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Intersectional Gender Equity in Tech: My vGHC 2020 Experience

paperbackdragon

This year, the Grace Hopper Celebration was virtual. Apart from interactive workshops, all sessions were pre-recorded and available to watch for many days after airing. There were keynotes with great advocates for women such as the soccer player Megan Rapinoe and great women in tech such as Lisa Su of AMD, networking sessions where they used Zoom to put you in random virtual breakout rooms for 10 minutes at a time–a feature that I think would be cool to have in Teams if it doesn’t exist already–and if you woke up early enough, yoga or a meditation in the morning each day.

What virtual GHC could improve on

I went to GHC in person last year, and it was my first GHC. The most powerful part of it was being surrounded by other women in tech, after working for 7 years and going to school before that in an environment where being a woman, and being feminine, was always the minority. The virtual experience didn’t have quite the same effect on me, though the real-time events they did like workshops and networking sessions had a similar feeling on a smaller scale. The other thing I felt the virtual experience lacked was a way to talk to people informally, either one-on-one or in a group chat format. The networking sessions were good and everyone was nice (apart from one of my breakout sessions being dominated by a guy from the sponsor company for the session, which wasn’t cool), but the breakouts were very limited in length, and as is typical in Zoom/Teams calls, there wasn’t a good way to have side conversations to get to make more personal connections with people sitting next to you. Microsoft did set up a team in Teams for attendees to chat, and that satisfied the part of me that wanted to connect with others attending the conference.

And finally, the deferral of the Career Fair to a later date felt very unfair to students and other people who attended just to look for a job and might have spent the $200 for a student ticket out of their own pockets. They attempted to make up for this by making sessions available to students, but I still wonder how many people this left disappointed. 

What virtual GHC did well

When you go to GHC in person, a lot of your time is spent waiting in line, especially if you want to go to the most popular sessions. The upside of this is that you sometimes get to know the folks standing next to you. However, it was nice to not have to worry about signing up for each session or waiting in line before it filled up, and since the sessions are available after airing for a while, it was very nice to not even have to choose between two sessions that were going on at the same time. One of the more important things about GHC is the talks themselves, and the quality of those was just as good this year. I left feeling re-energized to build a career in tech, and to lift up other women and minorities with me along the way.

There were many talks that I enjoyed, and here are summaries of my favorite ones.

Seeing Beyond Yourself: Effective Allyship, Advocacy, and Activism for Women in Computing

Panelists:

  • Alicia Nicki Washington, Professor of the Practice, Computer Science at Duke University
  • Fay Cobb Payton, Professor and University Faculty Scholar at North Carolina State University (NCSU)
  • Frieda McAlear, Senior Research Associate at Kapor Center for Social Impact
  • Gail Chapman, Director of Outreach at Exploring Computer Science
  • Lien Diaz, Director, Ed Innovation and Leadership at Constellations Center for Equity in Computing, Georgia Tech

Misconceptions

Most of the discussion was about common misconceptions about allyship and advocacy. These ones stood out the most to me, paraphrased in my own words.

  • It’s not the role of women of color to educate white women. It’s not the role of women to educate men. Alicia Nicki Washington expressed this in the context of the recent incidents of police brutality and related protests, saying, “My black is tired.” Everyone seems to want to ask her opinion about these events and it’s extremely taxing for her to always be the educator, especially when she’s still grieving what happened.
  • It’s extremely important to remember the impact of intersectionality. Being a minority in gender, race, or class can make things more difficult, but being more than one of these compounds the difficulty. As an example, in the original feminist movement, black women still weren’t seen as equal. There are still power structures and oppressive conditions in which we operate. “In order to fix the problem, we first have to admit it’s there.” – Kimberlé Crenshaw, who developed the theory of intersectionality.
  • “I don’t think it’s enough to have a seat at the table, because sometimes the agenda is already set by the time we’re invited to the table. Let’s be honest, sometimes being invited is tokenism. I think it’s important that when you’re in these spaces, that if you’re going to have a seat at the table, we also want to have respectability for the voices, for the talents.” – Fay Cobb Payton
  • Just being in tech and having a good salary doesn’t mean someone’s made it and all the money’s going into their own pocket. In many cases people are feeding whole families, ancestors, or peoples. It’s important to keep in mind that you often don’t know what people are going through in their lives.
  • Many people want simple answers to complex problems. Just opening up tech to women doesn’t mean all women are actually equally welcome and have an equal chance to succeed.

Allyship

There were also a few suggestions on how to approach allyship of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) and women in tech.

  • Allyship looks like actively joining movements. However, jumping on bandwagons when terrible things happen, such as the pandemic or George Floyd’s death, doesn’t itself make change. It needs to be sustained, and people need to truly believe in the movement.
  • For native peoples, build an accountable relationship with the people whose lands you live and work. Help them achieve their goals.
  • In sciences, being taught history isn’t usually part of the curriculum. There’s a lot to learn to be a true ally. Ask and understand what you can do to help. Go to where the folks are that you need to connect with–this might not be in tech.

Beyond the Code with Jen and Aparna

Speakers:

  • Aparna Pappu, Vice President, G Suite
  • Jen Fitzpatrick, Senior Vice President, Core & Corporate Engineering at Google

This talk was a very candid discussion between two senior executives at Google. I’ll touch on a few of the topics they covered that spoke the most to me.

