The Death of my Father

When I watched my father slowly die over several days (or you could say for a decade), I found myself having to think about the science and biology of it.  How one by one his organs were failing.  Oxygen wasn’t getting to his brain.  His kidneys were no longer working.  His lungs were filling with fluid.  His memory was gone.  He was no longer the man I knew.  Near the end he was like a wild animal.

I got the call from my sister while I was doing door-to-door canvassing.  My father was in the hospital.  There was a bit of a reassurance in her voice.  My dad was in the hospital a lot, usually for appointments, though sometimes for medical scares.  This is just another time.

In the past, one medication assigned by one doctor could mess up another medication assigned by another doctor -- the final drug cocktail ingested would make his eyes go yellow from stage 2 kidney failure.  I’ll never forget how bright blue his pupils were when I was home and the doctor called to say the blood test results show he needs to go to the emergency room immediately.  He was scared, but he went in and after a few days and tests at the hospital he would be back home and things would be back to ‘normal.’

I quote normal because things were never normal.  Not when your father is overweight and only half his heart is active.  He had a silent heart attack in 2001.  The doctors gave him 10 years at most with diet and exercise.  I imagine he was terrified and it paralyzed him.  Despite efforts of the family, he overall declined diet and exercise; consequencely putting an unspeakable toll on the family in the decade that followed.  Nevertheless he stuck to the doctor’s timeline.

The time I had in middle school and early-to-mid high school was dark.  Hormones go rampant, drama ensues, and there isn’t much wiggle-room for an overly sensitive kid who is constantly wondering when his father might die. 

I always wondered what it would be like to throw a baseball around with him, or build that homemade go-kart like he promised. 

Then again, I think of my grandfather on my mother’s side when I was a small child.  He was helping build a box-kite for me, as he was a superior carpenter, but we never finished it.  By the next time I visited his California home, the Alzheimer’s disease had mostly taken over and the kite was no where to be seen.  He died soon after.

Perhaps its better my father never got into those projects with me.

My father’s health was like the ocean tides, some days he was himself, others not so much, and sometimes he was a raging tsunami.  Imbalance with diabetes can do that.  Seeing his dependency on medications, and accompanying him on those hospital visits, made me fearful of meds and have a severe dislike of medical centers.

As the years tallied up after his heart attack, death was always a gambling thought.  When would he die?  At times he got really bad and it didn’t look likely he would live to see my high school graduation.  Then my college years continued on, and things became less ‘when’ and more accepting of what it was.  He was always ill, always dying.

I would always hug or shake his hand before heading back down to college.  Sometimes I would stare at him before walking out of the room—would this be the last time I see him?  My father silently caught on to my thought one time, his face showing hints of uncharacteristic sorrow.  I hurriedly turned and walked out of the house.

As I grew up, my room was directly across from my parents’.  I would always see my father napping on the bed, his big round belly rising and falling with this sometimes labored breathing.  Occasionally I stopped and watched his belly, fearful of the day I would look and see it still.

Over all those years I tried everything I could to get him to change.  I would positively encourage him.  I would yell and scream at him.  Only once or twice did he get on a treadmill for a few minutes, and more than a few times I made him cry.  Eventually I had to give up and start trying to focus on my own life, a process that took years and helped with the distance college brought.

Ironically, I had to take on my fears of medication and medical centers when I nearly died in 2009 in the middle of my election bid for Blacksburg Town Council.

A recent google search comes up with this explanation: “hypokalemic thyrotoxic periodic paralysis with thyrotoxic psychosis and hypercapnic respiratory failure.”  In English: I eventually was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a condition that causes my thyroid to be over active.  Due to a surge of thyroid hormones it started to shut down my system and fully paralyzed me in the middle of the night.  I was one symptom away from it paralyzing my lungs and killing me.

Perhaps in the fact that I was always seeing sickness with my father I failed to appreciate my own health.  At the time I thought my paralysis was due to me being really sick, despite my head being clear.  After around 30 minutes of effort, I crawled to the bathroom and found my temperature was just 95 degrees.  I took a hot bath and then went back to bed-- meh, I thought, I ought to feel better in the morning.  I was lucky I ended up being ok after that episode.  I saw a doctor the next day who did blood work that led me to find out about the Graves’ disease.  Three months later, as there is no cure, I had my thyroid removed.

