“Kansas is a place I couldn’t fckn wait to leave growing up. And I did leave, the first chance I got after college.”
This statement launched my “Kansas Is” speech when it was my turn to present during a Leadership Kansas adventure this year. I’m sure it was shocking to some, either that I opened with a negative or that I used some explicit language, or both. I wasn’t going for shock value, though. I just needed to be real.
I’ve spent a decade doing my best to live authentically and combatting “Kansas Nice”. I refuse to speak hollow platitudes and niceties just because they’re palatable. They lack the depth of feeling and it’s too easy for them to be used as a protective mask for what’s genuine. Turns out, I really no longer know how to pretend to be anything other than REAL.
The chuckles and nods I saw from some of my classmates on the bus, all facing me from their seats while I stood awkwardly at the front with a microphone, told me I wasn’t alone. That was all the support I needed to not sugarcoat the rest. For the next few minutes, I stood, vulnerably facing about 40 people, and hit the main points of what I’ve captured here:
My spouse and I moved to San Antonio shortly after college. There, we spent almost five years in what is possibly the friendliest city on Earth. We loved it—the weather, the people, the culture—and never wanted to leave. But jobs being jobs and life being life, our journey took us to Las Vegas just after we’d started a family. While we loved the weather in Las Vegas, the rest of it was hard for us to love. It was too expensive, and it was definitely not the friendliest city on earth. Being so far from our baby’s grandparents also felt hard in ways that wistfully tugged at us to move closer to home.
One day at a stoplight near our home in a suburb of Vegas, a driver behind me laid on their horn, yelled, and flipped me off. My offense? Not turning right on red, because doing so would have meant running over a person in a wheelchair crossing the street in a crosswalk. Sheesh. (Patience is a virtue, people.)
Anyway, my spouse came home a couple of hours later and looked confused as he made a statement posed as a question, “A job opening came open in Wichita?”
“Fckn take it. Get us the $%*# out of here,” was my reply before I even had a chance to think about it.
We decided we’d go back to Kansas for two years, maybe three tops. All previous conversations about moving closer to “home” had us no closer than Colorado Springs, but we could do two years back in Kansas, right? We’d survived two years in Las Vegas where everyone tried to sell you something and people in my moms’ club casually snorted blow at children’s birthday parties. (“None for us, thank you.”) We could make Kansas a quick adventure, just like our time in Nevada. Or so we thought.
We moved back to Kansas in 2008 and somehow just keep putting down roots that make it harder each year to imagine going anywhere else long term.
As I’ve already said, I’m not a sugarcoating sort of person, though, so I’m gonna be honest;
Kansas can be hard to love sometimes too.
Every winter when the wind chill is -12°F and the wind freezes my face I wonder, “Why the f#@& do I still live here?!” As a queer activist and advocate, experiencing a growing number of state legislators continue to fight for anti-LGBTQ legislation makes me and many of my friends and family feel unwelcome. With the passing of each bill that tells my people, my friends, and my family that they/we don’t belong, I think, “Why the f#@& do I still live here?!”
And why TF DO I still live here? It turns out, I’ve learned to capture this question when I think it and use it as an opportunity for me to pay attention to something I teach my clients about called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).
Science break!
The Reticular Activating System is a small part of the brain. Its main function is to filter the billions of pieces of data we encounter each day. Since human brains weren’t made to actually process the overwhelming amount of input coming at us constantly, the RAS acts like our personal assistant and helps us focus on what our thoughts and beliefs tell it to focus on. Essentially, it helps create our reality by filtering out the things that don’t align with our thoughts and beliefs and increasing our awareness about the things that do. It’s the science behind the “woo” when it comes to “manifesting the life you want to live”. In effect, what you focus on grows “bigger”. It’s brain science.
OK, but why do I live here again?
When I find myself frustrated and wondering, “Why TF do I live here?” I practice intentionally focusing my thoughts on the things that balance out the bad. And really, there is so much of the good that I don’t have to focus too hard. Experiencing a single glorious sunset on the expansive, rural Kansas horizon can help me endure the next freezing winter. The 12 days each of Spring and Fall when it’s not too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy or too buggy help too.
When I think of why the f#$& I DO live here, it’s all about the people—the Kansans I know, love and admire. There are generations of resilient, stubborn, innovative, determined, passionate people who have fought and continue to fight for equality, equity and justice in this place I know as home. Thinking of them and their grit and resilience fortifies me to continue to do the same. When I think of them and the progress they pushed for in spite of the trials they endured, it makes me think of our state motto: Ad astra per aspera. To the stars through difficulty.
Per aspera, through difficulty
Kansas can be a tough place to live, but Kansas has always been a tough place to live. Any descendants from the four remaining (and federally recognized) indigenous nations of Kansas could testify to that. Not only did indigenous peoples survive and thrive in the harsh environmental conditions of this state long before white people arrived, but many were also forcefully removed in what many white colonizers and their kin would nostalgically remember as Manifest Destiny.
Speaking of forced removal and racism… Kansas is well known around the globe for its “Old West” and “Wild West” history. Many think of the hardships the cowboys and “soiled doves” faced in the “Wild West” from Hays to Dodge City. However, when I travel Kansas, I can’t help but also think about the historical stain of sundown towns and the impact that era still has on Kansans, especially Black Kansans through generational trauma but also on white Kansans through legacy burdens of racism, aaaand… hello, vicious cycle.*
Despite Kansas being on the right side of the Civil War, John Brown wouldn’t have his mural on the wall of our state Capitol if he didn’t fight ferociously for the abolition of slavery in Kansas. Ending slavery didn’t undo racism, though, and neither did President Dwight D. Eisenhower (from Abilene, KS) signing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. This is why in 1958, Wichita’s NAACP Youth Council held our country’s first successful civil rights sit-in and became catalysts for other groups across the country to do the same.
Not every Kansan who championed progress chose to stay, though. Despite being born and raised in rural Kansas, Gilbert Baker, the creator of the flag recognized, flown, and worn around the world as a symbol of Pride, left Kansas because it was as hostile to him during his youth of the 1950s and 60s as it is today for LGBTQ+ youth, especially trans youth.
Ad astra, to the stars
I often wonder how much talent our state loses due to the fact that it can be so, so hard to live here. And that’s part of why I choose to stay and choose to love this place harder. I want every single Kansan to make it “to the stars” and to thrive with their divinely gifted skills and talents.
I want Kansas to be a welcoming birthplace to innovation that leads to progress on all of our collective challenges. Innovative and indomitable spirits willing to buck social norms to reach for the stars (like Amelia Earhart, Atchison, KS) have lived here for centuries, but what if people didn’t have to fight so hard to make it to the stars?
So, Kansas is… home, because it’s easy for me to see the power and beauty in who I choose to surround myself with—the lion-hearted people who fight for progress, equity, justice and common damn sense even when they are weary. My people are leaders who do leadership when it’s not always popular or easy, but we know from our collective history, it matters. Maybe someday history will be writing about some of them.
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Resources:
* To understand more about intergenerational trauma and legacy burdens, I can’t recommend the following books enough:
- My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Dr. Resmaa Menakem
- Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd edition) by Richard Schwarz, PhD
BONUS:
Want to see some pictures of the jaw-dropping beauty and power of Kansas that really help define the word “awesome”? Check out this gallery by my friend and photographer, Travis Heying.