Biggest failures

Jen started at Google as an intern working on Local Search, and continued working on this project as a full-timer. Once she started doing testing with real data, she realized the search feature she made worked great in Silicon Valley, but the content just wasn’t there once you got outside the valley. She ended up having to completely scrap her code and start over. She now sees it as one of her greatest successes because of how much she learned: don’t wait until super late in the game to do testing and contingency planning, and you have to set your sights high and be willing to fail in order to get those learning moments and get the perspective of what works and what doesn’t.

Aparna was studying networking at Georgia Tech, looking at streaming over multicast to take advantage of resources. It was done in software rather than hardware. She had a big bug in her code where she had no rate limiting, and it brought down the entire campus’ network for Georgia Tech and also some neighboring schools. It made her realize code isn’t what you write — it runs in an ecosystem, an environment. It taught her a lot about networking, and it was embarrassing but she got through it with a helpful peer group.

These stories spoke to me because you don’t often hear about failures like this from successful people. It’s important to remember that the only way to succeed is to be open to failure and learn from your failures.

Confidence in tech

Aparna found that working at a startup helped her confidence in tech. She got to try all parts of the stack: UI, application code, and kernel code. She recommends trying everything, especially earlier in your career when there are fewer downsides. She also spoke about initially being afraid of public speaking and talking to customers, but she pushed herself and volunteered to go on-site to talk to a customer to help debug something. It was scary at first but she ended up having fun, and talking to customers helped her understand the context of the issue better.

Jen has had peer groups that helped her through times when she was aware she was struggling. She learned through repeated exposure that you can dive into something new and unknown and get through it, eventually becoming more comfortable. She gave an example of this where, she was given an offer to lead a team in a completely different tech stack and product and she initially didn’t want to take it. Her manager strongly encouraged her to do it, and she went ahead with it. She learned that coming in with fresh eyes was very valuable to her new team, and she could use that to add value while building up her expertise.

“Leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room; it’s about thinking critically, asking questions, and bringing people together with a common sense of purpose.” – Jen Fitzpatrick

Advice to sustain through difficult times

Jen spoke about how resilience is a more important life skill than ever these days. Give yourself permission to not be operating at perfection at all times. Manage your own personal energy. Sometimes life’s curveballs mean it takes more energy than usual to do things. And sometimes you have to sprint, but you can’t do that all the time. Don’t try to be superhuman! Aparna agreed and said it took her a while to feel confident enough to say, “I’m feeling overwhelmed, I need to take the rest of the day off” to her team.

Aparna also mentioned that a colleague told her once, “You smile too much, people won’t take you seriously.” It really hurt her–she believed it was possible to be serious and smiling at the same time. She realized she doesn’t have to be like everyone else. There’s no one definition of “professional” at work. Leading and working in the way that works best for you means you’ll have more energy for everything else!

Parting advice for women

“Unequivocally – Stay. This is an amazing field, you will learn so much. Yes, things will happen. People will say things to you where you feel like they’re being a jerk, but don’t let that demotivate you. There’s so much more here and we need each and every one of you to stay here so that it’s not just a very small circle of women at the very top. Please, please hang in there and grow and have fun.” – Aparna Pappu

This made me tear up. It’s simultaneously the one thing I wish for the most for women in tech today, but I also know just how difficult it can be sometimes. I want to do whatever I can to help women and minorities who are struggling in tech and feeling like they don’t belong, or dealing with burnout, and I encourage everyone to do the same.

Abie Award Series: Why We Need to Make the Internet Less Racist and Sexist

Speaker: Dr. Jess Wade, Physicist and Wikipedia Activist at Imperial College London

Every year, AnitaB.org, the organization that runs GHC, recognizes the success of women technologists through the ABIE Awards. This year the winner of the Change Agent Abie Award, which “recognizes women who have created opportunities for girls and women in technology”, went to Dr. Jess Wade for her work with Wikipedia, and I thoroughly enjoyed the talk she gave. Her area of study is in material science, but she’s a huge advocate for women and minorities in STEM.

Underrepresentation of women in STEM

She shared some statistics from the UK of how underrepresented women are in STEM:

  • 23% of AP physics students are women
  • 10% A-level CS students are women (A-levels in the UK are similar to AP tests where they can get you out of entry-level college classes)
  • Girls outperform boys in computing, advanced math, and physics
  • Men scoring at or below 1st percentile in Physics, Engineering, and Computer Science (PECS) were equally as represented as women in the 80th percentile
  • 35% of Computer Science and Physics teachers have a relevant degree
  • Girls are 2.5x more likely to study physics at an all-girls school
  • In the UK, there are around 19k professors. 18k of them are white, and only 35 are black women. Only 1 of those black women is a professor of Physics, and only 1 of them is a professor of Computer Science.

Young peoples’ decisions are influenced by their parents, their teachers, and by what they read online and in social media. And even if your child isn’t allowed on social media, they are likely still influenced by kids’ books. She shared these stats about kids’ books in the UK:

  • 19% of main characters in kids’ books are girls
  • <1% of main characters in kids’ books are people of color
  • Among all bestselling children’s books in the UK last year (2019), only 1 main character had a disability

There are a lot of similar issues with textbooks. Two articles she shared about this:

We know the influence that it can have if you read about someone you think you could be like, who completely inspires you, or you see a little bit of yourself in them. Hidden Figures and Black Panther showed a whole generation of young people that black early-career engineers and researchers and scientists completely can transform the world. Why aren’t we making more media like this?

