Perceptions of Modern Poverty

I wanted to talk to you today about something that’s been on my mind since it came up. Money.  I once had a partner hand me a book about debt and budgeting, but instead of being helpful it simply recommended I quit my job and find one that paid better and invest all my savings.  He didn’t understand why the advice didn’t apply to me, as someone who lived paycheck to paycheck and had no savings to invest let alone the resources to find this magical unicorn job.  Money is a hard thing to talk about, especially in relationships, but it’s something I often have to sit down with partners to explain, because perception does not always define reality for someone who has no basis of understanding.

For those who have always lived in a place of privilege, poverty often exists as a very black and white issue. You either have money or you don’t. You either spend it, or you can’t. You’re either destitute or you’re fine.  This is why you hear people say things like “if you didn’t buy Starbucks maybe you could afford to buy a house” not understanding that, flawed credit system aside, poverty is not the extra $10 a week we sometimes have, it’s the extra $500 a month we never have. It’s the credit ruined by medical bills and one missed payment. It’s debt incurred by a sick day we had to take six months ago. 

I’ve grown up in the constant tug of war of poverty, where one week you’re fine but the next you’re struggling. If you’re not on the rollercoaster, the answer seems to be clear. “Save that $10”. Sure. I could. And I’d still be $10 short next week and pressed under the mental and emotional strain of living in a constant state of survival. The small amount of dopamine I get from a $5 taco is worth it, believe me. If you’ve never had to scrape change for bread from the corner market you can’t possibly know how rich it feels to be able to splurge on a taco once in a while. Im grateful not to be that bad anymore, but that trauma response remains. 

This is where perception plays a big role.  I spend extra on good makeup for work because if I wear cheap makeup every day my face will break out in painful rashes.  I have nice things because I keep them immaculate and use them for as long as I can.  They’re often at least secondhand, and I am furious when I break or soil things.  I can afford to give birthday, anniversary, and Christmas presents because I save links for months and buy things all year, so I get them  when they’re on sale.  I make a lot of  things.  I shop around.  Gift giving is a love language of mine, and I’ve gotten particularly good at it.  If I’m out with a partner and I can actually treat them to something, I feel really proud of myself, because it doesn’t happen often. It does mean, however, that I’ve forgone all of those little extras to afford it. I’ve survived on the bare minimum for as long as I’ve needed to, which is a sacrifice I’ve willingly made. The caveat here is that it builds expectations. If I paid for a $50 lunch this time, why can’t I pay all the time? Why? Because I can’t survive on scraps for months on end.  I’ve been put in some particularly uncomfortable situations when asked on the spot to cover things I’m unable to pay for myself, and it’s become a rather sensitive trigger of mine. 

Assumptions and expectations are a dangerous road in general, and they can lead to a lot of resentment. For example, I often have partners and comets give me money for special events with the intention that it be used for a specific purpose. Be it books, experiences on vacation, food, clothing, whatever, the understanding is that they will get to see the results and share in my joy.  For years I’ve struggled with this, because it’s hard for me not to use those funds for more responsible things. It took me years to accept that I deserve basic needs bought for me, let alone frivolous things, so the idea that someone might then think I’m taking advantage of their kindness because of false perception digs pretty deep.  

 I was taught that turning down a generous gift is an insult, so I’m learning to use those gifts in the spirit they were offered, and recently this has caused some turbulence where I felt there wasn’t really a right move I could have made. I won’t hide things.  I also won’t lie about what I did with my own money.  It doesn’t happen a lot, so when it does I do my best to be gracious about it. 

All this to say…don’t let your own experience of the world inform your perception of someone. I admit I have a lot of weird behaviours I still hold on to because of my past, and I’m working on letting a lot of those things go. I no longer force myself to finish a meal if I’m full or eat questionable food. I no longer keep broken things that are obviously unfixable. I no longer feel ashamed for being happy when people give me things.  

A Hinge’s Responsibility

So, let’s talk a little bit about what it means to be a good hinge in polyamory, particularly when there’s a conflict of interest between metas.  I’ve covered this topic before, but it’s something that comes up a lot, so we’re going to talk about it again. 

Let’s imagine Cyd has two partners, Kim and Raven, for whom they’ve decided to cook dinner on separate nights. Cyd decides, to avoid any hurt feelings, they’ll cook the same meal for both partners. They decide on fish tacos. Sounds easy, and tasty, enough. Cyd has the best intentions. This is equality. 

