A few months ago, thanks to my dear friend Michelle,  I discovered the fantastic Yes and Yes website. I’ve loved clicking on the great links suggested in ‘web wasters’ posts, applying the super easy tip of “do whatever you are supposed to do 20 minutes a day and watch it add up” (I am now several pages farther in my proposal than I was a week ago) and reading her ‘True Story” series.

What a great way to kick off a Monday when I saw that my interview was featured into today’s True Stories! I hope you enjoy it.

Once upon a time…My old theatre materials

Somehow the whole room gives off a red glow.  I am not entirely sure how this is occurring just as I am also not entirely sure this call-back audition isn’t going to be conducted in the foyer of an old tenement house. The ornate and curved staircase keeps bumping against my purse as I jostle with the other actors while trying to manage my jacket, water bottle and flip though the script to hastily read through the sides before my name is called.

It’s early December 2007 and I am at the third and final callback for a show whose name I don’t remember (for those who are unfamiliar with the world of acting, there is the audition which if you make it successfully through you are asked to come to the ‘callback’ where they have narrowed the list of actors down, if you make it through that round you are then asked to the final callback- the event where your fate of being cast or not is decided).

I had left my temp (meaning paid by the hour) job early to make it down here. For the previous auditions, I had braved the poorly running subway on an early Saturday morning and missed 2 hours of work thus impacting my scant take home pay.

At the time of the final callback, I still wasn’t clear on just what the show was about as I had not yet been shown the script. It had been described to me as “a dysfunctional comedy about the holidays”. Oh, and they were curious if I would be willing to appear in a bikini to sing “Joy to the World”. Hmmm.

So here I was at the final callback with the script finally in hand. And you know what I did after I read it?

Walked out.

I stood for a second taking in what I had just read and mulling it over. An orgy between the Christians and the Jews is what the director had referred to as a “show stopping number”.  My parents would want to drive down to see me in the show, I would have to take more time off of work for this unpaid part and it was just straight up bad writing. Yea, no. I turned around and placed the script quietly on the stairs behind me and left.

That was one of my last auditions.

Since moving to Oklahoma City to pursue anti-human trafficking work, I have been asked several times if I have auditioned out here and when I say “No”, they ask why. I have had a really hard time concretely answering that question.

So I decided to make myself answer it.

Sometimes you make a choice in life and at that moment it may not seem like such a major one but looking back you see it changed the trajectory of your life. While on a Skype call with an old friend (met in my freshman year of acting class), he talked of how his hate for living in the dorms freshman year prompted him to accept a full-time job which allowed him to move out to an apartment for the rest of college. That job also took away time he may have had for auditioning. He excelled at his job, working his way up and up and eventually to a new company with a better title and a better paycheck. At the time, following this career momentum seemed like the rational choice to make and he doesn’t regret it but did he pursue his dream of being an actor the way he thought he would when he first arrived in NYC? No. What did he give up? But what did he gain?

Staring at my friends face through my computer screen as we talked on Skype, I suddenly realized there is a visceral reason why:

I am afraid of acting again and feeling pulled towards something that should stay shut.

For so long, and often at a high price, I pursued acting as my career and I am not sure if I know how to do it as a hobby. I have years of training under my belt and want to use it. I had loved acting but it didn’t love me back. Opening that can of worms seemed oddly scary to me.

I always say New York City made who I am and taught me what I am made of. While this is true, what brought me to NYC was my desire to be an actor. Being an actor is responsible for the trajectory of my life that took me right here to this place- living in Oklahoma City working in the social services world and completely committed to abolishing human trafficking. A place I firmly believe is the right location and the right cause for me.

What if that was acting’s purpose in my life, to bring me right here? Would making acting the focus reignite those old dreams and wishes and turn my focus away from what I believe is my calling?

As it often happens once you identify or face down a ‘fear’, you realize you are in control of it and the fear is not controlling you. I realized I should be more open to incorporating that love into my current world. It’s a part of me, shaped the story of my life and just maybe (especially with my new partnership with the founder of End Sex Trafficking Day) there are ways to have both without sacrificing your purpose and it can, in fact, enhance it.

When I was in Thailand the children, unable to pronounce my name, nicknamed me “Dara”. Dara is the Thai word for actor. The children nicknamed me this without knowing I had ever been an actor. I have a small tattoo of my Thai name to remind me of my life in NYC and of my leap of faith to Thailand- one chapter leading to the other.

I’m seated in a café bar in the art district of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (which may sound like an oxymoron to some). Live music playing behind me, soft lighting from the lamp on the table highlighting the features of my table companions, the bronze bar top gleaming softly.

