Dissertation Writing Partner

Certainly one of the other benefits of the dissertation process is the community of sisters (and brothers) who are also in their PhD process.

Luckily, CIIS, my school, has a June writing group set up that meets weekly.  Another bit of good luck is that I have a few PhD sisters in SF and the East Bay who are in agreement to meet weekly to review our writing and our overall progress.

Finally, I also have a Mestiza sister (also part Pinay!) who is about my same age and has been in my same program about the same amount of time who is this summer working on her dissertation as well.  We met up yesterday, and mostly what we focused on was our hearts.

Both of us have security/survival issues coming up in our lives.  Whether it's money or family or living situation, we were able to share vulnerably about the obstacles and opportunities these daily concerns bring to our writing.

Moreover, we are both employing intuitive/organic inquiry in our dissertation itself, so there's a lot for us to connect on on various levels.  I felt inspired to bring more imagery and embodiment to my dissertation process.  Her main image is a quilt, and mine is the labyrinth.  We embody these symbols and are dissertation can as well.

I'm thinking embodied labyrinth water colors with muscle-like pathways to cosmological main ideas. Today I buy the water-color paper and a new brush. Excited!!!! And, grateful for you, my writing partner.

A Writing Retreat

Today I am starting up my writing retreat week.

[Oh, and I start my painting classes today!

This weekend has been full of good good things: investing in community, giving energy to being mentored, and feeling connected.

(Time with friends in a communal living "Hen House" and other old friends in the Christian family as well as the new Filipina-indigenous focused family. Time with my body too).]

So, now is the transition moment: the nepantla, the liminal, the space on the cusp of, the wide road of a border.  And, today, I will walk through this transition and be transformed.

On the agenda this week: visual mapping and re-reading for multi and contextual voices as well as organization.

Dissertation Mentors

One of the best parts of this journey?  My mentors on the dissertation committee.  

I have three, and all three are amazing, wise, and extremely helpful.  I realized a month or so ago just how amazing it is to have these three women mentor me this next year.  What a gift! 

In the past two days, I've met with two of them.  They fed me, listened to me, and shared their feedback and advice.  And, their advice is invaluable to me as it deals with the organization and preparation and space creation for writing such a long essay.   Also, they can address the subtle nuances of speaking to multiculturalism from a relational way of being, something I desire to learn so much.  They encourage me to speak to employ a transparent subjectivity and to continue to recognize my particular heritage and experiences while bringing it all back to that social-political-cultural level of engagement as well.  Oh, and, they introduce me to other wise women. And, last, they recommend texts for me to read that have inspired them.  These meetings are pretty much the best book club and spiritual direction I can imagine. 

Speaking about my research

I’m used to editing and omitting what I talk about when I talk about my PhD.  Women’s spirituality – exploring women and religion, ecofeminism, and sacred arts/healing – isn’t necessarily what I was raised to value.  Of course, my family is thrilled I’m working on my PhD, education being the passage of ascension, and in many ways, they don’t care what I am studying.  At least, that’s how it seems.

But there’s a new thing that I’m speaking to in my research now: racism.  And, you know, I just don’t know how to edit or omit very well in regards to this topic.   Moreover, with women-centered communities that I have felt free to share with before in regards to my program, mostly women who do not identify as women of color, I now find myself a bit speechless. I am hesitant to tell them that I want to talk about all women’s spirituality of my ancestors, making sure to include the dark and indigenous.  I somehow feel like I am calling them racist.  I feel unsafe, probably on the first level within myself, and then I think I’m all alone in this awkward inability to share. And, I realize, I am, actually, racist.  I carry that in me, and judging myself for that culpability, I can’t help but judge those around me

And, I'm Back on Dissertation Road

What I failed to write in the last blog or to even take into consideration was that I was going on a little getaway.  Orr Hot Springs, near Ukiah, has been on my list of places to visit for a retreat.  Many friends here in the Bay Area have recommended it to me, and when my partner wanted to go away somewhere for a few days, Orr was perfect.  I forgot that they have no cell or internet reception, but I'm sure glad they don't.  Really, did I expect to keep up with techno/work/school life while out there?

Overall, the last three days have been so restful. We spent the time at Orr lounging from our yurt to the hot springs private baths to the communal baths to the pool to the saunas to the gardens and to the redwoods.  Grateful grateful grateful.  

I did, in fact, do some research reading -- on decolonizing and liberating methodologies -- and still the time away from my computer and phone helped me get some "bigger perspective" on my dissertation and its role in my life.  I want to remember to love my body and spirit through the process. If I am slowly killing myself in the process of writing, what have I accomplished?

