Staying Positive in a Negative World
Yesterday I commented on a real-world and “social media” friend’s Facebook timeline, saying that those of us who are actual progressives as opposed to people mouthing platitudes while walking all over people for a few bucks or social media “likes” had noticed we were able to communicate better with “Trump supporters” and “conservatives” than many “neoliberals” (and “neoconservatives”).
Not so in this group! I was immediately set-upon by dogmatists, insulters and “splainers”. I had one lady explain to me that “Progressivism” came from Woodrow Wilson and — furthermore, Wilson was a giant douchecanoe with an asshat on top and so therefore I was a complete and total idiot. In addition, this helpful lady shared, f-you, you are destroying America.
I told her then I guessed I was just a communist.
I was thinking, There is no way. There is just no way in h*ll we’re headed for anywhere but Perdition , I’d better just gun up and get ready —
Then I saw I had an email from my friend Tamara Smiley Hamilton. She is this amazing, brilliant, eloquent, wonderful woman who is a motivational speaker, poet, author and executive coach. It was a wonderful speech and training she had given to the Fairfax County Health Department, focusing on five strategies to work well with others in a diverse workplace.
Tamara and I have, I believe, a few feelings or impressions in common, I have felt while listening to her story. As a young girl, her family moved to South Los Angeles (Watts) from the segregated South to build a better life. Things were wonderful for some time. Tamara speaks of the strong, safe, happy community she grew up in, with the many thriving churches, clubs, happy families, wonderful stores and just … well I do know South L.A. So did my father. It’s still a great place. It always was. It always will be.
Two important people in my life, my grandmother and the noted author Harlan Ellison, have said something that has stuck with me over time. “You’ll do well, Amy, because you have heart.”
I don’t know about myself, but I believe this statement is so very true of Tamara and then some. I felt her strong heart and spirit when I met her and continue to feel it to this day.
So when Tamara was 13 years old in 1965, the Watts Uprising happened. Her town was in flames, and until I listened to Tamara and read her story, I had not known that the National Guard had been called in, 34 people had died, over 1,000 were injured, and almost 1,000 shops, other buildings and homes were burned, looted or otherwise damaged or destroyed.
Imagine going in an instant from a wonderful, happy, safe home where you could walk home after school, be greeted by friendly neighbors and adults, maybe even stop off for an ice cream or a soda, or pet a friendly neighborhood dog —
To people running in the streets, shouting, screaming, smashing windows, police swarming in, shops on fire, business owners desperately trying to defend their business, people getting beaten down with billy clubs or worse —
You thought you were safe. What’s more you thought you were living in a happy world where people cared for each other, and no one would ever hurt you. Why would someone ever hurt you or treat you badly? You have never done anything to them!
Some children get this message at a very young age, the first time their mother or father screams at them or hits them. Or screams at or hits one another. There are little ones getting this message throughout the Middle East right now; there are bombs raining down on their homes!
I was raised by my grandparents because my mother died of pancreatic cancer when I was 3 months old. When I was 13, my grandfather died, the best man I had ever known, and my world fell apart. My grandmother fell into such a deep depression that she didn’t speak to me for over a year. I learned to drive the car, learned to write checks for bills, and did what I could to keep going in school, to feed us, take care of the house and animals (I was a rich and privileged girl with many different animals that depended on me — this house was in a rural area). Then I went to Hollywood to live with my Dad. I finished high school back in Redlands.
I had just been recovering from all that when I was a young scholarship student at the same school where Tamara and I got our undergraduate degrees (Scripps College in Claremont, CA). That is how I know her. I had made lots of good friends, and I even ran for the college council (and won!??!!). I started getting a big head and thinking maybe I was a good writer. I was the editor and publisher of the college newspaper, and won the 5-college literature prize (Scripps is one of the 5 Claremont Colleges) two years in a row. Then the guy who was a big name professor at the school that sponsored the prize hit me back of the head with a huge glass ashtray, dragged me off and raped me. I do not remember most of the assault. But I still have the scars (physical) and much bigger, mental. After several other events where either my life or the life of a loved one was threatened or lost (my baby Anthony died in my arms on January 11, 2005) I was diagnosed with complex PTSD.
I understand, now, what people go through.
I think I can understand the choices Tamara has made and how and why. I think I understand how she has always stayed such a positive and beautiful spirit, always looking for the best in others — all her life. I think I can understand —
Heedless
I put that awful picture of the angry old lady because there’s a story I remember —
My grandmother was seldom insightful in a positive way; at the same time, she did have a lot of insight. She used it in ways she thought were best to protect herself and her family.