But, Cyd has missed the fact that Kim hates fish, so they talk it over and Cyd decides on chicken enchiladas instead for Kim’s dinner. This is a good thing, and Judas tasty. This is Cyd meeting they’re partner’s need.  

Now, just before dinner with Raven, Cyd mentions the enchiladas, and Raven gets upset. He really likes enchiladas even if she loves the fish tacos. Cyd explains that the tacos are already done and there’s neither time nor money to make enchiladas for that particular meal, but they’ll be happy to make them some other time. 

The answer here is not to toss the tacos and spend their gas money to get to work on enchilada ingredients then stay up late making that instead. It’s also not to tell Kim she’s now stuck with fish tacos because it’s only fair to Raven. 

Raven has every right to be disappointed about this, but it’s not Cyd’s responsibility to stress themself out if they’ve done all they can. A compromise was offered. The onus also isn’t on Kim to suck it up and accept the tacos. She’s also not responsible for Raven’s happiness. 

This is an obviously silly scenario about tacos, but the spirit of the conflict is one that presents itself daily in polyamory support groups. Admittedly, there have been times I’ve let FOMO get the best of me and pulled a “Raven”, but I’ve also been on Kim’s side of the equation where I just needed a little extra consideration. 

In Raven’s case, sometimes polyamory is about sitting in your feelings for a while. While a hinge might be there for support, they cannot and should not try to eliminate every hard feeling that presents itself. That’s a losing battle, and I’ve been in more than one relationship where the hinge drove himself to the verge of a breakdown trying to make everyone happy all the time. In the interim they  would often make promises to each of us that were impossible to keep and placate us in ways that just fed the growing  hostility. In the end, these relationships are untenable, no matter how much people love each other. 

A hinge’s responsibility in this case is to meet the needs they are willing and able to meet without compromising their own integrity and mental health. That’s it. As humans, we must let each other have the experiences we’re having, and sometimes it’s extremely uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. Growth is often one of the hardest most painful experiences of the human condition. It’s breaking a bone to reset it properly. It’s the sting of antiseptic on a fresh wound. You can’t make it better with blanket rules or restrictions on other partners. That just creates such a chaotic web of hurt and instability that no one, including the hinge, can come out of it whole. 

Relabeling William

This isn’t the story about how the choice to have an abortion changed my life.

This isn’t the story about how the choice allowed me to build a life that allowed me to have a family when I was ready. Sometimes life doesn’t work out that way and no matter what you do the wrong time was the only time.

This isn’t the story about how the choice to have an abortion helped me heal from abuse. I live with the repercussions of that night every single day.

This is where I tell you that I didn’t make the choice to have an abortion. At nineteen I chose instead to have a baby that would have changed my life forever. He didn’t make it, but he was the closest I’ve ever come to being a mother of a child born from my body.

This is the story of a young girl terrified beyond all belief making the choice to find the strength to drag herself out of the trauma and depression for a baby created in violence.

A choice.

This is the story about a woman repeatedly having the air sucked from her lungs by a political climate that requires her to replace her baby with a fetus to make sure the choice she was able to make is protected at all costs, a woman who chokes on her tongue so that anyone who’s in the shoes she walked in as a scared child still has the freedom to make the choice she didn’t.

This is a story about the reality 1 in 4 people who have carried and lost a child feel right now. We spend a substantial percentage of the time and energy we should be allowed to spend grieving defending our babies, convincing everyone around us that what- no WHO we lost was real. We’re told repeatedly to get over it. We’re told we’re overreacting. The abject torture a parent grieving a lost pregnancy suffers at these comments is inhumane, and we feel that loss freshly every time we have to fight for their acknowledgment.

All that being said, the rights of people who may need abortions are under attack, and for them to win their right to make the choice that’s best for them we must accept the scientific factual rhetoric that a fetus is not yet a baby.

You see how much this can tear at our emotions, right?

