On Being a Sunflower

My birth month is typically accompanied by self-reflection, an almost involuntary reflex that I have grown to count on and value. It is a time to go back to my beginnings and my roots, to celebrate the ways that I’m honoring these roots, and to take stock of the ways that I could use an adjustment. While I do this throughout the year, February is a special time, and it helps when my son reminds me every morning “It’s almost the special day, it’s almost your BIRTHDAY!”

My work of late has been to let myself shine like a sunflower. Words that pop into mind around this work are self-centered (literally, centered in myself) and full-of-myself (growing into my own full-ness), ego-centric (centered in the “I”), all expressions that I grew up to think of as wrong. Perhaps it’s a shortcoming of our language and culture that there isn’t a word that conveys correct honoring of one’s ego, and so ironically we have found ourselves at the alter of ego and self-promotion in popular culture and beyond. We are either self-effacing, or self-glorifying, the woman who constantly apologizes, or the man who relishes in that apology. Both miss the mark.

There is a laundry list of ways that I have tried to hide my sunflower. Volunteering excessively rather than honoring the value of my time. Working really hard to make the grouchy person in the room like me, as if their approval will affirm me. Deflecting compliments. Hunching my shoulders. Apologizing after my inner lioness lets out a needed growl.

It’s easy to misunderstand what it means to unveil the sunflower inside each of us. Suddenly we find ourselves caught in new traps. I urgently have to express what I feel the moment I feel it. You have to hear and understand who I am and how I shine. The way I see it is correct. My voice is more important, my work richer. No one praises me so I will praise myself.

Let’s look at the sunflower, herself. Her stalk is thick and hairy, quintessentially exemplifying the world stalky. She sways in the wind, sensitive to the breeze, but exists in a firm way that doesn’t easily crush. She is unabashedly tall, and opens into a huge, meaty brown heart and surprisingly delicate, bright yellow petals. She is not ashamed or devoured by the hummingbirds that feast on her seeds; she knows it is an exchange. She just is, beautiful and authentic, comfortable as she mirrors the brightness of the sun. She lives in a field of other sunflowers; she has no need to be the only one, and the vast beauty of the collective enhances her shine.   

This month, these days, the sunflower is my compass. In a roomful of middle school students, exuberant, moody, questioning, I focus on keeping my center and my balance. When suggesting ideas to a group I remind myself not to start with an apologetic or minimizing clause. I’ve nearly eliminated the word “just” from my vocabulary.  While all ages have their virtues and shortcomings, the further I progress into my 30s the more grateful I am for the sense of comfort I have to simply shine. 

Grant-Writing and the Underground Poet

The past two months I have been neck deep in the process of writing a series of grant proposals. When I imagine what kind of facebook posts could showcase how I spend my time I cringe with the thought of dry, technical memes that say things like “do your project goals match with your measurement tools?” or sweeping and possibly vague statements like “engage diverse communities in meaningful dialogue.” When one gets on a roll with grant writing, one wonders if the inner poet is forced into deep underground hiding. 

Tedious as it may be, proposal writing forces me to do one of my favorite things: talk to people.  I am working on several proposals that relate to cross-cultural dialogue in Anchorage, and yesterday I met with Dr. Chad Farrell, the demographer whose research revealed that Mountain View is the most diverse neighborhood in the country. I appreciated his humility as he watched his findings become household conversation throughout Anchorage and the world, and his interest in having his research be a starting point for deeper conversations rather than our community’s self-congratulatory ending point. The demographic fact of diversity simple is, but how are we as a community going to move with it? Our conversation had personal reverberations as I thought how one of the reasons I moved from Kodiak to Anchorage, and to Fairview, is so that my 6 year old son can see more faces that look like his own. I never shared that with him, but when he came home from school with a self-portrait with handsome brown skin and dark brown, curly hair, I felt my heart relax a little. It relaxed even more when he said, “I miss Kodiak, but I do like that Anchorage has people that look like me!” 

Conversations like that with Dr. Farrell free my imagination (and perhaps the underground poet trying to weather the grant-writing storm), and then I get to bring new insights to the grant-writing process. Tangibles like the fact that the stories of minority community members are under-documented, and that there is a gap in research on the immigrant experience in Anchorage become arguments for film workshops for youth to research and tell these stories through documentary film. The poet’s fire leaks through to the proposal, even though cloaked in technical language and flow-charts. 

Stop Helping; Start Seeing

We are rightfully raised that it is good to be of service to others. As a woman, biology and culture together weave a story of volunteering time to help others, whether they are friends going through a difficult time, projects that need helping hands, children to tend to.

