Chris Ash

From the Archives: The Deep Exhale by Chris Ash

This was originally posted on November 13, 2018

There’s this thing that happens to advocates when the world around us burns with injustice and fury and we shift into what we know, the holding-fighting, fierce-eyed, tender-hearted caring that pours out compassion and links lives with survivors, shedding trails of sweetness as it goes. It’s a professional skillset and personal practice — a vocation, even? — that girds our own hearts with the structure of listening skills, crisis response, and open-ended questions. We wrap ourselves in the safety of our modalities while we float steadily alongside others, occasionally sharing an oar when someone is stuck.

It is an act of ministry when we exhale-blow out-breathe hard into darkness, trusting in the moment when the deep inhale comes to re-inflate our lungs and faith.

~ inhale ~

Privilege and Hierarchy in Community Care by Chris Ash

This is part one of a multi-part series on privilege, dehumanization, and hierarchy in organizing, activist, and ministry circles.

Early in my training at my current job, my boss explained our agency’s position on social justice and intersectionality to me: “When we center the margins in our work, everybody gets served.” Framed differently: When we expand the circle of who can access service, be treated with dignity, and have their humanity affirmed by others, those already within the circle get served, respected, and affirmed as well. Nobody gets excluded. Everyone gets support. In our work, we recognize that all oppressions are interlinked, and that you cannot effectively advocate for the abolition of one form of oppression without working to end them all.

I think there is a fear within circles of people who experience one or more forms of oppression that in order to allow care for those who are more marginalized, or marginalized in different ways, we must turn our focus outward to the margins, away from the center. And sometimes we do. Sometimes we need to stop talking about the needs of cis men long enough to really focus on harm experienced by women and femmes. Sometimes we need to stop talking about the experiences of white women long enough to recognize the unique oppressions experienced by Black, Latinx, and Native women. Sometimes we need to stop talking about the experiences of straight cis people to recognize the daily microaggressions, direct aggression, and harm experienced by trans and nonbinary people. Continue reading “Privilege and Hierarchy in Community Care by Chris Ash”

Gendered Only In Expression by Chris Ash

“I want you to see this new piece I wrote for our newsletter,” said Sister Ann.

We were safe inside the dining room of the Episcopal convent where she lived and I was an extended guest, and yet she spoke in hushed tones that suggested she realized the controversial nature of what she was about to say.

“This whole piece – it’s about the idea that being ‘born again’ clearly indicates the concept of God as mother.” She laid out her argument about wombs and motherhood and the feminine divine. It was a fairly essentialist argument (being the mid-nineties), but it was the first time I’d heard any modern Christian reference God as anything other than father, son, male. Before finding the Episcopal cathedral where I regularly attended services, I’d had two general experiences of the divine: the evangelical, conservative, patriarchal God of my father’s church, and the gender-creative spirit found in practices that were fairly alternative for my small, South Carolina town. Continue reading “Gendered Only In Expression by Chris Ash”

Pleasure, Touch, and Spirituality by Chris Ash

Sitting in front of the computer, I slowly and intentionally insert earbuds, click to start my favorite writing playlist, and open up Microsoft Word. I feel the tips of my fingers resting lightly on the keys, and notice the slight give of each printed square, glossy in the middle from months of 80 words per minute. I lightly tap my fingers on the keys, not pressing enough to type a letter, body motionless except my fingers, watching the absolute stillness of the screen, exploring the edge between pressure and performance with slow, shallow breaths, finally noticing the moment when the edge is breached, the key catches, and a letter appears on my screen, taking it in with satisfaction.

