9/28 update: Blair now has a mailbox and PayPal account! Find out the latest details about how you can help, at http://helpingblair.blogspot.com/ . Thanks to efficient Twitter goddess @kissthedog for her awesome work supporting Blair!

I just found out that a fellow Spoonie (someone living with chronic illness) has been booted out of her home and abandoned by her family, which ended up with her living in a car on a street. Now she’s in a hospital, because she’s gotten even sicker. Her life is in danger, and she needs our help desperately. If you are following my blog, chances are that you are living with a lot of stress and financial difficulties yourself. But chances are that you also have at least $1 to spare, or that you can write a blog post or tweet to spread the word and get help from people with more resources. There IS something you can do. Rise up to the occasion, just as you’d wish others would rise up for you.

If you are following my blog, you also know that I came damn near close to being homeless this past year, myself. It’s amazing how an injury or illness can completely unravel our lives overnight and leave us horribly vulnerable. I have experienced the sheer terror that comes along with having no financial safety net and limited resources and a severely compromised ability to function. So I want to do what I can to help this fellow Spoonie, whose Twitter handle is @blairnboca. And I ask you to join me. Here’s what I’m going to do, and what I’m asking you to do:

1. She needs a physical address to set up a PayPal account. I commit to getting her a mailbox in her hometown, if they will accept payment by phone. If not, I’d like someone in Boca Raton, FL to get her the PO Box, and I will send the money to comp that person.

2. She needs money. So through the first week of October, I will share with Blair 50% of all sales of my audio class CD. It’s a win-win all around: You get to learn how to dance to heal your pain; I get support for my spreading this work to those who are suffering; and Blair gets the help she needs to get out of her car and get a damn roof over her head.

Also, a friend of hers will set up the PayPal account once I get the mailbox. Check back on my blog, or follow me on Twitter, to find out how you can send $1 or $5 or whatever you can spare. Seriously, every bit helps. Not only does it help with expenses, but it boosts morale and keeps one’s head up to know there are people who care enough to help, even if only a little. I know first hand.

3. We need to get the word out that Blair needs help. Blog about her situation, or cut and past my blog onto yours, if you don’t have the energy to write a new post. Tweet about it. Post on Facebook. Retweet (RT) posts on my Twitter account, which you can follow @dancingwithpain.com .

4. Send messages of love and support and encouragement to Blair on her Twitter account – @blairnboca.

Too many of us struggle alone. It doesn’t have to be that way. Social media connects us and empowers us to help each other. Let’s all tap into our hearts and spread the love. If only in the name of R’shana, the Jewish New Year, where we are taught to look deep within ourselves and ask how we can be better people, and how we can make the world a better place. Here’s an opportunity to start the year off right.

On that note, if you are involved in a religious organization – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, whatever, please spread the word. Religious communities are ass-kicking organized and a great source of support when mobilized.

With love, peace, and blessings that we all may thrive, my hand in yours, your hand in someone else’s, all of us, together, never ever turning away from those in need, spreading a sense of dignity and well-being among us all. Tizkoo leshanim raboth unemoth, may we all merit numerous and joyful years.

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A few people have contacted me and let me know there is a technical issue with the audio clip. I’ve been working behind the scenes to get the issue resolved. I believe I have identified the problem, and I’m just waiting to hear back from the store admin, so that I can move forward on resolving the issue. I’m hoping it will be all good within the next couple of days. Thanks for your patience!

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Apparently, statistics indicate that women have chronic illness more than men. It seems to be, although I haven’t seen statistics on this, that historically women were more ill than men as well. I am not surprised. Women are energetically assaulted around the clock, in ways both little and small. The further back in time we go, the more that assault seemed to occur. Women had less rights, less voice, less power, less control.

Those assaults impact the body, eroding our life force and our relationship to our own damn skin. We come to feel uncomfortable in our bodies, or we rework our bodies to be in hiding or to fit the “on display” way of walking through the world. Think “hoochie mama” for that last one, and you know what I’m talking about.

There is a cumulative effect, just like with too much exposure to radiation.

