticing even in my friends going through this same kind of sifting... authenticity at first looks like showing up in your own life. Then you can begin the hard work of saying what it is you need and want because you start to know what that is. Expressing that to a partner after years of "going along" takes so much time. It can't be worked out in a few weeks or conversations or therapy sessions. Sometimes it can't be worked out. But it has to happen in order for love to be real.

It's hard to know what you really want when coming out of the fog of appeasement. It seems to me that the first tentative steps to authenticity sound more like: "Not that, not that, not that..."

Overwhelmed with email

The response to my Bonhoeffer talk has been nothing short of astonishing. The depth of questions, comments, sharing and interest has startled me. I didn't really expect anyone to watch a 47 minute talk on a computer monitor let alone engage the ideas. Thank you for being interested!

Over the next week or so, I want to explore some of the feedback to Bonhoeffer. Excellent thoughts, ideas and of course, now new questions. :) If you have ideas or thoughts you want to explore with me, please post them in the comments section or send me an email juliecinci [at] gmail [dot] com. Also, yes, I enjoy speaking and if you want me to come to where you are, I will.

Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity

This is an audio of my talk from the Truth Voice (Subversion) Conference in Dayton last weekend. We have a video of it, but right now only 12 minutes are posted. I'll put up the embed once they have re-uploaded it. I think audio is less distracting anyway (I use my hands so much! lol).

Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity

The meat of the material really gets going after minute 13. I give an introduction that includes personal story and some biographical detail of Bonhoeffer's life. I'd welcome any engagement with these ideas. Am slowly putting together a little dossier of materials, insights, writings and stories to include eventually in some sort of book. Yes, the elusive book goal! :)

Anyway, enjoy!

Here I am!

Julie Bogart: Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prison from Virgil Vaduva on Vimeo.

The way it is

I've started about five blog entries in the last several weeks. Here's the thing. I don't do well with secrecy, with protecting my inner life from view. I'm a bit of a soul-exhibitionist, in case you hadn't noticed. Yet these last several months have required a bit of delicacy in what I share. I've slowly let the story out with those who've asked privately. I'm finally to a place now where I can share more. So let me do that so you know what's going on with me.

In January, my husband and I separated. We've had a little back and forth since then (where he's lived at home again) but as of April, the separation became certain. We are living apart and sharing the kids. No one does this kind of thing lightly. The articles, books, radio show hosts that talk about divorce being too easy these days and how marriage partners dump long-term commitment for a younger model or because they're bored and want an "easy way out," are insensitive jerks. They're living in some fantasy I call "ideological-land" where they create a narrative to back up their defensive apologetics to describe the world as they would like it to be. It would be far more helpful if they stopped talking about how easy it is to leave a marriage and focused on how heroic so many people are for staying in them while in excruciating, soul-alienating pain.

Truth is, I have yet to meet anyone who has cavalierly tossed a marriage aside. Who does that? The ones that do must not be well-publicized, because by now I would have met this overwhelming majority. Rather, most people I've met, read, had the privilege of knowing who've been through separation and/or divorce, agonize over the loss of history, shared story, children, couple identity, joint assets and even that happiest of experiences: familiarity. For longterm marriages like ours (24 years), upsetting the apple cart of our family's story has been the most emotionally exhausting and painful thing we've ever done.

It's a myth to think that people move on to avoid the hard work of repairing their marriages. Did you know statistically, for instance, that married men who have affairs are far more likely to return to their wives than to leave them for the other woman? FAR more likely. Even when they are still in love with the other woman! The reasons to stay married are compelling and powerful, even when there's violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, emotional and verbal abuse, and extramarital affairs. So imagine some of the lesser reasons couples become dissatisfied (growing apart, financial instability, fundamental differences in lifestyle or religious outlook, trauma in the form of illness or wayward child, job loss...) and realize that people do tend to figure out ways to put up with a lot of crap for the sake of the "institution" or more poignantly, their families that they love, or more cynically, their fear of the unknown.

In fact, now that I'm in the whirlpool of marital dysfunction, I can't believe the divorce rate isn't higher! One of the most startling discoveries during this process is how many friends have shared their marital stories with me and how many suffer... a lot. Yet they stay married. (Many of them can't think of anything else to do since they haven't worked in 20+ years, either). Clearly the social pressure to protect the status quo "works" (I use that term loosely) a lot better than most of us give it credit for.

