“When it’s meant to be, it will all be easy.”
—MARYANNE, MY SEVENTY-YEAR-OLD FRIEND WHO SURVIVED FIVE YEARS IN A JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMP IN INDONESIA
I graduated with the MBA portion of my degree a month after law school ended. This degree was less about status and more about gaining access to a world of finance and business that puzzled me. How could profit be above people? Ever? My MBA led to enough confidence and understanding of “business speak” to hope that I’d be able to convince colleagues that business, including finance, could be used for good.
Marx helped me to focus on a career in private equity. When a position at the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association became available, he encouraged me to apply. Going to work for a multibillion-dollar fund seemed like the dream job for any JD/MBA student, and with his encouragement I took the job seriously and sat for an interview.
Two weeks later I was offered the position and accepted. The first few weeks on the job I was high on the achievement—a six-figure salary, smart coworkers, and constant interaction with power players all around the world. But as the realities of the position set in, I began to feel ill at ease, uncomfortable about the lack of self-determination. I was gaining access, but it came at a price I would not pay: conformity. It was like taking an exit too soon when you know there are still a thousand miles to go.
I tried an “introduction to improv” class at night with some friends, to keep my mind and self busy and to loosen up a little. We laughed and played in the class, but once class was over, I was back where I’d started, feeling stuck. Something had fired up in me during the documentary shooting in Fresno, and I was flat and uninspired at work—a lightbulb in a basket waiting for something else, something I was meant to do. “Give it a year,” a coworker advised. But I knew my boss wanted three years, and I just could not commit to that. I felt like a cog in a wheel; money was not the same as math, and whatever it was I needed, or needed to do, I could not find it in an office. If I had known it would be as difficult to build income on my own, or what was going to happen to the economy—well, hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I didn’t want to knock the opportunity or let Marx down or make him regret investing time in me. But I did not want to stay in that job. I wasn’t sure where my place was—all I knew was, it wasn’t there.
Perhaps Marx might’ve understood better if we’d known each other during my second year in law school, when I had discovered community economic development. The premise of CED is that exploited, impoverished, challenged individuals can be organized into a community and create economies on their own. For example, a group of women in a poor neighborhood, urban or rural, form a co-op to make and market a particular product—soap made from fresh herbs and flowers, say, or homemade marinara sauce. They prepare a small business plan and borrow seed money from a reputable microlender, such as Women’s World Banking or Kiva’s Opportunity Fund.
“Regular” banks rarely grant business loans under fifty thousand dollars—a debt a small business owner usually doesn’t want or need—but a microlender might lend as little as twenty dollars to someone in a third-world country, allowing the borrower to pay it back sooner, then return for more; the goal is not profit per se but economic development. The lenders stay in close touch with borrowers, sometimes teaching them management skills, keeping an eye on how the books are balanced, and ensuring that the money loaned and spent stays circulating in the community.
One of my favorite examples of CED, Homeboy Industries and Homegirl Café in Los Angeles, started in the late 1980s when Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest, simply got tired of burying kids. It started as a jobs program to benefit at-risk kids who were trying to get free of gangs or who’d been in jail and couldn’t get a second chance; it’s now grown to include a popular restaurant, state-of-the-art bakery, catering kitchen, and silk-screen business, all teaching work and life skills to kids who otherwise might’ve been lost. The jobs they do, the products they sell, the dollars they earn and generate—that energy stays in their community and radiates hope as well as autonomy and dignity.
So here I was, for the first time ever, with security, a solid paycheck, and the possibility of success and advancement. And I was desperate for a purpose. I was not a priest or a nun or anything even close, yet I wanted the same impossible challenges that they had. Convinced I could start an economic-development project from scratch, I fell to my knees, squeezed my hands together tightly, and asked God out loud if He could please help me to do whatever He had planned for me next.
The words of a local politician came back to me: “Every community needs a place where you can buy drugs and sex.” I wanted to scream when I heard it, but I said nothing. Does every community need a place where children are sold for sex or introduced to drugs? If so I needed to be a part of getting rid of these places. It seemed almost too big an idea to contemplate, but if I did nothing I risked being lost, undone, and incomplete. To be fair to myself and to honor my past, I needed to try.
