I was switched at birth.

The year everything happened...1963 - ​Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, the JFK assassination and the beginning of Beatlemania are just some of the history-altering events that made 1963 one of the most memorable years in U.S. history. It was also the year a beautiful little girl was born on Sunday, December 22 at approximately 1:10 pm. ​My parents,​ ​Ida Mae and William​, were 18 years old at the time of ​the​ birth and​ as any young parents would, they​ ​struggled to make ends meet​, b​ut they made it work. ​They named the baby​ Vickie​. She​ was their​ second child and a beautiful new sister ​to ​her​ then two year old brother Calvin. In those day,​, ​in the south​,​ families kept secrets​; that's just the way it was. As ​I grew older​, a secret weighed heavily on ​my mother. She had a nagging feeling in her spirit and wanted to come clean about​ the father of her baby girl. ​My grandmother, Eula Williams, may she RIP, was a strong and proud​ black woman with no interest in allowing anyone to bring ​embarrassment​ to​ the family name so she told Ida Mae to "let it be." My mother ​ke​pt her secret​ to herself ​for as long ​as she could carry the burden​.​ ​One afternoon, just after I turned 13, my mother called me in from outside. She was happy to go into the house because there were too many bugs outside; and I hate bugs! I sat down at the kitchen table, across from my mother who looked uncomfortable, sad, and tired. It was quiet for a long time when my mother, staring at the table, started talking. The secret that she had carried for so long tumbled out in long sentences full of words that seemed to cover the red and white checkered tablecloth. At first her words made no sense to me, like a story about someone else. As her burden began to lighten on her shoulders, my shoulders were now weighted. As I began to realize what she saying, I remembered my sweet Uncle Alex teasing me about my "real" father. All I could think about was "Daddy's not my DADDY!"

I am crazy for meditation.

Trust the process. That was my mantra as I locked my phone in my car and stepped into a 10-day silent vipassana meditation retreat in Claymont, DE. I’m a very committed person. I did just as I was told. 4am to 10pm, I was up and meditating. The first three days, you focus on the tip of your nose. Done. I got this. 18 hours a day I spent firing at my hippocampus. Day 4, we learned body sweep: concentrating on sensations in the body, not dwelling too long. All sensations change. A few times, I spoke with the teacher for short periods, she was unhelpful, but trust the process I did. Every morning I watch sunrise, but otherwise, my days lack external sensation. Day 6, the world vibrated. During a brief break, I sit with my back against a tree, part of its roots. I can see every single leaf, all at once. I flick the seed pods from a sweetgum tree and smile at the sound. In meditation, forces moved through my body. I sweat, my body spun like a tornado. I didn’t dwell, I would breath myself out of these sensations, but I was getting a bit weirded out. I wrote in my journal under the covers, hiding it from the leaders who would open the door to our rooms without warning. Day 7-8, overstimulated to the brink of little sleep. Goenka video teaching up meditation mentions that meditating can be more restful than sleep. So when I can’t sleep, I meditate in bed, listening and hearing and seeing every sound and creak and shadow. A dog barks, the wind blows, everything has meaning. I converse with the head teacher through looks during meditation. She telepathically conveys to me messages to own my light and have courage. The leaders start to track me when I spend an afternoon being blown by the wind. They tell me to come inside and I jump over the silly strung up barrier into the forbidden parking lot and sit on someone else’s car hood. Anything to begin to get myself back and turn out of this mind-skid I’m getting in. The sun sets on the eve of the last day. I can’t sleep. Wait, fuck the process. My head feels detached from my body. I can’t reason. I’m scared. With limited problem solving skills, I tell them I want to sleep in my car. That would make me feel safe and quiet. You can’t sleep in your car, Ruth, they say. Stay till the morning, you will feel better then. Fuck it. They are not hearing my words. Show don’t tell. I must show them the panic I feel inside. I explode my belongings in the parking lot. I can’t find my keys. I have no memory. My survival brain moves to the most basic search technique. Spreading all my belongings out in the middle of the parking lot and put my hands on each thing, looking for my keys. Two of the head teachers stand at the edge of the parking lot and watch me. I finally back out of the parking lot, stop to open the gate and drive away. They let me drive away in this state at 1am in the morning. Paranoid as hell. It takes me 2 days, a night drugged in the ER psych unit, and lots of family love to wake up from my paranoia and rewire my brain. Please, don’t fucking trust the process of a spiritual community you don’t know. Meditation and the brain are wonderful things...and terrifying. Be safe. Now that I am out and safe, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I never have to take an ayahuasca trip. I met raw parts of myself and voiced things I never would have in my conscious controlled state. But I might not have come out of it. I heard months later that another woman on my retreat didn’t. I remember talking to her in the brief talk time on the first day. She was so alive and excited, like me, for the introspective experience. But something switched in her, like it did in me. I have only heard glimmers of the story through speaking with a reporter for PennLive who wrote her story, but her internal voice echo turned suicidal. And she jumped off a bridge months after the retreat. Respect our brains and the mystery of their chemistry. Respect and listen to people’s unique experiences. Recognize cyclical mental patterns early. Engage trained mental health professionals. The first responder who worked with me was endlessly better trained in mental health than any of the retreat leaders. Meditation is wonderful. I still maintain a practice. But the international meditation community needs to demand better mental health emergency plans from all retreat centers. Tell this story. Take care of each other.

