One of the many stories shared in the “Shaping the Story of the Future” MSC Transitions Lab (May 14-17) was told by MSC Transitions Team member and Love With Power co-author Julie Quiroz via video conference.  The following is the written version of her story.

On March 30 I received a call at a little before midnight.

I was asleep. My 14-year old daughter had just crawled into my bed after studying late for a math test.

I was angry when my cell phone rang, right near my daughter’s head. I hit my phone to stop the ring. It rang again. I hit it again.  Then it rang with another number.  Finally I answered and whispered harshly into the phone, “Who is this! Stop calling! It’s the middle of the night!”

On the other end of the line I heard the steady voice of my doctor.

Calling me at midnight.

I rolled out of bed as quietly as I could, making my way to the kitchen where I crouched on the floor, hoping my daughter wouldn’t hear.

“Yes?” I said, knowing the call had something to do with the weird cluster of fevers that had struck me over the past month.

“We got the results of the blood tests you did this morning,” my doctor said.  “The results show you have leukemia. Acute leukemia. You will need to come to the hospital tomorrow morning to be admitted for chemotherapy.”

Hearing this news — as far removed from my healthy lifestyle as I could imagine — my thoughts went only to logistics, to my daughter’s test the next day, to the lunch I needed, wanted, to pack her in the morning.

“Oh,” I said to my doctor. “Okay.”

“I know you understand this,” my doctor added, as kindly as she could. “But I need to say clearly that this is a life threatening situation. It is urgent that we get you into treatment immediately.”

I hung up the phone, ready to dial the friends I’d need for back up support the next day, opening the fridge to remember what there was to make lunch with, hoping I could get my daughter to school for a few hours so I could breathe and think before telling her.

I knew I would need to narrate this crazy story to give it some meaning.

I knew we were heading into a terrifying future that I knew nothing about.

At 10 am the next morning we headed to the hospital. My friend – awoken at 1 am the night before — drove us there. In the back seat my daughter sat hand in hand with one of her best friends. My parents met us in the hospital.

Responsibility is the closest word I can find to describe how I felt that morning. As I entered the hospital I sensed a deep set of intentions guiding me. These weren’t intentions I wrote down that morning. They were intentions that had grown in me over my eight years of practice in tai chi and 60/40 stance, in the spiritual opening those practices created. On that awful day in March, these intentions led me to express gratitude, to stay open, and to be joyful.  

People say I was brave and strong. For me it felt like my intentions and my practices were simply carrying me.

Still, I ached to be the mommy I knew myself to be: I wanted to sit with my daughter and hold her and protect her through all that was happening.

But I couldn’t.

From the moment we arrived I was pulled away for tests, for a bone marrow biopsy, for intense conversations with the doctors who dropped into my life that morning to save it.

Instead of the parenting role I’d always held, I needed instantly to trust the friend my daughter had picked to be with her, to share mothering with the friend I’d brought with me.

On that day I had to let go, to accept a redefinition of the most important role of my life, that of being a parent.

I spent all of April in the hospital.

My daughter courageously left for her planned week of vacation with her father and extended family, then spent three weeks with families who took her in with unfathomable love and generosity.

My daughter and I had precious little time together that month. When we did, she would climb onto my hospital bed and cuddle beside me. We touched but barely spoke. Then, after a time, she would begin to cry.

Unlike me, her outside life and responsibilities continued: she had to go to school, had to take tests and do homework, had to endure the well-meaning but uncomfortable focus of students she barely knew. She had to show up in the world, every day, without her mommy.

When my daughter began to cry she would say, over and over, “I can’t do this.”

I can’t do this.

I can’t do this.

I listened, for weeks, as she cried.

I waited, patiently, knowing that she needed time to grieve, to be angry, to resist.

And I knew that at some point I would need to help her move along.

One day as she held me and repeated her cries of “I can’t do this”, I knew it was time.

From the core of my being, I dreaded that moment.

Still, I straightened my shoulders and gathered my strength.

With firmness and conviction I interrupted her.

“Mija,” I said.

“Right now both of us are going to find strength we never thought we had.