I gave my notice, left finance, and returned to Fresno, on a mission to bulldoze the motel that had become, for me and so many other children, a place that never needed to exist.
I was borne back to Fresno on wings of hope, but not surprisingly, trying to raise a multimillion-dollar redevelopment fund when I had no experience, less money, and only a handful of contacts proved to be more complicated than I’d anticipated. The community that surrounded the Villa Motel was made up of grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins of children who had been lost to the ruthless economies of sex and drugs that had plagued the neighborhood for years. They supported the idea of acquiring the sleazy and abandoned motels, bulldozing them, and starting over with businesses that might offer real jobs and real futures for their families. Longtime residents met with new residents at a local veterans’ association, and together they started talking about the change they wanted to see in their neighborhood. Elaine, Ron’s friend from juvenile hall, had spent her childhood on a street just behind the motels. She spoke movingly about the many friends she’d lost to pimps. Her mother still owned a home there, but it was gated and locked up, an attempt to keep danger out. Time and again I heard the same story: “Before the freeway, this used to be a safe place. Children could ride their bikes and walk to the zoo.”
Elaine became a key organizer within the community. She scheduled meetings and brought in her neighbors and friends, as I did the research and planning. We spent hours with her family canvassing residential streets. Everyone we spoke to was ready for something, some kind of new development that might begin to transform the community, bringing jobs, as well as safe places to shop, eat, and gather. The proximity to the freeway and zoo, I thought, could be a bonus. The zoo was anticipating an eighty-million-dollar renovation, and having a nice place to stop on Highway 99, halfway between Los Angeles and Sacramento, seemed like a no-brainer to me. It was an easy sell to the community and, I thought, an easy sell to investors.
After one of our initial meetings, Elaine called me. “Did you see the Fresno Bee?” I had seen the newspaper story she was referring to. A facility had been proposed at the site of one of the longtime vacant motels near the neighborhood. “It’s a prison, Carissa!” The planning department had approved a four-hundred-bed community-based prison for the neighborhood. When we protested, the prison developers started positioning themselves politically.
As an organized community, we faced off with the developers in heated meetings, in public debates, and finally with a direct request to the mayor, who was the only person with the ability to stop, or at least slow down, the project. Ultimately the prison became a smaller facility that offered housing and drug rehabilitation for women and their children. The idea of placing desperate women in a community swarming with pimps and drug dealers still haunts me. The facility was dramatically reduced in size, but I knew from here on out we’d have an uphill battle convincing investors that the street was commercially viable.
On the surface it was a small victory—the community’s support and activism, along with some legal research and persistence, had paid off. Elaine served as a community liaison with the facility operators, working closely with them to welcome their residents, women who were homeless, on parole, or recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. Still, I could not help but feel our “win” was somehow a defeat. A respite for women and children in the midst of sex and drug trafficking? Where children were still being bought and sold every day? I wanted to go further; I wanted to stop this type of haphazard development altogether, but in order to do that, I needed to sit for the bar.
I went back to the books. It was going to take me every waking second over the next three months to learn how to pass this exam. Contracts, evidence, civil procedure—it was time to put it all back together. As I took the practice tests, I watched from a distance as the stock market went to hell. It was 2008, and all over the country almost every financial entity I’d studied in business school—and perhaps could’ve been working in—was collapsing like an untended bridge or tunnel.
I passed the June 2008 California bar exam but still was not earning any money, and after my bouts with the city and the planning commission, I’d earned a reputation for being “difficult”—and, as a result, unemployable in Fresno. I tried to reconnect in Los Angeles, in New York, anywhere but could not pick up the momentum I’d felt around the documentary, in the outreach, and especially within finance and private equity. The stock market had crashed; the banks were in meltdown, the country was heading into a full-blown recession, and despair was spreading like mold.
