Women’s History Month Role Models: Historical and Modern Advocates for Justice

March 21, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and historical and modern women in advocacy. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

Today, I’m focusing on real-life women in history or the larger culture who are advocates for social justice. In particular, I’m focusing both on women who inspired me personally and who may not be quite as well-known. This list tends to be focused on my areas of interest – poverty, environmental issues, food systems – and this is just but the shortest of lists, so there are a lot of issues missed. Nonetheless, I hope to raise awareness about some of these women who aren’t always (although sometimes) mentioned in the history books.

Vandana Shiva: Shiva is one of the most compelling and unique advocates in the sustainable food movement. While much of the sustainable food movement is white, upper to middle-class Americans concerned about their personal exposure to bioengineering, Shiva is Indian and focuses her work on how corporate control of the food system affects farmers in non-Western countries. She’s spoken out against corporations and governments patenting plant species that farmers have been cultivating for centuries. She’s also done a lot of work in seed saving, helping farmers access to alternatives to “terminator seeds” that only produce sterile seeds. Her organization, Navdanya, has set up more than 100 community seed banks throughout India and is working with the government of Bhutan to convert 100% of their agriculture to organic. Plus, her PhD thesis was on “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory,” which is inherently hardcore.

Sister Dorothy Stang: If Sister Lucy is the most badass nun I’ve ever met, Sister Dorothy Stang is probably the most badass one I haven’t. (At least in modern times – some of those saints had some very interesting backstories.) As a young woman, she traveled to Brazil to educate farmers in the Amazon jungle about land tenure and avoiding deforestation. However, her work quickly became political as she learned more about the farmers’ situation. As loggers, ranchers, and real estate speculators moved into the rainforest, they threatened the livelihoods and lives of the people she was trying to serve. She collaborated with the local people to fight against the profiteers trying to kick them off their land. She lobbied the local government and sat in vigil to blockade logging trucks trying to get into the forest. Because of her advocacy, she was put on a “death list” and later murdered by the local crime group. As they approached her, she pulled a Bible from her bag and began to read from the Beatitudes. In college, I read about her story in Outside Magazine and hung their obituary on my door. Both her story and my experience with H.O.M.E. strongly influenced my passion for social justice, especially in tandem with environmental justice.

Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells: When I aspired to be a high-flying journalist (ha) in high school, Nellie Bly was my gal. Perhaps most famous for faking severe mental illness to get admitted to an insane asylum, I admire how she put herself in serious danger to expose corrupt systems and inhumane treatment. She was in the asylum for 10 days, where the nurses fed them poorly, tied the “dangerous” patients up with ropes, didn’t clean up waste, forced the women to beat on hard wooden benches all day, and yelled at and beat the patients. The articles she published exposed the subhuman conditions that were common in the very broken mental health system, leading to reform. For bonus awesomeness, she also beat the world record for circumnavigating the globe. Similarly, besides both being named Ida, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells also leveraged the power of the pen to sway people’s attitudes and actions. Ida Tarbell wrote a series of articles in McClure’s about the monopoly of Standard Oil and how it manipulated the economy. She pored over piles of public documents and interviewed people across the country. Her articles and the book that followed were the first examples of both investigative journalism and the corporate expose. Ida B. Wells was an early civil rights advocate. When forced to give up her seat in the first class cabin of a train because of her race, she refused, more than 70 years earlier than Rosa Parks did on a bus. She sued the railroad and at least initially, won her case. She was co-owner and editor of a black newspaper, where she wrote articles exposing the lies that white supremacists used to justify lynching, identifying as far more of a form of social control over the black community than anything related to punishment of individuals. All of these women show how fundamental communication is to social change and managed to do in a profession that has never been welcoming to females.

Ella Jo Baker: Baker was a key figure in the 1950s civil rights movement, but isn’t that well-known today. I actually hadn’t heard of her until recently. But she probably would have preferred it that way. Baker worked in the background of the movement, organizing people, mentoring new leaders, forging connections and building the foundation for the mass movement. She opposed the idea of charismatic leadership in advocacy and specifically rejected how the church was set up, with mostly male leadership over a female congregation. Instead, she embraced participatory democracy with a collective style of action rather than a hierarchical one. As someone who has only acted in an official leadership positions a few times, but dedicated many hours in the background, I highly appreciate this viewpoint. In addition, much of my learning curve of becoming a better ally and advocate has been about understanding how to listen, appreciate other people’s true needs and provide them the support they need. For me, leadership is much more about being a servant than having charisma. She’s such a great example of this philosophy.

There are so many more women around the world in the past and present who are making their communities stronger and the world a more just place. Oxfam America and ONE have been doing a number of profiles of women in non-Western countries that are both powerful and inspiring.

Who are your favorite female advocates for justice now or in the past?

Women’s History Month Role Models – Pop Culture

March 18, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

Picture: Pictures of Clara Oswald from Doctor Who, Agent Peggy Carter and Anna from Frozen; Text: "Female Role Models in Pop Culture / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So"

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories – women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and historical or cultural women in advocacy. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

Today I’m focusing on female role models in pop culture, particularly action adventure and SF. In addition to being my favorite genres, they also have a historic under-representation of women, especially when compared to movies, TV shows, or books with a romantic or historical focus. Unfortunately, most women in these genres are either “The Girl” in a group made up of all men or Strong Female Characters who are physically capable but over-sexualized and emotionally flat. While the characters I describe are far from unproblematic – both if they were real people and in how their works choose to portray them – I find them to have a number of traits worth emulating.

