The girl who was but never is…

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Don’t forget that just because I am strong,
I am still vulnerable.

Don’t forget that just because I always have the answer,
I don’t constantly question myself.

Don’t forget that as I build you up,
I am being torn down.

Don’t forget that behind this façade and brave face
there is a woman who has doubts and fears.

Don’t forget that this woman who thinks flowers are silly and just die,
is a girl who wishes someone would bring her flowers for no reason.

Don’t forget that my intellect and my wit, which you say you love
are really my defense against a world that frightens me.

Don’t forget that for as much as I love and laugh
I also cry and hide and rage.

Don’t forget that for every selfie I take and every celebration I post
I’m really just looking for acceptance.

Don’t forget that for everything I do and everything I become
I still long to hear that you’re proud of me.

Don’t forget to tell me good morning,
it gives me hope for the new day.

Don’t forget to tell me good night,
it gives me peace of mind.

Don’t forget to tell me you love me,
it reminds me I will be ok.

Don’t forget the me hiding inside the me you’ve come to know.
Don’t forget me.

 

 

 

On loss

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I’ve been thinking a lot about life and loss these days. It started when I was about to turn 40. October 1st, 2018 to be exact. I remember waking up, excited because it was October, ready to post my “it’s fall y’all meme” and celebrate my birthday month. I was also strangely excited for 40, or at least I wasn’t afraid it. I was in a good place. I had a job I loved, I was able to travel as much as I wanted, I had good friends, a home, a fiancé. Life was good, so turning 40 was more like the next big adventure rather than the dreaded over the hill.

Then my mum texted me. She told me she had some cancerous spots removed from her leg and that they were advanced enough that she’d need scans every three months. It was scary. It made me face the mortality of my parents and I didn’t like it. On October 3rd my mum texted again, this time to tell me my Uncle Donnie had cancer. It wasn’t as cut and dry as hers was. It was complicated and the prognosis wasn’t as good. More mortality. More fear. On October 11th my mum called to tell me Jim Halstead had died (again, cancer). Jim was like a second father to me. I grew up with him and with his kids. I loved him. I spent my 40th birthday at his funeral. Suddenly turning 40 didn’t seem so much like the next adventure and seemed more like a bad omen. A reality check. Everyone you love is going to die. On July 2nd, my uncle passed away. Forty as it was, was not a good year.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t struggle with everything. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the last year and a half has been hard. I’ve been faced with a lot of hard truths and have made some pretty monumental decisions based on these truths. I’ve started to reevaluate my life and my decisions. I’ve started to consider the future, not as something that is going to happen to me, but as something I am going to control. I can’t control death. I can’t control the loss of those I love. I can’t control growing older, growing grayer. But I can control what I do with the time I have left. I can control what I do with the time I have left with those that matter most to me.

For the past month, I’ve been distracted. I’ve let go of that frame of mind and I’ve allowed myself to become wrapped up in something that I shouldn’t be wrapped up in. I became consumed and swallowed up by a dream I shouldn’t have. In the last few days I’ve realized that dream is just that, a dream. It’s not reality, and even if it could be, it wouldn’t be a healthy one. Those who know me well, know I’m prone to self-destructive behavior. I have what my dad and Tony call “end of the world syndrome”. I’ve worked hard the last ten years to get that in check and this past month it’s been rearing it’s ugly head again.

I’ve been trying to get back to me. Back to basics. I’ve been writing again. Getting it all out. It’s a way for me to admit things to myself, it’s a way for me to channel my anxiety and my angst and my hurt and eventually let go. I submitted my application to the University of Illinois and their doctoral program on Education Policy. I got a new tattoo (probably more self-destructive behavior). And I started taking stock. I started really reflecting on my losses and my decisions. I started gaining perspective.

My aunt lost her husband. My cousin lost her father. That is a loss that can’t be reconciled. That is a loss that can’t be healed. When I think of my dream I have to ask myself, what did I lose? I mean, really, what did I lose? But through patient and sometimes painful reflection, I know what I gained.

