Ideas of "Family", Ideas of A Place That Resembles A Home.

I am realizing how I have or haven't experienced family and caretaking and with whom. And discussions around blood/given family vs. chosen families recently have made me recognize how much of a gulf I have between my blood family, my chosen families and myself.

Because, let’s be real. The reasons why cochlear implants (CI's) are/were important is because I couldn’t be a part of my blood/given family with out them; we had no space for truly incorporating a deaf/hard of hearing kid within our family. Even with this, the CI’s help, but its like an anti-biotic, and it makes struggling with lost connections a bit easier. But the gulf is still there; the infection is still there. So I can not be a whole person with my family, if I wanted to be in the rain while we’re walking I have to be sheltered from the rain, instead of experiencing it while deaf. It prioritizes hearing, in the name of including me. They wonder why I’m excluding them or isolating myself; when instead I’m opening myself up to the world. I can choose whether I want to hear or don’t; and neither decision should mean isolation or access. So I have this incredible sense of estrangement and isolation, although, at the moment, everyone in the family struggles with addressing my hearing impairment and deafness in the family, attempting to create space for me as a whole person in the family.

In trying to navigate a world where I felt isolated and estranged from my parents, the people who tried to mother and father me, as well as two brothers who I fought with as well as tried to support; I searched and formed relationships with people who talked in alternatives, or at least said something that struck a chord in me. Radical-identifying folks, folks who experience/experienced oppression and marginalization, the people who tell/told stories of resilience and resistance, and recently, other disabled people. And, maybe the most important, the friends who lived, loved, laughed, played music, danced by my side and worked to help me get where I am today. Some of these people are alive, some are dead, some are people who I know closely, and others are people I’ve never ever met. But their words, their stories, articles, songs, laughs, hugs, and smiles have taken care of me in a way and helped me survive a world as a more whole person than my parent’s care-taking has done.

What frustrates me is that I know that my parents, deep down, want to do that for me. They wanted and continue to want to be some of the people, if not the people, that help me through hard times, like the depression I currently am feeling and dealing with. But I can’t seem to do it. I feel like if I reach out, I’ll enter the gulf and just fall deeper. I’m scared. I want to cradle them in their complexities. But that means they have to cradle me in mine, and I know this truth will hurt them. It will hurt to hear that I feel that I have been displaced from my family. That I feel displaced from my body from a world that is ableist; a connection with my body that is not just connected to being hard of hearing/deaf, but having cochlear implants and growing up being perceived/attempting to perceive myself as hearing. That other people and communities have built relationships to me in a way that create a space for me to be a more whole person, that seem to me to be more like family.

It won’t just hurt them. It hurts to say. It hurts to name, acknowledge the pain. It seems unfathomable that I’ll ever experience blood/given family the way that I have seen and heard my friends name, a connection with these people who they came from that is unbreakable. And I want to, and I know my parents and brothers want to. But here’s the gulf. Some of the tools and materials to make a breakthrough are here, I just feel that there’s something that there’s always going to be something missing, an emptiness that will keep on gnawing at me, within me. And that emptiness is wearing me down.

There’s another gulf I am realizing exists, that I’ve been too scared to acknowledge. And it’s a gulf between the people that I have considered to be chosen family throughout the years and myself. I struggle with feeling like a burden. But, I think it comes from knowing that my friends, especially people that feel like chosen family, can’t always provide the caretaking or support I may need or want at any given moment, in any given crisis I’m feeling. And that doesn’t mean I’m a burden; it means that they have needs and desires as well; and may as well be in crisis, and I need to recognize and support them.

I sometimes expect friendships with people (with whom who I may not consider to be chosen family, and who may not feel the same way) to exist in a way that resembles close friendships or chosen family, relationships based on caretaking, honesty, vulnerability, and enjoying each other’s company. The other person doesn’t carry with them the same notions of friendship or chosen family; or the notions of accountability that I attach to such relationships. So, folks may not want such relationships, and that’s totally legitimate; and I should be responsive to these needs and desires too. Consent should exist in all types of relationships, so I need to stop expecting these relationships to occur and embrace them the way that works for everyone. This doesn’t mean I need to let go of desiring and creating relationships that create chosen families, it just means, that they don’t work for everyone.

I need to create the space for myself to become vulnerable within myself, be honest with myself, and support myself. Because I’ve been so scared to. The sense of displacement with my blood family is connected with a sense of isolation from my own body: that it wasn’t enough for them; is it enough for me? The senses of a connection that feels like family from friends and people I am not related to, reclaiming that sense that I am deserving of such relationships, is connected the idea that I can and deserve a loving relationship with my body and my deafness, even if its complicated with the use of cochlear implants. Building liberating, loving, fun connections within myself supports and is supported by building liberating, loving, fun connections with other people; whether they be emotionally intimate or not.