Princess Elizabeth, The Paperbag Princess: One of the first children’s stories to subvert the traditional “Prince rescues Princess” plots, Princess Elizabeth was probably my first fictional feminist hero. After a dragon burns her clothes and kidnaps her betrothed, Princess Elizabeth sets off to rescue him. After she beats the dragon, she finds out her “practically perfect” fiancé tells her to come back when “she looks more like a princess.” Declaring him a bum, she leaves him in the dragon’s cave alone and skips off to pursue her own destiny. I love how even though she anticipated being a “normal” princess, she does what needs to be done when people are in danger. She also uses her wits to defend the dragon and of course, won’t stand for the Prince’s shallow crap. Too bad Sansa from Song of Fire and Ice didn’t read this book before moving to the castle. (Despite my previous hesitancy, I’m totally on a Game of Thrones kick now.)

Anna in Frozen: In many ways, Frozen is an update of the Paper Bag Princess, with Elsa both acting as the dragon putting others in danger and the prince to be rescued. While it’s an obvious one for the list, it’s important to highlight how Disney has finally given us a female protagonist who is brave, compassionate, smart, self-motivated and deeply flawed. The movie wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful if it didn’t show both Anna and Elsa making bad decisions in their process of recovering from a life-long traumatic situation. While Elsa is such an important symbol for so many people – especially through Let It Go – Anna is a better role model once she’s gotten past the “next day wedding” idea. She’s far more willing to ask for and appreciate help when needed, be emotionally open, and tackle problems rather than hide from them. Although I think these two are the best, other good Disney heroines include Belle (her smarts and compassion), Lilo (her adventurousness and willingness to love outsiders), Rapunzel (her ability to break off an abusive relationship) and Tiana (her independence and passion for her work).

Agent Peggy Carter in Agent Carter and Captain America: I love Peggy Carter and totally want to be her super-spy friend. Unfortunately for me, she’s a fictional character who had her heyday in the post-WW II era. Nonetheless, I definitely appreciate how Marvel took a character who have easily been written off as “the girlfriend” in a superhero movie and showed how she is a badass in her own right. She stands up for herself against historically accurate sexism, outsmarts her co-workers and the bad guys, and is willing to support other women. While she first pushes people away from her to protect them, she comes around and realizes that while she wants to save people, she needs relationships too. From a visual perspective, I like how she has a very straight-forward fighting style, similar to the men surrounding her. While she’s more flexible and a little quicker than them, she doesn’t have the gravity-defying acrobatic style that many women in action-adventure movies do. It shows that you can be as physically tough as a man without being superhuman.

Clara Oswald in Doctor Who: Clara has come under a lot of criticism from Doctor Who fans for being a bit flat and boring during her first season. While the show’s portrayal of her definitely had its problems, her character actually had a lot of subtlety from the beginning. Since then, she’s only gotten much deeper. She’s a control freak overachiever who just wants to help people – the grown-up version of the fairy-tale heroine who always saves the day. And on the show, she frequently does, often through the dual powers of cleverness and compassion. In fact, she even saved it once through a story and a leaf alone. Needless to say, Clara is a woman after my own heart. What I relate to the most is that saving the world isn’t even her day job – she’s constantly trying to balance her travels with being a full-time teacher in an inner-city school. She wants to do good so badly that it exhausts her. Besides depicting this struggle for balance, the show has also used her to poke at the question, “What does it mean to be a good person and a hero?” Her desire to have things be “right” sometimes drives her to despair and other times has lead to drastic abuses of power. So often, shows and books tell us that the people who fight the bad guys are obviously both heroes and automatically good people. I love that Clara tries so hard to be good and is so morally complex in her quest to be so. (Lots more analysis on Clara is available in this TARDIS Eruditorum post and the author’s Tumblr.)

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I know that the female characters in Avatar the Last Airbender are supposed to be excellent, but I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.

In addition to these laudable characters, a number of shows and movies have complex but far more morally ambiguous characters including Kima Greggs on the Wire; Catelyn Tully Stark, Arya Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen in A Song of Fire and Ice / Game of Thrones; President Laura Roslin, Starbuck, and Anastasia Dualla (Dee) in Battlestar Galactica; Black Widow in the Avengers and Captain America; Evey in V for Vendetta; and Micah Wilkins in Liar. As women come in all shapes, sizes and moralities, I appreciate this diversity.

Who are your favorite female role models in film, literature, and TV, especially in action-adventure and SF?

Women’s History Month Role Models – My Friends and Family

March 16, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and women who have been major leaders in advocacy movements. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

What do you say when someone asks who inspires you? For me, it’s often the people I have a personal relationship with. Our greatest role models can be right in front of us.

