by Maria-Jose Soerens

From all the kinds of anger a woman can feel, none seems to be as brutal, unforgiving, and deeper than that of a daughter who angers her mother for not having protected her against abuse. The feeling of having been left to our own destiny while our mothers quietly witnessed the brutality of our fathers, brothers, uncles, or cousins, constitutes a wound so deep that can only be compared to being forsaken or abandoned as a child. Our archetype is the orphan girl.

As we grow older, our mothers’ reaction causes so much dissonance that we grow apart from them and we become their worst judges. I came to this realization while sitting in front of a client—a 60-year-old woman from South America who’s ex-husband had been abusive towards her and her children, yet her daughters related to him with love and compassion and were verbally abusive towards my client. Their claim against their mother was, “how could you let this happen to us.” Even though my client divorced her abusive husband and has repeatedly asked her daughters for forgiveness, they don’t seem to care. It is as though nothing could make up for such sin.

Sitting from my chair I could see my client as a victim of domestic violence and assure her that it is her ex-husband who did wrong to the entire family and that her daughters should be mad at him, not her. And that the reason why she didn’t defend her daughters was that she was being under abuse herself. The whole system was oppressive. However, as a daughter, her daughters’ anger seemed too familiar and I realized that I had been my mother’s worst executioner myself. And then it hit me: My mother was too a victim of domestic violence. She did not stand up for me because she couldn’t and that by punishing my mother I was taking part in an abusive and oppressive system. How could I, a post-colonial feminist, be so brutally oppressive towards my own mother? That very night I called my mother, who is in Chile, and asked for her forgiveness. She was very gracious, but by her reaction I could recognize the deep roots of abuse that had contributed to her disappearance from the central stage of her own life.

Reflecting more on this, and informed by the stories of many middle-aged Latino women who have been my clients, I began thinking on the variables that contribute to the feeling of orphanage we daughters experience as the result of our mothers disappearing in the background.  Two things came to mind: (a) The constant obliteration of our mothers’ sense of self in an abusive intimate relationship, and (b) The role of motherhood in Latino culture. As a predominately Catholic culture, the model of motherhood follows that of the Virgin Mary: an all suffering, all compassionate, asexual mother. Just like Virgin Mary, mothers in Latinamerica are expected to carry in their shoulders the suffering and struggles of all of her children without receiving anything in return. Mothers in Latinamerica lack all power and bear all responsibility.

Pedro Almodovar illustrates these dynamics brilliantly in the film “Volver.” (“To Return”). (Spoiler alert!). In this film, Almodovar portraits the generational dynamics of abuse through the story of Raimunda, her daughter Paula, and her mother Irene, who in this case is a ghost. Without getting into detail so that you can enjoy the film, Raimunda had stopped talking to her diseased mother years before her death. In the film, Raimunda has the chance to protect her daughter, Paula, who killed her father because he tried to rape her. A couple of days later Irene’s ghost comes back to resolve issues she couldn’t resolve while alive. I recognize I didn’t give much away… I hate spoiling films for people, but please watch it; and while you are at it, think about this post, the redemptive function of Raimunda, her relationship with her mother and the last sentence of the movie: “Ghosts don’t cry.”

If you are one of us, that is, a wounded daughter, fight for liberation through giving your mother a chance to be empowered. Honor her and forgive her, for she too was the victim of horrible abuse. You two are more united than you think.

By Lisa Carlson

I have situated myself in front of my dinner table as I write. My heart and mind are both filled with grief and inspiration. I grieve how exclusive our homes and tables are in this society. I lament that the poor do not know that they are welcome to knock at the doors of our churches and our homes to be cared for and yet (sigh) I am utterly and unstoppably inspired by the imagination and revolutionary ways of Jesus’s eating practices. As I have wrestled with, ruminated on and researched the holy texts around eating, I am comforted, affirmed and galvanized by the explicit fact that this is our tradition and our unique identity as followers of Christ; to allow our ways of eating to witness to the inclusive, healing and flourishing way of Christ in our world and for our people. I am charged that even in something as ordinary as eating, Jesus served to heal, liberate and reconstruct society.
I have learned through the scriptures and liberation theologians that I think Christ is mostly concerned with us being aware of our interconnectedness with God and with one another and that his meal practices are what spoke to this. Because of this, I believe now that one of our greatest tasks as a Christian is that we simply must nurture our understanding of this interconnectedness. Because, you see, it appears to me that what was so miraculous about Jesus eating practices was not that everyone got fed, but that everyone ate together. Because in this eating together, people became more aware that Christianity is about relational wholeness, which makes us all Christ’s Body and members of one another: “The knitting together would be the beginning of the recapitulation of all systems in Christ… It is clear that Paul sees the concrete working out of real presence in a community of people who are open and who identify not with the few, the like-believers, but with all- with Christ himself in the whole body.”
Our tradition, in its very beingness, is revolutionary. It is a tradition deeply rooted in the ways that Jesus subverted and transformed the complex structural issues of society that served to separate the elite and the non-elite, rich from the poor, the clean from the unclean. He did this not by talking about how the rules should be changed, but by simply living (and in this- modeling) a different way in the face of the ruling cultural narrative. Simply put, this was just something he did: to eat with the poor, the lonely, the exiled, the Jew, the Gentile, the clean and unclean. And from this, I believe that we, as a part of the Mystical Body of Christ, should be living this way too.
I find it to be extremely honoring that Christ in Fritz Eichenberg’s, “Christ of the breadlines”, is located in the line with the people and not at the other end of the line serving the people. Gustavo Gutierrez speaks to this when he says: “Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners vividly expresses his solidarity with the victims of established powers. Eating is a symbol of fellowship. Jesus got into trouble for eating with social outcasts because for the Jews, meal is also a symbol of fellowship with God. This is why Jesus used the meal as a picture of the Kingdom.” This is precisely what makes Christ’s way of eating revolutionary- it is because he is with them, and all are invited. We, as a church, must find ways of manifesting this identity too and I believe that even our eating habits make way for this manifestation to nuzzle its way into the hearts and minds of society.
Continued… Corpus Mysticum: How the Eucharistic Image Informs my Eating

