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The Pink FEAR-ies Strike Again

Since Duncan’s favorite color is pink, I get pretty pissed when I see stories about the high-and-mighty going nuts because they mistake a color for a gender or sexual orientation.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwQ0fVShIZk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

The latest example is this J. Crew ad, where a mom is painting her son’s toe-nails hot pink:

People have been going absolutely crazy over this, suggesting that the boy will be scarred for life and need thousands of dollars of counseling when he gets older.

And then there’s the fear that — shudder — the kid will grow up to be gay. American society will decay around the edges, and we’ll all be dope-slapped for this on Judgement Day.

I always knew nail polish was nothing but trouble, a bottle of sin dropped on our laps by Satan himself.

Here are a few bullshit comments from an article in Yahoo’s Lookout blog:

“Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your ‘innocent’ pleasure,” Dr. Keith Ablow wrote in a Fox News op-ed. “If you have no problem with the J. Crew ad, how about one in which a little boy models a sundress? What could possibly be the problem with that?”

Erin Brown of the Media Research Center took the criticism a step further — after being sure to remind readers that J. Crew is a fashion favorite of First Lady Michelle Obama — accusing the company of exploiting young Beckett to advance the cause of “liberal, transgendered identity politics.”

Good fucking grief.

There are more reasoned comments in that article, stuff that I agree with:

Sarah Manley, who set off a similar firestorm last Halloween after posting photos of her young son dressed up as his unconventional idol: Daphne from “Scooby Doo,” said of the J.Crew ad, “If the roles had been reversed and the photo…had been of a little girl playing in the mud with trucks, nobody would have batted an eye.”

You know what? she’s absolutely right, as is  Jeanne Sager, who wrote the following on the parenting blog The Stir:

“So go back and look at that picture in the J.Crew ad, will you? What do you see? Do you see pink nail polish on a boy? Or do you see a little boy named Beckett, with beautiful blond curls, and a mom who looks like she is impossibly in love with her kid, in the very best way? Because that’s what I see.”

That’s what I see, too.
This is one of those issues where Duncan has taught me a lot. 
He has a pink winter hat and a pink knitted coin pouch. When a priest saw him wearing the hat last year, a look of concern came over him. “Well, I guess there’s still time,” he said.

One Sunday, Duncan showed the school principal his coin pouch. “That’s an interesting color,” she said. The pouch was stuffed with coins Duncan couldn’t wait to put in the poor box.

I once asked Duncan why pink is his favorite color. His answer: “Because girls like pink. And I like girls.” Innocent words from a 7-year-old boy.

And yet there are those who try to tell me this is dangerous. He could grow up gay.

This is how you start a child down the path of social anxiety, pain and dysfunction. You take something as innocent as a color choice and start suggesting there’s something wrong with him.

When I was a kid, I got hassled over the more old-fashioned stuff, like being overweight. I also kept believing in Santa Clause longer than the other kids my age. Being fat meant being damaged, unworthy of the same respect everyone else got. In high school, I used to watch teachers belittle students who dressed like hippes. The kids were drug-injecting wastoids as far as some of the teachers were concerned. I knew some who were, but I knew others who were not.

Make a kid feel stupid over how they look or what they wear and after awhile they’re probably going to start believing they are damaged goods.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the pink fear crowd have their hearts in the right place. They just want children to be happy and grow into “normal” and happy adults.

But their thinking is flawed.

Here’s my take on the J. Crew ad: It looks like a typical fashion ad: over the top, depicting people with overly big smiles. But it’s harmless.

Hell, I remember painting my own finger nails red as a teenager because I wanted to look like people in the glam metal bands that were all the rage in the 1980s. It was harmless. And trust me, it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for girls. I was having no luck with the opposite sex in high school, mind you, but nail polish had nothing to do with that.

As for Duncan, he can like whatever color he wants to like. If you have a problem with that, you can come talk to the boy’s ugly, still overweight Dad.