This is how all my writing starts, with a ritual of simple pleasure and partial attempt at channeling. My partner recognizes this move when he sees it. It’s one I repeat throughout the writing process, as I’m waiting (hoping) for the next words to come to me. I’ll stop, lift my head and close my eyes, and allow my fingers to wiggle lightly over the keyboard as if inviting the unseen to move through me and write my piece. If that still doesn’t produce words, I might run my hands from thigh to knee, fingers pressing with increasing depth into denim-covered flesh. Or I might bring my hands up to my face, fingers resting on my hairline, palms lightly covering my eyes, as I experience the instant soothing of darkness and warming effect over closed eyelids, connecting to the me-within so she can help me bring forth missing concepts. Continue reading “Pleasure, Touch, and Spirituality by Chris Ash”

The Deep Exhale by Chris Ash

a picture the author in her yard There’s this thing that happens to advocates when the world around us burns with injustice and fury and we shift into what we know, the holding-fighting, fierce-eyed, tender-hearted caring that pours out compassion and links lives with survivors, shedding trails of sweetness as it goes. It’s a professional skillset and personal practice — a vocation, even? — that girds our own hearts with the structure of listening skills, crisis response, and open-ended questions. We wrap ourselves in the safety of our modalities while we float steadily alongside others, occasionally sharing an oar when someone is stuck.

It is an act of ministry when we exhale-blow out-breathe hard into darkness, trusting in the moment when the deep inhale comes to re-inflate our lungs and faith.

~ inhale ~

Several sweet people in my friends circle have disabilities that make it hard to sustain the consistent and ongoing level of fight-advocate-resist that seems the only logical response to the news cycle. Fear and prejudice seep red-black into the fabric of an already stained history, layer upon layer of oppressive harm and other-way-looking building up and muddying paths until the slog becomes near impassable, each step dragging into the next. How can we keep up, especially those of us whose health depends on the deep in-breath?

I recently read a post comparing activism to a wind ensemble holding an unnaturally long note that the group can only sustain through the staggered breathing of each member. While the long note continues each musician can duck out for a quick breath, trusting that the other musicians will hold the note until they return.

So goes social justice organizing. Continue reading “The Deep Exhale by Chris Ash”

God, Consent, and Freedom by Chris Ash

a picture the author in her yard Over the summer, I started at a new job, which I’ve decided I can safely describe as a “dream job” – one to which I can bring my full self, and in which I can use all my gifts and strengths. Whereas my old job focused primarily on anti-sexual violence work from an advocate perspective, my new job focuses primarily on sexual violence occurring in the context of human trafficking from an advocate, trainer, and policy perspective. Sex trafficking exists along and as part of the spectrum of gender violence, and yet the history of the modern movements against sexual violence and human trafficking have had very different drives and trajectories.

A few months ago, I attended a training webinar in which Marissa Castellanos of Catholic Charities of Louisville presented on best practices for faith-based organizations involved in anti-trafficking work. She encouraged agencies to use trauma-informed practices, and spoke clearly and strongly against the somewhat common practice of tying services to participation in faith-based activities. “We don’t want to replicate the patterns of the traffickers,” she said, noting that trafficking survivors, by definition, have a traumatic history of being required to do things they don’t want to do in order to have their most basic needs met. When our actions as advocates require survivors to cede their power to our concerns, we counteract any verbal messages we may offer about empowerment, agency, and freedom. Continue reading “God, Consent, and Freedom by Chris Ash”

Spinning the Fire, Shifting the Current by Chris Ash

Christy at the beach Seventy-two hours out of every week, I carry a hotline phone. While calls come in waves and some shifts are silent, my everyday and professional lives are peppered with reminders that evil doesn’t just pierce reality through acts of power, control, and violence – it seeps through in discrediting voices and disbelieving questions. It rolls into us off the well-meaning tongues of community members who’d rather protect the status quo than hold people accountable. It wraps its tendrils around us as we walk through each system we are forced to navigate – systems that are not set up to protect our vulnerable hearts and human dignity. Evil powers the backlash wave that tries to knock down every survivor who speaks out about gender, sexual, or intimate partner violence, and it also is in the fear we swallow when we choke down our own stories, press them down deeper, grasping to avoid yet another assault on our integrity, intelligence, and truth.

