Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Untouchable??

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 off as something was deeply flawed with that person that they were not lining up with the vision of the revered leader. Surely the rest would fall in line and most just keep quiet so they can live to eat another day.

Then another after sensing the anxiety of so many and knowing the way of operating was so wrong, it was causing harm within and without, someone had to do something.

So they spoke up.

And were met with flames and arrows aimed straight at the heart. That is the thing about those who believe they are the only true one to do anything and hold all the future in their hands, they launch out at the ones with vision through their facade and the courage to speak up.

Regardless.

Then, another and this time, it could not be brushed off as just a problem with the ones who did not fall in line with the supreme leader.

The question then became would the ones who remained let fear and innuendo grip them and color their glasses even more or would they take them off, put on the prescription of courage, and see what was really happening around them? Would they see the enablers for who and what they are and would they finally, finally, gain a bit of truth within themselves to let it go?

Or will they continue to try to breathe through squeezed heart muscles and palpitations, knowing the danger around them, but ignoring it for the threat of violence that would never come to them for underneath it all is insecurity, anxiety, and a failing.

One by one, the perceived giants of society will fall.

And one by one, the ones who were brave to stand, speak, and shout even, will be the ones who walk away with their soul intact. No matter how long it takes.

Justice still has her day.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Stepping to Self

 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 believe in himself because no one was going to make his dream happen for him.

Hustle, that is what the younger generation of content producers, influencers, and movers are calling it.

Being willing to walk away, the way Michaela Coel did when Netflix did not want her to have the copyright to her work, she walked away from a million dollars. Others have walked away.

My son did when he was offered a recording contract but would have had to relinquish his sound, his look, and his masters. He walked away from it and instead doubled down on building one CD at a time, that was way back when MySpace was a thing.

He taught me something, that is why I am writing about it.

Step to your own dreams. The lesson from my son.

Taking a risk has some bravery to it, to go against conventional wisdom, and ultimately to choose oneself, to believe enough in what you are put on this earth to do, regardless.

Of course I know that is a place of privilege for many. Not everyone can walk away from the gig that pays the bills the way I did earlier this month. But everyone can still dream.

Artists, writers, painters, poets, sculptors, singers, songwriters, producers, so many up and down the creative entrepreneurship space are "working" even as they type letters, teach classes, create latte art, fold laundry, sweep floors, sell furniture, or any other gig they have to support their art until their art can support them.

My sons , the oldest and youngest, are both creatives. They are also Millennials who have some lessons for those of us a bit older  (I'm a Jones Generation perpetually in the middle between Boomers and GenX).

To know that choosing oneself is not a selfish act but an empowering act.

To know that these devices have changed the game in access.

To know that even great employers will still choose themselves over you.

To know that life is to be lived right now and not wait until we are too old or too sick to do so.

To know that worth is not in the designer purse or jeans but in great relationships.

To know that no is a whole statement.

To know that friends are the real wealth.

To know that their is power is pursuing your purpose.

To know that this is all temporal.

I listened with great awe as my children counseled me in making a big decision that the safety-mode of my generation was stopping me from doing. I walked away from a social justice non-profit that had encompassed every waking moment of my life for four years. 

Before I walked away, my life was twisted up in knots trying to decide. I have a huge LOYALTY factor, I'm deeply committed to what I do and those I commit to. I didn't want to disappoint the people I was working with or the programs I invested in. My kids made me realize I was giving away the best parts of myself and needed to turn that loyalty around to myself.

So I did.

Asha Bandele wrote daughters and a quote that has framed my life for over a decade,"I will be a collector of me and put meat on my soul." 

I spoke that quote and said, "I resign."

And the world did not shatter.

The sky did not fall.

They kept on stepping and so did I.

I've resisted checking in on projects that took up my time and for a while, turned off all notifications that were thumping and pinging on my phone for years. I needed to hear myself again, just me, without the intrusion of after-hours texts or must-do-now messages that needed to be posted.

It was quiet.

So quiet.

Still. 

And I began to hear myself, revitalize myself, emerge into my worth, wrote some poetry, scheduled a facilitating event centering what I love to do, walked on the beach, and thought about what matters in my world.