I’ll probably tell you you’re being shallow and judgemental. I might even tell you you’re being a dickhead.

You’ve been warned.

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Change Is Pain, But Not Impossible

Last night’s 12-Step meeting reminded me of just how hard real change is. I used to measure change by who won the next election. I’ve realized that the only real change that matters is within myself. Naturally, it’s the hardest, most brutal kind of change to achieve.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqkxDgCIsOw&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Last night’s AA Big Book reading focused on steps 8, 9 and 10:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

The first few steps were much easier for me. Admitting I was powerless over my addiction was a piece of cake. I was so desperate by then that the admission was the reason I walked into an OA meeting. It takes desperation to walk into a room full of people you’re certain are crazy fanatical freaks. That’s exactly how they came across. Then I realized I was just like them and was in just the right place. Nearly three years in, I’ve determined that we’re not crazy and we’re not freaks. We’re just TRYING to be honest with ourselves and those around us. It makes us uncomfortable and edgy because it’s much more natural for an addict to lie. People like us are weird and often intolerable.

Acknowledging a higher power was easy enough, because I’ve always believed in God. But this step brought me closer to realizing my relationship with God was all wrong. It was transactional in nature: “Please God, give me this or help me avoid that and I’ll be good…” Because of OCD that was raging out of control, I tried to control everything. I couldn’t comprehend what it meant to “Let go and let God.” Once I got to that point it got easier, though I still struggle with a bloated ego and smoldering will.

Still, that stuff is easy compared to steps 8-10. To go to people you’ve wronged is as hard as it gets. You come face to face with your shame and it’s like you’re standing naked in front of people who have every reason to throw eggs and nails at you. At least that’s how it feels in the beginning.

Step 9 has been especially vexing. There are some folks I can’t make amends with yet, though Lord knows I’ve tried.

I feel especially pained about my inability to heal the rift with my mother and various people on that side of the family. But it’s complicated. Very complicated. I’ve forgiven her for many things, but our relationship is like a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. Those pieces have a lot to do with boundaries and OCD triggers. It’s as much my fault as it is hers. But right now this is how it must be.

I wish I could make amends with the Marley family, but I can’t until they’re willing to accept that from me. I stabbed them in the gut pretty hard, so I’m not sure of what will happen there.

But there have been some unexpected gifts along the way.

Thanks to Facebook, I’ve been able to reconnect with people deep in my past and, while the need to make amends doesn’t always apply and the relationships can never be what they were, all have helped me heal. There’s Joy, Sean’s widow. She’s remarried with kids and has done a remarkable job of pushing on with her life. She dropped out of my world for nearly 14 years — right after Sean’s death — until recently. The contents of our exchange are private, but this much I can tell you: I was wrong all these years when I assumed  she hated my guts and wanted nothing more to do with me. I thought my old friend Dan Waters hated my guts too. But here we are, back in touch.

Miracles happen when you get out of your own way. But it sure can hurt like a bitch.

I’ve also half-assed these steps up to this point. There’s a much more rigorous process involved. You’re supposed to make a list and only approach certain people you’ve wronged after talking to your step-study sponsor. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. I just started the Big Book study in January, so I have a long way to go.

It’s funny how, when we’re still in the grip of our addictions, we dream of the day when we’ll be clean. There’s a false expectation that all will be right with the world. But that’s never the case.

I’ve heard from a lot of addicts in recovery who say some of their worst moments as a human being came AFTER they got sober. 

That has definitely been the case for me. I’d like to think I’m a better man than I used to be, but I still screw up today. And when I do, the results are a spectacular mess.

But while I’m far from done with this stuff, I can already say I’m happier than I used to be.

Change is hard and painful, but when you can move closer to it despite that, the results are beyond comprehension.

I guess the old cliche — no pain, no gain — is true.

