Embracing Teens Today
We cannot let biases stop our teens from living out their destinies and becoming their truest, highest selves. It is important that we be supportive.
Deborah Fletcher Blum
June 22, 2022
When we hear about LGBTQ+ teens committing suicide, we usually think of an isolated teenager in a small, conservative town, where no one understands them and the adults in their family and community are intolerant. We hear stories of how these teens fear for their lives and – after much harassment and misunderstanding – either leave home for places, such as Hollywood, hence the large runaway population in Hollywood, or give up and give in to a quick way out of the pain.
Listening to the beginning of the MASH movie recently, I was struck by the song playing during the opening credits. “Suicide is painless…” I suppose this fits because war, and other trials we endure in life, are more painful than suicide.
Suicide is hardest on the people left behind. My husband and I have a beautiful teenager, Esther Iris z”l, who now resides in heaven due to suicide. I want to write about the upheaval this has caused in our hearts and souls; I want to pour out my grief and frustration, and proclaim from the mountaintops how much we miss our Esther Iris.
But right now, I feel compelled to write about one aspect of Esther’s struggle. Mental health was a key component; COVID was another precipitating factor; and yet another issue for Esther was their gender identity and sexual expression.
For LGBTQ+ teens, or those trying to figure out where they fit on the gender continuum, there is so much left unsaid.
We don’t usually think of teens in our Jewish community as limited in any way. Many opportunities are open to them. Yet for LGBTQ+ teens, or those trying to figure out where they fit on the gender continuum, there is so much left unsaid. There are LGBTQ+ shuls primarily aimed at adults, who by and large have figured out their identity and simply want a place to pray and make friends. There is JQ International, Keshet and Rosh Chodesh groups for LGBTQ+ and nonbinary teens, but how do these groups interact with the Conservative Jewish world at large?
At a Bat Mitzvah, when a mother is praised for bringing her daughter to Torah, I’m happy. But when a girl is told how wonderful it will be when she has kids, I wonder. What if she doesn’t want to have kids? I recall feeling shoved into a box based on gender in my 20’s, as I struggled to find myself as an artist.
Teens today may be where I was in my early 20’s, in terms of emotional literacy; that’s how fast the world is changing. Puberty arrives years earlier, and so much information floods the internet that pre-teens are incredibly sophisticated. Some may feel they fit perfectly into the box they were placed in at birth, but some take time to find themselves.
The pressure on teens from peers, television, movies, social media, and hormones to explore the body, identity and sexuality is huge. “Parents are literally playing catch up,” Jordan Held, an adolescent therapist at Visions Treatment Center for Teens, said recently at a workshop on Gender, Sexuality, and Suicide organized by the LA Jewish Teen Initiative and sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
Most adults in the Jewish community are not homophobic. We are LGBTQ+ or have LGBTQ+ friends and colleagues. But how does one approach the issue of gender and sexuality in the Jewish community? It isn’t only about helping children navigate life; we have a responsibility to be examples and guides to the teens in our community.
Can we exhibit love and fairness regardless of gender identity? It is one thing to say: “I have no problem with LGBTQ+ people.” It is another thing to embrace the Jewish values of tolerance, humility, compassion, and kindness and to be a shining light.
Teens go out in the world in ways we can’t imagine. We can’t prevent them from being who they want to be, or doing what they want. This is part of growing up. When our teenager, Esther Iris z”l, came to me and said they wanted to be addressed as they/them, I wasn’t sure what it meant. I was not prepared. If I had been, I wonder if I could have done more to help them feel comfortable. They borrowed their father’s shirts and used new pronouns, but we were both a bit mystified. Did this mean that Esther would soon want surgery and hormones for a new gender identity?
Esther ordered a binder on Amazon, wore it occasionally, and enjoyed wearing dresses, donning make-up and nail art, and making beaded earrings.
What does clothing and hairstyle matter anyway? As Jews, we believe one’s soul is what counts, right?
We cannot let biases stop our teens from living out their destinies and becoming their truest, highest selves. It is important that we be supportive.
Esther wrote a poem of two beings at war within themself. When I hear them sing “Lost Boys” on the piano, it makes me cry. Girls are allowed to roam free, but as teens, social restrictions are placed on females. I urged Esther to be adventurous; we hiked and biked together; they surfed … but I didn’t see clearly when Esther began to withdraw emotionally at age 12 what was happening.