When I go bike riding, I throw on a dark t-shirt and bike shorts. I do not wear a bra. Most of the men who pass me stare at my chest unabashedly, as if it is their right to visually consume my breasts. As if my breasts are independent objects, on display. As if the breasts are not on the sacred body of a human being with a heart and spirit.

I have been repeatedly surprised by the ogling, as I do not wear anything “revealing.” It’s a loose damn t-shirt. Not that if it were tight or with a plunging neckline, the ogling would be any more justified. But I’m just pointing out how extreme this behavior is. I have been so perplexed by the phenomenon that I actually have looked down when men stare, trying to figure out what the hell they are looking at and seeing.

I came to realize that when these men pass a woman, they must just zero in on her breasts, as if it’s their birthright. It makes me angry. Especially in the case of the guy today, who just would not take his eyes off, as he slowly passed me. What the fuck! It makes me see red. It makes me want to kick their bikes, yell at them, spit on them. As in, right back atcha, fuckface.

This socially-sanctioned form of violence – ie, violation – is so pervasive that hardly anyone notices it or talks about it or does a damn thing about it. We serve up our daughters to this undignified treatment, even sanctifying it as an indicator that a girl or woman is “beautiful” – the ultimate accomplishment, we are taught, for any female.

And it’s so damn pervasive, that I’m left with two choices: fight it constantly, or tune it out. Ahh, there’s the rub. Tuning it out means constantly and repeatedly denying the natural inclination of taking up and protecting our space. Therein lies the erosion. Another option is hiding and succumbing – ie, wearing a bra. Another erosion of the human spirit.

When I was sleeping on the beach in Tel Aviv, nearly 20 years ago at the age of 24, I woke up and took a shower on the beach. Naked. A man ogled me. “It is disrespectful to stare at my body. Turn around!” I commanded him. He did as I said. That is power. I get to be buck naked and you don’t get to look. That is also basic respect.

The energy of male-female interactions is one of peeking, copping a feel, grabbing, getting away with something. The female body, or body parts, become the target in a video game. And so girls and women are under assault constantly. Forget the threat of rape or murder or the domestic violence that happens every eight seconds. That’s extreme. I’m talking about the stuff you’ve numbed yourself out to.

The stuff that makes women more sick than men.

In 1996, I wrote a book called CONSEQUENCE: Beyond Resisting Rape. I chronicled my journey hitting men who harassed me – like the time I hit two soldiers in the balls for staring at my chest. My journey pushing the boundaries of response to sexual harassment was thrilling. Empowering. To keep it up over a lifetime, however, would be exhausting. As long as violence against women, in its tiniest or most grotesque forms, remains socially sanctioned, it will require battle to defend against it every day. And nonstop battle is depleting. But so is the erosion of our energetic field.

What to do?

In my 20s, I confronted things head-on. In my 30s, I avoided things – because I had enough on my plate, dealing with chronic pain. In my 40s? I don’t know. But I do know that I shouldn’t have to wear a bra, or a t-shirt for that matter, when I go biking. I do know that men need to teach boys and other men a different way of seeing, so that the “male gaze” dissolves, and gaze of respect and dignity meets women instead.

People have often said I should go to Burning Man. I always had the sense, however, that I would hate it. Nobody could understand, because I’m your prototypical anarchist artist type. But a new friend of mine said I would hate it. “Thank you!” I replied. “That’s always been what I thought. Why do you say that?” She shared with me that while men ran around without pants, without any predatory attack by women, women who went without shirts were sexually harassed with the “hey baby,” whistles, and all the other crap that women get on the streets – which are not as “enlightened” as these supposed hippies are.

It’s such bullshit, and I’m so tired of it. And I’m so tired of how overwhelming it is to take it on. As I documented in CONSEQUENCE, when a woman creates the rules of the game and starts hitting men who are assaulting her verbally or visually – the violence that deliberately falls through the cracks — she is the one considered the assailant. So she ends up not just assaulted by a creep, but then assaulted by the criminal “justice” system.

It is sick. And, as an upshot, so are we.

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I just got back from the set of Sacramento & Co, a Sacramento-based talk show on ABC. The host was terrific, and I had fun on the set. Check out the clip on dance for natural pain relief!

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