In my case, having been a child of divorce, I've never ever ever imagined that my life would include a separation. In fact, if I had one goal in my life that was immovable, it was to make it to the end with Jon. And that is still my hope... that somehow out of the ashes, we'll be able to rebirth a marriage worth sharing, keeping and protecting. For now, though, I live in a shattered dream state. It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy. I thought you should know.

Finding yourSelf

In the 70's, I "got saved" during the "I Found It" campaign. My very Jewish community put bumper stickers on their cars that said, "We never lost it."

Sometimes when I think about "finding myself" (that birthright of all Californians), I waver between these two feelings: "Aha! There I am! I found it!" At other times, I cynically look at the ways other people try to define me, tell me how to feel, what I ought to know, who I ought to be... and I feel like saying, "Buddy, I never lost it. I know who I am."

I don't know why it is that I'm compelled to work on mySelf. (Is it DNA? culture? growing up near the ocean? my astrological sign: Scorpio? my myers briggs temperament: ENFP? being parented by a mom who read I'm Okay; You're Okay at a critical juncture in my teen years - "You're in your child!" "But Mom... I AM a child!"?) So many people are completely able to disregard themSelves. They make big mistakes, they have affairs, they rage, they get addicted, they overeat, they lose jobs, they obsess over porn, they shame and abuse, they cavalierly break promises... and still don't go to private therapy, aren't compelled to drink cafe latte at Barnes and Noble poring over books in the "help thyself" section, seeking an answer for how they allowed themselves to wander into the black hole of dysfunction, abuse, and secrecy.

Sometimes these perpetrators of relationship dysfunction pop into the local counselor's office for a tune up (guilt combined with "relationship pressure" leads to a couple of sessions for many of these types). But that sustained curiosity for how their souls function, for why brokenness attends their most intimate relationships, for how they cause pain to the people they say they love is absent. In some cases, the partner who had an affair and returns to his wife is so relieved to escape detection, he lies in therapy! Not much self-understanding getting through there!

And weirdly, even with dramatic measures, some of these people continue on their self-creating, medicating, papering over, reframing, bubbling optimism ways about their newfound selves rather than the necessary deconstruction of their cavalier mistreatment and secrecy that would bring genuine healing to the people they've hurt.

Meanwhile, I know women who didn't have the affair, but who have read every book on affairs to try to understand the husband who wants to be forgiven and to come back (he doesn't read the books - she does!). I know men who were berated and beaten down by controlling wives and the ex husband lands in therapy for ten years, while the ex-wife carries on secure in their old friendships with seemingly few consequences. I know verbally abused wives who spend money, time and energy on becoming strong enough to withstand the nutbrain who will dog her life with complications for as long as they share children, giving away valuable hours and brain cells to the blackhole of brokenness, instead of her artistic talents or her generous nature.

I'm the therapy and self-help section gal. I've spent countless (really!) hours working on mySelf, wanting to understand how to be good, decent, fair, healthy, assertive, self-protecting, kind, generous, forgiving, line-drawing, boundary-making, communicative... hours I will never get back for writing books, painting paintings, horse-back riding, and surfing. The quest to know mySelf, of course, has yielded good things too. I have a firmer sense of what I will and won't tolerate, of what it means to hold out for healthy relationships, of what it means to be self-reliant in that "I know I can count on me" way.

But today... I'm sick of finding mySelf. I've put in a lot of time on this endeavor and so much of that work has been to shore up relating to broken people not similarly invested. I surveyed the landscape of my relationships. My yoga instructor gave us the following meditation on Wednesday:

I will protect myself from people who take more than they give.

I will surround myself with loving, giving people.

If you aren't invested enough in giving more than you take, you're on notice. I won't waste more of my life working on mySelf to adapt to you. Finding oneSelf is about becoming a peaceful, whole, authentic, ethical person of substance who can see across the chasm to another person's pain (particularly if you caused it)... and then doing something about it.