I gained a new appreciation for myself, I was tying my self-worth to something else and it was tearing me down. I gained a new appreciation for my personality that a lot of people find overwhelming and annoying. I gained a new perspective on what really matters and what really should keep me up at night. I regained my drive and my focus, my determination to accomplish the goals I had set for myself. I regained my resolve. It doesn’t mean I don’t love the dream. It doesn’t mean that I don’t hope for the dream. It just means that I leveled myself. I found my footing and stopped the world from spinning out of control on it’s axis around me. The dream will always be there, but it won’t haunt my dreams any more. It won’t be my everything. And I’m ok with that.

Tilt

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There are moments that define us. Moments, that as you stand on the bridge, swaying from the booze, or maybe it’s the fear, staring into the abyss, that you know will change your life forever. Moments, when you know, you’re going to jump.

I was a junior in college when I fell in love for the second time in my life. And I mean, I fell hard, in love, with Billy Kissell. He was in my class that summer, an archaeological dig, he also worked at the same bar I did. We became instant friends and laughed as we referred to each other as brother and sister. Something that both saddened and invigorated me. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be his sister, but on the other hand, he cared for me enough to see me as family. It was a confusing time for me.

Billy brought out the crazy in me. We partied too hard, ditched class, slept in. I was willing to put my future in jeopardy on the off-chance that he would think I was cool enough, and good enough to be with him. This dig was my chance to experience my chosen field first-hand. Dr. Prezzanno had high hopes for me and each day that Billy and I rolled up to the dig, in my car, having missed the van, almost on time or often quite late I saw that hope in me fading, but I didn’t care. That’s not true, I did care, but I couldn’t stop it. It was like an addiction. I had never felt this way before and I didn’t know how or didn’t want to know how to manage it. We’d leave at lunch to go the IGA for food, while everyone else ate packed lunches at the site. We’d laugh and cut up the whole time about how much trouble we were in and how much trouble we were. At night we’d party at his house, playing Zoomy Zoomy or Asshole and staying up into the wee hours of the morning.

The culminating night for us was when we drove out to what I call Mill Creek. It may or may not have been called that, but in my memory that was what it was a called. A small off-shoot of the Clarion River, down a long, steep, winding dirt road through the woods, to a pull-off and an old bridge. We stripped down to our underwear and climbed up on the bridge railing. I’ll never forget the feeling, his hand in mine, the darkness surrounding us, the water whispering below us. I was so afraid. I was so alive.

We fell forever that night. Into the dark, into the deep. I can still remember the rush of the air as we dropped. The sharp, jarring shock of the water as it first struck and then engulfed us. The joy and the laughter as we climbed up time and time again to jump off the Mill Creek Bridge. It’s a moment frozen in the time of my memory. Distorted, glossed-over I’m sure, but it is there and it reminds me.

Class ended a few days later and I didn’t see Billy very much after that. Whatever we had was gone. Lost forever to that summer. I resumed my studies, buckled down and got on with life.

I’m 41 now. Sometimes I look back on this memory with a strange sense of longing and nostalgia, sometimes I look back on it with a sense of horror at what could have happened. I guess that’s just the nature of growing older and dare I say wiser? Regardless of how I remember it, I am thankful for it.

We all need a Billy Kissell in our lives. We all need something to rock us off our axis and tilt our world so that we remember to live. Life is full of moments we let pass us by because we’re too afraid to take the leap. I’d like to think that if faced with jumping off of the Mill Creek Bridge at two o’clock in the morning again, I’d politely decline, but part of me isn’t so sure. Part of me knows…I’d jump.

You

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There is a dream.

It is fleeting,
It is dulled grey,
blurred around the edges,
fuzzy.
It is subtle,
It is subdued.
It is you.

It doesn’t have substance,
or body
or reality.
It doesn’t hurt,
but it brings pain.
It is need.
It is you.

