just do it.

My heart is heavy about the shooting today at the Holocaust Museum. I cannot write about it yet, because my head is swimming. Ugh.

I spent today on the hill advocating for increased funding for domestic and sexual violence services. If you have never lobbied, I strongly encourage you to attend an advocacy day with a group of your choice. They are supposed to listen to us and will give you the attention you deserve. Overall, we were treated very respectfully by the Missouri delegation (i say 'overall' because there were a couple moments of disrespect but nothing major).

For more information about how to do this lobbying thing, I'd recommend a book called Lobbying for Social Change (this one is a little pricey, buy an earlier edition or find it at a library...).

Heroes: Advocates to End Domestic and Sexual Violence

This posting will be brief because I'm tired and have to be up extremely early tomorrow morning. I spent the day with the National Network to End Domestic Violence in preparation for tomorrow's advocacy day. Tomorrow will be my first experience lobbying on the hill and I'm looking forward to it. I will be shadowing one of my mentors, Colleen Coble, the director of the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Colleen received two separate awards today for her absolute amazingness.

It is an honor to spend two days of this week with advocates against domestic and sexual violence from almost every state within the US plus DC and some territories. The people in the room with me today, along with every other individual who works in the anti-domestic and sexual violence field are my heroes.

We were honored to have the following people present to us today (in chronlogical order): Valerie Jarrett (Obama's Senior Advisor), Marylouise Kelley (from HHS), Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (via video), and Catherine Pierce (Acting Director of the Dept. of Justice's Office of Violence Against Women).

At the reception, we heard Secretary Hilda Solis, Vice President Joe Biden (via video), Karen Rogers (Vice President of the Mary Kay Ash Foundation Board of Directors and granddaughter of Mary Kay Ash) Congresswoman Gwen Moore (WI), Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson (MO), Congressman Ted Poe (TX) and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (IL) declare their commitment to ending violence against women and children.

I look forward to seeing some meaningful legislation behind the wonderful speeches I heard tonight. And I look forward to tomorrow's jam packed day.

Heroes: Used Book Stores

On day three of the month-long challenge, I didn't write. Boo. I have all sorts of excuses and reasons why that I won't get into... I doubt this counts but I will attempt to post two entries today.

Instead of driving back to DC directly from Richmond, VA (the aforementioned undisclosed location of the surprise party), my partner and I decided to take the long way home through Charlottesville, the Shenandoah National Park Skyline drive and Harrisonburg, VA. It was a beautiful day for a drive (though we would have preferred to be on motorcycles) and nice to be able to take our time and not hurry home. While in the cute downtown section of Charlottesville, we wandered into a used bookstore (there is a surprising quantity of used book stores in c-ville).

This leads to my first 'Heroes' themed post. I define a hero as someone (or an entity) that sticks to its principles through adversity and models self-sacrifice.

Somehow, I had forgotten my love for used book stores. I generally try to support local independent bookstores, though I do have my lazy amazon moments. For some reason, however, it had been way too long since I entered a bookstore with only used books. I could have spent the next several hours sitting on the floor surrounded by books.

I worry about the extinction of books and therefore am impressed that any (especially independent) can stay in business. I left the store with three books that I hope to complete this summer: Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia ($3), The Trial by Franz Kafka ($3) and My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki ($6.50).

Mommies & Sparents

Today is Mother's Day in the US and in Mexico (and probably other places as well). Mexico always celebrates Mother's Day on May 10th while in the US we celebrate our mamas on the 2nd Sunday in May. Why, you ask?

As holidays come along, I like to look into their purpose prior to the mass commercialization. (If I had been blogging the last couple of months, I would likely be hyperlinking 'mass commercialization' back to posts exposing the history behind St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo, maybe I can back date what I would have written on those days...).

Anyway, as Ruth Rosen reports on slate.com, Mother's Day was initially a day of political activism starting in 1858, and lasting for three decades, mothers protested against poor sanitation, war, child labor, lynching, trafficking of women and even consumer fraud.

Anna Jarvis was the first woman to organize a Mother's Day protest. In 1905, her daughter sought to honor her mother's activism with a national mother's day. In 1914, Congress formalized the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. Jarvis' daughter was not too happy with what became a billion-dollar industry...

So as I watched my facebook feed fill with posts about mother's day and mommies and after I called my own Mom to wish her a happy day, I started to think about my choice to not become a mom. I prefer, as Elizabeth Gilbert put it in a recent lecture, to be a sparent. That is, I can be available, if necessary, on retainer to provide parental duties but I am not interested in parenting as a full-time endeavor. (The only exception I would make is for my nieces. In that case, I would pour my heart and soul into full-time parental duties.)

What does it mean to be a 30 year-old woman who does not want to be a mommy?

1. I have the privilege to choose whether or not to have children. This is indeed a privilege on many levels.
   
2. As a lesbian, becoming a mommy cannot happen accidentally.
3. My partner and I are (potential) DINKs and have the luxury (when we are both gainfully employed) that goes along with DINKdom.

I have been firm about this choice for many years, yet people still regard me as if I'm betraying biology or destiny by being childless by choice. I regard it as population control, a way I can feel less guilty about being selfish, and the one you can call when you need a 'sparent'.

So Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies. I admire you. You deserve more than one day, of course, just like African-Americans deserve more than the shortest month of the year. I hope that you have several lovely sparents in your life for those days (weeks?) that you need some time for you.

Oh, and next year, let's throw some political activism back into Mother's Day... let's make Anna Jarvis proud.