I believe now that Esther may have been feeling things for girls, as well as boys. This was confusing, so they shoved those feelings down deep inside, where no one would see them. They wanted to stay part of the Jewish community they loved, which at the time was not as inclusive as it is now. They began dating boys and maintained close friendships with boys and girls.
Then COVID arrived and after a year of online school, due to isolation and stress, with no sibling at home, they broke down and began a descent into depression.
The school where Esther graduated from in 2019 has changed. Now, students use various pronouns and there is an all-gender bathroom. Jewish schools, camps and youth groups are changing with the times and embracing LGBTQ+ teens rather than keeping them on the sidelines. But It is sad to think there are still Jewish adults who do not understand the issue and are fearful.
Inclusion is a buzz word right now, so it’s easy to feel that by slapping a new label on a bathroom and pronouns on one’s Zoom window, that’s all it takes, but there is more we can do … more ways to love and be kind.
It starts with listening, seeing and reaching out. Imagine you are in line for food at shul and there is a teen with purple hair, a nose ring, and ambiguous gender, in front of you. You can be stern and unfriendly or you can say in a light tone, “Cool hair!” I guarantee, if you chose the latter, you will be surprised by their appreciation.
Teens trying to find themselves in this complicated world warm up when they feel included by adults; this helps them feel that they have a future in the Jewish community.
Teens trying to find themselves in this complicated world warm up when they feel included by adults; this helps them feel that they have a future in the Jewish community. What is the message we send when we reject young people on a journey full of tempestuous waters? Sharks lurk in the deep. Wouldn’t we rather be part of the solution than part of the problem?
When we reject someone this speaks to our inability to confront and deal with the complexity of the situation. Let’s be brave and learn. Just as we are made in God’s image, so are our youth. They need to feel this from each and every one of us. They need to feel they are not alone.
Deborah Fletcher Blum is an artist, writer, filmmaker and educator living in Los Angeles. She believes in fostering mindful conversations and can be reached at Deborah.f.blum@gmail.com
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/349527/embracing-teens-today/
QUARANTINE OR NOT, THIS TEEN CONTINUES TO FIGHT FOR INCLUSIVITY
02.02.21
Young people are often labeled as lazy and unmotivated, and that couldn’t be further from the truth for 15-year-old Chiqui Diaz. She is only a sophomore in high school but she already has a couple of titles under belt. She currently works as a teen board member with Beyond Differences and is a youth advocate with The Spahr Center. Her most recent honor: a 2020 Youth Award for her work as a peer educator and activist for the LGBTQ+ community in California.
A worldwide pandemic and online learning can be tough on one’s mental health. That is why Diaz believes it’s more important now than ever to reach out to youth and ask: how are you doing?
YR Media’s Denise Tejada spoke to Diaz about the work she is doing to reach out to kids during the pandemic and to ensure the needs of LGBTQ+ students are folded into school curriculums.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Denise Tejada: I know you’re pretty involved in a lot of projects, but in a nutshell can you tell me about the work that you do and what inspired it?
Chiquis Diaz: Yeah, so Beyond Differences, we fight social isolation and we do a lot of work at the middle school level. We provide free curriculum to schools all over the country. A lot of it is geared towards teaching middle schoolers how to build connections and create an inclusive community.
I got involved in high school because I experienced my own social isolation in eighth grade. I was kind of coming out and coming to terms with my identity and didn’t really know where I belonged. It was just a really hard period because I didn’t know where I fit. And so I think that really inspired me to kind of go and join Beyond Differences and work to make more inclusive spaces and more inclusive people.
DT: Why do you think it’s important to provide support and resources to kids as early as middle school?
CD: I think middle school is honestly the key time. That’s when people are really starting to get that sense of independence and start to discover their identity and figure out, “Who am I? What kind of person do I want to be?” And that’s a really complicated thing. I think also in middle school, people are really starting to explore social dynamics. It’s when a lot of social isolation happens, I think, especially because a lot of kids transfer from being in a small elementary school to a bigger school with more people. It’s really easy to kind of find yourself feeling excluded or kind of on the outside. And it’s very easy to feel lonely. I think, and especially with COVID, everyone’s very isolated now. I think we’re all kind of feeling what that’s like. And it’s more important now than ever to really connect people, I think.
