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avellanas-nutty-empire · 4 years

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Every day I hate the usa even more than the last

(This is a vent, ignore if u want)

When people were talking about the recent supreme court members death, I thought it would all be fine. I dont know literaly anything about them, and I generally dont understand my own emotions enough to grieve for someone like that.

But I went on instagram

And all the posts made me feel as though I'm being crushed by a mixture of negative emotions I rarely feel like this. Negative emotions so powerful and raw I feel I'm being literally crushed.

I feel as if I'm being literally crushed.

This is especially the worst since I dont understand my own emotions enough to heal from the pain and resolve them and move on from them properly. I'm stuck. These will forever linger, fractions of being healed, ready to crush me another time.

I made a lil angst post thing for Anna of my ABC girls oc's in which she also suffers from the inability to understand her own emotions. But in reality, that's just a fragment reflection of me. Except the details are solidified - a peace of mind I fear I will never have.

Trump is the third president to ever become impeached, and that alone says a fuck ton. He tries to build a wall, that would damage the ecosystem, solve nothing, and waist money. Then he does next to nothing about covid, using China as an escape goat while a ton of other countries handle it all much better than he does. Then the west coast fires get practically ignored. I have a suit case packed just for fucks sake because if theres one thing 2020 taught me, it's that shit can and will get worse REAL fast. I've been living with yellow smokey ash skies for the past few weeks and this morning at 4am, it rained a good rain for the first time long before the fires started. I was excited and happy for it. It even rained recently AGAIN while I was at work. It gave me hope. Hope that has swiftly been crushed.

Even if the fires get solved, the govornment will not. Trump holds his place in office like a tyrant, bragging about fighting for more terms in office than legally possible. Covid is still a thing, no matter how less officials have cranked down on social distancing. Other countries are out there PAYING people to stay inside. But everyone in the states will just complain and shut down that idea because "oh, we dont have the funds for it. The country is in enough debt already" yeah. Why are you building a wall then. Trump has SIGNIFICANTLY raised that debt since he joined office. Why are we letting a man who has his own history or bankruptcy on SEVERAL occasions be president? Our debt should be going down, not up.

The usa likes to preach to high heavens that it's the best country when in fact, its super NOT. And THATS one of the big problems. Much like a racist insisting "I'm not racist, it's just a joke" or something simular, no progress is gonna get made. People just get mad when our poor countries quality gets pointed out and refuse to see the truth. Then they look back over the constitution written over 100 years ago and recite it like the bible for worshiping practice.

We need to rewrite our constitution like MANY other countries have done SEVERAL times, and stop worrying about what a dead person MEANT when PURPOSLY being vague when writing the constitution because it was supposed to be open for change. But nothing about the United states is open for change. This country needs to get off its fucking high horse, and I need to move to canada

Except that's WAY easier said than done. I want to teach high school math, but I'm p sure you need a degree in french to teach ANYWHERE in canada (especially Quebec, but that's on the other side of the country so I think I'm good). I SUCK at learning vocab and had a hard enough time with my 2 years of spanish class. How am I supposed to get a degree in french?

The college I'm attending has study abroad programs I could participate in, and I have considered transferring to a canadian college if mine doesnt become in person soon, but god knows when that's gonna actually become possible again. I want to do in depth research on teaching requirements and scout out schools in canada and talk with my college supervisor and stuff about it all, but theres no point untill covid ends. I would say to just cross that bridge when I come to it, but the land behind me is rapidly disappearing faster than I can aproach the bridge.

Besides, isnt the canadian boarder still closed? What about my job down here? I dont have money to move to canada. And I dont have the confidence to do it because my mom hindered my progress in becoming a fully functioning adult who can leave the house without a backpack full of shit I wont actually need unless I'm roughing it in the wilderness. What college would even accept me and allow me to transfer my current credits anyways?

All I know is the United States of america is a toxic country that is bad for my health, and I am not ok.

#vent for void #avellanahablando #at least writing ahit like this helps a little #i should email my therapist about my writing actually cause it might help more #anyways yeah im being crushed #its fucking great #and thats fucking sarcasm

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aboutcaseyaffleck · 3 years

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Casey Affleck Gets Philosophical About Life, Time & The Whole Damn Thing

“Time,” reflects Casey Affleck, “is something I have been thinking about lately. It is ironic how the older you get, the better you are at being patient. With less time left, people become better at waiting. But this year, I feel much older and a lot less patient. I guess you’ve got to accept that time is never wasted? That doing is no different than not doing? That you can’t kill time no matter what you do, and that no matter what you do you can’t prevent the opposite from happening either? I don’t know. It’s a double-edged sword.”

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in early January, and Affleck and I are doing the Zoom thing, ostensibly to discuss his two new movies, the recently released indie Our Friend and the upcoming 19th-century period drama The World to Come. Yet our virtual tête-à-tête has become far more interesting, jumping wildly from his love of trains and travel to weightier topics like family, the future and the search for something more, something meaningful.

“I like the idea that time is an illusion. That past, present and future are all happening at once. I like it even though I can’t totally get my head around it. But either way, the me in the mirror gets older every day.”

Like most of us, he’s not only had plenty of time on his hands in recent months, housebound in L.A., but he’s tried to use his downtime wisely. “I tried to use this year of quarantine constructively,” the 45-year-old Oscar winner says. “I tried to see it as a winter season for shutting down and restoring something inside, but I just couldn’t. I’m not that evolved, I guess. I didn’t take up a new hobby or learn an instrument or get better at ‘self-care.’ If anything, I let my better habits and routines fall off. It was all I could do to keep my head above water and help buoy my friends and children when I could.”

As a guy with two teenagers at home — Indiana, 16, and Atticus, 13 — it hasn’t been easy, but he’s doing his best. He tried taking his sons on their annual camping road trip over the summer, but it was short-lived. Instead, he’s been focusing on making a happy home. “My kids don’t get to see their friends a lot, so I’m doing a lot more stuff with them, coming up with activities for the three of us, which they mostly hate, and I mostly let drop. And then I try again with the same outcome 90 percent of the time.”

While trying to create innovative plans to sustain his boys, he came up with one he thought might do some good, too. In June, he launched Stories from Tomorrow, a social-media initiative focused on creative writing by kids.

“At the beginning of all this last March, the first thing that occurred to me was that the quarantine would have a big impact on young people’s emotional well-being — the disruption they’re going to feel is really going to affect their mental health more than anyone else,” he says. “When I would sit down to write creatively, I felt better. But I couldn’t get my sons to journal or do creative writing much. I didn’t want to twist their arms about it. So I was like, ‘I’ll make a social media platform that inspires young people to write creatively, because it is such a good way of working out difficult feelings. And the way I will do that is have well-known people read the kids’ writing publicly.’ I knew that hearing your own writing read was exciting. I thought it would be really inspiring, that creative writing would be a great outlet for kids stuck at home.”

He enlisted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Robert Redford, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Jon Hamm, Matthew Broderick, Kyle Chandler and Danny Glover, as well as two current costars, Vanessa Kirby and Jason Segel, and arranged for donations made through the program to go to children’s hunger nonprofit Feeding America and Room to Read, which supports female education. He reached out to schools in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Haiti, hoping to create a global community.

Affleck was excited to make progress, to have done some good, but the initiative didn’t take off as planned. “In the end, an Instagram account for creative writing by tweens just couldn’t possibly compete with the quintillion bytes of daily data generated online. I don’t know. But I tried! And anyway, since then lots of other organizations started doing basically the same thing, and they are more organized than I am, and they have done a better job. So be it.”

Yet, adults have been disrupted, too, including Affleck himself, who is aware that, relatively speaking, he has gotten through mostly unscathed. “Am I happy? I mean, I’m relatively okay. It’s been a hard time to find balance and to keep it. I would say it’s been a hard time in my life, but I know that it’s been harder for other folks. So far we haven’t lost anyone, and we haven’t lost our house. And I rediscovered that when you’re feeling bad, there’s nothing better to do than to try to help other people. Being of service not only helps others but is a great way of getting outside of yourself. Also — and I really believe this — I think this time will be remembered as one when our country made leaps and bounds in the right direction; we are changing and growing and it’s uncomfortable, but we will be much, much better. I wish I could see the next couple hundred years. It’s going to be amazing.”

At the end of the day, it’s family that’s keeping him going. “Having my kids around and being able to spend so much time with them has been amazing. It is the brightest silver lining in all of this. They are what gives me the most joy. They are funny and smart and interesting and interested. They are just the best company ever,” he says. “Anytime I try to parent out some ‘teaching moment,’ I find they are two steps ahead. They help me make sense of stuff just as much I help them, if not more. I don’t have any answers, but batting the questions around, back and forth, is a good way of coping.”

CALEB CASEY MCGUIRE AFFLECK-BOLDT feels he is luckier than most. Although he and many of his peers have gone jobless for a full year, he spent 2019 working hard. He had not one but three films done and dusted prior to the start of the pandemic; the last one wrapped a week before mandatory quarantine. Two of these have back-to-back release dates: the tearjerker indie Our Friend came out in January, and sweeping period drama The World to Come will be released February 12. Thriller Every Breath You Take is slated for later this year. “I am so, so, so glad I spent 2019 working that much. It is what kept us afloat all through 2020,” he says.

The films themselves are radically different, but there are a few common threads. In both of his winter releases, Affleck plays a man who has lost a family member and whose marriage is in shambles. In both, he is a man in pain.

In the LGBTQ masterpiece The World to Come, which revolves around the love that blossoms between two married women on the mid-19th-century American frontier, his character, Dyer, says very little but manages to convey a wealth of emotion with his eyes alone. He may seem stoic, but he is suffering.

“The World to Come is a story about a couple who have lost a baby. They’re dealing with the grief in totally different ways and having a very hard time coming together again,” he explains. “My character wants to heal that by having another, but his wife [played by Katherine Waterson] is coping in a different way. She is severing all emotional attachment to him because it triggers more and more grief. She [only] seems to come alive when she is with their neighbor, a woman on the next farm [played by Vanessa Kirby]. He wants his wife happy, but he also would like her to love him. To me, this is the story of how couples can have their relationship shattered by a sudden loss. And it’s definitely a beautiful story about two women who feel that they have to hide their love and find the courage to love each other anyway.”

Affleck likes layers. He himself has many, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s drawn to roles written as fully formed characters, not caricatures. With Dyer, that’s abundantly clear. “Crisis is fun to play, [and Dyer] is in an interesting crisis,” he says. “I think he’s a really good person — a really decent, solid, loving person — which is what I loved so much about playing him and what I love so much about the writing. It’s more interesting when there’s no bad guy, just a conflict of circumstances and feelings that get so complicated that it drives two people apart.”

