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6.15.2020

Caught Between

Everything makes me feel nostalgic nowadays. For days of climbing trees, of barbies with my best friend, for embarrassment over naked Santa (what? you didn't have family that were naturists?). My Gram has been gone so long, that she has merged almost completely in my mind with the Grandmother from the old Garfield's Christmas special. She had many things in common with her anyway, but now I can't tell the difference.

I want countryside, maples in a blaze of red, and green green green so lush around me I can feel it without even having to touch. I even look back at March, and wish I knew then what I knew now... how differently I would have started things.

When I'm not feeling nostalgic, I'm ... what even is the opposite? wistful for what's ahead, and may in fact never exist? I long so entirely for a world that might not even come to pass, that I miss it. I weep for the house and the yard, for gardens in a riot of flowers and plants. For moments of quiet and teaching friends in a home studio. For traveling to the ancestral land of Wales that holds so very much of my heart. I pine for choices so very much out of my current control.

What does it say about our current days when I can't seem to escape the nets of past or future?

6.08.2020

As Inspired by Braiding Sweetgrass

When I was born, my parent's brought home my placenta and buried it under a lilac bush in our backyard. You could say after that I was raised by flowers, intimately connected to lilacs. Spring would arrive and my Mom would plant. It was her haven, and I would walk among the flowers she lovingly placed in the earth, surrounded the their scent. Flowers still feel like home, the look of them, the feel of them. Fingers in dirt roots me down and I'm back in my childhood yard, the forsythias a riot of yellow as glowing as the afternoon sun.

Like a young child called to pick up every shiny rock, when I'm walking I'm called to come in close to each flower I pass. While I have my favorites, I can't seem to resist inspecting every little bud, their rainbow of colors so pleasing to my eye. They have a voice and a language all their own, and its a familiar crescendo when the rest of life feels like an unfamiliar symphony. Everything has a voice, and when I moved to Colorado from Pennsylvania, it felt like shifting into a new language that I'd only even seen on paper and never heard spoken before. It took me 4 years to learn to speak Colorado, and 3 months of a pandemic to make me feel like I lost my new language.

My one constant though, is the flowers. Their's is a language that flows in my veins, the one I dream in. My exuberance feels like the bright orange of a tiger lily, the ones that naturally lined the dirt roads leading to my parent's house. Once I was old enough, I would walk by them, and gently run my hands across their stems to send them waving in my self-created breeze. On special days (according to the calendar, or just according to us), my Dad and I might stop and take a small handful to surprise my Mom with.

I plant my own inadequate garden now, in pots on my apartment balcony, the flowers in defiance of Colorado "spring." A rebellion of color and texture, placed into soil with a prayer to their being able to withstand the see-sawing temperatures, the possibility of hail, the intense winds that can come in the weeks that follow. When they make it, those flowers help rally me. Together we can withstand. I'm so grateful to have been raised by flowers.

6.05.2020

Bring the Camping Inside

Gwen's Girl Scout year obviously got cut short. They haven't met in person since March, and they only started meeting virtually about a month ago. They were so sad to have to miss out on their end of the year camping, but decided to do a zoom camp out instead. Obviously it wasn't the same, but I appreciate them making the best of the situation. Girls were invited to camp in either their back yard, or inside somewhere. We made a blanket tent in the living room, since we don't have yard space.




They also dropped off backs of stuff on each girl's doorstep, so that they could all do the same fun camping activities. I loved the creativity of using different sized treats to teach them how to properly build a campfire (pretzel rods for logs, pretzel sticks for sticks, potato sticks for kindling, etc).


They also dropped off stuff to make box ovens, and s'mores fire pits.


Then they stayed up on zoom until 10pm playing games and telling stories.


It obviously wasn't the same, but listening to Gwen belly laugh from her blanket tent was so satisfying. Quarantine has been hard on her. We've finally lightened up our own restrictions to allow her to play outside with friends, but we still ask her to distance, and she misses the normality of certain interactions. I'm so glad her troop stepped up to create this next best scenario.

6.01.2020

Pride and BLM

It's June - PRIDE month - and its more important now then ever to understand where Pride originated from. Pride was literally a riot. Starting with Stonewall, and especially LGBTQIA+ people of color (even more specifically, Trans Black People). It was a fight for the Queer community's very right to exist. Right now, Black people as a whole are fighting for those same rights - the right to exist without persecution - and queer people, ALL people, need to stand with them.




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You know, if someone murdered Gwen in cold blood, I’d want to burn them to the ground too. So what do you expect when that someone is the whole damn system?! Our very government, and the enforcers of our laws? When you’re told that kneeling isn’t an okay protest, nor is wearing an “I can’t breathe” t-shirt. The rage, sadness, helplessness I’m feeling right now is buffered by my white privilege. I will never know the fear of losing my family to the “inexcusable act” of being Black in America. 🖤 So just imagine how your BPOC friends are feeling right now. They don’t want justice after the fact (that’s a second place victory at best), they want TO STOP BEING KILLED. White killers that lead police on multi-state chases, kidnapping people along the way, are captured without bloodshed. They are put in the paper as “UConn Student” with a lovely smiling picture. BPOC are killed for being (falsely) accused of writing a check. Or for taking a jog. Or for sleeping in their own damn bed. 💔 They deserve better. We, white people, have to do better. It’s not enough to not be racist. We have to actively fight back against an oppressive system. And if you’re tired, imagine how your BIPOC friends are feeling after fighting this same damn fight for hundreds of years. 🤎 Please take the time to do some research, find ways to help. Amplify Black voices. And refuse to be silent when you see an oppressive system at work. #blm #blacklivesmatter #whiteprivilege #blacktranslivesmatter
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It's not enough to not be racist, it is time to actively be working against racism. And it is not okay to be silent.



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@therealyogimuse always gets me to try fun new shapes. Often new poses or variations produce a certain amount of discomfort at first. In yoga we learn that pain is your body’s way of saying something is wrong, but discomfort is something that can be sat with. Often times it’s simply alerting us to a new area of the body that we’re finally breaking into. If we learn to sit with it instead of running away, we get to move forward. If we learn to listen to the discomfort to see what is underneath, we grow. 🕉 White folks, what’s happening right now might make you feel discomfort. Sit with it. Don’t run away from it. Look at what is causing your discomfort and see what old, racial biases you’re carrying inside without even realizing. Grow. BIPOC have been adjusting themselves to alleviate our discomforts for far too long. It is well past our turn. #blacklivesmatter
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Black Lives Matter.
Trans Lives Matter.
Black Trans Lives Matter.

The fight doesn't end until we all enjoy the same freedoms and protections.




Please check out these amazing resources for education:
Black Visions Collective
Ally Henny
Rise Up Midwife
Matt Bernstein
The Armchair Commentary
NAACP