A few years before that, freshman year, I remember being up in the middle of the night on a weekend, lying on the floor of my girlfriend’s dorm.  I was withering in pain as my ears bubbled and popped.  I had a fever and ear infections.  Despite the immediate health problems, I figured I would go to the doctor later and didn’t even consider the ER.  I was again lucky in there was only minor scaring in my ears and no loss of hearing.

More recently, I wasn’t so fortunate. In the last year I had dull pains crop up in my lower left abdomen, even went to the ER after it wouldn’t go away for a few days.  They found nothing after doing several tests.  Months later the pain continued and I decided to get a colonoscopy to get to the bottom of it. 

Hours after that lovely process, which ended up showing nothing, I went to the ER with immense pain in my testicle.  I soon found out I had a history of testicular torsion.  Yes, it is as nasty as it sounds.  Your testicle can twist and cut off blood flow.  I had some symptoms and discomfort for years with my testicle, but always dismissed it and it got better. 

After years of occasional incidents, apparently the pain shot north toward my lower left abdomen.  For this latest incident, I dismissed the pain for too long.  You only have about 6 hours to untwist a testicle.  By the time I was in the ER and despite the heroic efforts of the medical team-- my gurney nurse was a veteran and passionately talked how he helped save his buddy’s testicle and was going to do it again for me-- my testicle was already dead and had to be surgically removed.

That’s one way to be knocked off your feet for a few weeks.  That was one of the first times I had an opportunity to really think about my father passing, 6 months after the fact.  I ended up spending a lot of time staring at the ceiling.

Rewinding to that afternoon where I just hung up the phone with my sister who said Dad was in the hospital, I was shocked and confused.  I didn’t get any details, but I knew it wasn’t good.  I came home the weekend before as it was Memorial Day Weekend; I remember shaking my father’s hand before I left back for work a few states away and recalled how cold it was.  The usual thought of him being close to death popped in my head, but I quickly dismissed it.  It was useless to think that way.

Still holding my phone and standing on the side of a neighborhood street, I called the director of my office and then my regional coordinator of our canvassing operation to let them know I needed to take off the rest of the afternoon (I had already made my fundraising quota).  I went down to a neighboring stream in a forest and sat and embraced the shock. Was I being foolish with my emotions?  Will Dad bounce back like usual?  The day wrapped up without incident.

The next morning as we were gearing up for the day and setting up our turf for canvassing, my mother called.  I stepped out in the hallway to hear my Mom in a choked up voice say I needed to come home, it was a second heart attack.  I knew what that meant.  With my back against the wall, I slid to the floor and starred ahead for a minute as the morning light came gently through the hall window.

I pulled myself together and got up.  Knowing the canvass operation needed my support, I felt guilty.  I walked into the next room and told the three friends there I had to go, my father is dying.  I called the regional coordinator who gave an agitated ‘go now!’ over the phone, understanding the importance of me being with my father.  I walked zombie-like to my car and drove to my apartment, grabbing a box and throwing random clothes in it unsure how long I would be gone.

It was impossible not to speed the several hundred miles home.  Every opening in traffic I took and sped until I got the 2 second distance behind the next car.  I still am impressed with my courtesy not to tailgate, despite thinking every minute is a minute closer to my father’s death.

Finally I arrived home and was eager to get to the hospital.  I then heard the details of the morning my Dad went to the hospital.  My Dad wasn’t responding normally while he lay in bed in the morning.  My Mom called 911.  They had to send two emergency crews to carry him out of the house.  The neighbors gathered and watched.  My parents tend to be very private people; I can’t imagine the hell it was for my mother to deal with that.

I went with my mother and sister to the hospital.  I saw the heart rate of all the patients in the ward on monitors along the hallway.  There was my father’s name, his heart rate stable.

My mother walked in first and said hello to my father like she would to a child.  “...and look, Bryce is here!” 