My mom: My number one female role model in my life has always been my mom. As bonkers as we make each other – in that special way only mothers and daughters can – we love each other deeply. As a teacher in an inner-city school district, my mom instilled in me a dual love of learning and service. She was unrelenting in her dedication to her students, buying thousands of dollars in classroom supplies and more than once seriously considering fostering or adopting a student. She taught me what the word “privileged” meant before I ever heard the term, emphasizing that I was lucky to be both physically and emotionally taken care of. Reminding me that many children had neither of those – often, children she worked with every day – she taught me be grateful for what I have and help those who don’t. In her retirement, she’s volunteering at the local nature center and food bank. She’s also the one who inspired my love of cycling. While my family had always gone on short bike trips, her decision to bike 500 miles across New York State during my junior year of college motivated me to sign up for the AIDS Ride for Life. It was the first time I had ever done a major ride and made me a convert to cycling advocacy. In my family, my dad’s mom was the another major influence, whom I’ve written about before.

My friend Nancy, at the first Carl Henn Memorial Ride.

Nancy Breen: On the bike front, Nancy Breen, the chair of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee, is another real inspiration to me. I know she’ll probably raise an eyebrow at her name being on the list, but she totally deserves it. She’s been the chair of our all-volunteer committee for several years now and it’s a pretty thankless job. Besides motivating us to get into gear, she’s spent endless hours with our city’s Mayor and City Council, whose meetings regularly run to midnight. She’s spoke in front of local policymakers on topics varying from police training to bike lanes. And she does all this in the very male-dominated field of bicycle advocacy. In fact, I think Nancy is a big part of why women are well-represented on RBAC and our concerns are heard. I’m also putting a major shout-out to my friend Sophie Chan-Wood, who does a lot of our group’s marketing and is the Rockville Roll Model for the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association’s Women and Bikes program.

Sister Lucy Poulin: Lucy is the toughest nun I have ever met. Admittedly, I haven’t met that many nuns, but she is a total badass. She founded Homeworkers Organized for More Employment in the 1970s in very rural Maine and still runs it. (She had co-run it with fellow awesome nun Sister Marie Ahern until two years ago, when Marie passed away.) What started as a simple co-op for crafters expanded to a substantial network of services including multiple homeless shelters, a food bank, a soup kitchen, a land-trust program that helps people build their own houses, an alternative high school, and much more. In addition to the main campus, she’s the matriarch of a rambling farm property. Chris and I volunteered at HOME for about a month and stayed in a plumbing-free house next to a lake at the farm. We ran the summer day camp, which at that time was down to 3 girls. Two of the girls were sisters and came from an incredibly tough background – they lived in one of the homeless shelters and their mom was a user and seller of illegal prescription drugs. Living and working there was super-hard and rewarding. But we had the luxury of it being temporary. Lucy deals with some radically difficult people, both those seeking services and volunteers, day in and day out. I saw her frustrated and even angry, but never impatient or mean. Most importantly, she created an atmosphere of fundamental equality. If you were more than a short-time volunteer, no one made the distinction between you and someone who needed paid work. It was never said but widely acknowledged that we all needed to be there, even if it was for different reasons.

Sylvia Robinson: Sylvia is another local activist that is the heart, soul, and backbone of an essential community organization. Leaving her steady job, she sunk her entire life savings into pursuing her dream of establishing a community center for her neighborhood. Housed in a impressive and historical but crumbly brick building in the DC neighborhood of Pleasant Plains, the Emergence Community Arts Collective hosts dance classes, children’s summer programs, poetry open mics, swap meets, and support groups. Through the organization, Sylvia has also led several projects delving into the history of the neighborhood, with a particular focus of highlighting the contributions of black women. I had the pleasure of knowing Sylvia when I volunteered for Ecolocity, a Transition Towns group that focused on sustainable food. She gave us free space for meetings and events as well as use of the building’s yard for a community garden and mini-food forest. Despite the fact that running your own non-profit is relentless, she was always willing to give our group time and energy as well. I’ll also offer a shout-out to my friend and fellow Ecolocity volunteer Gerri Williams, who now lives in Duluth, MN and co-hosts a radio show.

All of these women are dedicated to their greater community without losing sight of the individual relationships that truly make up that community.

Who are the female role models in your life who have inspired you the most?

Under the Sea

March 13, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

The ocean and its creatures are inherently weird. The act of living in water is so exotic that just considering it captures our imagination. I think that’s why so many kids want to grow up to be marine biologists, myself included. Visiting the aquarium is a peek into a world most of us will never be able to experience, a world about as accessible as the moon. Our trip last weekend to the National Aquarium in Baltimore illustrated that my fascination with the mysteries of the deep runs in the family.

We visited the Aquarium last year around the same time, but Sprout’s enjoyment of it then was limited to liking bright, colorful objects that moved. We hauled him around in the baby carrier and our arms, sapping our strength and limiting his view. While he was just starting to stand, he was still far from walking.

This year’s visit illustrated how very much he’s grown up. He did the entire trip this time on his own power, except the times we needed to lift him up to look in windows. My parents were with us and when my mom checked her Fitbit, she found we walked over a mile. That’s a hell of a lot of steps for a 20 month old! He also had far more comprehension of what he was seeing. These days, he’s regularly identifying all sorts of animals, from birds to bears. When reading his books, from Baby Beluga to Penguin in Love, we’ve learned about fish, puffins, dolphins, whales, and crabs. So the residents of the aquarium were far more than just pretty shapes for him.