I disarm people for a living.

I help people work through their deepest conflict, as a mediator and conflict engagement specialist. I did grow up in a violent household, and I guess that's where I learned to avoid conflict. Being a mediator, I'm neutral, and it's a lot safer for me to engage in other people's conflict than my own. When the participants are screaming and crying, and are at their weakest, emotionally speaking, that's when I feel the greatest call to duty to help them feel heard. I appreciate the vulnerability and courage it takes for people to open up about in front of a stranger, and it's my job to create a safe space where they can do that.

I sell sex to strangers.

I wasn't always a sex worker. Born and raised in southeast Michigan, to a steel-mill worker and a part-time, stay at home mom, I am the second youngest grandchild on either side of the family (nearly 30 total) and the first of all of us to finish college. I grew up an evangelical Christian because that was the church my mom took us to and was forced to "speak in tongues" before leaving school one day in 3rd grade. I was encouraged to spend a minimum of 6 hours in the chapel whenever it was "national day of prayer" and in 8th grade earned an award for "Outstanding representation of Christianity and exemplary service to her community". The most I'd heard about sex was this tip from my Dad: "If a guy tries to get his hands down your pants, watch out". I was anti-abortion until I was 17. People used to tell me they "knew I had the Lord in my heart" because of the way I smiled. After high school in Michigan, I found a new community in Boulder, Colorado. I worked alongside folks very unlike me in upbringing, class, native language, politics, spirituality, view of the world. I embraced this diversity and aimed to see myself independent of my family, with my own values, ideals and ambitions. I worked hard in school to earn a degree.. something I was never expected nor encouraged to do back home. Despite the life events that pulled me away from my puritanical values, I still knew nothing about sex until I was nearly 20. I first accompanied a friend to the Boulder County AIDS Project after she had slept with a "dirty hippy" a few months prior and wanted to know her HIV status. I did a lot of knitting and reading in that waiting room. I'd never received formal sex education- not from my Catholic school teachers, parents or friends in Michigan so I started to read up on it to answer my own questions. I realized this situation my pal was in, the agony of waiting 20 minutes for HIV test results, was not uncommon. I made a point to be more informed, supportive, proactive. I would be the one with answers for other people even though I'd never had sex (it'd be another 9 months or so). Fast forward a couple years. Throw in a college graduation, some personal development, a bit of nudity, lots of kissing, alcohol, etc... I was in Boulder, sitting in a coffee shop having just completed the GRE, scouring craigslist for volunteer opportunities (who knew what idealist was then?) because I sure as hell wasn't ready for grad school. Five months later I was on my way to Africa, to spend 6 months with grassroots movements performing HIV testing and counseling, STI education via dance and art, and community building around public health. It was in Africa that the sex work really started. HIV risk reduction counseling is a pretty amazing tool and something I've practiced in Denver, Seattle, Washington, DC, and countless communities in Cameroon, Ghana, Uganda and Peru and who knows where I'll use it next. Risk reduction counseling is my form of sex work. In those counseling sessions I spend at least 15 minutes talking with someone about their sexual behavior, their understanding of the risks involved in that behavior regarding exposure to STIs, and we have a conversation about how to reduce that risk while maximizing sexual pleasure. I consider myself the pusher of guilt-free sex. Everyone who walks out of that dialogue, hopefully, has just "bought" the kind of sex I've "sold" them, the safer kind. If you told me ten years ago that I'd have incredibly graphic, real, genuine, knowledge-filled, empowering conversations with folks as young as 12 and as old as 84 about their sex lives, I'd have cried. I couldn't have known then just how good I'd be at these conversations and how some of my upbringing, my experience, my comfort in who I am as a person and understanding of this terrible epidemic, would eventually lead to my selling sex... passionately, warmly, sincerely. Every other Thursday I'm at the Whitman-Walker Health's Gay Men's Health and Wellness Clinic where folks come in for free HIV testing and STD screening. I sell sex to men, women, and transgender individuals regardless of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, politics or how much they can pay. I can't imagine a day in my life when I don't sell sex. In Washington, DC, the HIV infection rates are higher than in any other city nationwide. Over 3% of the adult population in DC has tested positive for HIV, though many do not know their status. Do you know your status? Get yourself tested.

