TAKING A FALL

Surprise.  When my stocking feet first slipped off the top step and my head hit the floor.  "Ouch!"

Denial.  When I realized I was falling, feet first, body supine, down the stairs. "No! No! No! No! No!"

Shock.  When halfway down I realized I couldn't stop myself.  "SHIT! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Fear.  When I realized this was not a good thing and I was in danger of real damage.  "Don't break, don't break, don't break, please don't break anything!"

When I landed at the bottom of the stairs, Hub huddled over me, assessing my condition, I basically responded to the accident with my typical shock and trauma mode of crying and shaking and going into full-on anxiety over what had happened, what could have happened, what might still happen.

Then I took some deep breaths.  I realized I was really sore, really shaken, but also still whole.  Nothing broken; no concussion; I could move and stand and talk and even chuckle at the absurdity of this lapse in mindfulness.  I was reminded, again, of how one tiny slip-up in being attentive can result in an outcome of epically terrible proportions.

I had gone up to bed on Thanksgiving night when I remembered I'd adjusted the thermostat down to accommodate a hot kitchen full of people.  I wanted to re-set it, so I thought I'd just quickly run down and do that....not thinking of my slippery socks on the hardwood staircase.  I normally am religious about wearing soft-soled indoor shoes that grip the floor.  Not this time.  It only took one slip and down I went....all the way down...hitting each of the 14 steps with my right rib area, thigh, knee, and somehow jamming two fingers (which immediately turned purple!)

Hub said I looked like a log going down a flume run on Skid Road.  I felt like I was on a toboggan run...with no toboggan.  I think I heard myself scream at one point -- but not in joyful exhilaration.

I write now, three days later, still tender and bruised.  My knee is a little "glitchy" and I'm hoping nothing was torn on the inside.  Hub doesn't think so and he's sort of expert at knee stuff both professionally and personally, so I'm believing him.  Tylenol and Aleve have been my friends and I'm still so grateful not to have been injured more severely.

Also bruised, though, is my Ego.  I pride myself on my balance and flexibility from years of yoga practice.   I can probably be a bit insufferable about crediting yoga for everything good in my life, especially physically.  Hub thinks I should still credit it for the "muscle memory" of balance causing my body to fall in a way that resulted in minimal damage.  I could just as easily have completely lost balance and tumbled head over heels; I quake at the damage that might have ensued from that scenario!

But I am also humbled.  I have a home full of stairs.  I have always known we are one accident, injury, or illness away from not being able to easily navigate this house.  Sometimes I use the stairs as a workout opportunity, eschewing the handrail going up the stairs to ensure I'm not pulling up with my arms instead of using my quads to keep my forward momentum.  I typically use the rail going down, but not always, and definitely not when I'm carrying those bins of holiday decorations from the attic down to the living room.  Duh!

I'll be much more mindful from here on out.  Believe me, I've had a death grip on that handrail.  And my soft-soled inside boot/slippers are always on my feet when I'm navigating the stairway.

It was a wake-up call that accidents happen in a split second.  There is really no margin for error when it comes to carelessness.  My concern is whether I have to report this at my annual Medicare physical when they do that whole "Fall Assessment" thing.  I really don't think this was an aging issue. It was a stocking feet issue; a hardwood floor issue; a Karma issue...

Earlier in the day our almost 3 year old granddaughter had gotten her feet tangled in the Princess dress she refuses to take off (going on 2 months now) and tumbled down a few of our carpeted stairs.  She was so funny when she popped up and said, "I wolled and wolled!"  She wasn't hurt at all, so my laughter wasn't really cruel.  I just thought it was funny how she said it (the r's sounding like w's).   I was NOT laughing when I took my own tumble  -- until much later when I asked Hub, "Did I woll and woll?"

Karma is a bitch.

At least, that's the view from her.©

NOT HOLDING MY BREATH

It's election day for local races in our area. There is a woman I'm supporting for Mayor and a young man I'm supporting for City Council.  They are both progressive, with ideas for moving past the stodgy good old boy network here and bringing new life and vitality to city government in our city, which is growing in exciting ways, full of urban challenges, and still in some ways stuck in the last century.  I hope they will win.  And I'm not holding my breath.

A year ago, I was dressed in my Pantsuit Nation pantsuit, planning my election night victory party.  About this time in the afternoon a year ago I was euphoric about what I knew was just hours away...our first woman president and a woman I supported and admired at that.  We all know how that turned out.

There are days (OK, every day) when I am still suffering from shock.  I feel like my life turned inside out last November.

