jocs

[thisisfusion]

We’re in love with Ashley Burnham, representing First Nations pride!

This story was originally posted on Fusion’s channel on Snapchat Discover. If you live outside the US and the UK, look for our daily stories on Snapchat Discover. Also - follow our account: thisisfusion. 

 Images via Ashley’s Facebook. 

- Nuria Net

[uprootedandrelentless]

I love her.

The other night, I walked along Lake Merritt under the blue moon. They say beneath these moons you face a heightened activity of the mind. Your feelings drip to earth with the moonlight. The dewiness of the evening left on your skin reminds you to reckon with them. 

The blue moon hit me hard that night. It was a moon that asked me to be plain with myself, to evaluate with great honesty what I do, who I care about, what I believe in, and where I lay my devotion.

I have started and stopped writing this post over and over again for the past few months. I suppose I have been stunted by a fear of sounding trite about this, or for flexing my general lack of profundity when sharing something that my immediate family has for so long kept between us and close to heart. We don’t often share the things that pain us let alone ask for help. But that night, I felt as if the blue moon deepened the urgency for this particular telling and reminded me that it’s incredibly difficult to be lyrically graceful when you are scared, or tired, or longing, or sick. And in matters of hardship, life or death, things will always be hard to say.

This is hard to say. And I don’t have any more preludes to postpone what the moon told me to share (something my family too has thought long and hard about sharing). 

My sisters are my life and my oldest sister Christabel has been sick for many seasons with end stage kidney failure. In plainer terms, she has no kidney function on her own and currently wakes up three times a week at 4 AM for dialysis to survive. Despite dialysis, countless surgeries, scars, medications, and bad days– my sister has continued to live. She is the most vibrant, strong, and hopeful human I know despite all the ways that kidney disease has impacted and limited the bounds of her young life. Shouldering all of this, she still manages to be a caring (and sassy) wife, intentional yogi, incredible educator, and fiercely supportive sister and daughter. She has in many ways raised me–as my sister, best friend, and third parent. And she continues to push me to always live too. She has nursed my silly broken hearts, encouraged me to continue searching for the work that fulfills me, and reminded me to explore and party a little.  I love her and I would be lost without her.

In trying seasons like these, hope rises and falls like the moon. Three of my family members have tested to be living donors–and have not been matches. Calls off the waitlist have fallen through. While I am finally at a point in my life professionally and spiritually to begin the process of testing on my own, I can’t help but think about what more to do to help her keep living.

In my various nonprofit and NGO jobs, I’ve asked for your support but no cause hits closer to home than this. I have decided to participate in this year’s Kidney Walk in Los Angeles with and for Christabel. Here is my fundraising page. I will walk/run/jump/sing to raise awareness about kidney disease and organ donation in hopes of finding a donor for my sister.

Please join me.

To join our team, click the “Join Team” link on the Kidney Walk page.

If you are interested in being a living donor or know anyone who would like to donate, call Scripps Transplant at [phone] and visit this webpage for more information:  https://www.scripps.org/services/transplant-services__kidney-transplant/services__living-kidney-donation

Or please make a monetary contribution! When you donate, more than 80 cents of every dollar donated directly supports programs and services, including:

Educating Americans through multimedia public awareness initiatives about kidney disease and ways to reduce their risk.

Empowering those at risk to take action at free, local kidney health screenings.

Supporting kidney patients, organ donors, and their families - online at www.kidney.org, on the phone toll-free at NKF Cares (1.855.653.2273), and through personal peer-mentoring.

Advocating as the voice of the kidney patient in Washington DC to address the organ donor shortage, fund more kidney research, and defend Medicare coverage for kidney disease.

Sharing the latest treatment information and practices with healthcare providers so patients get the best possible care.

Or pray, or wish, or write to the moon, the universe, etc. 

Thank you for listening. That feels good too.

Best,

EK

[hairy-hag]

We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.

Unknown (via hairy-hag)

[jsacra]

It’s simple to wake from sleep with a stranger, dress, go out, drink coffee, enter a life again. It isn’t simple to wake from sleep into the neighborhood of one neither strange nor familiar whom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting, we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselves downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered over the unsearched….We did this. Conceived of each other, conceived each other in a darkness which I remember as drenched in light. I want to call this, life. But I can’t call it life until we start to move beyond this secret circle of fire where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner.

Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

[amahbee-blog-blog-deactivated20]

[philippinesculture-deactivated2]

Amen 

[postcolonialfeminist]

"Very recently I had a conversation with Cornel West in my house. I shared with him that people kept asking me when Obama first ran did I think it would make a difference in lives of Black males. I said yes, symbolically. On issues of illiteracy, poverty, the sense of meaning of Black males, no. I saw Obama having great ties to the wealthy and the sustaining of the wealthy.

[jsacra]

"If anything we have learned from both the civil rights and feminist movements is that we have people in power who look like us but do not represent us. Too often we focus on image over the action."

[brutereason]

Labeling women as “crazy” is a way of controlling them. It may not be something planned or pre-meditated, but the ease with which men call women “crazy” says a lot about them. Calling a woman “crazy” is a quick and easy shut-down to any discussion. Once the “crazy” card has been pulled out, women are now put on the defensive: the onus is no longer on the man to address her concerns or her issue, it’s on her to justify her behavior, to prove that she is not, in fact, crazy or irrational. Men don’t even have to provide any sort of argument back – it’s a classic catch-22; “the fact that you don’t even see that you’re acting crazy is just proof that it’s crazy.”

On Labeling Women “Crazy” | Paging Dr. NerdLove - Part 2 (via creatingaquietmind)

[selchieproductions]

I decided to ignore anything pertaining to the film ‘Frozen’ a long time ago - the misrepresentation of the Saami in it, or rather the combination of misinformation and problematic myth-making in it did not appeal to me at all, I had already explained why I disapproved of the bastardisation of our...

[dellahickswilson]

‘See your beauty without a compliment or a mirror.’

'Blind' by Della Hicks-Wilson (via yasodhara)

[jsacra]

Trigger warning.

CutMovie.co.uk - Brought to you by Women's Aid HD version (by womensaid)

[jsacra]

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.

Frida Kahlo

[jsacra]

at the end of the day, you gotta jump.

[yogachocolatelove-deactivated20]

Don’t try to force anything. Let life be a deep let-go. See God opening millions of flowers every day without forcing the buds.

Osho (via yogachocolatelove)

[iprefertobeartistic]

[jsacra]

beautiful

[jsacra]

pain + (self) love = growth

[blau-rosa]

[afrafemme-blog]

[loveisarevolutionaryact]

“Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment…’dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love — which is to transform us.’ Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.”  ― bell hooks