It doesn’t last when the morning comes,
yet It lingers,
on my lips,
in my hands,
tearing at my soul,
always on my mind.
It is you.

It is patient,
It is angst.
It is the devil on my shoulder.
It is hope for tomorrow.
It is fear,
of wanting.
It is you.

There is a song,
a melody,
and It recalls.
It reminds,
It beckons to my mind,
remember.
It is you.

It is a touch,
It is an image,
It blooms like a storm,
I see it,
I feel it,
I reach toward it,
It is you.

There is a dream.

It is you.

Love letter

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My love,

This began as a story. A story of us. A way for me to get it all out and rationalize what I am feeling. A way to combat the sleepless, longing and lonely nights without you in my arms. Then I realized it’s just too personal and I realized it isn’t a story, it’s a letter. A letter to you. To the man that I have come to know and come to love and come to need. I have to write this. I have to write this because I know that what we have can’t be sustained. I know that what we have will fade and tatter and slowly flutter away because the odds are stacked against us. The world doesn’t want this for us. And deep down, in places we don’t talk about at parties, we don’t want this for us. But there is a place in my heart, a place so deep in my soul that no one before and no one after will ever know but you, that I want this. So our story is now a letter; a love letter, to you. I’ve never written one like it before. I’ll never write another like it again.

There are moments. And then there are moments. You never know where you’ll be when lightning strikes and you can never be prepared for it. As a young girl I grew up watching Rom Coms; Julia Roberts being swept off her feet by a bazillionaire, saved from a torrid life on the streets, Meg Ryan hiding in a closet listening to talk radio and being rescued by Tom Hanks on top of the Empire State Building. These movies. These fantasies. They aren’t reality. I’m 41. I’ve never danced in the rain while Frank Sinatra sang in the background. I’ve never had a secret rendezvous on a mega yacht or a skyscraper or even a house in the suburbs for that matter. To put it quite bluntly, I’ve never been swept off my feet. When I was a little girl my mom didn’t lock me in my closet when I was bad and I didn’t have to fantasize that Prince Charming would come charging in, arm raised to rescue me. In fact, when the time came for us to have the “talk”, you know the one about birds and bees and the fact that a stork didn’t actually drop me on my expectant parents doorstep one night, my mom simply said this, “honey, sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”. Now that is parenting at it’s finest. And that my darling, left a lasting impression.

So, I grew up. Watching tv, watching movies, listening to power ballads about love and loss, living in reality but hoping in secret fantasy. Desperately wishing that one day Prince Charming would come rescue me. Day dreaming about boys and a life less than ordinary while keeping my feet on the ground and my eyes on the prize. I’ve never been one to settle. I’m goal-oriented, I’m practical. And yet, when it came to love, I was a disaster. I always found myself falling hard and fast for the first person that gave me any attention. I always settled. Tell me you love me. Tell me fast. Or else I’ll lose interest. And I remember, I remember so clearly that feeling when I got what I wanted. It was so empty. It was so shallow. I had broken another one down. I had gotten what I wanted and I was out. There were no fireworks. There was no tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach. There was no flutter in my heart. There was no stirring in my soul.

Now, to be fair, I’m an antsy individual. ADHD to a fault. I can’t sit still. I’m fidgety, I’m on edge, I’m constantly in motion and on the go. I don’t sleep for more than two to three hours a night. I always laugh it off and say, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’, but deep down I’d kill for a solid eight-hours. Deep down I wish I could shut my mind off, I wish I could just relax. Even in my writing I’m all over the place, stream of consciousness…Jack Kerouac and Burroughs watch out, ‘cause you got competition from this girl. See what I mean? There I go again… Anyway, I had this storm raging inside me. This duality. I was this level, grounded, focused, and driven person to the outside world, but on the inside, on the inside I was a tumult of emotion and desire. A tossing and turning sea of wants and needs and dreams. I’d lay awake at night and have the most epic adventures. Pirates. Monsters under my bed. Bad guys who needed thwarted. Secret plots to overthrow the government. Distant shores. Love that left me speechless. Each night was a new story and a new chance at feeling alive. Sometimes, if I liked the plot-line I had created enough I could keep a fantasy going for days, even weeks. Usually these tales involved stolen moments and secret kisses. Kissing that involved someone grabbing my face with both hands and breathing me in. Kissing that made my stomach flip and my hands tingle. Kissing that left me breathless and wanting more. Always. Wanting. More. It was a song on the wind, Elvis Costello’s She and some guy who said “this is you babe, this is what you make me feel”,