The influence of Wikipedia

This brings us to Wikipedia, another huge source of influence. It is the 5th most frequented website in the world, with 30-70 million different visitors a day. During the pandemic it’s become an incredibly powerful and important source for non-partisan information. On March 29 2020, when the pandemic was peaking in everyone’s consciousness, Wikipedia got 650 million views. It influences education, media, journalists, the direction of science, medical information and care, money made from tourism, and is a major source of information for many home assistants like Alexa or Siri.

So we know what’s on Wikipedia matters. Is what matters on Wikipedia? 80-90% of Wikipedia editors are men, and the majority of them are white and in North America. 18.6% of biographies on English-speaking Wikipedia are about women. Since she learned this statistic, every day she’s written a biography of a woman or person of color on Wikipedia, and to date she’s written 1,120 biographies. One woman she wrote a biography for was Gladys West, a black woman born in the 1930s in the US. Gladys graduated with a degree in mathematics when not many women were studying mathematics, and in fact in the UK she wouldn’t have been able to go to university at all. She ultimately worked for the US government, working on the early computations in mathematics for GPS technology, which we all rely on and use so much now.

Since the article about Gladys was written, Gladys has been nominated twice for BBC’s top 100 women, which increased her page’s views from thousands a day to tens of thousands a day, and she was inducted into the US Air Force hall of fame, meaning there’s now photos that the government has given to wiki commons that we can look at and are on her Wikipedia page. So many people have been talking about her, singing about her, using her in their teaching resources, because she’s on Wikipedia.

The best things about Wikipedia: you can teach anyone to edit it, and it’s completely free.

Final thoughts

I’ll let my final thoughts be Dr. Jess Wade’s final thoughts:

  • Listen. Why are people not choosing certain subjects or professions? Make a case for why they should feel included.
  • Be an ally. Work with marginalized groups in areas where you’re privileged. We shouldn’t always leave the activism for the people in marginalized groups.
  • Amplify. If you have any kind of platform at all, amplify others’ voices and affect change for other people.
  • Celebrate and nominate. Women and people of color are incredibly underrepresented in the people who win significant science and technology awards and honors. Spend an afternoon or a weekend putting together a prize package to nominate someone for something phenomenal. You’ll not only transform their career, but you’ll tell all the other people watching those awards programs that this person is impressive.
  • Lift others as you climb. As your career grows, lift up others along the way. Collectively we can make the world a better place, but only if we work together.
  • Thou shalt not read the comments. Whenever you’re being this advocate for change, you’re going to get some frightful pushback. So always remember to not read the comments!

Difficulties of Being a Woman in Tech

paperbackdragon

I’ve been lucky enough to have Microsoft pay for me to go to the virtual Grace Hopper Celebration this week. It’s been largely inspiring and rejuvenating, but at times has been tiring and frustrating.

I got into a funk today after an encounter that was sort of like a microcosm of the tech industry. I was in a networking session for the LGBT+ community, hosted on Zoom, where the session organizers put everyone into random virtual breakout rooms for 10 minutes or so at a time to get to know people more personally. It was sponsored by Discover, so they did a little spiel in the beginning. But in my first breakout room, there was a guy there from Discover, who was (most likely) not part of the LGBT+ community. After someone broke the ice about the cute guinea pig one woman had on her shoulder, there was an awkward pause and the guy from Discover talked about how great it was to work there, and said to ask him any questions we had about Discover. There was another awkward pause. At this point, in my opinion, he had talked for a bit too long about himself and I didn’t like that he hadn’t suggested the rest of us introduce ourselves or anything, instead seeming to want the conversation to be all about getting people to work at Discover and not what we were all really there for–networking, community, and feeling like we’re not alone in the tech world as women and as folks on the LGBT+ spectrum.

After this, one woman tried to bring the conversation back to networking by introducing herself and bravely sharing what brought her to the LGBT+ lunch. The guy then proceeds to talk again about how Discover is a great and welcoming place to work, maybe thinking this tied into what the woman had just shared, and talks for definitely too long this time. None of us had the backbone enough (or cared enough) to tell him to stop and let us focus on getting to know each other. While he was talking, I looked at the cameras of people in the room to gauge others’ feelings of this guy, and I noticed the first woman that spoke up about the cute guinea pig had already left the meeting. A couple minutes later, the woman who had shared about herself first had turned off her video. One woman who hadn’t spoken up yet started talking about how she was unhappy where she was working now and felt like she had to hide part of herself, and I felt so heartbroken for her and wanted to help her, but this guy jumped in and said how Discover would treat her better.

I felt like a deer in headlights, I have such trouble confronting people on the spot like this. So I didn’t do anything, which I now regret. Shortly thereafter, my laptop turned off abruptly due to a low battery. A sign from the universe? I freaked out thinking I didn’t want to leave the younger women in the room with this guy, having them think all networking sessions were going to be like this, but when I finally reconnected, they had finished those breakout rooms and were getting ready as a large group to join new breakout rooms. My other breakout sessions went far better.

I see a few problems that may have contributed to this situation:

  1. The last-minute removal of the Career Fair from GHC probably led companies to feel like they needed to recruit in other kinds of ways.
  2. This man’s stereotypical male way of communicating and taking charge of the conversation even at a conference for women and people who want to lift women up.
  3. The rest of us being women who–and this is at least just speaking for myself–are used to people-pleasing, not being assertive, and not rocking the boat, and are still learning how to navigate looking and thinking differently from most people that we work with.

