ashleydoes-blog

[ashleydoes-blog]

violence culture

I’m not writing this to turn a tragedy into something about me and my life, or because I think what I have to say is super significant. I’m writing it because when my emotions about a subject run deep and wide, writing them out helps me cope, especially in situations where I feel totally helpless and sad.

I don’t feel like gun violence is my issue to champion. I’m a farmer’s daughter from South Texas. Guns have been a part of my life since birth, and I have witnessed everything that falls on the spectrum between usefulness and danger. I believe 100% that we should reform our gun laws. I believe we have a tremendous amount of work to do . . . but I don’t feel like I know all of the right answers.

Here’s what I do know . . . I know being a single mother raising a son around violence culture in South Texas. I know what I’ve been taught about men and what makes them masculine. I know how people talk to me now about what kind of man I should be raising. I know when people think I’m not doing it right. I know how uncomfortable it is to challenge the status quo.

I’ve been thinking about Atticus all morning, and instances that I thought were isolated in his life are starting to connect together to paint a picture for me.

I’ve worried about raising a man since the day my son was born, but since we moved to Pleasanton and I’ve been raising him mostly alone my worries have compounded. We live in the center of Texan masculinity, and I’m navigating it while trying my damnedest to make the right decisions. 

When we moved here Atticus dreamed of playing football. It was all he wanted in the world. He thought he was going to be an NFL star. He begged me every day to play. Every. Single. Day. Even though I had my reservations about the culture and the injury potential, I was finally convinced to let him join a team. It was one of the worst Summers of our life. The culture didn’t work for either one of us. He did get hurt. He didn’t want to tackle anyone. He didn’t want to be tackled. I watched his heart break a little bit every practice and every game because football wasn’t what he thought it was. The men I hoped would be strong masculine figures in his life weren’t who I thought they were. He cried constantly. I cried constantly. What I cried about the most was feeling like he shouldn’t quit before the season was over. I’ve been taught that you don’t quit a team, and I wanted my son to learn that too. I wanted him to learn that commitments shouldn’t be broken in the middle of a season. I wanted him to toughen up. To man up. I wanted him to be brave in the face of what he was scared of. In the end, it wasn’t for him, it just wasn’t, and we decided together in the middle of a season to stop playing football.

Then he started Tae Kwon do and he LOVED it. He loved the training, learning, and conditioning. Tae Kwon Do seemed like his thing. A requirement of graduating to the next belt was to spar, and every belt requires more sparring. As he moved up in belts he gradually started complaining about Tae Kwon Do. He was vague. He didn’t even seem to know why he wasn’t liking it anymore. We naturally started to skip sparring days. He sparred enough to advance, but that was it, the bare minimum. I assumed it was because he would rather be at home in the AC watching TV. I assumed he wanted to quit because I taught him quitting was ok. When we got to the point that he started complaining the moment he got off the bus about dreading Tae Kwon Do I told him if we quit he had to replace the hour he was spending there with something productive. He went 3-5 days a week, so my compromise was that in order to stop going he had to spend an hour every day either outside playing, doing something creative, or helping me with chores. He happily agreed.

On Saturday at lunch my Dad invited him to go hunting. Atticus turned it down quickly with no explanation. It hurt me to watch him turn down spending quality time with his Pops so fast. An influential man in his life invited him to go do “man things” and he had no interest whatsoever. As a mom constantly worried that I’m not teaching him to ”be a man”, this gave me pause. I assumed, again, that he was just more interested in going home to video games and chilling. I thought he had his priorities wrong, so when we got in the car after lunch I explained to him that he was turning down quality time. That his Pops wanted to spend time with him and he dismissed it and why would he do that? A few weeks ago when I picked Atticus up from a friends house, the grown folks were out in a pasture shooting birds. I knew that at some point Atticus had probably been involved, and I trust the family 100%, so I didn’t think much of it. But in the car Atticus explained to me that when he was involved with hunting, he didn’t like it. He thought it was scary and loud. He didn’t want to kill anything. What started with me lecturing him about spending quality time with his Pops turned into me listening and really hearing that my son found hunting to be violent and scary, and he didn’t want to do it.

