mika
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Post by mika on Nov 11, 2012 10:32:32 GMT -5
Kay said: (too lazy to quote and delete most of her post) I would love to hear the stories of people's youth and what signs family and caregivers missed, and what they could have done differently, so that little boys like Lana, who struggle with identity, could be helped much earlier than in all the sad stories we hear. - I'm borrowing Mahailia's post to tagalong. I've posted this site before but I really love following the journey of CJ and his family. I'm a little sad that this vibrant little person has started to curb what he really wants out of concern for public reaction - he's five now. I'm glad you were moved by Lana's speech as I was - I was caught by her comment on not liking the term 'transition' and the problems of a society which insists on either/or instead of seeing a spectrum on such identity issues as race, sexuality, gender... Here's the blog I ref'd - much like Lana and Adam, CJ won the 'parent lottery' - so many aren't so lucky to have parents willing or able to be so supportive and to see the world through different eyes for the sake of their child. raisingmyrainbow.com/ |
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Alison
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Post by Alison on Nov 11, 2012 10:35:06 GMT -5
Oh, Sugaree! I am so sorry. I have been through this several times and it is heartbreaking. I am thinking of you and sending you love.
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mika
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Post by mika on Nov 11, 2012 10:36:32 GMT -5
I had to take Shadow on that horrible ride last night. That's all I can see through my tears to type. - So so sorry. many of us have been there and know there is little comfort now when you've lost such a friend and companion --- hugs from afar sweet lady, you and Shadow are in our hearts and thoughts on this day of remembrance. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2012 10:48:35 GMT -5
Oh sugaree. I am so sorry. You were the best owner, and Shadow loved you and had a great life. Farewell to a good, good dog.  |
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mahailia
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Post by mahailia on Nov 11, 2012 10:48:42 GMT -5
I had to take Shadow on that horrible ride last night. That's all I can see through my tears to type. - So so sorry. many of us have been there and know there is little comfort now when you've lost such a friend and companion --- hugs from afar sweet lady, you and Shadow are in our hearts and thoughts on this day of remembrance. ditto above, what mika said. It is so very very sad to loose a beloved pet, I have been there many times. sincere condolenses....... Sending warm hugs your way |
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annala
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Post by annala on Nov 11, 2012 15:34:35 GMT -5
Wow - so many thoughtful posts recently, not only in the Moon Garden, but also on the main thread and the election thread. Usually, I just pop in and out quickly with a brief response or thought, but it was your posting, Mika, of Lana Wachowski that brought me here today. So I'm going to ramble a bit about several things that I have been thinking about lately.
First of all, on Lana. As I've said earlier, I'm probably one of the older posters here, but while I'm getting on in years, my thoughts are as fresh as ever and I'm always looking forward, not backwards. I well remember the time of Christine Jorgensen and all that she had to endure with her highly publized sex change. She was the butt of cruel thoughtless jokes for many years, but what an incredibly brave, courageous, and beautiful person! In my years I have known and met several transgender persons - one was a friend of my ex-husband's, a man becoming a woman who was not able to complete her sex change because of lack of funds. I only knew her as a woman, and I sincerely hope her dilemma has been resolved by now (this was many years ago). Also there was a secretary at my company who worked her way up to become one of the chief admins to one of the high honchos. I was glad for her because she had always been a kind, funny, gentle and thoughtful person. She was out once for a couple of months to repair some old football injuries from her high school days, and it was then that I knew that she was transgender. She was so kind to me when I got caught up in a massive lay-off in our company several years ago - and I continue to think of her as a very special person. And then there are others that I have met - an auto mechanic, an accountant, an electrical engineer - so there are people of all walks of life who go through this, not just persons in the entertainment or fashion industries.
As for my thoughts about Adam - my LA son and I have a mutual friend who knew Adam during the Wicked days, and the friend at that time said that Adam was a great guy, easy to get along with, funny, and humble. At the time I asked this friend that if Adam became successful and famous, did he think that Adam would still retain these qualities - and the friend said yes, he hoped so - and guess what, Adam has retained all these positive qualities - it's who he is and one of the things that make him stand out in the tough entertainment industry. I think I need to give a lot of credit to his parents, Leila and Eber, for their love and support of their two unique sons and keeping them grounded.
