Change is never easy.

I know how fast information travels these days, so you have probably heard about the changes coming. I want to take a few moments to convey the truth for myself, as well as to share both the joy and the multitude of puzzling emotions that go with any change. To get to the point (something I’m not famous for doing), I will be leaving Santé in June. Yes, it’s true -- my time there has come to an end. This is the culmination of nearly eighteen months of confusion, challenges, resistance, mediation and bargaining. I am going to make a change.

SantéCenter for Healing has been a part of my life since before it opened. My journey into psychiatry began, primarily, because I was told I could NOT join Rip and Deb Corley in their work at Millwood Hospital in Arlington, Texas. The reason: I was not a psychiatrist. Soon afterwards, the Corleys left Millwood and settled into Charter Hospital of Dallas, alongside the Trauma Program run by Dr. Colin Ross. Being able to look to two of my favorite areas of work, led by experts in the same building, was a tremendous opportunityfor me, as I entered my residency.

Two months before I was to migrate to Dallas to complete the last two months of my psychiatry training in these two programs, Rip called to tell me that the contract had been cancelled; a big chain like Charter could no longer treat .” My plans were already in place, and I had procured my license, so I headed to Dallas anyway. I bunked in the spare room at Rip’s Dallas home. Many evenings were spent on parallel sofas, watching TV. I watched as Rip mused over a real estate prospectus on a place called “The Argyle.” It was a dream of his. A little over a year and a half later, that property would become SantéCenter for Healing and Rip’s dream would begin to come true.

Much has changed in the nearly fifteen years that have followed. I remember fondly those days of three or four patients, and of moving to that first magic hallmark of eleven patients. What a celebration that was! After roughly eighteen months as the first Medical Director at Santé, my time to move on came about. For the next four years, I followed my heart and the path ahead of me through three hospitals and back to Millwood, where it all started.

In 2002, I became intensely aware that my time of AcuteInpatientHospital work was about done (probably way past “about” done!). I bid farewell to that chapter in my life and walked away with the fulfillment of one dream, towards another. Early in 2003, Rickey Dovers and Dennis Wade had dinner with me to discuss the possibility of joining the Santé Team again, directing the development of an Eating Disorders program. It sounded pretty workable -- I began visiting Santé two half days a week. The next spring, Dr. Richard Prather migrated out of Santé, leaving a vortex that pulled me into not only the Medical Directorship, but also into the leadership of the Professionals Program. No longer filling a ten to twelve hour a week position, I began to make the trip to Santé three times a week. The split became too much and, in 2008, I closed my office in Dallas and finished my transplantation to Argyle.

During the last fifteen years, I have learned to present in PowerPoint and traveled to multiple conferences a year, usually presenting something at the majority of them (me and my big mouth!) In the process, I found that I had learned a few things that others wanted to share. I was now an “expert.” (Expert defined as "Having a PowerPoint presentation and being more than 50 miles from home!) I have been forced to learn to do so many things, many of them things I never realized I never thought I could do.

Santé has changed a lot in the last eight years. We have gone from a center with an average census in the lower twenties to an average census in the upper thirties. In fact, there have been times when all forty-six beds have been filled, and we had a waiting list. Rip “retired” and placed the program in the hands of the management team. In this process, Deb (at Rip's direction) challenged Ron and me to fill the gap. Since that challenge, Rip passed away. He took with him encyclopedic knowledge of what Santé does and how to do it, but The Team has picked up the ball and run with it. Santé has become more than any of us dreamed. As I look back on my journey to make a decision to leave, I see how much I have been torn between doing something I absolutely love to do with remarkable people, spending therest of my career with ease and comfort, as opposed to daring to look at a new vista, and a broader, uncharted horizon.

Somewhere in the last few years, a subtle tide began to turn. For several years, at the advice of some people I trust explicitly, I have answered calls from “head hunters” in psychiatry. This has allowed me to practice interviewing for a job – something I had NEVER done in my entire career. In 2010, more than a couple of offers began to raise new questions. One changed my thinking. This involved the request to envision my career in five years, and say what I would really like to have accomplished. Without permission, my mouth spoke a Truth I had not really embraced – “I would like to have taught five people what I know and how to do what I do.”
Suddenly, my entire horizon changed, forcing me to think in new terms and to see from a new perspective. I wanted to write, to teach and to grow within myself. I joined with Santéand with our best effort, these results didn't materialize. I found one consistent problem - I had woven myself into virtually every aspect ofSanté. The more I pulled back, the more I found I did not know how to remove my time and energy from any single part of the process. At this point, the prospect of letting go completely and starting again elsewhere became enticing.