This morning I was getting ready for work, reading about another incident of gun violence in this country committed by a white man, and the dots started to connect about how I want to parent my son.

I want to change gun laws. I want to hug families of victims. I want to donate tons of money to all of the causes I find important. I want to solve mental health problems. I want to go back in time and fix unfixable things. I want to do it all, and I can’t do any of it.

It’s so heartbreaking to feel helpless, but there is one contribution I can make.

I can listen to my son. I can really hear him when he says violence isn’t for him. I can look at these patterns and see that he’s not comfortable with people hurting him. That he’s not comfortable harming living things. When he thinks something is loud and scary, I can make the choice to be compassionate. Instead of making fun of him, telling him to get tough, or minimizing what he’s saying, I can tell him I understand. I can block out the influences around me and choose to ignore the advice of people that want to help me “turn him into a man.” He’s going to become a man either way, and I have the responsibility of listening to him when he tells me what kind of man he wants to be.

I don’t know the story of this shooter yet. I know these issues are complex. But I also know there are patterns in how we raise our boys that cannot be ignored. That placing value in how big, strong, tough, and aggressive they are while teaching them that their other emotions are wimpy isn’t turning out well anywhere I look. Of course not every boy is like my boy, but I believe in listening to what they are saying and trying to help them figure out their emotions when they are confused about them. I believe in finding your child’s strengths and helping cultivate them. I believe there is goodness in being big, strong, tough, and aggressive, but I don’t think there is goodness in forcing everyone to measure themselves against those qualities to determine how much of a man they are. I believe my son deserves to be heard when he’s finding his words to explain how he feels about activities that make him feel uncomfortable. I also believe he might change his mind later, and I hope I approach those times with respect. 

I believe I can do better, I believe we can all do better, and I believe that we have to.

No one expects their son to grow up and do something horrific, and I have no way of knowing who my son will grow up to be. But while he’s little and while he’s still looking to me for guidance I can do my best, and I can focus my energy into making that my contribution, however small it may be.

#violence #texas #lasvegas #singlemom #mom #boys

[ashleydoes-blog]

blogging (v.1)

I’ve been writing blogs since the early Myspace days. Over a decade in the books. I’ve started so many new ones that I honestly forget old ones until someone reminds me of them. Before blogging, I wrote in journals. I have a ton of those lying around my house, too. Some full, some unfinished. I write long text messages, emails, and social media posts. I have to pour my thoughts out onto “paper” in order to process them. 

Specifically with blogs, I always go through a phase in the beginning where I wonder why I’m blogging in the first place. A question I have never been able to answer for myself on a deep level. If I went through all of my old blogs there is guaranteed a post that sounds like “I’m not even sure why I’m blogging but here I am doing it.”

I’ve never been interested in a ton of followers, or monetizing my blog. I’ve never been too interested in following the formula of famous bloggers. In any sort of glossy photo spreads or aesthetically adorable themes. The idea of a bunch of strangers following me actually kind of horrifies me. The comments section is my scary place and I would never want to be the center of that kind of attention. People have often urged me in that direction, or wanted to know why I won’t take those steps, and I’ve just brushed it off. 

I get my kicks out of gathering information and then presenting it with my own words. From writing about an emotion I’m having that I know other people have and would never talk about or aren’t talking about. From describing my experiences in a way that makes other people feel like they aren’t alone. That there is someone out there fighting the same day to day fight that they are. 

In writing those previous 4 paragraphs I realized that I get huge satisfaction out of being relatable.

When someone reads something of mine and then applies it to their own life and tells me about it … that might be one of my favorite feelings. 