My mother, five years after her divorce, gave me the greatest gift of all. She told me that she knew the divorce caused me pain. She also knew the pain would come in waves for the rest of my life. She said, "Julie, while I'm living, you may come to me at any time with your pain related to the divorce and I will hear you. I will hold it for you and let you express it. There will never be a day when I am done listening to you or what you've suffered."

That's a woman who knows herSelf.

On being a mother

Oprah featured moms on her show a couple weeks ago. The two "experts" who "wrote the book" were bubbly, sharp, blond business-type women who wore chic outfits that had never seen spit up or spaghetti sauce stains. They rallied the audience into a frenzy of confessions about motherhood which variously decried the hardships of this "first order of creation" occupations.

"I hate the fluids of babies: pee, spit up, spilt milk, snot."

"I cried the day I drove to the car dealership to buy a mini-van."

"There were days I wanted to 'send them back to the hell from whence they came'."

On and on the tales of woe pored from the mouths of devoted parents. Video clips of small kids on bikes, disastrous laundry rooms, "stuffed to the gills" cars with seats and sippy cups floated by, making one wonder why anyone would sign up for the task of mothering, let alone sustain it for decades. Moms confessed things, too, like the one who said she didn't want to wake the sleeping baby by stopping the car for a potty break, but she needed to pee so badly, she took a Pampers diaper, stuck it between her legs and let it "go" as she drove. Yeah, I thought that was way more information than I needed to know about her, too.

There was a surprising lack of joy represented in the discussion of mothering. Mostly being a mom was held up as the hardest job on earth, the most demanding, the most self-sacrificing, the most misunderstood and overlooked work on the planet. A kind of shared martyrdom, underdog status united everyone and Oprah, never having mothered anyone, had to declare that indeed, they were right. Mothering equalled sainthood (which we all know implies burning at the stake and smiling through it!).

With my kids in the room, listening to the pain of childbirth and engorged breasts, the relentlessness of little voices, the demandingness of the small child's need for food, sleep and comfort, the annihilation of a woman's identity and sense of self, I couldn't take it any more. After all, far from being the hardest job in the world, mothering has been the happiest, most satisfying, life-giving, joyful, rewarding, fulfilling and (dare I admit it?) easiest job I've ever had. Oh sure, the hours suck, there are anguishes deeper than the ocean, there are seasons (years!) of such utter exhaustion you can't imagine ever being rested again... but all those discomforts are easily and unequivocally overturned by my children, themselves.

I punched pause on the DVR to set the record straight:

"Being your mother has been the single greatest joy and privilege of my life: not a burden, not a perennial unrelenting source of emotional and physical agony, not the 'hardest job in the world', not the knee-capping blow to my 'adult individuality' nor has it been the thankless, under-appreciated, most overlooked profession these mothers would have you believe. In fact, my sense of personhood, identity and self-knowledge have grown more through mothering than any business I've started, any degree I've earned, any relationship I've pursued. I thank YOU for being the best people to ever happen to me."

Then I spewed in bullet style the privileges and unique joys that came with mothering them (all five of them, each one popping into my life like a fresh daisy, every two years for 10 years).

Cuddling: Being your mom means I got to have someone to cuddle non-stop for 12 years while sleeping with at least one of you at a time, nursing you, carrying you, holding you, helping you in and out of car seats, backpacking you.

Sleeping together: There is nothing more divine than a baby who falls asleep on your chest while you fall asleep and the whole world stops while mother and tiny child become fused as one content, quiet, shared being. No meditation, yoga, prayer circle, private retreat has ever come close to providing me with the depth of peace, pleasure and abiding hope that sleeping with a baby has given me.

Playing: Board games and hopscotch, dress-ups, face paint, finger paint, walks in the woods, trips to the zoo, picking up bugs, rolling down hills, blowing bubbles, eating too many cookies, watching Arthur on PBS, rewatching Disney movies, cards, chasing a dog in the backyard, trampoline jumping, creek splashing, snowman building, skiing, middle of the night slumber parties, bike rides, soccer in the backyard, soccer on the official fields, ultimate frisbee... What adult gets to do any of this on his or her 9-5 job? Talk about luxury!

