Kate Ferguson's Blog

What is true freedom? Is it simply a having no limits on our time and being able to move from place to place without restrictions, go wherever our feet, mind, and desire will take us? Is it having enough latitude to do as we please, enough money to tell an employer to "take this job and shove it?" Is it commitments, responsibilities, and obligations tie us down?

Granted, all of the above represent some measure of being free, but are they really what true freedom is all about?

Slavery-a word which conjures up images of our ancestors in chains, taken from their homeland by force, trickery, and other people's greed-is still alive and present today. A recent news story told the tale of a wealthy suburban couple who were, in effect, slavemasters. They "owned" workers brought from abroad. That human beings are still being bought and sold day and age is a sad and shocking reality. But, if you think about it, all of us are slaves to one degree or another.

Individually, we are all still slaves to our own personal addictions. Whether money, alcohol, drugs, a job, a relationship, or a lifestyle to which we have accustomed, we have allowed ourselves to become bound by the chains desires.

The fact is, we are all prisoners of life's constraints-whatever they may be. But that isn't to say that achieving true freedom is an impossible dream. Difficult as it may be to get there, I believe the goal is attainable. A journey to a place where you are totally liberated, attaining true freedom is an ongoing exercise. When you get there, you realize you need nothing or no one to make you feel worthy, complete or of value.

You can't truly be free unless you can walk away from everything-that job, that man, that relationship, that lifestyle, that dress, car, shoes, or bag you simply must have to feel worthwhile.

The point is that we are of value because we are who we are. We exist, and our existence is what makes us of value in this world. Simply put, we need nothing else to validate us. What we choose to do with our lives is up to us.

The choices we make every day to do or not do this or that thing is the price we pay for the privilege of being free. How close we are to attaining true freedom, however, is always an individual moment. Each of us is brought closer or taken farther away from achieving that goal by the choices that we make and the behaviors that we allow to rule us.

A lofty ideal, being ready for true freedom takes preparation. For many of us, it is a goal that may not be achieved until we reach the end of our lives. Without becoming morbid, I believe that the surrender to and acceptance of death's embrace is, by far, the closest we can ever get to achieving true freedom.

Once again, how prepared we will be at that time is purely an individual moment. While we live, however, is the only time we will ever have to prepare.

Like clockwork, every morning, I listen to the news. As an editor, I have no choice. It's part of my job. I have to stay abreast of the news. But what I hear sometimes makes me wonder.

The other day, I heard that some legislators are considering introducing a bill which would place a curfew, not only on children but also on adults. Anyone on the street then would be subject to being stopped and questioned by the police. Oh, yeah, and since you'd be in violation of the curfew law, you'd also be subject to arrest.

What's so sad is that I know why the law is being considered—crime is on the rise. There's been an increasing rash of shootings. Bullets are taking people's lives as they sit watching TV or lay sleeping in their homes. Everyone is scared. And so, a curfew is suggested—for everyone. (Hope that also includes the folks with the itchy trigger fingers.)

To me, a curfew represents an admission by law enforcement that they can't keep people safe. I guess that's what makes our lives so scary. I've also heard that more people are showing up at public presidential events strapped. In some states, depending on their gun laws, these cowboys aren't liable for arrest. Why? Because they have a legal right to bear arms.

That makes me wonder.

When town hall meetings about health care reforms erupt into violence, where people, supposedly, come to discuss ways to save lives but end up punching and doing harm to others, that makes me wonder.

And, weren't some legislators in New York recently lobbying to make carrying a concealed weapon legal? (It was voted down—but it needed a vote?!)

Yeah, that definitely made me wonder.

Do you sometimes wonder why some people can take hit after hit in life and still remain happy and upbeat? Why they can stay in love with life and look forward to each new day? Well, so did I.

Then one day it dawned on me. For the fortunate ones among us, being joyful doesn't depend on good or bad circumstances. It is an attitude, an outlook on life—bring what it may—that remains solid. It says we are happy to live life and take situations as they come.

This attitude, this outlook is one which enables us to roll with the punches. Because we know that defeat doesn't end the battle, we are able to look for other alternatives to solve our problems. This is the thing which creates joy because we're living our life to the fullest, despite the problems that come with it.

Some people view life as a test. The bigger the problem, obstacle or challenge, the more difficult the test. Pass or fail, we learn something, and, in the learning, we achieve something of value. At times it could be a feeling of triumph, of having come through the fire a better, stronger person.