We started in Australia’s swamps, moved on to the Great Barrier Reef, hit the bays of America, explored the Amazon rainforest, visited the shark tank and big reef tank and ended with the dolphins.

Of all of the animals, I think the turtles and sharks were his favorite. He stood at the turtle tank in Australia for quite a long time, following them back and forth with his head as they swam in circles. He just stared saying “turtle,” so I think he’s fond of them in general. The sharks certainly held his attention, although I think they frightened him a little. He knew a wall separated them, but still shuddered the few times they glided past him next to the glass. Oddly enough, he also liked the electric eel. I suspect it looked and moved unlike anything he had ever seen. While the giant reef tank impressed him just as much as last time with its endless array of fish and sharks, the dolphins couldn’t sustain his attention. I suspect a combination of tiredness and the dullness of their tank rendered them less engaging than I expected.

Sprout also had great enthusiasm for the non-animal, mechanical elements of the aquarium. Several times he ran up to the many escalators and people-movers that criss-cross the building. When we got off them, we had to rapidly redirect his attention so we wouldn’t descend into Whine-O-Rama.

While I spent most of my time watching Sprout, some of the other children offered substantial entertainment value as well. A little boy in the Australia exhibit, barely through the door, started rolling up his pants to splash in a puddle. His grandmother sighed and shook her head while the aquarium docent helpfully commented that it is meant to be a multi-sensory exhibit. In a room with tall columns filled with bubbling water, we heard one concerned parent plead, “Don’t lick the bubbles.”

We would have thought Sprout worked up an appetite with all of that walking, but it was a Picky Eating Day. Upon a co-workers’ recommendation, we decided to check out Family Meal by Brian Voltaggio. While I thought his fancy, small plates restaurant Range was overpriced and overhyped, I wanted to see how he addressed the complete opposite end of the spectrum. To almost everyone’s enjoyment, it was excellent. The food was reasonably priced – pricier than an Applebees or Friendly’s, but no more expensive than our Silver Diner nearby – and absolutely delicious. The only one who didn’t appreciate it was Sprout. Instead, he used his fries and grilled cheese sandwich for the exclusive purpose of acting as a vehicle for ketchup. When one fry broke off in his mouth after multiple dippings, he pulled it out of his mouth and handed it to my dad. Thanks, sweetheart.

A Bear of Very Little Brain but a Lot of Heart

March 11, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

When the weather outside is frightful, I’m more willing than usual to bend the rules. While we normally don’t allow Sprout to watch videos – I’d just rather him be outside, looking at a book, or engaging in creative play – I actually suggested an exception a week and a half ago. It was freezing rain, there was a winter storm advisory and there wasn’t anything better in the world to do but snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. So that’s precisely what we did, turning on 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

We picked that particular movie after a rather strange exploration of the Netflix app’s children’s section. Of course, I fully expected there to be a number of inane films, such as Peabody and Mr. Sherman and Cars’ Tall Tales. Then there were a bunch of children’s films that are excellent, but still too old for a toddler, like The Lion King and Spirited Away. What surprised me was how many obviously adult – many R-rated – films were showing up, from Top Gun to Barbarella to Annie Hall. Also, the fact that “Crime TV Shows” is a category in “Kids” at all. I don’t know if someone is screwing with the Netflix algorithm or what, but don’t trust that section to be accurate!

I hadn’t seen this particular version of Winnie the Pooh since I was little, but I’ve had a lifelong fondness for the stories. My mom nicknamed my dad Pooh Bear in college and have a number of Pooh Bear Christmas ornaments. They sang me Loggins and Messina’s House at Pooh Corner as a child and now I sing it to Sprout in both the most joyful and desperate hours. Sprout also has a plaque with the famous quote from Christopher Robin to Pooh about believing in yourself that my mother-in-law originally gave my husband. Needless to say, I was looking forward to sharing these beloved characters with him.

Sprout thought it was fantastic. He laughed multiple times, mostly at appropriate moments. He giggled at Pooh falling out of a tree and spitting out bees in his hapless attempt to steal honey. He also laughed at the part where Rabbit starts hallucinating because he’s terribly lost in the woods, but I told him it wasn’t appropriate to laugh at someone being scared. He probably just thought the imagery was weird, but I don’t want to reinforce that reaction.

Besides what he laughed at, how he laughed was particularly striking. It was a tinny, almost stilted laugh that was different from his usual one. Chris pointed out that this was one of the few occasions he’s had to laugh “at” something rather than “with” someone. Usually when he’s laughing, it’s because we’re tickling him or doing something funny together. It was odd to see how much his laugh varied depending on the situation.

Sprout wasn’t the only one laughing though – both Chris and I enjoyed it quite a bit. While I remembered bits and pieces from before, there were a number of things I had forgotten:

1) How hallucinatory it is: Besides the sequence with Rabbit, there’s also a very trippy part where Pooh imagines Woozles and Heffalumps taunting him. It’s obviously influenced by Fantasia, with multi-colored dancing, spacey elephants and lithe, morphing weasels. For some reason, it also reminded me of the dream sequence in the Big Lebowski, but maybe that’s just because I love that movie. Jeff Bridges would make a very interesting Pooh Bear though.

