"The Edge"

BY: JACLYN NOLAN

Trigger warning: Profanity and the use of the word c*nt

In Journey Into Power Baron Baptiste defines “the edge.” He writes,

“The edge is where we come right up against ourselves and what we can do and be. It is the boundary between where we are and where we grow, the place of comfortable discomfort, where all growing and healing happens.” 

Last weekend I came face-to-face with my edge when I was fortunate enough to trek to Boston, Massachusetts for the Baptiste Power Yoga Teacher Course. It.was.great. After the first day of the course our leader asked us to consider what would happen if we went right to our edge for the second and final day of the course … what would happen if we crept right up to it? Even leapt off? Between learning new teaching scripts, recognizing my instructor defaults, and connecting with new people, I concluded that my edge is giving myself permission to finish something. Those unfinished research projects. The books on my nightstand I kinda sorta read but definitely didn’t finish. The draft emails I never sent. The old friend I’ll call back … eventually. The “I should do,” “I’m working on” … yea all that bullshit. Put your toes on the edge of the Grand Canyon and stand at the edge – for me it is finishing something. It is finishing something not because I have to or should or because I will look good in the eyes of someone else or be liked; it is finishing something because it rings true with my most authentic self. I count this post under my aforementioned edge.

Toes to the edge, girl … 

It’s not everyday you get an email from your boss with the subject line: “Offensive note.” Last spring I learned that I was indeed the recipient of an “offensive note.” I felt nervous. Immediately. My stomach dropped. What did I do? Was someone upset about their grade? But wait, final grades had not even been turned in yet … slow your roll aggrieved student!! Was it something I said in class? Did I forget to respond to an email? WHAT did I do? My wonderful husband assured me it was fine; it was just a case of some immature student doing something, well, immature. I appreciated my husband’s reassurance but I still insisted he accompany me to school that day to retrieve the note. He did willingly and with support and grace, just as he always has. 

Did you know that universities have an entire protocol in place for these things? Here’s the breakdown: offensive note appears, a staff member (a custodian in my case) finds the note and reports the note (thank you dear custodian!! *not sarcastic*), and a copy of the note gets reported to the Equal Opportunity Office. My boss didn’t skip a beat; “typically in these cases …” and he went on to explain the University’s protocol. I wondered how many times he walked someone through this process. I asked to see the note. Am I my own worst enemy? Maybe. But I was curious and plus my boss said I might recognize the handwriting. Here’s what the note looked like:

 “CUNT.” All caps. Pencil. 

Nope, didn’t recognize the handwriting. But what started with curiosity and a nervous pit in my belly turned into something more; I became deeply unsettled. I felt, in a word, unsafe.

I also thought if you’re going to call me a “CUNT” then at least do it in pen.

Pencil feels flip and weak-willed, but whatever.

I took my note back to my office to show my husband. We were both pretty shocked, thinking it was going to be more of the “Fuck you, bitch” variant of the offensive note genre. There was something particularly searing about “CUNT.” This feels like an appropriate time to point out that faculty members—at insert college or university of your choice—are on the receiving end of the actions of aggrieved students all the time. It is part of the job. Heck, one only need go as far as end-of-semester evaluations for such evidence. Note: this also strikes me as an opportune moment to point out that course evaluations are particularly unfavorable to women and people of color (https://tcf.org/content/commentary/student-evaluations-skewed-women-minority-professors/?session=1). 

Okay, okay, okayyyyy I know what you’re thinking. No worries because the word “cunt” has been reclaimed. Erika Jayne donned a “cunty” necklace on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Azealia Banks’s song “212” has that catchy bridge, “I guess that cunt gettin’ eaten.” I distinctly remember watching “cunt’s” reclamation in action at a college production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Classic. By the end of the monologue, “Reclaiming Cunt,” the entire audience was shouting “Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!” Each “cunt” utterance was more vigorous and louder than the one that preceded it. I think I repeated it too but in one of those awkward, half-assed whisper voices. Like, is this right?? Sidebar: I once met Eve Ensler at a book signing and I cried right in front of her as I told her through my tears that her monologue “My Short Skirt” basically saved me. It was exhilarating. But back to the question at hand: what’s the big deal with the word “cunt”? Eve reclaimed it so why couldn’t I do the same? 