She may be love that cannot hope to last, may come to me from shadows in the past, that I’ll remember till the day I die. The meaning of my life is she.

It was always some guy who just drank me in. Saw me in my entirety. And as I waited, and hoped, and dreamed, I became more and more jaded.

I didn’t get that. I got fists and anger and rage. I got accusations and jealousy and judgment. I got demands and ultimatums and truths I didn’t want to hear. I got stifled. I got put down. I got let down. I got jaded. And so I hardened myself to the world. I hardened myself to love. I stopped believing. I stopped dreaming. I stopped hoping. I stopped wishing. I stopped feeling. I settled. I picked guys who didn’t use their fists to wear me down. Who didn’t make my life difficult. I settled time and time again for men who thought they loved me and I’m sure did, in their own way. But deep down, I had given up. I had given up hope and I had given up my dreams. Somewhere, way back when, the little girl who dreamt of a love that the moon and the stars would lie down and be still for, stopped dreaming.

Then I met you. And baby, that little girl came alive. All of a sudden. All at once. Screaming and beating on the walls of my psyche to be set free and let go. Open to possibility. Wanting beyond what I ever thought was possible to desire. Begging me to let you in and let her have a chance. A chance at a life. A chance at a life less than ordinary. A life of kisses that left her wanting. A life of being seen and heard and loved so completely and so thoroughly that there are moments when she is left breathless and stunned and so completely overwhelmed that she can’t move. And so I did, I let you in and I let her out. You have awakened in me something I never thought was possible. You are that dream. You have renewed my faith for all the little girls led astray by life and movies and music. You have shown me that there is such a thing as wild abandon and fantasy.

So you see my love,  I needed to tell you. I needed to let you know, that despite what happens, despite the fact that I know this will end. That you have saved me. That you have opened my heart and my soul to a set of possibilities and wonders I long ago stopped believing existed.

Thank you.

I love you. Very simply. Very true.

Cornflakes

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You know me,
the girl in the back of the class
who has all the answers
to all the questions
but who can’t seem to get the professor’s attention
and who doesn’t think she is pretty enough, or good enough
to get yours.

You know me,
the girl who looks awkward in a skirt
but right at home in men’s jeans
who has a mom that says
‘why can’t you get all As and dress like a girl and marry a lawyer?’

You know me,
the girl standing by the bar
laughing too loudly
just trying to get her three dollars worth of beer
that tastes like shit anyways.
Courage that doesn’t go down easy.

You know me,
but not the real me.
Not the me that has crazy thoughts
and dangerous dreams
of faraway places and crystalline waters
chasing billowing sails.
Who sees you in tattered dreams
faded and soft around the edges of a memory
long erased
while I try to study for psychology
as the Beatles sing about Kaleidoscope Eyes and Cornflakes

Ya, you know me…

In the palm of your hand

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Sleep comes late,
if it comes at all
Your face keeps me awake,
the cruel remains of what I used to crave
A smile I loved,
a touch that came too easily
I try to remember the beautiful parts
The expressions
The moments when I felt whole
But all that remains is a bitter empty
a longing to hear you say ‘you’ll be my angel’

I lie awake and wonder why
I couldn’t be

Underdog

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I feel like I should begin with a disclaimer: I’ve never written a blog before, I’ve never really read blogs before.  I do not know the rules or expectations and am basing this first attempt on something Dr. D said in class tonight “remember, these are my own personal rants”, bearing that in mind I have something to rant about.  So here goes nothing…

