My Experience of Being A Woman in the Year of Donald Trump

Sometimes events occur that are so shattering, so emotionally personal, that sooner or later I know I will be compelled to write about the experience, either to share with others or to calm my own spirit and discover what kind of insight, what kind of wisdom might come bubbling to the surface. There are experiences in life that can never be adequately captured in the ever-so-limiting tool of language and words.

Sexual assault is such an experience. Even typing the words “sexual assault” fills me with emotion. It feels too personal, too dark, too horrific to write about.

There are degrees of sexual assault of course and my story is of a much lesser degree than those who have been raped. I have been very fortunate to never have been raped. That is an experience I don’t even know if I could find the courage to put into words.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me tell you about me – at least the “me” that matters most in this life on earth. Let me tell you about the spirit and essence and traits that make “me”.

I was born into the world a girl, a very shy, frightened girl with a deep sense of wonder and curiosity and a determination never to give up. At a very young age, my shyness caused me great emotional pain. I went to school at 5 years old and I was immediately teased and bullied. I am very small and petite in stature and I found it hard to stand up for myself in a physical altercation, let alone a verbal one. I remember the first day of school when I discovered that some people, even those I’ve never met, will be mean to me for no other reason (apparently) than that they can. I was very afraid.

I felt the pain of my shyness. I felt the pain of my fear of speaking up and expressing to my parents, my family, my friends – all the fear and confusion I felt inside.   I would look at the ground when I walked. I would avert my eyes when speaking to others (to boys especially). I would plan my conversations with boys ahead of time, afraid of saying the wrong thing, afraid of embarrassing myself…afraid of being ridiculed for not knowing the “right” thing to say to a boy.

I was very thin and gangly and terrible at sports. As my teen years came, I was awkward and my fear and shyness made me even more awkward. Much to my dismay, my breasts did not grow and my face broke out. My hair was unmanageable and cut too short, so I did not feel “feminine” (or what people around me at the time told me what that word is supposed to mean). I have learned a lot since then about the meaning of words… especially the question of “whose meaning?”

I didn’t wear make-up as a teenager because I was adamant and determined that if a boy were ever to like me, it would be for my mind and heart and not because I put some kind of powder or cream or color on my face. I thought to myself, “if a boy asks me out without make-up, I will know that he likes me for me and not because of my appearance.”  I was very stubborn about this.

Not wearing make-up and trying to get a boyfriend with my very shy personality alone didn’t work. No boy asked me out in the four years of high school. I did not go to the Prom. I spent my last night of high school on a bus full of my fellow graduates, going to the “Graduation Cruise” with no one on the seat next to me. I watched all the girls and the boys next to them laughing, while I sat alone, a graduating senior in high school, wishing there was a boy sitting next to me.  I asked myself over and over “what is wrong with me?”

Then, I went to college. Same thing for a while – terrible shyness and no boyfriends. I cried a lot. I wanted a man, any man, to ask me on a date. Nothing happened.

So, after graduating from college, I did the unthinkable – I decided to try to overcome my shyness and social anxiety by becoming an actress. It blew everybody’s mind at the time – how could a young woman as shy and afraid and hesitant and socially awkward as me ever walk out and perform on a stage?

The first few months of acting school were dreadful and terrifying. My legs and hands and almost my whole body trembled (even my head shook) when I performed a scene in front of my classmates.   My fellow actors and the acting teachers would look at me and ask me “Why are you here? You are so frightened. Why are you here?”  There were many weeks when I thought the stage fright I felt would never go away. I thought to myself that I must be crazy, as shy as I was, to think that I could ever go out there on stage and be a real actor.

Then the unexpected happened – my stage fright all but disappeared. I remember the moment it happened. I was performing a 10-minute one-person show on stage for a packed house at my acting school.  I went out onto the stage as frightened as ever and sure I wouldn’t make it through the whole show, when suddenly about 3 minutes into the performance, something clicked inside me and BANG, the fear disappeared. I still can’t believe it happened.  I’m still not quite sure what exactly did happen. All I knew was that, suddenly, I wasn’t afraid.  Instead, I was an actress playing a role and having the time of my life.