Please excuse me while I kiss this guy.

With the stakes low or high enough, misunderstandings can become miraculously funny interpersonal events, moments where our intelligibility is tickled by our capacity to imagine. For me, such comedy is often most vibrant when delivered as a mondegreen, or a mishearing or misinterpretation of phrase as a result of words sounding similar. Jimi Hendrix sings "kiss the sky " and we hear "kiss this guy"; John F. Kennedy says "Ich bin ein Berliner", and a Berliner wonders if the American president fancies himself a pastry. The list goes on and on, and while many of us have our favorite mondegreens from pop culture and our own lives, few dedicate brain power to their creation. That's where I diverge it would seem, for I find great pleasure and utility in feigning the misunderstanding of words, phrases, arguments, orders, you name it. When used appropriately, a mondegreen can diffuse a tense conversation, helpfully deprecate the self, or just plain spice things up! I must admit, though, that I overuse this form of humor, much to the chagrin of those who know what I'm up to, and much to my own in the moments when I fail to control my impulse. My mondegreens can resemble a nervous tick - a way to fill up space when I don't know what to say, or a method of earmarking an opportunity for humor without actually being funny. This is a bit sad, really, and a strange hearing problem for someone who listens to too much loud music to have.

I have been shooting up since I was seven

My family knew the symptoms: unquenchable thirst, weight loss, frequent urination, loss of appetite, fatigue. It runs in my family: Type I in my dad’s family, Type II in my mom’s. I was hospitalized for a week and diagnosed with Type I diabetes. My life changed from that of an already self-conscious and overly mature girl to a child with the heavy responsibility of a chronic disease to manage. My parents made sure I held myself accountable for the care of my health. Diabetes has never been an excuse, and I’ve never received or accepted special treatment because of diabetes. Every day is a challenge that requires self-discipline and awareness. Every decision I make every day has an impact on how I feel and what happens to my body. Diabetes is a constant, an underlying influence embedded in my identity, but it does not define who I am. I am a woman, an artist, a teacher. I travel, I hike, I mountain bike. And I have diabetes.

My hometown was a news broadcast.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Born in Geneva, child of the 80’s, what I saw of my hometown was in the daily briefs of French news. I knew of this distance place, Lebanon. My father made regular visits to this mysterious and explosive place. I knew he grew up there. I, however, only learned of the country by watching the daily broadcasts on the evening TF1 channel. More bombs, more militias, more violence, more killed. I was in theory supposed to grow up in the mountains of this Lebonon, but somehow plans were diverted and I ended up instead in a different place, spending most weekends in the Jura Mountains just north of the Alps. I didn’t really want to ever leave my cocoon in Pleasantville but I was curious to meet my cousins and my father’s six siblings. Curious but scared away by a war that raged for the first decade of my life. The house and my Lebanese hometown was, for me, never to unfold - a life, a plan, a dream aborted. My birth was in tranquil Switzerland and developed into 16 years of carefree and flowery youth. News, bad news, that is what I knew of that other place. Until one day, in 1993, I finally came face to face with my “hometown”. It was not pretty then, still burning, but the place felt very right. I met my parallel life, the one where my hometown was in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean, and the clouds delicately covered the bright blue sky among the Cyprus trees.

I am living with AIDS

I work at a little place in Adams Morgan called Joseph's House. It is a home for homeless men and women with end stage AIDS, a place where they won't die forgotten. I am living with the memory of all these people that I've loved and watched die of the terrible virus. I am living with AIDS.