I slowly walked in.  My father had a breathing mask on and saw me and his eyes widened.  “Brycefff?” He said through the mask.  “What arrr you doing here?!””  I panicked but tried not to show it.  Why would I be here unless he was dying?  He doesn’t know he is dying.  I can’t let him know.

“I got the day off Dad.  I heard you were sick and wanted to come see you.”  He looked skeptical, but also disconnected.  He continued staring at me with wide eyes, like a wild animal would in trying to understand as you coo at it.  Slowly he nodded and leaned back in his pillow.  Over the hours to come I would hold his hand and squeeze it, and he would squeeze back.

Soon it became evident he was getting worse.  Occasionally a fully sentence or two would bubble out of him, but it would take countless ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’ of him trying to think what he wanted to say.  Usually he was either trying to say he was thirsty (kidney failure) or that he needed to go to the bathroom (catheter).  Or he would give a one word curse. 

One of the last recognizable moments of the man he was, was when he looked ahead and raised his bushy eyebrows and gave a weary, extended “Ohh, man...”

Given my father’s size, the nurse said it was easier for him to do his fuller bathroom duty in bed.  The nurse tasked me to tell him it was alright to do so.  In one of the less graceful moments of his passing, I spent around fifteen to twenty minutes explaining to my father that it was alright for him to go to the bathroom there.  He would stare at me, trying to understand, he would say ‘um…um…um…’, take a breath, and then try to get out of bed to walk to the bathroom.  I would hold back down his arms and tell him again he can’t get up, you can go to the bathroom here. “Um…”  He stares at me trying to put together the thought-- “um…” 

”You have to go to the bathroom”

”Yeah.”

”I know, you can go to the bathroom here.”

“Um… uh.. oh, shit.”

“Yes!  That’s the goal!”

This repeated itself many times and eventually I had to give up.  When he finally did go, a group of nurses with malcontent on their faces lined up to change the sheets under my large father.

Soon my mother and sister and I started rotations at the hospital so we could rest at home and take care of the dog.  My brother got the news while he was in Cuba, of all places.  He hurried as best as he could back to Mexico to fly home, traveling for one to two days straight.

After grabbing lunch with my mom and sister, I glanced up at the ward heart monitor screen and my heart dropped.  My father’s heart rate was off the charts.  I felt a rush of adrenaline and hurried around the corner to see a group of nurses going into my father’s room.

My Dad was distraught, flinging his arms and cursing.  He was uncomfortable and felt trapped and was fighting.  The nurses were doing their best to keep him under control.  I think they had to drug him to calm him down.  At a later incident my mother ended up with bruises on her arms; my Dad is a big, but strong man.  Even when dying.

On my phone I took a video of our dog, Princess, and showed it to my father.  “Hey Princess… Hi baby” my father sluggishly said.  

At last my brother arrived, but at this point my father was no longer recognizable.  He tossed and turned, his eyes searching wildly across the room to close for a minute only to wildly search a moment later.  He didn’t notice my brother’s arrival as he stood there and took in the situation.

When I saw my Dad open his eyes slightly toward my brother, I told him to look at Dad.  He smiled and said “Hey, Dad” and with that my father eyes bulged as he leaned in and stared straight at him for several seconds.

“Good.  He recognized you!  He knows you’re here,” said my mother.

The animalistic qualities were all my father had by this time, restlessly shifting and staring wildly around.  As my family stood around, I found myself gravitating away from my Dad’s line of sight and slumped in a chair and tried not to cry. 

There was nothing more the hospital could do that this point.  The conversation of hospice came up and as soon as a room would be made available he would be transferred.  After ten years of my father dying, he may remain in this condition for many more months.  The thought was unbearable.

As my sister and I finished our hospital shift in the very early morning hours, I said good bye and I love you to my Dad.  He, in a tired, muffled tone, said “I muve you.”

My sister and I went home and slept.  A few hours later I got up and was downstairs when the phone rang.

“Bryce.”

Her voice cracked.

”Dad’s passed.”

I hurried upstairs and my sister was already awake from the expectation.  She looked at me and all I could do was nod.