2) How many jokes for adults there are: It’s easy to think that having jokes for adults in children’s movies was invented by Pixar and Dreamworks, but Winnie the Pooh had its share of them, most adopted straight from the original stories. From the fact that Pooh Bear quite literally “lives under the name of Sanders” with the sign “Mr Sanders” above his house to Owl clearly being based on some boring Cambridge don, there are a wealth of jokes only adults will get.

3) How deeply annoying Tigger is and how other characters react: Tigger is straight-up obnoxious. He bounces in with no warning, yells at other characters, often destroys their stuff, and abruptly leaves, never with any apologies. Now, many children’s characters could be described as “deeply annoying,” but what’s fascinating about Winnie the Pooh is how they explicitly acknowledge that within the text. Tigger’s behavior absolutely pisses off Rabbit and even frustrates ever-patient, kind Piglet. It’s so bad that in a secret community meeting, Rabbit convinces Piglet to help him lose Tigger in the woods! It’s a pretty awful thing to do, even to someone who is highly inconsiderate.

4) How much the stories are about the challenges of building a community, especially when the “people” in it are flawed: Thr conflict with Tigger is fundamentally about an outsider coming in who doesn’t mesh with the current community. Tigger, Rabbit, Piglet and Pooh all behave poorly and face a variety of consequences for it. Because it is a children’s story, they all learn a lesson at the end and get along, but it isn’t so easy as just a quick fix. While both the outsider and the community chooses to adjust their behavior and expectations to serve the greater good, the story definitely suggests that this is going to be an ongoing struggle for Tigger and Rabbit. Similarly, a story where Owl’s house is destroyed in a big storm is about the sacrifices we make for the people we love. While the storm continues to rain and rain, Eeyore searches for a new home for Owl. Finally, Eeyore announces he has found the perfect house, which Owl declares he loves. The only problem is that it’s already Piglet’s house. Saddened by giving up his house, but wanting his friends to be happy, Piglet makes the sacrifice. Thankfully, Pooh turns it into a relatively happy ending by inviting Piglet to live with him, but it’s pretty obvious that Piglet is still sad about giving up his house. It’s this kind of struggling with real moral issues that really rekindled my love for the movie.

While I’m not against showing Sprout movies and TV shows in general, I do want to be picky about what I show him. Just like his books and bringing him out in nature, I want the pop culture he does consume to be kind, thoughtful, and creative. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh happily met all of my expectations and more.

Guest Post at Church in Bethesda: The Circle Game – Toddlers, Repetition and Spiritual Growth

March 10, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I have a guest post over at the blog for my awesome church, Church in Bethesda. It’s about how doing things over and over and over again with Sprout has fed my spiritual growth and how even those without toddlers can grow from repetition. Here’s the first paragraph to give you a feel for it:

In meditative circles, one sometimes hears, “Solvitur ambulando,” or “It is solved by walking.” Often, this refers to the act of walking around a labyrinth. But it just as easily could be stated as “It is solved by repeating.” Besides the action of placing one foot in front of the other over and over again, labyrinths frequently have repeating motifs or patterns. Most are also fairly small, so you’ll probably end up making your way around it multiple times. Of course, repetition as a spiritual technique is far from limited to labyrinths. Many Christian traditions – most prominently, Catholics – have repeated prayers as a practice, with or without a rosary. While I had never spent much time with these techniques until recently, my baby turned into a toddler and repetition became utterly unavoidable. Fortunately, I’ve been able to embrace the opportunities for spiritual growth this particular season of parenthood provides.

Read the rest of The Circle Game: Toddlers, Repetition and Spiritual Growth

My son and I walking, our shadows in front of us.

Rooting D.C.: Growing Youth Agriculture

March 5, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Getting dirty should be an essential part of every kid’s life. After all, kids are highly washable. One great way to get children involved in the Great Outdoors is by teaching them gardening, especially growing fruits and vegetables. As I’m already involving Sprout in my garden, I was thrilled to consider some new philosophical approaches and learn some practical activities for gardening with children at this year’s Rooting DC conference.

While a lot of the workshops were designed for teachers, I was particularly interested in learning about gardening as a parent. The presentation from Permiekids founder Jen Mendez hit the spot. She explained that permaculture can be used as a philosophy not just for growing food, but for life. It is based on three values: care for people, care for the earth and finding sustainable ways to use surplus. The actions flowing out of these values should reinforce and feed into one another. While I’ve been interested in permaculture for quite a while, I had never seen it summarized quite so succinctly. While we think of “excess surplus” as being inherently about physical goods, she pointed out that it can also be an “excess” of skills, time, or especially in the case of young children, energy. Skills can be taught to others, time can be used to build something good, energy can be harnessed into service. It provided a really different perspective on how to approach parenting and children’s behavior. Being bored is just an excess of time and energy!

But it wasn’t all philosophy. Jen also had a lot of fun, practical activities for engaging children in nature. She demonstrated how you could use leftover scraps from apple pie to make apple cider vinegar before composting them. Cores and mushy slices can make interesting paintbrushes. Cracking nuts – whether with a nutcracker or more creative tools, like rocks – can develop fine motor skills.