In Our Friend, a different set of circumstances drives the leads apart. Affleck and Dakota Johnson take on the true story of Matthew and Nicole Teague, whose imperfect marriage was strained by his long absences and her affair, neither of which seem at all important when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“To me, Our Friend is really a story about how petty grievances between people can divide them and then be forgotten when a gigantic tragedy is dropped in their laps. [Matthew] was wronged, it’s true — his wife cheated on him. On the other hand, he wronged her in a bunch of ways; [they] were just more passive and not quite so salacious. He wasn’t around. Matt got to be a dad and he got to travel the world as a journalist. He left her to take care of the kids. She wanted to have a life too, she had dreams of her own — she wanted to be a singer, she wanted to work — but she didn’t get to do that. She just got to be a mom. She was left holding the bag, and it wasn’t fair.”

He spent a fair amount of time immersing himself in the journalist’s life while filming in Fairhope, Ala., in 2019. (The film’s title is taken from Teague’s award-winning Esquire essay, “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word.” The friend in question — played by Jason Segel — is a man who puts his life on hold to help the family during their darkest days.) But he did not become Matt Teague, which is an important distinction. “[Director] Gabriella Cowperthwaite asked that we not portray the personality traits of the real people. No accents, no mannerisms. [But] I did steal his style, because I had never seen someone nail the dad look any better than Matt. I say that with affection.”

As for the dreams Nicole gave up for her family, Affleck says, “If you were to ask Matt, I’m sure he would acknowledge that he was neglecting his role. He was neglecting her dreams, and that is a part of marriage, supporting what the other person wants. Like all relationships, it was complicated.”

Like life itself, really. This is why he can identify with both sides. He understands Nicole’s pain about the deference of her dreams as well as Matt’s desire to escape through travel �� especially now, when Affleck himself has been completely grounded. Since the age of 17 he’s taken 20 cross-country road trips. His love of driving is secondary only to his enthusiasm for trains: Amtrak is his jam. He even fantasizes about owning his own train car one day.

Immersing himself in each location — whether it’s the sleepy Alabama town of Fairhope or the more exotic locale of Romania, which served as a stand-in for the East Coast of the U.S. in The World to Come — is actually one of the most desirable parts of the acting life, he says. “One of the things I love about working as an actor is that you go to some brand-new place and the community invites you in in a way that they don’t usually if you’re a tourist,” he confides. “You get to see what it’s like to really be there and imagine yourself living there.”

And he has — over the past ten years he’s spent so much time in cities including his hometown of Boston; Vancouver, British Columbia, the location of Light of My Life; Atlanta, where he shot the 2016 action flick Triple 9; Argentina, where he made Gerry; Dallas, for A Ghost Story; Calgary, Alberta, where much of the epic western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was filmed; Our Friend’s Fairhope set; Cincinnati, for The Old Man and the Gun; and Braddock, Pa., where he filmed the 2013 drama Out of the Furnace. “I have loved moving in and settling down and living a character’s life and then moving on. But I feel most at home in places that are struggling to get by. It reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in. I feel lighter in those places, more relaxed. I feel like myself. I fit in.”

For him, the where is almost as important as the who — immersing himself in the place is imperative to understanding his character. This is part of what makes him such an accomplished actor — he and most of the parts he plays merge. I draw a crappy analogy about how the characters are like a coat, which he very obligingly works with. “You have to build the coat from all of the scraps and pieces of yourself; all these characters are made up of little pieces of me,” he says, noting, “Obviously, sometimes they can’t be. Sometimes I have no connection whatsoever, and those are the jobs I look back on and I either feel nothing for, or worse. But sometimes you have to take the job that is available, like most people in the world. You know? I don’t think my dad wanted to be a janitor. But he did it.”

He’s won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Critics’ Choice Award, a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award, among others, and appeared in films that run the gamut from box-office juggernauts like the Ocean’s 11 franchise and Tower Heist to indie darlings like brother Ben’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone and Manchester by the Sea. He has even written and directed, most recently 2019’s Light of My Life, a bizarrely prescient movie about raising children in a pandemic. At this point in his career, he should have his pick of parts. “Not really,” he says. “There are a lot of people out there who have done good work, who are driven, and who have something to share. I have never been someone studios embraced as a ‘movie star,’ never knighted. I have always had to fight for the parts I have gotten. And you know what? That’s fine. Let me fight. It’s how I cut my teeth, and it is how I will keep them sharp. You can’t ask for more than a chance to be in the ring. Also, movies and TV aren’t all I care about. Sometimes I think, ‘Well, jeez, I have to work, and there are two jobs available to me, and the one that isn’t as good is the one that is close to home and I can see the kids, so I guess I am doing that.’ I love movies and really try hard to make them good. I really bust my ass every day when I get the chance to make one. I care more about my family than any movie. It’s not [always] the job I love, but this is the reality of my life. But maybe life will be long enough for a few more chapters.

The forward momentum of his future is an interesting topic. At the moment, he isn’t so much planning for the future as he is exploring it, because Affleck is not someone who likes to live with regret.

“I guess [at the end of the day], regret should be reframed as a reminder to be different,” he observes. And so, with this in mind, he embarked on a personal journey several years ago and decided to go back to college (at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia). He had completed two years at Columbia University, but he never graduated — his film career kept getting in the way.

“I went back to school because I hadn’t finished, and I wanted to think about new things in a way that school can help you do,” he says. “I couldn’t go in person, so I found a strong online school and got started. You know, I’m 45, and I just thought, ’This is halftime. This is where you hit the locker room and think about how you want the rest of the game to go.’ You know what I mean? Like, ‘Okay, we went out, we played our best, we didn’t know what the other team was going to be like, we made some mistakes, we are in the game, so let’s adjust like this.’ Also, I’m not sure I want to be an actor forever. I had made a small pivot from acting into directing, and into producing more. And I like to direct movies. The most satisfying creative experience I’ve had in a long time was being a director. But ultimately it wasn’t quite enough. So I wanted to go study some of the things I was interested in. I wanted to do more with my life.”

Although he needed general credits to graduate, he found an unexpected passion for juvenile justice along the way, with a particular focus on alternative accountability programs. “I don’t know where this will lead me, or why I am so interested in it, but finding and implementing better systems for addressing harm and conflict among kids, adults too, but mostly young people, is something I care about. And the work that I have done so far has been fascinating and deeply rewarding.”

When I ask if this stems from his own experiences as a troubled kid growing up in Cambridge, Mass., with Christine, a single mom — his parents divorced when he was 9; his father, Timothy, an alcoholic tradesman, checked into a rehab facility in Indio, Calif., when Affleck was just 14 — he muses thoughtfully, “I love my parents and think they both did the very best they could and cared a lot. Period. Did I get into some trouble as a teenager? I got into some trouble when I was a kid, and I struggled a lot through high school with depression and substances, yes. Much of it I didn’t even know wasn’t normal. I don’t know if I was ‘troubled.’ Either way, as an adult, I’ve come to see that, regardless of how I compare to anyone else, I want less conflict in my life. That might be part of the reason why I’ve been so interested in learning about better ways of resolving conflicts, both with children and with grown-ups. It isn’t something they teach in school for some reason. Man, there is a lot they don’t teach you in school, huh? A lot you’ve got to learn on your own.”

And on this journey, mistakes will be made. That’s par for the course, and Affleck is no exception. “I have made so many mistakes, but life is the time for mistakes. I do believe people should hold themselves accountable and repair harm they have caused. That is important to me, and I try hard to do that whenever it is called for: apologize for mistakes and repair them,” he admits.

This is when our conversation, as such conversations are wont to do, comes full circle. Before we say goodbye, Affleck remarks, “You know, I heard Bono talking on Howard Stern’s show, and he said something about Frank Sinatra that was interesting. He said that he heard two versions of Frank singing ‘My Way.’ One version was recorded when Frank was young, and the other version was recorded when Frank was old. Each had the exact same words, same arrangement, same everything. But when Frank was young the line ‘I did it my way’ sounded proud, and when Frank was old it sounded humble. Whatever else time does to a person, I think it also does that.”

[source]

#casey affleck #interview #photoshoot #photo #quote

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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863

Do you have any friends who are on and off with bfs/gfs all the time? Yeah, Jo and Aya don’t make the most stable couple. They had one really problematic stint last year where they would break up and get back together every week. They ironed it out eventually and they’ve been ok for a while, but lately I think it’s a little rocky again because I no longer see them interacting and they’ve been retweeting stuff that gives me a few hints. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve broken it off for good. When was the last time you almost cried out of exhaustion? Ohhhh boy. It was some day in Feb I think? and everything had just been going wrong for me. Andrew and I got yelled at by our thesis adviser because she didn’t like what we submitted and she gave us a day to revise three entire chapters. We stayed in the college working away from 3 PM to 10 PM then when I got home, I realized I forgot to bring with me a certain item that my org entrusted me with. Absolutely wasn’t allowed to lose it. Had a panic attack and this was when I started crying because it was so late and I just wanted to go to bed; though Andrew saved my ass by offering to go back to school at like 11:30 just to retrieve the damn thing. Lastly, that was a time when business reporting was still giving me hell and I was struggling to find a business story around campus to turn in for that week, so I was freaking out about that too. All in all a shit day. What`s a TV show you hate missing? Idk man, if I miss a show I don’t think there’d be hate attached to it. I imagine I’d miss a show because it made me happy, so this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Do you think it’s funny how people always say their pet is the best ever? It’s adorable haha but not necessarily funny. Whenever someone says it I totally believe them; I think all pets are the best :) When did you last brush your teeth? This morning.

What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited? I checked my Twitter right before this question. Do you have a friend who you think you’ll be best friends with forever? Yes, Angela is for keeps. Does it annoy you when you accidentally delete things? For the most part I can just undo and get the deleted thing back, but when that’s not applicable it can get super distressing. I know I was gloomy for a very long time when I accidentally wiped out my camera roll with photos from 2014-2016. What`s a movie / book / TV show / band / whatever you highly recommend? Movie: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Book: Got nothing in this department. Show: BoJack Horseman Band: Paramore ha. They got a sound for almost everyone! When did you last use a dictionary / thesaurus? Two questions ago when I was looking for an adjective to best describe what it’s like to lose your entire camera roll and, essentially, good memories that you’ve made. Are you anticipating or dreading anything? I ammmmmm anticipating dinner haha. I can’t think of anything I’m dreading.

