Our mother never once waivered. She was never afraid of a fight. She never became silent in the face of injustice. She always said, “Change is a long, hard road, but that is not an excuse to give up.” She currently has cancer tumors on her brain that make it hard for her to speak, and yet…
Black Lives Matter. Period.
We – The STUFF Sisters – grew up with an Earth Mother. We began our lives on her hip and holding her hand as she marched and volunteered during the Civil Rights Movement. She went on to be a dedicated and celebrated leader in the Women’s Movement and the ongoing fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. We spent countless hours and days sitting at the Missouri state capitol in t-shirts boldly printed with messages of equality, while we helped stamp envelopes, fold flyers, and make yard-signs.
We were raised on a healthy dose of social justice. We were taught that human rights are NOT political. We were raised to have voices and to feel empowered to speak our minds. We attended public schools during desegregation and our names were offered to be part of the landmark case to integrate schools in Kansas City and Missouri.
We are proud, opinionated women that became active, participating members in the fight for social justice and equality for all people in our country. Our store has always been a safe space for all people. Our store’s doors are always open to anyone and everyone. We represent artists and creators as diverse and beautiful as the world in which we live. In addition, we curate works that hopefully reflect that same diversity.
24 years. Countless challenges. Two sisters. One vision. It is with very heavy hearts that we have made the tough decision to transition into “survival mode.” We have braved every setback in the last 24 years without ever cutting our hours. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
24 years. Countless challenges. Two sisters. One vision.
It is with very heavy hearts that we have made the tough decision to transition into “survival mode.” We have braved every setback in the last 24 years without ever cutting our hours. However, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.
Starting tomorrow, March 16, we will be closed three days a week. We will be OPEN four days a week. Closing for an unbroken 72 hours each week will help protect our customers by significantly reducing the risk of spreading viruses within our walls. We will, of course, continue to clean and disinfect every surface, and we will spray our store each night with disinfectant.
Last week, we celebrated STUFF’s 22nd birthday. Several months ago, we signed a new 10-year lease. We are here to stay, and we are excited. It’s a renewed commitment.
Last week, we celebrated STUFF’s 22nd birthday. Several months ago, we signed a new 10-year lease. We are here to stay, and we are excited.
When you start a business, people talk a lot to you about plans. “What is your business plan, your 5-year plan, your 10-year plan, and what is your exit plan?” “What if it doesn’t work; what is your plan?”
I have never been lucky in love. I have written a collection of tragic love stories. They are heartbreaking because I love without limits. I throw myself into love wholly and completely. The crashes are devastating.
I have never been lucky in love. I have written a collection of tragic love stories. They are heartbreaking because I love without limits. I throw myself into love wholly and completely. The crashes are devastating.
I have grown hesitant and protective since my last failed attempt. But, I still dream of love stories to be written by me. It takes a certain kind of bravery to keep trying and I like to think I have that type of courage.
I haven’t posted to our blog for a long time. If you follow our blog you may have noticed or maybe, if I am lucky, you didn’t. I left you in very good hands. My sister, Sloane, has been keeping our blog well tended with her lovely writing and unique point of view.
I have been overwhelmed. I don’t feel pressured to have an excuse. I am just ready to write it down and share it. Life has been challenging for me. I am no different than most of the people I know. Everyone is busy living fast and furious it seems. And, sometimes circumstances can knock you on your ass for awhile. That is what happened to me.
I haven’t posted to our blog for a long time. If you follow our blog you may have noticed or maybe, if I am lucky, you didn’t. I left you in very good hands. My sister, Sloane, has been keeping our blog well tended with her lovely writing and unique point of view.
I have been overwhelmed. I don’t feel pressured to have an excuse. I am just ready to write it down and share it. Life has been challenging for me. I am no different than most of the people I know. Everyone is busy living fast and furious it seems. And, sometimes circumstances can knock you on your ass for awhile. That is what happened to me.
When I have challenges that I cannot change, or I am not in the position to change, I rage against my impotence. I am conditioned to my high energy “get it done” personality. So when it is ineffective in a situation I burn ruts in the ground just trying to move something, anything, forward.
I could not change the hurdles that were placed before me this past year. I flailed about grabbing for something to change. My frustrations finally landed on my home. As time marched on I became laser focused on everything wrong with my property. I fed my pain by blaming myself for my inability to find the time and energy to get any projects done. Top of my list was my yard and gardens.
I would drive up my drive and say to myself, “See those weeds and those overgrown vines, do you see them? You are right, your life is awful. Why can’t you get your shit together? Look at your yard. It’s a mess.” You see, that is what I do when I feel helpless, I beat myself up.
I felt so overwhelmed. I began fantasizing about selling my home and moving into a small apartment with no yard, where everything was brand new and I lived on the 130th floor where nobody could find me. I appetite to run away from home was insatiable.