That horizon began to broaden with the invitation by Dr. Carnes to translate my “sermon” on Post-Acute Detox and Detox as a Physiological Process into a workbook for people struggling with the first phase of Detox. While closely related, his offer has been independent of the invitation to explore a new career move, and that creation is still in process. As the option to begin a new venture became real, I was approached by PineGroveHospital to consider working with them. The possibility of working in tandem with Dr. Carnes and the staff there, initially, had a bit of a magical allure. Playing on that, the process began though it could not entice me to consider more than a passing fantasy in that iteration. As the year progressed, however, their interest became more intense and the opportunity began to become more feasible and to show some possibilities I had not considered. After some intense work and a long standoff, the fantasy began to materialize.

Beginning late in June, I will begin to “commute” to Hattiesburg, MS to begin my venture with PineGroveHospital and the Gentle Path Program. One of the aspects of this change that has drawn me is that, free of the responsibilities of the Medical Directorship, I will be able to embrace the task of creating new components of the program with the staff, helping to publish the data they have gathered there. While I will spend the majority of time with the program treating sexual addiction, I will continue to treat chemical dependency and other addictive processes, since my true “love” is the poly-addiction model – “An addiction is an addiction is an addiction.” I will spend three days a week in Hattiesburg, committing another significant period each week to writing and program development. The remainder of my time will be focused on work I have had on the back burner. All this, while doing what I enjoy!

This has not been an easy decision. I am aware that it stands to create a huge upheaval in my life. After all, my life has been well-contained in many ways for much of the time I’ve been at Santé. However, just as my thumbprints are all over it, Santé has become woven into the fabric of my life. I have had the gift of walking sacred journeys with incredible people, and being handed trust that goes beyond words. Santé has been the platform for me to grow and develop personally, as well. I can never express the depth of gratitude to the Corleys (and George Straw), the staff with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working, and, most of all, the patients who have touched my life and my heart in so many ways.

I am leaving Santé as it turns a page in its own history. Change and growth have been afoot for some time. I deeply grieve leaving before the physical expansion and program growth are completed. The staff has not yet finished fully integrating the hours and days of training in the CSAT course and its nuances into the program. The experience of that training has been an amazing one for all of us. New people, new programs, and new processes that will make huge differences in the already strong and successful treatment program at Santé are moving into place. These things will be the “bar” against which my future will be measured. That will not be easy for others!

No doubt, many conjectures and assumptions will be conjured up from the ethers. Most of them will be very entertaining and far from the truth. I am making this move because it is the "blinding flash of the obvious" in terms of my future. This has been a pairing of tremendous excitement and possibility with a huge sense of loss. However, this has been one filled with a very deep sense of serenity. I have been challenged by my life to actually DO all those things I preach, such as surrender, ask for help, and relax and take a deep breath while I wait for the answer. They truly do work.

At the end of March, the weekend of the “Supermoon,” I went to one of my favorite places – Golden Willow Retreat in Arroyo Hondo, NM. I asked my good friend, Ted Wiard, to let me be there to be in a spiritual place to listen quietly. I had an unsigned contract from Pine Grove and a lunch date with Deb. One of those two would end the weekend in disappointment. With the help of a bit of silence, a prayer labyrinth, and a Native American time of prayer and contemplation, I was able to find clarity in my heart. Shortly thereafter, I stumbled on a quote by Anaïs Nin: “And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (I never cease to be amazed when the “answer” lands in my lap, if I have the wisdom to simply sit with a question!)