I still don’t know what happened that night 29 years ago. For a long time I was afraid that it was temporary, that the fear would return.  It didn’t. From that moment on, going on stage brought me not fear, but only joy.

That moment changed my life. Over time it helped me to overcome my shyness with men and others as well. I actually learned how to talk to a man and look him in the eye and not be afraid.

I still feel shy inside at times (I think I always will), but these three decades later, I am something I never thought I would be – a (mostly) confident woman, who looks people in the eye and is comfortable in my own skin.

That is half the story. The second half of the story takes me back to my appearance. I am still skinny. My breasts never did grow. My hair is still unmanageable, although I enjoy the thickness of it now, instead of hating it as I did when I was younger. My skin is clear, most of the time.  I am a very petite woman, who could be easily overpowered by a man. I live in New York City where I know that dangers exist. Like many urban women, I receive cat-calls and comments sometimes when I walk down the street.  (I’m still no good at knowing how to respond – my residual shyness kicks in every time.)

I still rarely wear make-up (some things never change) and I spend my money on music rather than fashion, but today it no longer matters.  Today, I am loved by those who know me, for who I am, not for what I look like….except.

EXCEPT….except sometimes by men. Sometimes I walk down the street and men make comments about my small breasts or my little body – sometimes the comments are complimentary and sometimes not….but every time it makes me feel like crap – awkward, afraid, anxious, confused and other feelings I can’t quite put into words.  It also makes me feel angry for every other woman who has these kinds of experiences.

Then, one day a few years ago, it got worse. (I will keep this part of the story short because it is painful to think about).   I was sitting on the subway. The subway was crowded. I was wearing jeans and a sweater, carrying a canvas bag on my lap.  Suddenly, something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t say exactly what it was, but I felt upset, confused, “wrong” – something was very wrong. Something compelled me to lift my bag off my lap and there it was — the hand of the man next to me between my legs.   I leaped out of my seat and he ran off the train as we pulled into the station.  I told the people around me what he had done to me. They sat and stared at me and said nothing. It is New York – many people do not get involved.

I didn’t get a good look at the guy and there was little I could do, so I just went home. I went home and cried – for days and weeks I cried. I am crying even now as I write this. I don’t know about others, but for me, that kind of sexual assault is something one never really gets over.

There are no words for that kind of violation and still being the shy person (inside) that I am, I was determined to simply get past it and overcome….and I did.  That is what I do when faced with life’s challenges….I overcome them.  “Overcoming”, however, does not mean the pain goes away.  It just levels out (and I tend to bury such pain to be honest).

Until now.  I buried that memory until this week — when I heard the audio of Donald Trump talking on that bus. Millions of other women like me – some who have been sexually assaulted, some who are shy, some who are not, even some who have been raped – and some who have received cat-calls and comments of all kinds from men walking down the street — we all heard Donald Trump.   We heard him say how he treats “beautiful women” and how he “can’t help it”.

Mr. Trump is not a woman.  How can he know what it is like to live as a woman in our society? How can he know the emotional pain and confusion and fear and horror and disgust and even shame that a woman can feel when she – when I – when we – are viewed as someone who can be touched or spoken to or spoken about in demeaning words like pussy or bitch or parts of our body treated as property for anyone to touch or criticize or judge.

Women know what I am talking about. We are women – we know the deepest, most visceral, physical part of what it means to be born a woman in this world – emotionally, psychologically, physically, sexually, spiritually – women KNOW what it feels like to be a woman – a girl, a teenage girl, a young woman, a middle-aged woman and, if we’re lucky, an old woman.

Men cannot know that feeling of what it is like to live in this world as a woman, just as I cannot know what it is like to be a man or an African American or Latino or Asian or other minority. We each know about who WE are, but we can only guess at what it is like to wear the shoes of another.

Still, many of us try.  Many of us show respect to the other gender or ethnicity or race or orientation, not because we are told to, but because we somehow know in our hearts the importance of trying to imagine what it is like to live in someone else’s shoes.   Empathy exists in the hearts of many – and it is lacking in the hearts of many.