Her suggestions extended beyond crafts to broader approaches to learning in general. One idea that was brilliant and absurdly simple was having a Question Wall in a prominent place in the house. Whenever someone has a question – child or adult, serious or silly – they post it to the Wall. That way, even if you don’t have time to answer right at the moment, you can still investigate it later. Toddlers are known for their love of “Why?” and a Question Wall seems like a great way to show kids that their questions are valuable without running late to every appointment.

While that workshop had the most personal application, the other two presentations I went to were more relevant to my community volunteer work. Although I haven’t been an active urban gardening volunteer for a few years, I do have a dream of starting a youth garden at the town park across the street from me.

The first session, called Bringing the Neighbors Back to the Hood, framed urban agriculture projects around the seven principles of Kwanzaa. As I knew very little about Kwanzaa before, it was fascinating to learn about these values.

I particularly appreciated the reminder of Kujichagulia or self-determination – that we need to respect people’s selves and experiences. As a practical matter, this means finding out if people in my neighborhood are even interested in starting a youth garden instead of going off and doing it on my own. It also reignited my interest in doing a project to interview the members of the community who have lived here for decades about their memories of growing and eating food. Signage in the youth garden recalling these stories could connect the older and younger generations.

Their discussion of Ujima – collective work and responsibility – also struck me hard as a upper-middle-class white girl. The presenters made the point that not only is everyone is obliged to help the greater community, but we need to appreciate what people can bring instead of what they don’t. One presenter said that instead of labeling people as “underprivileged or underserved, all of those ‘under’ words,” we should consider how to use their existing assets and skills. She said that when they worked with developmentally disabled adults, they said they had “differing abilities” instead of “special needs.” While that might sound like being “politically correct,” it’s actually much more respectful towards people you’re interacting with. For my theoretical youth garden, this was a reminder that learning goes both ways, not just from adults to children.

The principle of Kuumba or creativity tied very strongly into my final workshop for the day, which was presented by City Blossoms. An organization that focuses on youth gardening, City Blossoms has a lot of great ideas for pre-K and other young children. The presenter showed photos of a number of their community gardens that incorporate art and music. They repurpose old bicycle wheels into noisemakers, turn rain gutters into painted xylophones, and hang beads from painted wood to create colorful clouds. Digging beds for little kids allow them to play freely without messing up the vegetables. With chalkboard walls, children can write and draw to their hearts’ content. All of these projects seemed very doable and cheap for any youth garden.

After the slideshow, the City Blossoms person demonstrated a couple of activities they do with school kids when the weather is foul. Teachers or volunteers can use a seed sorting game to discuss sizes, colors, and texture. Gluing the seeds into a mini-mosaic allowed students to incorporate patterns like stripes and spirals, as well as practice their hand-eye coordination. I was pleased with my mosaic, although most of the seeds had fallen out of the clay by the time I got home. The dangers of trying to carry too much on public transportation!

Rooting D.C., when hundreds of people gather to celebrate their love of urban agriculture, always reinvigorates me. I’m so grateful that we have an event that covers everything from racial justice to youth gardening, often in the same session.

Yoga for Parents of Babies and Toddlers

February 26, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I love you all enough to take a photo of myself in spandex. I just couldn’t post a stock photo of a perfectly toned woman doing dancer pose on a rock.

I’m a big fan of yoga. I find it helps me focus my mind, be more aware of my body’s relationship in space with other objects, and provide fun and balanced strength training. While I no longer have time to take classes, I try to fit in a solo session once a week. Since I’ve become a mom, I’ve found I have aches and stress in spot I never did before. Here are a few of the actions I find stress my body out the most and the yoga poses I’ve found helpful.

Note: I am not a yoga professional. Please listen to your body and be aware of its capacity.

Squatting down to talk to kids at their level
When my prenatal yoga teacher suggested squatting as a labor position, I almost laughed at the absurdity. I could barely squat without falling over; how the hell was I going to while in the throes of labor pains? While I certainly didn’t use it in the birthing process, squatting down to talk to my toddler has become part of my everyday routine. To resolve the tightness in my hips and thighs, hip openers like pigeon and lizard are very helpful. If you aren’t very flexible in these areas (like me), you can also do adapted versions of these that aren’t as demanding.

Kneeling for the bath
Before yoga, my leg muscles were so tight that I couldn’t kneel for a single minute. But as it’s the easiest way to bathe a small child, these days I have 15 minutes of kneeling daily. To stretch out my legs, I use vajrasana, thunderbolt, or kneeling pose. Doing it as part of a yoga practice forces you not to lean on anything for support and allows you to focus on your breathing rather than a small person splashing water at you.

Having my son sit on my lap
Before having a toddler, I always took sitting cross-legged for granted. But as he’s gotten heavier, having him sit on my lap has become more challenging. My feet fall asleep and my legs ache after the third or fourth book. The hip openers above also help here, but the most effective thing I’ve found is butterfly (also known as bound angle) pose. Just putting the soles of my feet together and very slowly pushing my chest towards them is very helpful. Don’t worry if your knees feel absurdly high up in the air – that’s when you need it most! When I did prenatal yoga, the lady in her third trimester on the video had her knees far closer to the ground than I could when I was in high school.

