Author: Anne Elrod Whitney

Write On, State!

Y’all, I am doing a New Thing!!

As you may have heard, here in the town of State College where I’m a professor at Penn State, football is kind of important…but so is writing! I’m nervously excited to say that I’ve started a small business dedicated to writing (but Professor remains my “A” job!).

Write On, State! LLC is dedicated to supporting writers for living authentic lives. That is, I want all human beings to have access to writing for expressing themselves, for learning, for personal health and growth, for activism, for community.

We struggle with identities, with histories, with inequities, with transitions in personal lives and in communities, with mental, physical, and spiritual health— all of which can be explored and even transformed through the practice of writing.

So many of us have been alienated from our own writing power because of experiences they had in school: maybe they were compelled to write only in specific formats, or in fear of making mistakes, or in boredom and detachment from assigned topics and prescribed processes. Also, at the same time, so many of us are in such pain. We struggle with identities, with histories, with inequities, with transitions in personal lives and in communities, with mental, physical, and spiritual health— all of which can be explored and even transformed through the practice of writing.

This means that through Write On, State! LLC, I am (or will soon be) offering:

  • Summer day camps for young people where they can experience writing that is fun and entirely their own
  • Family Writing Events where families can write together to connect and reflect
  • Reflecting on Practice workshops for any kind of work group, to build connection and offer new insights for the
  • Teacher-Writer Group Writes for teachers to reconnect to their own writing lives AND process some of the overwhelming input of classroom life
  • Making/Remaking with Art and Writing sessions where writing intersects with other creative practices like collage, building, painting, and more
  • Custom events for all ages: birthday parties, faith groups, friend-nights-out, etc.

And, for those of you not Penn State football fans, the name “Write On, State” is a play on the Nittany Lions’ fight song!

Suppose it’s a Saturday

It’s April Fools Day, and I can’t take a joke. Like, at all. Every time I’ve been fooled or pranked or tricked, the way I feel is not amused, but ashamed. It feels like everyone set against me, like I‘ve brought shame upon myself by falling for it. I know, party pooper, right? I blame long-undiagnosed autism and the aftershocks of trauma…. But other than that, I’m super fun!

No joke, I can have fun, but often when I’m doing it, I feel bad for not doing some other thing I should be doing. And I also spend a lot of time doing neither what I think I should be doing NOR what I want to do, but anxiously hovering between them, or rediscovering emails I forgot about with things that I was told to do or promised to do but have not done. So, not as fun as I could be.

Today was different. Better! It is possible that I am actually learning how better to do being human than I have done before. It was a very good Saturday, even though all my problems are still problems and all my things I’m behind on are still things.

And it’s day one of Verselove. A poem a day, or some days, all April. Here is my poem today. May you have a day like this sometime. Or even every day.

Only with this inspiration from VerseLove and Sarah Donovan of Ethical ELA would I have written a poem today. You can too!

Prof. Whitney Goes to Austin

What a day of wonder. I’m in Austin, TX, Texas being my homeland and site of a whole lot of memories of all colors and temperatures.

Today I tagged along with a coalition of survivors of child sexual abuse representing several different advocacy organizations as well as themselves. We were there to educate legislators and their staff about SOL reform bills making their way through votes that would either help or further hinder folks like me to get any kind of justice AND to expose the abusers and the organizations in which they hide.

And lots of press! These today and more tomorrow. Whew!

(And Austin and music and tacos and bats and true love. A long, deep, great day.)

Here you go! Will edit/ update later on, so please forgive these messy and unhidden links-

Here’s what should be a free link to Houston Chronicle article: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/texas-capitol-survivors-child-sexual-abuse-17854764.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vcG9saXRpY3MvdGV4YXMvYXJ0aWNsZS90ZXhhcy1jYXBpdG9sLXN1cnZpdm9ycy1jaGlsZC1zZXh1YWwtYWJ1c2UtMTc4NTQ3NjQucGhw&time=MTY3OTU0MzU1MzY1OQ==&rid=YzkxZGQzM2ItYjY4OC00NzIwLTg4ZDItNjFjN2VkZjFkOWZh&sharecount=Mg==

And also CBS Austin https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/sexual-abuse-survivors-advocate-outside-texas-capitol-for-statute-of-limitations-reform

And also Fox 4 in DFW https://www.fox7austin.com/news/survivors-protest-texas-bill-child-sex-abuse-statute-limitations-austin-capitol

And Fox 7 Austin https://www.fox7austin.com/news/survivors-protest-texas-bill-child-sex-abuse-statute-limitations-austin-capitol

Pop Quiz, or, Report to my employer on the last three years after a “Sabbatical.”