We’re going to do things we never thought we could do.”

My words were not especially gentle. They were not a question. They were not an invitation.

They were simply a statement of fact.

Saying these words, to my baby, my precious daughter, was excruciating.

Yet, to my surprise, as these words emerged from my mouth, they became suddenly liberating.

These words became liberating because I knew the strength my daughter was finding would serve her for the rest of her life.

These words became liberating because I knew that the impossible for us would become possible.

These words became liberating because I knew that we had stepped into a story of the future: a story of great power and purpose.

I still felt tremendous pain, but along with it came joy and even exhilaration.

This is my story, a story I would never have chosen.

It is as story about transition. It is about transformation.

It is one river of story that joins many other rivers.

Reflected in my story, I believe, is some helpful truth.

I believe this is the moment of our Midnight Call.

I believe this is a Midnight call for all of us, for all our children, for all our communities, for our nation, for our planet.

In this moment, in my moment, in our moment, I would like to offer five wishes:

In this moment I wish you awareness of the Midnight Call, in all its pain, its liberation, and its exhilaration.

In this moment I wish you the satisfaction of an assertive stance and the ease with which practiced intentions will carry you.

In this moment I wish you openness to re-envisioning the roles you have have imagined and defined for yourself.

In this moment I wish you the liberation of living in the future, in the story you create.

And, above all, in this moment, I wish you the deep and soul filling joy of community.

I am raising a young Black boy in a society that is set up to set him up for failure.

This means I am often in protection mode: protection against educational inequity, unfair discipline practices, preschool-to-prison-pipeline, stereotypical accolades, and most importantly, his own self-hate and internalized oppression (don’t get me started on my 5 year-old-telling me he wanted to “be white”).

This is the daily battle I try to prevent my son from dealing with, the daily battle where I try to be the buffer between him and the real world.  I imagine myself as Super Mama, a powerful, badass mama with one hand holding a massive shield blocking my son, and the other, a powerful fist raised in resistance.

But in all of my fighting, resisting and protecting, I now realize that I have been blocking my own heart: my hands have not been open to nourish and nurture my son. I see more clearly that I have been parenting from fear.  I know that I must transition from parenting for protection to parenting for liberation.

My practice commitment is simple and affirmative: “saying yes.”

Yes to liberation.

Yes to freedom.

Yes to self love.

Underneath all of these affirmative statements is an internal struggle against a fearful and safe “no.”

After an amazing three days at the Movement Strategy Center’s Transitions Lab in July, with brilliant leaders working across distinct but intersecting movements, I am metabolizing and distilling the lesson from the foundational question of our Lab exploration: “How do we transition from a world of domination and extraction to a world of interdependence, resilience, and regeneration?” As a movement maker and staff of Move to End Violence, I am familiar with thinking about the “movement pivots” we need to make in order to go in a new direction. Now, as part of the MSC Transitions Lab, I am digging my heels deep into the “transitions” we want to make.

Transition is defined as “the process or period of change from one position or condition to another.” As a social justice movement leader, I have spent a lot of time focusing on the first part of this equation. Reflecting on my work in the violence against women movement, I know I expended a lot of energy naming the current period and existing conditions. This focus is present in the traditional names of our organizations.  Much of our language and framing is issue-based (what we’re fighting against). We’ve become so skilled at naming the problem it’s become hard to name the solution.

The key word in the definition of transition is “another” — not just focusing on the issue but also transitioning in order to experience and create another circumstance or condition. My past work with young people was filled with opportunities to envision solutions. Young people (I know this sounds cliche) are the future and therefore have the capacity to vision a different world.  A violence prevention curriculum I wrote with young girls was entitled “Be Strong” and spoke affirmatively from a strengths-based method for ending violence.

At the Transitions Lab, MSC guided us to think and vision a new world. We explored examples of movement strategies that employ visioning as a core element, such as my work with Move to End Violence, Octavia’s Brood, and Black Lives Matter. In each of these social justice leaders are supported to think differently about their work.

I invite you, too, to spend time visioning, looking toward the horizon, and sharing ideas of the world you hope to create.