It feels like an overstatement to spell it out in so many words, but it is how I felt… that first breakout room felt totally violating. Overwhelmingly I thought, how dare you take over space that was meant for women? This was meant to be a space for LGBT+ folks to share about themselves and get to know each other, not a career fair or a “learn about Discover” breakout session. I feel bad that I wasn’t able to be the one to speak up, or be a better role model for the less experienced women in the room. Those women deserved much better than that conversation.

Importantly, I do want to say:

  • I’m not trying to bash Discover–the initial spiel from a different person in the main networking session where everyone was together was much better, less about the company and more about being LGBT+ (because this person was actually part of the community).
  • I’m not trying to throw this guy under the bus… this kind of thing is really typical and I know he meant well and probably just wanted to do his job well and recruit people.

I’m sharing this more for awareness more than anything else. I hope others learn from this so that maybe I can help prevent at least one other conversation like this, while I practice speaking up more myself. I hope to find a way to handle these kinds of things that reflects my own style; gentle, kind, but still clear.

Finally I want to assert that tech is not always like this. These things are worth dealing with for the chance to work in tech. Above all my advice to women in tech would echo advice I heard yesterday at GHC: stay. I know that it’s hard sometimes, but we need you. We need your communication style, your great ideas, and most of all we need more women in the room, at the table, and leading the discussion.

Writing Prompt: The Moving Mountains

paperbackdragon

Link to original post on /r/WritingPrompts

“Hey, you should get up.” Melody kneeled beside her daughter, touching a hand to her arm and tugging gently. When no response came from the child, she tugged a little harder. “Lizzie, it’s time.”

Lizzie let out a quiet groan, then opened her eyes. She sat up immediately. “Oh no! I fell asleep!”

“It’s all right,” Melody chuckled. “You didn’t miss much. Mostly clouds. But we’re nearing the Moving Mountains and I knew you didn’t want to miss them.”

Standing up carefully, Lizzie looked over the edge of the basket of the hot air ballon. “I don’t see them yet. But I love the clouds.” She smiled that smile Melody loved more than anything in the world, full of wonder and excitement.

“It’s just a bit farther. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.” Lizzie’s eyes stayed glued to the fluffy white clouds below them. There were thin clouds above them as well, creating a feeling of floating between two soft blankets. The setting sun was starting to peek out beyond the furthest clouds.

Melody watched Lizzie watching the clouds below. She wished she could look at this landscape with brand new eyes and experience the childhood glee she saw in Lizzie’s face. As it was, she’d already flown these skies more times than she could count. There was always work for someone with a fast form of transportation. Now, it was Lizzie’s turn to experience the wonder that these lands and skies had to offer; and if she wanted, learn how to pilot a balloon herself. Lizzie leaned over the edge of the basket a bit farther, unafraid, and Melody knew she had it in her if she wanted to.

“There they are!” Lizzie shouted, pointing into the distance.

Melody turned to look. They appeared to be typical hills and mountains at first, but after staring for a few seconds you could see it. At their base, each mountain had an overhang, and the leathery gray head of a turtle stuck out from underneath. Two arms stuck out of the mountain-shell to either side. They waded through the fluffy clouds, unfathomably tall. Hardy, tough trees grew out of their shells.

“They’re so big!” Lizzie’s eyes were wide with awe. “Where are they going?” she asked.

“They’re moving south, to follow the sun as winter approaches. Majestic, aren’t they?”

“Yeah…” she sighed, trailing off dreamily. She turned to look at Melody. “Can we ride one? Please?”

Melody laughed. “It’s not safe, there isn’t a good place to land.”

Lizzie started to pout.

“How about we get closer?”

“Yes!”

“Would you like to try it yourself?”

A big grin spread across the girl’s face. “Yes!”

Melody pointed to the valve under the balloon. “See this valve? Open it just a little bit, and then immediately close it again. It will let some hot air escape. Don’t let out too much or we’ll hit the turtles.”

“Ok,” Lizzie said, her jaw set and her eyes serious. She reached up to the valve and tried turning it to the right. Nothing happened. She turned it to the left, and a whoosh of air made her yelp. She turned it back to the right, and the sound of the air stopped. “Whoa,” she said. “Did I do it right?”

Melody smiled. “Yes you did, very good job.” Lizzie backed away from the valve, still looking very interested, and Melody proceeded to let the balloon drop gently so that they ended up about twenty feet above the tallest of the trees on the turtles’ shoulders. Lizzie turned to look over the side of the basket again.

“Whoa, we’re so close!” Lizzie said. She was quiet for a moment. “What is that booming noise?”

“It’s the sound of their feet moving along the ground, miles below us.”

They both listened and watched for a while.

“I want to stay here forever,” Lizzie said.

Tears sprung to Melody’s eyes. “I’m so happy you’re enjoying this, honey. Would you like me to teach you how to fly this, so you can fly it yourself?”

“I’d love that!” she said. “Do we have enough time?”

The reminder of her terminal illness was a gut-punch. Her tears made wet streaks down her cheeks. She put her arm around Lizzie’s shoulder, squeezing.

When she trusted herself to speak again, she said, “I’ll make sure we do.”

Writing Prompt: Figures of Speech

paperbackdragon

Prompt: You’re on a space ship with a bunch of your crewmates. You’re the only human, and apparently metaphors are a strictly human behavior. You’ve learned to cope with this, but today you’ve decided to speak in only figures of speech as a prank on the others.

Link to original post on /r/WritingPrompts

“How’s it hanging, Moe?”