My mother and brother went to get some lunch.  My mom said to my Dad they would be right back.  My Dad was calm and my mom thinks he gave an acknowledgement of “mmmhmm.”  While at lunch they got a call from a nurse to come back; when they arrived they said he passed suddenly.  Perhaps he just waited to be alone.

At first neither my sister nor I wanted to see him.  We drove to the hospital nevertheless, solemn and hearts heavy.  We got to the ward.  I looked and saw a straight line where my father’s name was on the hallway heart monitor.  The curtain to the room was closed.  Slowly, reluctantly, I walked in.

It’s true what they say, how peaceful someone can look in death.  Heck, my Dad even had a slight smile on his face.  His balded forehead began showing a web of red and white as his blood pooled in his body, but otherwise he could have been alive.  The room truly was filled with peace and warmth.

I took his still warm hand and squeezed it with no response.  I kissed his cooling forehead and that was it.  So it goes.

Ironically after all those years of staring at his belly, fearful of it being still, it still moved in his death as the chemicals of his body settled.  

We walked out of the room. 

The next month was weird, to say the least.

I made a few calls to my supervisors to let them know I needed to take a month off.  At one point when I sheepishly apologized for the inconvenience of it all, I got a scoff: “Inconvenience? Well that’s an understatement.”  I didn’t know what to say, and so I said thank you and hung up. 

I made the calls and arrangement for his cremation; picked up his ashes.  It’s weird to see the red velvet bag on a table and to know the remains of your father are inside.  Though I knew it isn’t ‘him,’ so to speak.  He is gone.

I still took extra care in transporting his ashes, even putting the bag in the front seat belt.  For all the times I transported my father, working with his hefty figure and helping get in and out, this relatively small box was about as foreign of an experience as it could get.

My parents bought a house to retire in just before he passed and so for the next month my mother and sister and I went there to reflect.  It was almost like it didn’t happen, like it was a dream and my Dad is still at our old home waiting for us to return.  On the drive back while playing some music of a Broadway show my parents saw, my mother finally broke down.  “He’s not going to be there,” she sobbed.

I have always been proud of my father.  Despite all the reasons I have to be angry and unforgiving for the burden put on myself and our family for so long, I never blamed him.  He had a challenging upbringing and lacked a solid father figure himself.  He got into the military and had a long and successful career in the intelligence field.  He lived a full life before I was born, a life I never knew.  He knew this, and that is why it was important to him to show a piece of that life by being buried in Arlington Cemetery. 

From his years with the Army Reserves he got up to the rank of Colonel.  He was one rank below having a jet flyover for the ceremony.  My family decided to have only immediate members attend the funeral; it is what my father would have wanted as well.  Two charter buses of military personel escorted my father’s remains.  Horse drawn carriage, the riderless horse with boots on backwards, the band, the absolute precision of the march, the gun salute. 

Back in 2009 while I was running for Town Council, I remember talking with my father about my achievements.  I explained to him that I wouldn’t be the man I am today, being as involved as I am to even run for Town Council at age 20, if it wasn’t for the father that I have.  Filled with pride, he cried.

My father, Robert Carter, was extremely proud of his children.  We meant everything to him.  I consider myself extremely fortunate that I don’t have college debt and fully own my car.  My Dad made sure we were taken care of.  That was his gift to us that I can only fully appreciate now after he is gone.

Given my father’s background in intelligence, he had a habit of following his children online.  Sometimes he would spookily bring up something someone posted on my Facebook wall.  In high school it freaked me out, but in college I embraced Facebook and later Twitter as it was an easy way for my Dad to see and experience what I’m experiencing.  It was always fun if I was on the main field in college and I would call my Dad to check out the school’s web camera and watch me as we talked.  The habit of Twitter remains with me today; I consider it my lazy method of blogging.

In the past few months I’ve visited home a couple times to help my mother finish the move to the retirement home.  I’ve now gone through several things of my father’s including a lot of military pictures and documents.  I never knew it, but he was 50% deaf in one ear, 33% in the other after discharging his weapon without ear protection.