On the surface, the world looked the same as it had before I disappeared into the books, but everything was different. “He’s no longer at this office,” I was told several times. E-mails were rarely returned, unless they were regrets. “Sorry, we can’t help you now.” Desperation was setting in everywhere. Defeated and down, on my way to a community meeting, I got a flat tire. I had fifty dollars in the bank and wasn’t sure if it was enough to cover a flat. I went to my trunk for the tiny spare tire, jack, and tire iron that had come with the car. They looked like toys.
It was nearly dark when a couple in a truck pulled up behind me. “Need some help?” the man asked.
“That would be wonderful,” I said, right back on that long-ago Sarasota beach, stuck and relying on a sweet couple who went out of their way for me. Just then, my cell phone rang. I reached into the car to see who it was—probably another call about my student loans coming out of deferment, I thought. I apologized to the Good Samaritan for needing to take the call. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m going to get some things from my garage, but don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”
By the time the man returned with the large jack, it was dark, but I was lighter inside. Not only was he going to change the tire, but the phone call I’d received was about a job opportunity. I’d be flying to Utah in the next few weeks to train with an organization that had a formula for motivating and engaging all types of learners. The company, WhyTry, seemed like my only option. And it was.
WhyTry was created to work on dropout, violence, and drug and alcohol prevention in schools. In some ways, it was like my little tutoring businesses had been; the pay would be based on the business I built as an educational consultant, but starting out, I had no business. I put my student loans on hold again and negotiated to have my work-related expenses covered up front. I could once again move around the country and the world.
The job was a catalyst. I began learning the product I was going to sell, applying the WhyTry exercises and trainings to my own life. The material worked to build up my confidence and convinced me that it could do the same for younger students. This formula for hope was the breath of air I needed.
On the road, late at night, I started to write again. I had mostly questions, and few clear answers. “What am I supposed to be doing?” I cried to Marx. I liked this work, but it wasn’t what I’d gone to school for. Was the structure of the company itself somehow getting in my way? Or was I doing it to myself?
I was at a conference in upstate New York—a local agency was screening the documentary, and I was speaking to help them raise funds for a small home for runaways. Kyra Braxton, a friend from the world of finance, had joined me, and on our train ride from New York City to Saratoga, all we talked about was building a program to rescue girls. My interest in community economic development remained strong, but with the market still in shambles, the short-term prognosis was bleak. Looking out our train windows into darkness, I had no idea where we were, and I didn’t like the way that felt; I was misplaced. How can I get back on track? How can I make the experience and degrees I have count?
I once again went back to prayer, slowly and methodically speaking directly to God in a low voice, back to the routine I’d practiced as a child: lying in bed, flat on my stomach, propped on my elbows, hands folded, head down on my knuckles and eyes closed, with legs crossed. In the world I was loud, outspoken, and demanding, a witness, a voice for the voiceless. It was only in the presence of God that I made myself quiet and small. I trusted Him.
Memories, from my first fistfight to Icey to solitary nights on the street, had all caught up to me again, and I had no choice but to trust that it was all happening for a reason. I knew, because I’d been here before, that in addition to being given grace time after time, I’d also been given resilience. When sorrow and crisis are dished out, it is not academic degrees or designer suits that help even the odds; it’s hope. My messengers—a helpful man in a pickup truck, a fortuitous call from a job prospect, my friend Kyra from New York—all let me know that I’d be okay.
My first-ever talk to a group of incarcerated boys was at Camp David Gonzales, a juvenile detention facility just outside Malibu. Carol Biondi, a true friend and dedicated youth activist, was on a mission to redefine the camp as a sort of pilot project in the probation system. One of the newest offerings at Gonzales was a newspaper class; the teacher was helping the boys write a real newspaper, teaching them to observe, to ask questions, to report about what they learned to the other boys, the staff, and anyone who would listen. Carol spent every Saturday there and asked if I’d come with her and share my story with the boys in the class. She believed my story and my presence would be valuable to them.
