I have wanted to do this post since Kenya, but life has been its normal crazy life for me (in all the good ways) so it has taken this long for me to do its justice. 

*Everything written here is my opinion only and anyone mentioned has had key identifiers removed for their anonymity*

Hello my devoted readers, did you know I am a member of two secret societies? Luckily both of them no longer have the necessity to be secret, but with both, membership could have gotten me fired from jobs, discriminated against in a myriad of ways and the other still poses risk of death, imprisonment, physical injury or at the very least harassment. You are getting an inside scoop of both of these clubs and I know there are some members of each that probably won’t be happy about it. However, I believe speaking about either of these two things decreases societal stigma and takes away my own shame that I internalized from the culture I was raised. My next caveat is that  I do not speak for either of these secret societies, nor do I pretend to be an upstanding member of either. I do my best, but also I take what I like and leave the rest with both of them. It is only since my 30s that I have been capable to speak about both memberships openly with people outside of these groups due to fear and shame.

I am a friend of Bill and a friend of Dorothy…

The relevance of my membership of both groups to this post is because this past weekend I was called into work in Wilmington because a nurse had called out sick. Since everyone else was working at other clinics that day, if I was not able to cover, they would have had to cancel all the abortions scheduled. There were patients traveling from all over the United States for these appointments due to the new laws being passed all over the US. Luckily, I had the day free (besides something I could reschedule) and I was already dressed at 6 am, so I was able to throw a bag together. I am forever the girl scout and stay as prepared as I can for unanticipated changes, so assumed I would not be just working for the one day but the next day as well. I jumped in the car and away I went with snacks and coffee next to me.. I am lucky to have a Nikki that has no problem with me leaving her for a couple days randomly, with her in charge of our dog daughter and house stuff. 

I did have plans Saturday evening but felt confident I could get back in time if they asked me to stay for an additional day. It turned out to be a very busy couple of days in the clinic, but it was so good seeing coworkers I haven’t seen for over a year since signing up for MSF! I had some Kenya souvenirs in my bag that I was able to share with them. We also had lovely patients, as always.. I love working in the recovery room because I get to be a nurse, not my typical work as a clinician. In my nurse role,  I get to love on the patients, hold their hands, dote on them and listen to their stories. It is all the things I love about nursing. This is what leads me to the point of this entire story- I promise I am getting to it!

One of my patients was extremely anxious to have the procedure done. At this location, we offer lorazepam as minimal sedation; we do not have the ability to perform conscious sedation like at our Chapel Hill clinic. But this patient had not requested the lorazepam and I suggested she take some since she was obviously panicking. She told me she wasn’t comfortable taking it because she doesn’t drink.

I asked her, “Are you a friend of Bill?”, since there was another patient in the room with us. 

She looked at me surprised and said, “Yes, I am about to have 2 years sober.”

 I told her I was also a friend and had been in the program for 14 years. I am going to let you reader, in one of my first secrets- when members of AA say, “friend of Bill”, we are referring to one of the founders of AA, Bill Wilson. It is an easy way to ask if the other person is in AA without giving up anonymity if they are not a member. Unfortunately, no one has been able to get the secret handshake down. 

I used to not share my membership because it is a tradition in AA to keep anonymity so as to keep ego in check and in case one of us relapses and people around us think the program doesn’t work.  However, when I researched this tradition with one of my sponsors, she and I both interpreted it that one can disclose their membership if it is to be of service but not as an ego thing or representation of AA. Since then, I disclose to patients, friends, etc, if it is appropriate and if I think I can share some experience, strength and hope with a person who is struggling because of addiction. 

I have worked in many places where there is a higher incidence of addiction, like the county jail, and even if I had wanted to keep my anonymity with my patients, I couldn’t. In my first week at that job, a detainee yelled down the hall after we passed each other, “Wait! Are you Jen? Are you a member of my home group? I know you from AA!” Ha! Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately in a serendipitous way, I knew quite a few of the detainees from “the rooms” of AA. I continue to see them in meetings since they have been released. I never disclose that I have seen them as a patient, but typically they break their own anonymity and share with the group how helpful it was to see a familiar face in a scary place, a person who understands the disease that is attributed to their legal issues. I loved that job so much because I felt I could do service work for AA at the same time I was getting paid for my day job! It was a win/win. 