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Sometimes, Un-Friending Is The Right Thing

A friend of mine is angry and hurt because another friend deleted him and me from his Facebook friends list. The hurt is understandable: We grew up in Revere with this guy, and we went through a lot together.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3XGbYvyi3sW9L5fzWluoAv]

I sent our friend an e-mail asking why he un-friended us. His answer to me specifically was that this blog is dredging up too many painful memories from the past:

Bill your OCD diaries became to much for me. I felt the pain of the losses of Sean and Michael creeping back into the fabric of my life and some of the held secrets that still have not been spoken. Hence, I am not locking you out of my life, just out of Facebook. If I could filter THE OCD DIARIES out of Facebook and keep you I would do that in a minute. Please remember this is about me and my healing and is not meant to be offensive.

I’ve covered the Facebook un-friending subject before — specifically how my OCD had latched onto my Facebook friend count. Ridiculous, you say? Of course. But having OCD is all about worrying about ridiculous things. When I wrote the first post on it back in August, my friend count was 1,169. At last check this morning it was 1,451. Go figure.

Every time someone has un-friended me, I’ve worried about what I did to offend them. I keep my language mostly clean and I don’t whine about everything on my wall. But I push out a lot of my writing on Facebook, and for those with smaller friend counts, all my stuff can overwhelm their feed. But I also know some people un-friend me because this blog is just too much for them. One former colleague sent me this note a few weeks ago:

“Bill, I’ve grown to find your OCD posts too painful and am going to unfriend you. You realize you are an obsessive poster, I hope? I wish you luck, but I think you need help and compassion, not exposure. I have a daughter who’s mentally ill, so I am particularly sensitive to watching people flay themselves alive. I wish you all the best, really.”

It’s funny how attached we’ve all become to our Facebook friend lists. To be un-friended is to be slapped in the face and told to go away. That hurts.

But my thinking is starting to shift on this issue.

I still don’t like it when someone un-friends me because it still feels like a rejection. But I’m starting to see that sometimes it’s the right thing for a person to do.

For example, this blog covers a lot of heavy stuff. A lot of people have become daily readers and tell me my openness has inspired them to deal with their own issues. But for others, especially those with a lot of pain in their lives, every post is going to feel like a baseball bat to the head. And so it was with my old friend.

Facebook is still fairly new for a lot of people. We’re still learning how to deal with each other in this world of social networking. I doubt we’ll ever figure it out.

I’ll just have to  keep being me and hope for the best.

I suggest you all do the same.

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Hackers Are People Too

Written after ShmooCon 2011…

I have a bit of an anti-social streak in me tonight. Since I’m at a hacker conference in D.C., some might say I fit right in. But then those people have a narrow, bullshit view of the hacker community.

For those not educated in the ways of the hacker crowd, you have the good guys, who break stuff so it can be fixed and made more ironclad so the bad-guy hackers can’t exploit the holes.

It’s just a reflection of the human race itself: You have good guys and bad guys; social people and anti-social people. I have a lot of friends in this particular circle. I write about what they do because it’s my job as a security journalist. But I identify with a lot of them on a much more human level.

Many of them have spouses and kids they love dearly, like me. Many of them have struggled with their own mental health troubles, like me. Some of them have suffered from addictive behavior, like me.

To pin someone as evil or anti-social because of their work is typical short-sighted thinking. Hackers get stigmatized, just like people with mental illnesses.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the anti-social stereotype recently because in some ways I can be anti-social. Some of you will say that’s stupid because you know the talkative me. But sometimes I get awkward in a crowd, especially a party crowd. A big reason is that I’m sober and it can be tricky getting comfortable around people who are not. Last night I actually did a pretty good job of socializing, but tonight I’m skipping the big conference party. I’ve had enough temptation for one week.

It gets equally strange for me in food situations, like the sushi fiasco I wrote about yesterday. I had a conversation with my sponsor about it the other day — the fact that when you can only eat and drink certain things, it’s nearly impossible in a public setting not to display some level of anti-social behavior. If everyone in a room is eating and sucking down cocktails, the guy who isn’t eating or drinking sticks out like a wart-encrusted nose.

