love

Today’s Resistance: Choose Love Over Fear

/ Meredith Whipple Callahan / 2 Comments

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Two weeks ago, the Callahans embarked on a ‘near-shore’ adventure — a long weekend in Montreal to meet up with friends, dine on poutine, and test our high-school French skills. As we crossed from New York into Quebec, we were grilled at the border by the guards: How long would we stay in Canada? Who were we meeting? When was the last time we saw them? Where were we staying? Did we have a reservation? Who made the reservation? When would we come back to the United States? As we drove through Quebec’s broad fields, we made appropriately grim jokes about seeking asylum in Canada as a LGBTQ family. We laughed about The Handmaid’s Tale and shared our adoration of Justin Trudeau.

But it was the drive back — not the drive there — that made the sad truth of our circumstances even more real. As we approached the American border, I felt my heartbeat quicken. Yes, we held American passports. Yes, we were crossing the Northern border and not the Southern one. And yes, as Caucasians we had the privilege of not triggering any of the profiling flags that would cause someone to doubt our case. And yet, I was attempting to cross the border into the United States with my child. Thousands of mothers and fathers in similar situations had their children taken from them over the past weeks and months. It was only an accident of birth and circumstance that separated me from the parent who comes to the border seeking asylum.

As this disturbing truth percolated in my head, it didn’t take too much imagination to hear Elliott’s cries not as innocent toddler crises — about dropping her milk, wanting to take off her shoes, or refusing a graham cracker — but instead about being separated from Liz and me. I cannot imagine the horror of having your child forcibly taken from you, however briefly. I cannot imagine the inhumanity it takes to do that.

On a daily basis, I’m ashamed by what our country has become. We increasingly live in a country which is run, at the highest levels, without a sense of compassion or humanity. While there may be room for power and politics in parts of government, the way we treat human beings is not up for debate.

Regardless of our political persuasion, we increasingly have a choice between acting out of love and acting out of fear. Do we believe that others are worthy of respect and treat them accordingly? Or do we demonize and dehumanize them, characterizing them as animals or criminals? There is a long history of humans blaming “the other” in times of uncertainty and distress. It is easier to point the finger than it is to take responsibility for our contribution to the problem. But it takes a certain level of personal evolution to assume responsibility, to humbly seek to understand, to leave the need to be right behind, and to contribute to the solution. I am not always good at this; I can’t imagine that you are either. But, hopefully, if we can choose to face every situation — even the smallest and most trivial situations in our lives — with love instead of fear, we can collectively shift into a different way of being.

What does it look like to choose love? Every time you find yourself afraid — afraid of a person, afraid of a situation, afraid of an outcome — look inward. Try to investigate what is going on inside of you. What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of not being loved? Of not being good enough? Of failing? Of not being able to provide for your family? How do you act when you are consumed by that fear? In reality, that fear is just that — a fear. It may come true; it may not. You will find out over time. But, in the short term, your relationship with that fear — your mindset about it — dictates your actions. What would it look like to have more love, to have more faith? What might you see differently? How would you act differently?

So please, take all the political actions you can to influence our government in the direction you believe is the most compassionate and loving. Call your elected representatives. Sign petitions. Donate. But, in addition to these, take the initiative to shift from fear to love in your own life. Nothing but the sum of our everyday choices to love will unlock a bigger transformation in who we are as a people.

With love,
Meredith

Reflections on the Wedding

/ Meredith Whipple Callahan

This weekend, I attended the fourth wedding since my own nuptials in August. With nearly three months of perspective and so many more weddings under my belt, I’m finally ready to reflect back on what I learned through the entire wedding process.
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Starting with the planning, I’m grateful that we invested in what we cared about. In the months leading up to the wedding, it horrified me to find out just how much work this whole affair can be. So, I’m glad we picked our battles. Since I cared a lot about the ceremony, we wrote every word of it ourselves (I’m sharing the text in my next post if you’re interested).  Since Liz cared about the music, she picked every song by hand. The flowers that we didn’t care about were perfectly serviceable and lovely accents to the event. I’m glad we reserved our energy and didn’t worry about what mattered less to us.

My first realization during wedding week was that we needed every moment available. In addition to our wedding day, we held an entire week’s worth of events:  drinks at our favorite dive bar, biking across the Golden Gate Bridge, wine tasting in Sonoma, breakfasting with our families, picnicking with everyone in the Presidio, and celebrating our rehearsal at the restaurant where we had our first date.  About 24 hours into our 100+ hour celebration, I saw how much I needed all the remaining time to connect with people and spend solid time with all of them (as well as Liz!). Call me an extrovert, but I couldn’t soak up enough.  I’m grateful we had the luxury of time with so many guests.

In arranging the last-minute details for the wedding, I was touched by how people made themselves ‘of service’ in a beautiful way. In addition to our families and our wedding parties (who all played wonderfully supportive roles), there were unexpected guests who jumped in to help. It was the uncles who carried all the snacks for the wine bus. It was the classmates who helped transport all the alcohol after the picnic. It was the friend who diligently held my drink while I danced. None of them had formal roles, and yet all were so enthusiastically helpful. We will pay this support forward at every wedding we attend.