I was advised to sit still and let time help me get to the other side. I wanted to scream. Sit still? Screw that! There are things that must be done. Can you not see the weeds in my yard? I am being covered by weeds Why can’t you see the weeds? Doesn’t anyone see the weeds? I have to pull the weeds.
It was grim.
A few weeks ago, I took this photo with my phone one morning when I was impatiently waiting for my daughter to get out the front door.
This beautiful vignette of my courtyard. I started pulling the image up on my phone to view it randomly. I found it captivating. I wanted to know why I couldn’t avoid sneaking a peek at it a couple times a day. It soothed me.
There was that vine that had slowly and patiently, over the entire summer, crawled it’s way from behind a big planter squeezed against my fence, climbed over two plants, around a metal sculpture and was reaching down to the ground to find it’s footing. It is beautiful.
It began to validate me. I realized I was like that vine. I just need to give myself time to find my way.
I am now pulling a handful of the weeds each day. I am going slowly.
I was raised to believe that women and girls can do anything. I still believe that and pass it on to women far younger than me. If you say you can’t, then you’ve set yourself up for failure. If you say you will give it your best, you’re more than halfway there.
I am a Girl Scout. I will always be a Girl Scout. I am not a Troop Leader and am not in charge of a pack of young women.
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Just this past weekend, I returned to the Girl Scout camp of my childhood and ran smack-dab into fantastic memories that were laced with the amazing women who were troop leaders and were in charge of packs of young women.
Girl Scouts is more than cookies. Girl Scouts is leadership training at its core. It is subtle and covert in its training, so as to not cause bucking from those who aren’t ready to be “trained”.
If you tell a ten year old they are being “trained”, they will most likely tell you “so long”. But if you cloak the training in figuring it out for yourself, for accounting for your actions, for calculating progress, for tracking efforts, and for showing others the ins and outs, you will end up with a young woman – and a grown woman – who can hold her own and has the ability to troubleshoot and succeed. And, most importantly, one who will find the lessons in a failure or set-back.
I was raised to believe that women and girls can do anything. I still believe that and pass it on to women far younger than me. If you say you can’t, then you’ve set yourself up for failure. If you say you will give it your best, you’re more than halfway there.
The young women who were my counselors at camp were most likely only five to ten years older than me. I talked to one a few days ago in the wilds of Missouri, and I vividly remember her. If I could find my Juniors book, her handwriting and counselor name (Snickers) would be in there.
I can only imagine it was written with a firm hand and in ink. Much like a yearbook, at the end of camp every summer you had your counselors sign your book. I thought these women hung the moon, and in two I can easily recall desiring to be just like them. Strong. Sure-footed. Fearless. A leader.
At ten, when I first went to camp, I was none of those four things. Well, OK, I was strong but tried to hide it. That comes with being taller than all your friends and therefore “bigger”.
I spent way too much time trying to blend in, look shorter, and be seen as weak. Crazy concepts to me now, but crystal clear in my mind.
I went to Nashville Summer Camp for only four summers. They have blended into one long summer in my memories, but the distinct differences in the four summers came screaming back to me when I stood under the very old oak trees a few days ago. Water Wonderful was one. Outback Adventures another. Two more that held my focus then but whose names escape me.
I have never shied away from saying I am a Girl Scout, and I never will. I was able to walk the hills and trails of the camp of my youth for her last day of seeing campers, having walked those same paths thirty-five years ago.
The camp I remember – Camp Oakledge – has changed hands, and the land will now be the responsibility of others. I can only hope that the new ownership has a few Girl Scouts in their midst who will know exactly how to leave the land better than they found it, a basic tenet of Girl Scouting.
p.s. Those boxes of Girl Scout cookies do change the lives of young women all over your city. They make strong, sure-footed, fearless young leaders and help fund all they wish to accomplish. You don’t have to eat the cookies, but I always recommend buying them.
I get teased a lot for my passion, my enthusiasm, and my boundless energy. I get it. I am a force. I recognize that about myself. Many years ago I stopped trying to quiet my personality
I get teased a lot for my passion, my enthusiasm, and my boundless energy. I get it. I am a force. I recognize that about myself. Many years ago I stopped trying to quiet my personality or to dampen my outgoing nature. It wasn’t easy. I had been shamed by many. I was told I needed to change.
I don’t know if, when I was little, people were trying to change me because I was a girl, but I remember thinking why don’t they ever tell the boys to be quiet?
As an adult woman, I still feel that it is expected, at times, for me to “wait my turn”, to sit still and be quiet, or to be demure.
When I first started therapy 11 years ago, I was in crisis. I was facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. Turns out I was going to be just fine.