I will not be disappearing. I will, of necessity, make some dramatic changes in my private practice. I will continue to live in Denton and to have my anchor here with my family and friends. Unfortunately, bilocation has not become a skill of mine. Thus, the reality is clear that I will have to let go of some things on which I have had a vice grip of control. I will be discussing with any and all my patients how that can and will affect their continued care. I know many of you have heard me say, “I’m grandiose enough to think that I do it better than anyone else, and realistic enough to know that this is not true.” Those words are haunting me these days! Regardless, I want exactly what I hope I’ve provided – that each patient continue to have the very best possible treatment and care. We will find the new version of that care.

In closing, I want to be sure that I have thanked each and every person who has entrusted their bodies, minds, and souls to the treatment process of which I have been a part. You gave me trust, when I had not earned it. You allowed me to share in your journey into places you had either never been or had sworn you would never go. Without knowing it, you embraced the notion that I could walk through that dark place with you, and that we would both come through touched only by healing. My time at Santé has been an unbroken series of very special journeys, some of them miraculous and all filled with gifts along the way. I can never express my true gratitude. In the words from Wicked:The Musical, "youwill truly be with me,

“like a handprint on my heart….

and whatever way our story ends,

I know you have rewritten mine,...” by being a part of my life.

Please stay in touch and keep me posted about the ups and downs of your lives.

Celebrating the Winter Solstice!

Happy Winter Solstice! Nature celebrated this difficult year for many by arranging a Lunar Eclipse as the Earth began it's turn toward light. Regardless of how dark or cold (or, in Dallas, how hot) these bleak days are, all we have to do is keep waking up to new days that will be a tad brighter. No night will be as long as last night.

This has been a particularly difficult year for many people who have crossed my path. In the last months, many close to me have lost loved ones, weathered anniversaries of other losses and made transitions that were very hard. As hard as I try, I still tend to ask, "How much more can they endure?" A quiet voice inside me responds, "Only as much as they have strength to stand."

For many, this year has been like a cold, hard, emotional winter that doesn't seem to end. I have no doubt that, in those darkest, most frigid nights, the sense that it will never end cannot be ignored. When these moments come for me, I am usually reminded of the amazing winter of the tulip. Buried in the soil, beneath the snow and in the dry, hard ground, the bulb lies dormant. I would imagine that, if it could think it like we do, it would probably ruminate as it faded into dormancy, something like, "I'm never going to survive this! It's too cold." Yet, it is that very dormancy that prepares the bulb to explode into flower when spring and the equinox approach. Without the dormancy, it would be a lovely blade, if it grew at all.

Today is the instant in which all that begins to shift. At an imperceptible creep, the days will gradually become longer and the nights shorter. Though we have many days of snow and freezing weather ahead, Nature has begun its journey to Spring. Today, somewhere in the Energy of Nature, a celebration has begun. I have a friend in the Northeast who has horses. This has been a torturous year for her. She shared with many of us recently that, in the grind of routine horse care, she was brushing the day's layers of dirt from the horses, when she noticed that she was coming up with hair that was shedding. This was not alarming, though. It is time. One of her horses always begins shedding on or about the Solstice. Even before the deepest of winter and the heaviest of snows, they begin preparing to shed their coat and run free in the spring grass and warmth. In a moment of heartache and loss, she stumbled onto nature's "postcard" to remind her that the world is turning towards hope.

I know it doesn't make the cold any less chilling and the short days ahead feel any longer. Yet, being reminded that the Universe is moving forward into Spring is a thought that brings something comfortable and warm to mind. It is, in a way, a reminder that we can get lost in the chill and pain of our Emotional Winter. In a subtle way, the Lunar Eclipse adds the message that the darkness of night is temporary. Just as the changes on the moon are not the result of the moon becoming dark or red, but because the Earth gets in the way of the Sun. Likewise, we often cannot see that our natural, normal emotional "orbit" is the very thing that takes away the light and blocks the reflection of hope in our lives.

Combining this image with the message of the Solstice, we can't help be reminded that we can't change these facts. Our "orbit" is carefully designed and perfectly in place, whether we feel it or not. (Remember, a shift of just about 6 degrees, yes, a mere six degree shift in the axis of the Earth's rotation would freeze or fry the earth and wipe us all out!) If we will just feel the pull of Hope keeping us in that balance, the cold may just be a bit easier to tolerate.