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As the night progressed, I found the old adage to be true – something will go wrong, and you need to let it go. For us, the one thing that went wrong at our wedding was the coffee cups; they were paper cups instead of proper mugs. (Oh the horror!)  Did our guests notice?  No. Did we notice?  Yes. Did our guests care? No. Did we care?  Less than we would have thought, but more than we should have. Let it go and enjoy all that is right.

Looking at the wedding as a whole, my favorite moments were completely unscripted:  the drive to the venue with my parents and bridesmaid, peering out the window as guests arrived, my instinctual reaction when I first saw Liz, the champagne pop, the end of my father’s speech, the first song the DJ played, the last song the DJ played, and the plate of grilled cheese someone gave me. And perhaps more than anything else, I loved the quiet of Liz and I taking the dog for a walk in the full moon well after the wedding was over. I’m glad there was room to savor the little moments.

In my post immediately upon returning from honeymoon, I struggled to wrap my head around the whole event. However, since reflecting more, I’ve realized that every part of a wedding is a public affair. Not only do you celebrate your wedding in public, you process it in public. Typically, I work through life events independently, journaling on my experiences. This approach didn’t resonate for the wedding. It was only when I started to talk to people about the wedding – to hear about their experiences and share my own – that I started to see the meaning of the whole event more clearly. For all the relationship moments that are lived privately, a wedding is public. Meaning is created between people – between Liz and me, between us and our guests – and not in my head alone. Once I understood this, the debrief conversations with guests and my wife took on a new importance. Liz and I jumped into co-authoring a journal of our collective wedding week events to capture everything from a full perspective. We experienced it together, so we needed to process it together as well.

So, to conclude, thank you for digesting this with me and bringing yet another level to the public commitment Liz and I made in August. I’m grateful that you’re all bearing witness to the journey.

Onwards and upwards,
Meredith

P.S.  Congratulations to all the couples whose nuptials we’ve witnessed since our own:  Andrew and Christine, Justin and Pascal, Marla and Jamie, and Jenny and Fico! We’ve loved your lemonade stands, dessert bars, choreographed dances, drag queens, gazing circles, and Texan barbecue. It has been an honor to celebrate with you!

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So That Happened

/ Meredith Whipple Callahan / 2 Comments

As many of you know, I spent the last three weeks getting married to Liz, celebrating with friends and family, and running off to Bora Bora on my honeymoon. I can think of few other periods in my life as dense with experience, emotion, and meaning as these. Typically, when life feels full like this, I depend upon writing. Through writing, I process emotions, document events, and envision the future. However, uncharacteristically, I feel blocked from writing about the past few weeks. I’ve opened and closed my journal a dozen times. I’ve beat myself up about not writing. I’ve avoided it entirely. And yet, when it’s hard to begin processing, I suppose you have to start somewhere:

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Wedding week kicked off with dinner at French Laundry, the obligatory City Hall visit, beers and tacos on the waterfront, wine tasting in Sonoma, sitting around the Inn fire pit, open mic toasts at the rehearsal, and thirty people who rarely ride bikes pedaling over the Golden Gate Bridge. There was the ceremony we wrote ourselves, Reese’s best behavior as he came up the aisle, the reflections of our officiants, the surprise first dance starring our fathers, and the encouragement to “Live Long and Prosper.” There was the mist in the Presidio, the clear view of the Golden Gate, the sanctity of the space, the smell of eucalyptus, and the mountains of petits fours. There were bottles of champagne sabered by knives (more or less successfully), family-style platters passed around the table, a chance to wear my mother’s veil, a second wedding dress, and abounding grilled cheese. There was biking the approach to Sausalito with my uncle, calculating last-minute vendor tips with my bridesmaid Eleanore, the dance with my dad, and the last picture of the night with my mom. There was the note Liz sent me our wedding morning, my gasp at first seeing her, and walking Reese together under the full moon after the whole reception finished. And all this was before the honeymoon. It was before bottles of champagne on arrival, tropical flowers from my wife surprising me in our room, and fresh coconuts opened by the gardener. It was before Liz tackled the trails on our ATV, we choreographed team jumps off our overwater bungalow, and I fell face-first off a stand-up paddleboard. In each of these experiences, there were dense emotions as well: the joy of seeing friends and family, the pressure of coordination, the annoyance of detail-orientation, the hope that all would go well, the confidence that this was so right, the overwhelming love of everyone in attendance, and the gratitude for everyone and for each other. Coming out of these few weeks, there’s a distinct happy/sad feeling, just like the happy/sad tears I cried at the toasts, on the dance floor, and when the wedding was all thankfully, impossibly, heart-breakingly over.

Why is it so hard to write about the wedding? First, it’s too big, too dense, and too meaningful. I find it impossible to select a vignette that’s representative of the whole or condense the entirety down into something comprehensive. Thus, instead of presenting a thoughtful deconstruction of a focused experience (as is often my approach on The Intentional), I can only come up with the incomplete litany of impressions above.