Adding to the awkwardness is the knowledge that people in recovery can take it so far that the program itself becomes an addiction. And when that happens, you can be one anti-social bastard.

I’ve been on a tirade about the latter group in recent weeks. But when I’m surrounded by the stuff I binged on, I can see why “recovery addicts” are the way they are. Better to approach recovery like an addiction than to go back to the junk that destroyed you.

But there’s a silver lining.

When I was a slave to my addictions I was as anti-social as you could possibly get. I preferred hiding indoors and avoiding people. I was a mess and I looked the part. I didn’t want to be seen. I hid in my room and never noticed as the place started to stink from the discarded food bags and cigarette smoke.

I lived in Lynnfield, Mass., for a couple years and I had a room that was cut off from the rest of the house, with its own bathroom. I’d let the towels pile up and grow mold. I’d cut my hair or shave my beard and leave whiskers in the sink for days. When Erin and I first started dating, that bathroom was a place she didn’t particularly like being in. Why she stuck with me after seeing the filth I lived in is beyond me. Thank God she did, though.

Today, even though I feel anti-social when I’m the sober one among folks who are enjoying alcohol, I’m still in a much friendlier place than I used to be.

I’m also lucky at events like this because this crowd understands where I’ve been and they put effort into making me feel welcome.

That’s right. Hacker types making an effort to put me at ease.

That has to surprise some people. But as you know, some people are badly under-educated about certain cultural circles. The hacking circle is one of them.

Maybe this confuses you. It confuses me, too.

I should go to sleep, but fuck it. I’m going to go downstairs and take another crack at being a little less anti-social.

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Stupid Talk and the Tucson Massacre

I’ve held off for almost a week. I didn’t want to write about the events in Tucson because I felt a lot of folks were already exploiting the tragedy for page views. Plus, I’ve written already about mentally sick people who turn to murder.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxJOpr6Y5yI&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

I also found the Tucson case too upsetting to write about. I usually need time to process upsetting events. I don’t know any of the victims, but my heart goes out to them and their friends and family. I also pray that Rep. Giffords makes a full recovery. If she does, she’ll become a powerful source of inspiration. The fact that she had already demonstrated a fearless streak inspires me. (Her office was vandalized after her vote on health care reform last year, but she didn’t cower and pull back from public contact.)

I’ve decided to dive in for two reasons.

One, Erin and I were discussing the “blood libel” tag Sarah Palin has been using to describe accusations that this kid was driven to violence by Tea Party rhetoric. The second reason is that my friend Mary Ann Davidson shared a column in which conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer writes of the ridiculous nature of the accusations flying around.

As someone who knows what it’s like to be mentally ill, I’d like to say something about what I see as stupid talk.

To those who blame this affair on the often rancorous debate between the left and right, you’re off the mark.

True, the political debate in this country does get out of control, but most of the time nobody gets hurt. I consider myself a moderate, my father-in-law is conservative and Erin is somewhere to the left of both of us. We don’t get into knife fights out in the streets because we don’t agree on some things.

It’s the same, for the most part, nationally. Democrats and Republicans fight it out, and for the most part it’s a peaceful discourse. The system works the way the founding fathers intended. When someone says otherwise, it’s usually because their side isn’t getting its way.

A lot of name-calling happens, but the violence is rare. It happens, like it did last week. And when it does, people rush to blame it on the nastiness of the politics of the day. In this case, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement are the evil instigators.

Read Krauthammer‘s article, because in my opinion he’s right. Especially when he says this:

As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings – and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him – there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder.

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding toanything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

A climate of hate? This man lived within his very own private climate. “His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world,” said the teacher of Loughner’s philosophy class at Pima Community College. “He was very disconnected from reality,” said classmate Lydian Ali. “You know how it is when you talk to someone who’s mentally ill and they’re just not there?” said neighbor Jason Johnson. “It was like he was in his own world.”

His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with “unnerving, long stupors of silence” during which he would “stare fixedly at his buddies,”reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through “grammar.” He was obsessed with “conscious dreaming,” a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.