This past weekend I attended a charity event I failed to realize was to protect abortion rights where I live, which is something I strongly support. Still, I was unprepared for the triggers it would throw at me. I never got my rainbow baby. I never had another chance when the time was right. I never got to make that choice again. My heart breaks every day for the life I held within me and forced the work to know as my son. It breaks a second time every time I see a reminder that that reality is born of sentiment alone. He was my baby because I chose to make him so. I named him. I spoke to him. I use him as an anchor when I most felt like I’d be drowned in my own emotions, and I have to remember him that way to make sense of that time in my life, but the people who need protecting now need him to be something else. I understand it, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

Don’t Call it a Comeback

Really. Don’t. Because I don’t actually know how often I’ll be updating, and I’m trying to set the expectations low. 

I know I’ve made sporadic updates, but life has thrown us a lot of plot twists in the last few years, and at some point I just started feeling like a fraud. In the midst of a global pandemic we’ve faced homelessness twice, moved thrive, and lived in three different states. We’ve dealt with surgeries to remove all my teeth, my tonsils, and my meta’s case of necrotizing fasciitis. We’ve almost moved to Canada only to find out that the partner we were moving to homestead with had been cheating on me for months. I’ve learned to navigate my alphabet soup of neurodivergences. We’ve lost grandparents to death and a child to a flawed system. We’ve fought ourselves back from the havoc that living in a poisonous situation can wreak, and we’re more stable as individuals, as a household, and as a polycule than we have ever been. 

Also in the time, I’ve finished my book and started the arduous task of attempting to publish said book. I’ve lived dreams I’ve held vividly in my heart since I was 18. I’ve found not just love but trust, support, and compassion in both unlikely places and faces I’ve known for years. My community has become more important to me than it has ever been. As I’ve gotten older, and as my chosen family has evolved, I’ve come to appreciate community in ways I’d never considered before. When we were almost homeless in Illinois in the middle of February, our community saved us and helped us move. When I got my driver’s license last fall at the age of 38, my community celebrated from all over the world. This year I have watched partners who were complete strangers interact on Facebook and become friends independently of me. 

This is what I wanted to foster when I started Pearls and Pentagrams, and seeing the whole picture brings a special kind of peace. I am not yet at the top of my mountain, but I have made it to summits I never dreamed I’d see, and while the view from here is a little intimidating, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. 

All I’ve Got

“It’s just you and me now, kid,” my grandmother told me when my Papa died, and for the last year I have learned to paint a truck well enough for it not to rust, trim a lemon tree with 60 year old trimmers from an ancient ladder shakily erected in the bed of said truck, and maintain a house despite my grandma’s best efforts to tear it back down sometimes because she tries to do it all herself. I have had to let go of some possessions of his that I held dear. I have learned how to transfer the title of a car over state lines. I have researched the best options for adding someone to the deed of a house without it wildly affecting the property taxes.  I have been the only one who could pick up the urn and slide it into the statue inside which my Papa is interred. I have been a thousand miles away when the hospital called to ask me for consent for treatment when she needed stents put in her heart. 

My husband helped me drive the truck home, making the best of the impromptu roadtrip to stop at some amazing roadside attractions. We saw the Borax mine. We spent a night in Las Vegas. We stopped at the end of a rainbow during a rainstorm in Utah to pick wild sage. He held me while I broke down with exhaustion and emotion because I put a dent in the truck at a gas station in Colorado. He talked me into stopping “one more time” at the hot springs and just let my soul and body heal. 

I gave up going out for  New Year’s Eve to make sure she was alright. I’ve spent hours sitting in Papa’s spot on the couch watching Hallmark movies because she’s lonely. I’ve silently held space for her as she grieves, even as she tries to hide her pain, because that’s what she’s always done. She’s always been the strong one, the fixer, and the one to hold everyone up, and I know she’s tired. 

All this in the midst of a year of other great loss, of a custody battle for my stepson, of a world biting and scratching to return to something that resembles normal after a two year pandemic, of maintaining a full time job on the road and my own household two time zones away. 

And now as I pick up the responsibility of my dad after the death of his mother, he echoes the words from almost a year ago.

“You’re all I have now.”

And I smile. And I reassure. And I write to-do lists.

I’m stretched thin and I’m tired. I’m navigating multiple things that are out of my wheelhouse. I’m overwhelmed. 

I couldn’t be doing any of this without my chosen family. I’d have crumbled months ago without my partners offering both emotional and physical support. When people ask me “how does poly even work?” this is the example I hold up time and time again.  For an only child with a strained relationship with most of my cousins, this family we’ve built is holding me together.  Without them I’d also be all I’ve got, and I don’t know if I could do it. 