DT: You’ve been working on bringing LGBTQ curriculum into the schools. Can you talk about that work and why it’s important for you?
CQ: Yeah, so that has a lot to do with the work I do with The Spahr Center. We do a lot of working in schools and in local communities around LGBTQ+ issues and how can we best support queer and trans students. One of our big initiatives is working on getting a more diverse curriculum, because I know in my own experience, I don’t think I’ve ever really been taught about the LGBTQ community in a very meaningful way in class. We don’t really learn at all about Stonewall or read a book that was about a queer or trans character. And it comes up a lot in sex ed, too. It is usually very lacking in terms of sexuality and gender kind of education. I think if seventh grade me had gotten more of that, it would have been so helpful in my questioning and trying to figure out who I was. I basically had to rely on the internet to learn about my identity. If we can get a more inclusive curriculum in schools, LGBTQ+ students will be able to see themselves positively reflected and have that be so influential. Exposure helps create understanding, empathy and compassion and it can be really influential in preventing homophobia and transphobia. It’s really important to see yourself positively represented and to see what you are capable of and to not see yourself limited by your identity. Having, you know, an inclusive and representative curriculum is so key to that.
DT: How are you doing your outreach work during quarantine?
CD: It’s really important in terms of social isolation that we reach out even more. I know that I’ve gotten through a lot of this by being able to call friends — FaceTime friends and have that conversation and that connection. It is really important that our curriculums are online compatible. I know we’ve been trying to kind of get into online classrooms, although it’s difficult because there’s a lot less time and teachers are a little bit more pressed to teach material. We’ve been adapting a lot by using video and social media has been really big and getting involved in reaching people.
DT: Congratulations on winning the California Youth Award. How do you feel about that?
CD: I didn’t believe it. It was really wild. It’s incredible. I’m very honored to receive that award and mostly to know that the work I’ve been doing is impactful and is really making a difference. It has really inspired me to keep recommitting myself to my community and to continue on with this work, because I know it’s making a difference. Quarantine has been hard in a lot of ways, but it’s also really given me the opportunity to dive into social justice and really get involved in activism. I’m just very, very grateful and humbled and honored. The other thing that it shows for me is that you shouldn’t have to feel like because you’re so young or because you’re a teenager, you’re not capable of making change.
https://yr.media/identity/quarantine-or-not-this-teen-continues-to-fight-for-inclusivity/
Hanukkah Monologue
Sheryl Zohn, television writer and producer.
Waiting Room Mama by Rachel Zients Schinderman
As families wrestle with unforeseen stresses and responsibilities during the Covid-19 pandemic, a writer revisits her son’s early years—and the uncertainties of parenting through trauma.
I will spend the first chunk of my son’s life in waiting rooms. Doctors’ waiting rooms, yes, and therapists’–-physical, speech, occupational. I will sit in the chairs in the lobby with a book I won’t read and hand them my child, hopeful that in 50 minutes they will report back that this is unnecessary and they don’t know why we are here. I will watch as they go off down the hall to play with blocks and jump on mats and play what seem just like games, but are actually telling indicators about our future. I will sit by his side at times abandoning the waiting room. I will watch from behind a secret glass so he cannot see me and be distracted. But mostly I will wait in the lobby and look around at the other moms trying to catch their eye, to engage, to form a community.
Mommy and me groups will fail me as I cannot join at the allotted playground playgroup times. I will be taking my son to therapy when the others are off bonding, growing closer, sipping chardonnay from sippy cups, as they say. And so the waiting room is where I will troll for mom friends.
Daily, I will drive to and from our house to the waiting rooms. I will hand my child off each and every time. I will often tell the story of how we got there, hemorrhaged placenta, massive blood loss in utero. Cerebral palsy? Brain damage? Autism? Developmental delay? We do not know yet. I will listen as others tell their stories and I will feel grateful or jealous depending on their severity or lack of it. We will exchange numbers, not always our own, but usually for doctors, experts who can save us.