When you have joy in your heart, even the most crushing blows can't take your love of life and living away. It is a feeling and a state of mind which affects all areas of your life.

To be sure, there will always be disappointments and failures we must face. If you have a joyful heart, this does not mean you won't have anxious moments, sadness, depression or experience defeat. The difference that feeling of joy makes is in how you handle life's disappointing moments. If you have joy in your heart, your response will always be the same. You'll pick up the pieces and just start over again.

With joy in your heart, you look forward to each new day you're alive. You savor life to the fullest, embracing the joy as well as the pain. To a large degree, the joy in your heart is there because you've already made a decision about how you will deal with the world. That decision involves taking responsibility for your life and your relationships.

Although you may have no control over what happens to you, you do control your response to whatever comes your way. The amount of joy you have in your heart simply helps you see your troubles through and helps you to stay sane.

Apologies for being so behind on my blogging. The whip has been cracked so I will get cracking! I will blog every week...I will blog every week...I will blog every week!

During a recent series of meetings with a colleague about a project we discussed doing together, a number of issues arose which gave me insights into how important it is that partners be comfortbale with what they agree to do in a relationship. Further thought about it led me to draw a parallel between what happened in my business relationship and what can happen between friends or lovers.

The issue concerned how comfortable my colleague would be in agreeing to comply with a request I made as a condition for us working together on a project. Without getting into specifics, I knew that my colleague wanted me to work on the project with her but was uncomfortable with the compromise I asked her to make. As we dickered back and forth, it soon became clear that if she complied with my request, she'd resent me from that day forward.

In our personal relationships, too, this principle holds true. When we comply with a partner's request—for whatever—and make concessions to keep our partner happy at the expense of compromising when we deeply resent it, it sets the stage for a deep-rooted animosity which can manifest in ways we may hardly recognize. That is why, in relationships, it is so important to acknowledge that you may indeed "win the battle but lose the war" when you get what you want from a reluctant partner.

In love relationships, often one partner wants to please or appease the other to keep the relationship harmonious. And so they are careful to avoid disagreeing with or denying the other some request. These kinds of compromises or outright surrender are simply bad news.

Relationship dynamics usually don't change from situation to situation. Feelings are feelings and they remain the same no matter what kind of relationship we have. Therefore, in any relationship, it is important to avoid pressuring a partner into doing something he or she is against. But neither should we give in to pressure from a partner to do something that we find abhorrent.

The truth is, when someone feels forced to do something they dislike or pushed into a compromise they resent, animosity builds and eventually may explode to destroy a relationship from within.

As difficult as it was to say no to working with my colleague, I realized that, sooner or later, if I worked with her on this project, I'd resent her as she'd surely resent me should she agree to my request.

With that in mind, I thanked her politely, but passed on working with her on the project.

It's been ages since I last blogged. But recently I went to a meeting at the 92nd Street Y in New York City which got my attention and has compelled me to get yours. The event was a "public conversation" with playwright Eve Ensler. Yes, that Eve Ensler—of The Vagina Monologues fame. She was onstage at the Y with a Congolese doctor named Denis Mukwege, with whom she's teamed for a campaign called the "Turning Pain to Power Tour". Ensler is also the founder of V-Day, a global movement to bring attention to the ongoing violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A surgeon, Dr. Mukwege is the director and founder of Panzi hospital in Bukavu in DRC. Here, he performs fistula surgeries on women who have been brutally raped and mutilated in the Congolese war. But before I continue, let me tell you what a fistula is. it is an abnormal connection between an organ, vessel, or intestine and another structure. Fistulas are usually the result of injury or surgery and lead to constant, uncontrollable loss of urine and stool through the vagina. For these women who are victims in the Congo war, fistulas are the result of savage and repeated rapes and torture by armed men who use this kind of sexual terrorism to destabilize their families and communities. Why? To destroy their communities so people will leave the area and the resources there for them to loot. Dr. Mukwege calls these acts of terror "barbaric" and I agree. What I can't understand is the mentality that breeds these barbaric acts. Is it simply greed? Are these men just following orders to rape, loot and pillage as a means to an end? Is there no man there to step up and say what we are doing here is wrong? In a comment to the audience, Ensler observed her belief that most men are not rapists, that most men are not perpetrators, but that most men do nothing to stop the violence and the abuse. I agree.
The fact is that women have been casualties of war throughout history. Research shows that the victimization of women as "spoils of war" has been a male prerogative which has yet to be addressed in a society that calls itself "civilized." In war—and peace—the objectification of women as commodities to be used, abused and exploited has been one of the prices paid for living in a male-dominated society. But in wartime, for women, there have been no saviors as females—young and old—have been raped, mutilated and killed by soldiers on every side of a conflict, everywhere in the world.
What makes this kind of thinking okay? What makes a man think that a woman's body is his to use and abuse in any way he wishes? And, yes, I know that this is not the mindset of all men. But the fact is there is an attitude of dominance and sexual entitlement present in enough men's minds, however, to create a problem for women everywhere.