Conversation: Oh it starts off good - why do bubbles float? How did I get red hair? Why doesn't Santa Claus visit Moroccans, too? But boy does it keep getting better! I've learned about human rights, veganism, Role Playing Games, Shakespeare, Klingon, fashion, exercise, lacrosse, birds, fantasy novels, conspiracy theories, atheism, feminism, linguistics, alternative monetary systems for world peace (serious!) and more by talking to my kids.

Mothering is the job that means taking the dog and kids for a walk in the woods is on task. It's the one where teatimes and picnics are considered achievements worth trumpeting to friends and family. It's the job where even on bad days, someone tells you "Hey, I love you Mom" and then hugs you so tightly, you believe it.

There is no comparison to the jobs I've had in business and writing. Sure, affirmation and personal achievement are nice... but they are nothing like the bond that comes from the devotion of loving people who live every day looking for you to see them for who they are. I've found that the easiest thing in the world is to love my kids. All it takes is entering into their lives on their terms and giving all I've got. I get it all back and more.

Yes, there have been nights where I cried myself to sleep over a non-stop crying toddler or a teenager's emotional pain. There are times when I feel out of control and invisible and fearful for my child's future or welfare. But the rewards of mothering so far outweigh any of its challenges, I can't relate to the repeated refrains of "how hard I have it" simply because I chose to have five kids. Instead, I just feel perennially lucky that my lifestyle has included such richness, tenderness and connection to immortality through my children.

I think it's time we blew the whistle. Mothering isn't a job. It's a privilege.

Wikiklesia: Volume Two

Taking Flight: Reclaiming the Female Half of God’s Image. A Journey of Freedom and Reconciliation

The Wikiklesia Project: Volume Two

I'm one of the editors on this project and would love for any of you who feel qualified and interested, to submit articles. All details are on the website.

"It's Good to Be Free"

About a year ago, I went to California to begin my midlife crisis. I didn't consciously plan that activity, but it appeared on the itinerary anyway. I felt an inner "snap." The band holding my life together burst.

I turned the "purse of my life" upside down, gave it a good shake, and all the jumbled contents scattered across the floor in every direction: lipsticks, loose change, market receipts, old "to do" lists, paper clips, keys, sticks of gum, reading glasses... No way to squeeze it all back in and I didn't want to. The purse had become cluttered, crowded and unmanageable. High time to clean it out.

So I've spent a lot of this year sorting. The sorting process is tricky. I'm used to saving stuff, pushing it down, cramming it in to be looked at later. But later had arrived. I took it an item at a time: "Does this go back in?" Sometimes, even if I wanted to keep a thing, it had spoiled and I had to simply toss it and face the truth: it was not what I wanted after all.

It takes radical self-trust to believe in your own perceptions. For years, I've been trained not to do that. Someone outside of me can and should tell me what is good for me, what I ought to tolerate, what I must be willing to live with—as though someone else knows, someone who isn't inside me. But a year ago, on a beach, alone with my sacred cigarette, I knew I couldn't live like that any more. I had to take the first awkward steps toward reclaiming my voice, toward sorting my life.

I remember last April walking the streets of San Francisco while the Final Four were playing, hurrying back to a hotel room to catch the second half where my team, the mighty UCLA, went down. A bit metaphorical, after all. That school bound to make it with Kevin Love at the helm, fell apart. Expectations weren't enough to carry them. I knew I couldn't make it on reputation and habit alone.

Still, it had been such an incredible ten days in California: soaring with emotion, relief, freedom, and peace - an awakening to how life could be, yet with a dawning awareness of the cost to get it to be that way all the time.

A couple weekends ago, while little Villanova stunned the nation beating Pitt, I had a similar, and yet new, feeling. I was also out of town, watching a game on a screen in a sports bar at a hotel. This time, the team I rooted for won. The evening felt unburdened by my past year. It strangely liberated me. A flood of feelings followed: relief, escape, confidence, optimism, and admittedly, fatigue, too. In that space, I felt free to let down, to recuperate. I had spent myself, but I also liked what was emerging from the depths: my own, original (though still small) voice, undiluted by what others tell me to think or be. I let it all go - the bad, the good, the confusion. I embraced myself and knew I'd be okay.

"But the little things they make me so happy
All I want to do is live by the sea
Little things they make me so happy
But it's good it's good it's good to be free..." (Oasis)