Michael Coel in her acceptance speech wrote, “In a world that entices us to browse the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible — for visibility, these days, seems to somehow equate to success — do not be afraid to disappear,” Coel said. “From it, from us, for a while. And see what comes to you in the silence.”


Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Pain Proximity

 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 resurfaced.

The way pain does.

That boyfriend and I broke up, as young college romances sometimes mean a lifetime together and sometimes mean a lesson together. 

We went our separate ways and I ended up in Chicago living, working, and walking those long streets from train to my Loop office.

It sent signals, suddenly, it was not gone.

I could barely move one leg in front of the other.

By now, I had been married, divorced, and was a still-sorta-young mom working full-time in a big city with a flat and tuition paid for two boys without child support. There wasn't time to stop and focus in on it, so I pressed, one tiny step-at-a-time until I made it to the train station and sat down.

There wasn't a cure for nerve damage. This was long before oxycontin or even Aleve for the pain that radiated down my legs, seemingly favoring my right side.

My muscle memory of track and "walking it out" was the way I pressed, and rested it at night, stretched it, and just kept on moving.

Fast forward decades of lives lived in different places and that persistent nerve pain that flared up with the weather, too much activity, or whenever they decided they wanted me to remember what happened to me when I as twenty-two.

So, I didn't pay attention to the signals.

First a crick and a bend, those pain neurons in overdrive.

Thinking it was just my sciatic nerve, I did what I always do, try to walk it out, pull out one of my handmade wooden canes, and elevate it.

Until it was May and the pain was lower in my leg than usual. Previously, it was concentrated in the muscles of my right buttock and down my right thigh, never in my calf.

This was different.

So I called my doctor and described the pain, her triage nurse thought it was a blood clot, it was situated in the correct place for a blood clot, it was shooting pain up my leg like a blood clot, it was the size of a blood clot, so she had me go to the ER immediately. 

My daughter was home from college, she accompanied me but Covid restrictions meant she could not come inside and it was hours before they saw me. I was thinking, "maybe this isn't that big of a deal," but it did hurt and I kept it elevated in the ER.

Finally, they saw me, took me to an ultrasound.

The doctor comes out and tells me good news, bad news.


Not a blood clot, thank God, but something called Baker's Cyst, something they see with knees, fluid possibly, go see an ortho.

No cure for it, just elevate it, take some Aleve, and if it gets really bad, they may want to surgically remove it.

That was the ultrasound.

But the pain did not stop.

Like the other neurons firing up in my heart and soul, it was persistent.

Until recently, I worked intensely in an organizing with one of the claims being centering the ones closest to the pain, attempting to use activism to right four hundred years of wrongs. The work was exhausting, all consuming, and at times, deeply painful.

This was an especially hard summer.

I kept pondering how in some spaces, stories were captured for the benefit of the "movement" but not necessarily the ones living in the middle of systems trying to either make their own mark, like the Tyrone character in All American, a mark that causes enduring rifts. Or like the Spencer character who had a chance to get out and be better positioned to make an ultimate difference. There are always questions of being, centering, leaving, staying, and overcoming what hurts so much.

Sometimes, the hurt is ignored, shoved away, protested away, or coped-with-away.

Until it reminds us that it is not gone, it is still there, sending signals to pay attention to it, one way or another.

Pain is relative and we all find ways of dealing with what puts a pause in our life and makes us take notice, sometimes as a result of something done to us or sometimes as a result of just living years with history in our bones.

History that never really leaves.

Like the sciatic nerve damage that flares up and can be so intense that it caused me to not tune in to the first dull ache in my lower leg.

After a visit to the orthopedic surgeon and an X-ray of the right knee - those bones we didn't remember in science class - patella, femur, fibula, fibula - I was back in his office two weeks later with his demeanor a bit somber.

He said it wasn't my knee - that is what I thought, getting old, and what a former doctor thought when I mentioned aches going up and down the stairs.

"You need an MRI," he said. Then he started asking questions.