I’m sure a therapist could work out why that’s so important for me, and I probably could too if I gave it any more thought than I am right now, because it literally just came to me but I’m going to plow through to what I actually wanted to write about. 

(Hey, Ashley, this is why you write blog posts. Because when you do you figure out all of your shit!)

I’m currently obsessed with Brene Brown and everything she has to say changes my life so when a friend sent me a link to a two-part podcast of an interview she did with Oprah I listened to it immediately. I’m in the middle of reading Daring Greatly and I can’t recommend it enough to every single human. It’s cheap. Buy it. Read it. Talk to me about it. Let’s start a book club based on this book alone. 

I pretty much had the hang of what Brown is about so most of the podcast was just confirming things I already knew … but then they got to a section about play and cultivating creativity. I jotted down some notes that have some direct phrases from the podcast and while I’m going to attempt to put it in my own words some of what I say is probably straight lifted from these women. 

They started out by describing types of play and how important they are. Painting, scrapbooking, photography and rebuilding engines were examples. Activities that you do because you want to, with no real agenda besides just doing something you love for fun. Brown has researched people for over a decade and this was something that landed in her top list of what makes whole people whole. They said “unused creativity is not benign, it metastasizes.”

It is our nature as humans to be creative. When we aren’t using our creativity, when it has been lost along the way and pushed down as something not-important, it turns into emotions like grief, judgement, rage, sorrow and shame.  

I thought to myself I don’t do anything creative. I don’t play.

I started to panic because there was something Brene Brown thought was deeply important that was fully missing from my life. 

Play wasn’t defined as something to pass the time, like TV or the internet. It was defined as spending time without purpose to produce something meaningful, even if the meaning was just for you. It was the woman who works a full day and makes jewelry at night. It was my friend Austin, tinkering in his garage on the weekends with his motorcycle. It’s my brother learning to play the Banjo, and how much he loves to cook. It’s what all children do. 

My mind was still scrambling. Does the gym count?

They went on to say that part of play is letting go of control, and that a detriment to play is looking cool. In fact, looking cool will take you down. Play was a thing you did when you let go of control, when you didn’t care if you were good at it, when you lost the fear of judgement. 

The gym does count! I just wrote a blog about this … <cue epiphany>  … I JUST WROTE A BLOG ABOUT THIS.

Forget the gym, I’m still not sure if that counts and I don’t need that peg to fit into this hole. Writing is my play. Blogging is my play. It has no end goal. It has no agenda. I love when I get feedback, I do, but it’s not the main focus for me. I love blogging because the act of blogging is fun for me. I don’t feel anxious in any way until I share a blog to social media … because that’s when the judgement and the coolness factors creep in. There are apparently layers to my play activity. But I think there must also be for the painter, the dancer, the cook, the musician. Even children spend focused time coloring a picture, but they bring it to you when they are done to show it off. So there is probably a second part to play that Oprah and Brene never discussed about getting feedback. It’s not the most important part … but it has to be layered in there somewhere. 

This might not seem like a big deal. But for me, this was a groundbreaking moment. It explains years upon years of writing for no reason. I’ve always felt vulnerable about it. I’ve always felt like I had to explain myself. Like I had to justify why I do it. It’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it? Writing your thoughts down and thinking anyone would care to read them? The shift to thinking that it’s just how I’ve been using my creativity this whole time to save myself from unused creativity metastasizing as negative-emotion-cancer… that really hit me.

It’s not because I think I’m the best at it. I don’t care about looking cool. It’s not because I want to commercialize it. It’s not for praise. It’s not for big purpose. I’m playing.

I’m gonna keep doing it ya’ll. Because I like to. Because it’s my favorite. 

And then I’m going to show you this pretty sky I just colored. It has stars and rainbows and clouds, the sun and the moon both at the same time, and there’s a giant yellow flower because I want there to be a giant yellow flower. 