Volunteer Teaching in Uganda

In many ways I have dedicated my life to service and giving. My Masters is in Educational Development. I was going to live in Uganda with my now ex-husband and be helpful. At that time in my life, my idea of being helpful was inextricably linked to making changes that would positively affect people’s lives. I studied and pondered how girls could get a better chance at schooling, and how quality of education could improve in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was around this time that I developed a sense of guilt for my white privilege, for my upper-middle class upbringing, and a sense that I had to make up for it through giving what I had away, whether it be my time, my money, my skills, or my energy. My eyes were opened to the seemingly random power structures of the world, and how by chance of geography, race and class I had ended up somewhere on top.

Like all of us, I have stumbled along the way. The friends I kept helping and then ended up resenting. The family rift I couldn’t fix. Travelling across the world for service projects and realizing that it’s actually me that might be growing more than anyone I am working for. These experiences force me to ask what does it mean to be of service in a meaningful way? I see that giving until exhaustion doesn’t work, and that guilt-giving causes more harm than good.

I have started to play with the idea that I could replace giving with seeing and learning. I get to practice this every day with my son. Tchabo’s Dad visited, and Tchabo was naturally crying as they said goodbye. Every cell in my body wanted to take away his sad feelings, whether going back in time to create a different scenario, or saying something to cheer him up. Should I distract him with a treat? Should I tell him that everything will be okay? Instead I swallowed my need to fix and told him that it made sense to me that he was crying, and that he could cry until he was done. After 20 minutes of sadness and quiet, Tchabo exclaimed with delight “I cried for half an hour, and now I’m done!”

I think we can practice seeing or presence in lieu of giving, or as a deeper form of giving. We can do this with ourselves, with our immediate friends and family, and culturally and politically we can do this on a larger scale. This is not an argument against action. I’m making a case that we reframe our action. Instead of begrudgingly helping and hosting Syrian refugees, nations could look at how they could learn and grow from the refugee story. With this mindset it could be a privilege and a great stroke of luck to host these families, to learn about resilience, to be present to the results of wars that we are involved in, to gain perspective about what is essential.

Instead of starting NGOs to foster development in sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps we could just bear witness to the terrific stories of resilience, survival, and playfulness, and start to expand our own idea of what it means to be human. If I ever start another NGO it will be to save the broken values of the US with stories of inspiration from Africa. I am not making light of profound problems, but rather questioning our "fix-it" mentality that seems to bear an implicit superiority rather than the connection that shared stories bring.

This is why See Stories is the name for my youth education storytelling business. As we practice seeing, and being present to our own story and the stories of others, we grow in deep and profound ways. In my case, I learned that my helpfulness was often a way to experience myself as a good, lovable person, which actually I already am without doing anything at all. Ironically, I am helpful in a deeper and more lasting way now that I have realized this.

On Insecurity*

I woke up this morning with a small headcold and a case of insecurity. My body is telling me I need so slow down and stay home, but my energy level is up enough to support my mind wandering in what feels like 1,000 directions contemplating what exactly I am doing in Anchorage. There is so much potential in Anchorage for See Stories, but where should I start? Will it work out here for See Stories? Will I be able to materially support myself and my son in the way I want to?

I am aware that as a business owner I am supposed to project an image of confidence, and as an educator I work to support self-esteem in my students. I have never been good at trying to project an image, but my authentic self tends to be confident and enthusiastic. Yet here I am facing my insecurities, one of the most human experiences one can have. Everything has changed in the past two months, I’ve moved with Tchabo to Anchorage, my grandparents passed away, Tchabo started kindergarden, and I’m reframing my work model to emphasize local Anchorage projects so that I don’t have to take Tchabo continuously out of school. In a way it’s shocking that I’ve been doing as well as I have given all the change in my life, and yet that feels like little consolation in the face of today’s insecurity.

And yet this is a reality that business owners (and everyone!) has to face. It is an insecure world. Sometimes there are too many clients, other times too few. Sometimes payment comes on time, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I spend a week writing a grant to create a project for myself, and most often the grant doesn’t come through. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder if there is something wrong with me that I choose this life. Why don’t you get a regular job, Marie?! Or even more insidious… stop with the entrepreneurial bit, get a consistent job, it’s the responsible thing to do… as a single mom you OUGHT to. 

And yet I trust in my continual calling to run See Stories and to be an entrepreneur. I’ve been like this since I was a teenager, and I’ve always cherished this about myself even when it’s hard. I don’t want to live in a compartmentalized way, work, personal, parenting… I want my life to be in a balance. With See Stories, Tchabo can travel with me to a village to be with me as I teach. I can make a family reunion into a film workshop in my own village in Nebraska, spending time with family and delving into community stories with the next generation. When I need personal time I can take it, and when I am ready to be in the world I can go. And yet inevitably, there are moments and days when it is hard.

