An Open Letter to the Kids Who Tried to Steal Our Car

I know that you’re young and new to stealing vehicles, or my husband would have walked out to an empty spot in the driveway rather than a vehicle with thousands of dollars worth of damage to the ignition and steering column. I suspect that you think it’s a relatively victimless crime, and that you don’t really want to hurt anyone. I also believe that you didn’t think about what you were doing for too long.

When your inexperience in car theft left our vehicle unable to start, you moved on to a neighbor’s car. You succeeded there, and drove off with her car. You drove it a few miles and totaled it. That car was actually her college-aged daughter’s car. Her daughter goes to school and works. She only had liability coverage on that vehicle, and may not be able to afford a new one. They currently have to try to do everything with one car. It’s rough, and it may not be possible. Your joyride was not victimless.

As for us, we are out an insurance deductible that we can ill afford, and our rates will likely go up since we had to make a claim, which is another expense for which we did not budget. It took over a week for our car to be repaired. While we were figuring out transportation for two adults with long commutes, we each had to miss work while trading days with our other vehicle. That situation resulted in lost PTO and lost wages. You also don’t know us and how this incident has caused more hurt and hardship at a time in our lives when we’ve had plenty of both.

No one in our neighborhood feels quite as safe as we did before you crept around our homes and driveways in the middle of the night. Your thoughtless actions harmed us and our neighbors in many ways, tangible and intangible.

I am not mad, though. I am sad and exhausted. I really didn’t want to call the police, but we had to do so because we couldn’t afford to not make an insurance claim. If they find you, what sort of justice will be served? You’ll end up with a record for a night of stupidity. Depending on your age, you’ll enter either the juvenile or the adult court, jail, and prison systems. You’ll learn to be harder. You will probably become more skilled at stealing vehicles. You’ll learn to shut down. None of that does anyone any good. It’s not justice in any sense. Our justice system is flawed, and I want to reform it before I see anyone caught in it.

I wanted to find you, and ask for restitution. I strongly suspect that you don’t have the money to pay us back, but what I would love would be for you to come by once a week or once every two weeks and cut grass for us and our neighbor, shovel our walks, etc. until you’ve worked off the money and time we lost. I want you to get to know us and our neighborhood. It’s harder to make bad decisions when you understand how much they can hurt people, especially people that you know. I want to bring you lemonade and invite you in for lunch. I want you to stay in school and have time for healthy extracurricular activities or a weekend job. I want this to be the worst and the stupidest thing you ever do.  

Since our system is not set up to allow any of us to see each other as humans and work toward restorative justice, I hope you have someone in your life who can help you make better choices before you’re caught stealing another vehicle or making another rash decision. Your fingerprints haven’t matched in the system. Please keep it that way for your sake and the sake of your community.

Love,

A Person Who Wants Good Things For You

And His Mama Cried

Much is being made of the Steubenville rape case, and the media’s reaction to it. I am heartened to hear how vocally disgusted most people seem to be with the rape apologists in the main stream media (and, holy lord, they are everywhere) and with all the sympathy given to the young rapists. Even the Yahoo! News comments section, where decency goes to die (it should really be their trademarked tagline), seems to be trending towards those wondering where in the world the sympathy and worry for the victim’s forever changed life is. *I am editing this to add that I have also seen plenty of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, and drunk-shaming happening, but this is not the majority of what I am seeing, and certainly none of that nonsense is on my Facebook feed or other places where I encounter people I like and respect.

   

The fact of the matter is, these young men’s lives are forever tarnished and ruined, but it is not because they received a well-deserved conviction for raping an intoxicated young woman who was slipping in and out of consciousness.  Not only did they violate her, they recorded it, photographed it, and sent it around as text messages. Some of their friends who did not participate in the actual sexual assault helped with continuing to degrade and devalue this young woman by laughing about it, recording it, and passing it along. She was not a person deserving of respect to them. She was an object to use however they pleased. All of the young men involved are guilty of that, and so help me, I wish they all had to spend a little time in juvenile detention and run around as registered sex offenders.

