Standing in front of Senator John Glenn’s Senate office
in downtown Cincinnati,
1979, age 27,
Christian minister’s wife,
mother of two,
Organizer of the Cincinnati Peace Coalition’s first
peace conference,
aspiring “radical Christian,”
President of the local World Peacemakers –
handing out flyers to
anyone who would take them….

A man, who struck me as
a near perfect depiction
of the Monopoly man,
looked at me with scorn
and asked,
“Don’t you have anything better
to do?”

So naïve….
I was genuinely shocked.
And in that moment
I was convinced that
the masses of people living
with a near constant
television environment
just needed better information.

I had convinced my husband that
our Christian lives
would be enhanced
to exchange the television
for peace and quiet every evening,
and we had given it away and lived without TV since 1974.

Nevertheless, I decided that day
that creating better content in radio and television
would be the most productive thing I could do in my life.

In 1983, I received my Bachelors Degree in Radio and Television.
That same year,
I won First Place in Radio Features
in the Arizona-Utah Division of United Press International –
for my critical look at
a new Christian elementary school in Tucson,
which some asserted was akin to brainwashing children.

In the years since I stood on that sidewalk and decided
to pursue this goal,
I had divorced,
had my children stolen from me
(yes, by my Christian minister husband),
had litigated
and connived
to get them back
for two whole years,
got the kids back,
and lost my religion.

My ex, in another state, and I
were both in our final semesters
of college
when he decided to send them
to me for “just that year,”
so he could focus on his schoolwork,
and then he’d take them back.

Of course I agreed,
despite the impact on my schoolwork,
and prepared to sue him
as soon as I’d had the children for one year.

Because of graduation requirement changes,
I was taking 18 credits each semester to get my degree.
Because my parents demanded monthly payments on their loan,
I was also working three part-time jobs.
And I had two traumatized children to care for.

I was so stressed
that my student health counselor
wanted to put me on Valium,
which I refused.
Other than that, he suggested
Kahlúa in my coffee.
I didn’t do that either.

What I did do might have been worse.
I released my stress
by going out dancing
and finding a surprisingly
(and unfortunately, mostly)
nice string of lovers.
Serial monogamy felt like it was
keeping me sane.
But it did not help my career.

And it did not help my kids.
I often put them to bed at night
in care of the young mother in the other half of our duplex.
And after-school programs
were well used.

I believed I was doing my best,
conditions would only get better,
this was only temporary,
and I forgave myself.

Conditions were temporary,
but the next conditions –
living with a man who would become my second husband –
were a different sort of difficult, not better.

There may be yet another reason
why I never did much
in my chosen career after that:
panic attacks and nausea
when I thought of making
follow-up phone calls
to the various radio stations
I had applied to.
I didn’t want to be on television.

I think it was the jovial banter
I imagined in radio stations
that terrified me.
Decades later,
I would recognize that
I am on the autism spectrum,
so the picture of me
amongst a noisy group of people I imagined,
moving from office to office
to studio to office
was terribly unnerving.
And I learned that,
even as an award-winning reporter,
I would probably have to move
to a rural town for a few years
or else work night shifts in the city
to enter my chosen field.

Willing to do neither,
because it didn’t fit the children’s lives,
I went to work for
a quiet PR firm run by a couple of conservative women –
promoting companies that
probably worked against
all the ideas I considered
my most important motivations.

Just before my six month probationary period was up,
they sent me for the first time
to meet the representatives
of a new investment firm
we had just taken as a client.
Within minutes, I determined
this guy was a charlatan,
and I returned to the office
to tell them so.
Within days,
I was told to empty my desk
and leave.

(They continued with that client
and within the year,
he was arrested
and on the front page
of the business section every day
for the next 18 months.)

Carrying a cardboard box with my personal desk contents to the parking garage,
I met a man I knew
from meetings to launch
the new community radio station, KXCI.

I told him I had just lost my job,
and he told me the station
needed underwriting reps.

I took the job, became Director of Underwriting fairly quickly,
loved the work,
but never made enough money
and also had issues there
with someone that I didn’t know how to deal with.

I wisely decided
I should work alone
and do a different sort
of public relations.
I would offer media relations services to progressive organizations,
keep my expenses low
and offer the most reasonable prices I could.
Of course,
I would never make much money that way,
and would always qualify for food assistance,
and sometimes my kids would go to school with their shoes held together with duct tape.
But I loved my work.

I wrote press releases, of course,
coached my clients
on doing media interviews,
produced newsletters,
fliers, brochures,
publicity events,
public service announcements,
conferences –
and the fundraising video
credited with helping
increase the fundraising in Southern Arizona United Way’s Federal Campaign –
the year that every other region
in the nation decreased
because of a national scandal.

I was a “Woman to Watch” in the local feminist Clarion monthly newspaper.
I was interviewed by the Arizona Daily Star for a story on “Superwomen,”
in which I said,
“I don’t recommend it.”

