I hear it all the time when they see my son’s blue eyes and his big happy smile. “He’ll be a heartbreaker.” I always cringe. This happens a lot at the pool. We spend a lot of time there in the summer months since it’s just across the driveway. People we haven’t seen through the…
I held my fourth You Speak, We Listen: Together We Stand in August. (And I meant to post this article here ages ago.) You Speak, We Listen: Together We Stand (YSWL) is my quarterly virtual storytelling event for womxn. I created this virtual stage for womxn and their stories, last spring as we were under…
THE BACKSTORY My bestie and I — you know her as Maggie from Dear Universe (page 57 if you want a specific reference) — got together for the first time since December of 2019. The last time we were face to face, unmasked, swapping what’s happenings, we were sitting in a booth at a restaurant,…
I just held my third You Speak, We Listen: Together We Stand a couple of weeks ago and the power of the stories reminded me of why I believe in this event. You Speak, We Listen: Together We Stand (YSWL) is my quarterly virtual storytelling event for womxn. It was born out of my want…
The following is a guest post contribution from one of the You Speak, We Listen speakers (Sept 2020). NIGGER! NIGGER! NIGGER! I can still hear those words piercing through my ears as if it were yesterday. I heard that vile word for the first time in my adult life while driving my car in Southern…
On Tuesday, September 15th, 2020 I did something that terrified me. Not in the boogeyman under the bed ready to snatch your ankles and drag you underneath kind of terrifying, but the jump from an airplane in exhilaration kind of terrifying. The kind of terrifying that comes with the internal knowing you’re about to do…
When you end up in your 30s post-divorce and stuck in a job that ignores your potential and would never suggest you paid time and money for higher education, you wake the fuck up. You look back on all the things you thought you would do, all the aspirations you had, and realize your life…
Fast forward to my early twenties and I found myself in the safety of the trees once more, finding a path to hope in the wake of my sexual assault. I was in grad school, living for the first time on my own and still a long way from home. It was a year and…
From relationships taking a turn for the worst; to crappy jobs and scenarios; to other internal interpersonal conflicts, I’ve spent a lot of time ignoring my instincts. What have I learned from this? Two things: 1) trust your gut; 2) when the Universe calls, listen. The times I ignored my gut-feelings about something always ended…
We gathered at the top of the hill in the building called the WIG, taking off our shoes on the porch and entering barefoot. The pine boards were cool beneath the arches of my feet. Last year at this time, we had joined Otha Day for a drumming circle. There was sisterhood woven together with…