(Dear reader, I know there is irony in speaking of truth and then redacting parts of this post. However, my commitment to living in the truth does not extend to telling other people’s truths on the internet, and so I have hidden details pertaining to other people where I felt the need to give them the gift of privacy.)

Now, pop quiz time! See how many you can get correctly.

Quiz on Sabbatical Leave

Point value: 1.5% GSI or unspecified merit increase

Instructions: The statements below either do or do not describe Prof. Anne Whitney’s efforts and experiences in the period between her initial application for sabbatical and her return to service.

For each statement, fill the box in the left-hand column with “T” if true and “F” if false.

⃞Prof. Whitney gave away more than 48 cubic feet of clothes.
⃞Both of Prof. Whitney’s children changed schools.
⃞Critical family medical history was disclosed to Prof. Whitney by her parents, including the cause of death of her sister, who died before Prof. Whitney was born and was kept a secret until Prof. Whitney was 15 or 16 years old. This history would have been relevant to several critical medical issues experienced by both Prof. Whitney and her children.
⃞Prof. Whitney had a kidney stone embedded in her ureter, causing urine to flow in reverse.
⃞Two out of the three members of Prof. Whitney’s household were identified as having intellectual disabilities.
⃞Prof. Whitney led professional development for the teaching artists of the nonprofit Ridgelines Language Arts.
⃞Prof. Whitney appeared on television discussing how childhood sexual abuse affected her psychologically from childhood to the present.
⃞Prof. Whitney had a urinary tract stent for two months, causing pain upon any movement including walking.
⃞All of Prof. Whitney’s research sites (schools and professional development sites) closed/canceled.
⃞Prof. Whitney drafted a book proposal focusing on talking with children about childhood sexual abuse.
⃞Prof. Whitney used writing and social media action to make contact with more than ten additional victims/survivors, urging them to report the same coach for crimes occurring from the mid-1970s to the present.
⃞Prof. Whitney had at least five panic attacks. 
⃞Prof. Whitney had two uterine surgeries, the second of which was a total hysterectomy.
⃞All of Prof. Whitney’s doctoral students and at least three of her master’s students completed their degrees.
⃞Prof. Whitney’s mother explained that they had declined psychologist-recommended mental health treatment for her after sexual abuse. They gave as a reason that she had made hurtful and “unhelpful” comments about the family to the doctor. The same explanation was given three years later, when they again withdrew her from treatment immediately following an intake session.
⃞To date, at least 17 victims of Prof. Whitney’s sexual abuser have made reports to law enforcement, alleging crimes over a period of 40 years.
⃞After discovering that her childhood sexual abuser was still active in children’s programs, Prof. Whitney reported him to multiple authorities.
⃞Prof. Whitney enrolled in training to teach Zumba, an exercise dance style.
⃞Prof. Whitney had daily gastrointestinal symptoms.
⃞A geneticist determined that Prof. Whitney and others in her family almost certainly have genetic disorders of connective tissue, bone, vascular system, or hormone function, pending confirmation by whole exome DNA sequencing.
⃞Prof. Whitney was diagnosed with autism.
⃞Prof. Whitney incurred more than $20,000 in out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for her own care alone.
⃞Prof. Whitney had Covid-19.
⃞Prof. Whitney had twelve or more kidney stones.
⃞One of Prof. Whitney’s children was hospitalized for two weeks after an x-ray revealed a bone lesion encompassing almost 50% of the child’s femur.
⃞Prof. Whitney completed a book manuscript on high school writing instruction.