The last year of my life has felt like many years.  My time has been filled with organizing full-time, traveling and adventuring, health issues, relationships, and my father’s death.  There hasn’t been a chance to truly reflect.  That’s one reason why this blog has remained unused.

For a transition to what I’m up to nowadays, I’m watching Mad Men and can’t help but imagine my father growing up in that era as he would have been in his early 20s.  Slowly I am piecing together the man I never knew, and I’m ever more proud of him.

I know today that my Dad would be immensely proud of me, and that is something I’ll hold in my heart until the day I die.

Not Alone

I just watched a video I came across on Facebook and I found myself doing a lot of reflecting. First, give it a watch:



In elementary school I was teased a lot. I was beaten. Even as a school patrol, on the main school corner with the police crossing guard, I was put in a headlock and pounded on the head repeatedly which left bruising. I had sand flicked in my eyes. I was chased down neighborhood streets fearing for my safety. I was dragged along the blacktop at recess. I was called albino for my fair complexion and hair. A speech impediment made me even more of a target. I was a student who adhered to the rules and these actions pushed me to fulfill the role of a tattle-tale which resulted in even more abuse.

I was anxious and worried, questioning even the most sincere acts of kindness in deep suspicion. I withdrew in fear of being judged, of having something else be fodder against me. At one point during a summer in middle school I was so anxious I no longer could pick up a phone or look out a window. Paired with the strong and confusing hormones at that time of life, --at hindsight--I made silly mistakes (what middle schooler doesn't?) that then felt like being cut down to nothing and even less. I was a bitter hole that sucks in others, friends, who were so generous and would eventually see no benefit in staying in that hole with me. I didn't want to pull them in and I felt terribly guilty about it. So guilty the rational of suicide came to mind. However irrational I knew I was, the emotion was there: I was exhausted of the cycle, of that toll I put on others, of always being beaten down. Ending my life in many ways made sense.

But I wanted to live.

I remember walking home one day from elementary school, passing the blacktop and looking over at some high schoolers playing basketball. A group of four or five guys carefree in shooting hoops. I found myself in envy of them when, suddenly, something clicked. I wanted to be like them, I wanted to get on that path and the only way for me to do that is to challenge myself. I needed to get out of this darkness, which I knew I could only do one step at a time.

It's now been over a decade since then and I'm still working on it. In fact, it wasn't until last year when I faced an election campaign in my organizing work that required full-time phone banking did I finally fully get over my anxiety of phones.

Ten years ago I pulled back that curtain at the window. I started to explore who I was and not let myself be written off by others. I started to enjoy life more, take a hold of opportunities head-on. In late middle school I went with People to People Student Ambassadors to Australia and New Zealand. In high school I worked two summer jobs with Hensel Phelps Construction Company on wedges 2-5 of the Pentagon Renovation Project. I was told at one point I was the youngest person to have clearance with the project. I was invited to speak to an educational conference with hundreds in attendance regarding my internships with the construction industry.

I grew my hair long for kicks my senior year, golden curls bounced around. I would find out years later it made me a bit of a legend. I became more passionate about my studies, particularly in the environment. I embraced some of my creativity and worked with animations and computer design. For my passion my teacher nominated me for a class art award at graduation which I received. Then I graduated high school and went to college at Virginia Tech.

I wound up at a statewide environmental youth conference and was amazed to find not only can I learn about environmental issues, but act on them. From planning a small tabling event on campus to a full day of action, my organizing skills grew over the years in college. Together with our community I was also faced with larger challenges, such as that of the shooting at Virginia Tech and having my previous blog become world-famous and quoted in numerous publications which I had to deal with (I just found a book on blogging that has a piece on me). From that experience I developed an appreciation of how the media works (and doesn't work with gross ethical violations) and just how important the support of a broad community is. The seed of sustainability-- a balance of community, environment and economy-- blossomed in my soul. By the next year I helped plan a large state-wide student conference at Virginia Tech with several hundred attendees. The year after that I ran for town council.