We must ask questions to get to the source, it is never as simple as what initially shows up.

Bone disease or bone cancer in the family? Any breaks? How long has this been happening?

"Well, I don't want to alarm you, but this is something we need to take serious." You know that look when they sit, as close as they can with a mask and face shield in Covid-protocol space.

The nurse comes in with her instructions that I have to have labs done and the MRI is scheduled -without contrast dye because I don't want that to be the thing that takes me out.

And her tone.

We whisper in pain when we tell someone.

We shout it pain when we are in the middle of it.

We cry in pain when the reality of it is overwhelming.

Pain is always proximity.

Those closest to it are not an imaginary entity that is a great tag line to solicit donations or get people to come to a meeting.

We all live it in, at some point.

It is a signal, a communication, a deep system of interworking networks of nerves and neurons traveling up and down our body, in our heart, our soul, our mind, to hold up the big red STOP sign. Pay attention.

I don't know if this upcoming MRI will show cancer or chondracalcinosis and explain that mass on the side of my leg - the fibula, by-the-way - or if it will be some other big medical word that explains things like intra-articular body, abnormalities in the lateral tibiofemorial joint or whatever medical term my marketing degree did not study.

It is just painful.

Deeply.

Life is also a bit like that. In the bones and the blood, the foundation.

Neurons signaling something is wrong. An interruption.

I am nervous, that is also a response. Whatever it is, it is incurable, one is with a five year 15-30% survival rate if it is the BIG C that was in another part of the body, silent, that traveled to the bone or five year 60-70% survival if it originated in the bone and can be treated with surgery, reconstruction, radiation, all that good medical science.

Answers, that is what the MRI is supposed to give me, a deeper look.

What I do know is that it has at least given me a cause, sorta, of the big why every night my leg was like someone was stabbing me and I elevated it to get a moment of relief.

Just like the work of activism and organizing I did for years.

There were moments of relief, we spoke at a board meeting, shared community concerns, or even were able to have an impact on policy. But it is still only a moment of relief.

Until the underlying issue is attended to.

Like the history the surgeon kept asking me. Yes, my dad had rheumatoid arthritis, but this is not that. yes, my dad had surgery to remove a couple vertebrae but that was a hairline fracture he suffered during the Korean War that went unnoticed until the pain was too much. He had a full upper body cast for months. Yes, he had some bone disease I never knew the name of. No, I don't have kidney stones, yes, I am a living kidney donor. No, no, no to a litany of questions he kept asking me because there is no specific early screening for bone cancer or bone disease.

It is not noticed until it is noticed.

Proximity.

We can't always see, feel, or hear until we are able to see, feel, hear.

Then we can pay attention and consider what it is telling us.

So we stop, consider, imagine, reckon, and decide what we can do. We can appreciate the work that pain has done - it has caused an alert, we are paying attention.

And considering.

And deciding. 

What can we do.

And then try to do it.

And we live.

Because even if it hurts, it is still a signal of possibility.

 

Saturday, September 11, 2021

ACTs, Biscuits, and 9/11

 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 had only been off my corporate job for about four weeks, leaving just a bit before my daughter was to be born, preparing to enjoy my first-time-ever having a long maternity leave.

But nothing prepared me for that day.

None of us were prepared.

Twenty years later, a lot has happened since then that make me feel less safe. Domestic terrorism, police killing, environmental situations, flood, hurricanes, fires, economic collapse, and a deadly virus that is mutating faster than vaccine-deniers are filling up ICU beds.

So, this morning, I woke up early, it is a bright and beautiful Saturday up here in the Northeast. It was a bright and beautiful day twenty years ago, just after Labor Day, it was going to be a great back-to-work for a lot of people. Set in the heart of the financial district, it was supposed to mark the first fall of this new millennium, the new possibilities of this modern era.

When it all came crumbling down.

I was up early that morning, also, but for a nursing baby and a desperate new-mom-again clamor for the shower before she started crying again. I had hopes of sitting in the rocking chair with her, it was my husband's first day back-to-work as a girl dad. We were hoping for a lot.