So, grab a cup of something warm and find a fire or a comforter or someone you love and feel the warmth that comes from within each. Be reminded that the path toward Spring just started unfolding before you. If it is still well hidden in the "snow" of emotions and darkness, be patient and gentle. Even if it means a bit of emotional dormancy and stillness. Nature has shifted and done so with a display of grandeur.

It's old (though some may have not heard it!) and maybe a bit tired, but take a moment and think of the words Amanda McBroom, sung by Bette Midler and find some peace:

Just remember in the winter

Far beneath the bitter snow

Lies the seed

That with the sun's love, in the spring

Becomes the rose.

Happy Holidays, including the Winter Solstice!

(BTW, check out the story behind "The Rose." http://theroselyrics.com/ )

This is a repeat performance, but I think it bears repeating! Just Follow Rudolph!

Just Follow Rudolph!


I have to give full credit for these thoughts to Reverend Leo Booth, who is a colleague, friend and inspiration in some of my more whimsical moments of healing, as well as one of those who manages to remind me that spirituality is at the heart of everything we do!

Yesterday, Pere Leo was working with our folks at the Residential Center and inspired them all with his interpretation of "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer." I am taking the liberty to share it in the Christmas Spirit. So, here is my interpretation of his interpretation one of the world's favorite Christmas myths (that he reminded me was probably a Polar version of "The Ugly Duckling" and others!)

We all went to school with Dasher (the Athlete/Cheerleader) and Dancer (the Track Star/Ballet Dancer), Prancer (the "Too Good Ones" who never talked to us) and Vixen (need I say more?) , Comet (the one we never could measure up to) and Cupid (our true "first love" -- the one we never even made eye contact with), Donder (the one who would tolerate us and talk to us in class, but never sit near us on the bus) and Blitzen (the one who tortured us with taunts and pokes that hurt more in our hearts than on our arms and legs). We WERE Rudolph. We were a little bit different. Sure, they let us INTO the Reindeer games...as the water carrier or time keeper. If we were really lucky (meaning they were desperate), we got to play right field. If we told the same joke they told, nobody laughed. If we had the right answer, they convinced us it was wrong.

Many of us grew up to be different in other ways. Maybe we had a secret life. We saw ourselves as waaay too fat or waaaay too skinny and never did understand what others saw. What we saw in the mirror never matched. We starved or had surgery after surgery. We walled ourselves up in our room or on the other side of town using drugs or on the internet or shopping.

Perhaps, we found that a few drinks made us "different" or more like them. They laughed at our jokes. They let us stumble into the parties. Yet, we were still different. We didn't stop. We gave them MORE stories at which to laugh. We heard about dancing on the tables and barfing in the fountain. We made it OK because we were AT the party and, after all, we didn't remember it any way.

As the years passed, though, we still ended up on the sidelines. They ended up calling us more and different names -- "Drunk" "Druggie." "Addict." "Annie Rexic." "Pervert." The list goes on. If we were lucky, we hid in the back of the crowd and tried to stay "like" the others, even though our hidden, painful lives became more and more hidden and painful.

Then, one Special Eve, in the midst of our fog, many times lost in the woods of our secret, painful lives, a Messenger comes to call.
"Rudolph, with your Nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Perhaps, this messenger isn't exactly Santa Clause. It may be a brick wall...literally. The one the car runs into or the back wall of the jail. It may be Homeland Security knocking on the door in SWAT gear. It may be our family circling the living room with letters written in hand for our intervention. It may be the cameras and crew of "Intervention" filming our lives without us figuring out that it is about our disease and us going to treatment. It may be THAT headache or the one time the money ran out or the one time the purging didn't work or whatever. Regardless, the Messenger is that thing, person, event in our lives that invites us to wake up, find our inner calling and move to the front of the herd.

Recovery isn't an easy journey. Embracing our very "defect" as the gift that makes us who we are and using it to bring gifts to others is the heart of why there's a "We" in the whole Recovery process. The cartoon doesn't show how very, very difficult it must have been for Rudolph to walk to the front of the line, past all those "Superstars" that had laughed at him, put him down, shamed him, and invited him to feel so worthless and useless for all those years. He looks so cute and innocent and happy in the images. Could he possibly trust that he would not be criticized, jeered, taunted and laughed at again. Shouldn't he watch to make sure there were no reindeer pellets in the midst of the confetti and ticker tape in the parade? How could he just forget all those years and all those times he looked in the mirror and ONLY saw that HUGE, RED, FLASHING nose? Isn't that all they saw? What about the huge burden of leading the very crew that had thrown him under the bus so very many times? That need to do it perfectly must have been immense! Surely, he would mess it up like he had done with every high fly to right field! Would Santa forget and hail, "On, Dasher and Dancer....(You know the rest)!" and forget to mention Rudolph. (If Santa is a parent, like I am, he'll forget at least one or mess up and call "...Blonder and Ditzen..." or something else at least once a Christmas Eve!).

Regardless, like Santa, Recovery is a call for us to step to the front, be ourselves and let the gifts that are within us shine. The pain of our past, the struggle of Recovery, and the reality that life is neither fair, nor easy, are all part of the Message. Rudolph didn't have to make the toys, check the list, pack the sleigh, feed the other reindeer, map out the route and figure out the weather. He just had to let that silly red nose shine and be the littlest reindeer at the front of the team, leading the way. (He also did not get to look over his shoulder and make sure that the other reindeer were eating his dust and their "crow." That was the job of the Messenger!)

It's hard work keeping our red noses polished, our eyes on the road ahead, staying balanced in our brief landings on rooftops and mountaintops, and just getting through the nights. On top of that, like Rudolph, we never know if all the gifts go where we think they should. We just let our light shine, do our job and move on. We never really know if all the joy we hope for comes to fruition. However, the reality is that the Messenger knows the List, having checked it twice without our ever seeing it, and just calls us to do our job with our silly red noses.

If we are painstaking in keeping our noses clean, we get to play in ALL the reindeer games and more. Life becomes a joy-filled journey, free of the burdens and baggage that we collected in all those years, when we believed our own fairy tales about how defective we were. The fear that pierced us when the Messenger called us no longer plagues us and sends us running. We are called upon over and over to just be ourselves. Things we never imagined can become real!

Whether the Messenger is one of painful reality or one that would have angels sing in the night or little oil lamps burn for eight days or any of the other wonderful traditions that carry us through this time of year into the light, may the light of a little red nose burn brightly in your mirror and challenge you to move to the front of the Team and be precisely what you were created for!

Just Follow Rudolph!

Thanks, Father Leo and Happy Holidays!

Recovery is a Wellspring of Resilience

(That's not really a bumper sticker like I usually make them, but it is a title that, as a bumper sticker would certainly bring about questions. To Marty and Janis - Thanks for the support and patience....I think! ;-) )

Recently, I had the privilege of attending the inaugural meeting of the Canadian Federation of Physicians Health Programs in Vancouver, BC. I have “borrowed” a phrase that was used repeatedly during that conference for my title. In its best practice, Recovery is a “wellspring of resilience.” I strongly agree and have experienced that. However, the Conference this week challenged me to look deeper into this concept.

How do I define “resilience”? Often, especially in the first years of Recovery, resilience seems to be relegated to the capacity to return to some magical baseline when the realities of life, addiction and Recovery knock us down. This is both true and dangerous. For one early in Recovery, the satisfaction found in NOT losing ground is, indeed, not only a major source of serenity but also one of the earliest evidences of “The Promises.” These moments of connecting with a sense of success are both useful and essential mile markers to note, claim and collect. They must not be lost. However, they are only the groundwork of building the foundation of recovery.

I believe that a key word here is “wellspring.” Taken to its fullest extent, Recovery is a source of unlimited, unrestricted growth, renewal and serenity, even in times of chaos and struggle. This requires that our entire perspective on Recovery have a paradigm of health and wellness. In order to do this, I am learning over and over that we have to reframe the entire course of our journey.

First, we have to begin to see the powerless and unmanageability as opportunity, invitation and, in essence, gift. While it is easy to celebrate the escape from the prison of addiction, many times, the pain, grief and loss of moving through the first five of the Twelve Steps cast a dark shadow on those years and events. In addition, the arduous task of turning the tide of the chaos, damage and devastation. Many times, we rely on the Serenity Prayer as though it was a magical incantation that would send out a host of sparkles to convert life into a colorful place of comfort and peace. Not so! It is only a reminder to pause in the struggle, assess the battles into which we pour our energy and know that our true empowerment comes from Acceptance. In reality, it is very difficult to find a gift in the process of wading out of the middle of the swamp in which we seem to have landed. The concept of a Wellspring of Resilience requires that we see the journey through the muck and mud of the swamp of unmanageability as an escape to a better place. That is precisely when we need to view “The Promises” as somewhat of a “postcard” from the mythical land to which we are headed, not the result that is expected to arrive in a moment.

Second, when we accept that Life itself is not a static, stale event, but an ongoing process, we can see the invitation to move through whatever current circumstances Recovery leads into our laps as a part of the process. If we can make this next shift, we can begin to see both Life and Recovery as a journey. Not only does this allow us to shift out of trying to “pass” the twelve tasks with some mystical “good grade,” but to see the Twelve Steps as a fluid process along which we flow back and forth, repeating components of each step each day. Thus, Life becomes a journey, filled with twists, turns, valleys, mountains, deserts, swamps, oceans, and plains. All of them are filled with unique forms of beauty, danger, serenity, and excitement. Our task is to keep moving on the journey, following the Higher Stars before us, within us and around us.

Finally, if we remain in contact with our Spiritual Center, having a sense of being guided along this journey, we develop a new understanding of “The Promises.” This understanding is not one that we “learn,” but one that we “come to know.” It’s a strange sense and experience, very difficult to explain. Much like height, maturity, gray hair and wrinkles, this “knowing” just seems to show up one day. We don’t see it coming and can’t force it to happen. It just comes. If we focus on the journey, the excitement, exhilaration, loss and healing and growth around us, we are able to be present on our journey and see that it is truly an Adventure. Doing so does not make the difficult times any easier. What it does is allows us to tap into that “Source” or Wellspring of Resilience that allows us not only to continue on the Adventurous Journey, but to rise above it. In doing so, we become guides and supports for others, almost inadvertently. (I believe that spontaneous, soaring experience is something reserved for the last of the Twelve Steps – Service. Yet, while the spontaneous experience “arrives” in the Twelfth Step, Service throughout Recovery is a key part of the foundation of sound recovery!)

What a wonderful Promise – if we just keep doing what is in front of us and be of service, the Source will be there! However, the concept of a Wellspring of Resilience is also an active process. Much like a spring of water, the wellspring of Recovery requires constant revisiting and attention. Without water, we dehydrate and die. In fact, without daily water (which we rarely drink in adequate amounts – recommended at ½ ounce per pound per day), our performance declines and our function is compromised. This has been tested in many venues. We would do well to pay attention to this as a concept in Recovery. We must constantly support and replenish our mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, vocational, and relational health, wellbeing and resilience.

The Wellspring of Resilience that is Recovery is available to us all every day. However, we must go to it, partake of it, and pause to allow it to nourish us, fill us and guide us. Here’s the catch – it lies deep within us, all around us, and, in most cases, can only be accessed through those who guide us.

Here’s hoping your journey is challenging, wonderful, and all that is promised!

(Half-fast apology - the first version of this went out as a comment in the Sante Center for Healing Quarterly Newsletter. Due to deadlines, it was imperfect - You're welcome, Marty - and I noticed some changes I wanted to make. So...here they are, in this format!)

Recovery is A Wellspring of Resilience

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

That's all I have to say. I have at least 4 posts started and not "perfectly" edited ....a.k.a. - finished. Somehow, this grandfatherly brain runs out of gas before my creative spirit can conquer them. I WILL write. I WILL! I WILL! I WILL!

Thanks for patience!

A Word From Me

I have this problem....so many of the thoughts that I have in my head just refuse to jump onto this blog. I hope the folks that keep showing up as little red dots on the map won't give up and stop coming back. (I never know, since there are no comments!!!) I write bits and pieces and Life seems to keep getting in the way of the rest of the words getting on the cyberpaper. Keep coming back and I'll promise to keep thinking and keep adding as I can. There are so very many bumper sticker lessons out there! I learn one from the gifts in my life virtually every day. I'm hoping that this pseudo apology will encourage you and me to keep this going!

Thanks!

Not a Bumper Sticker, but some Thoughts....