If someone could randomly give you something right now what would you like? Baked sushi :( It’s a recent trend locally and it looks so gooddddd, I just don’t wanna spend the last of my savings on it or ask my parents to buy a tray for me. What`s the most annoying thing in the world? At the moment it’s people who refuse to wear masks because they claim that it messes with their oxygen level or because they find it personally uncomfortable. When did you last use one of those water slides you put on hills? I have no clue what you mean. What are you sitting on right now? One of the dining room chairs. What skills would you like to learn / develop? Adobe Indesign and iMovie. I dabbled with these recently – Indesign for a class and iMovie to make a video for Gabie – and though I was always too scared to start using programs like these, I actually found them fun and super useful when I finally had my hands on them. When we saw each other the other day Gab was talking about using this break to take up workshops in different Adobe programs so that she’ll have more stuff to put on her resumé, so I might follow her footsteps too. What is something other people say you’re good at but you think you’re not? Teaching. I always feel like I fumble a lot, but idk I get compliments on it so I guess I’m kinda okay but I just don’t see it. What does your bedside lamp look like? I don’t have one. I used to have a wall light though. It was a just tiny lil bulb that I had to plug in to give my room a light orange hue. What did you last take a photograph of? Myself and Cooper. When was the last time you got really frustrated with technology? Yesterday. My laptop was a bit slow when I wanted my YouTube video to go full-screen, and my impatient ass already got irritated with it. What was the last funny thing someone said to you? She didn’t technically ‘say’ it but my mom was singing a song earlier and had the lyrics wrong, and what came out of her mouth instead was so wrong and so funny. Who taught you to tie your shoelaces? My grandmother. What was the last thing you bought? I bought snacks from my girlfriend’s dad Korean food business! I got myself odeng (fishcakes) and tteokbokki (spicy rice cake) :) Do you want to move to somewhere else? If so, where? Any country with a capable government at this point. What time is it where you are? 8:04 PM. What’s your favourite picture of yourself as a child? I’m not sharing that on here, but I do have my favorites.

Do you like your neighbours? I suppose they’re okay, in a sense that they haven’t done anything to annoy me. I’ve never talked to them in the last 12 years that I’ve lived here though haha I always felt like my mom could take care of the socializing stuff – and she has been. Does your room need to be cleaned? Nah I’m barely in it these days. It’s mostly spotless and things are stacked up neatly. Do you have a good relationship with your family? I wouldn’t say it’s good, but it’s not bad. Super lacking in the emotional aspect, though, and it’s a big reason why at the end of the day I can’t call it a good relationship. What is something people are surprised to hear about you? That I don’t like fruits. The horrified gasps and expressions never get old. Do you make judgments about people straight after meeting them? Only if they blatantly act like a jerk. Do you hate any particular groups of people? I mean I hate racists, abusers, rapists, Karens... but if you mean to ask if I hate any race or people of a certain sexual/gender orientation then most definitely not. Do you fall up or down stairs usually? Down :( Do you constantly break things? (By mistake or otherwise) HAHA yes. What was the last bug you saw? Kinda looked like a moth but I’m not sure what it was exactly. Are there any smells which make you feel nauseous? Rotten egg, any fruits lol. What is the scariest thing you`ve ever gone through? Random men play-lunging at me when I’m walking outside and then laughing once I jump or whimper. I don’t know if there’s a certain script that those fucking pigs follow, but I’ve had several of the exact same experiences through the years. That’s why my friends can always poke fun at the fact that I drive everywhere no matter how close my destination is – at least I feel safest that way. Do you have anything unusual in your bag? No. I only carried the essentials in the last bag I used when I went out the other day. Are there any people you know in real life that you only talk to online? Yeah, there’s a bunch of people I don’t really get to see irl. Some of them are friends who’ve migrated, some are my friends’ parents, my relatives who’ve always lived in the US, etc. Do you think people who don`t care about education are dumb? In the Philippines they will definitely be considered careless, dumb, and having no ambition. But I know education isn’t as big of a priority in other countries and that college isn’t a necessity in those places, so I guess there’s a cultural difference here. What`s your favourite key on a keyboard? I don’t pick favorite keyboard buttons lol. Do you always finish what you start? Nah I’m a little terrible at that, especially if we’re talking of passion projects. I collected Starbucks planners for like six years and was never able to completely fill up any one of them. Who`s your favourite character from The Simpsons? Or do you hate that show? I’m not a big fan of the show but just because I relate to her a lot and the fact that she’s intelligent and a goody-two-shoes, Lisa. Have you ever had any friends who always tried to steal your things? Nah wtf? I’d so easily stop talking to them if all they did was steal from me lmao What is something you will never understand? People!!! Who!!! Aren’t!!! Nice!!! To!!! Servers/Baristas/Anyone working in a job that has to directly deal with customers!!! When did you last laugh hysterically? Probably earlier this afternoon watching a Good Mythical Morning episode.

#survey #surveys

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homeschooled-littles · 5 years

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October has been Stressful!

Monday October 28, 2019

This month has been filled with it’s struggles. K has not been doing well in Public School since the beginning of the year. I was expecting some difficulties, but I was expecting her to do better than she has been.

I met with her Home Ed Principal and we discussed possibly having K go to school for her Language Arts as well so she could get the extra reading help she needs.

I brought this suggesstion to her school Principal and everything just snowballed from there. The Principal requested to meet with me on Wednesday October 23rd after school. I agreed to the meeting and went to it all prepared with what I was going to say. That all got thrown out the window when I was ambushed by 2 of K’s teachers, the teacher who would be her LA teacher and the Principal. I was only expecting to meet with the LA teacher and the Principal. Being ambushed like that was not pleasant. To top it off they made me feel very small in that room like I had no voice. It was very difficult and one of those times I wish I would have dragged my husband with me. I didn’t bring him because I was prepared and I knew bringing him would ruffle some feathers. He’s not as polite as I am and he’s more abrasive.

I had no need to speak with K’s social and science teachers who were at the meeting. Her science teacher I really dislike as she was K’s KG teacher and K was just left to fall through the cracks rather than being taught properly.

During the meeting they made it seem like homeschooling K was a huge mistake and that I have just wasted the last two years of her education. I know this is not the case, so that was hurtful. They brought up how K is lacking “school skills” like filling in the blank. That is a load of crap because she’s able to do that at home with me no problem. The only area where she lacks “school skills” is for quizzes and tests because we don’t do those in homeschool.

Because learning to read, write and do math are the most important life skills taught in school, another option was presented to me. They asked how Kiele is doing in math and I was honest. I told them that we are behind but working hard to catch up and start on the grade 3 math. I’m confident we can get the grade 3 math done by Christmas or shortly after. She’s is not struggling with it at all and we are able to fly right through the pages. Because she’s behind, that told them she is struggling and it was suggested I put her in school there for LA and Math where she could get the necessary help she needs.

By putting K into school for grade 3 math when we are doing the grade 2 stuff would be like throwing her to the wolves and I absolutely cannot do that to her and I was horrified that they would even suggest doing that to cause her additional struggles and frustrations at school.

All I wanted was to know how the LA teacher would help her improve her reading and I did not get that. I got bombarded with everything I’m doing wrong from their point of view. This was not a fair situation!

Her LA teacher would have done the at-home reading program with K where I would still be working with her on her reading at home. She would not get any one-on-one attention in the classroom, which is what she needs. Her teacher said she’d send over supplemental work from that days’ lessons for us to do for the next day. She would do the same for math.

How is that different than me teaching her at home and doing it all myself anyways? It’s not! I’m still doing all the work. The only Kiele would be getting would have been the classroom exposure. That is far less important to me than her succeeding in her reading and writing.

I was so upset in the meeting and from everything they were staying I started to tear up. I tried really really hard not to let them see me emotional but I just couldn’t hide it. Their comments were hurtful and I care way too much about my daughter to have feelings like stone.

After coming home, my husband and I talked all night until bedtime. We came to the decision that enough is enough and we would withdraw K from school and continue with homeschool full-time. They wanted an answer two days after our meeting. But after talking to K’s Home Ed Principal, he advised we take the weekend to think things over and discuss everything. That’s what I did and last night I sent the email to her school stating my decision. I got a very basic reply that they respect my decision and are disappointed to see K leave the school. I don’t care how disappointed they are, I’m disappointed in the lack of support and how they have to have the parents do the support instead of the teachers. I have no problem if my child was in school full-time and was struggling with something, like say patterns in math, and needed some extra practice at home. But to expect us parents to do all the support instead of having support in the classroom is not fair to us.

Tomorrow morning I’m picking up K’s things from the office and I hope they have everything there or I’m going ot be hounding them relentlessly until I get everything. At the beginning of the year I sent along 2 boxes of kleenex, they can keep those for all I care, but all her work and supplies that I bought through their program I want.

I’m hoping the adults in the school can remain professional as I still have A in KG. I don’t need A to get any fallback because the teachers dislike me over my decision. I don’t need her to have a hard time in school because I had to do what’s best for K. I know this year A is in good hands, but next year is a different story as she will have the teacher I really dislike. If that’s the case I will take A out of this school and I will send her to the school in the next town over even if that means dishing out extra money for bussing costs. If it means she will get a better, unbiased education, it will be worth it.

I love my children and all I want is what is best for them. They mean the world to me!

#homeschool #grade 3 #update

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bandedbulbussnarfblat · 2 years

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Just got the worst evaluation of my life at work. And I feel like I knew it was coming, but I've just not been able to reach these kids. Working with EC kids is hard, especially when they have behavior problems. And I've tried, but I do think eventually I just gave up and went into survival mode. Because I don't know how to handle them or help them.

I've been working with EC kids nearly a decade now, mostly self contained students. And the difference between them and pull out students is so extreme. Not to mention these kids I work with had severe anger/emotional issues that I didn't know how to navigate.

I've always gotten good evaluations before. I spent years with a group of kids and got to know them and their personalities and figured out the best ways to work with them. We had a flow, and a rapport and the kids trusted me and even liked me.

Then I got moved to a different school. These kids seemed determined to view me as the enemy from the get go. It didn't help that there was no stability-we didn't even have our own classroom, we had to use other teachers' room during their planning time.

And more and more work piled on. Paperwork on the kids, teachers I was supposed to reach out to, more programs I was supposed to do. But the thing is, I'm an assistant/aide. I left teaching to get away from that sort of stuff. But here I was expected to do the work of a teacher. Not the stuff like IEP meetings and what not, but the day to day work of one.

It's been miserable and I've hated it the entire time. I couldn't get the kids to engage or care about school. I couldn't manage their behaviors. I couldn't do anything.

I don't know what the solution is. I've already asked for a transfer. Because I can't take another year of this job. My mental health can't take it. I've spiraled into a depressive episode, one of the worst I had in years.

I don't know. I don't know how I failed these kids so hard. I don't want to blame the kids themselves, but the reality is some of the blame rests with them. They say meet kids at their level, but you can't help someone who refuses to let you.

I don't know. Maybe it's because my own mental health problems that I got so overwhelmed. Maybe our rough edges scraped against each other. But somehow I failed these kids, and that doesn't feel good.

It was going to be a hard year, regardless of where I was, after so long with virtual learning. And while I know it was absolutely neccessary to keep us safe, it's also done a lot of harm. Kids lost not only their academic skills, but a lot of social skills as well.

I don't know what to do. Maybe I should leave the education field entirely.

#education #personal #maybe a rant

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lumalaya · 6 years

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summer films ‘18

hi there! to clarify, this is a log of films i’ve seen this summer, not exactly films set in the summer, so if you’re here for that, i’m sorry?

anyway, here we go!