Do You Suppose She’s a Wildflower

The hill behind my grandmother’s house is covered in yellow clover, and in this unseasonably warm weather it’s blooming in a breathtaking golden cascade…and she has me ripping it up. Why? Because they’re “weeds” no matter how pretty they are, Therefore, everything must go. I’m sad for the senseless waste, especially because the bees love this spot. I’m frustrated by the hours of extra work ahead of me. I’m acquiescing because if I don’t do it she’ll kill herself out here doing it herself.

As I tug and pull I am overcome. We’ve done a lot of work to have an adult relationship, but as a child and young adult I was always the weed. An artistic kid, neurodivergent, though girls in the 80s and 90s were rarely diagnosed as such, with curious tastes in most things. An only child with a small smattering of friends, I kept to myself mostly. There weren’t kids I could walk to see. It was me, my mom, and the animals, and that was fine with me, but it made me weird. It made me different. It made me what both grandmothers I saw regularly would use as a backhanded compliment; it made me unique. There was no place for weeds in her garden, no room for black sheep in her herd, so I learned to blend in, struggling under the radar until I could plant my roots elsewhere.

When I left for college I thought I’d be back, and it’s a decision I’ve questioned for the last 20 years. I struggled a lot without the resources I needed to survive. I dropped out of college. My career path was fractally diverted. I wilted without health insurance to provide neither insulin nor mental health care. I juggled new trauma with pockets already overflowing with past trauma. I kicked, I screamed, and not once could I make myself fit into the planter boxes that had loomed over my since birth. I died several times over only to find myself blossoming in a new garden, one I had plotted for myself. Ironically enough, this would be exactly when I would be called back home.

I don’t hide now, but it’s a careful game of chess where some of the squares are equipped with land mines. I still stand out as the sunflower in the rose garden. I am belladonna. I am an orchid. I am a blooming thistle. But I’m here.

You see, I’m the one, in the entire cultivated garden, that thrived. I’m the one, in the specially selected herd, who came back when no one else would pick up the mantle. Just as I know this clover will return. Especially since I play to find some in the spring in the garden center being sold as “ground cover” to welcome it back.

Photo by Saliha on Pexels.com

Out of the Mabon Fires

This week has two important astrological events in the span of a few days, and it’s creating quite the energetic stir. September’s Harvest Moon blends right into the energy of Mabon/autumn equinox. Let’s talk a little bit about what these things, and the signs they’re hanging out in, mean in the bigger picture. But first! A bit of a look back. 

Last year I had an idea of what was coming in the year ahead. All readings pointed towards huge, life altering changes, and holy hell was I not wrong. I knew the dark season was going to be almost insurmountable, and I called for my closest chosen family to pull in and get through it together. Otherwise, I knew some of us wouldn’t make it. 

The ritual I put together for this was your standard “intentions in the fire” working, and it was extremely potent. I felt the seeds planted then, but I had no idea what we were manifesting, as I’d never imagined some of the intentions cast were in total opposition, a rather ironic turn for a  time celebrating balance. What I didn’t feel was that in casting my intention I was also throwing myself into the fire.  Looking back, I sacrificed what was left of my mental health, believing I was keeping the peace, and the more I fought the messages coming in the more the universe enforced those messages by any means necessary. It would take two months to burn to my core and several more to heal from such extensive damage that I was unrecognizable, but in the end the spirit of my ritual was realized. Those of us who were meant to come together did in amazing ways, and we are thriving.  

The resulting seasons brought a complete rebirth for our family. In the spirit of Mabon, what was not healthy for us withered away and what enriched us became plentiful, and we worked together to build a new home and fortify ourselves as individuals and as a family. It made the winter a battle to survive, but we emerged with a new home that’s been perfect for us, new relationships that are stable in ways I haven’t felt in a long time, and even new familiars finding their way to our door. 

All from one little fire in the backyard. 

By contrast, Mabon this year is much more personal and introspective. While were still preparing for the challenges of the dark season, the feeling of sheer dread isn’t present, as we’re not limping from harvest to harvest. 

