by Ashley Judd
Our local office arranged a day for me in Soweto to look at some programs and to visit a few people. I love meeting folks in their homes, having a sense of their lives beyond the words we exchange. My first stop was the small, three-room shack of an HIV-positive woman who was struggling to live with the virus. From oppressively crowded streets, we entered through a lean-to kitchen filled with good pots and pans and a vintage stove that would suit a stylish period cottage in America. She was a baker by trade. She told me that if she were well enough to work, she’d love to do catering. The living room and bedroom were crammed with furniture; the floor was covered with dirty, loose linoleum. She told me she had buried two children from HIV-related illnesses and had one remaining daughter. As if on cue, the daughter came bouncing in from school, doing things familiar to kids everywhere: dumping her rucksack, kicking off her shoes, looking for a snack (there was none). Then a chatty neighbor came in, also HIV-positive, and she launched into an animated monologue about her illness and how hard it was to keep healthy in such a filthy environment. Soweto’s infrastructure, never much to start with, was falling apart. She complained that there was only one water tap in the whole neighborhood and one rancid toilet for ten families to share, and how sick it was making them. At first I resented this woman for interrupting and dominating the conversation, but I quickly realized that this was my Soweto after all: poor but informed, sick but informed, neglected but informed. And angry. I listened to their considerable woes and asked what I could do. Even though this was a PSI visit, they most specifically asked me to complain on their behalf to the city about their toilet, which I did.
I struggled to reconcile the disconnect between such smart, eloquent women and their ongoing victimization, but whether women rail against it or remain mute, the problems of HIV, poverty, gender inequality, lack of education, and lack of opportunity remain entrenched.
The traumas of apartheid have been replaced by a new array of social pathologies, including a surge in violent crime and an epidemic of rape. A disturbing survey conducted by Interpol and the local Medical Health Association found that one out of three males admitted to raping at least once, and more than 40 percent admit to being physically violent with an intimate partner. Some researchers posited that South African men were reacting to the emasculation and humiliation of apartheid by taking out their frustrations on the disempowered—women and children. Others blamed the rigid patriarchy that cut across ethnicities and sanctioned rape as an expression of male entitlement and privilege.
An estimated 500,000 rapes occur in every year in this country of 42 million (although only about 70,000 are reported). Forty percent of those assaults are committed against children under eighteen, an intolerable number that has been increasing at an alarming rate. Part of the upsurge is credited with a superstition, perpetuated by sangomas, or witch doctors, that men can cleanse themselves of HIV/AIDS by violating children. The only hopeful news to emerge from this sickening scenario is that grassroots groups have been organizing to counter the violence. POWA, People Opposing Women Abuse, provides legal and support services for women survivors of violence and victims of rape and domestic abuse, and the One in Nine Campaign (named for the number of rapes that are reported) advocates for the enforcement of laws against rape and gender violence. Also, various UN agencies are sponsoring “One-Stop Centres” across South Africa to offer a wide array of services to women and children who have suffered abuse and violence, including comfort and medical treatment, counseling, legal services, and crisis accommodation. They also support programs aimed at the perpetrators of violence.
Our next stop was a small, tired yard where a decrepit, hand-painted double-decker bus was parked to one side. A hand pump for water was in the center, and around it were a few small tin outbuildings. In one of them I was amazed to discover about thirty calm, wide-eyed babies sitting in an orderly row on the floor. All were AIDS orphans; some were HIV-positive, some were not. The children were subdued because many didn’t feel well, and it was terribly hot. The program here was an extremely modest foster care scheme run by a local woman. It had little, if any, funding. Neighbors and churches donated food, but some days the kids did without. They spread the kids around to locals who could handle them, and a child might not stay in the same house two nights in a row.
Seconds after walking in, Papa Jack, Kate, and I had babies to look after. It struck us how each child was placid, unperturbed about being approached and held by strangers, and in fact they reached up trustingly, undoubtedly because they were passed around so much. Papa Jack ended up with a big toddler in his arms, who was sound asleep in minutes.
“Hey, I can put anyone out,” he said proudly. He held him the entire time.
It was touching to see how nurturing the older children were to the younger. One could only hope that they didn’t end up caregivers with total responsibility for them, as so many orphans did. This contributed to the horrible cycle of cross-generational and transactional sex, when the young girls trying to feed themselves and babies had sex with older men for food and supplies and were then of course at major risk for HIV. Insist on a condom? No power to. Abstain? If you abstain, you and the little ones starve.