1. kasal (2018) / dir. ruel s. bayani ♡ 180525 ♡ girl is engaged to the son of cebu’s current mayor who is currently preparing for elections, but her ex comes back and tries to win her back ♡ cliche, i know, but trust me, this movie deals with this plotline in a very interesting way ♡ and come on, it’s bea alonzo and paulo avelino, two icons 2. high school musical (2006) / dir. kenny ortega ♡ 180614 ♡ iconic, i love troy bolton, thanks for reminding me ♡ i know sharpay isn’t that bad but she’s still a bully lol ♡ the choreography for when there was me and you got me dying i love it ♡ fave song: stick to the status quo 3. high school musical 2 (2007) / dir. kenny ortega ♡ 180622 ♡ my least favorite in the trilogy ♡ there was so much unnecessary drama they should’ve cut troy some slack ♡ i hate chad danforth, that’s all ♡ fave song: you are the music in me 4. high school musical 3: senior year (2008) / dir. kenny ortega ♡ 180622 ♡ my favorite in the trilogy! ♡ i still hate chad tho lol but i love taylor so much she’s my favorite character! ♡ i wish they elaborated more on gabriella though, because i like to imagine an alternate ending where she declines stanford and stays in albuquerque for another year which disappoints everyone and puts a strain on her relationship with troy. that would’ve been so interesting! ♡ fave song: i love all of them, but if i had to choose, the boys are back 5. kimmy dora 2: the temple of kiyeme (2009) / dir. joyce bernal ♡ 180626 ♡ the only reason i watched this was because i had a terrible pimple on my forehead and it reminded me of some horror movie then i realized it was this so i had to look for the particular scene ♡ the movie was really bad, as expected ♡ but i absolutely love eugene domingo!! she’s so talented i really admire her as an actress

6. before sunrise (1995) / dir. richard linklater ♡ 180630 ♡ this was the day my internet ultimately stopped working (for four days, if i may add) so i thought hey why not start that movie marathon i’ve been meaning to do ♡ i was excited to watch this because it’s a known pop culture reference, and also because it’s seulgi’s favorite movie ♡ it’s unique! it’s not easy to film a story that revolves around two people who’ve just met walking around in a city neither of them knows ♡ i liked this movie but it wasn’t that spectacular or anything, i think it lacks emotion and excitement ♡ but please, do not get off a train in europe with someone you’ve just met that is dangerous

7. before sunset (2004) / dir. richard linklater ♡ 180630 ♡ i knew nothing about this so i was actually surprised to see the same actors nine years after before sunrise’s release ♡ i like this better than the first one! céline shows the emotions i was looking for ♡ it’s much simpler and easier to follow because it really is just them walking around and talking to continue the story because of the short amount of time they have together

8. before midnight (2013) / dir. richard linklater ♡ 180630 ♡ this movie is the reason i watched the series! it was mentioned in it’s okay, that’s love so i thought i needed to watch this, and honestly, it helped me understand the characters from iotl a bit better! ♡ it ended up being my favorite film of the three ♡ it’s more complex than the first two because it introduces more characters and is set in more locations ♡ after years of watching and reading romcoms, this made me believe in love

9. gone girl (2014) / dir. david fincher ♡ 180701 ♡ i knew nothing about this film except that there was a girl and she was missing and the plot is unexpected? ♡ i won’t say much on this because it’s amazing when you watch it without knowing anything ♡ but it is CRAZY it hecked me up so much wow ♡ will try reading the book when i can!! 10. the grand budapest hotel (2014) / dir. wes anderson ♡ 180701 ♡ my first wes anderson film (finally) ♡ bored me at first because sadly, i can’t relate to rich european men who live in hotels and have sex with elderly women ♡ but it is so much more than that! it’s funny and deals with loyalty, the war, and crap immigrants go through ♡ yes, the cinematography is unique and beautiful, but i couldn’t appreciate it much from years of seeing wes anderson stills on my social media ♡ i went into this without knowing anything about it, but i wish i’d watched the trailer beforehand because that would’ve helped me appreciate it more 11. the fault in our stars (2014) / dir. josh boone ♡ 180702 ♡ i was bored and looking through my sister’s hard drive and i thought hey why not watch sad western teen books-turned-movies i used to glorify years ago ♡ it was alright but knowing every line, song, facial expression that would come next made it worse ♡ john green’s cameo is so awkward it’s almost funny ♡ i hope i never meet an augustus waters in my life 12. if i stay (2014) / dir. r.j. cutler ♡ 180703 ♡ part 2 of sad western teen books-turned-movies i used to glorify ♡ the story is pretty good but the film itself isn’t as good as i remembered ♡ i’m still so in love with jamie blackley after four years he’s so handsome and his voice is beautiful ♡ chloe moretz’s acting is really awkward though it’s almost painful to watch ♡ it made me want to reread the sequel where she went though! 13. she’s dating the gangster (2014) / dir. cathy garcia-molina ♡ 180705 ♡ i started this with an open mind and some expectations because although i hated on it for no reason years ago, i wanted to give it a chance ♡ but i’m sorry it really is bad ♡ kenji delos reyes is manipulative and selfish i hope i never meet a guy like him 14. grave of the fireflies (1988) / dir. isao takahata ♡ 180706 ♡ two siblings in the middle of a war ♡ watched this because a friend wanted to rabbit with me! ♡ i haven’t seen a ghibli film in a while so this was refreshing ♡ really sad though :( 15. 10 things i hate about you (1999) / dir. gil hunger ♡ 180706 ♡ guy is paid to date girl lol ♡ julia stiles is so beautiful :( i love her ♡ pretty funny actually! ♡ also watched this because friends wanted to rabbit with me :> 16. i’m drunk, i love you (2017) / dir. jp habac ♡ 180707 ♡ i finally, finally watched this ♡ not gonna lie it disappointed me? so many people loved it but for me it was eh ♡ paulo avelino’s character was pretty lacking for me, i wish they’d elaborated more on him ♡ but i liked the group dynamic because they’re not the wholesome, fake happy kind of friends, seeing them interact made me feel like they’re people i really know in real life (which made me miss my own friends) ♡ even jasmine’s character felt real because she’s probably someone i’d know HAHA ♡ fun fact: i’ve listened to the song lloydy long before watching this because i mean? a song about john lloyd? sign me up 17. that thing called tadhana (2014) / dir. antoinette jadaone ♡ 180708 ♡ another film i finally watched after multiple pop culture references ♡ i actually kinda liked it! it literally has a spiel about john lloyd of course i do but it gets better when the main characters become comfortable with each other ♡ i find it interesting that the director also directed love you to the stars and back which is another film that revolves around two people, both dealing with stuff, who’d just met and decide to go on a journey together ♡ the characters also feel pretty realistic/relatable once you get to know them 18. the spectacular now (2013) / dir. james ponsoldt ♡ 180709 ♡ part 3 of sad western teen books-turned-movies i used to glorify ♡ the only reason i rewatched this was because it was the shortest of the films i had at the time and i needed something to pass the time while loading episodes of svt club ♡ i mean it’s okay? not bad not good and i don’t even like miles teller ♡ shailene woodley perfectly plays the part of the awkward oblivious girl (and that’s not a compliment) 19. the breakup playlist (2015) / dir. dan villegas ♡ 180716 ♡ this film was so refreshing to watch?? sarah portrayed a youthful musician just starting out so so well i love her so much what a great first sarah g movie for me ♡ piolo made me fall in love with him and later on hate him, as he should ♡ i love opm kaya seeing the gig scene, some actual artists like ebe dancel, and looots of covers of songs like wag na wag mong sasabihin by kitchie nadal and with a smile by eraserheads ♡ i understand now why people love paano bang magmahal HAHAHA 20. barcelona: a love untold (2016) / dir. olivia lamasan ♡ 180717 ♡ alright so remember how i absolutely hated sdtg? ♡ I LOVED THIS FILM SO. MUCH. ♡ kathniel matured a lot in two years and i think they were perfect for this!! they really showed certain struggles of young adults and did not disappoint ♡ it also shows filipino values for family, utang ng loob, ofw struggles, etc ♡ and of course the cinematography is beautiful HUHU i mean it’s barcelona!! 21. my annoying brother (2016) / dir. kwon soo-kyung ♡ 180721 ♡ honestly took me a bit to get into it ♡ i expected it to be funny and although it did make me laugh a lot why were there tears :((( ♡ kyungsoo is so, so, so talented i admire him so much as an actor now ♡ really hits you in the feels! a really beautiful story about two brothers 22. so i married an anti-fan (2016) / dir. kim jae-young ♡ 180724 ♡ meh ♡ it took some getting used to seeing chanyeol being all snobbish and cool instead of his usual loud happy self ♡ of course it’s overdramatic for the comedy, but the hate-turned-love isn’t even that good lol it’s just unreasonable but whatever ♡ the lead girl reminds me of arci munoz HAHA 23. wonder (2017) / dir. stephen chbosky ♡ 180725 ♡ we watched this during my summer program and i was actually pretty excited because i remember loving the book! ♡ this honestly teaches you a lot not even just from the perspective of children but also as teenagers, parents, friends, etc ♡ i thoroughly enjoyed it!

#films #movies #recs #recommendations #reviews #film reviews #movie reviews #film recs #movie recs #high school musical #filipino films #i love troy bolton #sad western teen books-turned-movies i used to glorify #before series

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tophersong · 6 years

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End of Year Reflection 2017

I’m always a sucker for writing reflections after long periods of time. For those who still use tumblr or have somehow stumbled upon my tumblr this past year, maybe it’ll give you a better idea of who I am. Maybe reading how someone else’s life is will give you inspiration to share your own story. Who knows? I just like writing to look back and see how far I’ve come. And here it goes.

This has been an interesting year from start to finish.

I started off last year with broken glasses, a very broken family, a broken heart and a confused soul.

Broken glasses- A quick story. I spend every New Year’s Eve at church to ring in the year with my church. I was fooling around on the 4th floor with my friends. One guy wanted to test how strong he was so he wanted to punch someone LOOL, typical guy stuff. One friend said bring it on. The dude punched and the punch went through my friend and hit me right in the face LOOL. And that’s exactly how I started my 2017.

Broken Family- If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll probably know this one already. My dad left years ago, creating big trouble for my family. Younger Chris grew to be a mediator between the storms of hell between my mother and sister who were very emotional and sensitive to everything. Fast forward 12 years, not much has changed. Sister moved back in and the fights started again.

Broken Heart- I started off the year fighting to go abroad. I was super hungry to experience something new and I wanted to really live freely. The beginning of this year is when I found out legally, I’m not allowed to exist in Korea and also that I didn’t have anywhere near enough experience with teaching to teach anywhere else.

Confused Soul- After finding out about the above, I felt lost. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue with teaching. Sure enough, I knew that everyone went through this phase but it didn’t make it any easier.