Yes, the two rapists will forever have to register as sex offenders. Some people seem to think that this is an injustice. I think the one year sentences are an injustice. In one year, are they going to learn to see other people as human beings worthy of kindness and gentleness, regardless of how female and/or drunk they may be? In one year, are we going to be able to undo the years of damage that a culture that cries at the INJUSTICE of their conviction for spending hours treating another human being as a prop has caused? Many people, particularly in the MSM, shake their heads and talk about what a shame it is that their lives are ruined, and that this will be with them for the rest of their days. Yet, where is the head shaking over the fact that they did it? These are not innocent youths wrongly convicted. These are boys who were taught that they were special and above the laws of the state and common human decency because they are athletically gifted. It is reported that they are good students as well. First of all, so what? Secondly, forgive me if I sound a little jaded here, but these kids had adults who were trying to cover up a GANG RAPE for them. Is it really so far-fetched that their grades could be padded? I’m sure they didn’t have to be model students to receive model student grades and perks. They may actually have been, and they may not have been, but it doesn’t change the fact that they REPEATEDLY VIOLATED A YOUNG WOMAN.

This fact is the real shame. They have ruined their own lives, and, more importantly, what they did to this girl will be with her for the rest of her life. Through no fault of her own, she was sexually assaulted, humiliated, and has to live with the fact that not only did all that happen to her, but that many people saw pictures and videos of her degradation. She will need counseling, she may very well end up with trust issues and issues around her own sexuality and sexual maturity, she is now at a much higher risk for suicide, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, amongst other issues. Let me repeat that first part for the slow people in the audience, THROUGH NO FAULT OF HER OWN. Being drunk, being high, wearing something alluring, wearing red lipstick, walking home in the dark, going anywhere alone, hanging out with guys, etc. etc. are actually not versions of consent.

Men do not rape women for these reasons. They are the red herrings of a culture of rape apologists, and every lawyer who has ever defended a guilty rapist thanks society for creating them. Rapists may use these things as excuses, but rape is about control and seeing someone as less than you. When someone violates another human being, it is not because they were so irresistibly drawn to that person that they couldn’t help themselves, or they were confused about whether someone who had vomited all over herself and was no longer conscious wanted to have sex. No. They do it because what they want is more important than what is right. They do it because they do not see any value in that person beyond what they want from him or her (yes, men get raped, too), and this, this is where we fail every time we talk about any rape, but specifically the Steubenville case.

We do not recognize that no one who sees past his own pleasure, no one who recognizes the value and dignity of other people beyond what those people can do for them, can harm another person the way they abused that girl, and, to make it more disgusting, they did it for fun. It was just a night of partying, and they expected to get away with it. Where I cry for these boys is at a more fundamental level. I cry that they were convinced that it is true that they cannot and should not have to control themselves around others. If they want it, they should take it, especially if it involves sex. After all, who doesn’t secretly want the golden boys, and how can they be asked to control themselves in the face of drunken availability? What a load of crap to sell those boys.  They can control themselves. They can treat a drunk girl the same way that they would likely treat their drunk buddies, which is get them to a safe place, put a bucket next to the bed, and tease them the next day by eating in front of them and making really loud noises.

 I read that one of the boys’ mothers became hysterical during sentencing. I hope she was crying not because of her son’s not remotely harsh enough punishment for his brutal actions, but because at some point he failed to grasp that you don’t hurt other people. People aren’t there for you to use however you please. If someone is at a disadvantage, self-inflicted or otherwise, you take care of them. I hope she wept because her son’s life was ruined long before he raped that girl. I hope she raged because he had become a person who thought it was fun to assault another human being. I hope his mama sobbed because she is ashamed and disappointed, not because he has to face the music for forever changing the life of a young woman. Mostly, I hope she cried for that girl, and all the others like her, who are raped by young men who have not been taught the value of another person.  

We have a social fetish

I have noticed a few disturbing trends as I have been working on taking better care of myself. People, but mostly women, so please forgive me if I focus on women here, when they are trying to get fit focus on entirely unrealistic goals. It happens for a few reasons. One would be the ubiquitous use of Photoshop, so that even the models cannot attain the bodies that, according to their print ads, they have. Another would be choosing someone who you will never, ever look like as your inspiration/motivation. I could pin a picture of Heidi Klum to my Pinterest boards as a goal, but it doesn’t matter what I do. I simply won’t look like her. For one thing, she’s around a foot taller than I am. For another, her body is simply proportioned differently than mine, so even if you stretched me or shrunk her, we would not have the same figures, ever, regardless of how healthy we were or weren’t.  Another iteration on this, are the women who say, “Healthy is the new skinny.” I think that’s a wonderful sentiment, but they then proceed to post pictures of athletes in peak condition as their inspiration. Most people will never look like that, even many of the athletes don’t when they aren’t training.  They still look good, but not every muscle is ripped beyond belief.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t try to tone, sculpt, lose weight, be healthy, etc. I am certainly doing those things, and most Americans probably should, given the sky-rocketing rates of obesity, heart-disease, and diabetes, just to name a few. What I am saying is that your goals should be realistic. You should want to look like the best version of you that is sustainable, not an air-brushed picture of someone who doesn’t even share your body-type. Get yourself to a healthy weight, and please note, that while the BMI charts can be generally helpful, they really aren’t the be-all and end-all; there are people well within their BMIs who probably aren’t that healthy and people who aren’t who are extremely fit. You should consult with your doctor and come up with a healthy weight range for you.