⃞Prof. Whitney was interviewed by investigators including law enforcement, federal authorities, and multiple journalists about her experience of childhood sexual abuse. The interviews required prolonged, repeated engagement with traumatic memories and personal questions about her family relationships, sexual experiences, and mental health from 1983-2022.
⃞Prof. Whitney initiated partnerships between Penn State teacher education students and middle school students.
⃞Prof. Whitney borrowed money from her parents for the first time, even though she is 49 years old and an employed professional.
⃞Two of Prof. Whitney’s colleagues died.
⃞All of Prof. Whitney’s planned sabbatical research funding sources canceled their award cycles.
⃞Prof. Whitney gained 25 pounds in less than 12 months.
⃞Prof. Whitney co-led a group of Anti-Racist English Language Arts Educators in a critical reading group. These teachers teach high school English in two schools that partner with the university.
⃞Prof. Whitney has both physical custody of and full financial responsibility for her two children, making her officially a “single mom.”
⃞Prof. Whitney accumulated a pile of clean yet un-put-away laundry so big that she could not open her closet or walk unobstructed from the bedroom door to the bathroom. It was so anxiety-provoking that she ultimately asked friends and even hired teenagers to fold and stow it. 
⃞Prof. Whitney published two books, two book chapters, and multiple articles.
⃞Prof. Whitney had a bladder resection surgery.
⃞Prof. Whitney missed deadlines for several important academic conferences.
⃞Out-of-pocket medical expenses for Prof. Whitney’s children totaled more than $15,000 in an 18-month period.
⃞Prof. Whitney’s parents explained that they had taken no action following Prof. Whitney’s experience of sexual abuse in 1983 because Prof. Whitney had said she didn’t want to.
⃞Prof. Whitney’s childhood sexual abuser was arrested almost 40 years after he assaulted Prof. Whitney, charged with multiple counts of indecency with a minor.
⃞Prof. Whitney divorced her spouse after sixteen years and two children.
⃞Two of Prof. Whitney’s books came out in the same month.
⃞Prof. Whitney canceled presentations at several important academic conferences.
⃞Prof. Whitney read more than 150 books, 19 of them memoirs.
⃞Prof. Whitney took up kayaking.
⃞Prof. Whitney played a feisty bard gnome in Dungeons and Dragons.
⃞Prof. Whitney visited HersheyPark three times. The SuperDuperLooper was closed every time.
⃞Prof. Whitney’s children required treatment from healthcare practitioners outside the university insurance network. Of the four specialties needed, three of them are not practiced by any physician in a 90-mile radius of State College. The fourth specialty required waiting lists of six months or more at all practices within a 120-mile radius.
⃞Prof. Whitney learned to make pottery using both handbuilding and throwing techniques.
⃞Prof. Whitney drafted a book proposal focusing on the professional development of summer camp staff.
⃞Prof. Whitney was diagnosed with ADHD.
⃞Prof. Whitney had untreatable uterine disease.
⃞Prof. Whitney experienced the prolonged escalation and consequences of a global pandemic (along with most Earth inhabitants).
⃞Prof. Whitney completed a book manuscript on writing practices for spiritual reflection.
⃞Prof. Whitney drafted a book proposal focusing on school literacy experiences of a student with autism spectrum disorder and high intellectual function.
⃞Prof. Whitney joined with hundreds of teacher-writers in a joint writing effort in March of 2021 and 2022.
⃞Prof. Whitney led two new workshops using writing and collage as modalities for reflection and (re)composition.
⃞Prof. Whitney served as a writing partner for women serving prison sentences in Oklahoma, via the nonprofit Poetic Justice.
⃞Prof. Whitney sold approximately 35% of a house, bought a house, and moved into it within a 30-day period.
⃞Prof. Whitney spent whole days and weeks at a time completely unable to think or write.
⃞Prof. Whitney’s children both accelerated in school in two or more subjects.
⃞Prof. Whitney survived.
⃞Prof. Whitney is writing again.