The first part of the year was extremely rough. After breaking my glasses and surviving all the fights at home, I decided to join the youth group staff at my church. A new pastor had come and I thought that it was finally the right time to join. Who knew that making that decision would really impact the rest of my year. I joined a bunch of ragtag peeps who weren’t that connected as a staff. I certainly kept my distance because I didn’t want to engage myself in something too energy consuming. As the days went on, the fights at home escalated to a breaking point. Physically, emotionally, mentally, I felt very broken. I meant to meet up with my best friend to share and just get things off my shoulders but I met with a new friend earlier in the day and ended up sharing my guts with the dude. I literally bawled in a restaurant and I was ok with that. The relationship that was built from that really turned into one of the stronger relationships that I hold onto. In the middle of all this fighting, I also happened to feel the urge to come out to my mom. Talk about timing. I literally sat her down after a big fight and was like, here we go. Both of us being christian, she was probably very confused. I tried my best to explain my story but all it looked like she got was that I like boys. She didn’t talk to me for a week, which killed me in the that time. But sharing with her made life easier for me. One, it was a way to ask for prayer. Two, once she knew, that was probably the biggest hurdle before sharing with others.

Here starts the second season of my year. I found a job as a math tutor and working here has been a challenge of all sorts. Learning how to work with students of all ages and understanding where they’re coming from while also not being the push over. The people at work were incredibly nice. Having nice coworkers made the transition a lot easier. The students, although some are a pain, are fun to teach. Some are so eager to learn or help that it gives me hope for a better future. My sister was able to move out. The fights didn’t necessarily stop but our family chemistry started healing. Family is still awkward with each other but it’s always something worth fighting for. I was still trying to look for any opportunity to go abroad. In the morning, I’d search for jobs abroad and prep for interviews for Japan and I’d work from 3 to 8. My days went by very quickly in this manner. Towards the end of this season, I said I’ll volunteer as staff for a church mission trip with our youth.

Here comes summer. This is where I started to get challenged to grow. I had to plan out my weekends to be filled with church activities and had to plan out a budget to make sure I’d have enough money to even go. (*I failed LOOOL) I worked during the week and I’d be at church during the weekend. The first challenge was when sunday small groups were being changed as the new freshmen came up. I didn’t want any grade honestly speaking. I just wanted to be a background staff that helped wherever he could. The pastor originally wanted me with the freshmen but I hated the idea. If you’ve seen my past posts, there’s one with a student I’ve felt unnaturally connected to. Yeah, that kid’s a freshman and at the beginning of the summer, I was sure that he hated me. So naturally I cowered away in fear of being hated and didn’t want to take the responsibility. My heart felt like I should say yes to it but I ran from that. I guess the pastor saw where my heart was and she placed me with the sophomores. The next challenge came with the same student LOOL. We had to make groups for the missions trip and I felt called to take him in mine but I ran away from that call too. The missions trip came and went. The students were on a spiritual high and it was easier to connect with them. I started to feel more engaged in church socially. I made a close group of friends that I ate dinner with almost every Sunday. Honestly speaking, if this were me in 2016, I’d say that it wasn’t worth all the effort to meet these people. But boy do I love them now. In the beginning of the summer, I also went to help out at my friends church for a one week program that they had. Maybe that’s where it started. A fresh hope for something new to begin happening. It was during that one week that I also came to peace about not going abroad. It’s where I came to understand that for the time being, my heart is already where it belongs.

As Fall approached, my life fell into a rhythm. It turned into study, work, sleep, church. I started looking towards future changes like heading back to school soon. I just went through cycle after cycle and not much changed. Things were in a good place. I had a close friend of mine fall off the grid. Enough so that his brother contacted me because he hadn’t been seen in a couple weeks. I tried contacting him and he was fine. But after trying to contact him after that, he seemed to have changed. I still haven’t received an answer from him after several months and my heart feels very challenged. To let go of a friendship that’s not worth it or to continue trying because it seems like no one else will. This isn’t the first time it’s happened so maybe it’s time to change my answer.

As the year came to a close, a lot of other things did as well. I really have this idea that my church is my home driven back in. These are people I’m not willing to let go of so easily anymore. My ragtag staff grew close to one another. I got a promotion at work. And I finally got some sense of closure with that kid from before.

As this year starts and as a new season of my life starts, I wait in anticipation. There’s no saying whether there will be a good season or a bad season. But what I know is that God’s carried me through the toughest parts of this year and He is faithful to see me through more. My one real resolution for this year is to learn how to say yes when He tugs at my heart. It’s so easy to run away. But is it really worth it in the end?

This year has been incredible. I hated the beginning of it. And as corny as it sounds, I feel like a freaking butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Maybe I just needed that time to break my cocoon so that I could learn to fly LOOL.

I look forward to more growth this year. Wherever that takes me, let’s go.

Thanks for reading this far. I wrote a heck a lot. And if reading this meant anything to you, I challenge you to do the same. It’s nice to know what other people are going through. It’s nice to share.

*I also feel like I left out a lot of stories so feel free to stay tuned to hear more.

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ebenpink · 5 years

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I Saw the Extra Weight I’d Carried My Whole Life Slip Away https://ift.tt/2Umr7tu

It’s Monday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Monday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

My visual transformation isn’t all that impressive. In fact, despite having a completely different body composition, I weigh more or less the same that I did six years ago.

My real transformation has occurred on the inside and in the way that I try to embody the Primal Blueprint principles in the way I live my life.

Before Primal Living:

Out of shape

Abysmal self-esteem

Without a clear life path

6 Years Since Discovering Mark’s Daily Apple:

Owns a Health & Fitness blog and coaching business

Inspires others to find their self-esteem through leading by example

Recreational athlete in Powerlifting, Strongman and Highland Games

Loving life every day

I first heard of Mark and his message about primal health back in 2013. At the time, my husband and I were living in a modest cabin in the woods of Northern Maine and the extent of my fitness routine was the obligatory jog now and then or some exercise videos that mostly involved bodyweight training. Our cabin had no electricity or running water which meant that we were gathering, cutting and stacking firewood by hand so that we could stay warm during the long winters. Turning manure, bending over in the garden, hauling hay for our goats and clearing woods for future pasture were serious back killing chores and we knew we needed to find a way to get stronger in order to support our active lifestyle. Coupled with this was my husband’s chronic GI distress and autoimmune condition, Reactive Arthritis, which led us down the road of research into how a grain-free, sugar free diet could improve those ailments.

As is often the case, primal nutrition and heavy lifting principles were deeply entwined from the very beginning of our journey towards optimal health. And as we cut out wheat and sugar, we also began learning the functional movements of the squat, deadlift and pull-up. With a manual treadmill we found in the barn, we regularly blasted ourselves with intervals after reading from you the importance of sprinting. Your fitness principles of walk far, run fast, lift heavy came so naturally to us and in the setting of the lush, Maine woods, it felt that much more primal to get in tune with our ancestral physiques.

You might imagine that the stronger and more fit we became, the more we wanted to eat better to support that. Before long, our backs felt bulletproof chopping and stacking piles of firewood. My husband’s arthritis improved. I was seeing the extra weight I had carried my whole life slip away. We had gone to the woods to seek a lifestyle where we could call the shots and pursue our healthiest existence. But in the process, we had the rude awakening that our bodies were the weakest link in the chain of health. Our minds were strong and our homestead was strong, but our bodies were not. And so when we saw the benefits of the Primal Blueprint massively improve our existence, it was like coming out of a bad dream and I woke up one morning thinking “hey, this is really something to live for.”

While I graduated college with a degree in writing, I never really had found my purpose or a career I was passionate about giving my 9 to 5 energy to. I always believed that I had a lot to share with the world, but couldn’t conceive of what avenue to take, but with this new primal lifestyle, I discovered a completely unexpected passion. Always the chubby book nerd my whole life, taking on sports in school out of social pressure and obligation but never out of true interest, here I was, suddenly wanting to pursue fitness and wellness as a career.

We ended up leaving our little homestead for my husband to travel down the long (and still not complete) road of becoming a Dentist. He studied for biochemistry and tests and I studied strength and conditioning in between my long hours at Starbucks. (Side note: I managed to make it 2 years working there without consuming sugar and my coworkers would always marvel at my dedication of turning down a free Frappuccino. I explained to them that eating primal, my energy was consistent throughout the day and better than ever and seeing the positive effects of my nutrition in my day to day life was all the motivation I needed to persist.) The years we spent studying for our individual pursuits, we also spend wrecking ourselves on the barbell and on the field doing sprints and without following any strict program, we simply tried to remember to walk far, run fast, lift heavy. Slowly and surely, our body composition improved and I took on my first personal training clients.

Now living in Salt Lake City, I think of myself more as a Strength Coach than a personal trainer and before walking that road I didn’t even realize there was a difference. I see my colleagues often get wrapped up in ideal programming principles and I try to remember the basics: pick up heavy stuff and put it overhead using good technique, train for explosive speed and go on long hikes outdoors.

I use my personal experience to help guide my athletes on the emotional journey of becoming strong and realizing their physical potential. I have so many people, primarily women, come to me saying they want to lose weight. But as we begin working together, they quickly see that in fact their goal is much more complex that a number on the scale. They learn that it feels good to get strong and learn how to move in ways they never thought possible. I see the look of fear in their eyes at approaching a back squat for the first time and I recognize that look of fear because it’s the same one I felt when I started my journey. I see timid women who hate their bodies do a pull-up for the first time after working hard for a year and then it’s like poof… now they love their bodies because they unlocked this talent for strength they never knew they had. When that happens, the number on the scale matters so much less to them because now they have a performance goal. Now they are pursuing health rather than weight loss.

Although I am not strictly a Primal Blueprint coach, I still hold onto those principles while I teach other people how to lift and what strategies they can use to build balanced nutrition. I encourage them to seek nutrient-dense foods rather than counting macros or calories and to eat when hunger ensues naturally rather than adhering to six small meals a day. I feel confident coaching strategies like Keto and Intermittent Fasting because I have done the research on the health benefits and have the anecdotal evidence to back it up from my own experience. I am always trying to do what your blog did for me, which is to teach them ways they can figure out what health uniquely means to them. I still try to embody the idea that you instilled in me: study how our ancestors thrived to learn how to seek our healthy existence in a world that can often be toxic.

My transformation doesn’t come through in a before and after photo, but I believe I have gained a million times more than if I had lost 100 lbs and cured 10 autoimmune conditions. I discovered my life’s path and spend every day trying to guide others to do the same.

Thank you, Hill

primalpillarsstrength.com Instagram @primalpillars

The readers featured in our success stories share their experiences in their own words. The Primal Blueprint and Keto Reset diets are not intended as medical intervention or diagnosis. Nor are they replacements for working with a qualified healthcare practitioner. It’s important to speak with your doctor before beginning any new dietary or lifestyle program, and please consult your physician before making any changes to medication or treatment protocols. Each individual’s results may vary.