“Go on” urged my friend to the guy sitting to my left, “Ask her where she moved here from.”

He obliged, turning to look at me and asked.

I smiled benignly “New York City”.

His eyes widened “Uh, then why are you here?”

“Because this is where I am supposed to be right now,” I responded.

He considered that for a moment and then turned to the rest of the table, “Well,” he said “you definitely can’t argue with that.”

You can’t but for the past several months I had been trying to.

In 2010 I left NYC to move to Thailand to work with The Sold Project; an organization which provides resources to at risk youth. Even before I came back at the beginning of 2011, I knew NYC was no longer my home and, while I was enjoying a seasonal live-in position out on Long Island (close enough to go to NYC on weekends), for months I knew somewhere else was calling to me. I just didn’t yet know exactly where was.

I was on the platform of the Long Island Railroad when I made the split second decision to move to Oklahoma. It was that fast to do but took that long to make.

In the spring I had attended an anti-human trafficking conference where I learned of the major trafficking occurring Stateside with Oklahoma being a problem state. I had girlfriends from NYC who had relocated there a few years back and, more importantly, I had felt called out to that part of the country even when sitting in my little wooden room in the middle of a rice field in Thailand.

I packed it up and moved cross country to a place I had never seen and got down to the business of figuring out what it was that brought me to the Midwest. And waited and waited. Getting oriented in the culture out here was more of a journey than I had anticipated.

In the beginning I was full of energy and positivity; I connected with anti-trafficking orgs, met some friends who took me in and took me out and around OKC, dated a ton, for the first time I was active in a church and I found myself saying “excuse me” and “ma’am” as I never had before but then the momentum stopped. It took me six months to find a job that I could say ‘yes’ to without feeling like I was going backwards (six months while I watched my bank balance dwindle and dwindle) then six months into the job, I developed shingles due to stress and a dysfunctional work environment and left.

I was so thankful for the friends I had made yet struggled with finding a larger community and more like-minded women. I always had things to do Saturday and Friday night but was accustomed to a richer social life. The dynamic surrounding relationships out here wasn’t one I was used to and a dynamic I wasn’t sure I liked participating in. I felt isolated and out of sync and, sometimes, not unlike how I felt before I decided to leave New York City. So what did this mean? What was the point? Did I have to re-locate again after only being here a little over a year?

I was struggling with emotions I didn’t have a lot of experience with. I felt like I was too young to feel this way. I didn’t doubt moving out here was the right choice but… was I really supposed to feel this unhappy?

In those raw and real and hard moments, I faced down and eventually answered questions I hadn’t realized I wasn’t even thinking about before. Those moments helped me figure out my life priorities and goals beyond just my calling career-wise. While I do believe when you are in the right place in your life things will happen but sometimes there are moments or places – twilight places- in your life you can’t rush through. When you’re in the biggest apartment you’ve ever had, surrounded by different attitudes, different life choices, accents and codes of conduct, you learn how you fit in or how you don’t and you learn how you interact with those new situations and what it brings out in you. When you are in a situation where you are considered (however kindly) the oddity and conversations peter out once the woman realizes you aren’t married and don’t have kids- you start examining how that makes you feel and why.

Being honest about how difficult this has been for me is something I have struggled with. But once I put aside my pride and put aside my determination to make it work and allowed myself to go through what I was feeling, it got better. I was being real and I was being honest and things changed. I stopped being resentful as it dawned on me the hard moments caused by my transition out here lead to important life realizations; and maybe those realizations are exactly why I was brought out here. My friends more than stepped up to the plate once I communicated how I was feeling. Suddenly career opportunities and encouragement came out of unexpected areas reinforcing the point that I was at the right place. I met more people thus building a community and more relationships that have depth. I started volunteering which helps me keep it all in perspective.

The other day at lunch a friend of mine remarked if there was one word to describe me she would say it was the word “truth.” I think that’s the best affirmation I’ve received in a long time.

This time here and all its ups and downs, career acceleration, and loneliness, created a lot of time with myself thinking about where I want to go, what I want, what I can do and what matters. Being unhappy has deftly illustrated what does makes me happy.

Thanks to Oklahoma, I am in a better place to receive and to give to whatever comes next in my life.

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A huge proportion of the women I know enough to talk with about it have survived an attempted or completed rape. None of them was raped by a stranger who attacked them from behind a bush, hid in the back of her car or any of the other scenarios that fit the social script of stranger rape. Anyone reading this post, in fact, is likely to know that six out of seven rapes are committed by someone the victim knows.