I will often wander back out to the parking lot while my son is down the hall and wait and cry in my car. I will call my husband at work and review our son’s reports that they will have just handed me in the lobby. I will heave over bolded and CAPITALIZED words and never allow my husband to fully comfort me, for he is somewhere else, not here in these waiting rooms. I am jealous that he will hang up the phone and be able to walk down the street and get coffee or talk with a work friend and not drive back and forth to sit in waiting rooms, never really allowing that this is not just happening to me, but to him as well.
Before these waiting rooms, I will be wheeled into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to meet my son, still on a gurney. I will throw up upon seeing him, wires and monitors everywhere. I will be told he is critical. I will have called my mother informing her she has a grandson, and then I will call her back asking her not to get too excited. I will not be sure he will make it through the night. I will leave my child behind in the hospital as I am allowed to go home and he is not and I will wait until we are told he can go home too. I will wait until his 13th day of life to do so, his mini bar mitzvah, I will joke.
I will believe them when they send us home from the NICU that we dodged a bullet, that he is fine. But I will watch him and at the first sign of any delay I will call for an evaluation. I will traipse us to doctors. Day in and day out. Friends will tell me he is fine and to enjoy this time and I will hate them just a bit for having me have to point out my child’s deficiencies. I will then hate the therapist who does point out his deficiencies, confirming my fears, too glibly, too clinically, who will not see the tired, shellshocked woman in front of her with the child who does not sleep, does not grab, does not wave, does not, does not, does not, does not, all of the does nots will swirl in my mind as I sit and wait.
I will wonder who my baby will become, how this will play out. I will wait and see as my child works down the hall with experts. What do you wait for in these waiting rooms? Yes, you wait for your actual child to come back to you and each and every time it is a lovely greeting of smiles and joy. But these waiting rooms are simultaneously hopeful and dreadful. I will wait for him to be old enough to show me he did not suffer any damage from my placenta. I will wait and wonder how else it could have gone. If only I had called my doctor the day before. I will wait and wonder about insurance and reports and costs, but I will not be aware enough then to think of the actual cost to us as a family.
And I will wait. I will wait for motherhood to start or at least what I thought it would be. Occasionally I will grab at motherhood, defiantly, or what I think motherhood should be. It’s not sitting in waiting rooms multiple times a day I will tell myself. I will drag my son to museums, to classes, to the park. And they will be too loud for him, too much. He will squeal, “Home! Home! Home!” when the too-realistic dinosaur arrives for the Natural History Museum interactive show. And so we will go home. I will learn what he can handle and I will wait again back in my waiting room seat, waiting for him. Waiting for us to get started.
I will think that motherhood is happening somewhere else, without me. That motherhood is fierce, and this one, where I wait, is passive. But giving up my idea of motherhood for what my child needs is fierce. I will not realize this then.
I will worry as I wait that I am so tired, so marked by all of this that he will not know the real me, the fun me, the lovely me. He will know the harried mom, the worried mom, the grasping mom. At least my husband will have known who I once was, will my son? Will he understand the fight, the grit, the commitment? I can only wait and see if it settled deep within his understanding. And that is motherhood in a nutshell: waiting to see how it will all play out.
I will grow to be the mom in the waiting room doling out information, too comfortable at the top of the food chain for having been there too long, as if I am the high school senior of waiting rooms. I will start to go get food while I wait or boldly run an errand. I will actually read the books I bring. I will play with the waiting room toys with my younger son I eventually felt brave enough to have. I will find myself bored as I wait, the greatest revelation, no longer plagued by worry. For my child down that hall, or through that glass, will begin to emerge and show who he is and who he will become. The wait for answers will shorten as he ages and I will see the individual he is, the strength he embodies.
We will graduate from the many waiting rooms eventually, at least daily. There will be cake and balloons from his therapist. And he will smile proudly in one of those small rooms where he was taken without me to play and pose for a picture, a rarity. “No pictures, Mom!” he usually instructs, but this he will want documented.
What will not be documented is that graduating from waiting rooms does not mean leaving it all behind, even though that will be my deep belief at that moment. And that moment of hope will resurface as heart cracks when we stumble, as we most definitely will.
He will ask to go off to sleepaway camp and I will send him. He will teach himself to ride a bike on his own, falling off over and over and getting back up without asking for help from me. He will be elected to the student council after losing the year prior. He will find me frustrating and hovering as mothers of children with special needs can be.
