Willingness to reach. Capacity. Witnessing. I’ve been thinking about friendship. Relationships. They take effort. Ideally not at the expense of oneself, but maybe sometimes outside of comfort. Imagine reaching one hand outside of one’s own awareness to receive or make a bid. A connection. A high five. Reaching out. A stretch is more than a … Continue reading Reach
Words can’t encompass the enormity of humankind. Our beauty or disrepair, nor the beauty of our disrepair. One concept wears the naunce of 7 billion impressions. We are hungry to assemble meaning. Classic. Cliché. True and utterly boring. Used. Repurposed. Twisting them until they are wrung out. We repeat mantras until they’re numb. We wear … Continue reading Wrung out
I don’t know how it is in other countries, and I know some of you who follow this blog live outside of the United States of America. I can only talk about what we do here, as that’s the only experience I have. And here we have difficulty talking about race in a useful way. … Continue reading Black History Month…
Some things carry an inherent, non-negotiable weight no one person has the right to redistribute. And the intersection of these two ideas: the preservation of what is and should remain inherent, and preventing their inequitable redistribution is where we shape our legacies. Dignity. Worthiness. Accountability. It’s inevitable that survival mentality stirs in our mammalian brains, … Continue reading Rebounding
People leave. Sometimes it’s because their time in this life is done. They go, like my father did, into that place where we can still feel their presence but only in a certain new way that’s never quite enough. Sometimes our time together goes short, though we planned on it being much longer. A handful … Continue reading Depths
Self-determination. When it’s starting to break free from inside of our children, we have to celebrate it. Nurture it. I find that right after my very small child has open-handed/high-five style slapped me splat in the middle of my face, it is not the time to celebrate it. But really, after I have recovered I … Continue reading Umbilical (from 2014)
This is a risky piece to write. Nerves are raw here in the US. I am experiencing many simultaneous feelings. I’m repurposing an original piece I shared on a social media platform yesterday, adding minor edits. I’m not writing to anyone in particular. As usual, I’m sharing my sociology-minded lens to the trends I’m seeing … Continue reading Distress
Here we are. So many layers. I’m perched, benched, resting. Working differently for a time until something moves or shifts that lets me know I’m ready again. I am watching the world go by, but I’m not out in it. For now. I put my toes in the water a bit last week and I … Continue reading Hummingbirding
I haven’t posted about race or the Black Lives Matter movement for a while. And it’s pretty common that we white folks will join the dialogue and discourse vigorously when it’s popular, then hit a wall of discomfort and freeze up or abandon the work entirely. Doing the work to lateralize power, resources and privilege … Continue reading Relinquish
HONESTLY…I can’t breathe very well today and I can’t tell if there’s more smoke in my house, or my glasses are just really dirty, or if the light is filtered by the haze and making an optical illusion in here. All three. It’s all three. My unrelenting headache lets me know it’s really bad, and … Continue reading Holding on