Evil stains our flags with the undeniable imprints of genocide, slavery, and continuing racial injustice and then demands that we wave those flags, smiling and allegiant, as The American Dream itself is held hostage, torn from its family, held in a cage. Continue reading “Spinning the Fire, Shifting the Current by Chris Ash”

Bake the Damn Cake: Owning Up to and Mitigating Our Traditions’ Trauma Histories by Chris Ash

Christy at the beach

“We have learned that trauma is not just an event
that took place sometime in the past;
it is also the imprint left by that experience
on mind, brain, and body.
This imprint has ongoing consequences
for how the human organism
manages to survive in the present.”
— Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

While I’m not a trauma therapist, I work in a field in which I regularly support people who have experienced trauma. Sometimes I’m accompanying a recent survivor of assault at the emergency room for a rape kit, speaking warmly, offering compassion, providing distraction. Other times, I’m holding space over the phone while a fifty-something year old survivor tearfully discloses, for the first time in her life, the things done to her during childhood. Recent or old, those experiences shape us and our responses to them, even those that might not serve our health, are efforts to protect ourselves, to avoid pain, and to seek an elusive sense of safety.

“Trauma isn’t what happened to us.
Trauma is what happened inside us as a result of what happened to us.”
— Gabor Mate, in his presentation “Addressing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma”
during the Healing Trauma Summit

Our attempts to resolve trauma, to escape it, may be labeled dysfunctional and may not, ultimately, serve our highest good. They are, however, the actions of someone who wants to feel secure, who wants to feel loved.

My desire to understand trauma and trauma recovery serves my professional development as well as my personal journey, and learning more about the how trauma relates to the body has proven helpful in both of these areas of my life. I’m not a mental health clinician — I’m a crisis advocate and consent educator. But the process, as I understand it, is something like this: Continue reading “Bake the Damn Cake: Owning Up to and Mitigating Our Traditions’ Trauma Histories by Chris Ash”

(Not Yet) Elder Reflections by Chris Ash

Four years ago, as I went to touch up my roots with a shade of red I’d been dying my hair since I was 18, I noticed that what had started as a few random strands of gray amidst my natural reddish brown had become streaks of brilliant silver. I began dying my hair red as a style choice, long before I’d ever even thought of going gray. I loved the way my natural hair reddened in the summers, with copper highlights flashing under the beach sunsets. There was never an intention to hide gray or look younger, but there was a time in my thirties when the first few strands of gray seemed to make my darker roots look muddy, like they were dirty instead of graying.

But brilliant streaks of silver? This, I could do. I switched from my usual permanent henna dye to a temporary red to keep my roots touched up while the henna’d hair grew out, and waited. Three years later, all the permanently red hair had grown out, and I was ready to have fun. I went to the stylist, had him bleach out the parts I’d been dying red, and had him color it all with a wild ombre of colors that would look good with silver. My hair was a darkened nebula, silver roots reaching down into four different shades of purples of blues. After each new dye – a brilliant nebula, each time fading over a few months into a soft mix of gray-blues and silver. Even at the end of the fade-out, people still ask me if I just had my hair colored. Every week, the color seems a new shade.

Currently, I’m at the end of a fade out. Honestly, I probably would have colored it a few weeks ago if I weren’t so busy, but at this point my hair is mostly gray with some slight bluish highlights.

And twice in the last week – TWICE! – I’ve been offered the senior discount by well-meaning cashiers.

At 42. Continue reading “(Not Yet) Elder Reflections by Chris Ash”

Friend Zoned by God by Chris Ash

Sometimes life hurts. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we dive deeply into darkness. Sometimes we fall.

Sometimes our lives line up so perfectly we can’t help but sense the hand of the divine helping us clear our paths and point us toward wonder. Other times we plan and work, make vision boards, bullet journal, dream journal, gratitude journal, think positive, dream big, and repeat affirmations until we finally take in the joyful chest-inflating breath of a goal welcomed.

Sometimes we can’t help but see the roles we’ve played our experiences, how we’ve drawn certain experiences into our own lives. We see how those experiences have impacted our lives for pleasure or pain, but almost always (if we are willing and able to work with them) for our growth.

Sometimes we do everything “right” and end up disappointed. Sometimes we float along without intention and land in the “right” places.

But at no point is the divine obligated to “put out” in the specific ways we expect because of our efforts, prayers, or intentions. Continue reading “Friend Zoned by God by Chris Ash”