I had some concerns each time I went into a juvenile facility to talk to girls, but I’d never dreamed of being in front of a group of incarcerated boys. My personal experience with teenage boys had been pretty bad, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. My biggest fear was that I was going to be boring—talking about money in exchange for flesh, about being raped, about living on the streets and spending time in juvy, all experiences I guessed most of them were familiar with. Every possible outcome ran through my mind except what actually transpired when I got there: They listened attentively, they spoke respectfully, even gently, and we had a real conversation, one that I would value maybe even more than they would.
I stood at one end of their newspaper room, in front of, not behind, a long desk. They faced me, their backs to the door, in the standard-issue uniform of white T-shirts, jeans, and laceless shoes. I started as I always did: “When I was twelve…” Not one of them wiggled or shifted in his seat; no one rolled his eyes or made a face of disgust or shock at the boy sitting next to him. Faces upturned, their eyes steady and attentive, just like real journalists, they listened. Slowly I relaxed.
At the end of my remarks, when I asked if anyone had any questions, the one that came was a big surprise. “Have you forgiven your mother for dropping you off and leaving you that day?”
My heart sank. “No one has ever asked me that before,” I replied, hearing the catch in my voice. The boy was perhaps fifteen, and his question was so matter-of-fact, so calm, it was as though we’d known each other and talked like this for a long time.
“Well, that’s been the thing I needed to do,” he went on. “Forgive my brother, my mother, my father, in order to be okay.” He then repeated the question. “So, did you forgive her?” The word “forgive” seemed suspended in the space between us.
I answered the only way I could. “I haven’t,” I said. “And I don’t know if I can or will be able to.”
I left that day with the question running in my head, and it stayed with me. What does forgiveness even mean, and can I do it? I asked my sisters, my friends, and my therapist to tell me what they thought about forgiveness. “Forgive and forget” was the most common response. Forget? “You just can’t hang on to stuff or it will get you down.”
Another friend admitted, “I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never had to forgive anything that big or life changing.” Sky explained how Steve had apologized to her for “hurting” her and “making a lot of mistakes.” He was in tears, and although he did not list his wrongs, Sky understood they included his attempt to sell or purchase her virginity. In his brief moment of vulnerability my sister found out something about herself. She could forgive him. I didn’t get it exactly. How could Sky forgive our stepdad for something he did to her, but I couldn’t? The father-daughter type of relationship that came out of this one talk was not something I envied or desired. To this day I continue to avoid Steve. My heart remains distant but confused because I believe he is proud of me, that he loves me, and that if he could he would take back all his mistakes and be a better father.
Did forgiveness come in different shapes and sizes, then? Big forgiveness for big crimes; small forgiveness for petty ones? After that day I searched my heart, my brain, and the Internet. I read books on the philosophy of forgiveness, the self-help of forgiveness, the empathy of forgiveness, the getting-stuckness of not forgiving. Can I do this? Should I do this? What will happen if I don’t do this? I gave myself a mantra: Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. As if I could will myself to do it. If only I could just say it and make it true—“I forgive!” I tried it for a few days, but I was no different in feeling or conviction. There was something standing between me and forgiveness, and there was no way around it.
For as long as I could remember, I had tried to organize my days as though they were math problems—linear, controlled, with a formula that imposed order on process. Imposed control. Or what I thought was control. I held on to grievances, real and imagined, and allowed friends and lovers in my life only for a short time; my relationships were genuine but not too close. I was always packing, always with my eye on the door, as though preparing for a long journey, a kind of war, from which I might or might not return. When I grew tired, I tried to dig in, make a real home, an actual place to unpack and be safe, but I consistently chose relationships that had an underlying shakiness—the wrong people under the wrong circumstances and at the wrong time.