Several days ago I picked up Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning as if I unconsciously knew that I would struggle with insecurity today. As I nurse my cold and my emotions I read his instructions that seem directed precisely at me in this moment: “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.” I know this in my bones, even as my mind spins with questions. I am responding to my own particular call in this particular moment in the best way I know how.

Sometimes the reminder about the “cause greater than oneself” is so tiny that it disappears next to the deafening noise of the mind’s chatter. As I respond to Frankl’s call, I realize that today a student from my last workshop just wrote me that she had an exciting interview with a woman who spoke Swedish. She is crafting a film on Swedish traditions in Wausa, the town of my late grandparents. A beloved student and friend from Uganda wrote me to say hi and check in, a young woman whose story and strength of spirit continually inspires me. Ultimately it’s my students, and the next generation, that inspire me to continue with See Stories. As a film educator, I get to support youth to share and engage in stories that are meaningful to them.  

While I sit with both my insecurities and my inspiration, I also realize there are limits to what one person, and to what I, can do. And that’s okay. I follow my bigger call as best I can, but that doesn’t always have to look momentous. It can be as simple as a student doing an interview that touched her. Or a conversation with a former student about how she sees her path forward in Uganda. If there is one thing I would like to go back in time and tell my 20 year old self, it’s that the difference you make doesn’t have to look huge to be meaningful. In a world obsessed with “scaling up” and “broadening impacts” I am content to “scale down” and focus on the little openings. I wonder where they lead…

*I would like to acknowledge my teacher, mentor, and friend Lydia Ossorgin for her conversation that helped me to refine this blog post.  

Weaving a Story

Interviewing 97 year old Great Great Uncle Clicker

In Wausa everyone is related. The Hults, the Bloomquists, the Andersons. It feels as if the families can be counted on one hand. This is true in most villages where I do film workshops. Karluk, Alaska consists primarily of two families. One stops even asking about whether people are related in most communities because the answer is so obvious. The difference in Wausa for me is that I am a part of the web of relationships. I am a Hult, and also a Bloomquist and an Anderson through marriage. When I look at old pictures I sometimes see a resemblance with myself. Interviews are punctuated with explanations of how I am related to cousins, nephews, long lost aunties-in-law. When I flip through the pages of a Wausa Gazette from 90 years ago, my late Grandpa's birth announcement flies off the page. "Born, to Mr. and Mrs. David Hult, Monday, August 17th, a baby boy." I suddenly see him as a little baby, with all the potential that comes with babyness. He was not yet the handsome young man he would become, or the avid carpenter, or the old man who couldn't stop loving life until the very end. He was a bundle of freshness, unnamed in the paper. 

Grammie in the center of her grandchildren

I can mark time and growth through my visits to this place. The Labor Day parade, with hours worth of floats that defy any notion that the small town is a fading thing, reminds me of the same parade, 25 years ago. My grandma sewed all of us cousins swedish costumes. We danced around the maypole the way the Swedes did in the old country. We ate Potato Balogna, Ostakaka with Lingonberries, and we called the noontime meal "dinner." 25 years later I realize how much of myself is recycled from this past. I started a crepe stand, and we can trace the crepe tradition back in our family for 5 generations. No matter where I travel in the world, I am most comfortable in a village where people farm their food and live with the seasons. Tchabo and I recently noticed that we both apologize quite often even when we have done nothing wrong, and even this I see in the mid-west politeness where people tend to be extremely considerate of one another. 

Grammie's biography of her Mother-in-Law

I work with students to share their local stories, I also weave together my own story. I realize that my Grandma was quietly and impeccably keeping track of our family story. Every object she possessed had a note about its history. Every photo had a caption, and relatives had entire home-made books documenting the family tree and anecdotes. I find myself connecting to my late Grammie through this passion, as I too am drawn to understand the web of connections in our family. Who suffered what? How did people survive? What was different, and what the same? And yet my Grammie didn't leave notes about why she felt called to be the family historian. She did it so quietly that I didn't even think of her as a genealogist until I witnessed her countless albums, reel-to-reel-movies, and writings, after her passing. What she didn't say or write, but what I sense, is that she kept track out of love. She wrote her Mother-in-Law's history as a 95th birthday present. She wrote the story of tatting in our family as a gift to me and my cousin Melissa, who learned from our Great Grandmother how to make lace. She understood how important it is to feel connected to a bigger story, and wanted her loved ones to experience that. 