#ashleydoesblogging #play #creativity #brenebrown #daringgreatly #oprah

[ashleydoes-blog]

fitness (v.1)

My sister in law and I train with a personal trainer together once a week. We met our trainer through a bootcamp at our gym that ran for the month of January. We took another bootcamp with her and now we’re gearing up for our third. This week we were chatting with her about what did and didn’t work previously.

While we were discussing how intimidating it is for a first-timer in a bootcamp we both admitted that during our first week back in January we both went home and cried. A few times. 

We were overwhelmed. Frustrated. Intimidated. Embarrassed. 

Women twice our age were kicking our ass. We didn’t know any of the vocabulary. We didn’t know any of the movements. We both hated timed challenges because neither of us are big on competition, or trying to move fast. We both like to concentrate on form over speed. Neither of us have ever been too athletic. We both have tricky knees. Basically, we didn’t know what we were doing. And not knowing what you are doing can be terrifying.

I’ve been thinking about it for days. I had sort of forgotten about crying over bootcamp and remembering it flooded me with an arching perspective of how far I’ve come and what I’ve learned along the way. How I’ve been meaning to share it and document it, and just haven’t. Because writing about something you are still learning about can be terrifying.

(Which explains the draft staring at me titled “ashley does dating.”)

I’ve been in an absorption phase for the past year. I’m trying to learn as much as I possibly can about every subject I’m interested in. When you switch gears from telling people what you know to learning what everyone else knows, it makes you less interested in writing what you know. You know?

One thing that I have learned … no matter what the subject is, no one has it exactly right all the time. Striving for perfection and waiting for your knowledge to be fully formed just gets in the way of living your life.

I wasn’t good at bootcamp, but I decided it didn’t matter. I just cried my tears and kept going.

I spent my entire adult life being fascinated by people who worked out. I didn’t understand where they were getting their motivation. I didn’t understand why they wanted to put themselves through it. I didn’t know where they found the time. I didn’t get it. I knew I wanted to be healthy. I knew I wanted to exercise. I just couldn’t ever find my groove and I didn’t understand how other people were finding theirs. You can read someone’s personal story of their own fitness journey and it doesn’t make a bit of difference in your life. I always thought I would do it one day … when I had gotten in a little bit better shape at home on my own, when I had friends that also wanted to work out, when I found the style of exercise I truly enjoyed. 

As it turns out, the way that I started consistently working out is by forgiving myself for sucking. 

I did join a gym. I did have two amazing sister in laws that both went there and motivated me. I did take classes to find what I enjoyed. But before all of that and above all of that the main thing that I did was not put any pressure on myself to be good at it, to be consistent at it, or to have any goals at all. I understand that my process of motivation by zero goals whatsoever is not for everyone. But it’s what worked for me. 

I decided that there wasn’t going to be a start date, because then I could fail. I wasn’t going to say “this day marks the day that I start working out 4 days a week” because if I didn’t work out 4 days that week, or any week, I would have failed. I instead told myself “I’m going to go to the gym when I can. If I make it that day, awesome! If I don’t make it that day, whatever.” I just went when I had time, so instead of it being this looming task that I had to do, it was a fun task that I wanted to do. 

I sucked at everything, too. Cardio, weights, Zumba, everything. The first cycle class I ever took I just laughed hysterically the whole time because it was so hard, and I was so bad at it. But I decided that didn’t matter. I told myself all the time that whatever I was doing had to be better than doing nothing. 

I refused to change my diet. I knew if I tried to tackle too much at once I would quit. So I drew the line at food. I already ate sort of healthy. There was (and still is) a lot of work to be done with my diet, but I didn’t eat fast food or drink sodas all day, and I knew myself well enough to know that if I took on too much I would give up all together. So when anyone would try to bring up diet changes to me I would just tell them bluntly I wasn’t changing my diet. I saw a few excellent faces as a result of that. I knew how important food was. I knew my progress would be slower. I knew what to eat and what to change. I just chose not to focus on everything at once. My priority was making working out a routine, and once it was I could move on to the next thing. 