There is still this gulf; I am scared to experience it: can I really do this? Can I build this not just with friends and people I identify as chosen family, but my blood/given family? More importantly maybe, can I build this within myself? It feels like I am entering an unknown. I am moving along a path that is my own, but is illuminated by the words, experiences, and existence of those who have gone into themselves and the world at the same time, by people who are alive and those who have died. The evidence that we have left and are leaving for each other and ourselves to find; to know that we are alone and together at the same time in our different but connected struggles and journeys.

All of these realities and experiences leave me with so many questions and almost all of them feel unanswerable. Can I be a whole person with myself and with other people in all of these ways, and ways that I haven’t mentioned such as strangers, classmates and people I will work with? But with these notions of family first and foremost: can I participate in building loving relationships with myself as well as with my families. If so, how would I go about doing that?

It feels like all of this is a part of navigating between how the world is, the way I want it or need it to be, taking care of myself and the people I love and care about along the way (and being taken care of); all the way to our respective and collective notions of home, liberation, and community. And at least for me, the ideas of places where I do not feel the emptiness that eats me away that I sometimes feel.

It scares me how vulnerable I am, how vulnerable I feel; especially in relationships that feel like family, and how much I want that notion of family. The relationships that feel like a site of home, of safety in vulnerability, of resilience and resistance, of visibility and conversations behind closed doors. The hugs, kisses, smiles, waves, text messages, phone calls, letters, all the things we give each other to know that we can find our way together, that we are there for each other even if we can’t be there or offer words or presence to support each other when we need or desire it most. All of it silently, softly, loudly saying: we care about each other and ourselves in the entirety of who we are and desire to be simultaneously.

I Don't Think This is Home: Privilege, Isolation, and Resistance

This past weekend I was at an anti-racism workshop at the college I go to. This blogpost comes from a weekend of reflecting on whiteness and disability; struggling to figure out and name the ways that intertwining systems of privilege and oppression function in my life.

I realized that I have internalized the notion that the straight white non-disabled (cis)male-bodied experience is comfort and safety within their own bodies. Sometimes that is how some people (esp. white, able-bodied people) treat me, when they either don't recognize or choose not to recognize the fact that I am hard of hearing/deaf. I feel like I've internalized from white supremacy and patriarchy and heterosexism and ableism the idea that if my deafness/hard of hearing-ness could be eliminated, I'd be "normal", and finding "home" would be no problem. Within that context, that ideology, the solution seems to be to fight for access for me, and every other oppressed person, to live in the same ways that those with multiple privileges do; and I feel like that is how I've generally imagined what "home" would look and feel like.


But there's something that is nagging at me; that says no, it wouldn't feel like that at all. Because when I am treated as if I am a hearing person; I feel isolated. I have never felt like that space is a home; just that it is what I've been told that it should be. And when I engage that isolation, I feel lost, like I'm stumbling around trying to figure out where I am and where I'm going. Because the compass I've been given points towards the spaces where I and my friends who experience similar and/or different oppressions have been denied access and experience violence, isolation and invisibility. But I know and feel that going isn't the direction where "home" is; for me, and I'm not sure it is for any of us.

Because when I tap into what feels like home within my body, the spaces I inhabit, and the relationships I have-what feels like home is within active resistance to oppression and isolation. Home and liberation begin to feel like possibilities when I don't follow the compass pointing towards a life of living within bodies and spaces of privilege and domination alone, moving instead with my friends and communities toward a shared destinations that shift and change as we need them to.

In order to inhabit those spaces, resisting white and male-bodied supremacy is just as important as resisting internalized ableist oppression. Re-imagining what home and liberation means involves reinventing the ways I relate to people and spaces that I inhabit that reinforce isolation and oppression. Because if I don't do that, I begin to recreate the space that isolates me. In creating the spaces where I become vulnerable, I feel that a tension creates space for growth and movement towards a world where liberation and home becomes possible; imaginable, and maybe even real, even for just a moment.

Third World women, lesbians, feminists, and feminist-oriented men of all colors are banding and bonding together to right that balance. Only together can we be a force. I see us as a network of kindred spirits, a kind of family. We are the queer groups, the people that don't belong anywhere, not in the dominant world nor completely within our own respective cultures. Combined we cover so many oppressions. But the overwhelming oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit we are a threat. - Gloria Anzaldúa "La Prieta"

Resisting Isolation, Building Home.