ANSWER KEY: 

No “answers” when it’s my own life I’m living. Whatever answers I have been taught about what should be, or what makes sense, or what a good or healthy or capable person would do– turns out they aren’t really what living is about, at least not if I’m aiming to live my life and not just get through it. I’m learning that, for me at least, reaching for “the answers” is like earnestly, naively trying to answer a trick question. I’ll just end up both wrong and ashamed of having fallen for it.

All I can authentically reach toward is truth. As my therapist Leslie asked me almost weekly for twelve years: What do I know right now to be true? If I look inward, if I listen to what Glennon Doyle calls my “truthiest truth,” what does the deepest me need me to know?

ANSWER KEY #2:

All of the statements are true. It’s been kind of a shitshow. Nadia Bolz Weber tells about a turning point in her own life as “having my heart of stone ripped out of my chest, and replaced again with something warm and beating, like an emotional heart transplant” (I linked to her Substack, but the best place to start with NBW is her memoir Pastrix). I had turned my own heart to stone, in hope that it would stop hurting. Maybe I even stoned myself, like they might a whore in the Bible or another outcast. This is me in January 2023, standing in a puddle of molten rock, melted lies, left with hot feet and a lot of lava around… but alive. A living human with a warm and beating heart.

On TV

The last thing I ever thought I’d be doing on TV news is talking about this! Usually it’s students of mine doing a cute performance, or maybe photos of them eating ice cream at a festival or something!

A story about telling my story

When I decided in spring 2022 to make sure that the man who had sexually abused me in 1983 had actually been officially reported to law enforcement, I did so for my own peace of mind if nothing else. I had no real sense of the places it would lead. Now Mike Spiller, a gymnastics coach who sexually abused me and who is accused by many others, has been arrested, and Danielle Lerner of the Houston Chronicle has written this loving and precisely researched story. With more to come.

Here’s a quote from the top of the full story, as it’s most personal to me:

Anne Elrod Whitney had only recently joined a girls gymnastics team at Rowland’s Northwest when she was invited to attend a team sleepover at the gym’s building in northwest Houston. It was 1983. She was 10.

What should have been a safe, fun-filled event in a familiar space instead became corrupted. 

The sleepover had the atmosphere of a school lock-in with loosely organized games, sleeping bags splayed across the floor and pizza ordered in for dinner. Kids played on the gym equipment normally reserved for rigorous instruction. Some people propped blue vinyl gym mats up against the wall to construct lean-to forts. 

At some point Whitney found herself alone in one of the forts with Mike Spiller, who she knew as a charismatic man and one of the gym’s primary coaches, out of sight between the mats and the wall. 

There, she says, Spiller snuggled with her on top of sleeping bags and began massaging her thighs and hip while commenting on her muscles. Then Spiller put his hand inside Whitney’s underwear and massaged the outside of her vagina. 

“I actually, at that time, didn’t know anything bad had happened,” says Whitney, who is now 49 and resides in Pennsylvania. “I think I liked to be somebody’s favorite, you know? And I know now, that’s the thing that happens to a lot of kids where, you know, there’s (seeking) approval in a relationship, and even affection, from somebody that you care about.” 

Nearly 40 years later, on Nov. 18 of this year, Spiller turned himself in after police in Boerne, Texas, put out a warrant for his arrest. He was booked into the Kendall County jail, where he remains on a bond of $150,000, on a charge of indecency with a child.

Read it in one of these forms:

Full investigation (for Chronicle subscribers, 99 cent paywall): https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/general/article/texas-gymnastics-coach-arrest-sexual-abuse-17618101.php

Free version of need-to-know info: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/general/article/Mike-Spiller-gymnastics-coach-sexual-abuse-Texas-17618279.php

Timeline of the allegations: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/general/article/Gymnastics-coach-timeline-17618424.php

I’m not the first to say we’re made of stories. In fact, I have sometimes heard that kind of statement and thought, “blah, I’m sure that’s true, but how trite!” And on a slightly more articulate (but equally grumpy) day, I might have thought, “Stories are meaningful and good, BUT stories don’t get someone more money or medicine or a job or a loving advocate when hard times come. Or at least, they don’t work anywhere NEARLY as well as actual materials, resources, and actions do.