Almost one month ago, Senator Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States. When the confirmation came, it was announced by the DJ at the roller skating rink where I go to exercise and de-stress. After coming home to see Senator John McCain leading Obama by five electoral votes, I had to get out of the house. My biggest fear was that there’d be a hijack attempt—another stick-up of democracy which just might give up the goods to a covert America out to keep the status quo in place at all costs.

Thank God it didn’t happen. That night a DJ saved my life—not with a song, but with the announcement that Obama had won. For the first time since I became aware of the level of hypocrisy in this country, I felt that there was still hope for America. The United States had redeemed itself. It had lived up to its potential by showing it could stand for something instead of falling for anything.

At work, management ordered pizza and staffers talked about the possibilities brought by these winds of change. In the conference room that afternoon, people expressed hope and emotions too complex to put on paper.

For me, as the citizen of a country which is my adopted homeland, I was able to resurrect the enthusiasm I felt as a child coming to America. On election night this country proved that democracy can work. It proved that this is the place that my mother described when she talked about her reason for waiting 13 years for her number to come up so she could apply for a visa and book her passage to America. When she sent for me, my sister and brother a few years later, we were ecstatic.

Eventually, however, as we started getting to know the country, the place of opportunity she’d described and which we’d heard so much about became a source of disillusionment. Although there were opportunities to be had, being Black in America had its drawbacks—serious ones.

In the aftermath of the election, I realize that these drawbacks remain. For me the biggest difference is now I have realized a new feeling of hope.

Sometimes, in relationships there is such a thing as being too nice. Take, for instance, breaking up. When a relationship has reached its end and cannot be salvaged, letting go is usually the best thing for both parties. Often, however, this comes very hard for some people.

Women, in particular, who try to extricate themselves from relationships with controlling, obsessive or abusive men must often consider how best to leave their partner as things can go from bad to worst, quick, fast and in a hurry.

At the risk of jeopardizing their own well being, girls are raised to be accommodating and overly concerned with hurting someone else’s feelings. In turn we become women who suffer for far too long through bad or nowhere relationships. Brought up to give off mixed messages, we act disinterested to “keep a man interested.” Why? Because, we’ve been told, no man values anything (women, too) he can get too easily, which is why we sometimes become victims of our own man-getting strategies. When you do want to get rid of him, however, sometimes he’s unable to take a hint. (Maybe, he thinks, she’s playing hard to get.)

Stalking, perhaps, the number one fear of women who wish to break off an unwanted relationship, is a dark side of romance. Sometimes, it’s mild: annoying and persistent phone calls from a former lover. Sometimes, it’s extreme: threats of bodily harm that have to be taken very seriously.

Women, advises Dr. Jeff Gardere in the September 2008 issue of Sister2Sister magazine, need to give clear messages to men they no longer want to see that “the relationship is over.” Mixed signals of no kind are to be given: no phone calls when the going gets tough, no “let’s be friends” and chill together sometimes, no visits to his hang-out spots alone or with a new man (translation: Oh, she just wants to make me jealous; I know she’s still interested.)

So, stop worrying about how bad he’s going to feel if you decide to make the break. For once, be nice to yourself and think about you first.

How much trust should you give a person at the beginning of a relationship, especially since you can be misled?

I used to think that when I entered a relationship, the way to handle trust was to give it until the person did something that proved to me he or she couldn't be trusted. So I'd keep getting burned all the time. I'd trust the person, thinking this was the way not to bring previous baggage into the relationship, but that person wouldn't have done anything to prove he was worthy of me placing my trust in him. In hindsight, the process now seems backward.

Also linked to trust, honesty is a huge issue in relationships. Just how honest should we be? And how much honesty is too much in a relationship?