Everything I believed about my brother/sister Americans was proven wrong: Millions of them are perfectly OK with a sexual predator, racist, money-grubbing, corrupt, malignant narcissist in the White House.

What I thought I knew about my country was proven wrong: Patriotism doesn't extend much beyond flags and songs; voting is optional and some citizens bothering to educate themselves to be informed and not influenced by obvious media manipulations is rare.

The idea that even if lawmakers disagree on policy, but will definitely come together for the good of the nation when our ideals, norms, and even laws are disregarded to the detriment of the majority was a naive belief:  Partisanship and donor-pleasing is way more important than democracy.

No more starry-eyed optimism for me.  The past year has been a daily horror show of disappointment, disgust, and dismay.

So, I identified myself with the Resistance and wrote my letters, made my calls, marched in my marches, waved my signs, gathered with other activists for encouragement and strategizing.   I did as the Resistance instructed and got involved locally in races that actually effect my everyday life in my city and county.  But dirty political shenanigans have turned up here as well and I have to wonder how many will not bother to seek the truth, will buy the line of bull they see online, will just sit this one out.  (Voter turnout for the Primary for the election today was 24%.  Yep.  24% bothered to care a whit about who would run their city for the next four years.)

I'm going to my Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction meditation class tonight (read all about it on my Yoga blog) and when I get home, I'll flip on the TV and catch the election results from across the nation and in my own backyard.  I hope the good guys win.  But I'm not holding my breath.

At least, that's the view from here...

P.S.  I WAS WRONG!!!!!!!  Tuesday Night's election results were heartening and even joyous in many races across the country in cities, counties, states north, south, east, and west.  Get this...
women ran and won -- including a woman who decided to run when (and she beat him!) an incumbent Tweeted that he hoped all the women in the women's march would be home in time to make dinner.  B-bye, asshole.  And a transgender woman won, beating the guy who introduced and touted the "bathroom bill" which outlawed a transgendered person from using the public restroom of their choice.  Another transgendered woman won in her race, a Sikh man (first ever) won in his race, black men and women won, an anti-NRA, gun safety advocate beat a pro-gun guy.  Seattle elected a Lesbian mayor, and Washington flipped the only district where a Republican gave the Statehouse a majority, and now we join Oregon and California to form the "Blue Wall" on the west coast of states who have Democratic Governors, Statehouses, and Attorneys General.

In my local races, alas, my first-timer City Council candidate lost, but my incumbent won.  The Mayor's race is still too close to call, the two women separated by a mere handful of votes.  The worst result was a neighboring town electing the Trump equivalent as Mayor over an imminently qualified, experienced, and fine woman who happens to be my friend and yoga studio owner where I practice and write my other blog.  She has been on the Council for years and has served as Mayor there and it stymies me how his lies and innuendoes and dirty campaigning won the day....reminiscent of last November. Still...overall, my pessimism was proven wrong in a sweep of national activist voting.  Resistance Rising!

At least that's (the morning after) view from here...©

GROPING AND GRABBING IN THE HEADLINES

There's suddenly an epidemic of sexual harassment and assault!  Hollywood and Washington DC, especially, seem to be headline-blaring hot beds of lust-crazed men groping and grabbing.

Or...wait...maybe there is a slowly building, hopefully not short-lived, tendency (I can't make the parallel "epidemic" argument) toward people believing women (and some men) who are accusing men of harassment and assault.  It's been a long time coming and I have to wonder what caused the tipping point right now.

Could it be the collective disgust that our current president so brazenly bragged of the same harassment and assault and was still elected president?  Did the nation grow a conscience?

I swear, I don't know.  I'm stumped as to why, at this juncture, we are hearing of decades-long behaviors among prominent men and that there is some "news" in this.  Are we supposed to be shocked?

I'm not.  A handful of well-known men do not represent an anomalous cohort.  What's truly epidemic is the prevalence of this behavior and what any woman can tell you is, it happens all the time.  Studies show 1 in 3 women is sexually harassed at work; 1 in 5 sexually assaulted in college;  1 in 10 (fewer in some studies) raped in their lifetime, most often by an intimate or known partner.  So, yeah, there's that.

I did a little life review in light of all this recent revelation.  My journey of harassment and borderline assault started in junior high, grades 7-9.

I walked a mile to and from school and many times was whistled at, lured to get in vehicles, and followed by adult men.  My best friend encountered a man exposing himself sitting in a car near her home every day for a week.  We told our parents; they said to be careful and/or take a different route.

An 8th grade math teacher was known to leer and encourage girls to bend over in front of him to pick up an 'accidentally' dropped textbook.  We made a game of avoiding him.