Mabon 2021 heralds the beginning of Libra season, making the balance of Mabon a lot more internal.  The Harvest Moon pushes for genuine connection and understanding, and Libra reminds us that those connections often demand we set boundaries and enforce them.  It will seem as though the spirit craves both independence and deep genuine connections simultaneously, which can be extremely confusing and exhausting without those boundaries holding firm. 

The full moon in Pisces brings with it a deeper empathy and a highly emotional experience as we look around us and decide what will sustain us through the winter and what needs to be sacrificed. The harvest this year will come in the form of deep truths, vulnerability, and intensely personal realizations, something I’ve been fully immersed in for the last few weeks. 

This is going to put a lot of emphasis on new beginnings and strengthening the relationships developed during the high energy months in the sun. The dance the sun and moon do at Mabon, being in both balance and a bit of a power struggle, there’s some care required in setting intentions, especially if you’re someone who tends to plant your seeds in the fall instead of the spring like I do, as what we manifest in our mind tends to be drawn into reality as a last pull by the sun. 

This could also mean a feeling like other things are coming to a natural ending, and while those endings are hard, believe me it’s much easier than resisting them like I did last year. One diseased crop can taint everything you’ve stored for the winter and leave you struggling not to starve to death. 

It may seem almost natural to be empathetic and forgiving to those around you, but remember to extend that same understanding to yourself. Those of us who are strongest at Mabon can generally see things from all sides and make a lot of sacrifices to make those around us comfortable. Stop it. Notice where it’s reciprocated and appreciated. Learn to use your No. Hold your boundaries. Resist the urge to throw yourself in the fire for someone else’s desires. In the end, you are all yours guaranteed to have on the other side of the longest night, so make sure you’re also being provided for this harvest season. 

With all that said, don’t forget that Mabon is also a celebration.  No doubt this year has been unusual. Chaotic. Transitional. The harvest is drastically different than in the past, but there is much to be grateful for.  In my world, the growth of my family and my home has been unprecedented, and I can’t help but look at it all and sigh in relief and gratitude. I’m using this year’s ritual to take a deep breath. We’ve worked hard this year, and it shows. The hopes and dreams from Imbolc and Ostara have blossomed and bore fruit in so many unimaginable and unexpected ways. 

 The Pisces moon is full of art, creativity, and romanticism. As you reach for the connections and balance of Mabon, take some time to connect to the expressive, imaginative part of yourself. Remember that you’re alive. Remember that your heart beats, desires, and feels. This will be one of the most important things to store for the cold months ahead, and the Pisces moon inspires your imagination to manifest in extraordinary ways. 

A year ago I was a husk of myself. I was drained, depleted, and dying after a year of constant trauma and crisis. It took the universe burning me to the ground to make me look at the way I’d let my fields go fallow because I was tending to everyone else’s. Today my internal fire burns brighter and brighter everyday, and this is what will get me through the dark season. 

Blessed Mabon to you all!

The Ugliness of Body Dysphoria

Usually when I write in this blog I have some pearl of wisdom, even if it’s been a bit misguided, to share. usually I at least have a point to make. Today, I have no goddamned clue. Honestly, I just need to tell you about what’s going on in my head.

So, here’s the scene:

Me and any one of my partners are talking and they go “this person is gorgeous” or something of that nature, and immediately my brain tosses every time they’ve ever called me pretty into a bonfire and I panic because this other human looks NOTHING like me.

Why? Because body dysphoria is a fucking asshole, that’s why.

Logically, I can tell my brain “hey, they called you beautiful LITERALLY 5 minutes ago and you clammed up like a tuna sandwich in the sun”. Logically, I can tell my brain that everyone I find attractive doesn’t look alike. Logically, there are a lot of words I can use to bring myself down before I react.

This is something that’s happened my entire life. As a teenager and young adult I had more masc friends than femme friends, because they were easier for me to trust, but i quickly meant that I became “one of the guys”, and was no longer a datable human. Later, as I became more comfortable and open with my sexuality, It was generally rationalized that I was a human who liked boobs, so why wouldn’t I want to see this work of fleshy art? It never dawned on them to compliment me, because I was someone they knew, and therefore not some entity around which they could build fantasies. Now, I think it’s mainly that I’m easy to talk to and will mask a lot of those visceral reactions, not because I don’t think they wouldn’t talk with me about them, but because in those moments my brain in genuinely convinced I’m a fucking troll in that person’s eyes, no matter what they’ve told me.