This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder – ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.

Krauthammer gets right to the heart of the matter in that last paragraph. This tragedy happened because a mentally sick kid got his hands on a gun and found a place where there’d be a lot of people to use it on. He may have targeted Giffords, but politics had nothing to do with it. He just wanted to kill someone high-profile and get attention.

A couple other moments in history come to mind.

John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981 to impress actress Jodie Foster. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been institutionalized ever since. He didn’t care about Reagan’s politics. His brain didn’t work right. And in his mentally-impaired world, he got fixated on Jodie Foster and wanted her attention. Shooting the president, in his mind, made perfect sense because of the publicity it would bring.

Should we have blamed it on the movie “Taxi Driver” and fought to ban it and movies like it?

The kids Charles Manson brainwashed into killing for him were led to believe The Beatles were telling them to do it in “The White Album.” Manson turned their young, tormented and impressionable minds to mush with drugs and made them believe a war was coming and that they had to kill.

Should we have blamed it on The Beatles and banned ‘The White Album”?

Hell no.

The point is that when someone is mentally sick, it’s easy for them to fixate on a person or movement. Those who turn violent will always be motivated by something based on religion, politics or something to come from the film or music industries.

When I was at my worst, I blamed everyone for my problems. I was convinced people at work were out to undercut me. I was convinced that certain family members had it out for me. I listened to a lot of metal music back then, as I do now. Sometimes, I would listen to the music and consider turning violent on whoever I was blaming for my unhappy life.

But I never would have carried something out because — thank God — I’ve always had a strong enough moral compass that would only allow me to go so far. My mental state was damaged and would stay that way until I sought help. But it was never so far gone that I ever would have carried out some of what I was thinking about. I’ve always had just enough sanity to know better. 

Some people don’t have that, and they’re usually the ones who pick up the weapon. They have a choice, and they choose to do evil.

That’s what happened in Tucson.

Don’t blame it on the political divide. That’s just stupid.

Instead, try to see it for what it is: An evil act perpetrated by someone whose mind was so far gone that anything would have inspired him to commit murder.

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A World Without Facebook

A few days ago, rumors wafted around the Internet about Facebook shutting down in mid-March. Panic ensued, illustrating just how addictive this thing has become.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm7KUQ_uXK0&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

Call me nuts (well, I am a little nuts). But as a guy who’s recovering from a runaway addiction, I know it when I see it.

And since an addict is forever playing a frustrating game of whack-a-mole, I admit the thought of Facebook going away panicked me a little, too.

There are times when I’m embarrassed by my own Facebook behavior. Sometimes I’ll stare at it for hours even if there’s really nothing new happening. It’s easy to use it to be a busybody and nose around in other people’s worlds, though some folks are only too happy to supply the fodder.

Last summer my friend Linda noted that I changed the settings on my Facebook page to allow wall comments. It amused her because it was my birthday. She knows me well. Truth is, I wanted to see the birthday messages. I have an ego to stroke.

I suffer from an inflated ego. It’s a side-effect of where I’ve been. I have this odd fear of being forgotten. And I didn’t want to be forgotten on my birthday. It sounds ridiculous. But there it is.

OCD types have big egos. Achieving big things is one of the ways we try to fill in that hole in our souls.  In my profession, getting access to the major power players of information security is a rush. I feel like I am somebody as a result. When I don’t make it to a big security conference, the wheels in my head start spinning. I start to worry that by not being there, I become irrelevant.

With this blog, when I write something that really connects with people, the ego grows a few sizes larger.

I’m somewhat ashamed about this. But I also think it’s a common thing among us. When people say they want their birthday to pass quietly without hearing from people, I don’t buy it.

Everyone wants some attention. That is exactly why Facebook took off.

People suddenly found they had a way to project themselves in ways never before possible. Wannabe writers suddenly got to become “published” writers because they had a platform to do it with. For the most part, this has been a good thing, because a lot of those writers are very good.

