when i was preggers. and had reached that magical 41 weeks mark. my midwife brought an acupuncturist to my house to help to induce my labor.
it didnt work.
it didnt work for all the right reasons.
i learned a lot about healing from that acupuncturist.
some of the things i learned were practical like: acupuncture works best to jump start a stalled labor, not to induce a labor from the start.
some of the things were philosophical like: the graph that shows that the average woman will give birth at 40 weeks is a bell curve. a lot of statistics in biology/medicine plot out like a bell curve. there are always outlying dots. the dots on the far end of the bell curve. just a few scattered ones.
Many biological, psychological and social phenomena occur in the population in the distribution we call the bell curve (Portney & Watkins, 2000). This picture shows a symmetrical bell curve, in which the average score [i.e., the mean] would be plotted in the middle of the curve, where the ‘bell’ shape is the tallest. Most of the people [i.e., 68% of them, or 34% + 34%] have performance within 1 segment [i.e., a standard deviation] of the average score.
i am an outlying dot. my birth was an outlying dot. and in the midst of him poking needles into my legs. i realized i was really comfortable being an outlying dot. of course my birth would be an outlying dot. living on the margins. this is where i gravitated, floated toward throughout my life.
now that may sound ‘cool’ or ‘edgy’. and yeah. i like my life. am grateful for the beauty in the world that i have gotten to experience. and i have been blessed (cursed?) to experience some of the beauty of the margins.
but we are punished for living on those very margins. for being or re-presenting an outlying dot. outlying = outlaw (?)
some of us simply cannot conform. it is not even a matter of willpower. we simply cannot. and i am not talking simply of biological processes. although there are very few biological processes that i would classify as simple. i am also speaking of social locations. identities. performances. (like ive been watching a lot of music videos lately and i have to say i really admire these women dancers in hip hop videos. damn. i studied dance for 15 years. and i know how it is to do some of those back bends in 3 inch heels. not to mention the contortionism. in some of the most ridiculous outfits. with little rhinestones poking your in the pelvis. and the shoes a size too small. it takes a lot of energy and skill and practice and time to conform. to put on the performance. there is beauty in that.) for the sake of our survival we cannot conform. for the sake of our survival we cannot not conform.
is that where we are? the margin is between a rock and a hard place?
so that acupuncturist didnt do what my midwife wanted him to do…hurry it up…but he gave me that image of a bell curve. and it was holding on to that image after our birth and the trauma that came with it, that activated me healing from post traumatic stress syndrome after the birth. that image of me as a black dot on a white graph. rolling toward the edge of the paper and off that paper. off that 2-dimensional flat cosmology. and into the real world.
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July 12th, 2009 at 9:36 am #
this…just helped my brain to relax. it’s been in a tight little wad lately, and this…
rest.
I keep thinking that
rest.
and this post just gave me a way to do so.
yes.
July 12th, 2009 at 3:56 pm #
I wrote about outliers before, keep that curve in your head.
http://cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com/221594.html
July 12th, 2009 at 7:54 pm #
“for the sake of our survival we cannot conform. for the sake of our survival we cannot not conform.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to my political community. My beloved sistahs who have essentially given form to most of my adulthood. Yet, the older I get, I’ve noticed how increasingly awkward I have felt in my community. I’m still in love with all of them, so rich, so intense, so beautiful and brilliant they are. But I’ve also noticed, in our urgency to unravel the oppression that has ravaged us and our communities, we sometimes develop some hard boundaries about political conformity. I’m worried about our ability to expand our ideas and disagree with one another without thinking that the person stepping outside is…well…I’m not sure what the right word is. Stigmatized, I think, might be one way to think of it.
I have had to think about creating loving and flexible boundaries to negotiate the tension of conformity for survival — and nonconformity for survival. Perhaps, in any vision of liberatory community, an element of loving and flexible boundaries might be key.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:17 am #
this reminds me of a quote some statistics students like – “I’m not an outlier, I just haven’t found my distribution yet.”
July 13th, 2009 at 9:38 am #
bfp, I hope you don’t mind if I say something off topic. I don’t want to derail, but I need to say something to thatgirlhasissues and I she doesn’t link to a blog so I can say it there and I don’t have her email.
Thatgirlhasissues, I owe you a huge apology. I thought you were making up excuses for NOWHC and said some awful things. I went back and reread everything you said and it was simply the TRUTH. Every word you wrote was true, you were the only one who had any clue about what was really going on. Everything I said was ignorant and cruel and I wish I could take it all back. I am so sorry.
You too, bfp. I was harsh with you too and had no right to say the things I did to either of you. I am sorry for that.
July 13th, 2009 at 1:27 pm #
donna–your words mean more to me than you could know. I don’t think I was totally blameless in that thread, and I have continued to process and think about things–as you too have clearly done. thank you SO much (not trying to speak for thatgirl, just for myself)…and if I said or did anything to YOU to hurt you–I am really sorry as well. As I said to somebody on twitter–we’ll get to the other side together. that much I know.
much love to you donna.
xo
July 14th, 2009 at 11:05 pm #
Donna,
I’m so moved by this, thank you very much. That was a painful discussion, so I’m also sorry for the way I didn’t show up as well as I could have. I’m still sorting through what happened in that discussion and why. But, especially as I’m a great admirer of your work, I really appreciate your note.