Carrying my baby in my arms when he was a newborn
As a newborn, Sprout cried if I put him down for more than 30 seconds. As a result, my arms, shoulders and back got quite a workout. Shoulder openers stretched out my muscles that were in a bunch all day. I find extended side angle pose particularly useful, as it’s relatively simple and you can really focus on reaching up.

Carrying my son around on my hip as a toddler
With Sprout much heavier now, carrying him is more like an anarobic workout than an aerobic one. The days I haul him around for more than a few minutes, my lower back is always sore. Doing cat/cow poses nice and slow works out some of the kinks. Plus, Sprout thinks it’s funny if I make the appropriate animal noises with them.

General exhaustion
Being a parent – being a person – is freaking tiring. Sometimes you just want to feel strong and powerful when your mind and body feel the opposite. Warrior II makes me feel this way on even the crappiest of days. Grounding my feet solidly on the floor and spreading my arms open wide gives me a sense of regal composure that sure as heck doesn’t come to me naturally.

Those are some of my favorite poses. Do you have any favorite yoga poses or stretches to get over our parental aches and pains?

32 Years of Disastrous Beauty

February 24, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

I turned 32 years old today. A quarter of the time – if I’m lucky – I feel like I know what’s going on and am at peace. The rest of the time, I’m mentally windmilling every cell in my body in an effort to move forward in some disorganized, chaotic fashion. While the feeling of flailing has accelerated post-Sprout, becoming a mother has made me much more honest about both my strengths and failings. At this odd, not yet mid-life period, I find myself more comfortable with myself than ever before while still being deeply confused by life.

Becoming a mother certainly hasn’t made me less neurotic. In fact, I hear the voices of imaginary critics ever the louder these days. After all, people can judge me not only on my behavior but my child’s as well! But I’m able to call out those neuroses more often and label them as false. It doesn’t mean they’re gone – you can’t logic your way out of something irrational – but they don’t have as much control. I can see them as a conflicting song rather than allow them to become the primary melody of my thought. It’s a bit like the guy profiled on This American Life who loaded all of the most awful things his brain whispered to him throughout the day into a software program. He then programmed it to email insults to himself several times a day. Between the sheer repetition and the re-contextualization, his mind stopped processing them as bad and instead could see them as absurd. For me, the way parenting has turned up the volume on my neuroses has forced me to face them, instead of allowing them to lurk in the dark, dank alleyways of my mind.

Many of my anxieties stem from a need to control situations, which being the mother of a toddler is about as realistic an expectation as thinking he can read Hamlet. Letting go of my vision of “what should be,” of what a perfect mom or “real adult” looks like, is like giving up a mental lovey. My ability to judge myself – and shamefully, judge other people – is what I fall back on when my brain gets lazy. Without those false standards as a safety net, I have to do the hard work of extending compassion and grace to myself and others.

And that’s only one of the weaknesses I’ve been forced to work on instead of just sweeping them to the side. If I want to be the best mom I can be, I have to be the best person I can be, especially in the social skills that have been my greatest challenge. Being self-aware of what I genuinely can improve also gives me something to push back with when my brain waves absurdly exaggerated flaws in my face. While I still have a long way to go before being a good listener, I think I’ve improved a little. Learning to truly pay attention to a person who doesn’t yet speak my language has taken me out of my own head more than an adult ever could.

Fortunately, stripping away the layers of fear and shame and guilt, like Elsa in the song, has enabled me to find my more authentic self. Sometimes it isn’t pretty – although I haven’t caused anything to freeze over (yet) – it’s true. My awkward teenage self was told by well-meaning but clueless adults to just “be natural” and I always wanted to say, “I am! They just don’t like it.” The truth was, I didn’t like it either, so I tried to hide it and failed miserably. Now, I’m at the point in my life that if someone doesn’t appreciate my quirks and isn’t willing to forgive my flaws, I’m not going to worry about it. I have enough people who do love me that I’ll spend my energy and time with them.

The times I’ve been able to actually embrace this freedom have been liberating. On a work trip in the fall, I went out to dinner with my colleagues and we talked and laughed and shared fairly intimate parts of our lives. A little voice said, “You should be more careful,” but I ignored it and I’m glad I did. As it turned out, I learned something in that conversation that helped me support one of those friends when her family was going through a crisis. At Christmas, my in-laws hosted their Christmas Eve extravaganza with their long-time friends, all of their friends’ children, and the significant others of the now0grown children. Normally, I’m jittery at these get-togethers, trying to remember the names of a bunch of people I kind of know and all whom seem to remember every detail of my life. This year, somewhat buoyed by my sister-in-laws’ excellent cocktails, I felt so much more comfortable and relaxed. I could just “be” without worrying – a new sensation for me.

I hope in my coming 32nd year that I can find more ways to embrace the mess, the authenticity, the awkward beauty that is me and the people around me and the world we live in. Because there’s a lot of darkness in the world and in my head. While we can’t get rid of the darkness, we can bring light and love into it. After all, love is patient, love is kind, and love never fails.