I will eventually have a pre-teen who slams doors in my face and doesn’t allow his brother in his room, and I will amazingly long for the simple times of the waiting rooms of his infancy and toddlerhood of when he ran into my arms down the long white hallway coming back from his therapy. And then I will catch myself and remind myself this was everything I wished for and worried about, wanted and waited on: this, raising this child, this very spirited child. And I will ask time to slow down and to wait up as my child capably steps further and further out into the world away from me, as he will and as he should.
***
Rachel Zients Schinderman
Rachel Zients Schinderman is originally from New York City, but Los Angeles has been her home for more than 20 years. She currently lives in Culver City with her two sons, two dogs and one husband. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Jewish Journal and Shondaland, among other publications.
From Poster Child by Emily Rapp (2008)
Christine was one of the girls who lived in the neighborhood; she also sang in the school choir with me. One day, after the first few weeks of school, she leaned over to me in the car. Her look was conspiratorial, and I stiffened with expectation. If she told me a secret, it meant we were friends, that things were changing and maybe Dad had been right. Christine whispered in my ear, “You know that nobody likes you, don’t you?” I did. I had simply assumed. Her words only confirmed my fears. She smiled at me and then stared out the window as we drove the rest of the way to school.
Every morning became torture. Christine usually found a way to sit next to me, even when I tried to avoid it, knowing what was coming. As soon as the car pulled out of the driveway, she whispered in my ear, “What’s your problem?” or, “You look weird.” She always spoke softly and with such a smile on her face that the driver would never suspect anything from where he or she sat, chatting with the girl sitting up front, who was never me. Even my own father didn’t catch on when it was his turn to drive the group to school, and I never told him. He would wink at me in the rearview mirror as if to say, “See? You’re making friends.” I always smiled back as if his look had told the truth about the situation; I was too ashamed to admit otherwise.
My reaction to Christine’s cruelty was to do nothing. My days of fighting back against insults were over; I kept silent. I accepted her statements, while at the same time feeling absolutely determined to prove them wrong. By the time we reached school, I was practically trembling with terror and rage that I hid behind a shy smile.
To purchase Emily’s latest book, Sanctuary, go to https://www.amazon.com/Sanctuary-Memoir-Emily-Rapp-Black-ebook/dp/B087BCBNWW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=sanctuary+emily+rapp&qid=1611208892&sr=8-1
From The Orphan Collector: A Heroic Novel of Survival During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Kindle Edition by Ellen Marie Wiseman (2020)
“Did you see the letter I send in to school, Mrs. Derry?” Mutti had said.
“Yes, Mrs. Lange, I received he note. But I’m not sure I understand it.”
“Forgive me, I only wish to make sure…” Mutti said, hesitating. “My Pia is, how do you say, delicate? She does not like crowds, or anyone touching her. I am not sure why…” Her mother started wringing her hands. “But she is a normal girl and smart. Please. Can you be sure the other children-“
“Mrs. Lange, I don’t see how-“
“Pia needs to learn. She needs to be at school. I don’t need her to…”
“All right, Mrs. Lange,” Mrs. Derry said. “Yes, I’ll do my best. But children come into contact with each other while playing all the time, especially during recess. It’s part of learning. Sometimes I won’t be able to stop it from happening.”
“Yes, I understand,” Mutti said. “But if Pia doesn’t want… if one of the other children does not know to leave her alone… please…”
Mrs. Derry put a hand on her mother’s arm, looked at her with pity-filled eyes, and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. And I’ll let the other teachers know too.”
Mutti nodded and gave her a tired smile, then said goodbye to Pia and left.
After that first day, for the most part, Mrs. Derry and the rest of the teachers had done little to look out for Pia. And the memory of that encounter – her mother wringing her hands and trying to communicate her odd concerns to a confused Mrs. Derry while Pia cringed at her side and the other kids watched – recurred to her every time she stepped foot in the classroom. While the other children played Duck, Duck, Goose or Ring-Around-the-Rosy, Pia stood off to the side, sad and relieved at the same time. Inevitably, when the teachers weren’t looking, some of the kids taunted and poked her, calling her names like freak girl or scaredy-cat. And now, because of the war, they called her a Hun.