Happy Feet

Thud. Scream. Hard feet running across the floor.

I open my eyes. I have woken in to a nightmare. My exhaustion begs me to deny it.

Thud. Scream. Slam.

I know the dimensions of their apartment as he throws her against every wall. I can no longer deny it.

I force myself awake and go down to the manager's office. I tell the manager that there is a domestic violence dispute above my apartment. We walk upstairs and we listen through the door. We can hear her crying. She tells me she will take care of it.

Silence. Sweet silence.

I run in to some of my neighbors. Turns out the landlord has confronted the wrong couple. They were wondering who reported them for domestic violence. I apologize telling them that there has been some sort of miscommunication.

Thud. Scream. Hard feet running across the floor.

There has been some sort of miscommunication. Her screams terrorize me and I am wide awake at 3:30 in the morning. He is torturing her. The police will get here too late. I know I must knock on their door. I put on my hooded sweater, so I can look bigger than I am. I think about grabbing a knife in case I need to defend myself. I decide it is a bad idea. I laugh to myself, "With my luck, I will trip and fall on it."

I leave my apartment. I feel my body shaking as I begin to walk up the stairs. The carpet is blood red with these strange flowers printed all over it. The flowers are twisted as if they grow under water. Thoughts are fleeting through my mind and I cannot hold on to a single one. What if he hurts me? What is on the other side of that door? What am I going to say?

I am standing in front of the door of apartment numer 10. 10 is the number of completion and I wondered what was complete and whole in this situation. My arm raises itself and knocks the door, despite my fear. I tell myself, he cannot see you afraid Kisha. I whisper a prayer, "Bless my tongue, bless my words God." I feel my spine straighten and I am in my full power. I knock again.

I hear steps of hesitant feet slowly walking towards the door. His steps become steady as bare feet touch wood. He opens the door and her whimpers reach my ears like the smell of microwaved popcorn in a small office. I quickly glance over him. Shirtless, his slender brown body is dressed in grey sweats. I lock eyes with him, despite his long black hair covering half of his face. His face shows no more than 25 years on the planet and his cheek bones and lips tell the story of Philipino ancestry. We stare at each other in silence for a moment. I tell him a whole story with my eyes. I tell him about the possibility of retribution for his actions. I tell him about my anger. I tell him about how wrong he is. I tell him that the story is coming to a close.

My mouth opens and words emerge. I say, "I want you to know that I hear what is happening. I am very concerned and if it doesn't stop, I am going to call the police and have you arrested." He does not flinch and says a very mellow and small, "Okay." I nod my head and he closes the door. I go back to my apartment. Silence. Sweet silence.

Thud. Slam. Crash.

Two days later, our pact is broken through the turning over of furniture. Her feet dig hard as she runs from one side of the apartment to another, like a caged animal. I run upstairs and he runs past me. I yell at him, "You gonna have to work that out man. Last chance." He does not respond, but continues to run down the stairs and out the door. I hesitate and knock on the door. Small feet full of fear walk toward the door. She opens the door and I greet her with compassionate eyes. My eyes tell her a story. I tell her the story of safety. I tell her the story of visibility in her pain. I tell her the story of the possibility of love without betrayal.

She is a small skinny white woman with long blond hair. She is shaking and her eyes are wide with disbelief. She is pale and her mouth is small with thin lips that tremble. I have seen her blue eyes before. Where? I search my mind. I realize that her eyes look just like the penguin in 'Happy Feet'. I look in them and I find innocence. Unlike the film, where the penguin finds redemption through his feet, the only footsteps that I had heard for her were ones of punishment. I search for words. I tell her, "I am sorry that this is happening to you." She says, "It wasn't like this before." It turns out that they had been dating for more than a year and all was well until she left her apartment and began living with him. That is when the isolation started.

He began to keep the keys so that she could not leave the apartment when he was not there. He started keeping her from getting a job and she began living in her pajamas. Her Lupus agitated under all of the stress, translated to her hair falling out in chunks. That is when she began to rationalize the situation. She tells me, "I ask him to go to therapy and he gets even angrier. I try to explain to him that this situation is not good for me." She has no place to go and is not sure what to do. It turns out both their names are on the lease and his own momma had thrown him out of the house while they were dating.