And yet. AND YET! Time after time, in my own life and in so many lives and spaces and communities, I keep seeing how it is true. Stories make shape out of the messy and incomprehensible flow of experiences and ideas. Stories make lives, they make communities, and they make selves.

It’s a beautiful idea and one that I’ve built a life’s work around. Even when I haven’t been aware of it, this idea about the meaning and power available in acts of in storying, storytelling, revising, etc. has threaded through all of my work in writing, research, teaching, teacher education, parenting, and faith.

We don’t make all the components of these stories. We don’t get to pick where and when we are born. Whether our ancestors or our current selves were or are oppressed and/or oppressing. What our bodies look like and the histories of how are bodies are seen in the places we find ourselves. The movements of populations, celestial bodies, revolutions. Diseases. So little is under our control.

And yet. We are always making and remaking the stories from which and into which these components flow. We string together events and feelings and wonderings and all the other bits and pieces into narratives. And as we grow, as we acquire additional story elements, or as our vision changes, we get to change the stories.

What a gift of power.

Abuser in jail. Boom.

They got him. This is Mike Spiller, the gymnastics coach who sexually abused me when I was 10. It took 39 years, but tonight there’s ONE LESS ABUSER out there getting away with it.

Thanks so much to the people who shared, retweeted, looked up old photos, etc. It took your help to turn up enough of my fellow victims/warriors to get here.

If you had interaction with Mike Spiller that in any way connects to his 40-year career as a gymnastics coach, camp leader, and pedophile, please get in touch with me and/or call the Crimestoppers number in the photo.

It’s never too late to tell the truth. We may not change the facts, we we sure can change the story!!

Talk about “just-in-time” delivery!

“This is an example of what we call ‘just-in-time’ inventory.”

Maybe these are not the words you think of a new grandmother saying to her first newborn granddaughter, but if you know that both of my parents are CPAs and that there’s only so much a new mom can chit-chat, it makes more sense. I’d had my newborn home for just a couple of days, and I spent almost all time nursing and nursing that hungry baby, and was a sick combination of exhausted and restless, weeping daily by 6:30 pm an dgenerally no fun at all to be with. So an uncomprehending newborn baby was basically all Grandmamma had in terms of people to talk to. And my mom thinks about stuff like inventory strategies a lot more than theh grandmothers in books and movies do. And I have to admit, I laughed, so it was a good relief from the tension of sleeplessness and adjustment. And I also did not know what just-in-time inventory was*, so hey, it was informative. If you’re wondering, it means a way of managing such that you don’t have piles of materials sitting around but instead have the materials arriving just as you’re about to need them.

*The reason I did not know this term is because having two accountant parents and having a stronger-than-average drive to individuate, I refused to listen to any financial-related info ever if I could help it. And it was hard to help it: two and sometimes three televisions were on with different financial channels and shows on each one for what felt like 24-hour financial education opportunities. Opportunities I rejected, to my later disadvantage most likely, though feel free to look me up when I’m retired and see. So defensive I was of my creative spirit that when Mom suggested I take typing in high school, I adamantly replied, “Why? I’m not going to work Sitting in Some Office!” Apparently I thought all the creative jobs were done standing up and/or outdoors. And that computers, which at that point were original Mac and some early PC clones, were not really going to catch on. Annnnnd now I am a writer for a living, literally typing in an office NOW, and I’m ergonomically horrid.

I’ll never forget my mom speaking these words to my newborn daughter 15 years ago, watching me on the sofa, again, under a baby again, nursing again. I was always on the sofa it seemed and never fixing dinner even though I was so hungry, never cleaning up the mess someone had left just a few feet away, never getting any item from one room to another or getting that glass of water I needed or shower I needed or book I forgot in the other room or or or or or.

Then, your mileage may vary if you’re normal like other moms seemed to be (ok, seem to be, present tense, even now when said newborn is 15 with a ten year-old sibling), but for me it went on feeling just about the same for most of both my children’s early years. I felt behind, always failing in some area, be it cleaning or work or wife-ing or just general being. I was trapped under a baby, and later just trapped, trapped in a body in one place at a time and on one relentlessly advancing timeline in which I could never, ever do enough, catch up, do things right. Never have enough or know enough or be efficient enough or strong enough to do all these many important things. Never organized enough or disciplined enough, or relaxed enough or healthy enough. Never enough.