For most of my life it has been easier to perform a survival able-bodied-friendly version of myself, rather than nurturing the harder to live disabled-self-loving version of who I ache, desire and need to be. Because it has often meant the difference between a-little-bit-more-connection and a-little-less-isolation. But what is the point of connection, if you still feel isolated and alienated from your self? And what is that connection built upon and from? How do I want to be connected? - Mia Mingus, "Wherever You Are Is Where I Want to Be: Crip Solidarity"

Ever since I read these words written my friend Mia on her blog, Leaving Evidence, a few months ago; I found that these words make me wrestle with myself, wrestle with internalized ableism. Way too often, I brush away the the part of my body, my being hard-of-hearing that demands my friends and family change their ways for me to be fully present with them. When I do this, the connection I have with them feels like it is built and contingent upon my internalized ableism and their able-bodied privilege. And I hate that. Because I want to be able to be whole with my friends, disabled and able-bodied, while at the same time being whole and connected to myself.


And I felt like I couldn't: that if I wanted to control the space so it was accessible to me, I had to be alone; and if I wanted to be with friends, then I had to just deal with the fact that the space is inaccessible. I felt like I would just have to hold all the ableism, internal and external, inside until I was forced to leave. And I would rarely mention a word about ableism; only say that there were too many people. Saying ableism or lack of access, or not being able to be whole or fully present was too hard. And it still is so fucking hard.



Keeping my lack of access in apolitical terms that don't imply power or privilege has been a way of mentioning there's an issue, but not telling the full truth. Because telling the full truth would mean telling them the ways that I struggle when I'm with them and the truth that I need them to help create access with me. So I tell them that it's too loud or that I need to take a walk or that I'm not feeling like being there and leaving without telling them why. Because I've told my parents what my needs are, repeatedly, and nothing has changed, so by the time I'm dealing with this with friends, I leave, feeling defeated before we begin struggling to create access together.



Last night, I was chatting with my friend Ryan Alley, and we were talking about the idea of creating our bodies and hearts as a home. He said:

"home happens in moments. there are moments when my body is home, moments when i feel home/belonging with other people. but it is a constant struggle, impossible to maintain that feeling of home. it is always moving, shifting."

So I need you to join me in struggling to find ways of interacting and connection that help us resist isolation, to find ways that dismantle the notion that any of our bodies are wrong, inferior, or broken. It is creating the space in which we can talk about what it feels like to be isolated, the pain of not having our access needs met, and defining what our access needs are in the situations we are in. It is holding each other and ourselves accountable for participating in systems of oppression. It is allowing each other to be the complex people we are and giving all of us space for self-care. It is dancing, story-telling, laughing, cooking and traveling with each other. It is being with each other in these ways that can help us create our bodies as home, even if only for a moment. In these moments, we can create relationships that begin to feel like home, like family, like liberation. And recapture it again and again as it shifts.

Check out Mia's blog, Leaving Evidence: www.leavingevidence.wordpress.com

A Heart Should Be a Home

Often I hear the phrase, “home is where the heart is”. It is such a soothing idea, to think that our homes are where are hearts are. To me, this implies that our homes (and therefore our hearts) are safe spaces, spaces where we are comfortable and ultimately a place we can fall back to when other places are too difficult or painful. However, in my experience as a person who is hard-of-hearing and have always used assistive hearing devices to function in the world, I have found that my heart is not my home. I have internalized the idea for such a long time that it is my body that is wrong. That if I don't hear people correctly, or at all, then it is me and my body that is the problem, rather than the culture and the navigation channels of this world are designed for those who are hearing. That being hearing is superior to being hard-of-hearing or deaf, and that deafness is a burden for family and friends. In short, my heart is not my home; but it should be, or at least, be one of them.

But creating this home goes beyond just feeling at home with being hard-of-hearing. Creating this home means that I have to destroy all the systems of privilege and oppression that my body interacts with, not just ableism, like working to dismantle systems of white privilege, male-bodied and masculine privilege, class privilege, and straight privilege. How can I separate class privilege and whiteness from my experiences with ableism when my cochlear implants cost multiple thousands of dollars and the access I have to the medical industrial complex when I choose? Creating this home also creates a space where I can experiment with my gender presentation, and embrace the queer side of me that still is struggling to find its way home too. Because dismantling all of these systems of privilege and oppression and isolation are my desires and dreams; and it would be a lie to to say that they weren't a part of me, of who I aim to be.

So I commit to making my heart, my sense of self, a place that I can call home. At least as much of a home as I possibly can. It can be through acts of self-care, spending time and building community with friends, it can be sitting next to my parent's garden, with my sound processors off and being totally deaf for as long as I feel like. The home gets built from the ruins of the walls and barriers of isolation that get destroyed; like the day that I couldn't join a group of friends to a movie because it would be too hard for me, and they called me to check in and make new plans if that was necessary to feel not left out; coming to the realization that that is how it should be, that being ignored or pitied shouldn't happen. This just goes to show that this is not a process of independence; this is a process of building interdependence, because if what use is having a home if I don't have friends and family to be there with me?

“And as for the false images: we need to name them, transform them, create something entirely new in their place. Something that comes close and finally true to the bone, entering our bodies as liberation, as joy, as fury, as a will to refigure the world.” –Eli Claire, “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness”