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Marcela: Unfiltered

Monthly Archives: July 2014

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Social Working On the Wing of a Dragon…

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Fear, Humanity, judgment, Life, Love, Pathology, Social Work

Image from personal photos

Image from personal photos, Karlovy Vary, CZ – M.M. June, 2014

The drug addicts, the homeless, the mentally ill and deranged, the alcoholics, the beautifully and frighteningly crazy, the abusers, the molesters, the abused, the victimized, the rich, the poor, the privileged, the socially acceptable, the educated, the illiterate, the marginalized and stigmatized, the famous and the infamous: these are my clients. I have a deeply personal and profound understanding of how we, yes all of us, get to how we get, get to where we got. Whatever that looks like in (y)our respective world(s). I look for context, I pay attention, I listen to, I hear the story, I feel the pain. I give a damn. Really, I give a damn.

I endeavor to keep my own experience out of it, for contrary to popular belief, it is not useful, and it clouds my ability to see them (you) clearly. Moving me out as much as possible allows me to do my job with no judgment, and come at the problem from the perspective that the problem is the problem, manifesting in a person’s life, not the view that the person is the embodiment of the problem. This is how I can come at it from the only fair place there is, from humanity and heart, and with deep compassion, no matter the struggle, the crime, the heinousness of it all, personal, familial, cultural, political, systemic. I treat them with some dignity; it is often their first time, ever.

When I posted these words to one of my personal social media pages, in their brief, raw, unedited and in the moment-version following two extremely heart-wrenching work days, I received wonderfully upbeat and positive feedback, and the word amazing was used by many of my friends to describe me, and how I do my job.

Yes, there are days when it feels that way, but more often than not, my work reality (and by extension other parts of my life), are not always amazing, unless of course I modify it to amazingly painful. There are too many days when I am, as judged as the people I work with, for understanding, for not being disgusted with why they are seeking my professional services, for caring, about their humanity in really tough situations. Let me be clear, I am judged, I do not, simply feel that way.

The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people. -Noam Chomsky

For you see, there are different levels of acceptability in terms of compassion and empathy, and as a human-helper type, it appears that I am afforded the right to feel these emotions for some, but not for others. The criteria for discerning between those deserving of my understanding or indifference, and by extension my very best, most creative and heartfelt professional services, you know, human services, as opposed to more of the big-box they find in our systems; is entirely dependent on the nature of their struggle. Whether or not it is deemed as self or other inflicted, socially acceptable, or a current taboo, their socio-economic position in the world, are they deserving or undeserving poor, their ethnicity, their skin colour, their perceived level of (dis)ability, their level of formal education, and other socially constructed boxes, assumptions and norms. What a joke. What an excruciatingly painful joke, on me, on them, on all of us.

Make no mistake: my clients (or as I refer to them, the folks I work for), are you, me, and everyone else that you can imagine. They are NOT those people, them, they are us. And if you don’t believe that you and I fit into the same box, I will urge you to check, and make certain that you are indeed, human.

I’m pissed, and let me clear; I am not an angry person (any more). As we know, anger is a secondary emotion, and mine, 99.9% of the time, is the cover emotion to spiritual, emotional, and/or psychological pain. It wounds my heart, damages my spirit, and hurts my brain, when I am weighed down with the shackles of the box. You know, the one I keep blowing up, but find myself repeatedly stuffed into. For it is continuously in the process of being reconstructed, remodeled, and renovated, using ever more covert methods to try and fool me, and you, into thinking that it is OK to think about, and treat some people, and animals and plants for that matter, better than others. The hu(man) created hierarchy of love and deserving-ness, our, their, your, relative importance in this world. The socially and politically created rules and contracts, belief systems, propaganda, and dogma, that are fed to us, explicitly and implicitly, in boxed media like CNN, FOX and essentially any network ‘news’ program, airing on what truly has become the idiot box, or printed in any mainstream newspaper and/or magazine, and so much bullshit on the internet.

The toxic fodder of judgment and victim blaming, are either gingerly spoon fed me (and you) in a manner so devious yet transparent that I am not certain whether to rejoice at my ability to see it, or despair at the greasiness of it, or it is rammed down my throat so overtly and aggressively that it feels as though the proverbial pitchfork is choking every last piece of civility and compassion out of my person. There is very little middle ground in how I am viewed where my position and outlook on the human condition is concerned. I am either a saint, amazing and awesome because I help those people, you know, the ones who deserve my help and (y)our compassion; or I am a bitch and sympathizer of bad and evil wrongdoers, you know, the ones who created their own and other’s misery, the ones not worthy of any kind of hand up, human understanding, effort, or absolution; Ever.

