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Marcela: Unfiltered

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Best regards, Marcela.

03 Sunday Aug 2014

Tags

addiction, Human Services, Humanity, Love, Negative Social Response, Personal Power, Recovery

Clear? Great. Peace.

I share the communication below with you for several reasons.

1) I have nothing to hide.

2) I share my life publicly while protecting the folks I work for because I know I am not alone with the experience that hiding, pathologizing, demonizing, victim blaming, concepts of deserving and undeserving in human struggle, suffering and experience, serve only to perpetuate those ills. The very ills that the so called normal people sit in fear and judgment of. It serves no-one, except for those individuals and systems interested only in winning their game, at any cost.

3) I believe in the power of truth, in the power of love,  in social justice, in the human capacity to not only survive, but to thrive, and I believe in me, and my own (proven) capacity to do just that. The haters will continue to hate, the judgers will continue to judge, the naysayers will continue to say nay, and the detractors will continue to de-tract. Regardless of how (tactfully, or not) I say what I have to say, regardless of what I do, or how (well)  I do it.

4) I must Abandon Hope (and Fear). I must abandon the hope that people will understand if only I explain it to them better. And in the abandonment of that hope, I have abandoned the fear that despite all of my efforts to help them understand, despite all of my efforts not to offend with my experience of my life experience, I will anyway. In the abandonment of these hopes (and fear), I abandon the pain of knowing that they are offended by human suffering. Mine, yours, ours, theirs. And in abandoning that pain, I am one step closer to the freedom of truly knowing and caring for, Marcela: Unfiltered. And for you. And for them.

5) I have nothing to hide.

Email from one professional to another (forwarded to me, not sent directly by the ‘concerned professional.’) regarding the potential hire of my services in a Custody and Access dispute:
“I have received ………… email which says that it is unfortunate that I do not specify what material on Marcela’s Facebook profile would affect her judgment in a professional setting.
I strongly advise you to read the whole of the Facebook, and I am reasonably certain that the language she uses, the history of drug use such as crack cocaine, to name just two things is something that would raise alarm bells with anyone.
I am very much certain that a person, who it appears has worked as a prostitute, has been a hard drug user and uses language such as is seen in her Facebook page, is someone that not many parents would not want their children exposed to.
My client is somewhat distressed that you would even suggest a person who appears from the Facebook page to be as unsuitable as she is.”

My response:

Dear ………. :
While I have been advised not to waste my energy on this, please, humour me will you? I will thank you, please, not to jump to conclusions and perhaps ask about how long I have been in recovery (I am joined in this community, in that illustrious group of people. by several attorneys, other social workers, and even a judge or two, doctors, counsellors…. you get my point). You could also ask how I was exploited into the sex trade as a teenager by an upstanding ……… business man, how I escaped, but clearly, context is not something that holds meaning here.

There is an entire blog post written about that, context, but I am certain that you will have already discovered it in the course of your investigation into my person. Would it be too much work, if you are so concerned about my character and history, to contact some of the people who have employed me in the past, or do so now, and inquire about the actual quality of my work? Or how about this far-fetched idea: ask me, clearly, my life, present and past are no secret.

Apparently it is not enough to have worked at not only fixing the damage others created in my life and past, and on my own culpability in parts of it, put myself through University as an adult while raising a family on my own, with no financial support from anywhere, worked my way from support worker at ……… cleaning up the vomit, blood, sweat, and tears, yes tears, of other struggling humans, to a very successful private practice and and and and… by the way, I did not need to turn tricks to graduate with distinction, to earn the awards I earned, and to get where I am, despite, or perhaps because of, small minds with only their limited view and judgment on anything outside of their own personal experience. I have a brain, and a heart.