Mr. Trump’s remarks – and especially his behavior – hurt and anger me as a woman because of what I have experienced and what I have seen other women experience – but most of all,his words and actions tear me apart because a man of such power, such wealth – lacks the empathy to imagine – or to try to imagine – what it is like to be a woman on the receiving end of such behavior — and most of all, because there are those who support a person who lacks such empathy as a candidate for President of the United States.

Mr. Trump very likely will not change, but we can. We – you, the other women and the other men in this country and this world — we can change. We can try and imagine what it is like to be of another gender, another race, another religion, another sexual orientation.

We can never know….but we can imagine.

I ask you today to please imagine….and then vote.  Vote with empathy.

Blessings to you all,

Cinda

Why Every Voice Matters in the Age of Donald Trump

I am experiencing deep, deep feelings today. This is not unusual for me, but every once in a while I have a day when the feelings lead to an awareness, a visceral sense of “being” that is powerful in its intensity. It’s not a negative experience. It is actually a great experience. Feeling deeply, be it pleasant or frustrating or sad or whatever the case, reminds me with a potent force that I am alive; that the very fact of being alive is temporary and miraculous and inexplicable and mysterious and all the other words that may not even exist in a thesaurus to describe it.

All the deep feelings today come from a restlessness inside, a feeling of malaise, a feeling of fear mixed with hope and awe. The news media is bursting with opinions, rationalizations, complaints, confusion, fear, disbelief. There are thousands of voices out there now responding in all manner of ways to the current state of American politics and to Donald Trump, in particular. I thought about writing about Donald Trump and now I find myself actually doing it, even though I think others probably express it much better than I can. (Please forgive the redundancy of another thought-piece on Donald Trump. As with all opinions, for better or worse, you can take it for what it is worth.)

I hope to find a much more pleasant topic to write about in the months ahead, but like many of us this week, Mr. Trump is on my mind. To be more specific, it’s not so much Mr. Trump himself who is on my mind as it is the voters who support him and believe in him. I don’t “get it”…at least not entirely. Perhaps it is my fundamental faith in the basic good sense of humankind that prevents me from completely understanding why anyone would think Donald Trump would make a good president. (I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence, but it is true that I am an optimist at heart) Many don’t get it, but here we are…whether some of us get it or not.

The most comforting and truest thought I have about Mr. Trump is this: he is temporary. I am temporary also. You are temporary. We are all temporary. If, by some disastrous chance, he is elected President, we will be stuck with him for a maximum of 8 years (hopefully fewer, but that is the maximum). I think about 8 years in the whole scheme of time and space and it is a tear-drop (in this case, literally) in the universe…less, in fact.

The reason why it is all so emotional for us (non-supporters) to be thinking about Donald Trump right now and especially his supporters right now is that it is happening “right now”….and 8 years feels like an eternity. I think that it is the “right now” aspect of disturbing events that makes them feel so powerful. Events from years ago or centuries can lose their emotional impact for those living right now. Events to be in the future are not yet known, so are not yet felt yet.

Donald Trump is happening right now, today, this election year – and I am feeling the ramifications of that deeply in my heart. These are the moments of our lives – right now. The now matters to us because we are living it now.

When all the other ridiculous and treacherous leaders around the world were alive (and are now gone)….all those who lived at the time, were also experiencing it “now”. In the history of our civilization, we have had some very terrifying periods of “right now”. Years have passed and Andrew Jackson is gone; Pontius Pilate is gone; Richard Nixon is gone; Stalin is gone; Joseph Goebbels is gone; Napoleon is gone; Genghis Khan is gone; Henry the VIII is gone; Ho Chi Minh is gone; Joseph McCarthy is gone; Prince is gone; Sinatra is gone; Harriet Tubman is gone; Lech Walesa is gone; Robin Williams is gone; my mom is gone; my first grade teacher is gone….you can fill in your list too. Those that are gone far, far outnumber those that are here right now. Right now becomes “back then” in the blink of an eye. This is the nature of that mystery we call time. The bad ones are gone and the good ones are gone and all who were alive back then are gone.