The skills and tools I use to survive and thrive in the worlds (work and personal) that I occupy, are accessible to us all, but too often, from where I sit, misused. Utilized as the means to a personal, self-centered end that has nothing to do with anyone but one’s own need for justification and rationalization of the atrocities of the world we live in, the comfort and ease of continuing to ignore how our every action and inaction, impacts/contributes to, the lives and misery of others, near and far.

Every single day; I go into my life (and others’) on a wing and prayer. The wing of a dragon called Love and the wrongfully attributed prayer of St. Francis. I know, for a non-religious spiritualist, leaning more and more toward atheism, this is a stretch, but it works. It allows me to get out of my own way and do my job, well.  I have come to rely on a personally modified version of what I prefer to call a mantra as opposed to a prayer, really, I cannot pray to any ‘master,’ I beg the gods of the dragon world I escape to, because come on, dragons are cool, to help me get through the day without in turn, judging the judgers, hating the haters, carrying that weight to the already overburdened folks I serve, and then wearing it home to try and deal with on my own, and worse, dumping it on the people closest to me.

If you know anything about me at all, you will know that I hold the dubious privilege of insider knowledge and experience, as it pertains to many of my work people’s pain (Manifesto of Pain and Personal Power) and I mean from the hurting perspectives of both victim and victimizer. I was harmed, and a dearth of effective coping skills and tools, however honestly earned, led me to harming others. Primarily the people I love most, the ones who love me, relied on me most, self included.

Please, make no mistake, this is not an exercise in self flagellation, though to this day, I do still excel in that sport; it is a way of making a point. So let’s get to that shall we? I know, you are waiting… context, it is all about context my friends, and that, I know, can feel truly cumbersome. For it is much simpler to jump to a conclusion, exclude any context, build and insert any given human and their actions into a box, make a decision about who someone is, why they did what they did and thus, feel better about self and our own shortcomings.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.”   -Noam Chomsky

So, the point: the most difficult part of my work day is not what I do with the folks who pay me for support in sorting out their lives, it is everyone’s opinion of them, of me, and of my position on any given social-worky-human-service issue and by immediate extension, my position on and compassion for, the individuals perpetrating the human deeds deemed acceptable/unacceptable in our world, and in direct relation, redemption worthy, or not. By default, that position for me is one of Unconditional Positive Regard. I will let you do your own research on it, but it is an extension of what I said earlier about the problem being the problem, one of the foundational concepts of Narrative Therapy, one that removes the issue as the personal pathology of the person, and places it within its rightful, from where I sit anyway, context.

And before you jump down my throat to join that pitchfork I am gagged with as a matter of course, this does not mean that I co-sign bad, hurtful, criminal, self and/or other-harming behavior. It simply means that I do my best to see the human as human, and as such, as someone who came by their stuff honestly, not, as the sum of their actions. Because really, if I were to tally the total of all my least palatable moments over the last 53 years, calculate the total carnage that some of my actions created, I could not allow me, or you, to think of me as amazing, awesome, or anything useful, what-so-ever. And please, I beg you not to come at me with ‘but look how you turned it around’ or similarly gag-reflex provoking commentary. I did not stop until the second I stopped, did not change until there was no other recourse, and most importantly, please, take this piece to heart: had there not been folks, specifically two human service helper types, who looked for, and saw the well-hidden humanity and potential, inside some of the outwardly visible sub-human actions, I would not be here to accept the amazing and other accolades.

I would be dead. Period. End of (this) story, for now.

Yours, with all the love I have, always,
MyLa: Unfiltered.

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Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under In the Service of Other Humans, My World(s), The 'L' Word

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The (evolving) untold story of my hero…

07 Monday Jul 2014

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Children, Family, Heros, Humanity, Love, Personal Power, Relationships

Kolonáda - Karlovy Vary, CZ - June 24, 2014

Kolonáda – Karlovy Vary, CZ – June 24, 2014

July 7th has rolled around once more, and 43 years, in this moment feels like 43 seconds, for I will always, and forever, miss you. I get my rebel, my power, my wisdom, my ability to see the truth, my stubborn-never-give-up from you, and also the fragility and dandelion fluff inside that we both hid/e from the rest of the world, so that they cannot harm, damage, our oh-so-vulnerable humanity. It never changes for me, this day. Time does not heal all wounds, it simply grows scar tissue over them which dulls the ache, allows me to think about you with some clarity, remember the entirety of your being, and how you still, 43 years after your untimely departure, teach me, guide me, help me keep my rebel on, with some measure of grace and dignity.