The 7-foot tall, thin dark-skinned man from Klorn stepped out of his quarters and looked over at me. “Hello Sarah. How’s what hanging?”

I laughed and continued down the corridor, coffee mug in hand. This was going to be fun.

“Did you make coffee?” Moe said.

“You bet your britches I did!” I gulped down the last mouthful of the bitter but comforting beverage. The coffee they stock on spaceships is never very good, but it’s still a necessity.

I stepped into the kitchen, placing my “Aliens Shmaliens” mug in the sink. Moe followed behind me and walked up to the coffee machine, filling his earthenware mug. I sat down on a stool by a table nearby.

“Sometimes I just cannot understand you humans,” Moe said, shaking his head, brow furrowed.

“Why the long face?” I asked, smirking.

“Long face?” He frowned and rubbed his chin. “Are you calling me names now?”

“Ah, I’m just joshing you.” I waved my hand to indicate he should forget what I said. “Nevermind.”

After he gave me a puzzled look, Moe shook his head and turned to leave the kitchen. “It’s too early for this.” As he passed into the corridor, Orma turned to enter the kitchen and they nearly collided. Moe stumbled out of the way.

“Oops, sorry Moe!” Orma said. The gills on her neck fluttered open and closed in embarrassment. Moe shook his head again and left the room. Orma looked over at me. “Hi Sarah! Did you have a restful sleep?”

“I slept like a log!” I grinned.

“Like… a log? A log of wood? But wood does not sleep,” she said, cocking her head at me. “I suppose if you are smiling then it was a good sleep.” She went to the refrigerator and reached for the green juice she was always drinking. A ripple of pleasure went through her tentacle-hair after taking a sip directly from the jar. “Ah, that tastes good. I slept well. Are you ready for the mining mission? We are nearly at the moon called Thermyn. It could be dangerous. But that is the fun part.”

“Yep! I’m an eager beaver,” I lied, giving her my best grin.

“What is a beaver? You speak in strange riddles today.” She took another sip of juice. “It will be the first mission with us where you are not on the ship, we will both be scouts today. Are you not nervous?”

My stomach turned at the reminder. “I’m… well, I’ve got butterflies in my stomach for sure.”

“Butterflies? Those beautiful bugs from Earth? Why would you eat those? They are so pretty. And probably not very filling.”

“Not… literally.”

“Oh.” Orma nodded. “Good, I like butterflies.” She took another long drink from her juice, then put the cap back on and put the jar back in the refrigerator. “It is almost time to suit up. Do not forget to eat something, it will help with nerves.”

“Thanks,” I said. I really didn’t feel like eating anything. “See you in a jiffy.”

“In a what?”

“In a flash,” I smiled.

Orma laughed and looked at me like I was crazy. She waved and left the kitchen in the direction of her quarters.

—

Sooner than I would have liked, I heard the captain’s voice on the ship’s intercom. “We’re now approaching Thermyn! All hands on deck!”

My heart started racing at the thought of leaving the ship’s airlock. It would be the first time I stepped on an unknown planet, or moon, or really anything that wasn’t a training area. I was in my quarters and had been reading the mission briefing on my tablet over and over. I finally put it down. No need for my tablet in space.

I made my way to the meeting area on the main deck of the ship, where we usually met before starting a mission. Quite a few people had arrived already. I took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

“Sarah. Good.” Captain Yannik nodded at me.

My heart pounded at being called out in a room full of people, but no one seemed to notice. The captain scanned the room. His large, round eyes were attached to short antennae that stuck straight up from his forehead, which meant that he didn’t have to move his head to look at the whole room, he just moved his antennae. Usually it was unnerving to me, but anything to distract me from my nerves was welcome.

“I think we have everyone. As you read in the briefing, this should be a simple in-and-out mission. Our scans have detected precious metals on this moon that we desperately need, and our sensors have not picked up anything hostile. We need to scout the surface and extract some of the metals we need, to determine if this can become a mining outpost. Orma and Sarah, you’ll be our scouts. Moe and Syd, you’ll set up our small mining rig to extract the sample metals. Everyone else will stay on the ship, monitoring their progress and providing help where possible. Understood?”

A variety of movements and sounds of agreement filled the room.

“All right, let’s do it!” he said. The crew started filtering out of the room and I turned to follow, but Yannik said, “Sarah, a moment of your time?”

My heart started racing again, but I nodded and approached him. Did I forget something already? Orma spotted us and walked over as well, standing a respectful few paces away.

“This will be your first mission as a scout. Do you feel ready?”

“Fit as a fiddle! Let’s get this show on the road, sir.” I tried to smile, but in my current state I knew it was not convincing.

“You… do know what a scout does, yes? This is not a music performance.” The captain’s head tilted in a gesture that felt similar to narrowing his eyebrows, if he had any.

“Oh, certainly, sir,” I said.

Orma stepped closer to us from where she was standing and said, “If I may interrupt, please excuse Sarah. She is speaking in riddles today. I think it is her way of coping with her nerves.”

I felt my face grow hot immediately. I had no idea what to say in the face of such blunt truth. Part of me hated her for calling me out, but I knew it was just her personality.

Captain Yannik chuckled. “I see! Nerves are completely normal. It’s the actions you take that count. You’ve got great combat expertise, you just need to get used to space! You’ll do great.”

A wave of relief washed over me, a ton of bricks tumbled off my back. I took a deep breath and let it out. I had no idea how much tension I had been holding. I felt a gripping in my throat as if tears were just around the corner, and I fought off the feeling to avoid further embarrassment. “Thank you,” was all I could say.