Starting Seeds with Sprout

February 21, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Kids and dirt are natural companions. But while most moms discourage their toddlers from getting dirty, I purposely gave my kid a big bowl of dirt a few days ago. And over a white carpet, no less. The things I do in the name of permaculture and teaching my son about my passions.

The actual purpose of this disaster-in-the-making was to start seeds for my vegetable garden. I’ve been starting seeds for my garden for several years now and even started saving seeds myself. This year, I had tomato seeds and sweet potato starts saved from my garden as well as pepper, cantelope, and butternut squash seeds from vegetables purchased at the farmer’s market. The rest I bought from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which in addition to carrying organic, heirloom and regionally-developed seeds, has a lovely catalog with hand-drawn illustrations and stories about the selections.

While I could have planted my seeds by myself, I want to involve Sprout as much as possible in my gardening. Teaching children how to garden increases the likelihood of enjoying vegetables, gets them outside with all of the sensory benefits that involves, helps them feel more like they contribute to the larger household, and teaches them the valuable skill of growing food. Plus, gardening has taught me to be a better parent.

You can also use gardening to teach all sorts of academic skills, including math (counting seeds and measuring distances between plantings), biology (the growth of a plant), and social studies (where we get our food). Personally, I see it as an opportunity to teach ecological principles. In my garden, I practice permaculture, which focuses on working within ecological systems in ways that produce goods for people such as food. Through lasagna composting or gardening, where you layer several levels of organic matter together like leaf litter in a forest, I can demonstrate the importance of decomposition. With cover crops like clover or hairy vetch, I can show him on a practical level how nitrogen fixing works and why it’s essential to the ecosystem. Planting flowers that attract bees and butterflies can demonstrate how pollinators rely on plants and vice versa.

But as he doesn’t understand higher-level concepts yet, we’re mainly working on our fine motor skills. I started our gardening adventure with a big bowl of wet seed starting base. To prepare, I took my old seed starting pots – recycled yogurt containers with holes punched in the bottom – and sprayed them down with a bleach solution, then rinsed them in water. Because new sprouts are extremely vulnerable to mold, you have to minimize potential contamination if you plan to use them in the garden. It’s like sanitizing a newborn’s bottles. Then, I took the seed starting mixture from the garden store and soaked it in water. The soil needs to be thoroughly damp for starting seeds and I find it a lot easier to do that before planting the seeds rather than afterwards. Whenever I’ve done it afterwards I’ve ended up drowning them.

As I set this whole rigamarole up, Chris was giving me a bit of the stink-eye. Not that he didn’t want Sprout to participate in gardening, but he was highly skeptical of my confidence in containing the mess. I would have preferred to do this task outside as well, but as the temperatures were topping out in the teens, that wasn’t an option. As I laid out paper towels, I hoped my hope was more well-founded than his skepticism.

With my containers, starter, seeds, and masking tape for labeling, we startd the work of planting. Sprout’s main task was to move seed starting mix from a big bowl into the individual containers. With a bit of explanation and demonstration, he understood quite quickly. It must have tapped into toddlers’ love of moving stuff from one container to another. Tackling the job with gusto, he stuck his little hand in the giant bowl fully of mud and grabbed what he could. Picking up a small clump at a time, he shifted it from one container to the other with relatively little leakage. And he never purposely threw dirt.

After we filled a container up 3/4 of the way, I took several seeds and spaced them out around the top. Sprout then sprinkled a few more bits of dirt on top, which I smoothed out with my hand, making sure all of the seeds were covered but too deep. He actually was working so fast that I had to tell him to slow down so we didn’t bury the seeds by mistake. Then we handed it off to Chris, who wiped down the container and labeled it with the plant name.

As quickly as it started, it was over, with six containers of seeds to show for it. There was a lot of dirt on his crafts table, some on the mat underneath, and a little bit on the carpet. Most of the dirt that ended up on the floor was because he brushed it off the seat of his table in a mistaken but well-intentioned attempt to keep things neat. The main loss was the majority of a packet of tiny basil seeds that Sprout had mistakenly dumped. They were so hopelessly mixed in with dirt that retrieving them was impossible.

For his help, I gave Sprout a special present later in the day – the book Growing Vegetable Soup. Written and illustrated by Lois Elhart, who illustrated Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, it describes the process of vegetable gardening from start to finish, complete with comprehensive labels for every tool and veggie. I saw the book back when I was shopping for Christmas and decided I would put it aside until we actually started the gardening process. While he probably doesn’t understand the steps yet, I hope reading the book over and over again will improve his comprehension of what’s going on by this summer.

As we move forward, I’ll keep him in the loop of caring for the plants. According to my gardening book, “petting” seedlings makes them stronger, so that will be his job if he can be gentle enough. He also loves turning lights on and off, so I’ll let him pull the chain for the grow lights.

Starting seeds shares some elements of parenting a toddler: the mix of unpredictability, anticipation and potential for the future. It’s also taking a bit of a stand for hope as this brutally cold winter drags on. It reminds yourself that yes, I do believe that one day the warmth will return. It’s these little symbols that get us through the tough times – the image of one tiny seed, nurtured by love and water, eventually producing a wealth of delicious vegetables.

We'll Eat You Up – We Love You So

The Adventures of a Mom Just Trying to Make a Difference