The End of 2022

What a Year

This year has been a monumental year for abortion. It’s been a year of upheaval, of big shifts and change. We all know what happened on June 24, 2022, a day that will live in infamy.

It was also a monumental year for me personally. You may know that I left teaching last year after more than two decades, which included teaching in Mendoza, Argentina, for a year, substitute teaching for the San Luis Obispo school district, teaching as a graduate student at Cal Poly and then getting hired at Cuesta College and then at Cal Poly, where I taught as adjunct lecturer for 16 years. After I left in September 2021, I gave myself the sabbatical I never got as an adjunct. I enrolled in drawing and painting classes, bought a motorcycle, met with a life coach, read, wrote, stretched, started this newsletter and got back into audio journalism. I participated in a government-sponsored clinical trial for psilocybin that cured me of some self-limiting behaviors as well as my atheism. I’m ending the year physically and psychically lighter and healthier, and more appreciative than ever of trees and birds.

Not to worry, though: I’m not so blissed out that I’ve lost touch with the world and its troubles. If anything, I’m feeling more than I have in a long time. When I attended my first session with the life coach, I thought we would work on a resume, revamp my Linked In, and launch me into a new career path. Instead, he asked me where in my body I felt the frustration I was speaking about. I almost responded: “What are these things you speak of? These things you call feelings?” I was a little out of touch.

When I read about abortion or listen to stories about people being denied abortions or about those risking their lives to provide them, I feel the full gamut of emotion. Like when I read this week about G, a girl whom the journalist Lizzie Presser wrote about in the New York Times Magazine.

G’s father had been accused of molesting her when she was little and had given up parental rights. Her mother had a succession of boyfriends and, financially unstable, moved G from place to place. She wouldn’t or couldn’t pay for G’s braces. G finally moved out to live on her own when she was 16. She worked and tried to go to school and support herself. And then she got pregnant, with twins.

This is the story of her trying to navigate parental-involvement laws that are enforced in 36 states, where minors have to notify or get consent from one or both parents to obtain an abortion. It’s also a story that effectively conveys the complexity of pregnancy for a young girl. Abortion, adoption, motherhood—all of these options are complicated, difficult, heart-breaking, potentially life-breaking.

I have too much in common with G. Her childhood reminded me of my own and the moves from place to place, so many that often when I woke in the middle of the night, I would not know my way to the bathroom. I too was subjected to my mother’s boyfriends. I too had a single mother who could not afford braces or even regular dental care. My teeth were a mess—my front teeth were chipped and crooked; I had cavities and would need fillings and crowns and root canals. At 15 years old, I got a job at Jack in the Box to pay for my own braces. I made $3.15 an hour and worked after school and for eight hours a day on weekends and I saved. I paid for my braces. I also got porcelain crowns for my front teeth. Things fell apart anyway, despite these efforts, just as things fell apart for G. I’m through it, but G is still in the thick of it. G, my heart goes out to you. I can give 10 articles as gifts as a subscriber to the New York Times. Here’s this one.

It is very difficult to not see those you disagree with as wrong, as ignorant, as mean, or, at the very least, misguided. A friend turned me on to a Substack newsletter called Abortion, Every Day, written by Jessica Valenti, who really does write about abortion EVERY DAY (I joked with my friend that my newsletter could be called Abortion Every Trimester). Valenti writes:

“There is no ‘debating’ a person who wants to force a 10 year-old into childbirth; there’s no discussion to be had with a legislator who wants to fine-tune just how close a woman needs to be to death before she qualifies for an abortion. This will never be time well-spent or energy well-used. Instead, it will be exactly what it feels like: An exercise in degradation. Because every time we engage in a conversation about the morality of abortion, we are accepting a premise that says our humanity is up for debate. By showing up, we have already lost.”

And it’s true, if we debate smug pundits, we are only humiliating ourselves. But there are many people who have nuanced views about abortion, who are open-minded enough to be swayed depending on what they hear. However, what may drive an open mind to the anti-abortion camp is being ridiculed or criticized or shamed by someone staunchly pro-choice.

In October and November, I served on a jury for a civil case for more than a month. I enjoyed getting to know my fellow jurors, bantering with them as we went through the metal detector and waited for the bailiff to allow us into the courtroom. When it finally came for the 12 of us to deliberate, we were given a packet of questions to answer. In order to progress from one question to the next, we needed at least nine jurors to agree.

Well, we soon reached an impasse with a vote of 8-4. The more the eight of us tried to convince the four, the more they dug in their heels. The more evidence we provided and testimony we read, the more entrenched they became in their rightness. I felt myself becoming angry and frustrated; I felt myself beginning to demonize these four holdouts as ignorant, pig-headed, blinded by their own biases. We took a 10-minute break. I nearly physically avoided them—almost walked in the opposite direction. Instead, I went to sit with one of them. We talked about the weather and coming storm. We gazed at the clouds and talked about Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. He told me about the rotunda in the U.S. Capitol building, the Apotheosis of Washington, painted in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Then we went back inside and resumed.