A boy in my 8th grade science class leaned over one day in his stupid Madras plaid shirt and said "You're not much from the chin up, but from the neck down you're gangbusters!  Nice tits!"  I gotta think he heard or read this somewhere, but still, I took it to heart and from then on believed that my body was my only asset.  I can still hear him...and from that day I believed I was not pretty.

I was groped in the city swimming pool one summer almost every time I went.  I stopped going.

In high school there was more of the drive-by luring/jeering behavior (by adult males) as I walked every day to a friend's house after school to await my parent pick-up.  I don't even count the times teen boys grabbed and flirted and made suggestive comments and invitations, because that was so commonplace as to just be "normal" for the late 60's.  I started to feel like a target and started to feel afraid at times.

One school dance date night I found myself pinned to a sofa (after many, many rebuffs on my part) being told "I love you" and "let's do it" over and over.  I pushed him and kicked at him and he finally stopped, but was mad at me.  So, I apologized.  Then went to dinner, which I didn't eat, then jumped from his car in my driveway and cried myself to sleep.  I was disgusted, afraid, and furious.  I had no idea how to handle something like that.  I never told anyone.

At an after school job I worked in a small office with one older woman and three salesmen.  I typed and took dictation (poorly).  One day the woman was not there and two of the men wanted me to take dictation and laughed at me when I couldn't keep up.  When I stood up to leave they commented on my short skirt and "great legs".   I cried all the way home, embarrassed and ashamed.  I quit the job.

After high school,  I worked in a large office, as an assistant to a product buyer, where a man from a different department routinely walked around flirting with all the young women.  One day he came to my desk to chat, and asked me to stand up and turn around so he could see if my outfit would look good on his wife.  I did it, and then he laughed and said his wife wouldn't fill it out like I did.  I was humiliated and embarrassed, knowing the whole thing had been a ruse.  I avoided his future approaches.

I worked later in a small clinic where I learned to process x-rays in a darkroom.  The boss took many opportunities to supervise my work, leaning over me from behind, his body touching mine as I tried to squirm away.  I needed that job.  I put up with it.

At the community college I attended nights, I once found myself in a stairwell with a male student, who chased me down the stairs and grabbed my butt before running on ahead of me.

I recall going to a party with my husband where one of his medical school friends asked me to dance, then groped my breasts.

At the medical center I had a boss, an MD, who told me stories of his "open marriage", asked questions about my marriage and sex life (I didn't answer), tricked me into undergoing a bogus physical exam, lured me to a hotel room, and belittled me for rebuffing all his advances, then told me I should thank him for proving to myself that I loved my husband by not going along with him.  I told my supervisor and others, who were sympathetic but passively patted me on the back and shook their heads.  Nothing happened.  I quit that job.  (I've written about this in more detail in a previous blog post).

My mid-20's feminist awakening empowered me.  I was less naive and more savvy.  I learned to protect myself with street smarts and intuition.  But, still, too often I  felt like a target and I began to feel that any man was a potential rapist.  I was afraid too often, always searching for safety in my surroundings, how to get help if I needed it.  This is no way to live!

In my 30's, with motherhood and age, all of this seemed to calm down.  My life was lived mostly in groups of women and children and decent men who were respectful.  Later, my career in social work was in a female-centric workplace.

I guess I am lucky I was never truly physically injured in an assault, nor was I ever raped.  (I didn't go  away to college, but completed my undergrad degree over many years as an adult, so I don't have that experience to add to my story.)  But psychologically I was wounded just the same.  For much of my late girlhood and young womanhood, I felt like meat, like I didn't exist or have value beyond my body, that I was always in jeopardy, that my breasts were my best asset, that my sexuality was for the pleasure of men.  And that I was a prick tease, because flirting seemed to imply consent,  but I could not be promiscuous.  I still had a modicum of respect for myself, that finally feminism celebrated.   Feminism was such a relief.  And if I was angry a lot, and hated most men as a gender for awhile, that was a necessary part of healing the wound too.

So, yeah, I'm delighted all these guys are getting their comeuppance.  But it's a drop in the bucket.  Ask any waitress, Target checker, secretary behind the desk, schoolgirl, nurse, doctor, lawyer, teacher, writer, baker, executive....you get it.  Ask any woman anywhere.

We've all got stories to tell and there won't be any headlines or multimillion dollar settlements for us. And most of our harassers will never pay any price at all for the damage done.  They might even be elected President.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit: REX.Shutterstock Harvey Weinstein.