As for my own personal "fandom", I don't really have too much to contribute here. I've never met him (not good at playing that radio call-up game), and don't know if I ever will, although I sure would like to. My own immediate family has been mostly supportive (although a bit amused, I think). My LA son is a big fan ever since Gridlock as are a number of his friends, and I like going to concerts with him. My daughter in Arizona is more into other things like Ironman, but she sent me some Adam pictures. Here at home, my son (who is partially disabled) and his wife think that Adam is "good for me" - and even this son said that he might like to try an Adam concert with me sometime (not sure if his back could take it, however). I took one of my grandsons to one of the concerts in SF because he also had been in children's musical theater and I thought he could relate, but it didn't take - that's OK - I appreciate him coming with me, but different strokes for different folks. The one grandkid that I can talk with about Adam is the austistic one, an intelligent young guy but has also gone through his teen years as an outsider and can relate to anyone who feels different. I really don't talk about Adam outside the family (and even here I've cut back on talking Adam at home as much as I used to), however one birder friend knows I'm a big Adam fan. I have an Adam t-shirt (kind of a dorky thing from the Adam Fan Club) that I sometimes wear underneath a sweat shirt - today I wore it to the farmer's market and I've worn it on bird trips up to the Sierras and other places - I've also worn a pair of AL fingerless mitts when gripping boat rails while out whale and bird watching on Monterey Bay- so Adam is always close to me in a kind of subtle way.
So, anyway - those are some of my thoughts for now. I appreciate all that all of you have been posting lately - the internet is still kind of a mind-boggling thing for me in that kindred spirits can connect from all over the world. So my peace and good wishes to all of you!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2012 15:57:59 GMT -5
I am enthralled by the CJ blog, mica. Great insights, mahailia. Certainly, all areas of our society need educating re acceptance of differences and labelling of "acceptable" and non acceptable gender roles. Having worked in pre-k for a long time--albeit in quality accredited schools, I found that it was largely accepting of boys and girls who didn't fit stereotypes. I believe because of the age it was considered "normal" for girls to play with cars and legos, and boys to dress-up and play with dolls etc. And of course all boys did put on the dresses--they were so much more exciting than the neckties, unless they had learned from home that it wasn't right. In fact for valentines day one year we had the kids choose outfits from the dress-up center, we took their pictures and the kids made cards for their parents. There were boys who chose the dresses and necklaces and, although I warned those families, it was widely accepted. They can get away with a lot at 4.
It's when they hit school age that the floodgates of society crash down and take away most of their free thinking. It was in kindergarten where my son learned that pink shouldn't be one of his favorite colors and was told what a gun is (ya know that arguement that you might as well give a boy a toy gun because he will just pretend something else is a gun if you don't? Wrong!).
Now, the thing is that if you have any experience with multiple children, you know that there is a difference between the sexes. I love the idea of it being a spectrum though. So, my question really is, not how do help kids feel normal but how and when do you acknowledge their differences from the norm? If they are feeling them then why not address them? You know how Adam's mom always tells how she was advised to not say anything to Adam about her suspicions re his sexuality. Well, what if she had? Wouldn't that have been easier for him even if he was still searching in himself?
Adam has changed my parenting, the most obvious being that I've discussed my opinion about homosexuality with my kids, at age 9. They don't even know what sexuality is but they have been watching Cinderella for a long time now so I thought I would tell them about Adam. I caught them after the kids at school had taught them that gay was a derogatory word but before they knew what it meant.
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lynne
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Post by lynne on Nov 11, 2012 19:40:04 GMT -5
Yesterday after school a former student came by and asked me if she could show me her college application essay. I was a bit filled with dread as I hate editing and giving feedback on those, lol, but she has always been one of my very favorite girls, so I told her that of course I would read her essay. As I read, I quickly came to understand that she didn't want me to critique her essay; she just wanted me to hear her story. The prompt was to write something about an ethical/moral decision, and this girl had chosen to write about her experience with another former student who left our all girl's school at 16 when she decided to come out as transgender and identify as a male rather than a female. Apparently, last year my student asked this student to the prom but was subsequently told by the administration that he could not attend the prom with her. She was given various reasons not related to his sexual identity, but she felt they were excuses. I looked up to see tears in her eyes as she told me that because she knew she could not win the battle, and because she loved the school and didn't want to leave it, she had acquiesced. She considered staying home from the prom in silent protest, but in the end, she chose to attend the prom by herself. We talked about fighting battles and change and institutions and ethics and learning and growing and influencing others. What I was left with is an even stronger realization that young people today are changing and are being real and are speaking out- and that soon more and more of their generation will be voting, and they will be