As I drove home from class tonight, my first with Dr. D, I found myself pondering something we discussed, attempting to answer a question that was asked, and fixating on what I consider to be my failed video introduction.  At the start of class we entered a lively discussion on why it’s the lower performing kids who are hurt the worst by non-aligned curriculum.  My hand shot up, I thought I knew the answer, and then I experienced what I’m sure will be the first of Dr. D’s excited and somewhat terrifying responses to my “not-so-correct-as-I-thought-it-was” answer.  Later in class we discussed a question we had been asked to answer for our video introduction.  We were supposed to include for the class something we feel they should know about us, but something we wouldn’t put on our resume.  He explained to us why he asked this question and what he expected to receive as an answer in return.  As I drove home I realized I hadn’t answered this question and begin racking my brain to come up with something “worthy” of an answer.  Something that was honest, something that pertained to my experience or mission as a teacher, and something that represented me as a person, not me as the person I pretend to be when I’m worried the whole world is watching.  As I exited I-85 I felt pretty confident I had it, I had hashed it out into words and had imagined it as my part of my video introduction. Yet, somewhere between Exit 54 and home my vision became twisted in my mind and it seemed contrived, almost forced, and I had once again resigned myself to answering the question at hand.  Then something happened, it’s that “Aha moment” we are always told about as educators, and in our syllabus as future administrators told to blog about and it all become clear in my mind again.

I like the “bad” kids (hopefully the quotes will make sense upon conclusion of this blog).  I always have, maybe it’s because I wasn’t one, and was living vicariously through them.  Maybe it’s because in my first year of teaching I experienced the workroom banter of “Oh, you havehim, he’s lazy…he’s trouble…he won’t do anything in your class…just give him an F and move on…”, and always being one to take the path less traveled I enjoyed saying in response, “Really?  Why I just loved him.”  Or maybe it’s just because they’re more fun, more challenging, and usually the most surprising students you can teach.  Yes, they drive you nuts, and yes, they break your heart, and YES, sometimes you lose them, but when you don’t, when you reach them, when they succeed, you feel a moment of elation, a moment of resolve to save all the “bad” kids you can.  It’s a moment that makes you cry, and sing and dance, and brag and shout to the world “I am a teacher, I am good at what I do, and I LOVE my job!”  Sometimes, it’s even a moment where you decide to take a risk and blog about it.

What happened was this.  I came home tonight, resolved to put my quandaries regarding class on hold so I could pack and clean in preparation for my trip home tomorrow and in search of a brainless distraction I checked Facebook.  I’m not a Facebook “stalker” and therefore usually only see what is right in front of me on my news feed.  Luckily, tonight the first post was from a former student of mine, it was a picture of merchandise his company (an entertainment company he started and manages) is selling in Concord Mills.  It’s a legitimate business, which given the kids past history is important to note.  It made my heart sing.

I first experienced this child second semester of his freshman year.  I was warned about him, he was Trouble, he was, a “bad” kid.  It’s the usual story people always feel compelled to whisper to you in the hallway or the copy room; terrible home life, terrible upbringing, parents who don’t care, probably doesn’t even know who his father is, if he does know him he probably visits him in jail, blah, blah, blah.  Truth is, I never had any trouble from him, I never saw him as trouble, so much as I saw him as Troubled.  I realized quickly that he wasn’t a “bad” kid, he was the underdog.  He was the kid who was 16 in the 9th grade, he failed more classes than he passed, he spent most of his days in ISS or OSS and he was disliked by most of his teachers and feared by most of his peers.  He had what he called “street cred” and told me that having that was more important than having good grades, or a starting position on the basketball team (although he’d “school anyone in hoops who dared step to him”).  He was also the kid who called me “ma’am” on the first day, who offered to hand out papers and then tested me with silly antics while in the process.  He was the kid who called me “mama” after a few weeks of knowing me, and started calling me his “wife” a few weeks later, because “she’s always on my a$$, just like an old ball and chain”.  He was the kid that bought me Steelers pajama pants and then threw them away in front of me because I couldn’t accept gifts bought with drug money (something I regret doing to this day because I had no proof that’s where the money came from).  He was the kid who told me that history won’t help him pay the bills, or stay off the streets, or stay out of jail, or live to see his 21st birthday.  And he was the kid that broke my heart.