I listen patiently. I must build trust and take it slow. Let her get it out. Let her tell the story, so she can find her power in it. I must hold the space just long enough, but not too long. If I hold it too long, it will confirm that she is powerless to change the circumstance. If I open the door too quick, it will be traumatizing and she will run back in to the cage, because it is what she knows. Yes, I must open the blinds slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust.

She thinks it is her fault. I remember that. I tell her about surviving domestic violence. I tell her about thinking the good outweighs the bad, but that it doesn't. She covers her mouth, "I don't want him to go to jail." I tell her about the mixed bag of abuse. I tell her that she is compassionate and that the best thing she can do for him is to alllow him to have the consequences of his choices. It is how she can help him. I can't make him wrong or she will run. She says, "He doesn't hit me, he just pushes me." I tell her that in a healthy relationship, people don't push each other. No one has a right to push anyone. She looks stunned, lost in the myriad of complexities of abuse.

I remember. I hated him and I loved him. I wanted him and I wanted the abuse to stop. As many tiimes that I returned, I never liked it. I never wanted it. I wanted the good times that were in between. I wanted out from the guilt that he placed on me every time I tried to get out. I never wanted to be disloyal. In that hall of mirrors, it never occurred to me that I was the one being violated. She says, "He does sexual things to me." She covers her mouth and her body shakes. She says, "I think it turns him on." I feel sick to my stomach. I say, "So he does more than just push you. He violates you. Sweetie, you don't deserve that." She lowers her head and sobs uncontrollably.

I breathe. She snaps back, "I don't know what to do." She is 22 and alone. I say, "Are you ready to leave?" I tell her that leaving can be a process sometimes. It took me four years to get out. It took me four years to hit bottom. She says that she is, but I feel that she is not quite there. She is ready in the moment-when the pain is dense. It is okay, I can walk with her. I can be an ally in supporting her to stay alive while she walks through it. I default to my domestic violence training. She is not ready to go to a shelter. I ask her not to fight in the bathroom or kitchen, too much porcelaine and sharp instruments available to snuff out a life.

I ask her if she wants me to sit with her and the landlord to figure out if she can get him off the lease. She needed time to think about it. I give her my number. Too much is whirling in her head. I keep it simple. He left her with the key to the apartment building and apartment. I tell her, "Your job is to not let him in tonight. That is all you got to do and think about engaging the landlady to help you. There are people here to support you." She nods her head. She swares she will not let him in. "I have had enough", she says.

I wait all weekend and no phone call. I come home on Sunday and I see that a note is taped on top of the box of number ten. I tell myself to mind my own business, but I don't. I carefully open the note. It is the key to the front door. The note reads, "Baby, I hope you are feeling better. I am at the mall." I tape it back and smile. I remember. I go in to my apartment. The foot steps are light and happy. Light and happy like people under a tapestry in a rain storm. Temporary relief from a burning sun. She has happy feet as she walks a familiar trail to a dead end. I smile and think to myself, "Yes, I remember."

Go Back to Africa

It was a particular non-descript day. I had decided to go get some breakfast at a local restuarant in Oakland. I had decided it was a perfect day to nap in the sun. I wanted to go get a book on chakra healing in Berkeley before I went on a quest to find a place to nap. I approached the bus stop. I notice two black women and three kids sharing a bench. They were sharing a bag of chips and fussing at each other as kids do. "Momma, he won't give me any more chips!" the little girl said to one of the women. She snaps, "Share those chips, Jamal." For the first time, I notice that she is wearing a bus driver uniform. She says to me, "I love that color on you." I was wearing a lime green. I thanked her and asked how they were doing. The little girl looks up at me with sprinkles of chips all over her face. I smile at her and say, "Wipe your face baby." She wipes her face and then looks at me. I nod.