After their dinner of rice and pap—cornmeal mush—with gravy, the children became a little more active. I stayed for a long while, working my way through the babies until I got to Nonno, whose name meant “Lucky.” I decided to talk a walk with Nonno in my arms to a cinder-block building where I heard singing. It apparently served as a church on Wednesdays for a few adults who came to worship and be fed a snack. There was white bread, peanut butter, and juice. I sat on the floor next to a large woman who passed her sandwich to my baby, who serenely ate it on top of his rice and pap. I took off his sweaty shirt, and he cooperated perfectly, holding out one arm and then the other, and it occurred to me that he needed water. I was not supplementing his care that afternoon: I was his caregiver. He was, in fact, dehydrated, and I stayed in church with the praise and dancing filling my eyes with tears, sitting on the floor and giving sips of water to my boy until he was rehydrated. After a while, a reluctant Papa Jack came over and said everyone was waiting for me. I panicked. I couldn’t set him down. I was beside myself. After we sang “Amazing Grace,” I waved another woman over to me. I prayed with her, and that helped me do the impossible: pull myself together so I could come to grips with walking away from my sweet little Nonno and all the other children I would leave behind.
On a busy road with rough tables set up to sell sundry goods, one of our audio-video mobile units was doing its thing. The market was flooded with adults making their daily visit to pick up what provisions they might be able to afford for the evening meal. The market was also busy with kids who had been let out of school, perfect timing for some edutainment. “Fats,” our peer educator, entertained the shifting crowd with music that carried the message of the ABCs of prevention. I floated around, trying to stop counting the malnourished kids (identifiable by the rust color of their hair), and kept it more upbeat, chatting up shy (or were they defiant?) young men about safe sex. One too-cool young man explained that the goat-skin-and-hair bracelet on his wrist was worn to ensure his ancestors’ protection. I handed him an antirape flyer.
As Fats was winding down, his fellow peer educators started dancing in the street. I began to make my way toward them, then decided instead to ask some small girls to dance with me in a cooler spot under some stairs. A party broke out among us, and we added more girls, then boys, all of them grabbing to be the one holding hands with me. I led, then they led, and soon the shy ones couldn’t stand being left out and joined in, too, becoming the most animated dancers. I couldn’t count how many times I fell in love, how many times I said, “You are so beautiful,” how many times I said, “You are so smart,” how many times I said pleadingly to Papa Jack, “Just five more minutes!” But, as all things do, it came to an end, and I left Soweto perhaps the filthiest I’ve ever been, covered in dirt, snot, rice and gravy, slo
bber, my own sweat, and the sweet, tangy sweat of scores of children I hope help make Soweto a better place someday.
Back at the hotel, I soothed and calmed myself with normal, stable routines, such as hand-washing my things in the tub. I skipped my stained, caked linen pants, though, and decided I’d retire them dirty with a few other special things I kept in my closet, such as the sandals I wore my first summer in France and the sneakers in which I survived the ashram’s hikes. After so many years of following the liberation struggle, my pants were my own little piece of Soweto’s soil, sun, and soul.
It was finally time to go home. I’d had twenty days in Africa, and provided I had some sleep, I felt I could easily carry on with the work. But I wanted to be at Dario’s race that weekend. His energy beckoned me, and I couldn’t wait to connect with it. I was set to arrive at the track just in time to hustle out to the grid for a bad-airplane-breath kiss before the green flag.
During the transatlantic flight, I discovered an entire Joni Mitchell CD on the in-flight entertainment. I covered my head with my blanket and sang along with “Carey” as loud as I could without attracting attention. Then I listened to “California,” and the earphones made her so present to me, and therefore me so present to myself. I became the person I was when I was eight and “Carey” was my favorite song, or who I was when I was six and I lost my first serious fight, which happened to be with my sister, over the order of verses in “Twisted,” discovering in spite of my fierce conviction that I could be dead wrong. Or who I was in college when I played “California” on my radio show, or who I have been every time I felt the rapture of the rhythm of “Help Me” or reminded Sister on the phone of all the lyrics to “You Turn Me On I’m a Radio,” or who I was each time I drove to the theater while doing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, swept away by her brilliant orchestral revisitation of her old material. I felt all I had been, and all I am now, and it was so sweet and so here, a beautiful, almost unbearably exquisite here, my arc and my life, and the women who have entered it, oh, my hand on Nini’s belly, Sahouly’s incandescent smile turning toward me like a rising half moon, half radiant, half shy.…
“Amelia” affected me deeply tonight:
Me, well, I’ve been to Africa.
Chapter 12
BUMPING INTO MYSELF
My extraordinary big sister, Wynonna Judd. Of the many gifts she has given me, introducing me to recovery is the greatest.
The spirit is never at rest, but always engaged in progressive motion, giving itself new form.
—HEGEL, Phenomenology of Mind
n the months after my return from Africa, I should have felt on top of the world. The outer form of my life seemed perfect; I had basically done everything I had hoped to do. My film career was still thriving, and I gave performances of which I was proud in a couple of creative, inspired independent projects. The trip to Africa was a huge success, including Tracking the Monster, the VH1 documentary shot in Madagascar about PSI’s Global Fund–sponsored programs, which was broadcast in eighty-one million homes worldwide, received great reviews, and won an array of awards. In June, I was invited to testify about the AIDS crisis before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, D.C. I told the committee members that the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic was indistinguishable from the fight for gender equality, that there was nothing more important in the struggle against this virus than to urge all societies to reject violence against women and any social norms and cultural practices that cause girls and women to exchange sex for economic survival. I also spoke about PSI’s mission to a roomful of reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, where I looked in awe at the twentieth-century headlines hanging from the venerable club’s walls.