by Maria-Jose Soerens

I live in one of the most obliviously segregated cities in the US: Seattle. With one of the highest levels of education per capita and a strong progressive identity, people in Seattle are often excited about the latest Social Justice “issue” while unaware of their own “mainstream-ness” and physical distance from the poor among us.

We not only have very defined urban boundaries separating class and race (Bhutanese people in Greenlake? seriously?) but even if we share the same block, the limits of our lifestyle and habits of consumption are not conducive to running into people who are different from us. My dear friend Halimo, from Somalia, lives half a block away from me yet she doesn’t hang out in the same coffee shop than I do, much less has a laptop to chill and do some freelance work while sipping her Americano. Our distance impoverish us all.

the 48 bus in Seattle goes through all white and multi-ethnic neighborhoods in the city

In this context of gentrified neighborhoods and segregated community spaces, I often run into the dilemma of going and meeting people “where they are at,” or crafting healing spaces in the middle of downtown Seattle so as to increase our Social Capital.

There are good reasons to “go” and meet people in their midst. Most refugee and immigrant families live in the South side of Seattle (Columbia City, Rainier Vista, White Center), and on the East side (Bellevue, Kent, etc), because rent prices in Seattle are not affordable for a family that lives on $600 per month. Many adults work up to three shifts to make ends meet therefore have no time to travel downtown to seek much needed counseling services or support groups.

On the other hand, if these families have no reason to ever leave the “ghetto,” they miss opportunities to integrate and foster relationships with people who are better plugged into the mainstream network. Hence, these families become more impoverished because they lack social capital.

Facilitating the development of Social Capital for the poor among us should be one of the paramount priorities of our advocacy efforts. It is certainly a burden to make time in our schedule to go and help immigrant families, but it may not be too bad to help your friend Hodan who needs a ride to an appointment at the the immigration office, or connect her with your small business owner friend who is hiring a position for her coffeehouse in Fremont.

This type of relationships occur when we dwell in the same physical space. Therefore our efforts should be focused on creating environments that allow for connection between people who are different, for relationships to thrive and for stories to be shared. One of the biggest struggles of our time is equal access to the city; we are losing the right to live in it. As my friend Paul Sparks says “community is becoming illegal.”

Advocating for equal housing opportunities in our neighborhoods is one of the most revolutionary, radical, and sustainable things we could do. However, as Dr. Perkins says, it needs to first become our burden, and that burden will be our own when we take the time to open our eyes and extend our hand to the poor and the foreign in our midst.

“…never fight against memory. Even if it is painful, it will help you: it will give you something, it will enrich you. Ultimately, what would culture be without memory? What would philosophy be without memory? What would love be…? One cannot live without it. One cannot exist without remembrance.” –Shuster & Boschert-Kimmig.

Isabel Allende explores a broader understanding of feminism beyond gender

See this interview @ Artocratic magazine:

Click here to see Interview

Frontiers. Boundaries. Borders. Borderline. Ninety four percent of people who have suffered trauma shows behavior that is often misread by untrained psychologists as borderline. Borderline is a personality disorder characterized by a disrupted sense of identity, difficulty to control impulses, self-destructive behavior, and chronic feelings of emptiness. The fact is, not every traumatized person turns into a borderline, however these two have one thing in common: The shocking experience of splitting of one’s identity.

When a person suffers trauma, he or she experiences a crush of their sense of being. Something has been broken inside; one feels as if one has died although one’s still alive. And that is one of the most disturbing things of all: working hard to continue living while you know, deep inside, that you are actually dead. In other words, trauma is a disruptive event that crushes one’s identity, and the cure looks pretty much like reconstructing the pieces that make up the narrative of who we are. Continued… From the frontiers of ourselves…