But it’s also become an outlet for a never-ending supply of mind junk. And I’m only too happy to consume it.

There’s small comfort in the fact that I’m not alone.

For me it’s complicated further by my profession. In the media world I exist in, proliferating your content is vital to survival. If nobody sees the content, why would anyone want to advertise with us?

So I can’t completely put Facebook down and walk away.

I also use it to push out the contents of this blog. I won’t lie: Some of it is driven by my OCD impulses, some of it is because I badly want to break some stigmas.

Facebook, Twitter and the like are like a rushing river. Throw a toy boat on the water and it’ll be gone from view in milliseconds. 

So we throw duplicate copies of the toy boat into the current every few hours.

I’m no better than the other people who worried about Facebook going down.

I also know people who can stay off Facebook for days and weeks at a time. I envy them.

The best I can do, since I can’t extract myself from Facebook, is be a positive voice and give people something they might be able to use while I’m here.

It beats the shit out of whining.

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Narcissism Inc.

I’ve always wondered if I was a narcissist. I’ve been wondering even more since last week, when someone asked me when I reached a point in my recovery where I stopped being self-absorbed. I had to be honest and tell her I still get self absorbed. All the time.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOivymp6rto&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

People with obsessive-compulsive tendencies are basket cases about being in control. Maybe it’s simply control of one’s sanity. Usually, it’s control of situations and people you have no business trying to control.

I went looking for a definition and found this on Wikipedia:

Narcissism is the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others. The name “narcissism” was coined by Freud after Narcissus who in Greek myth was a pathologically self-absorbed young man who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool.

So, let’s see…

I’ve never fallen in love with my reflection. Usually, when I look in a mirror, it’s to make sure I don’t look too fat. I don’t get people who insist on having their bedroom or bathroom fitted with wall-to-wall mirror. I’ve also gone through long periods of hating myself.

But I am guilty of thinking I’m better than the guy sitting next to me. I probably think I’m a better writer than I really am. There are days when I think a little too highly of myself.

Here’s a fact about addicts: We are among the most selfish people on the planet. Or, as Nikki Sixx says in the final track on Sixx A.M.’s soundtrack for The Heroin Diaries: “You know addicts. It’s all about us, right?” That selfishness usually leads us to do stupid things that make us feel shame. In the midst of that shame, we lie.

That sort of behavior can overwhelm us, no matter how much we want to be better people. Putting ourselves before others is the hardest drug of all to resist. 

In OA, those of us in recovery from our compulsive eating disorders rely on a set of tools that go hand in hand with the 12 Steps. There’s the plan of eating, writing, sponsorship, the telephone and literature. There’s anonymity. And there’s service to others.

The plan of eating is what’s most necessary for me, but I think my favorite tool is service.

When I do service, the people I may be trying to help are helping me as well. If it’s through OA, everyone is supporting each other. It’s the same at church, be it through school activities or actively participating in Mass. That’s why I do lectoring. Actively participating in Mass helps me to pay attention to what’s going on instead of sitting there locked inside my head.

Service forces me out of my usual role of being a selfish little bastard.

It may not be a cure for narcissism, if I even fit that description. But it makes it manageable.

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From Confusion to Wisdom

I’ve crashed many times while blasting down the road of life. The car is in one piece now and I’ve learned to throttle back some. And when I hear the following words of wisdom, I KNOW it’s the truth:

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agn4y-M1rjA&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

ACCEPTANCE

?”Holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting it to kill someone else.” – Matt Baldwin, Snow Rising (thanks, Cheryl Snapp Conner, for pointing this one out.