The untold story of my hero
I want to tell you this story. It is the evolving story of a hero, who through the process of me growing up, had to be seen, by me, as human, before he could be my hero, for real for real. He was my first and biological father, Tomáš Mrnka. He was born in the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia on October 24th 1935, and died, under extremely curious circumstances, in a mine shaft in Stewart BC, on July 7th, 1971. It was 12 days before my 10th birthday. He was 36 years old, and when he died, everything I ever hoped for, and dreamed of, died with him. For a while… a long while.

I held him on a pedestal of my own making for many, too many, years after his death, and only ever thought about him in a haze of golden glory and undeserved persecution. I only ever told stories of his heroic actions: his undeserved imprisonment in the old country for a democratic cause, his valiant battle to get us, his beloved children and wife, out of the clutches of communism following the Soviet invasion of our beloved land, and into the country that he wanted more than anything to provide us a life in. I knew this story so well I could recite it at the mere whisper of his name, and expound at length on his virtues and sacrifices; for his beloved country, for his beloved family.

The parts I left out of the story, the human bits, are as important a contributor to the true nature of his hero-status as his me-created perfection. He was the first man of many, to hit me and tell me he loves me in the same moment. He did not do this because he was evil, he did it because that is how children were disciplined; it is what he learned in the environment and culture he grew up in. He was unfaithful to his beloved wife, my beloved mother, and considered somewhat of a Casanova. He was a catch: he had one of the few motorcycles in the country at the time, and a full set of leathers, a rebel with a chip on his shoulder, but he had a cause. He had attitude and the inimitable grin, wit and charm of Rhett Butler, and all the girls wanted him. My mother got him, and forgave him, over and over, to keep him. She had endless discord and conflict with her beloved mother because of him. He was not only imprisoned for voicing his political beliefs against the status quo, he was imprisoned for shooting a law officer. I tell you all of this not to be-smudge his memory; I tell you this to illustrate the full context of his humanity, he was so imperfect, so human, but still a hero not despite it, but because of it.

He worked very hard to redeem himself when he brought us here, to make it right, to atone, to take responsibility. I tell you this because we all have a dark side, a side that requires constant work and effort to keep in check, to make certain that it is not given more priority than the hero in all of us. The side that makes poor decisions based on fear rather than the belief that we will get what we need if we act accordingly; the side which is driven by the outside, all the world’s influences, rather than the inside, the core of our humanness, our hearts and souls. The side of us that ignores our innate intuition, even when the warning bells scream like the sirens in a big city. The hero in all of us, the piece that knows love and abuse cannot co-exist in the same environment, the piece that informs every act of kindness and compassion we have ever given freely because that is what gives us the most true happiness. The piece that would die for the people we love, and sometimes for those we don’t even know but feel true human compassion for, that piece, is the one we must nurture, nourish, and encourage to grow and empower.

I could not see my father, Tomaš Mrnka, as the authentic hero he was and is, until I could see the full extent of his humanity, without judgment, or the childish notions I carried about the perfection of a hero. I tell you this story because I have experience with imperfection and humanity, and because I miss my hero today.

Dad, I cannot help but believe that you were there when recently, I visited the places I have some of my strongest and fondest memories of you from, Karlovy Vary, Boży Dar,  on the journey of a lifetime with your widow, my mother, and my son, your grandson Thomas. We told him stories about you that he has likely heard a thousand times before, but it was different, for you had walked these streets that we were walking, you held my mother’s hand there, you held mine. You came back to life for me in moments of memory so vivid that they caught my breath, and we all got to know you, and ourselves, a little better than we did in the days, the moments prior.

Rest in peace my beloved dad, and know that the lessons of your life, your imperfect humanity, and your true heroism, have watched over me, followed me, taught me, led me, sometimes astray, but always back, to the true hero in me. 43 years ago on July 7th, my life and world changed in a way that I spent too many years trying to numb, to feel, to figure out, to forget, to remember; and 43 years later I come full circle to face my own imperfection and humanity, once again.

Boży Dar, CZ - June 15, 2014

Boży Dar, CZ – June 15, 2014

Jelení skok - Karlovy Vary, CZ - June 24, 2014

Jelení skok – Karlovy Vary, CZ – June 24, 2014

Thank you dad for the continuing lessons. You did well; and although my dark side comes out to play and wreak havoc in my heart and life periodically, I believe that my hero always triumphs in the end. I miss your person every day, but I feel your presence, every second.

Always yours, with all the humanity I have,

~MyLa: Unfiltered.

(edited from original written July 05, 2012)

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Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under The 'L' Word

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