Like, Brain, WTF mate?

Even in established relationships, if not MORE in established relationships, my brain defaults to “they tolerate your body because you’re sweet, funny, low maintenance, etc”.

It’s bullshit, and I know it’s bullshit.

So, why this post?

I very rarely write here when I’m actively having problems. I generally wait until the storm has passed and some form of epiphany has come from it all, hence the gaps in my consistency. But fuck it. I’ve shown you all my progress with my mental health, and this is a reminder that progress is neither linear nor is it erasure. The work I’m doing doesn’t eradicate my mental illness, but these setback days do not eradicate all the work I’ve done. That’s REALLY fucking important, because a three minute conversation yesterday has me convinced I’m a waste of human meat who will die alone. Add in a dash of the baseline depression and some random hormonal sads…and it’s been a rough day in my head.

It starts there. Then there are no less than 5 humans with baby bumps on my friends feed, and I not only hate my body for what it is, I hate my body for what it isn’t, what it can’t do, what it never will. And THAT’S where I am today. Living in a dark box waiting to either die or not hate every cell of my being.

I know it’s going to be ok; it just isn’t right now.

So what am I doing about it? I’m going to take a nap, take a shower, and go fucking easy on myself for once.

That’s it. That’s the wisdom.

Loving Myself on Beltane

I’ve written before that healing neither linear nor a one shot process. Now, if I could get myself to remember my own lessons that would be great.

I’ve recently found myself in a place where I’m building some really strong new connections. There’s the usual flutter of excitement, the usual dance where I wonder how the other people feel and whether or not my energy is too much for them, and the usual moment where I realize I love them. Whether as a friend, comet, or romantic endeavor, there’s been a lot of love in my life lately, and it’s been extremely positive. What is not usual is the undercurrent of doubt, not in anyone else, but in my own emotions. That’s not to say I don’t usually have anxiety with new people, but I’ve always been solid on how I feel. This is new.

Lets examine my last breakup. The relationship was quick, intense, and decorated primarily with red flags. I saw them. My intuition told me to be careful. I told my intuition to take a hike. In doing so, I put my family’s living situation in danger. Months later, that’s a lot to take in. Throughout the entire thing I let my boundaries be set aside and blatantly disregarded, I put my mental health in repeated tenuous situations., and I looked the other way when things didn’t add up. But, having the stubborn heart that I do, I tried to help, but talking things through only works if one party can be honest. The payoff was my integrity being targeted with not a single person questioned it. In the end I watched it unravel, and the last of my mental health went with it. Combined with other stressors, I found myself in a worse place than I’ve been in a long time…over a relationship that barely lasted a few months.

So, as I begin to pull out of what was an extremely hard dark season and lean into the light there’s this slim shadow of doubt that still exists, and I realize I’ve been afraid. Never before have I regretted how I love. Fully, openly, and freely. Never before have I felt the need to temper my energy and hold back “just in case”. Never before have I wished I didn’t. But here I am. I’m blessed with people who are patient and supportive of the work I’m doing to trust myself again, but I hate that they have to be. I hate that I let someone push me into a hole I didn’t realize we were digging. I hate that, for the first time, the risk of heartbreak isn’t worth the joy of loving.

Oh, no. No one gets to take that from me.

I’m sitting here kindling the Beltane fire within, and I’m feeling full of love and light that I want to share with all of those close to my heart. I’ve spent the last few weeks working through the doubts and fears, and today I’m thinking seriously about what kind of fruit I want to bear. The seeds of the spring have been germinating, the energy I’ve put into my projects and my home are taking root, and my family is flourishing. Now it’s time to consider what kind of blossom I am and what I want to bring forth into my world. This is a level of self awareness I’ve never felt at my core, even in rituals. This is the heart of who I am.

The job of creating life falls to the mother. Their body holds, nurtures, and ultimately gives birth to something they created. Sure, the seed had to be planted, but they alone have brought that seed to life. The world around me has planted its seeds, and this Beltane I am putting the faith and love into myself to create something vibrant. To do that. I need to stop ignoring my intuition, stop fearing my heart, and shine my own light into the shadows that doubt casts on my brightest days. I need to let myself love again, yes, but I also need to trust myself with that love. Trust myself to know where it’s appreciated. Trust myself to not deplete my resources. Trust myself to know I’m strong enough to stay standing if the love returned to me ends.

