The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

There is sometimes an immobilizing grip that fear can have on a soul, rendering it near impossible to move past it.  It is powerful, even the treat of harm can cause the heart to start beating so much that it can feel like someone is simultaneously squeezing that muscle beyond endurance. Fight or flight feels very real - if one can only move. Will my family eat? Will I eat? Will I be whole again? That is the threat that a lot of those who felt their position of power was so great they could operate, rule, through intimidation and coercion, thinking that their name was so transcending that they were beyond reproach. And for a while it can seem just like that. There are debris of human possibilities left in the road after encountering them, shattered hopes and dreams, even questions of their worth. Left to pick up the pieces of what they thought they would be able to do and envisioned that only met the reality of ego and dominance. So they walked away. First one, and it was brushed o...

 Life is a journey. It really is. Moment by moment, encounter by encounter, experience by experience, for all the days we have on this earth, we are on a journey.  And we are not on it alone. We are connected to people, always. It is the nature of being in a community, even if we are an introverted writer who observes society, engages deeply with it, and has lived a life of serving others. We are not alone. The thing about it is also that we sometimes feel alone. In our thoughts, in our images of ourselves, in our check list, in our aspirations, there are moments when we must all stand by ourselves. Alone. And be ok with that. My oldest son is one of my inspirations. He is a very talented renaissance guy - a writer, rapper/spoken word artist, illustrator, and sneaker artist, restorer, and investor. I never understood all the ways he managed throughout his adult life to let his entrepreneurial spirit flourish, but I have always supported him. He once told me that he had to beli...

 I wake up every day in pain. Every.single.day. It is like my constant companion, with me, reminding me through the night of their existence, challenging my middle-aged-body to respond. For years. In my twenties, as a full-of-promise college student working a full-time job, going to college full-time, driving a car a bought in an apartment that I worked hard for, I was giving my college boyfriend a ride home from work. We were side swiped. He walked out ok, I was injured and hospitalized. Pain does not always break. Nothing was broken over thirty-six years ago, but something was deeply damaged in my body. My nerves that resulted in the ability to walk to be an exercise in excruciating pain. I made it past, though, persevered, for that was something embedded in me from generations. I went from walking on crutches to being able to walk and return to my life, even joining the little sister organization of my now sorority, stepping, dancing, and living my young life. Until it resurface...

 I woke up early this morning feeling the enormity of everything that is today. Twenty years. Just this past Sunday, I was celebrating the birthdays of my "twins." One turned thirty-three and on his birthday, received the first little sister after a house of boys. She turned twenty. On that Tuesday morning, sitting in my suburban Kansas City master suite, finally relishing in a shower without her crying, Katie Couric was starting the morning banter of then 7 o'clock central time news. My husband came in from his run and was in the shower, baby girl was now in my arms, she was not a week old yet.  When it happened. Breaking news. Katie Couric report and shifting to whatever footage was coming from what is now called Ground Zero. What was happening? A plane crash? In a building? An accident?  They were scrambling to figure it out.  My husband was showering for his professorship, the older boys were getting ready for school, it was up-to-that-point a normal morning. I h...

 I never really thought of myself as an influencer. I'm barely understanding Instagram and refuse to venture into TikTok land, so it was a bit surprising to me that someone mentioned to me about writing. Granted, I've been writing since I was nine years old and my late father told me, "Tayé, go write your stories." I did and those etchings with my #2 pencil and stack of red Big Chief Tablets (I grew up in the 70s, that's what we had in my mid-MO town), were lost during one of those never-ending basement floods of my childhood home. But I never stopped writing, even when I didn't think it would matter. I took first the name, Tayé Foster. The latter being a matrilineal family name. I added Bradshaw over a decade ago when I wanted to really think about the mothers-mothers-mothers-mothers of my life and how my being has been framed from them. Then, I started writing a few lines here and there, poetry mostly. I'm not a novelist by any stretch of the imagination...

 Today, September 7th, just after celebrating my daughter's 20th birthday and Labor Day, joined with hundreds of others and I resigned from my position with a non-profit in my former state. It was time. I, like many who lived through the pandemic, had a moment of reflection of what is really important. Life is much more than an environment that is no longer conducive to joy and wonder, that does not feed your soul, that robs you of your peace. The pandemic and the recent natural disasters that hit parts of the country, including up here in the northeast, were a reminder of how precious life is. It is more, so much more than a life drain. Like some who decided, you know, this isn't feeding my soul anymore, I may not know where my next is and what it will be like, but for today, it feels like peace.

 I am a true INFJ Really. An introvert. That doesn't mean I don't talk to people, I do, or even that I am petrified in crowds, I'm not. It just means that I refuel by my alone time, that I am deeply introspective and intuitive, that as an empath, my emotions are my spiritual radar, and my judgements are made based upon careful consideration of possible outcomes and impact. Over the past month, with so much happening in the world, really ,the past year, my "being in tune" has been on hyper-speed. The effect has been like a ball of air in my stomach or a pit of fire in my heart. No, it wasn't a personal crisis. It was the combination of watching everything around me, advocating for others, and realizing that I needed to attend to my heart, that compelled me to do a step back. I went for a walk along the shore. I read some poetry. I talked to a trusted friend about transitions. These are deeply spiritual and meditative practices for me, maybe for you. When we are...

I had an abortion. I also had a D&C after an unviable pregnancy - miscarriage. I have given birth. I have five children, the youngest will be eighteen in four months, the oldest will be thirty-five a month after her milestone birthday.  In all my life and in all my choices of my reproductive care, I never had to deal with OWM trying to get into my uterus to tell me what to do with it.  My daughters will not have that same choice if the rest of the country goes the way Texas went in the dark of night, the same way they pushed in that illegal Supreme Court handmaid tale justice in the absolute final hours of the orangecovidmenacereignofterror. So what is the issue? Do I believe that life is precious? Of course I do. And I also believe that cisgendered women and transgendered men who still have female genitalia inside are the ONLY ones who can make decisions about what to do with their bodies. Body autonomy does not just belong to OWM. It is actually kinda creepy that all the...