There were weeks I didn’t make it to the gym. There have been times I have fallen behind in how much weight I could lift, only to have to catch up to where I already was. There were days I shouldn’t have gone because I was tired or sore and didn’t get a good work out because I didn’t give myself enough rest. I’ve watched people pass me up in body changes. I’ve been put to shame in class after class by people who are bigger, stronger, and faster than me. I’ve had to overcome a lot of fear. 

I did it slowly. On my own terms. The only goal I set was just to go to the gym sometimes. I didn’t pick a number on the scale I wanted to achieve. I didn’t pick an amount of weight I wanted to lift, or a distance I wanted to run. I didn’t pick a diet to follow, or an amount of calories I wanted to burn.

I just picked health, and hoped the rest would fall into place. It was the only way I could do it so that it would be a sustainable lifestyle change, and it has become one. I work out at the gym or at home anywhere from 3 to 7 days a week. I lift weights, work on balance and flexibility, bang out cardio, take studio classes when I’m in the big city, and try anything new I can get my hands on. I’m not the best at any of it. But I’m the strongest I’ve ever been, I’m the most confident I’ve ever been, and I’m the most forgiving of myself I’ve ever been. Every once in a while I get asked what I’m up to or for advice so I’m putting my experience to paper, so to speak.

If you’re struggling to figure out a routine … if you’re intimidated … if it’s all scary … if competition makes you want to throw up … if all you know is you want to be healthier … if you don’t know what your goals even are … if you’ve thought you knew your goals before only to fail at them and feel subhuman …

Permission to suck, granted. 

Just go back again, you know, when you’re not tired and you have time and it’s not a big deal if you don’t but you should. 

#ashleydoesfitness #fitness #health #gymrat #beastmode #squatgoals

[ashleydoes-blog]

politics (v.1)

I’m 31. 

In my lifetime, I have never witnessed or been a part of anything like Election 2016. It’s this monster of a topic that is so wide and so deep and so layered and so fractured and so important that even trying to talk about it makes me feel small. There are over 300,000,000 people in this country. My experience is small! I just started really paying attention to politics this year. I just started openly talking about it and asserting my opinions this year. What do I know? 

One thing. I know one thing. That reading personal stories from other people is fascinating and educational. I’ve always written blogs. I’ve always babbled on the internet about this or that. I’ve never felt like I had something to add to the conversation about politics. But I’m realizing that just sharing your thoughts, however naive, or newly formed, or emotion driven, can help with the conversation. The big conversation where we all attempt to get a little closer to understanding each other. 

I’m not an expert about anything except for my own life. So I’m going to start there. On a topic that isn’t so much political as it is inspired by finding myself in conversations about politics. I understand that there is so much more to this election than how certain groups of people feel about it. I just don’t find myself in conversations about policy that end up the way conversations about the social aspect do.

I work on a family farm in South Texas, and the majority of my immediate and extended family work in agriculture of some kind. I was born and raised in very Christian/Republican communities. All my exes live in Texas, and so do all of my friends. I’m white, straight, and lower middle class. I haven’t been met with a lot of cultural diversity.

I voted for Hillary. I’m real nasty. 

I’m not in a position where I can just phone home from another state and tell my family that this year I don’t think I can make Thanksgiving because I’m a little emotionally overwhelmed by their politics. I’m not in a position where I can fight with someone and hang up the phone and not see them until next year. I’m not in a position where I can cut someone out of my life because I feel like their vote threatened my rights. 

I’m in a position where I find myself in conversations about politics with people who strongly disagree with me, and are constantly telling me I’m wrong. I’m in a position where I have openly cried in public and still been yelled at about how blind I am. I’m in a position where people I love believe in chain emails and conspiracy theories and think that I need to “wake up.”