When there was a cause I especially felt close to,
I jumped in with two feet, volunteering nearly all of my spare time.
I was a spokesperson for saving our elementary school,
Which was the anchor for a healthy, multigenerational,
multicultural neighborhood
near downtown Tucson.

I fought to stop a developer
from building a 14-story high-rise in our residential neighborhood of two-story homes.

And I gave one-half
of my business hours
for free for four years
to work to protect
a mountain sacred
to the local Apache
and important to environmentalists and evolutionary ecologists around the world.

And I was the number two person
in launching a successful
international trade magazine, Permaculture Drylands Journal,
for no pay, only inspiration.

I had not meant to give away so much of my time,
robbing my paying work,
robbing my children and
my future Social Security.
But my husband strongly encouraged me,
almost begged me sometimes,
even promising to make up the difference financially,
but rarely did.
And I kept giving my time away, because I really did believe in these causes.

I just didn’t think a single mother should give away that much of her time.
Especially in this culture in which Social Security would determine my income throughout my old age.
But my husband kept promising,
and I kept submitting.
And loving the work.

My environmental work
was mostly, and happily,
associated with the most radical environmental organization
that inflamed reactions
across the nation.
People camped in forest tops,
one burned a bulldozer,
others danced in bear costumes – meriting media attention –
inspiring and impressing me.
I couldn’t help but give away more of my time.
If I only hadn’t been neglecting my children.…

Three years in, four of our colleagues were arrested,
having been entrapped by the FBI.

One year after that,
two colleagues were car-bombed and nearly killed,
immediately blamed for the bomb,
and arrested while lying in their hospital beds.

(Supporters helped them begin a lawsuit which would finally get to court 12 years later,
with one having died in the meantime.
I would do international media work for the trial.
And the FBI was found guilty of charges related to, but not including, the actual bombing,
and they paid a historic judgment.)

Many of us activists were derailed by the bombing,
and I was.
Two weeks earlier,
I had interviewed the woman who would die after 8 years of agony,
another single mother like me,
a devoted peace activist,
and after the interview,
I decided to watch her
and learn from her
and eventually become a better activist –
but after my kids were on their own, just a few more years.

I wanted to quit activism for these next few years in order to be a better mother to my children.
Meantime I planned to watch and learn from her.

Then she was bombed
and nearly killed by someone close to the FBI.

I was not the same after the bombing.
I had always thought that because I wasn’t doing anything illegal, only producing and disseminating news,
I would be safe.
But those were the things that she was doing,
only better than me.
So if I wanted to learn from her,
it seemed I was putting my life on the line.

I didn’t know my history well enough
to have already thought much
about all the people who’ve lost
their lives because they were spokespeople for causes resisted by the government.
Like I said, I was naïve.

Now, this truth I’d ignored
was very much in my face,
all of our faces.

I needed a job that was simple and repetitive and didn’t consume my every waking hour.
I took a 9-5 job at a birdwatching tour company, doing client communications.
And soon, the owner
of this international multimillion dollar business
offered to sell it to me
for a decreasing percentage of net profits.

I hated to turn it down,
but I didn’t want to commit
the rest of my life to
something so repetitive.
I was someone who started things
and then moved on to the next inspiration.

But what an affirmation of my abilities,
and it could be so enriching
to send people around the world
into Nature
to commune with birds.
And I could actually have a decent income.

I could imagine creating that business,
but I couldn’t embrace the idea of
doing the same repetitive management tasks for the rest of my work life.
Nope.

Before I answered his offer,
my son was diagnosed with cancer.
The very same day,
my boss had left me in charge
of everything
as he flew across the country to attend his eldest son’s wedding.
Besides the six ornithologists we hired as tour guides,
this was a two person business, and we had clients
flying all around the world
who might need our assistance.
I had to be at the office.

I drove from hospital to work,
to hospital, to home, back to hospital, etc.
for two days,
then collapsed after my boss responded to my stress and returned home early.

Eventually,
trying to get back to work,
while my son endured chemotherapy nausea alone at home, watching TV –
I repeatedly found myself
coming back to consciousness
with my head on my desk,
and no memory
of having laid it down.
Instead of taking over this wonderful business,
I had to quit.

Four other things had happened the week of my son’s diagnosis. My health insurance company sent a letter disclosing their bankruptcy, reduction of benefits, and increasing monthly premiums.

For the first time, I would accept every credit card offer that came in the mail and begin to use them and not pay them off.

I would also finally act on my desire to divorce my second husband.
And I would cave in when he refused to leave our home,
and instead moved out myself
with the kids
to wherever I could afford,
which I would soon learn
was not in our neighborhood
or their school district.
And they would hate me for it.

A couple of weeks earlier,
I had just won another writing award,
this time for a short story,
and one of the judges had encouraged me, if I wanted,
to get a Masters Degree in Creative Writing at the university.

It would solve my problems.
Writing could serve as therapy,
and give me student loans
to live on,
so I didn’t have to work
and could be home for my kids at least a little bit more –
though they would very soon be on their own.

One day, before leaving our home,
my stress was so high,
I descended the stairs into the basement to cry without disturbing my daughter,
but instead, I began roaring.