Read more… 3,225 more words

A while ago I was contacted by a blogger, via the Twitterverse, to write a post on keeping the faith while fighting injustice. At the time I was overwhelmed with life outside of writing and not actually sure what my thoughts were on the matter or where my faith was exactly.

Nearly a year later I had the time and the answer.

A few weeks ago I had the fun of being her first guest blogger in her series “13″. Please check out the post here.

Two nights ago I had a phone call with Erin, the founder of End Sex Trafficking Day and editor of ”End Sex Trafficking: Let’s Be Impossible to Ignore” (of which I contributed an essay to). We had a fantastic brainstorming session for ‘EST 2013′ and if anyone knows of artists who may be interested in this cause, please have them contact me.  I look forward to sharing more details of this soon!

I have often been asked if I find it defeating to work for a cause (primarily made up of non-profits) to fight the enormous multi billion dollar industry of human trafficking.

The answer is “sometimes”. Not always and not often but sometimes.

Sometimes the issue of human trafficking is so horrifying in its scope it’s hard to keep the faith and see success, especially when Congress chooses to let Safe Harbor Laws  (laws that define sexually exploited children as victims of abuse instead of criminals, helps them find protection and support, and grants them immunity from prosecution for prostitution) and the Violence Against Women Act lapse. It can feel like just when it seems awareness and education is taking place and progress being made, a giant step backwards happens… at a federal level.

However, I have learned focusing on the scope isn’t always beneficial. There are many things that when you stop to think of the whole picture/ the end result you’d never have the energy or the courage to take that first step. It really comes down to putting one foot in front of the other. To think of the one person you are working for instead of the  100,000 children estimated to be in the sex trade in the United States each year because reaching that one person (one after another) is way more attainable than focusing on saving all 100,000 at once.

This past December I had the honor of attending and speaking at The Sold Project’s End of Year Event (it was super fun to spend time with Rachel, the President of SOLD, in the USA for the first time).

Rachel and I at SOLD’s event

We talked about a recent issue that took place with some of our students in Thailand.  Some of SOLD’s students were being solicited and “courted” (buying their friendship and if you will, their silence and obedience by giving poor girls cellphones and gifts)  by a woman who works at an escort service in Chiang Rai. One of our kids made the brave and scary choice to tell SOLD and her parents what was happening and ask for help.

Was it frightening to remember how real the exploitation these children face is? Yes. Was it disheartening to learn some of the girls were still communicating with this woman? Yes. Did it make me sick to know one of our girls, one SOLDs first students, went along with this for awhile? Yes. Was this a testament to the importance of SOLD that this girl asked SOLD for help? Yes. Yes, only one asked for help but help she received. In asking for help and notifying SOLD what was happening, SOLD was able to notify officials about what this woman was doing and, hopefully, preventing her from being able to contact vulnerable village schoolchildren.

As Rachel wrote ” [Like Mother Teresa said] If you can’t feed 100 people, then feed just the one. Or, for The SOLD Project, if you can’t prevent all 60,000 (# of estimated children in Thailand’s sex trade), then prevent just one.”

January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. You do have the power to help the one. Will you?

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil

Is that good men and women do nothing.”

People in 76 countries read my blog this year?! That is awesome. Thank you. I promise to write more in 2013- I have a feeling there is another adventure about to be kicked off and there is still so much advocating to be done.

2012: you have not been my favorite year but in the spirit of being appreciative and positive, we did have some good moments together & exciting things happen career wise. I’ve a feeling in retrospect you will make a little more sense.

Rock on 2013 and Happy New Year everyone!

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Yet there is a flip side. Oklahoma in some ways is like the 1960’s. I’ve had people assume I’m married and when they find out I am not, they then ask if I have kids (I think to see if I am divorced), initially assume the traveling I have done is on account of the fact I married a military man and refer to any man I date as “my man” within 3 dates of my meeting him. I, on the other hand, marvel at the 25 year olds parents with 2 children, have dated men who are divorced with kids and in their early 30’s and been frustrated at the trend of co-dependency here.

It’s also been a helluva month in other ways. Among other things (including the return of The Shingles (OUCH)) I had nearly $700 in unexpected expenses show up. The other day I dutifully printed off a coupon for a budget friendly oil change at Jiffy Lube. Boy, was I wrong.

Jiffy Lube was quite a friendly bunch (although I did become slightly on guard when the young guy checking me in heard my Irish name and began unbuttoning his work shirt to show me his Irish family crest he had tattooed on his upper chest). After exclaiming over the miles on my 10 year old car (196,000+ here is looking at you), I was politely escorted into the office to wait while they worked on my car.