I found out about a program that develops the skills of environmental organizers, Green Corps. I applied and got in and soon found myself working on campaigns from protecting one of the strongest climate laws in the world to supporting family ranchers and stopping oil pipelines. I knocked on hundreds upon hundreds of doors over last summer, talking to people about protecting streams and health. Now I'm with the Sierra Club in Denver, Colorado, a place I always dreamed of being with an organization I always wished to work for. I may not be playing basketball on my elementary school's blacktop, but things have worked out great.

Sometimes I get too focused in what I am doing I forget the journey of where I've come from. The challenges I've overcome and still am dealing with-- my Dad passing earlier this year, for instance, or finding out I have Graves' Disease and deciding to have my thyroid surgically removed in 2009. When I begin to imagine where I might be in the next ten years, I realize anything can happen and the potential is limitless. But I know everything I've listed here, everything I've done, every step has been a challenge to overcome for me.

It is videos like what Jonah made that remind me of the path I've found myself on, and where I came from. This is a path that is not uncommon. There are a lot of Bryces and Jonahs out there, lost in the darkness and oppressed by people and shadows. Some of us don't make it out. Stepping out from under the oppression we find ourselves in is never easy. But you can learn more about it, why it happens and how you can personally manage it and then extend a hand to others because we are all on this journey together.

My boss for a Buddhist environmental non-profit I worked for once told me that we all must cross the same river but we get to choose the vessel we go in to get to the other shore. The waters can be turbulent, but we ride the same waves together.

Life is still far from perfect for me, but that's how life is. While I've made strides, I'm still not where I want to be in fully appreciating the day-to-day beauty of existence that is out there. But I'm working on it. One step at a time. And I have amazing friends across the country and beyond who are there for me.

Good luck on your journey, Jonah. You're going to do great and are already strides ahead of the game.

Embracing Videography

Long, long ago I got into animation. I really liked being able to create an experience or story someone else can have and share. Animation was long and tedious, you have to literally create a scene from a blank canvass, piece it together and then mold it frame by frame. Then I found videography. The hardest part is over, it's already created. Now you just have to piece it together. If I ever find myself pursuing another profession, it would be related to film.

Anyway, I've been stretching out as I settle down out here in Denver and have spent a bit of time working on a couple quick spots involving my travels.

Enjoy!

Eye Contact

This evening has been one of those evenings in which you drink too much caffeine earlier in the day and late into the evening you have too much to think about. You think about the weight of the world around you, of the systems and metrics that over-simplify the infinite complexities of life and existence. Your thoughts drift from your own health to that of others, of those that have passed and of those yet to be born. You think about the imaginary power institutions have and utilize, how information is developed and manipulated. How endless bureaucracy endlessly loops around the roads and highways of the world.

You wonder how can we ever even begin to redress these challenges and pursue the goodness that humanity can possess. Kindness and stewardship. Fresh air and water. A lush world environment, nurtured by our ability to care for it and each other. All of our lives are under the dark impassable weights of the world's systems that we've developed. Subject to work within its endless forbidding corridors to ends unknown, wondering who or what could have created this path we blindly follow.

As the evening sky is eaten by outstretched light posts, nestlings wildly reaching into the night for a morsel of the last visible star, you feel lost and confused and alone. How can we fight the world that is forcing us into lives so unnatural, unripe; simply waiting for an unattainable self-enlightenment? What can you believe in if all is part of this tangled circular growth?

The city around you is breathing, rasping into the still-warm night air. The homeless line the streets in their sleeping bags like cocoons waiting for first light to emerge as butterflies never to be delivered. The lights stare at you indifferently and you sigh as you quietly walk your way home, lost in thought as you bear the weight of the world.

Out of the darkness emerges a passing face in close view. Your eyes lock and with a smile a man kindly, softly, asks "How are you doing?" with a tone so knowing of exactly where you are that the moment has already passed where you hastily replied "Good, how are you?" with automatic, systematic perfection to realize: you are not alone.

Colonel Robert James Carter, Rest In Peace

Just the beginning

About two years ago I heard the group Beyond Coal was coming onto Virginia Tech's campus, whose mission was and still is to shut down the Virginia Tech coal-fired power plant which distributes steam for heating in the majority of the buildings on campus. I immediately dismissed this idea and group as ridiculous and radical. The only way change will happen is if we go through the systems established.