Alarmed,
I tried to stop,
then commanded myself,
and soon was distressed
to realize I could not.

It kept on to the point that I felt
I could break a blood vessel
in my throat
and either drown in my own blood or bleed to death,
or both.

I quickly climbed the stairs
and called the local Helpline
(thinking how ironic it was
that I needed the help of an organization to which
I might have earlier been an advisor)
and talked to a counselor –
in phrases between roars –
and she helped me quit roaring.

Soon I began moving,
zombie-like,
to accomplish a few tasks she had helped me name –
to make phone calls
and appointments
to see apartments and
decide where we might move.

I would also get an appointment first thing Monday to talk with a therapist.

I walked in the door and before I sat down,
I recited the litany of stressors that plagued me:
cancer, divorce, health insurance bankruptcy, move, children hating me –
and then words came out of my mouth that had not crossed my frontal lobe:
“and I think I was sexually abused as a child.”

This was immediately followed
by an adamant assertion
that that was not
what I had come in for
and I did not want to spend time on it
and I hadn’t even thought about that –
except for once in my life it had crossed my mind,
but I had other things more immediately important.

That exchange would begin my nervous breakdown –
not a bad thing, I assert,
because our nervous systems do need to break down
in order to form a new,
hopefully healthier worldview.

There were events in my life I would come to discuss,
oddities that didn’t seem to fit,
but were certainly there, remembered with every fiber of my being,
but making no sense,
at least not in that socially controlled frame of mind,
so I chose not to think about them – till those words popped out of my mouth.

So when this counselor suggested
I go home
and ask my inner children whether
there was anything my adult self needs to know,
I thought it was ridiculous.
But I tried it.

And the results blew my mind
because that inner child didn’t pause a single second,
but played back to me a shocking 10-second scene,
in which I experienced watching my spastic baby arms and legs
occasionally wave above my face,
without any sense
that I might have agency to move them on my own.

There was movement,
then the coolness of a diaper removed,
prodding between my legs,
then something that sent me out of my body
and up to a place
where I looked down on the room
and saw things that imply something …
that makes me speechless to this day,
and still makes me grieve.

My first year of the writing program,
I was the middle-aged woman who seemed rather unstable.
Young hipster students ignored me.

And one day, the staircase to the second floor classes
seemed to tip and sway,
and I gripped the handrail hard
to stay upright.
Another day, as I offered my critique to someone’s writing in class,
I felt myself turn into another person mid-sentence, whereby she/I added a qualification to my previous statement then turned my conclusion 180 degrees –
while marveling that the placement of the walls and shape of the room had abruptly changed.

But my writing stayed strong,
and one submission
to a nationally famous editor received a personal response,
not the typical boilerplate postcard of most writers in their first years.

But when I bent my writing toward the subject of sexual abuse,
my favorite teacher,
who had begun to treat me
like her favorite student,
began to scold me
and push me away.

When my daughter moved out of our apartment (two bus rides from their school),
my son and I followed her –
to a place without occupancy permits,
without water or even electricity
in the two apartments the children chose,
so they came to my apartment
for meals and showers.

Soon my son was declared
cancer-free,
and my kids would be even more on their own.

I would finish my degree,
and accrue debt like I’d never done before,
partly from medical bills I could not pay
and partly from building myself
a little home.

I decided one day the noise of the city was too much.
Money and debt had become almost meaningless.
And since I had $25,000 of unused credit card credit,
and 20 acres of land I had gotten in my second divorce,
I moved out there,
off grid,
with a solar oven and fireplace,
water from the roof,
and I listened to the birds
and the breeze,
and write and read.

I drove to town for three days
each week to take classes,
staying with a friend,
then driving back to the peace and quiet for four luscious days.

I thought about
my failed marriages,
my overwork,
the arrests of friends
and the bombing,
the loss of time with my kids,
all my bad decisions,
and soon a few more issues
I didn’t even know I had.

I also began to have experiences some of us call spiritual,
shamanic or other-dimensional. And I began to study with shamans.

My journalistic inspirations were few,
though I did produce one more radio show
for our local community radio –
about the FBI and fear,
called “Spooks,”
aired ironically on Halloween night.

Then it would be 14 more years
before I published anything else.
It was my memoir,
exposing some of the dark side
of our government.

And I seem to have been punished ever since,
targeted with every sort of harassment,
Social, financial,
vehicular sabotage, and more,
exhausting me,
keeping me from publishing much
of quality.
I’ve probably published one thing
for every 20 ideas I’ve had,
just too tired to follow through.
So I’ve gone to producing
quick and dirty, one-take videos,
all I have the energy for.

Sometimes I even think the targeters, my controllers
know when I’m in that
moment of inspiration,
and they respond by hitting me with a depressive frequency.
I don’t know.

And so this may be the end of my writing and journalism career,
my attempt to provide important information to the mainstream.

I’ve tried my best.
And I will try to keep on,
maybe yet publishing something more.
I hope….