I was finally using my voice to speak out on the political level for the voiceless millions whose lives are affected by the policies being shaped in distant world capitals. Through my work with PSI and other organizations, I was earning a seat at the table, not for me, but for Ouk Srey Leak, Shola, Sahouly, and the women of Soweto whose stories had moved and inspired me to change my life.
My confidence and the smooth exterior of calm and professionalism I presented to the world, however, only disguised the growing chaos I felt inside me. On trips to see grassroots programs, I was focused and single-minded, the harrowing feelings externalized by being in settings rife with egregious examples of trauma and grief. But at home, there was nowhere outside of myself to direct and metabolize my own pain. A familiar, gnawing emptiness haunted my days and nights. I could feel the trapdoor underneath me opening again. I was having trouble modulating my behavior; I’d swing back and forth between being paralyzed and overdoing whatever I undertook. I might be able to confidently lobby archconservative Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell in his chambers, but I couldn’t seem to manage the simple task of finding a comfortable chair for my writing desk. That summer I decided to reorganize our library to accommodate Dario’s ever-increasing haul of trophies, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. I began sorting through all the unsolicited gifts that were piling up around me, writing thank-you notes and deciding what to give away, then alphabetizing all the books within genres, steaming with resentment that I “had” to waste my time processing stuff people randomly sent me that I hadn’t wanted in the first place. I could become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it and was unable to place things in their proper perspective.
I was also concerned about some frustrations I’d had during the making of Come Early Morning and a few months later on the set of Bug. It wasn’t anything awful, just work relationships that became muddled because I couldn’t seem to make my assistants understand what I was saying. I wondered if I was expressing myself poorly or if they simply weren’t hearing me. I concluded I was the common denominator and that I needed to take a look at my own behavior to tackle these ongoing communication problems.
I had embarked on a program of radical self-investigation through yoga, where teachers like Seane Corn showed me how a practice could heal on the emotional—not just the physical—level. Now I decided to augment it with a series of intensive therapy sessions with a remarkable and gentle counselor and life coach named Ted Klontz, a PhD with wide-ranging experience who was referred by an admired friend. She had said, “I trust Ted with my life.” Her endorsement made an indelible impression on me, as I had the sense that my own life might be at stake—and that I might uncover more than a simple failure to communicate.
The approach Ted began using with me is called “motivational interviewing,” which would rely upon identifying and mobilizing my own intrinsic values and goals to stimulate my desired changes in my behavior and improvements in my feelings. In our conversations, my motivation to change would be elicited from within me, and not imposed from without. Ted guided me as we discussed relationships and behaviors, past and present, validating my reality, gently pointing out my contradictions, letting me catch my own ambivalence, and make my own discoveries. Ted referred to this as helping me “bump into myself,” and it felt more organic and transformative than anything I had ever done before.
I had seen a therapist or two in the past, mainly to try to respond to episodes of major depression, but I had never before endeavored to look at my childhood and my family’s history in the context of my adult perplexities and how the two might be inextricably related. Part of the problem was that large swaths of my childhood memories were voids, so I naturally disregarded them. It had never occurred to me there was stuff buried there that I needed to uncover, discover, and discard. With Ted I began to revisit my childhood and to address my “life scripts,” the basic messages I had been given by my family while I was growing up, that have shaped—or, more accurately, warped—my self-perception ever since. However unintentionally—I don’t believe anyone did so thinking, Hey, let’s make Ashley feel abandoned and worthless—my family members’ dysfunctional behaviors led me to conclude that I was a burden, that my needs and wants were too much and were inappropriate—and cons
equently that I was unlovable. Their messages distorted my thinking, causing me to internalize the fiction that I was too hurt and damaged to heal. Ted began to help me see that while I was powerless over others, their addictions, and the way they affected me, I wasn’t helpless. As an adult I was now responsible for my own life, which included the legacy of my childhood pain. I was finally acquiring the tools that would allow me to decide what to keep in my life and what to discard—something I had always wanted, but that had eluded me.
Soon after Ted and I started working together, consistent with my characteristic “why not?” attitude in life, I offered that I was happy for us to meet with Dad if Ted thought it was a good idea. Dad and I were in a relationship again, although it was at times uneasy. For me, when something uncomfortable came up in our present dealings, it inevitably dragged along with it, like a fishing hook that dredges up tins cans and other unintentionally found junk, the unresolved, unaddressed past. It held my attention that Dario loved him, as did his friends, who uniformly enjoyed his company. I accepted that I must be part of the uneasiness between us, so in the safe space of my home, with Ted to guide us, Dad and I arranged to have our first professional therapy talk. On the appointed day, my bravado wavered. There was so much unacknowledged pain around that relationship, so much loss and grief. The idea of being vulnerable with him, showing him (and myself!) the real trauma from the terrible losses overwhelmed me.