2020 Was hard on the world, and my life had a litany of added lows, but here we are in 2021. I won’t pretend things are all better, and I won’t pretend there’s not still a lot of work to do, but I do know I’m pulling out of it an entirely different person. My people are happy, and I am ready once more to be a source of love, light, and manifestation.

Blessed Beltane!

How My Voice is Best Heard

I’m going to tell you a story…

About 2002 I wrote a poem, and in this poem I used the N-word. Looking back, I even felt gross about it at the time, but naïve 19 year old me thought she was making a statement. And she was. She was making the statement that she’d never had to face her own place in the community in which she was raised.

I grew up not only in an area full of POC of multiple backgrounds, and it was both a blessing and a curse. I grew up surrounded by so many different cultures and people who loved me that I never questioned my privilege and place with them or my responsibility to be self aware enough not to speak in voices that were not mine.

There’s a unique experience in recognizing privilege when you’ve grown up around diversity that is very different from what I imagine it’s like for people who have not. There’s an unseeing of what personal reality existed and what societal reality was and still is. There is a setting aside of familiarity to see the experience of entire communities. There’s an acknowledgment that ways I interacted with those closest to me was still full of micro-aggressions that never crossed my mind, even within my own family.

Fast forward to a year or so later. I’m at a poetry slam, and I, still pretty blind to any responsibility outside of what I perceived as my voice as an artist, decide to read this piece. Whew. Let me tell you. In retrospect, the fact that the entire hour before I went on stage I sat and questioned the appropriateness of that one line should have told me to really think about why. Why did it feel wrong? Why did it make me anxious and sick to my stomach? I know now why, but at barely 20 I assumed it was because I was nervous about, again, making my statement. I even convinced myself I would regret it if I edited my piece.

As soon as the word left my mouth I knew it was a mistake. The chill in the air and the pregnant silence in the room told me I hadn’t been scared, I’d been right. I finished the piece, but the inappropriateness of that line left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth. I wanted to run and hide from this newfound revelation that there were parts of myself that needed to be re-examined, but I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to do that if I stayed silent. I stammered an apology I don’t quite remember and promised to never read that piece as written ever again.

At intermission I tried to sneak out without being noticed…and ran straight into the special guest who was set to read at the end of the night, who looked horribly disappointed.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“Home,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t trust my intuition, made a fool of myself, and offended and entire room full of people?”

“Baby,” she laughed, “I’m going to bet it wasn’t the first time, and I can tell you now it won’t be the last, but you owned it and it’s done. I need you to go back in there, keep owning it, and listen to the rest of the voices in that room. You have a voice. You haven’t learned to use it how it needs to be heard, but you will. You need to use it, not run away from it.”

She was right. I say a lot of stupid shit that often requires me to acknowledge it, apologize, and learn from it. I’ve remembered things years later and wondered what I was thinking. I’ve written things I thought I knew years before I was mature enough to truly understand it. Seriously, just go back to the beginning of my blogs. I learn more about myself all the time, and as I do I notice my voice changing. It’s growing stronger, and I’m finding my place where it needs to be heard.

Recently I was assigned to write an article about diversity and inclusion, and I knew right away that not only was this not where my voice needed to be heard but also that this was not the article for me to be writing. I was even more disappointed when the editors obviously wanted me to focus more on all the good the company was doing for accessibility and inclusion and less on what their own community advocates were saying are still roadblocks. I was chosen to write a piece meant to exploit buzzwords and not just ignore the voices that needed to be heard but twist them to say something different.

This editor highly underestimated my ability to use words that sound like fluff to say what actually needs to be said. I started in journalism and poetry, and I will probably die because of my journalism and poetry. By contract I can’t turn down the assignment, but I can make it say what I need it to say. I can use my voice to amplify the ones that need to be heard, not silence of censor them.

I’m still going to stay stupid shit and make mistakes. I’m still going to catch myself halfway through a sentence and not always know how to change or address it. I’m always going to have to examine my voice for intrinsic bias. I’m still going to scrutinize myself the way I scrutinize people who write about my identifiers. I’m still going to expect more from myself, from my voice. I’m not always going to know what to say. but never again am I going to try and run away from it.