This past weekend I visited a relative. When I told her that the morning after the election I had friends of different races texting me telling me they were now scared living in this country she told me “that’s not true, that isn’t happening.” She rolled her eyes at me. I don’t think she was trying to say they didn’t text me, I think she was trying to say their fear wasn’t rational. After that I got quieter. I listened. I tried to imagine the differences in my information and hers. 

The differences in all of the information I consume and the information the people around me are consuming. Why do I feel like instances of racism and sexism are on the rise, and the people around me don’t? Why do I feel like rights are being threatened, and people around me don’t? Why do I feel any of the things I do that people around me don’t?

I realized that, for me, this knowledge is coming from social media and alternative media. Not the kind where I’m reading fake news articles targeted at liberals to stir us up. The kind where I belong to a private group on Facebook that has 3 million people across the country (and a few around the world) that share their personal stories. They aren’t politicians with agendas. They aren’t major media corporations. They are just people. Who are part of a private group because they don’t want everyone in their real life to read what they have to say. Because they are scared. Or ashamed. Or insecure. And they talk about small insignificant things, or they talk about major things. They talk about swastikas popping up in their neighborhoods. They share threatening notes left on their cars, their doors, their churches. They talk about their sexual assaults. Why they never reported them. How they are overcoming their obstacles. They talk about the ways that they feel victimized in their daily life. They share stories of hope. Their very real experiences that are happening since the election, and how they compare to their very real experiences before the election. All races and creeds and colors. All genders. 

When a hashtag surfaces on Twitter about a social issue, I read through the tweets. #blacklivesmatter #notok #whywomendontreport. 

And suddenly I have information from everywhere. People supporting, people denying, people sharing. Millions of people who don’t know each other from all walks of life talking about their experiences. 

I read through the less savory ones as well. Anyone remember #repealthe19th?

I listen to podcasts. Created by people all over the country. Some comedy, some history, some politics, etc. All information. All from a variety of sources and backgrounds. 

I’m not covering everything. These are just a few examples. I thought they were sort of unimportant. But I’m starting to see, at least in my life, how these small things draw the line in the sand between me and the people around me. The people who think the internet and social media are weird outer space places for folks with nothing better to do seem to be much more dismissive about the social issues I talk about. If I bring up Facebook, or Twitter, or a podcast to a farmer in my family, they look at me like I’m an alien. Like getting information from losers on the internet is reckless. 

I see their point. 

But I also see that it’s this valuable source. For a girl living in small town South Texas … it’s the only way that I have to see what’s going on outside of my community in real time. They aren’t books written after the fact. They aren’t news stories. They are personal anecdotes about life in this country right now. 

I’m not wrong. I’m not blind. I don’t appreciate the level of disrespect that comes with being told that I am. 

If you’re actively choosing not to see what’s going on outside of your community, if you’re actively choosing to only watch mainstream TV news and talk to people from your local church and your neighbors, you’re never going to see what happens beyond your circle.

People are very comfortable in their circle. You have to put forth a lot of effort to learn about social issues outside of your circle. And when you feel like you have social issues of your own, and you need to protect yourself and your family, and you’ve never cried or whined about the ways you feel victimized, you don’t want to put forth the effort to learn about anyone else. I get that. You have to want to learn about other people to learn about them. 

Don’t get me wrong. As much as I disagree with the election of Donald Trump, and as much as I disagree with what he represents, I know that people had informed and educated reasons to vote the way they did. I’ve been learning about those reasons as much as I possibly can. I listen. I try to understand how they can be more important to someone than what I perceive as basic human decency. I try to understand the other side of the argument.

I’m just speaking to my own conversations with the people closest to me. Who seem to be getting an entirely different set of information than I am. We all have to use what we know to prioritize what’s important to us. This is just me attempting to figure out how what I know is so completely different than what people who spend every day next to me know. 

One step at a time, right?

#election2016 #donaldtrump #politics #blacklivesmatter #notok #whywomendontreport