This morning, my last child, my second girl, who wasn't even born back then, is going to take her ACTs. She is a senior in high school and as a focused, dedicated, scholar, is well into the top five-percent of her class. She is a bit of a perfectionist. 

She wanted my famous biscuits.

So I rose early to begin the ritual.

I melted butter and whipped together the sugar and vanilla that she likes, adding in the ingredients and thought about just how ordinary making breakfast was for so many back then. So many trying to make trains, some from Connecticut, where I live now, calculating how much time they had before taking one going South.

When I popped them in the oven and started on her fruit plate, a flood of memories filled my mind.

How do we reckon with the years?

How did it shift from being about the 3000+ souls who died - on the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers, the lowest-to-the-highest employee crumbling together, the plane that was bravely taken down by passengers instead of our Nation's Capitol being another tragedy, sheroes and heroes - to being about the first responders who ran into the buildings? Almost every made-for-TV movie I've seen since then has only been about the Firefighters who ran into the burning buildings and yes, they should be applauded, recognized, remembered, and thanked. But what about all the other lives, the janitors, the secretaries and assistants, the mail clerks, the coffee ladies, everyone who tried to get their co-workers down smokey stairs, the ones who made it out and the ones who didn't?

This narrative change also made some things in this country worse.

It became just about the police and firefighters. Then about the war we never should have fought, about the military. I'm a military daughter, sister, mother, cousin, niece, so I respect all those in uniform, but something changed that day.

The collective became afraid.

And irrational.

Hatred ensued against those who were sunkissed with smooth espresso skin and silky hair, even those whose ethnicity and religion had nothing to do with those who attacked this country.

Then like now, irrational fear and paranoia took over and instead of thinking together, many attacked.

So while making biscuits, I began to think about that day and all the days since and what we can do now.

Now, we have another more dangerous attack that is raging across this country threatening everyone, an unseen pathogen that is taking out so many lives. And many are refusing to deal with it by a simple vaccine or mask.

I thought about it as memorials and commemorations are happening today. Will we be Americans together remembering, much like some of us were the night before this new administration was sworn in and they had a collective grieving for the victims of Covid. Will we cry together for what was lost who was lost and will we remember?

My daughter came down to eat her breakfast. She has her ACT this morning. I wanted her to be nourished for the day. So many other mothers, wives, and husbands were doing the same thing all those years ago, readying for the day.

I looked up at the clock on the oven as I was plating her scrambled eggs and turkey bacon - 7:11 on 9-11. I paused for a moment. And thought about that. Just a normal morning, that's what it was. Living in the Northeast, being on EST, I marvel at how the day unfolds, my body clock still adjusting to the move from the Midwest. 

Flight 11, the first to hit, aimed directly at the North Tower, followed by Flight 175 in the South Towers and Flight 93 out in the Pennsylvania field, all those were people who got up early early in the morning to make their flights. The flight crew, the flight attendants. I've been on those morning flights, they are usually filled with business folks starting the week, colleges were already back in session and vacation season was winding down, so less likely to be tourists. Seats of perceived power.

And that was the aim.

In New York and in DC.

To take down what Al-Qaeda thought was the global enemy, the economic freedom, the democracy, the rights and liberty to live as one chooses. 

Yet, here we are, and we no longer have the economic liberty, our democracy was attacked from within, and choosing life is becoming harder and harder with homelessness, vaccine-deniers endangering others, and more lives lost than on 9/11 and the twenty years war.

Biscuits felt a bit normal, something I could do.

My daughter asked for them, but also, it was something I could tangibly put my hands on.

I don't personally know anyone who died that day. I know flight attendants who were diverted as a result of 9/11 and like many Americans, I know what it is like to go through TSA and be screened because of that day. 

We all changed that day.

Our country changed that day.

The world changed that day.

I don't know what will happen in our tomorrow.

The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan now that the Americans have finally ended a war that went on far too long. The military-grade weaponry left there to wield terror against women and children. But are we meant to be the saviors of all the other nations when we are crumbling within?