That being said, this setting of unrealistic goals for ourselves is dangerous and counter-productive. First of all, the fact that we sell ourselves on the idea that looking like ourselves isn’t good enough. Being healthy is necessary. It contributes to your overall well-being. Being skinny, being curvy, having big breasts, small thighs, etc. etc. are not necessary. Some people are naturally very thin. A woman who is naturally very thin is generally not very curvy (think Lisbeth Salander, a fictional character, but someone who is very thin and small). A woman who is very curvy (Marilyn Monroe) is never, ever going to squeeze herself into a size zero and be remotely healthy, yet Lisbeths tend to want to be Marilyns and vice versa. We then have the fall-out from that. Some women scream that the “stick figures” aren’t healthy and we shouldn’t look to them while at the same time we watch curvy women and make sure they don’t get too curvy. Christina Aguilera has very publicly added to her curves. She does not appear to actually be overweight, but because she isn’t as thin as she once was, we need to bring out the pitchforks. The willowy stars are told to eat cheeseburgers, etc. How is anyone not seeing that there is no “perfect” figure? Tearing down what you are not doesn’t make what you are better, and it decimates everyone on the inside.

I feel that this constant focus on unattainable appearances, the air-brushing of already very thin models, the presentation of an artist’s ideal as a norm to which women and girls should aspire, the nitpicking on every pound gained or lost, the fact that nearly every female celebrity has her detractors for not being something (curvy, thin, too much booty, too little booty, etc, etc) has contributed to and possibly even created our fetishization of low self-esteem. If you are not perfectly beautiful, you are not a good person and you deserve very little, even the fairytales we tell our children support this notion. Cinderella is beautiful and the stepsisters are.  .  . not.

It is not okay for a woman who is healthy, but not pin-up worthy without air-brushing (is anyone, though?) to be confident. She can’t say, “I’m healthy, happy, smart, and beautiful!” because she isn’t perfect. Without perfection, she must choose her flaw(s) and focus on it (them), and not a fixable flaw(s). Of course, all of us should work to improve ourselves. If she has a problem with her temper, this woman should work on that, and it would benefit everyone, but that isn’t the flaw we want her to fixate on as a society. No. Her derriere is not perfect. Maybe it’s too big, maybe it’s too flat, maybe it’s just a little uneven, regardless, it’s not something that all the working out in the world will fix, but she is supposed to feel bad that she doesn’t have a perfect rear, not confident that she is all the other wonderful things that she is. If she doesn’t have an issue with it, we hate her for it. “How dare she walk around feeling good about herself with an ass like that? I look better than that, and I hate myself.”  If you think you haven’t done it, or that we as a society don’t do it, you should check yourself and/or the comments section of any piece of celebrity fluff journalism. We have to have low self-esteem, particularly as young women. Being happy with yourself is just not done. Every magazine, every ad, most television shows, and movies all tell us that. The mean girls are the confident ones, and they lose in the end. You have to go through a process of self-improvement and beautification to earn a smidgen of confidence AND be a nice girl.

 I am here to say that this needs to stop. We need to stop telling ourselves that confidence and conceit are the same things. It’s okay to know you have a few (or more) pounds to lose or that you need to work harder in some aspects of your life, and still like yourself. It’s okay to be happy and NOT be perfect. This fetishization of low self-esteem holds us back. It keeps us from walking with our heads up, from speaking up in the classroom, the boardroom, and when that jerk cuts in front of us in line. It also keeps us from being our best personally. If I want to look like Heidi Klum, I will probably give up on my journey to be the healthiest me that I can be because I do not have a realistic goal, just as if I want to work on my generosity of spirit, comparing myself to Mother Theresa will find me lacking. Just because I can’t be Heidi Klum or Mother Theresa doesn’t mean that I can’t be a good person. The same goes for everyone. Find your gifts, physical, emotional, and spiritual, and celebrate them! You have every right to be confident in the fact that you are a person of beauty inside and out.