While talking to this patient, this weekend, I also disclosed that I am a friend of Dorothy. Per Wikipedia:

“The precise origin of the term is unknown. Some believe that it is derived from The Road to Oz (1909), a sequel to the first novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). The book introduces readers to Polychrome who, upon meeting Dorothy's travelling companions, exclaims, ‘You have some queer friends, Dorothy’, and she replies, ‘The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends.’[3] There are numerous references to LGBTQ characters and relationships,[4] including a possible innuendo about bisexuality – when Dorothy asks Scarecrow which way to go on the yellow-brick road he says, ‘Of course some people go both way’ – although it is unknown whether they were intentionally included.”

No one knows for sure where it derived, but the consensus is that it refers to the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie, played by Judy Garland, who was a gay icon. This came up in the remade series, A League of Their Own, derived from the 1992 movie of the same name.. I told y’all I wanted to talk about this series when I was in Kenya and now I am circling back to do just so. Nik and I binge watched it in our hotel room and loved all the queer themes. I have heard folx ask why it had to be so queer. There have been excellent opinion pieces about this very topic, much more eloquent than I can be. I will just summarize: It is so queer because the original movie was starkily not. This series also included  many themes of racism because that really wasn’t addressed much in the movie either. Penny Marshall, the director of the original movie, gave her blessing to the recreation, by Abbi Jacobson (and others). 

An added bonus to all of the gayness IN the series is that during an interview with an actual member of the women’s league from that time with Abbi Jacobson, the person interviewed came out to Abbi after Abbi shared her difficulty in coming out and how to identify. This 95 year old woman, Maybelle Blair, used the series as a platform to finally speak her truth after all these years. Queerness in sports is still not talked about openly. People still have to “come out” as a queer player instead of just being a player who happens to date someone of the same gender or who happens to have not been identified as that gender at birth. We have come a long way but we have a long way to go.

I happened to disclose I was a friend of Dorothy as a joke that I had hit the genetic lottery. After her procedure, when we were alone, she disclosed that she identifies as bisexual, but never feels comfortable telling people, even from the queer community because she has felt people don’t believe her or think she is going through a phase. This is something I think our community needs to do a better job with, such as our journey to be inclusive of gender identity in the LGBTQI alphabet. The patient and I discussed how often, when someone is first coming out, they sometimes “feel the water” by identifying as bisexual to see the responses of friends and family and also as part of their own exploration of their identity. What this does, however, for people who ultimately do identify as bisexual, is make them feel invisible or “fake” to the queer community and the rest of the heteronormative culture. 

I have to admit my own journey of acceptance of those who identify as bisexual. Progress not perfection, y’all. I had my own prejudices and anger that someone could “be both” because I once thought that if one could “choose what gender to be with”, I would never choose to be with women. It was too hard of a life and my childhood religion had convinced me I would go to Hell. As I got older, I thought the people I knew who had, in my mind been “die hard lesbians” who ended up with male partners in a seemingly heterosexual marriage, were sellouts to the queer community. (I was devastated when Ani Difranco married a man and had a child). I believed they got to get all the benefits of living in mainstream while the rest of us suffered. I assume (and of course I do not know from personal experience), that it is similar to lighter skin people of color versus darker skin people of color. I have now learned that all of this was created to keep us against each other, so we cannot rise up against the systemic intersectional discriminations going on towards all our minority groups. I am trying to do better and to educate myself more. 

When she left our clinic, we both gave each other big hugs and she whispered, “There was a reason you were my nurse today. I am so grateful I was not alone.”

And that, my dear readers, is why I disclose my membership to both groups whenever I can.