Oftentimes small town and family history can boil down to nostalgia, or a sense that things used to be better. Or for others, perhaps a sense of relief that we are in a new century that doesn't involve waking at dawn to milk cows and feed chickens and work all day, every day. Sometimes I look at the straight-forward and lasting nature of marriage as it used to be in Wausa (marry young, and stay married for life) and I find it more honest, that instead of looking for an ideal partner you work hard with the partner you have to make a life. Other times I feel grateful that I have more options, that I can marry (or not marry) on my own terms and in my own way. The truth might be that life is challenging and beautiful in either case. For me, looking into my ancestors here in Wausa, ultimately I am not comparing the merits of the past and the present, but I am in the tender process of understanding myself and my son. What is this piece of the puzzle? Tchabo intuitively knows the depth of the connection, which I see as he spontaneously embraces without release his Great Great Great Uncle Clicker, or as he plans how we will honor the memory of Grammie and Grampie through making apple pancakes and celebrating them "at least once a month." Through an honest and evolving understanding of ourselves, free of judgement, we grow and embody our full potential, our birth-right. 

Moving to Anchorage

Mellow coals hiss after doing their work of boiling tea water. Mist just encircled the valley where Tchabo and I are camping, shrouding both the sun and the moon in their dance on opposite horizons. I shift from spot to spot in my own dance with the smoke. This camping trip, though spontaneously hatched, has turned into closure for our time in Kodiak. Next week we move to Anchorage.

Anchorage, my home town, has never felt like a place I am anchored to. After growing up there it was strictly a place to visit family and friends between journeying the world. If anything, Anchorage felt disorienting, the way the place of your adolescence can stultify you with old patterns that have an uncomfortably strong grip. Important to experience, and vital to leave. Now, to my surprise and delight, Anchorage is just the place for me and Tchabo. I've travelled enough to know that I am the same everywhere, and I've changed enough to see my hometown with new eyes. I am excited to return.

Tchabo will start at Denali Montessori in August, and I will continue with See Stories leading film workshops with teenagers. Some have dug to find the hidden man behind my move, and I smile because if a man is inspiring this decision it's Tchabo. Kodiak has given him the wild natural childhood that for many places is a thing of the past. Anchorage will give him opportunities and broaden his horizons.

Tchabo's present horizon is that of dreams in our tent, lulled by a roaring surf. Our camping trip coincided with the blue moon which our bodies responded to in tandem with the inhaling and exhaling of the tide. Tchabo played in the surf as the moon milk poured around him strong enough to cast a moon shadow. The tides, the endless waves, all speak of return, of timing, of cycles. Now is the moment for Anchorage. Kodiak has prepared us. I have led my life thirsty for new places and experiences, inspired by the travels of Marco Polo, the 1,001 Arabian nights, and ancestors filled with unsatiated wanderlust. I smile realizing that Anchorage itself holds the whole world, literally, as one of the most international cities I have experienced.

This return to Anchorage is punctuated with a See Stories trip to my extended family in Nebraska. I will do a film workshop in my Mom's hometown of Wausa, supporting students to look at stories of small farm culture. When I was 18, before leaving home, I went to Wausa to gather small town stories for my zine, The Crooked Rascal. I realize with this full circle that See Stories has always existed in my thirst to witness the way people look at the world, the way my family looks at the world and the the way I see it. That thirst exists whether I am in Greece, Uganda, New Mexico, or Anchorage. What has grown is my focus on supporting the next generation to make meaning of this web of stories, whether that be Tchabo or my students. The shared process of anchoring.

Following the Sun

One week until I go full time with See Stories. One week before Tchabo returns from a month with his Dad. A Saturday of surprising quiet. I never cease to be amazed how the house stays tidy without the bursting energy of a five year old, nor how I miss the mess. I take this moment to savor the details, to rejuvenate myself by doing very little. I relate to the sprouts in Tchabo's monkey, slowly and tenderly craning towards the light, and moving as the light moves. Taking nourishment from something far larger than myself, without having to understand it. 

The way my hands and heart relax with the first spring garden planting. The way I have learned to give myself permission for a nap rather than drink a cup of coffee. The way I just set aside my to-do list to write for a sweet moment. This is my practice of following the light, sometimes clumsy, sometimes comfortable. One clue that something is nourishing is that I feel at home with myself when I do it. That is how I feel in the company of words and letters.

Days like this incubate my energy for launching See Stories as a full-time venture, a daunting and

thrilling immenent prospect. And the energy for Tchabo as he bursts like a seedling back into my daily life. My sun.