“People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.” – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers

“The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.” – Warren Bennis

FAITH

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” – Helen Keller

“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.” – Marian Wright Edelman

“Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.” – Edith Hamilton

“Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

FEAR

“Hate is a disease. It is fear’s messenger and it makes us do terrible things in a shadow of our better selves, of what we could be.” – Colin Farrell

“The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief.” – William Shakespeare

“Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear.” – Cheri Huber

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.” – Swedish proverb

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

FORGIVENESS

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” – Robert Frost

“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.” – John F. Kennedy

“In the Bible it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive, and he said 70 times 7. Well, I want you all to know that I’m keeping a chart.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake

ADDICTION

“A grateful heart doesn’t eat.” — Over-eaters Anonymous saying.

“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.” — George Carlin

“when you can’t climb your way out of such a hole, you tend to crouch down and call it home…”
— Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)

“What’s worse? Being strung out or being fat?” — Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star) 

“When You’ve lost it all….thats when you realize that Life is Beautiful.”
— Nikki Sixx

“If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.” -AA saying

“I spent a lifetime in hell and it only took me twelve steps to get to heaven.” -AA saying

MENTAL ILLNESS

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness” -Richard Carlson

“Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.”
– Bill Clinton“My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves” – Socrates

“The main symptom of a psychiatric case is that the person is perfectly unaware that he is a psychiatric case.” – Oleg P. Shchepin in the New York Times, Nov 1988.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.” – Carl Jung
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Those 70s Cartoons and Child Abuse

There’s a thing going on this weekend on Facebook where people are changing their profile pics to a 70s cartoon of their choice to raise awareness against child abuse. It’s an admirable thing, but there’s also a downside.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5P8lrgBtcU&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I did bite, though. Here’s what I am for the weekend:

When I was in the hospital six weeks at a time for Crohn’s Disease, Tom and Jerry was a welcome distraction. I used to love watching Tom get the shit knocked out of him. It was a great release of aggression for a 9-year-old. It was before I had heavy metal music to do that.

I was a big fan of Super Friends, too. I watched it mainly because I was a big Superman fan. I never liked the Wonder Twins, though. I always wanted them to die horrible, gory deaths.

I wasn’t all there when I was a kid. Come to think of it, I’m not all there now.

So this campaign is all about child abuse awareness. Here’s what people are posting on their walls:

All children deserve happy childhood memories, RAISE AWARENESS: Change your FB picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on facebook until Monday the 6th of Dec. Join the fight against child abuse, and invite your friends to do the same.

It raised my awareness, all right. In the 70s and 80s, I saw plenty of child abuse in my house. Not from my father or step-parents, but from my mother. She had a hard life so I don’t hold it against her. I forgave her long ago. But the memories still suck. My sister got it the worst. Between that, a bitter divorce, illness and death, I don’t exactly consider that period a happy childhood.

I’m pretty happy today, so maybe I should start a more contemporary campaign with modern cartoons like one of my current favorites, “Phineas and Ferb.” I love snuggling up with the kids and watching that one.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQsmupllGEs&fs=1&hl=en_US]

To me, the happy memories are being made right now.

But I’m going to go along with the childhood cartoon thing anyway. Billy Joel once sang that “the good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow aint as bad as it seems.”

As a kid I used to think my parents lived in a world that looked a lot like that movie “Pleasantville.” Everything was clean and pretty. Nobody fought. Every day was Christmas.

I know that wasn’t true for my mother. My father tells me the 50s and 60s kind of sucked for him. He was overweight and kids made fun of him.

But that didn’t stop me from wanting to live in their past. Surely, it had to be better than the present I was living.

A lot of kids probably look at the 70s and 80s the same way.

So, if putting up pictures from old cartoons is going to make them happy, I’ll do my part.

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Asking to be Assaulted?

Sometimes people say things that make me feel sorry for them. A few years ago I might have called them an idiot or something more Revere-like. Today I can only shake my head and feel pity. Here’s an example from the NerdChic blog.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie3NinwlX6A&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Noirin Shirley writes in her blog, NerdChic.net, that she was sexually assaulted during a conference late last week. She names the guy who allegedly did it to her, and goes on to explain a lot of things that has netted her post 150-plus comments.