June 28 marks the 40th Anniversary of the Riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Many people have no idea what this is. Just like many people may have no idea what the Suffragettes were or what the March across the Bridge in Selma, Alabama was about. (Ask Senator John Lewis about that one. He was there and has a skull fracture to show for it.) Each of these represent two things, in my view - moments when a marginalized people stepped out of the margin, marring the neatness of history and moments when the course of history was changed forever.

According to Wikipedia, that modern day icon of wisdom, "Suffragette is a term originally coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for the more radical and militant members of the late-19th and early-20th century movement for women's suffrage..." It was coined in the United Kingdom and migrated to the United States. Yes, there were "radical and militant" women who actually once wanted the right to vote! Can you imagine that? How preposterous!

The march in Selma, occurred on Sunday, March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday." It was a march to protest the prohibition of the African American right to vote. Mary Stanton wrote in , FROM SELMA TO SORROW: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo (University of Georgia Press, 2000), "The marches drastically shifted public opinion about the Civil Rights movement as a whole. The images of Alabama law enforcement beating the nonviolent protesters were shown all over the country and the world by the cameras of television networks and newspapers. The visuals of such brutality being carried out by the state of Alabama helped shift the image of the segregationist movement from one of a movement trying to preserve the social order of the South to a system of state endorsed terrorism against those non-whites."

Here's an adaptation of the Stonewall story from "GLBTQ Social Sciences" Web Page:

Friday, June 27, 1969 found the world mourning the death of gay icon Judy Garland. In the early morning hours of June 28, police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a small bar located on Christopher Street in New York City's Greenwich Village. Although mafia-run, the Stonewall, like other predominantly gay bars in the city, got raided by the police periodically. Typically, the more "deviant" patrons (that is, drag queens and butch lesbians, especially if they were "colored") would be arrested and taken away in a paddy wagon, while white, male customers looked on or quietly disappeared. The raid began in time-honored fashion, as plainclothes and uniformed police officers entered the bar, arrested the employees, and began ejecting the customers one by one onto the street. But for some reason, the crowd that had gathered outside the Stonewall, a crowd that began to cheer each time a patron emerged from the bar, soon changed its mood. Perhaps it was Judy Garland's death, or the summer heat, or the fact that police had been especially busy that summer raiding bars and patrons had become angry and frustrated. Or possibly it was the sight of several drag queens being forced into a paddy wagon. Whatever it was, the on-lookers lost their patience.

As to who threw the first punch, accounts are contradictory. Some say it was a drag queen who initially defied the police, while others claim it was a butch lesbian. The crowd, now several hundred people, erupted and began pelting the officers with coins, which represented the payoffs gay bars had to make to the police to stay in business, then moved to stones and bottles. The police, surprised by and unused to such resistance from patrons of gay bars, beat those they could reach with nightsticks, but eventually were forced to take refuge by locking themselves inside the Stonewall Inn.

This single event brought a population that has been documented for thousands of years, remained hidden, "closeted" and oppressed, into the mainstream, in essence, likely short-circuiting the AIDS epidemic and thrusting medical research into a new century. (Think where we might have been if nobody had ever heard of gay rights twenty years ago, when HIV became an epidemic and had not been forced from the recesses of the shadows into the streets, media and limelight. Thank heavens for those drag queens and that crowd!)

In March, I visited New York City for the first time. Since I had worked all week, I had Saturday afternoon off and had an opportunity to "see the city" with a friend, who also happened to be in town. We planned a trip down to Greenwich Village and to the Hudson, to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and the river where the plane landed. We would eat dinner and visit Rockefeller Plaza, walk through Times Square, and end with a walk in lower Central Park.

Yep, that's the Hudson and the Statue of Liberty in the haze in the background!

As we walked back from the Hudson River (where Picture 1 was taken, showing the Statue of Liberty in the haze in the background!), Marc suggested that we cross the street and walk over to the Stonewall Inn. It seemed only fitting. Hence, Picture 2.

The Stonewall Inn -- Remarkably unremarkable to have changed history, isn't it?

So, why am I writing about this momentous occasion. Well, yes, I do support the cause of the GLBT movement. Yes, I do believe this was a monumental occasion. However, I think the more important point is the reminder that, once again, it was the troublemakers, the odd, the marginalized that brought about change, revolution and the freedoms that we all take for granted today.