And in the event you are interested, you must be, why else were you looking at these things, the sex trade and drug addiction, not directly connected in my life by the way, combine for a total of just under 5 years of my almost 53 on the planet. But clearly, they are more important than anything else I have achieved, undertaken, done in the way of community service (that list is much more extensive than anything you will find on facebook), raising a really well adjusted family, and so on… We are not all born, or raised, or subjected to, the same set of ‘choices,’ and I assure you, I have worked very hard, physically, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually, to get to the point where I can actually choose, and stand up to the kind of abuse in the email [quoted above, your email]. My references, former and current clients, speak to my professionalism, my credentials, and above all, the difference my work, and how I do it, and yes, I do it differently, very differently, makes in people’s lives. The thing that speaks to all of that most however, is how I live my life, honestly, and with integrity. Clean living goes so much further than abstaining from a substance, it has to do with being a good human, and while I am acutely human and by extension acutely imperfect, my biggest priority in life, in all areas of my life, is to ‘do no harm.’ Given the slanderous nature of various communications you have engaged in about me, my person, my life, it appears that our values differ in this regard.

While you are perusing my facebook page, you ought to note that the only people I have as friends are old enough, to choose and accept, or not, my language. Like the rest of the world, I am prone to using language in my personal life; and by extension in writing about my personal life, which is not the same as that which we all use in our professional dealings, and particularly not around children. I have had many a conversation with clients and their attorneys, judges for that matter, outside of office walls or a courtroom, that would require an R rating were they put on video, and I assure you, it was not me doing the swearing. If you had looked carefully during your forays into my world, you would have found that I walk my talk in my personal as well as my professional life, for example in a particular series of recent posts regarding a very important re-union in Europe, but it is much simpler to ‘find what you need,’ and leave the rest, no?

I should tell you that the reason I make my life and past (other and self-inflicted) relatively public, is a) I have nothing to hide, and b) it is an effort to highlight people’s humanity, their capacity to change and grow, to overcome pain, suffering (other and self-inflicted), to normalize what has been wrongfully pathologized as abnormal, and to navigate ridiculously complex and convoluted systems, often hurdles of seemingly insurmountable magnitude, and to illustrate what helps and what hinders in those processes. And, because I simply give a darn about people, and have a particular soft spot for those who continue to be marginalized and stigmatized by the narrow thinking that created the motivation, behind looking for what you and/or your client could find against me, actually the smallest part of my entire life, as opposed to what I excel at: Human services with heart and compassion. With a direct and intentional focus on the human, and with a real bent for finding the truth. For more information on how that does not amount to co-signing bad, criminal, self or other harming behaviour, please do check out my very public blog. Had you taken the time to read any part of that with more than the intent of finding dirt, you may have discovered more under the name Marcela than a former ‘prostitute,’ and ‘crack’ user.

Since you have taken it upon yourself to decide who I am based on little more than the results of a very poorly executed witch hunt, I have taken the liberty to provide you with a little context. I do not, feel the need to explain myself, please understand the difference. With the exception of potential legal action in which case you will hear from whomever is my representative, my communication with you and the parents involved in this matter will end with this email. I have informed ….. that I will not be able to assist with the case and I have suggested to them that they contact …., and have left ….. a voice mail regarding the referral. Thank you and best regards,
~Marcela.

Courageously yours,  MyLa: Unfettered.

August 02, 2014

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

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On recovery and the dreaded ‘R’ word…

24 Friday Jan 2014

Tags

12-Step, Love, Recovery, Relationships

No, it is not (drug)- Replacement, not even Relapse, though perhaps they both fit, also. The ‘R’ word I speak of; or words rather, are Romantic Relationship. Double R-whammy! You know; that thing you are told from your very first (recovery) meeting to stay out of.

Let us be clear on my position: No-where, to the best of my knowledge, in the primary book, in its many incarnations, of my preferred 12-Step Program,  does it say to “stay out of relationships.” That little tid-bit of life-advice seeped in from various unaffiliated treatment programs over the years, and was adopted, by many, as program dogma. It says somewhere in that same book, that relationships are often a difficult area of recovery. That is all.