Back in 2001, we were just reeling from a stolen election, chosen by judges, and just settled in to what we thought would be a normal four-years of not having to pay much attention to national politics, but just get on with life. Things were simple back then, no cell phones everywhere, definitely no cell phone cameras or social media to record every gory detail. There were no tanks going down streets against protestors and no hyper-first-responder language or flags.

It is important to remember what was lost, along with all the lives, all 2777 in the towers and on the plane as well as the 343 brave firefighters who rushed into those buildings to save lives. We honor them. I can't call all the names and probably in the next week or so when the crowds leave, will take a trek down to NYC to ground zero to have my own moment. I don't like crowds even before the pandemic.

What I hope happens is that we pause.

In all the flags that line our streets, looking up at what that made me feel when the rubble of the assault left the shell of the building and some firefighters planted the nation's flag. I've only known this country. So many of us, of many colors, ethnicities, languages, religious practices, and beliefs, we have only known this country.

Home.

Hope.

The sun rose this morning on a new day.

New days will keep coming

There is a promise in this.

Like teenagers taking big tests and mothers making breakfast, and in the new day, there is a possibility. 

Remember,  yes, we must, so we learn from it and keep learning.

I don't know what all the lessons are over the past twenty years. 

I just know that if we, the collective we, don't act like a we, we will cease to be.

And maybe that is it, that is the lesson. 

We are in this together.

Like the ACT my daughter is sitting down to take that will begin at 8:30am, I am sitting in that stillness of hope. She is facing her future with so many of the Class of 2022. A future they want to be possible with acceptance and wonder. Her friend group includes many religious expressions, nationalities, and ethnicities, languages spoken at home and foods shared. They are the beauty of the world.

And we tell them so they don't repeat the mistakes of the past and forget.

So we pause.

And reflect.

And look at the sun streaming through the windows on this new day.

And whisper a prayer.


Thursday, September 9, 2021

Yeah...But Can You Not Write About it?

 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.

Then one day, I started writing posts and a few online articles that were picked up. I wrote on Huffington Post and The Kirkwood Patch, was regular on Helium until it was bought out by RR Donnelley and disappeared. Finally, I started this, the Musings. It became my place.

Well, as my place, my kitchen table over a latte, I write about whatever is happening around me, in the world, in the community, or to me.

About a decade ago, in the. middle of some intense educational equity organizing and activism in my former town, I was writing intensely about it. Again, never thought of myself as an influencer, just someone with a heart for justice who is a bit of an Introvert and used the tools at my disposal. I didn't even think anyone was reading it.

Until one day, a certain administrator asked me, "yeah, but hey, can you not write about it."

I sat on the story for a minute.

It was timely.

And all these years later, with something else brewing in me that could be scorched earth if I wrote about it, I wondered, who does that serve?

For a month, I have been in an intense transition, an unraveling of my heartstrings to something that I was passionate about but was no longer singing my soul song. It was hard to maintain focus on all that was happening, and it was a lot happening, in a state several thousand miles away. I wasn't on-the-ground there anymore and was frankly being drained by the non-stop fires that needed to be put out on top of the questionable practices that were becoming vexing. So I began to disentangle. First with a block and then with a brick wall. The separation was necessary and quite painful, as almost all activism and organizing is if one is really trying to use their gifts to change lives.

I finally hit the end button this week, decided while walking along the shore that I was trying to hold onto and save something that was over, including a personal connection. It needed to be mourned and named.

But write about it?

That I haven't done yet, not in all the scorched-earth-detail that could really derail efforts of liberation for the community. I don't want to do that. But how many times have I written and scratched out, written and deleted? Too many to count.

But again, who does that serve?

Loyalty comes with a price. I'm a True Blue, an INFJ, a Golden Retriever, whatever description is used for someone who is intuitive, perceptive has strong EQ, and is an advocate for what is right. When someone comes to me in pain and identifies a real wrong, I shift and try to go-to-bat for them, even if it costs me. 

There is a limit to that.

A dear sister friend reached out to me, without me telling her, knowing something was happening, and reminded me to take care of my heart.

Black women are not often afforded that space.

To take care of our heart, to name that something has affected us, and to not be labeled in identifying it.