Second, it’s hard to reflect upon the wedding/honeymoon period because it’s not yet over; we’re still in the ‘liminal’ period. Liminality is a concept in anthropology and ritual studies; it describes the disorienting in-between-ness that happens after you leave one role (e.g., engaged person) and before you take on your new role (e.g., married person). You’re no longer this, but not yet that. Because we start back to work tomorrow, Liz and I have not yet re-emerged into the world as married folk. Life is still filled with wedding logistics, honeymoon-worthy candlelit dinners, and a distinct separation from everyday life. Perhaps, in addition to the sheer volume of experiences, I’m also struggling with reflecting upon this experience as I’m still in the midst of it.

Looking forward, I suspect it will take time to integrate the events of the last few weeks; as days and weeks pass, I’ll be better able to digest the great volume of experiences and benefit from the perspective of being back in the flow of life. Self-growth often takes conscious processing, and there are certainly more wedding posts to come. What form my continued reflection takes, there’s also a refreshing finality in closing this in-between period. It means that, on the most important level, the change is complete. I re-enter the world tomorrow fundamentally and delightfully different from who I’ve been: I’m now married to Liz.

With love to all those who read this, all those who celebrated with us, and, above all, my lovely wife,
Meredith Whipple Callahan

(More to come!)

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How I Felt When Love Won

/ Meredith Whipple Callahan / 1 Comment

I left the States earlier this month for a combined business trip/vacation to Frankfurt, London, Windsor, and Sussex. In addition to the highly useful work parts, Liz and I took a week in the middle to put wedding planning on hold and travel the UK. In the course of eight days, we hit the Royal Ascot, the Harry Potter Studio Tour, Abbey Road, and over two dozen pubs. After pint upon happy pint, Liz returned stateside, and I hung around for work.
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I arrived back home on Friday, leaving Heathrow mid-morning and landing in San Francisco mid-afternoon. As wheels touched down, I casually fired up my iPhone. Before texts or emails had a chance to load, I opened Safari and searched for “Supreme Court.” I knew in the back of my mind that the ruling might come out, but I honestly didn’t expect it. (I was secretly planning to have some sort of SCOTUS breakfast next week: get up early when the courts announce, invite over some sympathetic friends, and provide lots of coffee and bacon.)

The first headline I saw was CNN’s simple and factual truth: “Supreme Court rules for same-sex marriage nationwide.” The announcement was so fresh that my newsfeed was not yet subsumed by opinion articles and teary pictures of couples kissing. It was just a simple fact.

I showed my seatmate. I took a breath. And then I started bawling on the airplane.

Even now I’m surprised and self-judgmental about my reaction. I haven’t been fighting this fight my whole life. While I lived for years with questions and uncertainties, they didn’t subsume my ability to live as myself. Today I’m more likely to feel the oversight of someone’s assumption (“Your fiancé, what does he do for a living?”) rather than the bone-pain of overt discrimination. And though I was hurt by not being able to marry in Michigan, preparing for our California marriage looks and feels a lot like our opposite-sex couple friends.

In my head, my emotions were not qualified by the discrimination I experienced. I didn’t deserve to react the way I did. Crying like that? Who did I think I was?

Beyond external pains, reflection tells me that there was more subtly meaningful happening when I read that decision. This is well-illustrated by what happened on the rest of my trip after Liz left. So let me tell you a little story:

One of my major failings in life is a complete inability to put myself to bed. I loiter on Facebook, linger over work, and dally over emails. But more than anything, I troll the web – from HuffPo articles to Buzzfeed links. Happily, when I’m home with Liz, I follow her nightly routine and, blessedly, go to bed by 10PM. However, when I’m on the road by myself, like the last week, I end up plummeting into a late-night clickhole. It’s such a problem that one of my colleagues once gave me a book that she used to read to her child: The Going To Bed Book. I needed it far more than her toddler.

I bring this up because it’s during those wandering, lonely nighttime hours that I’ve been circling this issue – at 1:28AM at the Piccadilly Meridien, with piles of white hotel pillows around me and a computer screen illuminating my face. It’s then that I’m knee-deep in the National Organization for Marriage, Savage Love, Huffington Post’s Gay Voices, Focus on the Family, Marriage News Watch, and even the SCOTUS site. I read the smart arguments about equality, but reflect even more over the voices – both explicitly hateful and lovingly dissenting – who question my rights.

When life is private and secret and lonely, I step into my quiet, underlying question of “Am I really okay?”

We all have reasons why we might not be okay, why people might not love us, and, most scary of all, why we might not be deserving of love. While my waking life abounds with love from family and friends, I find plenty of lurking evidence to feed my fears during these nights. Here are all the reasons I’m unlovable, writ large in a national political debate.

Maybe that’s why I was so casual about searching out the SCOTUS answer in the daylight. My daytime self is strong; I know my worth. My daytime self smiled and shared the SCOTUS decision with my seatmate. But after a moment, when the truth filtered through to my fragile, nighttime self, I cried with relief. There’s something at the vulnerable core of me that’s validated by this decision – not because it makes my marriage legal, but because it makes me okay.

What is Friday about to me? It is primarily about the love within same-sex marriages and, specifically, the love that I share with Liz. But, beyond that, it is also one more step towards better loving myself.

With all sorts of love,
Meredith
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