What I had realized after a few weeks was that he was the kid that everyone else, his parents, his teachers, his string of former employers, had given up on.  He was the kid who was “hopeless”, not hopeless in the sense that he couldn’t be helped, but hope LESS as in the kid who had no hope.  He had learned at a young age to rely on himself, he learned at a young age that authority figures were the enemy, and he had learned at a young age that it was easier to be thrown out of class for misbehavior than to try in class and still fail.  He was failing because the world had failed him.  I was young, new to teaching and full of hope and ideas.  Yet despite all my best efforts and I mean my BEST efforts, I lost this kid his senior year.  I did everything I could think of to “save” him; I requested him his junior year in US history, I asked to take him into my class as a “helper” when he was kicked out of his English class, just so he had somewhere to go, that wasn’t home, I fought with my Assistant Principal, a man I have more respect for than I can properly put into words, every time he suspended him.  I went home and cried the day he was expelled and again on the day I learned he was sentenced to prison.  I feared for his life and rejoiced when after 3 years of his sentence he was released and contacted me to be a reference for him.

He was out of jail, he wanted to make an honest living for himself, and he knew I wouldn’t turn my back on him.  I gave him my information and accepted his friend request on Facebook, something I regretted often over the past few years when I saw posts from him and I knew he wasn’t living a life I approved of or a life I had always hoped he would have.  Then tonight, while in deep thought over a question that I decided to take as seriously as I could, I saw a picture of merchandise, in a mall, in my town, designed by a kid I thought I had lost, advertising a company that he created and I knew that while I probably had nothing to do with it, while he probably didn’t even remember my name, I just knew, I hadn’t failed him.  I told him on Facebook how proud I was of him; it’s the first time I’ve ever posted anything to his page in 7 years.  This was his response (please bear in mind, I was not his English teacher), “Leanne (tag) you know you was always my favorite. Nd you was the only one who eva had any faith in me nd tried to help in school.  Know I was hard headed nd live lil different life.  You still cared.  I messed up but had a turn around after jail and prison and had to get it together.  I never stop thinkin about you nd appreciatn you foreal.  Nd thank you, I’m glad I make you proud.  When I blow I’ll have a job for you lol…”  Now, I don’t know what the last part even means, and I know that the grammar and spelling is atrocious (and in my response I told him we need to work on it if he is going to be a respectable businessman) but the rest of it speaks for itself and gave me the courage to share my “secret, non-resume worthy tidbit” about who I am.  (Sometimes you just need someone to believe in you.)

I am a teacher who likes the “bad” kids…I am a huge fan of the underdog.

Just Believe…

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I apologize in advance because this is lengthy, but then again, aren’t most journeys?

I think my journey with understanding the implications of race began when I was in undergrad. I had around eleven majors in my five and half years at Clarion and finally settled on education as my final major because my previous major of anthropology and dream of being the next Indiana Jones seemed a bit silly as graduation and the real world drew nearer. My mum was a teacher in Dunbar, West Virginia and when home on breaks I would visit her kindergarten class and decided during those brief moments that there were worse things I could do for a living.

The school my mum taught at was poor and black. She was one of only three white employees in the building. My mum is what some would consider a “bleeding heart” liberal; she will tell you she is a card-carrying member of the ACLU, NAACP, and the Southern Christian Poverty Law Center (I have no idea if this is actually true). Her principal, who was black, used to tell me,”Leanne, your mum is my favorite white girl because she loooooovvvveessss black people…” Why is this important? Because at the young age of 21, my beliefs mirrored what I had learned at home. Therefore, I was a bleeding heart liberal who looooovvvveeedddd black people, which I thought at the time was the same as understanding them.