voting for change and for civil rights. Kay's Adam discussion brought me out of my semi-lurking mode. I have spent the last twenty-five years of my life being fairly balanced between work, kids, husband, friends and creative pursuits, but I am realizing more and more that my "balance" was all a carefully constructed and orchestrated wheel that rolled along effectively when I was raising my children. I needed boundaries to be in place so that I didn't ignore any one piece of the pie for too long. When my children left, I felt the freedom to dive in to things, and I did. Adam came along and I dove right in and ended up down a delightful rabbit hole with so many interesting others. I learned all kinds of new things. Recently, I started to feel I was getting out of balance in Adamland, so I decided to put more of my energy into creative pursuits and work. What happened? I dove in and ended up in more fascinating rabbit holes of a different nature there. I'm starting to think that my kids are the ones who kept me balanced in life, and that by nature I am just a diver. I am really passionately interested in the few things that I am interested in, and anything else, apparently not so much, lol. Fortunately, my family members always interest me, and most anything i am doing gets put down when they are around as that is more of a rarity these days. Even better, ironically, I married a man who is interested in everything, and so he is quite content to hear me go on about all of the above. By the way, I have met Adam, and I can honestly say that as we talked briefly, I felt very quietly connected with him, the way I do sometimes rarely with certain people I meet. He is very real, and when he looked at me, I felt like he thought that I was real, too. My daughter, a very sane non fan, lol, who genuinely loved his acoustic radio show, felt the same way when they talked. That was all, and don't worry, I don't feel a need to repeat the experience.  |
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Holst
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Post by Holst on Nov 11, 2012 21:09:29 GMT -5
Oh, Sugaree, so sorry. I thought of you today while reading the old TWOP thread that Catz posted last night. Back in 2009 there was a post by someone with the name ShadowsMom (I think that was it). I thought of you--maybe that was you--and I wondered how Shadow was doing. It is very painful to lose pets.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2012 8:08:43 GMT -5
This post is inspired by some questions raised in the Moon garden: do we feel the need to justify our Adam obsession (and to whom: to others, to ourselves or both) and if so, why.
I did feel the need to justify it, to myself mostly, and very briefly. For there I was, sidetracked from actively participating in my life, focusing on achieving my goals, progressing - and as we all know, that’s what any respectable citizen of the 21st century world must do, just go, go, go! – allowing myself to stop for a while, to smell the flowers. To appreciate the moment of Adam’s and my timelines intersecting. I found myself ‘stopping by woods on a snowy evening’, enchanted by their beauty, and those miles I had to go before I sleep suddenly looked sparklier.
So any doubts were brushed off by en elegant swipe of my determined mind. Especially if observing and appreciating are not passive, like so:
If I had to coolly assess what makes Adam worthy of my keen interest, the first thing on that list would be his message, the one that keeps echoing from his lifestyle and his music ( his life and art and character : all the love, tolerance, fun, work ethics, friendship, joy, respect, acceptance, perseverance, focus, courage, wit, imagination, talent, open-mindedness, warmth, novelty, freshness, loyalty, dedication, determination, fluidity, etc). To remain on the cool side here, I will not call it a philosophy, but that is how it feels. For his message is so deep and so impressive that it is worthy of that title. It makes people do and change, and that is how this role we are taking stops being passive – if we apply what we soak to our own lives, we are actively interacting with him and his art becomes applied. AA stands for Applied Adam, not Adamholics Anonymous for me.
In addition to that, we have learned so much; to quote Midwifespal here:
I couldn't begin to catalogue everything I've learned over the last four years following this man. About pop music. About alt. music. About social media. About the role of the internet. About gay culture. About singing. About the entertainment business. About L.A. About fashion. About twitter. About kale. About Finland. About Halloween. About Kiev and Amsterdam and Kansas City and Toronto and Cape Town and Wroclaw (and how to pronounce it) and Queen and David Bowie and glam rock and electronic dance music and dub-step and and and and and. I've just been like a sponge.
This list has a pretty damn long et cetera, the most important three for me being - making friends, improving my English and virtual, since I cannot have real, travelling.
Shockingly, the last on my list is my mind’s high appreciation for the audio/visual stimuli Adam has to offer. It would be ludicrous not to stop and acknowledge that, because such a package does not come so often in this Universe. Having been able to enjoy that is a treat, not a trick:). Admiring, trying to understand and appreciating Adam is something I see as my strength, not my weakness, my victory, not defeat.
So this is how I justify my love for Adam, to quote his favourite diva, although , in spite of me abundantly using the word ‘love’ in connection to him here, I would not say that I really do love him. Admire, respect and appreciate would be truer. ILHSFM is just a convenient, fangirly outlet for my frequent and intense Adam-coloured moments. And as far as justifying it to others goes, I still did not feel the need to do so.
ETA - I forgot to add that it is not without significance that at this moment in my life I feel accomplished and confident enough to allow myself the luxury of Adam. I deserved it, damn it:)))
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