She suffered from extremely low self-esteem and severe depression. You know it’s extremely low self-esteem when your mother’s best school friends take the time to take you out to lunch on several occasions and tell you that the woman who raised you (your grandmother, your mother’s mother) was “The most beautiful woman in Redlands” and “We were all scared to death of her.” This group included a woman whose father owned the local chain of department stores, and another lady whose niece became Miss California and a noted actress. Every blessed one of them had very nice families, wonderful homes, and wonderful lives. And they all felt “inferior” to this dynamo that was my grandmother.
Nana drove a white Pontiac Firebird at blazing speed all around town way up into her 80s.
I digress.
Nana hated this lady who was Vice Principal at my high school. They were both members of a local women’s club and my grandmother could not stand her. I’ll call her “Miss Harblemayer.”
Miss Harblemayer had never married. She had devoted herself to being a school Administrator. She was tall and thin, and had a “severe” demeanor. When I first knew her, she wore her hair in a classic schoolmarm bun. Later on, she wore a succession of wigs. We learned much later this was because she had cancer and had lost her hair.
So, I was always afraid of her, not just because of her demeanor and her job (Vice Principal, i.e. the one who expelled and suspended kids), but also because Nana, who never talked smack about anybody without reason (not because she was so ‘good’ but because she was smart) hated her and had said so several times.
Imagine how I felt when one day I learned I was going to receive a college scholarship from the Soroptimist women’s club [a different women’s club to the one of which my grandmother and Miss Harblemayer were joint members].
Miss Harblemayer turned out to also be a member of the Soroptimist Club, and when the day came, she drove me and another student to the luncheon where the group planned to give each of us a physical check. While at the luncheon, Miss Harblemayer introduced the other student and briefly recounted the student’s name, activities and clubs, sports teams, and other academic achievements, as well as the college where she was going to attend (I think it was USC but not certain). The student stood, received her scholarship, shook Miss Harblemayer and the club president’s hands, said “Thank You” and sat down.
Then Miss Harblemayer said my name.
And that was it.
For a lot of people, this would qualify as a “Most-embarrassing moment.”
Not for me, but I remember I didn’t know what to do. Some of the other club members made some type of joke about it, and I remember there being some efforts to make me “feel better.”
I copied the other student who’d actually been introduced.
I remember being driven back to school by Miss Harblemayer. My eyes were filled with hot tears of hate but I refused to let her or the other student see that I was upset in any way.
I went home and although disclosing anything personal to my grandmother was generally a bad idea, I remembered that she had said she hated this woman.
Maybe it would be okay to tell her what had happened. It made the check and the club and everything feel horrible. Like I didn’t want the money and never wanted to think about those people or Miss Harblemayer again.
My grandmother listened to me tell the whole story before responding (almost unique — usually she would interrupt, correct, add, or try to change what I was saying before I could say two or three words).
“Now you know why I can’t stand her,” she said.
Best Revenge
I’m an emotional person and I am an empath. I need to make it clear that just because I feel what you feel doesn’t mean I “sympathize” or that the knowledge would influence what I would say or do.
It took me a lifetime to get this way. When I was young I was easily swayed; I hardly had any sense I was an individual at all. Miss Harblemayer’s total slam was one of the first times where I had any sense that I had just as much right as any other person to be treated decently. I knew what she’d done was wrong. To this day I’ll never know why she did that; it was grossly unprofessional and far more embarrassing to her as a school official and club member than any slight or insult she might have meant to my grandmother — or me.
It was something straight out of Harry Potter.
So, what Miss Harblemayer did had quite the impact over time. It allowed me to put myself in the student’s seat in the classroom. It let me see the impact of a teacher’s actions — or more importantly — lack of action.
This is what we make people feel like when they make their best effort and do something genuinely worthwhile, and we ignore them or respond disrespectfully or dismissively to them.
Pure rage.
And there’s nothing good about that, either to the person who feels it, or to those who elicit it.
Years later, I became the youngest President of the morning Soroptimist Club in my town. I just never felt comfortable with that luncheon group. Not their fault at all —
I’m not a genuine good person like Tamara. But I am a fair one.
At a certain point, its beneficial to our own health to stop crying and turn the rage to good effect. That’s how we stay positive in a negative world.
