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Stronger, Healthier, Together
Spring Houghton, Generative Fellowship alum
(This story originally appeared on the CoreAlign blog, June 17, 2015)
(This story originally appeared on the CoreAlign blog, June 17, 2015)
When I found out I was pregnant at 19, I lost it. I had been told my whole life that smart girls with integrity didn’t get pregnant in their teens. It was THE big mistake, the big sin. So, I felt an incredible amount of guilt and shame during my pregnancy, and during my first few years post-partum. I held on to the feeling that I was a failure and – worse – I would inevitably shed my mistakes onto my kid’s environment and stunt their blossoming into the smart, intelligent adult that I knew, deep in my gut, that I was capable of raising.
My brain was divided up into these parts:
1. Fear of failure
2. Embarrassment
3. Stress with new motherhood, trying to make money, trying to keep a troubled partnership together, trying to finish my undergraduate degree
4. LONELINESS
Slowly, over years and years, I began building solid relationships and partnerships. I forgave myself, and then I started trusting others more. I cut out relationships that weren’t good for me. I started taking care of myself, but what this meant for me was more quality time with people I admired. The whole time, I realized I had been missing a strong network of supportive allies.
Soon (over months and months), my brain changed, and it started to have parts more like this:
1. Self-love
2. Gardening
3. Laughing
4. Problem-solving
5. Discussion
6. Activism
7. Food
8. Drink
9. Fighting alongside others for what is right and good and true
Somewhere along the way, I got an idea to start a program for girls that focused on creating a healthier, smarter, more reproductively just Oklahoma, but I didn’t know exactly what it would look like. All of the research about Oklahoma’s lack of sex education, high teen pregnancy rates, high maternal mortality rates, high number of legal abortion restrictions, as well as my own experiences made me want to create and teach curriculum about Oklahoma’s terrible treatment of women. But when I began talking to young women and girls, I heard that what they want and need most is peer support. Young people want exactly what I had wanted when I was young: real, healthy support.
Young people, just like the rest of us, need what I first heard the activist Andrea Smith call “strategic alliances.” Smith was speaking at Take Root: Red State Perspectives on Reproductive Justice, a conference where she was keynote speaker. As Smith explained,strategic alliances – which Native people and organizations often forge out of bothgenius and necessity – are the most effective, and maybe the only way to get work done.In “The Problem with Privilege,” Smith speaks to the struggle that is actively working tocreate solid and thorough relationships even in marked safe spaces. There is nothing natural or easy or smooth about building lasting, trusting relationships with other humans.
The dehumanizing, ego-driven systems we live under (many of which are products of European colonization), and the responsibilities of our daily lives to survive in those systems (paying bills, feeding kids, staying healthy, keeping our families safe, etc.) make bonding with other humans work. We have to work to build new ways of being together. She reminds us that “there is no simple anti-oppression formula that we can follow; we are in a constant state of trial and error and radical experimentation.” To build alliances and friendships is hard work, and all hard work inevitably includes mishaps and failures.
What I have learned over the past year participating in the CoreAlign fellowship and trying to build a program for teens is that we will just have to try and see what happens, with respect and empathy. And we have to be willing to fail and forgive and try and fail all over again.
My CoreAlign project and my plans for a program working with young people are still evolving. I still feel scared about failing. The biggest thing that keeps me going, however, is the support, not only from other incredibly generative and generous RJ workers in Oklahoma, but also from others across the country who want to see us succeed.
Living in a red political state means that women have fewer reproductive rights and more impediments to reproductive justice, both of which lead to some of the most unhealthy lived realities in the country. It also means that those of us working professionally or on a volunteer basis to advocate for the improvement of all women’s lives have to be patient and look to each other for support in ways that people who live in areas where networks are larger and more established may not have to. We cannot go at this alone. A movement built on the awareness of interdependence and bonds of respect is one I want to be a part of and grow within. It’s one I want to show to and share with my kid.
Spring is a mother, educator, novice gardener, and activist living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Learn more about our fellows and the Generative Fellowship.
My brain was divided up into these parts:
1. Fear of failure
2. Embarrassment
3. Stress with new motherhood, trying to make money, trying to keep a troubled partnership together, trying to finish my undergraduate degree
4. LONELINESS
Slowly, over years and years, I began building solid relationships and partnerships. I forgave myself, and then I started trusting others more. I cut out relationships that weren’t good for me. I started taking care of myself, but what this meant for me was more quality time with people I admired. The whole time, I realized I had been missing a strong network of supportive allies.
Soon (over months and months), my brain changed, and it started to have parts more like this:
1. Self-love
2. Gardening
3. Laughing
4. Problem-solving
5. Discussion
6. Activism
7. Food
8. Drink
9. Fighting alongside others for what is right and good and true
Somewhere along the way, I got an idea to start a program for girls that focused on creating a healthier, smarter, more reproductively just Oklahoma, but I didn’t know exactly what it would look like. All of the research about Oklahoma’s lack of sex education, high teen pregnancy rates, high maternal mortality rates, high number of legal abortion restrictions, as well as my own experiences made me want to create and teach curriculum about Oklahoma’s terrible treatment of women. But when I began talking to young women and girls, I heard that what they want and need most is peer support. Young people want exactly what I had wanted when I was young: real, healthy support.
Young people, just like the rest of us, need what I first heard the activist Andrea Smith call “strategic alliances.” Smith was speaking at Take Root: Red State Perspectives on Reproductive Justice, a conference where she was keynote speaker. As Smith explained,strategic alliances – which Native people and organizations often forge out of bothgenius and necessity – are the most effective, and maybe the only way to get work done.In “The Problem with Privilege,” Smith speaks to the struggle that is actively working tocreate solid and thorough relationships even in marked safe spaces. There is nothing natural or easy or smooth about building lasting, trusting relationships with other humans.
The dehumanizing, ego-driven systems we live under (many of which are products of European colonization), and the responsibilities of our daily lives to survive in those systems (paying bills, feeding kids, staying healthy, keeping our families safe, etc.) make bonding with other humans work. We have to work to build new ways of being together. She reminds us that “there is no simple anti-oppression formula that we can follow; we are in a constant state of trial and error and radical experimentation.” To build alliances and friendships is hard work, and all hard work inevitably includes mishaps and failures.
What I have learned over the past year participating in the CoreAlign fellowship and trying to build a program for teens is that we will just have to try and see what happens, with respect and empathy. And we have to be willing to fail and forgive and try and fail all over again.
My CoreAlign project and my plans for a program working with young people are still evolving. I still feel scared about failing. The biggest thing that keeps me going, however, is the support, not only from other incredibly generative and generous RJ workers in Oklahoma, but also from others across the country who want to see us succeed.
Living in a red political state means that women have fewer reproductive rights and more impediments to reproductive justice, both of which lead to some of the most unhealthy lived realities in the country. It also means that those of us working professionally or on a volunteer basis to advocate for the improvement of all women’s lives have to be patient and look to each other for support in ways that people who live in areas where networks are larger and more established may not have to. We cannot go at this alone. A movement built on the awareness of interdependence and bonds of respect is one I want to be a part of and grow within. It’s one I want to show to and share with my kid.
Spring is a mother, educator, novice gardener, and activist living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Learn more about our fellows and the Generative Fellowship.