As the bus approaches, we all begin to move towards the curb, where I notice an elderly white woman standing. She is almost clutching the post as we come close to her and she gets on the bus as the current bus driver emerges to swap places with the black woman. She sits in the front seat next to the window. The little kids continue to fight over the chips and I laugh at the little girl's brother who is obviously getting joy at tormenting the poor child. His eyes lock mine and I give him a half smile while I shake my finger at him. He laughs a mischievious laugh. He stops teasing her and gives her the bag of chips. He looks at her You can tell he loves her though as he asks her to sit next to him. He is loving. The second black woman approaches the front of the bus and he says, "Auntie, sit here with me!" She ignores him and sits up front next to the white woman. Mistaking them as sisters, I begin to wonder if they are together. My mind drifts and I find myself staring out the window.

All of the sudden there is a comotion in the front of the bus. The black woman jumps out of her seat with her fists clenched. "You need to learn some respect." The elderly white woman says, "I have always been good to black people. My son..." Her voice trails off. I hear the black woman say, "I don't give a damn about what your son has done, you have been having an attitude with us since you the bus stop. You are a damn racist." The white woman is speaking and I cannot hear her until she yells, "You can go back to Africa if you want to."

Stunned, I said, "Oh hell no, she did not even go there." I think of the irony of this event happening as we roll through Berkeley. Berkeley, the alleged haven for radicals and liberals. They call it the Berkeley nation for a reason. Every time, I go to Berkeley, I step in to a time lapse. There is always some long haired beautiful being walking down the street with some kind of book written by some philosopher or activist who was working to change the system. There is always somebody who took just a little bit too much acid back in the day and never quite came back. There is always some privileged white youth who choose to be homeless littering the streets with their signs requesting pot and sometimes food too. There is always somebody eating some sort of organic politically correct food out of a recycled bag. There is always somebody with too many tattoos, earings and layers of mismatched second hand clothing exploring the existential aspect of our mundane existence.

Yet, I have often wondered about free love. I have often wondered about the radical inclusiveness that Berkeley liberals and liberals in general work to practice. There always seemed to be a repression that comes with political correctness. I think they have a lot of unexpressed feelings and thoughts that get pushed in to corners and emerge in funny ways. I like to walk through Berkeley and one day, I walked in front of this person's property. Someone had trampled their garden. They had posted a sign, "We have you on camera. When you come back, we have a gun waiting to greet you." Berkeley? The home of non-violence and homeopathic medicine?

I snap back to the moment. It is etched in my mind. The black woman standing in a warrior pose with ther fist clenched, rocking from side to side like a boxer, preparing to strike her foe. The elderly white woman scrunched in the corner staring straight ahead rooted in her privilege. There is nothing apologetic about her. The bus is silent and I look around and people are mortified. Their liberal bubbles bursting. The black woman screams, "You need to show some respect!" The energy is escalating. I know that I will intervene if the black woman moves to strike her. As much as I understand and feel her, we just cannot strike 70 year old women. We just can't. I see her. I understand that she is a product of her time and her consciousness is limited. She probably doesn't even see herself as racist. Having that understanding does not mean that those comments hurt any less, so I understood the black woman as well.

As we approached the tipping point, a young white woman who is sitting across from me tells the elderly white woman to leave the bus. The bus driver asks her, "Is she wrong?" The young white woman says, "Yes. There is another bus behind us, you need to get off the bus." The bus driver pulls over the bus and tells her to get off the bus. The elderly white woman huffs and says, "Fine. I am going to tell your supervisor." The bus driver says, "Go ahead and tell him how you are racist too."

The bus pulls off. The black woman bursts in to tears. I was shocked. I was surprised, because of her appearance. She had her hair braided and pulled to the back with her white shirt tucked in to her jeans. A gold necklace complimented small gold earrings. She looked like she came from a whole bunch of hardness and I guess I did not expect that someone or really anything could touch her. I tell her, "Don't take it on, it is not yours." The young white woman echoes and pats her on the shoulder and says, "I am sorry. You should not have to take that. It is not yours, don't take it on." She tells the bus driver, "You know what she said to me? She said you fat black bitch, you can go back to Africa if you want to." She cannot stop crying. The elderly white woman had found the string and this black woman was becoming undone.