Over the time away, I pondered these thoughts (from a healing session with the previously mentioned mentor):

"Words of wisdom will....sound eternal, applicable through many situations, many ages, many times. Words can heal or steal.  Now is the time to contemplate just what the words you hold in your mind are doing for you and to others.  What meaning are you giving your life as you define your experience to yourself?  How are you valuing what you do?  You are not the words themselves."

My partner and I discussed these thoughts, questions, and we pondered the significance of valuing times in our lives only in hindsight.  We talked about how we want to be grateful for our times together here and now and not just tomorrow.  We talked about the revaluing, if necessary, so that we can honor our livelihoods as alternative as they may seem to others.

Well, on to yoga and meditation now.  I've just dropped my partner off at the airport.  We won't see each other for 2 months. Yep, that's another story too.

Into the Dissertation

Yesterday, I was offered a "medicine bag" from a woman who quickly became a mentor.  Her medicine is social and media networking with a language that is accessible as well as marketable. Inspired by her medicinal work and sacred intention, I've decided to try to blog daily brief thoughts about my dissertation experience. My hope is that this online space will help me translate my academic writing into something more ...exciting? popular? sellable? I guess I already feel like I have a poetic and creative voice that I tend to share on my blog or with friends and I have this academic-y voice reserved for school. The two really have to meet, and my dissertation itself works toward integration too. 

Thus far, I've constructed a proposal that will hopefully be approved in the next two weeks. I've organized the next few months so that I will hopefully finish a draft of my dissertation. June is research and organizing month!

I've been pondering how exactly I would frame my dissertation so that others outside the academy would be interested in reading it.  I've considered something like Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves or Aurora Levins Morales' Remedios and Medicine Stories, but I'm not confident that these works would pass as dissertations.  Leny Strobel's A Book of Her Own: Words and Images to Honor the Babaylan has more critical writing dispersed within it.  I'm imagining, a mixture of these three works with creative "riffs" then quotations then critical analysis chapters then ritual/story telling sections.  

Well, this is a good start, no? On to the day....I'm moving today. Sigh, trying to find a home is another story altogether. 

Annual Newsletter ... Spring Equinox

The end of 2012, the time of solstice and holiday warmth, flew by as I traveled in the Philippines.  I wrote most of this newsletter from the very-warm-indeed Philippines.  I was on a ferry from Manila/Batangas to Mindoro, making my way to North Pandan Island for some diving off of Apo Reef.   Now, I’m safely back home with Oliver in the L.A. area, and I can hardly believe it’s March! 

As I think about this past year, I realize how much of a gypsy I’ve been.  Although I started off the year living in the Bay Area for a solid four months, the summer quickly took me on a whirlwind tour of scattered friends.   While in the Bay Area, I had these healthy weekly rituals that included hiking, dancing, yoga-ing, happy houring, and working!  I bicycled around town and caught up with friends and family.   I also finished my first comprehensive exam, and I felt closer than ever to my school community. 

In June, I started moving around: to So Cal for Oliver and his health, New Mexico with Grammie, back to the Bay Area for retreats, to the farm in Ventura County, and last to Alaska for my hitchhiking/camping/kayaking/ice-climbing adventure.  With the Fall, things did not change so much.  I celebrated my birthday in Tahoe then around Pismo Beach, and last in Los Angeles.   I also visited a friend in NYC on my way to present a paper at this big academic religious conference in Chicago.  The Chicago time became really a big reunion, and I loved it.   I was struck by just how many friends of mine would want to attend or present at a religious conference.   And, my presentation went well thanks to the many friends that supported me.  

And, then, just after thanksgiving, after a Filipina grief retreat, I decided it was time to be in the Philippines for a while to connect with my Lola Concepcion’s homeland, my motherland in part as a Mestiza Filipina.  It was a timely trip as my second comprehensive exam is on this topic (Mestiza Xicana and Filipina Identity, Spirituality, and Creative Writing).   I romped around the Philippines with my partner and also became certified as a scuba diver too (big for me! Big fear embracing!).  Life under the sea is amazing, and I found myself in love with the coral and colors and fish and turtles.  I spelunked through a long underwater tunnel too! 

For most of February, I joined with other Filipinas and Filipina-Americans on a tour of Mindanao tribes.  The trip was one of great celebration of these indigenous people (my people!) who keep the ways of Earth and women affirming community.   Connecting with a couple Mestizas on the tour, I had the opportunity to present at a multicultural conference on women’s spirituality in late February.  Also through women I met in the Philippines, I connected with Sister Mary John at St. Scholastica’s in Manila.  We danced together at One Billion Rising, the Vday (Feb 14) event to end violence against women and girls.

Altogether, the Philippines was transformative and both painful as well as beautiful.  My life just can’t be the same, and as I step into 2013 in California now, I’m (a bit nervously) excited to see what comes from that grand adventure into one of my family’s homelands.