There was a Twitter post the other day about the stereotype of Black women in the work place being called "angry" or "inflexible" or any other trope for bearing the brunt of office politics. If they name something is wrong, like not being paid, or being given lousy assignments, or simply being excluded from the group, then they become the problem, the issue.

It can be exhausting.

And the expectation is that we bear it up.

Regardless of industry, even in places of ministry and faith circles, women, Black women, are expected to shoulder the burden, carry the bricks stacked on her chest and still walk upright to serve the rest of the world. We can't do it all the time.

And be silent about it.

The pandemic, though, is giving a glimpse of what can be.

Maybe not right away writing about THAT THING, whatever it is, but a view into what could be.

Reclaiming oneself and one's right to one's story and that we owe no one nothing, not even our silence.

So yeah, maybe I will write about it one day, as soon as I finish this coffee and watch the rain in peace while I breathe free air and muse.


All Rights Reserved.

2021 Copyright by The Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group LLC, a Connecticut entity focused on the liberation of story and the celebration of words.





Tuesday, September 7, 2021

The Great Resignation

 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.

Monday, September 6, 2021

Renewing Moments

 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 bombarded with so much on the news - whether we get it from TV, social media, radio, or opening the newspaper - it can feel like a lot because it is a lot.

We are in times we have never been in before.

Every generation has that statement, but this is incredibly different.

I live in the Northeast and we had the aftereffects of Hurricane Ida, some places are still trying to dry out from the inland flooding. For folks in Louisiana and parts of Mississippi, this has been an incalculable loss.

Then Covid-19 and the Delta variant are still wrecking havoc on lives, truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated and children under twelve who are suffering the consequences of adults. 

Nevermind the twenty years since 9-11 and the pull-out from Afghanistan that has many people wondering what in the world we were doing there for that long anyway and if it was the right thing to leave or even if anyone can reign in the terror of the Taliban while terror looms in the air here.

In the time since summer started, we learned there are more non-white people in the country, school boards have had an all out assault against anything resembling reckoning with history, and denial is on hyper-speed.

I needed a moment.

So I did what this Advocate knew to do, but do it for myself.

I asked myself what did I need in this moment, how was it with my should.

When the answer left me wanting, I went to the shoreline, I pulled out my pens, I looked at the trees, I breathed.

None of us know what will happen in the next breath.

That can feel scary.

But it is also empowering

Why waste time waiting for someone to recognize your talent? Go and do something else.

Why lament what has already happened with the climate? Go and do something else about it.

Why just scream and post about the bans-against-women's-autonomy? Go and do something about it.

Even as an inner thinker and observer, I knew there was something I could do, so I did.

I took to the pen, that has been my gift, and I lent my story, and I donated and I spoke about it.

So much can make us feel powerless and that is actually how these things get to keep on happening, it renders us immobile, but if we look up, take the time to reclaim our heart, and then decide on that one thing we can do, we can renew.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

A Woman's Choice

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 these people are deciding what a woman can and can not do.

Sounds like the Taliban.

But it is right here in good old America, in the great state of Texas that the rest of the Elephantledredhangerfolks are watching, salivating, like my home state of Missouri, to see what else they can take away.

As a woman of the Global Majority, of African descent, I can assure you that it is not because they want more babies born who are sun kissed and sparkle. It is because they, OWM have read the 22-year-notice about the "majority-minority" nation that they could not kill or jail away. The U.S. Census results proved it, white Americans are not the majority anymore and fewer white babies were born in 2007 than  babies of the Global Majority. 

This is all connected. It is an annoying thing about me, to some people, that I look back thirty, twenty years and see things that were taking place and look forward to the strategies these lawmakers were focused on to erode. They concentrated on the courts, thanks to that goobblygooseneckdealerofdeathfromKentucky. That is how he got his handmaid on the Supreme Court, he started grooming her from law school.

The many, many women's groups, from Planned Parenthood - where I got my first birth control pills and all my reproductive and well women care while I was in college - to NARAL in Missouri to so many activists, have all been in virtual or actual protest for years about this. No more hangers is not just a slogan from the dark alley days of the 70s. 