Orma put her arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go, Sarah! Grab your gun and armor and it’s time to explore. This is my favorite part of the job.”

I nodded, a new flood of butterflies filling my stomach. As we walked out of earshot of the captain, I turned to Orma and said, “Thanks. I guess I needed to hear that. What was your first scouting mission like? Were you scared?”

“Oh absolutely. I hid in my quarters until someone came to get me. In comparison you are handling this very well.” She grinned. I grinned back.

We made our way to the lockers, geared up in our space-ready armor, and picked up our laser guns. I looked out the airlock. The planet outside was purple, mountainous, and full of strange plants.

This was it. Orma reached for the airlock controls and then looked at me. “Are you and your butterflies ready?”

I smiled. The butterflies hadn’t left my stomach, but I supposed they weren’t going to. I’d have to make peace with them. “Ready as I’ll ever be!” I said, finally feeling like I wasn’t trying to hide anything.

Orma cycled the airlock and we stepped into the unknown.

Pride Month Sharing

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This month I agreed to share about my own journey in the LGBT community I’m a part of at work, and thought it’d be worth sharing the same post more widely. ❤️

My name is Heather and my pronouns are she/her. I’m bisexual, having come out “fully” only a couple of years ago. When I was about 7 years old, soon after my parents divorced, my father came out as trans, and bi, and transitioned to being a woman: Paige. I’ve always been close with her, so the LGBT community has been close to my heart for nearly my whole life. I remember going to PFLAG groups as a kid. We have a number of LGBT family friends. I’ve been to a lot of Seattle Pride parades.

It wasn’t a very easy childhood (whose is, really), in particular because of the divorce, and sometimes being the mediator between my parents. I admit that for a while it did feel like I was losing a father, but I eventually realized that what I was grieving was partly the divorce and losing a nuclear family (as my mother raised me after that and I only saw Paige on weekends), and partly I was grieving the traditional “father figure” in my life, yet Paige was still there and loved me just as much as she always did. As a side note, I do sometimes use “dad” or “father” as the noun to refer to her since as I was growing up, my mother was always the “mom” and it didn’t feel as right to Paige to use that word herself, and Paige has also said she has felt guilty about “taking my dad away from me” in a sense (I blame society for that, not her 🙂), so when I was younger she suggested I continue to use “dad” if it helped me. Today I only really use it when talking to others about her, to make it clear she’s my parent.

For me, being bisexual has been one of those things that is easy to hide and be silent about, or “cover”, because my partner is a man and it looks like a straight relationship. I acknowledge that this is a privilege I’ve had. I also wasn’t aware I was bi until sometime in college. It was a huge relief for me to come to that conclusion, to realize there was a reason I felt nervous around some women (those were crushes, girl!), but also scary because I had to consider how, when, and who to come out to, and I’ve struggled a lot with the fear of what others think of me, in all areas of life. I held back telling anyone about being bi for many years, except to people I dated. Eventually, two Junes ago, I came out to my friends and wider family, partly to help normalize being bisexual and being part of the LGBT community, and also to allow myself to be more connected with the LGBT community. It didn’t feel right to me to attend LGBT events and talk about being bi with others at those events if I couldn’t work up the courage to tell my friends and family. Having a supportive group of friends and family is also a privilege I acknowledge. I eventually felt that it was only right that I help normalize being bisexual in a way that would be very visible to others.

I also share frequently on social media about my anxiety and depression. It’s a value of mine to be vulnerable with others and share my experiences in order to foster human connection. To anyone who feels comfortable sharing, what have you come out about, or “un-covered” if you will, in your life? Maybe it’s your sexual orientation, maybe it’s your gender identity, maybe it’s a disability?

Recovering a Sense of Strength

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I just started reading Tehanu by Ursula Le Guin, the 4th book in her Earthsea series. Her writing style is so beautiful to me. It fills me with a sense of longing and urgency: I want to be able to do that. I feel the same way about Tolkien’s works, or whenever I watch the Lord of the Rings movies.

It inspired me to dig out The Artist’s Way again, and continue working through it to see if I can unblock my creativity. Synchronistically, I left off on week 8 which is about “Recovering a Sense of Strength” and it had many, many phrases that rung true for me. In essence it was about taking our creative losses and grief and turning them into opportunities. Reminding ourselves that it doesn’t take big leaps to get to where we want to go–it’s about small steps that we can take every day. And daring ourselves to keep looking at the far-off goal that fuels us and keep making those steps.

This spoke to me deeply because I haven’t written any prose of significant length, or really finished any writing project, in 10 years. I let my failures pile up in my head and replay over and over and keep me from moving forward. Looking at my past blog posts, it took me 2 years of still being stuck to pick up The Artist’s Way again.

One of the exercises this week was goal-setting, for 5 years out, 3 years out, 1 year out, 1 month out, 1 week out, and today. “In a perfect world, I would secretly love to ___.” For me: be a published author. To have something I write be widely read and well-received and make peoples’ lives a little bit better. I know that with the Internet anyone can instantly be published, but I’d also like to be professionally critiqued, and reach a wide audience. Perhaps there’s an alternate way to get there than being published in a book or magazine. I’ll explore that.