The fact that an event is in the past or the people who experienced it are gone, doesn’t make it any less significant, but its transitory, “big-picture” nature may bring a small bit of comfort. The impact of the events and actions of those who are gone can resonate for centuries and beyond. The impact of a Donald Trump presidency may resonate for centuries too, but still, like all events, like all lives…it will be forever temporary. Someday Donald Trump will also be gone, along with all his supporters and all his opponents. Nobody escapes the eventual state of “gone”.

The temporary nature of everything…the way we look at time….all of it….it calms me down a bit when the feelings of fear begin to surge inside me about what is ahead for us all.

I also remind myself that even if Donald Trump supporters outnumber those of us who find him a scary, absurd individual….the voices of the minority (if they are even that) are still a voice. President Trump or ex-candidate Trump – whatever the future holds — each of us has a voice; a voice we can use to make change, to have an impact. (Our vote, of course, is one of the most critical ways we can express our voice….even better than a blog.)

As long as each of us uses our particular voice with courage and wisdom and determination and fairness, we are not destined to accept the ideas and the world of Donald Trump, or anyone for that matter. We have power. You have power. I have power. Whatever the future brings to us, we can affect it. We can speak out for a better life for future generations. We can speak out to protect the rights of minorities, gay people, transgender people, Muslims, women, people of all religions, children, immigrants, the homeless, the displaced, the poor, the disenfranchised…all who struggle against insurmountable odds.

The President has power, but you have power too. So do I. Good people with deep compassion, thoughtfulness, a sense of fairness, integrity, forgiveness, justice….the light inside these people is more powerful than the dark, fearful, angry force inside Donald Trump or any one of his supporters.

I try to remind myself of the above when I have a day like today, a day when I am feeling deeply disturbed and fearful of the impact of individuals like Mr. Trump and his supporters.

Time will go on. Our lives will go on. Our lives are extremely short, but we can make our lives matter in the time that we have for those not yet born, by speaking out now; speaking with courage, with grace, with respect, with wisdom….and even with love – especially with love. Love for ourselves, love for those who oppose us and most importantly for the love we feel for future generations.

Dark forces seep into the consciousness of the many who are afraid and I believe those dark forces – fear, anger, rage, intolerance — those forces lead to bad choices; choices we may, and probably will, regret.

By the same token, the forces of light, of compassion, of empathy, of mercy, of tolerance – those forces are also very powerful.

I feel the fear deeply at times, but I feel the love even more deeply. For decades I have walked through the streets and subways of New York City and looked closely at the eyes and the faces of the millions around me. Even as I live the role of the stranger that I am to most of those living on this earth, in this city…even as a stranger…I see the frustration of the humans around me. I see their apathy, their amusement, their anger, their anxiety, their kindness, their confusion and even their love. I see it in the eyes of each person I walk past in the L subway tunnel twice a day.

We are in trouble. I feel strongly that we are in trouble…but the eyes of those around me tell me that it is not hopeless. I see apathy in some of the eyes and despair and hope and fear and all kinds of human feelings, but I also see humanity. You and I are the embodiment of humanity and all that comes with it. You and I also have power within us if we can only take the deep feelings of all kinds and turn those feelings into action, into positive choices – from year to year, from week to week, from day to day, from minute to minute.

And so it goes….a multitude of words and feelings that some may read and many will not. Still, writing these words here now, it is an action, albeit a very small one. It is an action that helps me to sort out all the feelings and ideas and fears and hopes and the whole internal, complicated muddle of being a human being alive on this Cinco de Mayo in the year 2016.

Sorting it all out in my mind and heart, expressing it, expressing my voice in a productive way….it is a tiny action, but it is not nothing. No small action is nothing because a billion small actions may lead to a future world (a braver world) where the ideas of a person like Donald Trump are rejected. It will take brave people to create a world where the xenophobic, racist, narcissistic ideas like that of Donald Trump are rejected. People accept such ideas out of fear. People scapegoat others out of fear. Fear is sometimes nuclear in its force, but if we reject fear, there may indeed one day be a “brave new world” – not Orwellian, but instead one that we can actually be proud of.

We can make that world, you and I. We can do it in our short temporary lives….one small action at a time; one voice at a time. We may not live to see the world we are creating or the impact of our voices, but future generations may. We will not know the names or stories or fate of those future people, but they are us and we are them….and so….though we will never know them, we must begin loving them now.