The need I had to love and be loved was tangled up in the need to believe I was lovable at all—that I could be forgiven. I’d lost years of my life—some stolen, some gambled. I’d been shut out, locked up, and told over and over that I was untrustworthy. I’d been introduced to sex not in a way that enhanced or confirmed my essential womanly self but rather by situations that degraded me, interfered with the development of my brain and my character, and even threatened my life. It made every “normal” life situation look and feel like a threat, a fight, a danger. I’d gone through school focused on math and math and math, then on lawyer lawyer lawyer, in a kind of forced march toward goals that kept me moving forward while my subconscious self was mired in the past. It’s simple physics: If you put one foot on the gas and put the other foot on the brake, you will destroy the car.
After graduating from Fresno State, I’d seen Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames in the bookstore. I liked the title, bought the paperback, but couldn’t “stay” in the reading of it. I’d read a page or two at a time, then I’d put it down to rush on to other things, deadline things, classroom or Real Life things. I carried the book from apartment to apartment, trying to understand the words but not ready to know what they meant. The pages were beginning to turn dark, and the corners of the cover curled up a little. It was not until I knew I needed to grapple with the question of forgiveness that I picked up the book again and realized that across all the miles and all the years, this Vietnamese Buddhist monk had sent me a message: “If your house is on fire,” he wrote, “the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist.” My problem was not forgiveness; my problem was, I was on fire.
I had been so deeply afraid of my own anger at myself and at others that I could not look at it. It stood between me and my reflection in the mirror; it stood between me and the people I wanted to love and trust. It stopped me from being able to forgive my mother; it stopped me from even wanting to. Before I could forgive her—or anyone—I had to come to terms with how angry I was about my own decisions and choices. I had to see clearly the chaos in which I’d lived, the circumstances in which I’d been harmed, and admit that all the progress I’d made in the intervening years did not erase the monster emotion that had burrowed under my skin the day my mother walked away. Anger was consuming me like flames that could not be put out.
When I had this realization, instead of feeling daunted or overwhelmed, I felt as happy as the lucky person who finds the baby in the king cake at Mardi Gras. Everybody knows the little plastic baby’s in there, but only one person at the table will get it. To some it represents Jesus; to others it represents good luck for the following year. To me, it was the aha moment, and it had been there all along, waiting for me to be ready. I needed to put out my own fire. How it started didn’t matter anymore.
At seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, even at thirty, with degrees and accomplishments and honors, I was not okay. I burned through friendships, drank myself silly, and dated recklessly. My only enemy was a mirage, a shadow from the past, yet there I was, constantly punching, defending myself against something that wasn’t there anymore.
I found a mantra—inner peace, outer calm—and repeated it, hour by hour, day by day. Slowly my heart settled—not because I solved the question of forgiveness but because anger was something I had real control over. I could let it go or keep it up. I could put out the fire or let it burn. Unlike forgiveness, my own feelings about my own past were entirely up to me. When I realized the power I had, I put it to work a little at a time. As I did, forgiveness flowed in—a sweet result of letting go.
I was afraid, even terrified, when I went to my mother with forgiveness. We had a conversation over the phone, and then, when I thought I had sped through it too quickly to keep it in my memory, again in an e-mail. In making peace not with her but with myself, I made space for a mother who loves me and is proud of all I do.
The boy at Camp Gonzales was younger than I was, less educated, and heading down a path that I’d once been on—yet he was years ahead of me when he asked the question and answered it at the same time. “It’s the thing I had to do in order to be okay.”
My shield, my defensive patterns had tricked me, but once forgiveness happened with my mom, and I recognized it, it happened again and again. I stopped looking back at Icey with thoughts of how I could hurt him or get even with him or with any of the men who bought the body of a little girl. When Steve approached Sky to seek her forgiveness, she forgave him. They reconciled, but for another decade I would wrestle with the fear and anger that his actions stirred up in me. Letting go of that hurt was the last step in my healing. It unfortunately didn’t happen until we lost Travis in a tragic car accident. Only then did I recognize that Steve was human, a man mourning the loss of his son. And it was there in his most vulnerable state that all the things he had done to try to provide for us shone the brightest. When I got the news of Travis’s death, I spent the evening with my mom and Steve. I didn’t know how else to show my love except by helping with cleaning and making tacos. For that night it was enough just to be there. To stay and not run.