Part of the goal-setting exercise included defining my “true north”, which made me think yet again through why I like writing. I used to think it was purely selfish, that it was all about the praise. That I just want to be published and don’t want to do any of the actual writing. But, I know that’s not true, especially when I read Ursula Le Guin. It’s not, “I wish I was famous,” it’s “I want to be like you. I want to affect others like your work affects me.” And I miss the act of writing sometimes. For me it’s also not just about expressing myself, which I sometimes think is all it is. I don’t like to write in a void where no one can see it. Journaling alone is not satisfying enough.

Since working with my therapist about what I truly value, I think I see the truth more clearly: I enjoy helping others feel more connected to each other, to themselves, and to the world around them. I share vulnerable stories of myself so that people can hopefully relate and feel that sense of common humanity, that they’re not alone. I want to connect people to the beauty that I see in the world, so that they can see it too. These are the things I enjoy most when I read.

The past few years, I’ve gone though phases where I get inspired to get back to writing, and then I don’t do it. It’s possible this is another one of those times. But I’d like to think that it isn’t. And even if my writing practice is few and far-between… it’s there. It’s not nothing. And I share this with you in the hopes that I’ll hold myself accountable, and remember why I enjoy writing: because I want to bring that same joy I feel when reading, to others.

This all is even more timely because of the state the world is in. I have a lot more time to sit and think, for better or for worse. A lot of feelings are running around in my head that I need to express somehow. My therapist recently asked me what my long-term goals are for myself and I struggled to respond; after today, I’ve decided I’d like to make being published one of my goals again.

Pepparkakor Cookies

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I used to make Swedish pepparkakor cookies with my mom for Christmas. Americans would call them gingersnaps. We’d always use my grandmother’s friend’s recipe, a very simple list of ingredients and a sentence or two on a yellowing notecard written in my grandmother’s handwriting. I never met my grandmother on my mom’s side, since she died a year before I was born. My grandfather eventually married another wonderful woman, and as I grew up, I considered her my grandma.

When my grandparents still lived in Seattle, we’d sometimes bake the pepparkakor cookies at their condo. It was in an older building, the kind where the kitchen countertops and cupboards were that off-white laminate with wood trim that was popular in the ’50s. It was a small, cozy place, full of pictures of my grandparents’ trips together and their grandkids on both sides of the family.

My grandma would always ask us how we were with such warmth in her voice that I wondered if she had any warmth left for her blood-related grandkids (she did). I remember her often making cheese and crackers as a snack for my grandpa and offering some to me every time. It felt like such a kids’ snack that I thought it was silly that grandpa was having some, but as I got older I worried I was eating too much of the stash of his favorite snack.

Their kitchen was small, but well-kept and clean. We got out some of my grandma’s cooking utensils and some that we brought with us and set to work. The first, more difficult step was to mix the sugar and butter together. The recipe called for shortening, but my mother preferred the richness and honesty of butter, as if shortening was just pretending to be something it would never be. This meant trying to break up two sticks of butter while they were still cold, and mixing them with the sugar thoroughly. Knowing more about baking now, I’m pretty sure we should have warmed up the butter first for this kind of recipe. Sometimes we’d use a pastry cutter, and other times we’d just make due with slicing up the butter with a knife and mashing it into the sugar with a fork. I’d often get mom to help with this part due to my weak kid muscles (and probably some laziness).

To that mixture we’d add the other wet ingredients: molasses and an egg. I would always ask my mom to add the egg for me, because the consistency of raw eggs disgusted me at such a primal level that I still find it hard to eat even runny eggs. I was (am) a picky eater.

Separately, we then would mix the dry ingredients: flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and baking soda. It was three whole cups of flour, which always felt like too much to me. It was hard to mix the dry and wet ingredients without having a bunch of little dough crumbles you had to smush together with your hands, since your hand oils were the only thing that made it a dough and not a crumbly mess.

We’d toss some flour on a clean countertop, take a handful of dough, and roll it out very thin with a rolling pin. My mom would then let me do the honors of doing the cookie cutting. Popular shapes for me were trees, stars of different sizes, Scottie dogs, and gingerbread men. After a while, my mom let me (or deluded me into) doing the rolling step myself. When done right, pepparkakor are thin and crisp. Think gingersnap. I easily got impatient with how many batches of cookies there were to roll out. As I progressed, they were not the sort of cookie that would snap anymore. My mom would come over and kindly comment that I wasn’t rolling the dough thin enough. But I also not-very-secretly preferred the cookies that way, in their doughy and chewy goodness. She wouldn’t bother to keep insisting that they be thin, probably due to some combination of loving me too much and not wanting to do all the rolling herself, so I usually got to make at least half of the cookies the way that I liked.

We underestimated the work required every year. We ended up with so many cookies, even with my shortcut, that we had no choice but to give some away or they’d never get eaten. Especially since mom would only let me have a couple at a time. But they made great gifts. My mom’s aunt hosted dinner on Christmas Day every year, and when we brought cookies they would tuck away half of what we gave them for themselves, before setting out the rest for guests.

Many of my favorite Christmas memories involve baking, often with my mom. During college, we’d even bake when I flew home over the holidays. The first Christmas after college when I had my own place, I tried making pepparkakor cookies by myself. I again forgot how much work it was, and made them thicker than they should have been. I shared them with my mom when she flew into town for Christmas, but she didn’t have much since she was trying to cut out sugar from her diet. I missed the old days, then.

This year, the third Christmas since my mom’s passing, I missed the old days so much more. It feels like there’s been an aching hole in my Christmas each year that I haven’t yet found a way to fill. I also haven’t made pepparkakor cookies in years. Maybe the answer is to bake a batch this winter and roll them out thin, just for her–and then make half of them thicker, just for me.