Virginia Tech, as an institution, has a lot of bureaucracy, strict professional standards and expectations, various hoops, unspoken tests, and a lesser level of classism to deal with in order to get something that radical to actually happen. A bunch of kids without any resources or finances or training or experience will only be a public spectacle and laughingstock for the rest of the relatively conservative university community. After spending my entire collegiate career, including nearly every break in those years, investing myself in building up an amazing professional organization who was committed to working with our university in bringing resources together to "Invent the Future," I felt cut down to see this new radical mentality take over and erase what I and many others worked so hard on.

That was two years ago.

Today, though, I proudly call myself a radical and am in fact leading Beyond Coal for Colorado. Today I proudly see our campus organization was not cut down, but instead transitioned. A radical movement cannot be stagnant, which is exactly what happened and why things needed to change. We live in a world demanding radical change and it is only the few that will deliver. The Arab Spring was just the beginning, now the American Autumn will follow with so many different and evolving elements that it will adapt to the whims of producers loyal to national media owned by, indeed, corporations.

Several years ago I would have put my hand up, shook my head and walked away from myself if I had begun to go into a passionate rant about how corporate power is destroying lives and our hindering our way of life.

Today I literally found myself joining a passing anti-corporate march (#occupywallstreet) to the state capitol and spoke to the hundreds gathered about my experiences in the last year and why we must fight without a moment's hesitation.



Over four years ago there was a mass shooting at my school that left 33 dead and dozens more injured. The media frenzy that followed was overwhelming to our community and quite often abusive from reporters dressing up as clergy to Bill O'Reilly's Fox News staff rewriting and re-contextualizing an e-mail I sent that they put on air.

Now I see more than ever how the media are free to manipulate and shift stories to their leanings, or not tell them at all. Only now are the #occupywallstreet protests becoming front page news as the blockade of Brooklyn Bridge can't be easily ignored.

A year ago I was reluctant to embrace my first Green Corps campaign because it was anti-corporate (and ironically funded by a corporation), but what unfolded made me realize that the power corporations have is daunting....

[to be continued]

Transitions

It has been over a year since my last blog post. Yesterday, I graduated Green Corps in what has surely concluded one of if not the most difficult year of my life. The challenges I've faced on a professional and personal level have pushed me more than I thought possible. I am a new person, someone who I am not ashamed to admit to having dreamed about becoming. I am skilled, confident and ready to take on whatever challenge lays out before me. I am sociable, outgoing, adventurous and a shameless romantic. I am political, engaging, and yes, even radical. I am not ashamed to say I am a progressive who wants to work with others to solve the entangled web of interconnected issues we are facing and have a lot of fun while doing it. This is said with it being noted that none of the aforementioned would I have been willing to confidently identify with just a year ago.

I'm about to transition into a new chapter of my life-- I have been hired to be the Associate Organizing Representative for the Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign in Denver, Colorado. I am so thrilled to be able to go out there and fully invest myself into a community and work directly in developing the leaders that will take us to a sustainable future.

The next few weeks to months are going to be a hard transition. A metaphor I found myself explaining the way I have felt the last few weeks is like that of a mirror-- in the last several months it has cracked in several places--- cracked by the challenges I faced with working on Green Corps campaigns, cracked by the growing disconnect from high school and college friends, cracked from life challenges of friends and family and finding a balance to be there for them while keeping up my needs, and the final, major crack, was the death of my father in June which has left me, as many who lose a parent, in a small existential crisis. It was all I could do to hold the mirror together for the last few months bearing the weight of these coming-of-age challenges to finally have it shatter altogether, completing a challenging chapter of my life. Now, though, comes the exciting and terrifying time to piece together the remaining shards into a new frame, a blank canvass. Through the reflection of these shards I will start to write out my thoughts of the last 13 months of my life in a series of postings over the next several weeks.

But before I start reflecting on this past chapter, I must head to sleep as the winds of a fading tropical storm Irene tussle the trees outside the screen door in the darkness of night. At last, though, I am at a place I can blog.