Here’s an excerpt:

At some point, it was too late and too loud to reasonably continue. Everyone cleared out (Nick, you are a *god*, for spending the extra five minutes to clear the carnage, so that I could wake up in a room that showed no signs of what had happened the night before!), and we headed to the Irish pub next door that has become our local.

Some food, a few more beers. Squeezing everyone up so I could sit next to someone I wanted to talk to. Laughing at the events of the week, and the night.

And then I went to the loo, and as I was about to go in, Florian Leibert, who had been speaking in the Hadoop track, called me over, and asked if he could talk to me.

I’m on the board of Apache. I’m responsible for our conferences. I work on community development and mentoring. If you’re at an Apache event and you want help, information, encouragement, answers, I will always do my best to provide. So this wasn’t an unusual request, and it wasn’t one I expected to end the way it did.

He brought me in to the snug, and sat up on a stool. He grabbed me, pulled me in to him, and kissed me. I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear). He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling.

Now, if this did happen, it sounds horrible. But since it’s currently her word against his and everyone has a right to be deemed innocent until proven guilty, the fact that she mentions the guy by name is unfortunate. The place to name names is with the authorities, not the blog-reading public. That’s my opinion, anyway.

On to the comments:

A lot of people have dissed this woman for her own bad behavior that night, for dressing in a supposedly provocative way, putting herself in a situation for this to happen, etc.

Let’s look at the comment from “LOL@you” —

“Get over it, some jerk groped you and now your whole life is ruined? You’re an attention whore who got the wrong sort of attention, that’s how it is sometimes. Calling this guy out is fine if you want but recognize that you’re clearly an idiot. There is “what’s right” and what is smart, as an adult you ought to know the difference by now you big baby. Keep waiting for the law to intervene and clear away all the jerks and pervs and you’ll live a long, sad life only to learn in the end that the cops, lawyers and politicians you think give a shit are the biggest pervs/jerks out there and will only help you to help their career. Just stop being such a drama queen/attention whore and you’ll be fine … “bicycle shorts under my skirt” …LOL. Do you realize what a social misfit you are?”

Whoever you are, LOL@you, I feel sorry for you because you lack the stones to say who you are. When you call someone a whore and say she deserved it for how she dressed, at least show yourself. Failure to do so makes you a coward.

I don’t care how Noirin was dressed. You simply don’t touch another person without their permission, man or woman. If this guy really did what Noirin claims, he deserves to be held accountable — in a court of law, should she choose to press charges.

To suggest she was asking for it is a clear indication that your understanding of right and wrong is severely underdeveloped.

That’s how I feel about her claim and some of the responses. Now that I got that out of the way, I have a bigger point to weigh in on.

Some of those who commented called her a baby for bringing up something like this. My view is that she could have done it more tastefully, mentioning all the details but not naming the guy, but if she was traumatized, she should be able to express herself.

If you don’t like that she did it in her blog, you don’t have to read it.

I can’t claim to be better than her when it comes to naming names. I’ve done it before, with disastrous results.

When my friend Sean Marley died, I mentioned in a newspaper column less than a week later that it was a suicide. I went into too much detail about how he did it. The price is that most of his family won’t talk to me today.

In that case, I could have handled the telling of the tale better.

I could have let a certain period of time pass before naming him and the nature of his death like I did, for all to see.

I’ve mentioned him a lot in this blog, and by now everyone knows he took his life. But the dust was left to settle for several years in between. I write about him now to honor his memory. 

In fact, in the last few years I decided there was a stigma around depression and addiction and that I had to try and break it.

In doing so, I’ve told you things about myself that some have deemed risky. I’ve been asked if I worry about losing my job for acknowledging my struggles.

Acknowledging that you were sexually assaulted is risky, too. If you in fact were assaulted and you refuse to be quiet about it, you are taking a risk. But it’s a courageous risk, which is hopefully done with class.

Since she chose to name names, I hope she is telling the truth. If she is, I commend her, despite some of the sloppiness in the process.

If all this is a lie, then I can only feel sorry for her, too.