As I sat, mouth breathing so as not to inhale the smell of gas and oil that seemed to saturate the air, an older gentleman limping and using a cane came and sat diagonally across from me. As we exchanged friendly nods in greeting, the mechanic walked out into the office carrying something in his hand.

“Do you know what this is?” the mechanic asked me.

I took it in for a moment. “A bird’s nest?” I guessed.

“No, your air filter.”

And it just went downhill from there.

As I watched the estimate for my car climb from the expected $20 with a coupon to over $100, I could tell the mechanic could read the tension tightening my face. He very kindly explained to me he could give me 30% off but under no circumstances could he in good conscience just shake off my air filter and return it to my car and I agreed to have it replaced. He left to complete the job and the older gentleman smiled at me in commiseration.

“You made the right choice you know,” he said kindly. He told me how he had waited to replace something on his car and ultimately it ended up costing him $400.

“Wish I had those $400 for groceries,” he said wistfully. “But you know, God is good and He provides.”  I nodded in agreement and he reinforced his point, quoting some Scripture to back it up.

We chit chatted about in-consequent things and from what he did and didn’t say, I could tell the man did not have much. I handed him my card and told him if he ever knew of anyone who needed something to give me a call as my company has over 30 social services programs available.

“Oh, thank you for your kindness ma’am. God always does provide like I said,” he smiled and launched into a bit of sermon–esque monologue on God’s goodness and faithfulness.

“You know your Bible well,” I commented to him while the New York trained part of me sent its radar up, wondering if I was about to have a religious fanatic break loose.

“Oh yes, I do,” He replied, smiling. “I used to be minster when I was younger.”

Before I could respond, the mechanic walked back in.

“Mrs. Flynn, we’ve your bill ready for you,” he called out, turning to look at me.

I benignly smiled. “Miss,” I replied.

He looked flummoxed.

As I gathered my purse and walked to the register, he had recovered enough to ask a question I can only assume he may have meant as a compliment.

“Why aren’t you married, girl?”

“Well, there are a few reasons,” I replied as politely as I could. “1. I was smart enough to not marry any of my exes 2. I haven’t met the right person yet and isn’t that the best reason to not be? (I heard the older gentleman laugh softly in agreement behind me) and 3. Respectfully- where I come from, nobody but nobody gets married as young as you people do.”

As the mechanics eyes widened and he laughed, the gentleman behind me spoke up,

“Good for you. Those are perfect reasons to not be married. As you know and as the Bible says in Psalm 37:4 ‘take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart’.

I turned around to face the man, startled. He sat, suddenly looking as together as I had seen him thus far, looking right at me with a half smile on his face as if he realized the impact of his words. His smile widened and he repeated the verse again. The mechanic pushed my receipt towards me and as I turned around to sign it, I felt a bit flustered.

Over the past couple of months as these crossroads have drawn closer and I’ve had a few soul searches, this verse kept returning to my mind again and again and it spoke deeply to my heart about where I was at and what I need to do. To have this man, on a day and week which had not been the best for me, quote it to me and in the context in which he did, really hit me.

I finished signing my receipt, thanked the mechanic, said goodbye to the older man reminding him to use my card if he had a need and walked outside towards my car. As I opened the driver door, I heard the garage’s door swing open.

“Miss,” I looked up and the older gentleman was standing, somewhat awkwardly, near my car.

“Yes?” I smiled politely.

He moved his cane forward and leaned on it heavily as if his left leg hurt but the smile stayed on his face. His next words hit me like a ton of bricks and have stayed with me since then as encouragement as I look ahead to the future. I don’t think his word choice was accidental and I believe people are sent into your life as messengers when you need clarity most.

“I can tell you’re someone who’s been following what it is God wants you to be doing with your life and I just wanted to say…”

Here he paused and, straightening himself up, looked me right in the eye.

“Keep the faith, sister.”

Erin Giles — Business Philanthropy Coach is bringing a straight up resounding call to action with a message, that hits straight to the core and I’m honored to be a part.

Buy a copy of End Sex Trafficking for $20 — a collection of 60 essays on love, knowledge + freedom by trailblazers like Seth Godin, Danielle La Porte, Jonathan Fields and yours truly— and all of the authors proceeds goes to the Not For Sale Campaign an organization fighting to abolish slavery every single day.

None of the essay contributors, the publisher or the editor is taking any money from sales, it’s not just a book, it is a chance to change the world.

More than 27 million human beings are enslaved in the world in 2012.

So — you want to stand up for freedom…today?

BUY THE BOOK HERE.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing.”