I spoke first and told the four that I imagined they were arguing and basing their vote on their principles. Nods. I told them I admired this, that I saw them as principled, moral people. I asked them about their positions, and what ensued was a discussion rather than a debate. I asked them if compromising on the vote felt like compromising their principles. They all agreed that it did. But we ended up listening to each other, and in the end, the eight of us compromised on a few questions and the four compromised on others. We all gave a little, and a deliberation that began that morning by feeling like it might take weeks ended up taking just one full day. Five minutes before the we were supposed to finish for the day, we had a verdict to present to the judge, one we all felt good about. The final vote was 11-1.

When we all left for the day, the presiding juror came up to me in front of everyone and said, “I know your super power—it’s listening, like, really listening, and making people feel heard.” Another juror came up and hugged me and whispered “thank you” in my ear. I was so happy and relieved, I started to think I should go into mediation. Of course, this was the Carl Rogers approach to argument I taught about at Cal Poly for so long and have written about in this newsletter, but I’d never had an opportunity to put it to use in such a high-stakes setting. It worked.

How does that apply to abortion? Is there a way to shift from debate to discussion? Of course there are unwavering zealots whose goal is to eliminate and criminalize abortion. But most people are reasonable; most people want abortion to be legal and accessible, especially in the first trimester. I’ve always been passionate about this issue, but so passionate that I could barely talk about it with people I didn’t see eye to eye with. I’ll never forget the debate about abortion I had with a guy at a barbecue in Springfield, Missouri, more than two decades ago. I lost badly. And I learned something about myself in that moment: I have neither the skill nor the desire to debate people about abortion. I realized that as I was hiding in the bushes, crying tears of frustration into my Coors Light.

I have a friend, Amritamurti, who traveled back and forth to India a couple of times several years ago and ended up staying for 10 years in an ashram. She returned to the United States last year to take care of her older brother who’d had a stroke. She was experiencing culture shock in a sense, having been gone for a decade. She was shocked, for instance, when I told her about gun deaths and school shootings. In the ashram, you live very simply. You have a job—hers was cleaning bathrooms and writing the ashram’s newsletter. Her head was shaved. She chanted. The food is vegetarian. Her small room was basic. We now talk on the phone with some regularity. The other day she texted me this:  

Look at your mind.

Be curious.

Welcome groundlessness.

Lighten up and relax.

Offer chaos a cup of tea.

Let go of 'us and them'.

Don't turn away.

Everything you do and think affects everyone on the planet.

Let the pain of the world touch you and cause your compassion to blossom.

Never give up on yourself.

This was a rare didactic text from her, though a timely one I appreciated, as I had been ruminating for some time on the concept of us versus them, of the need to create an enemy. We’ve seen this scapegoating throughout history and in the present coming from political leaders; it’s the ever-growing polarization we’re enveloped in. Is this newsletter just contributing to that? What would it mean to not live in such a way, of perceiving the world as us versus them, of defining ourselves in opposition to others? Of course, we are not amoeba, floating through existence. We have opinions and beliefs and morals and things we are passionate about and want to fight for, may even be willing to risk our lives for. What would it mean to work toward a vision of justice and equality without vilifying others? Is it possible?

Yes, the fight is real. Even if I’m having my own Kumbaya moment, I am not Siddhartha sitting by the river. And anyway, Siddhartha didn’t have to worry about access to abortion and didn’t even know about his own son until his son was an adult, and even then, they fought soon after meeting and were again estranged. Then Siddhartha achieved enlightenment—without having to change a diaper.

In my living room

There are still laws being passed and enforced that deny women and girls the right to make decisions for themselves. There are women and girls, who, rather than be able to live their lives as autonomous, equal, free beings, find themselves in fear, frustration, and peril. Fearful of not just being denied the healthcare that is abortion, but also of being harshly judged for their desire or need for one. Still, I’m willing to listen, even to strive to be more Buddha-like.

Roe might have been overturned in 2022, but we’ve also seen a tremendous number  of people rise up, speak out, vote, run for office, and proudly, unabashedly declare and show support abortion, which makes me in turn, happy, hopeful, and proud. I’ll also continue to speak my mind, share my views, tell my stories, and fight for what I believe. I learned some things this year about God and beauty and love and understanding and compassion and strength. I’ll try to put them to good use. I’ll feel it all. Frustration, after all, can fuel change. Fury can be useful and clarifying. But I’m ending this year feeling self-possessed, joyful, and unafraid.

Hope you are too.

Happy new year!

A portion of The Apotheosis of Washington