I want to believe that I am living the amazing story I am living now because somebody (or many somebodys) long, long ago took an action for the love of the unborn me.

Love of future generations may give us the motivation we need to speak out now. You or I may never see the impact of our small voices, but my gut tells me that each of us must speak out anyway….so the light will not go out….not ever.

We are the light and the humans walking through the subway tunnel in the year 2516 – they will also be the light.

Trump or no Trump….I hope that more of us than not will never give up on the light. I hope that more of us than not will feel love for the unborn who are yet to be. I hope that more of us than not will never stop believing.

It is the actions we take today, big and small, on all of the above that make the whole damn trip worth it…right now and, especially, after we are gone.

Love,

Cinda

Embracing Courage in A Very Frightening World

For me, one of the most rewarding — and most frightening — parts of being alive is sharing myself with others – all of myself – my hopes, fears, dreams, jokes, stories, feelings, opinions, thoughts, suggestions…on and on and on.

Some of us are an open book. (I am not… at least not in my daily interactions with others.) Some of us share a lot. Others of us share less. (Some share too much.) Those who share less sometimes choose this option because of a deep sense of privacy or a fear of being hurt or simple shyness.

Sharing all the different and authentic parts of ourselves takes courage. (It does for me anyhow.) Whenever I open up and tell the truth about how I’m feeling or a mistake I have made or a controversial opinion that I hold, I always feel the danger of the backlash…criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, dismissal, being ignored. I feel apprehension even as I write these words. Opening up to others means making oneself consciously vulnerable. Nothing can be more terrifying in this life than feeling vulnerable, feeling exposed.

Over the years, I’ve become a little more courageous about speaking up and sharing myself, but I still get scared sometimes and I still have work to do.

Whenever I communicate my true self out to the world, I know that I am taking on the monster under the bed: vulnerability. I know that making myself vulnerable always contains within it the inherent possibility that I may not get the response I am looking for, that I may get hurt, perhaps badly….and I won’t lie – this scares me. This makes me feel weak.

It is a shame that vulnerability can feel like weakness because I do believe that the uniqueness of each person is one’s beauty and one’s gift to the world. I feel sadness at times that exposing our vulnerability to others can cause such pain.

I get it. It’s a very tough world and not a kind one. A lot of people are ridiculed in their life for their uniqueness. When we expose our vulnerability, when we tell the truth about ourselves, we may be called “weird” or “strange”….or worse. This is an all too common experience because for whatever reason, we are uncomfortable with those who are different from ourselves.

Today, in middle-age, I embrace the weird in myself more than I did when I was younger. Weird, strange, freaky… these are subjective words. They are also gifts from the universe. One person’s weird is another’s beautiful or truthful. As a teenager I remember wondering if other kids pondered the big questions of the universe each day as I did. The superficiality of everyday conversation made me suspect that perhaps I was weird in thinking so much about our purpose upon this earth.

Over the years, the question of my own weirdness came to matter less. (I owe this fact to an extended family of very loving and tolerant friends.) My life has become richer and happier and more rewarding since I (slowly) began to embrace my uniqueness, even more since I began embracing the uniqueness of others.

I am more content these days when I express my authentic self — and sometimes I am also quite scared. I still occasionally feel terrified inside when I express what is in my heart because I am aware that the response may not be kind or tolerant. Instead, it may be mean or unfair and that is painful. When I find the guts to express my opinions, my values, my heart, however, I also feel liberated. It feels scary, but it also feels “right”.

Eternal optimist that I am, in spite of the darkness out there, in spite of the fear, I still believe that the calm, creative, courageous and compassionate expression of a person’s authentic self is a priceless gift to be honored – and I do. I especially honor courage because I know what it takes to embrace the journey of trying to live a truly authentic life. Just getting out of bed in the morning takes courage because, if we are truly honest with ourselves, I think that most of us would admit that a good part of the time we have no idea what we are doing. This is certainly true for me.