My head was pretty much always working through how I would get my act together. It went a little something like this:

ME: I feel like there's just not enough time for everything I'm supposed to do.
ALSO ME: Your colleague seems to make time. Why can't you?
M: It's not the same. Their kids are way older, and their spouse stays home with the kids anyway, and doing things like laundry and having dinner ready. 
AM: Well, the rest of the department won't know that. They'll just think it's you.
M: Shit. I'm getting up at 5 daily already! I can only do so much. I'll have to try again to divide up the work more fairly at home. Even if I had one more hour a couple times a week...
AM: He can barely do what you're asking of him now. Cut him some slack; some husbands do less! Manage your time better. You wasted a whole hour last night watching TV on the couch. 
M: I meant to be packing lunches then, but I was so tired...
AM: And then you conked out early, and you know you need to be having more sex or you're going to end up alone.
M: Being alone wouldn't...
AM: Shut up; you'd be a basket case. No way you can keep all this up on your own.
M: You're right. I know. I can't even keep it all up now. I'm fucked.

And then because minds can be real assholes, as in even worse than it was already being alI day long in conversations like that one, I also felt (feel!) bad that I felt bad about this. Now, I’m a grown-ass woman with a Ph.D.! And I know for a FACT that this isn’t just me. I have read articles! Peer reviewed articles! I actually offended myself as a feminist for feeling like I was supposed to breadwin AND do all the mom stuff AND clean AND oh yeah put out more… but none of that stopped me from feeling it. And then judging the feeling as a dumb feeling to have. Like, I could just feel like I was failing, and that would be bad, but my head prefers the layered, deeply grooved bad of reflexive-looping self-judgment bad. It’s a bit like having that same exact argument with someone you love for the millionth time, and knowing that nothing will change AND you may actually be doing damage…but to yourself.

So a newborn gets just-in-time inventory from a boob, but my mind goes either for excess or extreme scarcity. Excess: My mind appears to have excess stock of poison. Scarcity: I know I am supposed to know that it’s not me, and that I have enough and am enough, and that a lot of my feelings of inadequacy are really just what it feels like to like and work in America in 2022. Yet often my heart rejects the knowledge, seeing just empty shelves where intentionality and self-compassion and acceptance should be. (I think they’re somewhere near the empty shelves for grading, baking, getting grants, raking, and putting away laundry.)

And then, just in time, this text floated near me!

Somehow, I was able to pick it from the air and feel myself set right– or at least right enough to keep going. Nadia Bolz-Weber’s take on the parable of the mustard seed is that it’s not that the mustard seed WILL grow to be enough, it’s more like just a seed IS enough. Now. (Seriously, she even uses Greek grammar to do this, so you know my nerdy heart was extra open to her point.) The disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, and in answering that, she writes:

Jesus isn’t actually scolding them for not having even the tiniest amount of faith – instead when they ask him to increase their faith he’s basically rejecting the premise of their request.

In essence, he seems to imply that what they need isn’t  more faith,

What they need to realize is that the thing they already have IS faith.

It’s like Jesus is saying how much faith do you have? and I’m like I don’t know Jesus, it’s not very much it’s like barely any and Jesus is saying “perfect!”

That’s a different message entirely isn’t it?

I think this message is for the humanist lacking faith in one’s own sufficiency to circumstances as much as the Christian’s. I don’t have enough, I can’t do enough, my faith is not enough– these are the earworm-y jingles that fear plays on the pianos of our heads. And we let those fill our ears, let them distract us from what we know deep down to be true, and end up seeing ourselves as empty cupboards, tiny seeds, when the truth is: here we are, human and all, already having just what it takes to be human. Not great reassuring piles of what we need, and not all stocked in ahead of time so that we feel ready. But already, always, we are who we need to be to live the moments we live through. Just in time.