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sweetandsavageautistic · 7 years

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I'm Fuming Right Now

(TW: mentions of rape, emotional manipulation, swearing, mentions of suicide, depression, guilt tripping, a general wave of unbridled rage.) So I'm sitting outside an open classroom and some students are demonstrating scenarios pertaining to rape culture and I realized; that's something they need to teach us in school, but especially in social skills classes. I mean, I think I was taught it in Health class, they definitely at least told us about different methods of safe sex, but some kids might go to schools where that shit isn't taught. But this shit could be especially scary for autistics like myself. In high school, we have to go to these social skills classes and academic skills classes and some have to do vocational work. They might never learn about this shit. We never learned social skills pertaining to parties in high school. And if they don't know the signs that maybe someone who's talking to them has an alterior motive, they're gonna be traumatized, like any NT, except NTs have the chance to learn this shit. Some autistics miss out on it. I know some autistics who are highly social and yet are on the "moderately autistic" side and they would probably attend clubs and parties and dances. But they aren't gonna know how to tell if someone is thinking of taking advantage of them. In fact, the program, now that I think about it, is shit for high schoolers. My social skills classes never taught me how to respond when someone tries to flirt with you, never taught me anything more than really what I'd been learning since elementary school; unexpected and expected behavior, body language, how to respond to bullying, how to keep a conversation going, etc,. I mean, don't get me wrong. Learning that stuff is very important, but it was the same year after year after year. Even when my social skills classes became social/academic communication, that gave us even less opportunities to learn things to keep our mental health from deteriorating or to keep ourselves protected from being raped, since schools refuse to tell people to JUST NOT RAPE, like how to read if you're in an abusive relationship and how to get out of it or if a friend is being manipulative or emotionally abusive or how to know if someone is being honest or not. I didn't learn the signs of an abusive SO/friend until I was in Sociology class last semester. By that time, the damage that the girl had done was, well, done. They teach us how to keep our friendships, but not how to cut them off. They teach us about how to tell if we're invading someone's personal space, but not how to tell if someone is being clingy or controlling. They teach us how to tell basic facial expressions, but they don't teach us how to read someone's eyes, which say more than their words and face as a whole. They teach us how to be polite, but they don't teach us how to confront an abusive SO/friend. They teach us when it's okay to tell a white lie, but not when someone is trying to make us feel guilty. The message is very subtle, but it's there; they tell us that if our friends are angry at us, it's our fault because we fucked up again. They set us up to be taken advantage of. They tell us that every social mishap is our fault, simply because we're autistic. And that fills me with rage. I had an emotionally manipulative friend for about 2 years. She would put words into my mouth that I never said. Some conversations I had with her over texting ended up in tears and panic attacks on my side. She tried to keep me from a friend we shared. She kept telling me that I wasn't making any progress with my depression. If said "friend" ever finds this post: DID YOU HONESTLY EXPECT ME TO MAKE ANY DAMN PROGRESS TOWARDS RECOVERING FROM MY DEPRESSION WHEN YOU KEPT GUILT-TRIPPING ME, TRYING TO KEEP ME FROM KT AND NEVER APOLOGIZING WHEN I HAD TOLD YOU THAT WHAT YOU HAD SAID TO ME HURT ME? I TOLD YOU THAT I DIDN'T FEEL INCLUDED IN CONVERSATIONS EVEN WHEN I TRIED TO PARTICIPATE IN THEM AND YOU DIDN'T DO SHIT TO CHANGE THAT EVEN WHEN YOU SAID YOU WOULD. YOU PLACED IT ON MY SHOULDERS AND GAVE ME THE SUBTLE MESSAGE THAT I WASN'T TRYING HARD ENOUGH. HOW THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT ME TO TRY WHEN YOU KEPT IGNORING ME? AND YOU CALLED ME SELF-ABSORBED? LOOK WHO'S TALKING. ALL YOU CARED ABOUT IS WHETHER YOU HAD KT ALL TO YOURSELF OR NOT. YOU COMPLETELY MINIMIZED ANY PROBLEM THAT I HAD. YOU NEVER EVEN TRIED TO UNDERSTAND MY PERSPECTIVE. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE SHIT YOU PUT ME THROUGH THAT I STILL HAVE TRUST ISSUES DESPITE HAVING AN AMAZING FRIEND GROUP IN COLLEGE. WHEN YOU ASKED ME IF I HAD APPLIED TO A COLLEGE I HAD ACCEPTED TO BECAUSE KT HAD GOTTEN ACCEPTED THERE, I SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOU THAT I DIDN'T REMEMBER WHY I APPLIED AND YOU COMPLETELY DISREGARDED THAT. YOU CHERRYPICKED WHATEVER I SAID TO MAKE ME SEEM LIKE I WAS MANIPULATING YOU. YOU KEPT ACCUSING ME OF APPLYING THERE BECAUSE KT GOT ACCEPTED THERE. YOU MADE ME FEEL LIKE I COULDN'T VOICE MY OWN THOUGHTS TO YOU WITHOUT YOU BLOWING THE WHOLE THING OUT OF PROPORTION WHEN THAT'S A BASIC FUCKING PART OF A FRIENDSHIP; BEING ABLE TO TALK TO THEIR FRIENDS ABOUT WHAT'S UPSETTING YOU. DID I ACTUALLY MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU AT ALL? WAS IT BECAUSE OF WHO I WAS AS A PERSON OR BECAUSE I WAS SOMEONE ELSE YOU WANTED TO CONTROL. AND NOW TO ADDRESS BOTH YOU AND KT; I DON'T CARE HOW CLOSE YOU TWO ARE. I DON'T ACCEPT BEING THE THIRD WHEEL. THE REST OF YOUR FRIENDS AREN'T THERE WHEN YOU CAN'T HANG OUT WITH EACH OTHER. NOW TO ADDRESS JUST NOT KT AGAIN; THE WORLD DOESN'T REVOLVE AROUND YOU. MAYBE YOU WERE GOING THROUGH SOME EMOTIONAL TROUBLES, AND I'M SORRY YOU WERE, BUT THAT WAS NEVER EVER AN EXCUSE TO MAKE ME YOUR PERSONAL VERBAL PUNCHING BAG. YOU WORSENED MY DEPRESSION. YOU MADE ME FEEL LIKE ABSOLUTE SHIT. YOU PATRONIZED ME AND MADE ME FEEL WEAK, SO THAT I WOULDN'T LEAVE THE FRIENDSHIP UNTIL ENOUGH DAMAGE HAD BEEN DONE. I GAVE YOU TOO MANY SECOND CHANCES BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU WOULD CHANGE, BUT CLEARLY THAT ISN'T, NOR WILL PROBABLY EVER BE THE CASE. I SHOULD'VE CUT THE "FRIENDSHIP" WITH YOU A LONG TIME AGO. If you see this and attempt to retaliate or play the victim to gain pity, you're only proving my point that you're emotionally manipulative. I hope you're happy with what you did to me. Now that that part of the rant is done with: Anyway, thanks to the shitty social skills program in high school, I never learned those signs. Yes, I've harbored anger from it. Yes, it still affects me a bit. But no, I'm not afraid to talk about it. Because there could be another autistic who is going through or will go through a similar situation. I wrote the signs down in my Sociology notebook. When I get back to my dorm, I'll post them here.

#emotional abuse #emotional manipulation #autistic #actuallyautistic #rant #anger #autism #depression #suicide #sweet and savage autistic

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cannithebear · 3 years

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Reasons why I know our education system is shit

- I was told by a teacher and a school counselor that my mother abused me and my siblings because we didn't help enough around the house and needed to be better kids.

- My older sister's nerdy boyfriend used to get beaten up by some boys from the football team over and over. The staff did nothing about this. One day, he had enough and when the football boys came to attack him, he ended up beating the shit out of one of his bullies in the parking lot. He was immediately expelled.

- My class wanted to make a rainbow road themed float for our mario bros themed homecoming parade but wasn't allowed to because "some people might think it's for gay pride and be offended"

- I signed up for Spanish classes in high school two years in a row and they just didn't put it in my schedule. When I asked them to fix it and put me in a Spanish class, they conveniently never got back to me about it.

- I also signed up for welding and never got it. I'm pretty sure it's because I was what they defined as a girl.

- My autistic 8 year old brother was being consistently bullied by a kid in his class. The teachers and staff did nothing to stop this kid from bullying him and left my brother alone with him despite being informed of his neurodivergency and being told that he's easily overstimulated. When my bro (after at least months if not a couple years of being bullied by this kid) turned to his bully and said "if you don't leave me alone I'm gonna kill you", he was immediately expelled.

- Speaking of my little bro, he (understandably) would become overstimulated easily and have what we always called "meltdowns" (idk if there are other words for it, that's what we always called it). Meltdowns are VERY VERY different from tantrums. People throw tantrums when they're mad about not getting their way. People have meltdowns when they become overwhelemed and aren't given space to breathe and calm down, resulting in an emotional explosion that is absolutely NOT their fault. The school's response to these meltdowns (during which my brother made an active effort to not hurt anyone) was to call my mother and tell her to come pick him up instead of calling on the resource people they had AT THE FUCKING READY who were trained to fix these situations and get him back on track. He had an IEP and a person (social worker maybe? I was young when this went down, I don't know all the details) who was specifically assigned to him to help him in these situations and the staff just? Refused to acknowledge any of that?

- ALSO SPEAKING OF MY BRO. The superintendent, in response to one of my brother's meltdowns, told my mother that she needed to "discipline him more at home" (proving that the superintendent knew absolutely fuck all about autism or neurodivergency as a whole)

- That superintendent went on to become the principal of the middle/high school and implemented a rule involving wristbands. There were three wristbands dividing the students into three groups; well behaved, in the middle (? i guess?), and badly behaved. Keep in mind, this guy is a white mormon Trump supporter who is principal of a school consisting of mostly hispanic students. So while I wasn't there for the wristband thing, I can be fairly certain the system was racially biased. I don't know a whole lot about how much the wristband system governed but I do know this: "good" students were free to take bathroom breaks whenever they pleased. "Middle" students (or whatever they were referred to as) had to ask for bathroom breaks (and were often denied). "Bad" students only got bathroom breaks between classes. Gonna piss yourself cause you gotta go in the middle of class? Too bad, guess you gotta deal with it. So needless to say, the wristband thing breaks multiple laws.

- Speaking of that principal, he flat out refused to speak to any parents/family members of students who don't speak english (this area is heavily populated by immigrants) despite having a translator at the ready who showed up to all the school related events and provided wonderful and clear translations.

- The school I went to had a program that was specifically for teaching non English speaking students to speak English. Sounds great right? Well not when you consider that they just listed a bunch of students who already spoke English under that class to make it look like they had done their job. Meanwhile when students didn't speak English, they would pair another student with them and say "teach this kid". Even I (a student who does not speak Spanish because they woULDN'T FUCKING TEACH ME HOW) was told to sit with a student who didn't speak English and told to teach her how to use the school computers.