I saw something in Wal-Mart the other morning which has haunted me and, no, it wasn’t the disastrous nutrition options, the mullets or the fact there are 27 check-out lines and only 7 of them are ever open.  No, it was much more real and much more heartbreaking than that.

As I searched for a line which wasn’t ridiculously long to wait in for the small amount of items I had to purchase, I turned my cart into a row and quietly came to a stop. In front of me were two women with  slightly matted hair pulled into messy buns, twitchy arms, well washed and misshapen cheap clothes, matching tattoos on their lower right shoulder and one of them –and this has stayed with me- had her feet were in flip flops,  the bottoms of her feet thick with cracked, dry, dirty and grey skin. I haven’t been able to shake that image. They exuded a nervous yet determinedly cocky energy and didn’t interact with the two men who were with them.

The two men.

One was not even my height (I’m 5 1”) and on a phone talking in a jocular tone of voice about the party he was hosting and how he wanted his friends to come. The other man was skinny, younger than the other man and appeared slightly anxious as he pushed a Trojan party pack of condoms down the counter towards the cashier.

Everything about that made me sad; including the fact I couldn’t say anything or do anything to intervene or to encourage these women that they are worth more.

I don’t know if these women were being pimped or if they were there by ‘choice’ (although I have to quote a mantra of survivors of sex exploitation “if prostitution is a choice, then we have failed to offer other choices”) or despite appearances and my assumptions, they were friends with or dating those men. I don’t know what circumstances lead them there, if they are close friends who have matching tattoos or were branded by their pimp and I don’t know what exactly happened at the party his friend was raving about having.  I didn’t know if they were being pimped, where and who the pimp was and what could happen to them and to me if I approached them and struck up a conversation.

What it did drive home for me is how easy it could be to see something not quite right and dismiss or judge it as something else. It drove it home for me how easy it is for exploitation to take place in front of someone’s eyes and no one is the wiser.

“When a community is not aware of what’s going on, it’s hard to protect someone.” Oklahoma based Trafficking survivor Jeanetta McCrery, 41, of Tulsa told NewsOK.com.

As told to NewsOK.com McCrery said she was kidnapped, drugged and assaulted at age 11 after going with friends to a house in north Tulsa. Within a year, she was arrested for the first time on a prostitution charge.

By the 1990s, she was working as a prostitute for what she described as the Mexican Mafia in Texas. When she sought to escape the group, McCrery said, she was stabbed 36 times and barely survived.

“You don’t just walk away from that when you’re in that lifestyle,” McCrery said. “You know and see so much.”

Unfortunately Oklahoma, where I have found life to be polite and relatively wholesome compared to where I’ve been, rates in the top percentile in terms of many high-risk categories for human trafficking and percentage of women incarcerated, domestic abuse, teen pregnancy, and poverty and youth homelessness. There are many wonderful organizations who provide for communities (and I am pleased to be working at one) however for most of these organizations their lack of knowledge on the extent of human trafficking, especially in Oklahoma, prevents them from being able to identify victims who may utilize the agencies services. “Contrary to public opinion, the worst of America’s human trafficking arguably doesn’t involve foreign women smuggled into the United States, but homegrown girls,” (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times).

This problem is at such mammoth proportions and people and law enforcement still treat the women as if they are the criminals. Brian Bates, the founder of JohnTV.com says “People try to water down prostitution to a woman just selling what she could otherwise give away for free and it’s simply not the case when we’re dealing with prostitution I’ve seen in Oklahoma,” Bates told Fox 25.  “You almost never have prostitution that doesn’t involve addiction, coercion and some sort of abuse.  If you remove those three elements they wouldn’t be prostituting.”

However there are signs this perception is changing. The Tulsa World recently reported a law was passed by the Legislature Panel created a new, seven-agent unit within the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs dedicated to investigating human trafficking. Darrell Weaver, the agency’s executive director, said, “Someone told me years ago that human trafficking could be larger than drug trafficking. I didn’t want to believe them, but the more we look at this, it’s surely more troubling because of the victims.”

As leading anti human trafficking advocate Nicholas Kristof said in his  article on Obama’s recent speech addressing human trafficking; “normally, if a man has sex with a young girl, he risks jail and she gets counseling. But, if she has a pimp who earns $50 from the transaction, then everything changes: The man may get a slap on the wrist and the girl may go to jail. Does that make any sense? …If Representative Todd Akin’s remarks about “legitimate rape” provoked uproar, shouldn’t it be incomparably more offensive that millions of human beings are still trafficked in the 21st century? Yet the world often scorns the victims and sees them as criminals: these girls are the lepers of the 21st century.”