Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

S has been out of control lately, beyond anything “usual,” even for her. She’s been consistently mean and violent and screaming. She created a fake ebay account and purchased $400 worth of items, and this has been a nightmare to fix. She is eating whatever she wants at lunch at school, mostly sugar, and refusing to eat the healthy lunches (or, for that matter, suppers) that I make; food has been an issue all along, but it’s really escalated recently. Worst of all, she is showing little remorse for her actions. Every little request turns into a fight. Every boundary is a challenge meant to be broken. Even if she agrees—yes, you’re right, I can’t handle the computer, please take away the keyboard and mouse—the next day she is screaming at me and her college buddy because I’ve taken away the keyboard and mouse. Living in my home has been exhausting. This past Tuesday, things reached a head when she blew up and cussed at a teacher. Up until that point, most of her aggressive behavior had b...

In her poem "Pussy Willow (An Apology)," Susan Mitchell writes of being late to see a friend because she becomes enthralled with pussy willows outside the florist shop on the way. "I had to take off/my gloves, and I would have/taken off my skin//(for why should I put/a barrier between/myself and anything?" she writes, "...because I cannot/keep my hands/off the world/and the world out of my breath." The poem is about how every choice we make to be present with one thing means, necessarily, that we are no longer present with something else. Each hour I'm at work and S is at home, my heart struggles--I want to be with her, but I also want to do my job well, to manage a program that makes a real difference in the community and in students' lives. I'm able, somehow, to keep that larger goal before me when I'm meeting with faculty, students, and community partners, to continue to feel the excitement of the potential results of those meetings (tho...