When I was growing up and coming of age in the mid-70s and early-80s, the older women would talk about the white girls who "went away" for the summer or a "trip overseas" because they were pregnant. They were not putting them up for adoption but were going to places were they could get it taken care of. It cost money, something not all Black or Brown girls had back then.

Definitely not something I had.

So when the decision came to have an abortion, as a married young woman, it was done with care. A woman was holding my hand throughout the whole thing, my ex-husband attended to me for the days of aftercare, we mourned and we moved on with our lives. It was in our plans, but neither was that pregnancy that I ended up not being able to carry. It was after six weeks that we found this out.

Six weeks.

That is the span of time of just realizing you missed a period.

Most women don't realize they are pregnant until the eighth week, some even the tenth week if they don't keep careful records like I did.

Six weeks.

It is not viable outside the womb, it is a bunch of tissue. As a seminary trained minister who has over twenty Bibles that I have read cover to cover and studies exhaustively, it is with the breath of life, there is no quickening in that invasive tissue in a woman's body.

Men.

That is part of what has been all wrong with American everything.

Control.

Power.

They forced preteen Black girls to have babies from being raped by their adult men masters or some Black man they forced to be a buck. It goes back to 1642 and the Law of Maternal Descent when Enslaved African women's children were counted as property to be snatched away before her milk even comes in. Is that sanctity of life?

They are hypocrites, for the same ones who are making it legal that any Joe Blow or one of those Crazy Karens can sue you for having an abortion in Texas, none of them are caring about the walking, living, breathing children under age 12 who are susceptible to Covid. None of them care to provide school lunches for hungry children or a full income for their mothers to care for those children.

All the Old White People who held the evil, egregious, and enormous signs outside the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis will to give one penny for diapers, formula, or daycare. They just bully, like the January 6th crowd or the school board protestors now.

Yes, I have been inside an abortion clinic, and long before they were forcing women through invasive vaginal ultrasounds to see the tissue in their body or sit through some "counseling" to wait two more days before doing it. I was not shamed or shunned.

But that was over thirty years ago. 

I rarely talk about it. Until now, my children probably didn't know. It is not that I am ashamed, but that I live in a country that makes women ashamed of what they do with their bodies. It didn't matter that I was sick or that I couldn't carry a baby or even that we were a young, married couple and could not afford another child. 

That is the point of these bans.

It is not about adding to the already burgeoning population of America, it is about them growing babies in unwilling bodies so they can walk around like minigods.

A woman has a right to choose.

That is what I told my daughters, one who will be twenty in a few days and one who will be eighteen in a few months. Their choice.

I will walk through hell fire to protect their choice and the choice of anyone else who is not ready. 

Just like condoms protect against disease and birth control protects against pregnancy (for the idiot men, neither of these are abortifactants), an abortion protects life. Some women have unviable pregnancies and have to have a D&C, these bans like the ones in Texas now make it so that doctors and nurses and even uber drivers can be sued. 

It is about their sick sick sick soul.

I am aggrieved. 

I am appalled.

And I am telling my story so that others will do the same, we can't let this thing in Texas become nationwide. It can not overturn Roe, but state houses are making it harder and harder for women to have basic care.

Meanwhile, OWM have all the viagra they want.

So they can rape, even in cases of incest, they will not grant an abortion.

Sounds pretty Taliban-ish to me.

I'm writing through tears, through rage, through determination.

I've never been an abortion-rights-activist, that was never my wheelhouse. I've supported organizations who have and have lent my voices, but never my story. But that is what activism sparks in us, something pushes us to the wall and angers us that we have to say something.

Say something.

I can assure you that you know someone, 1 in 4 women have had an abortion. 

Or you will know someone.

Maybe even your daughter or your gender-non-conforming child who still has ovaries that send an egg through a Fallopian tube to attach to a uterus that will push out through the vagina - if they choose, but if they don't and decided to not have those parts removed in their affirming gender, they may be someone you know who need reproductive/abortive/health choices.

It matters.

We can't go back.

We won't go back.

So speak up.