If you don’t start with the confidence that you are a good person, but you’d like to be even better, then you will probably fail. If you start from the position of hating yourself and wanting to be somebody else, all the diets, working out, self-improvement, meditation, prayer, etc. won’t help you achieve your goals. You are never going to be someone else. You will always be you. Love you, then fix what can be fixed and move on. That’s how you grow. You can stagnate in the scummy pond of low self-esteem that society has sold you, or you can bloom in the sunshine and fresh air of self-confidence. I know it’s not always that easy, and that real psychological and physiological conditions can contribute to disliking yourself. I am not saying “boot-strap yourself out it.” Find a good support system (this can be friends, family, therapists, doctors, support groups, on-line, in-person, etc.), and work on your issues, and don’t contribute to the poison that’s out there by tearing others down. Let’s try to save another generation from feeling like they have to hate at least part of themselves to meet society’s expectations. In the process, we can like ourselves better, be healthier, happier, nicer, and make better choices in general. What an example that would be.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

It seems that one theme that runs through a lot of my posts is treating others with a basic level of courtesy and respect. This post will be no different. Today, I am going to tackle another aspect of the “Mommy Wars” (*gag*). The stay-at-home-mom vs the work-outside-the-home mom battle is one that has been raging for quite some time and shows no signs of slowing, which is aggravating as Hell because here we are fighting amongst ourselves over who works “harder” while the politicians are busily chipping away at our rights to vote, be treated equally in the workplace, and make the best choices for our reproductive health, amongst other things.  Don’t fool yourself; whether you are pro-choice or anti-abortion much of the current legislation will do little to stop abortions and much to curb you and your Dr.’s authority to make the decisions that are the best for you.

Let’s get one thing straight. It is a privilege to be able to talk about this topic at all. It’s very First World. I can promise that none of us work as hard as those who live below the subsistence level. Also, back in the First World, this debate completely discounts single parents (who are amazing), child-free people, and what and how men should be contributing. The whole of this topic is too big to cover in one post, so I will likely return to it at some point.

As the title of my blog implies, I am a SAHM, and have defined myself as one since my oldest was born.  I have actually only been a full-time SAHM since my youngest was born. Previously, I had a seasonal job that I was able to work around my husband’s schedule. After the birth of my oldest, I worked close to full-time hours that first summer, but as my husband is the main wage earner as his job demands changed, my availability changed because I did not make enough to justify paying a sitter, gassing up the car, and commuting. It is a position in which many people have found themselves. While the experience of one person is not definitive, I will say that that first summer wasn’t easier or harder than being home, but it was different.

Many things have inspired this post lately. The weird dichotomy of Mitt Romney being upset when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, said that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life contrasted with the Mitt Romney who was the governor of MA and offering/forcing on women w/ very young children the “dignity of work” while forcing them into dead-end jobs. Which is it Mitt? Either what Hilary Rosen said is true, or that “dignity of work” thing was a load of BS in an attempt to put a pretty bow on a policy that was forcing a lot of single mothers into an untenable position. Also, while I suspect what Ms. Rosen was trying to say was that Mrs. Romney, with her staff, money, etc. didn’t understand those of us who don’t have those benefits (and it is what Ms. Rosen claims she meant), many people took it as a knock on the SAHM. Hilary Rosen even apologized for the comment, later. Still, it was not a politically bright thing for someone who is a political strategist to say.