Unlike trust, honesty is an issue which calls for us to make critical judments based on the nature of a specific set of circumstances and variables. Trust has more to do with absorbing and relying on a certain set of beliefs which we take on faith. It is based on an inner certainty and outer predictability, two factors basic to trust which a respected psychologist named Erik Erikson proposed was how infants learned to first establish this feeling.

His example was universal. Trust is a child's first social achievement, when he or she is unable to see its mother yet remains unperturbed. The child trusts because it is certain of its mother's presence—the outer predictability. Without this certainty, says Erikson, the feeling of trust cannot exist. It is the same dynamic in a love relationship.

But back to honesty. More subjective, due to a certain set of circumstances, being honest is often a value judgment that we make. To be honest means preparing for certain consequences. When we are either honest or dishonest, other people are often affected by what we choose to disclose—or not. the rightness or wrongness of our choice, however, may be excused or explained. Sometimes, it is a matter of diplomacy. We may choose to lie to spare someone pain.

If you think about it, we can trust someone who we know has been dishonest. Why? Because we trust that they are not always liars. And, when they do lie, we feel they must have a very good reason. Our basic ability to trust them, then, is not affected.

Honesty is not a state of being. Really, it is an act which may be selfless or selfish. We may wish to disclose certain facts to a partner or wish to have him disclose certain facts to us for many reasons. These facts may or may not be relevant to our relationship with that person. Our desire for honesty may simply be motivated by selfishness; we simply want the satisfaction of knowing the truth.

If we are the ones who disclose because we say we want to be honest, there are reasons for that which may not be totally altruistic. Maybe we're trying to lay a guilt trip on someone or simply dumping emotional baggage from a previous relationship on the new person who came into our life.
Before being honest in this way, however, ask yourself these questions: What is it that I need to be honest about and why?

As a concept, what is it that makes love so special? Most often thought of in romantic terms, the love between two people isn't confined to the kind of gender-driven feelings experienced by men and women. There is love between family and friends, even the abstract love people can feel for humanity, for people they've never met or seen. Whatever its representation, however, the fact is that love is a strong force, a mover of mountains, its power enough to motivate and maintain life.

At its very highest level, love is unconditional, such as the love a parent may have for a child. It is an awesome force this thing called love, which we've tried–without success–to define, to control, and to direct. Tasted in its purest form, it provides the taster with a warm sense of security and well-being, a feeling unlike any other in the world.

Love, indeed, is a many-splendored thing, a force which gives us the strength to go on in the face of adversity, provides us with the comfort and healing we need for our ravaged spirits, and gives us a reason to exist when all other answers fail us. Its power is such that it can overcome fear, ignorance and hatred, prompting us to put others before ourselves, and their needs and safety before our won.

But there is also love of self, a truly special love which allows us to love another person fully and without reservation. By supporting our positive self-image, love of self ensures that we are able to share this part of ourselves with others. Love energizes the mind, refreshes and renews the spirit, and soothes the soul.

As a force for good, perhaps nothing has the ability like love to make all things seem possible. Like a bridge, it connects individuals divided by age and gender as well as race and culture as it spans time and defies logic. To date, no one has been able to accurately capture love's elusive essence, its special chemistry and subtle nuances; and, perhaps, no one should really try. Instead, let's be grateful for our ability to love and be loved. To be sure, there is nothing that compares with it in all the world.

What is love to you?

Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague who, upon learning that I was now working at a health magazine which features HIV/AIDS news and information, started a discussion about the unrealistic idea that women could simply ask their partner to use a condom. Married for over 25 years, my colleague said even in her long-lived relationship she could not ask her husband to use a condom. Furthermore, she said, the first thing a man wants to know when a woman asks him to use a condom is, "Why, are you f***king someone else?" On the extreme side, she said, depending on the man involved, a woman puts herself at risk for a beatdown with this kind of question. "I mean, is a cop gonna be there to enforce the man using a condom?" she asked. After thinking about it for a minute, I had to admit that she had something there. At the very least, HIV/AIDS educators need to be sensitive to the realities facing women who have been socialized to always put themselves last in their relationships with others. Found a really great website which is like a one-stop center with information on HIV and real-life stories from women who are living with the disease. If you don't know anything about HIV...or even if you do, check out this site . It's informative, educational and, most of all, inspiring. Would love to get other people's opinions...