Morning Pages

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I have a lot of mixed feelings about writing. At times I get a lot of meaning and happiness from it, and at other times I feel like an untalented failure of a writer and avoid writing altogether. The latter has been winning out for the past few years, depression being one of a few factors. We talked about this in my therapy session today and given all the tools I’ve learned to deal with feelings of failure, I think I’m ready to try writing again.

The Artist’s Way came up, a book by Julia Cameron. The idea of trying morning pages again feels like a potentially achievable goal to start with. If you’re not familiar with this concept check out the great short video(s) on her site. The last time I did morning pages regularly was 10 years ago, during the same summer in which I finished the first draft of my novel, The Last Moon Elf. I would be overjoyed to tap into that creativity again.

I absolutely love notebooks, so I decided buying a dedicated journal for this would be a good way to kick off this goal. I watched the other video on Julia’s site, about the idea of an “artist date”, where you go on an outing by yourself somewhere fun where you might find inspiration, once a week. So I brought these ideas together and decided to check out this store Paper Hammer, walkable from work.

Here’s my haul! 😊 All notebooks are lined. Couldn’t help also getting some tree-themed washi tape. Fun was had, that store is adorable.

Experiences with Anxiety and Depression

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For me, learning to handle my depression has been like fighting my base instincts. The difficult thing is, I can’t fight it, fighting it doesn’t help, I have to accept it and move through it, not around it. My analytical mind, which I pride myself on at work, works against me when it comes to emotions. Trying to figure out why I’m so anxious, or so down, leads me to trying to “fix” it, which often results in no helpful outcome, and instead sends me into a self-critical downward spiral. My biggest lesson at my therapist recently was learning to tell myself, when I’m in these moods, It’s okay to feel down. It’s okay to feel like a failure. It’s okay to be anxious. It’s normal, natural, and does not actually mean that you are a failure. It seemed like such obvious common sense when my therapist said it that I nearly spiraled down again, but I realized the irony in that and laugh-cried instead. I really struggle with self-compassion, but I’m learning.

I’ve started working through this book called The Mindful Way Workbook with my therapist and I have hope that it will really help me. The mindfulness practices they have you do are making me realize that being truly present in the moment can be a blissful escape from the craziness that is my mind, and can help me step back and be aware of myself, allowing me to make better choices before I let myself go on constant autopilot. I’m already learning so much about myself that I didn’t realize I didn’t know.

It’s seriously difficult though. There are just as many hard days as there were before. I just have some tools I can try using to make them a bit more bearable.

Reflections on Grief

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This month marks one year since my mom Maria died, and I feel like sharing.

It’s been one of the hardest years of my life, to be honest. It hasn’t been without its ups, of course (I’m engaged and making wedding plans!), but I’ve had more downs than I care to think about. Ups don’t counteract downs. They just kind of… coexist.

My grief is triggered by seemingly random things sometimes and it can be intense when it happens.

One example: last year at Sasquatch in late May, I was watching Florence & The Machine on the main stage. She was killing it, in this flowy, faery-like pink dress; something that I imagine my mom would like. She started singing her song titled Mother and, despite the meaning of the song probably being about something completely different from grieving about the loss of a mother, it hit me hard. The song has a chorus:

Mother, make me
Make me a big tall tree
So I can shed my leaves and let it blow through me
Mother, make me
Make me a big grey cloud
So I can rain on you things I can’t say out loud

If you know my mom at all, you know she loved trees and nature, and she was always willing to be a sympathetic ear when something crappy happened in my life. It was only a month since her death and it was still feeling raw. It felt like Florence was singing about me, and I just lost it, tears streaming down my cheeks. There are other lines in that song that struck me as fitting, too. Check it out, it’s beautiful:

I’ve cried spontaneously about my mom at work multiple times, even once in front of my boss (he was awesome about it). The littlest things can set me off, and often it’s not the things that I think will trigger me. It feels random. These episodes have more and more time in-between them as time goes on, but they still happen. I had one this morning thinking about how good my life is right now, and wishing she could be here to see it, in person. Just like that, happiness turned to sadness, and I teared up on my way to work. If my mom were here, she’d tell me to let it all out, cry it out, don’t hold it in. I’ve been trying to do that, though in our society it definitely feels taboo to cry in public.

Over the past year, I’ve changed a lot. The biggest thing is that I’ve started learning how to properly take care of myself. I’ve discovered some latent anxiety and depression and have had to learn how to handle that. Other than medication, I’ve started exercising, meditating, and journaling regularly. I went to a therapist for a while. I’ve been trying to find hobbies that don’t stress me out but also give me a sense of purpose, like cross-stitching.

One lesson I’ve learned is that I’m bad at opening up to people when I need it most… I tend keep it bottled inside to avoid upsetting others with my grief or seemingly stupid anxieties. Honestly, I want to talk about my mom. Even if it upsets me. She meant–and still means–so much to me, and I want to share that with others. I’ve started trying to open up to friends when I get upset rather than keeping it in my head. Attention friends: Please do not hesitate to ask me about her. I love talking about her. Don’t worry about upsetting me.

I’ve also been–slowly–gaining some self-confidence. I survived through this past year and I feel like I’ve come out of it a better person. If I can do that, shit, I can do anything. ✊

This year, on the day of her death, April 22, I’ll be at the Coachella music festival. I think she’d like that I’ll be with friends, enjoying music, having fun. There may be tears, but that’s okay. ❤️