All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [150]
—ROBERT KEGAN, The Evolving Self
he cabin was dark on my flight from London to Mumbai, so I tapped out a journal entry in the small cone of light by my window seat. While I envy those who can sleep on airplanes, I do enjoy being alone with my thoughts. Tonight, my thoughts were focused on the mission ahead: It was March 2007, and I was about to embark on a three-week journey through India. It was a dream trip straight out of my childhood imaginings. But rather than focusing on Ayurvedic spas and colorful Hindu temples, I would be zeroed in on the largest slum in Asia and the largest brothel district in India. With more than a billion people, nearly one-third of whom live below the poverty line, $1.25 per day, and an estimated 2.5 million infected with HIV/AIDS, India is the mother ship, the big kahuna, of development challenges and an urgent platform for PSI. The pandemic had already infiltrated the subcontinent among the usual high-risk groups: prostituted and trafficked women, intravenous drug users, truckers, and migrant laborers. Now HIV/AIDS was poised to explode through a region that holds one-fifth of the people on earth. The need for measurable, sustainable, immediate intervention was—and still is—critical.
The usual team would be meeting me in India, along with a National Geographic crew who would be filming me for an hour-long documentary, India’s Hidden Plague, about how HIV/AIDS is spreading under the cover of secrecy and ignorance. I would also be meeting up with another special traveling buddy, my beloved yoga instructor, Seane Corn, whom I had invited to join PSI as a fellow YouthAIDS ambassador. Seane’s gritty street smarts and boundless compassion made her a perfect companion for an inevitably difficult journey.
I knew I would witness scenes of devastation, and I would listen to the all-too-familiar, always heart-wrenching stories of abused and abandoned girls and women. But a year had gone by since I’d entered into treatment, and I felt better prepared than ever to take on this work. Did I expect to hurt on this trip? Absolutely. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But I no longer had to hurt myself. I had recovery. I wrote in my journal: “I am often asked, sometimes quite harshly, why in the world I do this social justice work in squalid places, and I am, by the grace of God, slowly learning that piece of my own story. Simply put, I do it because I love it. But why do I love it? I have always had an absolutely insane sensitivity to sexual exploitation of any kind—overt, covert, institutionalized, spontaneous on the street, humor in movies that is outrageous yet depicted casually like there is nothing wrong with it. It hurts me. I know now that I was abused myself, and of course, it makes so much more sense.…
“My recovery brings with it healthier boundaries, loving detachment, and the ability to serve for the sake of serving, letting go of the outcomes, not because I am unconsciously wrestling my own unresolved grief. The latter motivation is not a bad thing, not at all. To do this work, it takes what it takes, but I, for one, am glad to know why the orphans and other vulnerable children affect me in a way that before could make me ill for days. Now, when I see lost children, I know that I, an empowered adult, am nurturing and loving my own little lost child in me, and that is such a beautiful thing. We are all one, and I am incredibly moved to live this out, time and again. We are one.”
My personal goal on this trip was to feel, just once, compassion, tenderness, and—dare I say it?—love for a perpetrator. To see someone who exploits other human beings and to understand completely that the behavior is not the soul. To remember that abused people in turn abuse, that behavior is a perfect reflection of the system in which they live. To truly love just one madam, pimp, or john—even if only for a breath. That is my goal. A goal that requires a Power greater than myself, for sure. So, I prayed:
God, I am now ready that You may have all of me, good and bad. Please remove every