- My school got the funding for Ipads. For most schools, Ipads/laptops/whatever other electronics they might provide to the students are used as an addition to the classes. In my school, they threw the Ipads at us with some barely followable online classes and said "teach yourselves". Teachers were reprimanded if they were caught you know, teaching? Like? Doing their job? And oftentimes, the tests included things the lessons didn't cover resulting in A+ students dropping to Ds and Fs (and of course the principal and superintendent and shitty teachers played dumb and pretended they couldn't possibly know what was causing the failure)

- With these online classes, students would be given a pretest before starting a new lesson. The pretest would consist of the content of said new lesson. If the student passed the pretest, they could skip the lesson and move on to the next. Now my friend was a real science wiz. It was his favorite subject and he generally knew a lot about it. So when he took the pretests for his science lessons, he would almost always pass them. The science teacher accused him of cheeting because NO KID could POSSIBLY pass these pretests! Just UNTHINKABLE! So if he passed a pretest, she would make him do the lesson anyway. I watched him do at least five of these pretests (probably more) and I can tell you definitively that he did not cheat. I told him he should ask the teacher to sit with him while he does the pretests and then she'll see he's not cheating. He said he had already asked her and multiple other teachers to do so and they all refused without giving him any reason.

- The one positive thing was that I was able to opt out of coming to the school to do my classes and simply used my Ipad at home for the latter half of my 12th grade year. Why was I able to do so you ask? Well, let's get into it. February of 2018. I'm at home sick. At school, a boy who's been harassing my friend for years (my friend and other kids tried to report him multiple times for harassment and the staff never did a damn thing about it) comes up to him in the locker room and says "I've got a bomb in my backpack." So this kid is threatening to blow up the school and my friend of course goes immediately to the principal at the time (another white morman trump supporter homophobic racist and literal puppet of the superintendent turned principal I mentioned earlier) and reported that this kid was claiming to have a bomb. It took half an hour for the principal to believe him and take any kind of action. When action was taken, the kids were evacuated to the old gym/lunch building (a short walk from the middle/high school). You may be wondering "what's the harm in that?" Well none... If you don't count the fact that they evacuated the kid making the bomb threat to the same bulding and put him in the same room with all the other kids. The kid who made the bomb threat then started saying he had a knife and threatening to stab students. They escorted him out. And when I say they, I mean the FUCKING JANITOR. Their reasoning for keeping him in close proximity to all the kids he was threatening to murder and then having a janitor escort him out as opposed to someone with some proper training for this kind of stuff? "We didn't wanna single him out :("

So I was allowed to do my classes at home because I made it clear I was not comfortable coming into a school where it takes half an hour to respond to a bomb threat and then when the response comes, the staff just further endangers the students. When the lady at the desk (who I'd known for six years at that point) asked me why I wanted to work from home, I said "because I don't feel safe here" and she couldn't even look me in the eyes after that.

- Not a story from my school but my grandmother was a special ed teacher in an elementary school. One of the other teachers in that school was racist as hell. This racist teacher had a hispanic student in her class named Jesus. This teacher said it was blasphemous to have the name Jesus and refused to call him that. Instead, she referred to him as "Jose" (not his name??? Tf???) Luckily, that teacher was at least punished in some way and I think fired? Good riddance.

Anyways, there's some of the reasons why I know the education system in this country (and probably almost every other country on Earth) is absolute garbage.

#education #school #education system #high school #tw bullying #tw harassment #tw homophobia #tw racism #story time

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jesseneufeld · 5 years

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I Saw the Extra Weight I’d Carried My Whole Life Slip Away

My visual transformation isn’t all that impressive. In fact, despite having a completely different body composition, I weigh more or less the same that I did six years ago.

My real transformation has occurred on the inside and in the way that I try to embody the Primal Blueprint principles in the way I live my life.

Before Primal Living:

Out of shape

Abysmal self-esteem

Without a clear life path

6 Years Since Discovering Mark’s Daily Apple:

Owns a Health & Fitness blog and coaching business

Inspires others to find their self-esteem through leading by example

Recreational athlete in Powerlifting, Strongman and Highland Games

Loving life every day

Thank you, Hill

primalpillarsstrength.com Instagram @primalpillars

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lauramalchowblog · 5 years

Text

I Saw the Extra Weight I’d Carried My Whole Life Slip Away

My visual transformation isn’t all that impressive. In fact, despite having a completely different body composition, I weigh more or less the same that I did six years ago.

My real transformation has occurred on the inside and in the way that I try to embody the Primal Blueprint principles in the way I live my life.

Before Primal Living:

Out of shape

Abysmal self-esteem

Without a clear life path

6 Years Since Discovering Mark’s Daily Apple:

Owns a Health & Fitness blog and coaching business

Inspires others to find their self-esteem through leading by example

Recreational athlete in Powerlifting, Strongman and Highland Games

Loving life every day

Thank you, Hill

primalpillarsstrength.com Instagram @primalpillars

(function($) { $("#dfwXhAX").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfwXhAX" ); })( jQuery );

window.onload=function(){ga('send', { hitType: 'event', eventCategory: 'Ad Impression', eventAction: '67622' });}

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cynthiamwashington · 5 years

Text

I Saw the Extra Weight I’d Carried My Whole Life Slip Away

My visual transformation isn’t all that impressive. In fact, despite having a completely different body composition, I weigh more or less the same that I did six years ago.

My real transformation has occurred on the inside and in the way that I try to embody the Primal Blueprint principles in the way I live my life.

Before Primal Living:

Out of shape

Abysmal self-esteem

Without a clear life path

6 Years Since Discovering Mark’s Daily Apple:

Owns a Health & Fitness blog and coaching business

Inspires others to find their self-esteem through leading by example

Recreational athlete in Powerlifting, Strongman and Highland Games

Loving life every day

Thank you, Hill

primalpillarsstrength.com Instagram @primalpillars

(function($) { $("#dfzhrUG").load("https://www.marksdailyapple.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=dfads_ajax_load_ads&groups=674&limit=1&orderby=random&order=ASC&container_id=&container_html=none&container_class=&ad_html=div&ad_class=&callback_function=&return_javascript=0&_block_id=dfzhrUG" ); })( jQuery );

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Article source here:Marks’s Daily Apple

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thatonepsychoticbipolar · 7 years

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In the beginning (first revision)

I woke up at about 10 o’clock that hot, July morning. I was on the floor, in a sleeping bag, surrounded by emptiness. I could hear my anxious breaths starting, as I started to realize what day it was. It was a very anticipated and dreaded morning. That day, was July 31, 2009, and that was the day that my life would change forever.

I quickly unzipped my sleeping bag, because it was so hot and I was sweating. I had the bright idea of leaving the window open, as a last chance to breathe in the Arizona air. I stood up, and looked around, reminding myself that it was the last day I would ever be in that house, the house I grew up in. It was also the last day I would spend in the city, or even in the state.

I shared a room with my sister, but she had decided to sleep in the living room with our other two siblings, while I, decided to be in my room for one last night. My sister and I had never really gotten along and sharing a room with her was pure torture sometimes, especially when I had friends over and she decided that she had to be in the room as well.

I walked out to see more emptiness and some unzipped sleeping bags on the floor. I was the last one to wake up. Sleep was good for me; it was the only time I wasn’t depressed or anxious, which were two things I was no stranger to.

If I wasn’t experiencing anxiety, I was experiencing depression, and on really bad days I would experience both at the same time. My emotions were difficult for me to control or predict but when I tried to explain to the many therapists I have seen in the short time I had been alive just shrugged it off as me being an adolescent and that it was normal.

However, it didn’t feel normal. I didn’t see my classmates bursting into tears over things that were small and didn’t matter, or experiencing extreme anger that I would have subtle tantrums by taking heavy steps and being short to anyone that talked to me.

At home I was always in trouble because of my emotional outbursts. My privileges were revoked most of the time, including: my cell phone, ipod, and access to the internet. It was even more depressing when I would have nothing to help calm me down when I was experiencing deep emotions that I didn’t always understand; that I never understood for the entirety of my lifetime.

I walked slowly to the garage, where I knew my parents would be. My mom, was working on a paper for school and my dad was on the phone. My siblings were talking to the neighbor that we had grown close to.

While they were doing all of that I decided to go for a walk down the street I had lived on since I was four years old. As I was walking down the street, I passed the house of my seventh grade crush. Nothing ever happened between us mainly because I had no idea how to act around people I wanted to be in a relationship with.

I would go into full obsession mode and stalk them with the core of my being. Facebook made that easy to do. I wasn’t very smart about either, I would go very far down on their page and like and comment on old statuses, completely exposing the fact that I was down right stalking them.

I was very immature for my age, due to the emotions I couldn’t control, and my dad had no problem pointing that out and making me feel like I was the problem and that I had to fix myself. I could never fix myself though, no matter how hard I tried. I would get frustrated with myself and a growing self hatred began to grow.

I walked down a few more houses and then turned around and began to head back to the house. I knew this was it. I knew it was the last time that I would ever see this neighborhood again. I cried a little as I approached the house.

I went inside and rolled up my sleeping bag and gathered the little bit of things that I had left off of the moving truck: the first twilight book that I was finally able to get my hands on, my diary and diary writing pens, my flute that I didn’t want exposed to the heat, my cellphone, my ipod, my wallet, and my Nintendo DS. In a small suitcase was an overnight bag, containing toiletries and another comfy outfit because we would be stopping about halfway through the drive.

I grabbed everything and made my way to the garage again and set them down on the ground, just waiting for us to leave, growing more anxious by the second as I waited. I had no way of knowing what this new place had to offer me and I didn’t like the idea of having to leave the place I grew up in, but my fate was sealed and all I could do is see what this new place had to offer.

When my mom closed her laptop, I knew it was time. I watched her put it in a travel bag and put it in her SUV. It was a red, Ford Expedition, and it was old yet functionable. I wondered, quietly to myself if it would even make it as far as she intended to drive it.

I was the one riding with my dad, in his maroon, Ford F-250. The three younger ones were riding with my mom. I wasn’t too particular about the riding arrangements, it was forced upon me, much like this whole relocation.

I loaded my stuff into the back seat and I stepped up and into my dad’s truck. That was the moment in time where I cried over leaving Arizona one last time. I had no idea what it was going to be like where I was going. I had no idea what school was like there, what the kids were like there, or what the band program would be like there.

I had built a life, though not a good one, there in Tucson, Arizona and I was sad to see it go, a feeling that I do not understand to this day. I was bullied constantly in middle school, and who’s to say high school would have been any different? I had friends, but they were shallow and often using talking to them as a privilege, and the two friends that didn’t do that weren’t much help through that difficult time

However, I was most sad about leaving the opportunity to have my first real relationship. It was the first time I hadn’t gone overboard and acted crazy about liking him. We had gone way back and I was comfortable with him. I had known him since sixth grade and he was always super nice to me. We had a lot in common because he too, had problems controlling his emotions.

We had spent the summer on the phone and growing closer together, but we were both awkward and inexperienced so to have an actual relationship with him, it would have needed a ton of patience and lots of guess work.