In the fall of 2000 I accepted a job at a southern high school and officially began my career as an educator. I instantly loved the profession. What other profession would afford me the opportunity to talk for 90 straight minutes? That fall I taught my first predominately minority class. It was an inclusion ELPS (economic, legal and political systems) course of 41 students. I had kids sitting on my bookshelves, my floor, my desk, until a relief teacher was hired in October and my class size dropped to a manageable 33. My class was about 75% African American and Hispanic, about 50% were EC and I’m guessing that over 50% were on free/reduced lunch plans. I realized pretty quickly that these kids were different from me, they were different from my honors (predominately white) kids, and they were even different from the inclusion white kids in their class. I didn’t know how to reach them, I didn’t know what to make of them, I didn’t know how to handle them, I didn’t know why they didn’t like me…I just knew I needed to do something, so I developed a “plan”, a “tactic” if you will, for dealing with “those” kids.

My grand plan for that class was: empathy. I told them that I too had grown up poor, wearing hand-me downs from the church and my neighbors, who were boys. That I understood the struggles they were facing because I had watched my mum cry while grocery shopping when the total was too high and she had to decide what staples we could go without for that week. (this is all true by the way) I told them all of this because I wanted them to know that I had survived my impoverished childhood and gone on to college and that they, just like me, could be successful if they JUST TRIED…if they JUST WANTED it badly enough. I did this for three years, and for three years I went home daily wondering why I wasn’t reaching my poor, minority students and why, despite my best efforts, they weren’t succeeding.

One day, a kid, I wrote about him in Grad school, called me out on my pitiful, “woe is me” childhood saga. With confidence and surety, I told him (in front of the class), “you too can be successful, if you would just TRY.” I’ll never forget this, he looked me square in the face and said something along these lines, “Where were you last weekend Ms. H? The beach? How about the weekend before? A Steelers game? Didn’t you go to Spain and France when you were in high school?” I was stunned to silence, standing there, mouth agape, nodding my head in affirmation to everything he was asking. Then he said, and this is a direct quote, “You don’t know shit about being me, so stop pretending like you do.” I was floored. I was hurt. I was embarrassed. I went home and cried. I felt like a failure. I felt like a poser. I felt empty and lost in my current profession. I called my mum and sobbed, I told her how unfair it was to me when I had grown up so poor and so…She cut me off and said two things that remain with me to this day, 1) My version of poor is not most people’s version of poor. As she likes to remind me, she grew up poorer than I did (daughter of German immigrants, blah blah blah) and these kids that I was teaching were sure as hell growing up poorer than I did. 2) Regardless of how poor I thought I was, I still grew up white, and that made a HUGE difference.

I remember feeling so ashamed, so…guilty for being white. I remember being angry at the unfairness of it; after all, it wasn’t like it was my fault I was white. I pointed this out to my mother and she just laughed at me and said, “You’re angry over the unfairness of being white? Imagine how everyone who isn’t white feels Leanne.” I remember finally realizing what the term “white privilege” meant. I remember being humbled by the realization that it actually existed and wasn’t just something that black people said when things weren’t going their way. I remember going back to class the next day with my head down and my tail tucked between my legs. I remember the fear and anxiety I felt about what I had to do. The uncertainty only a third year teacher who was about to admit to a class of 33 high school children that she was wrong could feel. I started class that day the only way I could think to start class that day, I apologized, not for being white, but for being naïve, not for having wealthy parents, but for pretending I knew anything at all about what is was like to grow up black in America. And from that day forth I didn’t try to empathize. I simply owned it; I told my kids up front that I didn’t know what it was like to be them. That I grew up (mostly) middle class and white and therefore couldn’t possibly understand the troubles they faced as a minority in a white dominated society. I promised them though, that if they wanted to share, if they would be willing to enlighten me, that I would listen, that I wouldn’t judge, that I would believe in them…that I would BELIEVE them.