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Then there is the tired, old “This is What a SAHM is Worth” articles that tend to come out around tax time and Mother’s Day. I hate them. First of all, I am not a psychologist, a nurse, or a chef. Yes, I deal with emotional conflict, first-aid, and I cook. I am not actually trained in any of that (although I do have an expired first-aid certification and I was a psychology minor, so I’m totally qualified), and for the heavy stuff, I would still go to the professionals, the people who went to school and trained for years to earn those titles. I don’t need some outside organization to crunch some numbers and validate my choices. What I do has value. Yes, part of it is monetary, but much of that value is intangible. Those articles also raise the hackles of many women who work outside the home. “Well, *I* do all that AND work. Should I get two salaries?” Actually, they don’t do all of it, and they don’t do as much of it. Yes, they care for their children, but someone else does that while they are at work (This is NOT a judgment; it is a statement of fact; much like the fact that while being a SAHM is work, it isn’t a job in the sense that you have a boss, office politics, and a salary, is true), someone they likely pay, unless it is a family member who is gracious enough to do it for free. Since they aren’t home all day, there is less daily care of the house, less cleaning up the family room after the whirlwind, fewer diaper changes, etc. They also sometimes have to call on those of us who don’t work outside the home for help, “Can you please get Billy to soccer practice for me? I have a late meeting.”

That being said, of course they raise their own children, take care of their own homes, and juggle a lot of the other things. The charges to the contrary are ridiculous. Working outside the home and then coming home and being “on” for the family can be hard. Of course, there are also the days with late meetings and travel. There are days when a WOHM might not get to see her children at all, and not because she’s having a fun night out, either, but because she is out there busting her hump. Not that there is anything wrong w/ time away for fun; we all need that, sometimes.

 I once read an abstract of a study that found that WOHM work harder than SAHM, but when I searched for more information and dug into the study, I discovered that the results were based on self-reporting and journal-keeping. When interviewed and asked specifically about tasks around the home, it turned out that the WOHM were much more likely to report every single activity they did in and out of the home, and the SAHM just sort of hit the highlights. If the SAHM actually logged the housework, childcare, and errand-running, amongst other things, as assiduously as the WOHM, it was probably a wash. In other words, while it is tempting to draw a conclusion about who works harder (and those who ran the study did, despite the evidence of the interviews; that is bias at work right there, folks), one really cannot be drawn here, although I would love to see a follow-up study on how women value what they do and their time and whether working a job affects the value we place on ourselves. I will tell you there are plenty of people who work harder than I do, and plenty who don’t work nearly as hard as I do. It has little to do with who has a paying job and who doesn’t, though. I honestly hate that this study was even run. It just propagates everything awful about the SAHM vs WOHM debate out there, and leads to things like this: 

Now, it is tempting I suppose, if one has a “little gig on the side” to see this, high-five other women in the same boat, and let us bon-bon eating people who *only* raise kids and run a house know how it really is. They obviously work harder and are superior to us. Of course, those of us who actually stay at home and prefer Peanut M&M’s to bon-bons thankyouverymuch, may take issue with this little “joke” that isn’t actually a joke. Then we are sensitive and can’t take a joke because we see that there is a little bit of basic respect lacking here, and a lot of not understanding what it is we do all day. Did you know that SAHM are much more likely to be depressed than the rest of the population? Did you know that one of the reasons is that we are continually told that we have no or less value than people with jobs in many ways (unless we’re getting head pats in “mom salary” articles, or worse, from Focus on the Family), including things like this little “joke?” Also, it is full-time, not full time.

“Hey, you get a break from your kids and house for at least eight hours, five days a week, and you get paid for it! It must be nice to only parent and run your house part-time while you eat lunch w/ out worrying about sweeping and cleaning after! Here’s your bon-bon!” is terrible, un-true, hurtful, and not funny.  If I saw that, or something similar, I would seriously be appalled.

If all the things the “other side” says about you are un-true and hurtful, why oh why would you assume that the things said about them are any more truthful and any less hurtful? Is it so hard to understand that we’ve all made the decisions that we felt were best for our family, and that we all work hard for our families? I respect any woman who is trying her best for her family. I don’t assume I do everything she does and vice versa, even if we are both SAHM. I think it is high time SAHM were offered the same courtesy as a whole. WOHM don’t do everything I do, and that is okay; I certainly don’t do everything they do.  

I sometimes think that in fighting to be allowed to do other work and to be respected as just as, if not more capable than men, in every field, we have helped devalue what is seen as “women’s work” (*shudder*). Instead of equality, where people choose what is best for them, and all work is respected, we have come to a place of women disdaining other women who make the choice to be home, and in return, the women who are at home are lashing out at the women who have jobs. It sets everyone back when all work isn’t respected. I also include blue-collar and service work here. Those jobs used to be seen as important work, but now too many see it as beneath them. I won’t get into how women’s rights and worker’s rights are intertwined. That topic is a different post entirely, but just remember that ALL work has value, and we couldn’t get by without each other.