All the kids in that part of the city had already started school, and I too, would have already started my freshman year in high school. However, my mom didn’t want to start us because she knew the schools where we were going started in late August. I remember arguing with her about her not letting me start school. I would always say it would help me have closure with the area. To her that wasn’t a very sound argument, therefore, I did not start school with the rest of my classmates.

As we started to back out of the driveway and into the street, I watched with tearful eyes, the house I knew and loved get further and further away. This was it. It was really happening. As we drove down the Tucson streets on the way to I-10 I was in deep thought. I was thinking about everything that was leading up to this point in time. It was a better opportunity for the family; my mom wouldn’t have to work from home anymore, running a home daycare, and just concentrate on school because my dad was offered a better job.

It was that deep thought, at the very beginning of the journey to our new home, that I started to understand that this was my chance to start over. I was on to a new adventure. I remember feeling a half smile as I came to this realization. A fresh start where no one knows my name. Maybe things were going to be okay for me.

Maybe age 14 was the age where things started to look up for me. Maybe I was finally going to live a normal life without people at school calling me every name in the book, stealing my homework, and making me feel like an inferior person.

“Maybe I’ll be popular like I had always dreamed of,” I thought. “Maybe I’d be desired by many boys and have to turn a lot of people down. Maybe I’ll have a chain of friends that never ended, that would always have my back if one of the popular boys was being an asshole, or if I forgot my pencil black eyeliner to touch up my waterline during lunch.”

My hopes and dreams of my new home, a house or place I had never even seen pictures of, started to grow within the first hour of our two day journey. Little did I know, that it was that dream, though just thought of, was the start of something only a psychotic woman would do. I was determined to live that life one way or another.

I could see it before my eyes, me being the leader of the pack, of people of all ages, Them all adoring me and walking in a formation in the mornings and after school in the hallways. If we’d have the same classes, we’d tell each other test answers and copy each other’s homework before class.

Maybe one would be a cheerleader. Young, yet excelling. Of course some band mates, maybe one that plays the clarinet? A Japanese girl, most definitely a Japanese girl, one where we’d have to teach to walk in wedges and dress in skirts. Older boys, like seniors, maybe brothers of people closer to my age, and if any of them had sisters that are older, them too for that matter.

Feuds only come naturally with being so beloved and popular. Girls would try to steal boyfriends by being slutty and tempting. Girls who would say mean things about me and presume I’m a slut or a bitch or a hoe for having so much success in a social circle.

I just sat there in thought, watching the numbers on the exit signs get bigger and bigger, feverishly picking my nails to the point where I was exposing the skin underneath the nails, and bleeding in some cases. It was a nervous tick that I had acquired in middle school that had gotten worse and worse as it continued. It would cause so much pain, to the point where I had trouble playing my flute and sometimes gripping a pencil.

I looked down at my wrist. The top of my left wrist had a scar that ran across the length of the wrist. That was the sight of my first cut. I didn’t have much resources so I was taught by some girls at school how to scratch the skin by scribbling on a piece of paper with a mechanical pencil, creating a point, and pressing and running it back and forth on the area that I wanted to cut.

I thought of how it felt. It hurt, but took my mind off of the emotional pain I was feeling. I knew after the first and only time I had done that, that there was going to be more times it would be done.

It was an escape from all the emotional pain and gave me something to concentrate on. It was like a trip, where I felt my emotions become numb and my mind finally relax. It was a dangerous drug that I was in the early stages of becoming dependent on it. If only I knew what I was getting into, and if only my parents knew, then maybe, just maybe, I could have been spared from such a self destructive path

As we continued to drive, I closed my eyes in thought. I began hypothesizing how my new life was going to play out. Starting dreams of meeting my first boyfriend quickly and dreams of a beautiful first kiss and maybe more. I mean, if I’m gonna be popular I’d have to have an open mind or those boys would lose interest. It’s high school after all, that’s all boys want.

With my dreams in mind, I started to drift asleep. I was not anxious at that point in time and I was trying to take advantage of that fact. When I dreamt as I slept, the characters I had recently started to make up were given names. That was way more of a downfall than I realized at the time. It was in it’s early stages, but it started a process deep inside my psychotic brain that had already began to consume me.

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teachanarchy · 7 years

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When Eli Sommer came across the term “transgender” in a Tumblr post in high school, everything clicked. “Oh,” he thought. “That’s me.” Attending a Georgia high school, struggling with anxiety and depression, Eli tried to communicate with his parents who were forcing gender conformity and insisting he was a girl. It wasn’t until his psychologist, who is himself transgender, recommended The Transgender Child as a resource that his parents realized what Eli needed to thrive.

The family met with his homeroom teacher, who quickly became an ally, even advising the LGBT club Eli established called GLOW (Gay, Lesbian Or Whatever). “He’s cisgender, he’s straight,” Eli recalls, “but he’s passionate about advocating and making sure all of the kids in our club succeed in school and aren’t held back because of how they identify.”

Eli also found an advocate in his school principal, who located a gender-neutral restroom for him to use at school. “I would not have thought that my principal would have been helpful because he drives a big red truck with a gun rack on it,” recounts Eli. “But when all of the transgender stuff came to the table, he was like, ‘I don’t really understand, but Eli’s a good kid and we’ll get him what he’s entitled to.’”

Although it was not without obstacles, the relative ease of Eli’s transition is rare. The 2013 GLSEN National School Climate Survey found that, compared to their LGB peers, transgender and gender-nonconforming students face the most hostile school climates. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, in 2015, 75 percent of transgender youth felt unsafe at school, and those who did not drop out altogether were more likely to miss school due to a safety concern, have significantly lower GPAs, and were less likely to plan for future education.

The good news is educators are learning more about how to support nonbinary youth at school. One of the most important lessons? The needs of transgender youth remain distinct from those of their LGB peers—and they extend beyond pronoun usage and bathroom access.

“When Kids Like Me Grow Up …” Experts cite mentorship as instrumental for trans students’ success, but formal mentors are scarce. Jenn Burleton, executive director of TransActive Gender Center in Portland, Oregon, sought to establish a trans-to-trans mentoring program but failed to locate enough transgender adults for similarly identified youth.

“Right now what these kids do not have is enough of a sense that: ‘When kids like me grow up, there’s an adult version of me doing what everybody else does and getting through the day. They’re there for me to see and know that there’s a place for me to walk when I get older,’” Burleton says. “Not letting kids see that can give them a subliminal sense that there is a dead end to their identity or that hiding is the only way to be.”

Kiera Hansen, a genderqueer-identified social worker in Portland, Oregon, is attempting to fill this void. Hansen—who prefers the pronoun they—helps run an afterschool drop-in program where almost everyone identifies as trans or gender-nonconforming. While funding sources have diminished, their team has pooled resources throughout the city to create a tight-knit group. Outside of the group, Hansen has accompanied mentees to school when they need support, meeting with teachers to ensure access to the right bathrooms, use of the right pronouns, and to address any other issues students might face.

Hansen cites modeling vulnerability as a key to successful mentoring. “I’m surviving a lot of things on a regular basis, just as the youth are,” they recount. “I am genuinely honest with them. We’re transparent about the hurdles and barriers we go through in life and in the program. We do not make everything look perfect and well-put-together. We want them to have the tools to interact with the systems that are often working against them and their voices.”

One of the members of their drop-in group, Cameron, is about to graduate from high school and attributes part of that success to the group. “I have a really bad attendance problem with school,” he confides, recounting frequent bullying, including being compared to a wild animal in sociology class. “Having this group to look forward to every week has been one of the motivations that brings me back to school.”

Gender Identity Competency When working toward success at school for transgender students, it is paramount for youth to identify an adult with whom they feel safe. Johanna Eager, director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools program, coaches educators around gender identity competency. She trains schools to help transitioning students identify a knowledgeable staff member who may or may not be trans but to whom students feel safe going during the day. “Any trans student needs to know who their safe person is,” she says. “You are vulnerable if you are the only one.”

Eager says there is no formula to positive mentorship. Some mentors are passionate and informed based on experience. Some are naturally kind and caring, with no formal training. “I’ve seen educators who don’t have much knowledge tend to the social emotional health for a trans child, and I have seen folks who are trans or LGBTQ be supportive with their knowledge. It can be either and it always has been.”

Above all, quality mentors trust that transgender youth know who they are and what they need. As one father reflected about parenting his transgender son, “There were never any conscious decisions. It was always intuitive, following him. It’s about letting him lead and supporting wherever he is. That line is always moving.”

Transgender youth are looking, first and foremost, for adults to respect their chosen names and pronouns. Making this effort validates young people’s core identity and solidifies their safety. Without it, a trusted relationship cannot be built. As Cameron says, “People using your pronouns and correct name without fail is wonderful. When people do it with no question, you can tell they see you the way you want to be seen.”

Earning the trust and respect of transgender students requires educators to uncover any internalized transphobia and recognize personal biases. Some allies find it takes time to mentally de-align gender and genitalia. Still, adults cannot show up for youth without honestly accepting their feelings and beliefs. If they skip this crucial step, youth will notice. This is the case for Todd, who is genderqueer and can read their teachers’ facial expressions as measurements of acceptance and safety.

Once educators recognize their own behaviors and microaggressions, they’re better equipped to identify microaggressions, bullying and harassment when they happen in schools. Even if it appears minor, these behaviors need to be interrupted in the moment. Too often transgender students expect no assistance from teachers; being ostracized becomes the norm. As one trans middle school student—who is now homeschooled—attests, “As long as it doesn’t escalate to a screaming match, they think everything looks fine.”

Furthermore, the interruption does not have to be impeccable. Eager recommends, “Just say something. You may screw it up, it may not feel comfortable, it may not be perfect. But saying something is better than saying nothing, and you need to say it because everyone is watching to see if they are going to be safe.”

If necessary, distinguish between the personal and the professional. Lead author of the resource guide Schools In Transition, Asaf Orr, stands behind educators who are “on board” regardless of their personal beliefs. “In their private lives these educators may not be supportive of gender exploration,” Orr notes. “But when they get to school, they know it’s critical to be 100 percent supportive of a kid’s own gender exploration, and they ensure the space for them to do that.”

Educators can support their trans students by including nonbinary identities in the curriculum. As Cameron asserts, “With every sex ed class we have that’s not inclusive, and every English class where there’s no inclusive literature, there’s another trans kid that feels so alone.”

Recognizing nonbinary gender identities depicted within student work is also important, as youth are likely to reflect themselves most accurately. One agender-identified seventh-grader, Jace, remembers feeling safe after a teacher commented on their agender character drawing, saying they “looked cool.”

Finally, do not assume. Nontransidentified adults, says Cameron, “are never going to be able to fully understand what any trans person is going through. Adults need not question the way a person feels about themselves, because they do not know. They are never going to feel the same way. And we have to figure ourselves out.”

Transgender youth know what they need to feel safe. Strong mentors ask them.

#trans #gender #pedagogy

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