Chin up, I told myself. This note will not get the best of you. So that’s what I did. I showed it to a few colleagues, whose reactions amounted to equal parts shock, bewilderment, and “holy shit I’m sorry.” I made jokes. I even thought about framing the note and proudly displaying it on the wall in my office. My momentary fantasy went something like this: HEY YOU KID WHO CALLED ME A “CUNT,” I TAKE YOUR NOTE AND RAISE YOU ONE FRAMED NOTE … THANKS GOES TO MICHAELS THE ARTS AND CRAFTS STOREFOR ALL MY FRAMING NEEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

It didn’t take long to realize that my Michaels make-believe ought to stay in the realm of the imaginary. So then I decided to share the note with a few folx in my yoga community. They were supportive, and in the spirit of my yoga community, there for me. I told my mom about it. She told my dad. They were horrified. I shared the note with two academic colleagues. One of their responses really got to the crux of the issue. Here’s part of what my colleague said in our text chain, “This is wrong because it repeats the misogynistic lie about what women are; it’s stupid for trafficking in the misconception that having a vagina is anything other than human.” I couldn’t agree more. I felt seen.

When I give myself permission to finish something I stand in my authenticity. And authenticity, I learned in Boston, is the capacity to free.

In this case finishing something requires that I get dead honest and sit with my real, raw self. When I move past the jokes, my imagined push back in the form of a fierce framing job, and the support I’m so privileged to have, I’m left with one uncomfortable truth. That note rattled me because it stirred up a quite visceral and very familiar feeling of being unsafe; one I associate with my trauma (my story can be read here FYI). Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that some jerk face writing “CUNT” on the back of a university flier and slipping it under my office door is akin to my assault or anyone’s experience with sexual violence for that matter. Nor does it possess the rhetorical power and cultural trauma of a racial epithet. There’s no comparing here.

But, for me, I am certain that being on the receiving end of that note stirred up a familiar feeling of being utterly precarious in my body, unsafe for simply being a woman and taking up space as a woman.

Like my colleague suggested, it is just so fucking gendered. Sometimes I want to rage.  

I distinctly remember my assailant being angry with me. He was mad and he said it could have been something worse or more; he said these things over the faint sounds of my clock radio. In that moment I was frozen. In that moment the fucked up logic suggested I caused this thing to happen. Look what I made him do. When I searched for a reasonable explanation for that note there it was all.over.again. Surely something I said, a comment in class, a less than responsive email, a particular assignment or class activity … something I did caused the note.

It was on me. Trauma is such a double-punch to the gut like that.

Not only does one endure it; one then carries it with them, and for me, its only pattern is randomness. It announces itself when I least expect it.

Last spring it was the “CUNT” note. 

It is not lost on me that I harbor dual realities: while my trauma is woven into the story of who I am, I am also admittedly safe in the world in ways people of color and LGBTQ+ persons are not. Every time I thought about putting finger pads to keyboard all I could think was how silly, precious, and stupid it all sounded. Here I am bitching about a moment that generated such vulnerability when it is the way of the freaking world for so many. So don’t finish something, Jaclyn. Don’t finish this. But what if I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and finished my post anyway? Not for some recognition or because I should get it right. What if I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and leapt? Baron Baptiste also says this about the edge, “The edge is the point in every pose when you are still within your capacities but are challenging yourself to go just a little bit farther. Stepping up to this edge and daring to leap is how you break through and thus break with old ways of being.”

In authenticity, there’s freedom.

I’m free.

So there it is. I want a world where everyone’s metaphorical “CUNT” note is the exception not the rule.