I stayed in therapy, and I still value it to this day. I have spent many sessions on self acceptance. Countless journal entries, talks, and reading and writing exercises learning about myself. It is hard when you have been teased and criticized about your core nature and personality.
I know we all do it to each other more often than we realize. I hope I seldom unwittingly hurt someone because of my jokes. I know I have in the past, and for those times I am deeply sorry. And, when I make the mistake in the future, I will apologize and ask for forgiveness.
At 47 years old, I am ready to stop apologizing and to start celebrating. My enthusiasm comes from a deep passion for love, acceptance, creativity and justice. It was how I was built. I am a force. I am proud. I am Casey.
Yesterday a good man posted photos that included touching words about my sister, me and our store. The post on Facebook was in celebration…
Yesterday a good man posted photos that included touching words about my sister, me and our store. The post on Facebook was in celebration of community, connection and charity. I was very proud of his words.
Sadly, I was also horrified by two of the images. I am embarrassed to admit it, but I was shocked at my big butt. That is all I could see. I wanted those photos gone.
I was blinded by my vanity. I cried. I was mean to myself. I had a vicious internal conversation with myself. I treated myself with hate and loathing.
This morning I woke and laid in bed thinking about how I ruined the kindness of that post. I alone was to blame. I looked at my lovely daughter sleeping next to me and I cried. But, this time I cried about my stupidity and vanity.
I will not ask to have those photos removed. I will never see those images the same way again.
Those images are now a reminder to not judge myself so harshly. I will breath in the kind words written about me and I will learn love myself.
It was wine night on my deck. Two good friends, a few bottles of wine and some snacks. I was ready for adult conversation. We were kid free. I was craving
It was wine night on my deck. Two good friends, a few bottles of wine and some snacks. I was ready for adult conversation. We were kid free. I was craving talk about subjects you save as a parent to talk about when there are no kids around. I know men believe that when women get together we talk about our “periods” and other “women stuff”. Not true! We talk about politics, world views, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. We are evolved women dammit.
Well…most of the time.
This night we were discussing our daughters “coming of age”. We are fast approaching this next adventure in parenting. One of my friends already has older girls, so we leaned in while she shared her sage advice.
We are still a couple years from the big, looming menstrual cycles. So, we somehow got into a discussion about deodorant. Yes, the day your baby girl needs to start wearing deodorant is a big deal.
My own childhood deodorant story is traumatic
I was on a much anticipated trip with 5 family elders. I was the only kid invited to go on their summer vacation. My grandparents, two great aunts and one great uncle all to myself. We drove in two cars to Colorado Springs, Colorado to stay for a week in a mountainside cabin. I rode alone in the backseat of a Duster with no A/C owned by my great aunt, Eunice. I would slide on a pool of my sweat when we made turns. It was bliss. I was on-my-own in an all adult world.
My great aunt, Eunice, a single woman, was the only member from that generation of my family that lived in Kansas City. All my other “greats” were in mid-Missouri. So, I was close to her. She was the “great” that took us to the Zoo and World’s of Fun every summer. We had bunking parties at her house. She made individual jello servings in little bowls with fruit when we visited. She took us shopping and lunching about town.
Eunice was generous and loving. Eunice traveled. Eunice was a “city girl” that lived in her own house. She was independent and worked full time. She dressed nicely and lived simply. I looked up to her and loved her deeply.
She was also very direct and pragmatic. So, when I was stinking up the cabin with my sweaty 10 year old funk, she told me, directly to my face, in front of a room full of my elders without any softness…no hug, no let’s “have a talk”, no warning. Just a flat out “you need to get some deodorant kid, you stink”, I was crushed. I was embarrassed. I was mortified. These were not subjects you discussed in public.
My grandmother Gladys, her younger sister, saved me. She called me into the kitchen under the guise to help her cook and then took me outside the mountain cabin for a short walk to let me cry and to give me a much needed hug.
She also took me the next day to get my very first deodorant.
As I sat on my deck with my friends I shared my story. I also shared my plans to guarantee that my daughter did not suffer the same humiliation. That when she was in her mid-forties sharing wine with her friends she would not have the same sad tale. She would tell a story of her remarkable mother that handled every situation with gentle, loving kindness.
The next day, out of the blue, my daughter walked into the kitchen and said, “Hey Mom, we need to go to CVS and buy me some deodorant. I am starting to get stinky pits.” I was speechless.
I laughed until tears fell down my cheeks. Check that off my parenting list. I thank my Mom and her generation of fellow feminists for championing women’s rights and a world where open, honest, frank discussion about our bodies is common place.
A page from my daughter’s journal.
I wish Eunice was still here. She and my daughter would get along perfectly.
PS. I will look for a photo of my Great Aunt Eunice and share it soon.
Continue reading “Black Lives Matter. Period.”
           