I firmly believe my mother would have been a Suffragette. It was women like her who wrestled the right to vote from affluent, educated Caucasian men. After all, she had the wherewithall to obtain two unrelated Masters Degrees in 1942, to have the absolute audacity to not only continue teaching in an academic institution after she married, but also to return after she had each of her 4 children (which, BTW, she insisted on nursing when she was rather aggressively told by the medical experts that her babies would not grow up normal without being fed formula! Tell that to our 97 years of higher education!) It was the marchers in Selma who began the movement that wrestled the right to vote, live, marry, and be human from a Caucasian majority. Today, my family is about as "conspicuous" as they come! We are not only multi-racial, but multicultural, mutlilingual and multi-just-about-everything-else! When I was in grade school (and I'm NOT THAT old), my extended family would have had to eat in separate dining rooms, use separate restrooms and water fountains, and may have even been arrested! I have godchildren who would have been considered illegitimate because their parents could not have legally been married an any state in the union!

Far more importantly, I want us all to pause for a moment and ask what just may be in the air. Once again, a growing number of issues are being raised by a marginalized population. They center on the right to live, love, work, and be treated like human beings. These are not questions about sex any more than Suffrage and Civil Rights were about sex, corporate takeovers, destroying any institutions, or contaminating any aspcts of humanity. I remember the arguments in my eighth and ninth grade class that allowing "blacks" to marry "whites" would lead to a "gray" race and the ruination our future. It hasn't happened. Nor, has the 49 to 52% failure rate of marriage significantly changed in states that allow same sex civil unions (or whatever they choose to call them). The earth has not opened up and swallowed America because we have a President who is not Caucasian in ancestry.

Stonewall, Selma and Suffragettes remind us that we are all human. We live on a planet that has abundant resources, space, and creativity. While we cannot all have everything, but we can all have enough. Until we learn that the way to access this abundance is NOT to take something away from another, but to give freely and to find ways to creatively spread around what we do have.

Is it such an unreal vision of the future that, one day, our history books may not be earmarked by our conflicts, wars and fights, but by our successes. That we may not record milestones in terms of deaths, but lives saved. That we may not record geographic boundaries in terms of who destroyed whom to get to the top of the heap, but how many lives were enhanced and enlightened, how many mouths were fed and how many heads received shelter. That power may be defined not in terms of money, weapons, and potential for destruction, but in terms of how far arms are outstretched. That Peace may not be defined as the absence of war, but the persistence of a world filled with satiated appetites, warm slumber, dry shelter, and safe drink in time of thirst.

Am I a dreamer? I hope so. Then, I can walk in the margins with other greats: Like those radical militant women who got my daughters, nieces, great nieces and granddaughters the right to vote without even thinking about it. Like those irrational marchers, who crossed that bridge, facing loaded weapons and gave people of all colors, including mine, the right to vote, live, learn, work and love to their potential. Like those drag queens (reportedly mostly of color!) and butch lesbians, who brought an entire ten or more percent of our population out of the margin. Like a small movement you haven't even heard of that is trying to save hundreds of children from dying in orphanages in Ethiopia and other African countries while thousands of affluent Americans custom order babies from overpopulated countries, such as China, because they have the right skin color.

It's uncomfortable here in the margins. It's not popular. However, if we look at history, the "mainstream" has brought about very few changes. True change comes from the margins and the marginalized. From people who forgot to hear that they couldn't do something or other. Like these: John Stuart Mill, Emily Davison, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Sylvia Pankhurst, Julia Ward Howe, James Bevel, Amelia, Sam and Bruce Boynton, John Lewis, Bayard Ruston, Martin Luther King, A group of unnamed Drag Queens, Richard Berkowitz, and the list goes on. (Google some of them. You'll learn some things you didn't know!) These are the people who began to change history. What if all that dreamers likeme dream could be true?

Remember, they once said that electricity would never replace gas, the west would never be settled, slaves would never be free, women would never vote, blacks would never have rights, we'd never go to the moon, Maman would never have a cell phone, and well, you hear the rest every day! Maybe, they never consulted the Drag Queens!