My voice is a tiny one on a tiny planet in a vast universe billions of years old. When I consider the massive expanse and nature of time and space and existence itself, I am profoundly aware that I am alive on this earth for less than a millisecond in the face of all that has ever been and all that will ever be. My voice is one of 8 billion others voices that will be gone in less than a century. Time itself is a miracle and a conundrum beyond any human understanding. A second is a century. A century is a millisecond. A millennium is barely a second. 10,000 millennia are but a raindrop among a trillion trillion raindrops. What is my purpose under such circumstances? Do I have a purpose at all?

Yet, even knowing the insignificance and brevity of our lives and our existence upon this tiny planet – even knowing how badly we treat each other much of the time – our egos still dominate our world. This fact astounds me. The size of the human ego itself astounds me, including my own. It is absurd and nonsensical and yet it is the engine that drives the movement of all humankind. The human ego may be our saving grace or our downfall. The jury will remain out on that one for a very long time…I only hope it is not before it is too late to reverse course.

In the meantime, it takes undeniable courage to live each day acknowledging the silliness of the human ego in this inexplicable universe, while at the same time finding a way to find meaning in each day, each choice, each interaction, each relationship. We know not which day will be our last or what comes next, so we must simply have faith that there is meaning in our being here at all and courage that, whatever comes next (or doesn’t), we have the strength to face it.

We know not where we came from, why we are here, or where we are going… yet, we must live our very brief lives with purpose and integrity and bravery, in the face of endless dark and confusing temptations. Many try to do the right thing in a world where the temptations to do wrong are powerful and many. Personal survival vs the survival of our species… what personal choice could possibly be more important or require more courage than this?

To live in such a world, faced with such a question, we must be tremendously brave. We must be brave enough to fail again and again and again and still get up the next day and try again, never knowing if any of our choices make any difference at all in this scary, wondrous, chaotic life.

It takes courage to have faith in such a world; faith that it all means something….and faith to keep going even if it all turns out to mean nothing. It takes courage to be optimistic in a world of so much fear, anger and hatred. It takes courage to admit when one is without courage. It takes courage to forgive others when they fail and courage to forgive ourselves when it is our turn.

In 2016 we live in the age of Donald Trump. We live in the age of Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jung Un, Vladimir Putin, Pope Francis, Marta Vieira da Silva, Edward Snowden, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, Hanya Yanagihara, Bernie Sanders, Serena Williams, Caitlyn Jenner, Chris Rock, Bill Maher, Malala Yousufzai, Ashen Wirathu, Mark Zuckerberg, Annie Lennox, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Stevie Wonder, Winona LaDuke, Dr. Fleming Kim and countless others who may impact this world for the better or for the worse. Even in this, not one of us will be the final judge.

The famous among us are few, but the world moves forward and backward every day with the physical, mental and emotional energy of the billions whose names will never be known to most.

I sit in a diner in New York City and watch through the window in a single moment in time as the vast multitude of people pass by on the streets and sidewalks, living their lives, voicing their opinions, paying their bills, worrying about their troubles, trying to stay alive (and sane), trying to stay brave. I see them pass, knowing I will likely never know them, nor will they know me. It strikes me at these times that my life matters to those who love me, but matters not at all to the billions who do not know that I exist.

We live in a world of mutual strangers where each individual choice affects our collective fate; yet we will never know how or why and we will likely never meet those who may have the biggest impact on the future of our lives. The world is powered by each of us, yet most of us will never even know the names of all the billions we live amongst or whose choices determine our future.

To say this is an incredible phenomenon is to understate the miracle and magnitude of it all… and yet the individual human ego seems limitless in its size and scope.

It is incomprehensible and ironic. It fills me with wonder, faith and fear.

To experience this world in our minds and hearts with a kind of grace… to love it in all its absurdity and turmoil and arrogance and still believe that there is meaning and purpose in our short, anonymous lives — this, I believe, is the core of what we call “courage”. It is all so much bigger than you or me – or anyone – and yet something tells me there is only one response: to try our very best to stay brave.

Of all the many blessings I would wish for our species and for each individual soul upon this earth, for as long as we exist, I pray that our courage will be the most enduring.

My heart tells me that one day, many billions of moments from this moment, long after all who read these words have passed on to something else, this may be the sustaining key that unlocks the mystery itself.