4. I was number 63 on the waitlist for Tara Westover's book, Educated so I expected it to be really, really good. When I started reading the book, I couldn't figure out what the hype was. Sure, it was interesting to hear the account of her childhood but I wasn't gripped. Until yesterday. Part 2 and 3 hit my in ways that will stay with me and continually challenge me in the way I live and pursue my work.
Below are a few excerpts and my takeaways. Still, put yourself on the waitlist, her words are better than mine. 1. “I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.” Yes. All of this. In my opinion, poverty is the root of most social problems and creates pervasive and chronic trauma. For example, almost every youth I work with lives in poverty and does not know what it's like to have financial stability. They don't have the security of knowing their basic needs will always be met. Food, housing, clothing, transportation, means of communication, and present parents (plural is even a stretch as many of their households are single parents) are never guaranteed. In some ways, they are overly responsible and parentified. Yet we wonder why they commit crime, perform poorly in school, and navigate the world in such an unhealthy way with no long term vision. They don't have space to worry about anything but meeting their basic needs. 2. “The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I’m fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.” The traumas Tara experienced could not be more different than mine, yet I could relate so deeply to her reactions to childhood trauma, including this. The last time I was in therapy, my therapist confronted me on using the word lazy to describe myself. It was easier for me to say I was lazy than to say I was in distress, which at the time I was. Lazy is something I can control, physical reactions to childhood trauma, not so much. I would function highly during the day but it took so much energy. Things that seem simple, running to the store to make a return, showering before bed, getting a load of laundry folded, took me so much mental energy to start and were more exhausting to complete than they should have been. 3. “I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested. I did not think of my brother as that person; I doubt I will ever think of him that way. But something had shifted nonetheless. I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.” I don't know how to put my own words around this one but it has challenged me to think about the ways I've retained power and have been willfully or accidentally ignorant to traditions that dehumanize, brutalize, and further suppress others. 4. “I’d never heard anyone use the word “feminism” as anything but a reprimand. At BYU, “You sound like a feminist” signaled the end of the argument. It also signaled that I had lost.” I don't consider being a feminist being a negative thing, and it's surprising to me when people use it as a reprimand or a slam. Really, we just want the same social, economic, and political opportunities. It's not that crazy. 5. “The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education” “An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.” To all my teachers, both academic and non, thank you, for giving me an education and the ability to see the importance of being a lifelong learner.
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Hi! I'm Haley. Archives
May 2019
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