I heard for many years, from various program (power) couples, how I needed to focus on myself and stay out of these silly, silly relationships. For too many of these years, I did not actually have the voice to stand up for myself. To let them know it did not seem right for folks who had used with someone, got clean with someone, and went on to (re) build a life with that same someone, to pontificate on the topic, to folks like me. To lecture me about staying out of a relationship, to roll their eyeballs at me whenever I shared in a meeting (or privately), about how difficult it often was to function in a pathologically-partnered world. To bring me to tears of frustrated invalidation with self-righteous tirades on how to love and accept self, to be a proud single parent, and other similarly stupid bla bla. To patronize me to this day, almost 16 years and much personal work later, about how I need to focus on self. And all of that, while, they tell me about how they could not have made it through this that or the other major life event without the support of the other half of their twosome. Addiction left me utterly alone. Bereft. Abandoned by self, community, society and family, my child removed from my care. A woman in her mid-thirties, forsaken, just before Christmas, in 1997. Sick, sad, hungry, tired, beaten, broken, deeply wounded and ashamed, on the streets of a city, literally looking from the outside in, through the windows of Starbucks, thinking: I do not belong to this world any more; or to anyone in it. I am completely alone, disposable.

Again, let us be clear: I have waded through more shit in life than most people have flushed and come out smelling like a rose. So if you wish to get loaded again because your other human did, or because they turned out to be an asshole, or because your mother died, or your dog ate your shoe, please, by all means. Using drugs, or food, or gambling, or consumerism, or sex, or or or, are always options. So is going outside my back door at night when I hear Mr. Bear out there, but I won’t be stepping out, to make his acquaintance any time soon, either.

So here’s my deal: I made a commitment to myself and to my child when I got clean, that I would not use, no matter what. No matter what is all-encompassing for me, and since April 25, 1998 I have honoured that commitment. I have also honoured my need and want as a mature, wise, intelligent, well-educated, funny, energetic, passionate, loving, accomplished, human-woman, to pursue love, and my very own, personal, version of the romance fairy tale. Interestingly enough, I have actually spent more time being single in recovery than ‘coupled,’ though I have enjoyed, as well as suffered a number of shorter and longer term relationships and/or dating scenarios. Every single man I have dated, slept with, been in a serious relationship with, had the same choices I had, in regard to the relationship as well as recovery, if he were a member of this not-so-exclusive club; many were not. It is not a pre-requisite.

How does this all relate to my recovery and continuing personal growth, my argument that it is not the place of well-intentioned program members, to tell me what to do in my personal life? In a nutshell: I have continued to do my work, within the parameters of this program and well beyond them. I am not stagnant or stuck in never-ending cycles of abuse and/or patterns that I could give you a hundred ridiculous victim-blaming-physcho-babble names for. I am human, and I long for another human in my life. One that is capable of the same kind of fun, commitment, craziness, passion, Madd-love, that I am. Had I been stuck or distracted from my recovery and personal work, I could not possibly have a) stayed clean, and b) come to the following stunning insight, one of many, in the days following an entirely unexpected, heart-wrenching and cruel ending to what I believed, with everything I had, was my final romantic relationship: I have a deep and compassionate understanding that we all come to our shit honestly. Along with a life well lived, and multitudes of horrific life events and barriers triumphed over, used as opportunity, this makes me really good at my job. I get it, but can usually stay detached enough from the person/family/issues/circumstances/systems to see it all clearly, the good, the bad, the ugly, the indifferent. I have realized recently, that the same compassion and understanding about how humans get how they get, makes me really bad at navigating the bad, the ugly and the indifferent in various personal relationships. I am learning that just because I get why people behave like ass-holes, does not mean I can continue to provide them with permission and forgiveness when they dump their neglect, shit and abuse on me, treat me like human waste, without consequences. Primarily, the consequence that they miss out on a really cool, really smart, really loyal and loving friend, lover/mate, sibling… Period.

This insight translates as well to many false-loyalties I have continued to hold in terms of friendships. I should never be working harder in any relationship than the other party, to maintain the quality of said friendship. So; the point? The program has taught me much over the years, including, how to get better at relationships, all relationships. Not by watching others have them, not by reading about them in self-help or Social-Worky and Psych text books, not by listening to my counsellor expound on how-to, or not, but by having them. By being real, 100% unadulterated, unfiltered, pure Marcela. Because that, is what the program, has given me the most of. Unfortunately for the 12-Step dogma-sheeple and related literature, pure Marcela comes equipped with critical thinking skills and the capacity to take what I need, and to dissect and disseminate the rest, as I wish.

Gratefully yours, always,

~M.

November 10, 2013

 

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Posted by ~MyLa | Filed under Commentaries: On what matters to me

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