The bus pulls over and it is my stop. I pat her on her shoulder and tell her, "I am sorry that that happened. I hope you feel better." I felt the irony of being someone who does go back to Africa and loves it. Yet, I understood the underpinnings and historic context of the elderly white women's comment. Some wounds are old and ancestral. Raw just under the surface, if there has been any healing at all. I didn't know what else to say to the black woman. Is there anything else to say? How quickly we fall from our ideals. How quickly the unexpressed conversations emerge continuing to etch the legacies of those that came before. Some of the paths of our ancestors were meant to be followed and others were meant to be re-imagined and re-created in ways that mirror our humanity.

Re: What is the way of the empath?

This is how it works. I created this blog back in January and it is now May. Now, I am ready to blog for hours, maybe even days! I am ready to download it all from my Spirit. This is how it works being open to the flow and not forcing it. So, here I go. So what is the way of the empath?

I don't believe there is one way to anything. I believe that feelings-by their nature-flow. Yet for me-being a primarily feeling based person, I have come to know myself and how my feelings manifest. People say that I have a calming presence. I never thought of myself as a healer. I try not to. It is a trap, because I know that healing comes through me. I am a vessel. People call me a bright light. I ask who brings light to the light bringer? My flame feels so low sometimes that it is about to go out. Yet, even in those times-sometimes especially in those times-people tell me that I bless them. I have come to believe that the way of the empath is all of it. It is the light and the shadow. My Godmother used to tell me, "The brighter the light, the bigger the shadow." So, what is the way of the empath? I realized some time ago that I have a set of rules that I live by.

The way of the empath is:

Compassion: To me compassion means that I see myself in every situation. It is not denial of my feelings. It is owning my feelings and finding myself in the behavior. It is owning my part in it-in all of it-from environmental destruction to the miscommunication with my friend. Compassion is not passivity. I do not confuse empathy with sympathy and I do not confuse kindness for weakness.

Feeling and Intuition: I cherish my gift of intuitive feeling as a gift from my ancestors and Spirit. I do not confuse my ability with ego. I feel and I feel some more. I trust my feelings. I have found that the majority of my pain comes from when I do not listen to my feelings. Sometimes the external circumstances and my feelings conflict. It can be counter intutitive to follow my heart when all circumstances tell you to follow the condition. Following the path of the heart takes much courage

Service: I believe that empaths are organic unifiers. As we can feel everything and everyone, we are able to create links and bridges between people and perspectives. Where others find disconnects, we discover common threads. We help people unify within themselves and between each other. We serve oneness.

Sustainability: I include myself in the definition of my service work. I ensure that I give to myself as I give to others. I give to others in ways that supports my own replenishment. I know I cannot give from a half empty place and that my work is ultimately sustainable when I serve in a way that is sustainable to myself.

Courageous Love: I ask what would love do now? I search for the highest good in the situation. I know that every situation requires a different response. Sometimes love requires allowing others to walk their path without you. Sometimes love is letting go. Sometimes love is don't call here anymore. Love is looking at it with a cold eye. It is seeing life on life's terms and loving it, because of how it is, not how you want it to be.

Spirit: I know that I am guided and held by Spirit. I know that spirituality is the foundation upon which I live, work and breathe. I know that I call forth the people that need my energy as I call forth beneficial energies that are required for my growth and development.

The way of the empath is a special path. I had not thought of it as a path until last year. I was thumbing through one of those huge birthday books-you know the ones that are like a 1,000 pages and are so large they damn themselves to be coffee table books until they are given away as they take up too much space? I looked up my birthday-30 June and 1971 and it said, "Way of the Empath." I heard a bell. Yes, that is me. I knew it then, but I never thought it would bloom in to a practice. I never thought that it could be my work in the world. I guess you cannot run from who you are. It expresses itself-constructively or destructively-but it always expresses itself. Empaths always express themselves. Thank you for allowing me to express myself to you.