onetruerevolution

" and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive" - Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn

[navigatethestream]

i understand wanting to build a broad base movement, but at the expense of who exactly is the million dollar question.

I still see black women, black femmes, non-black WoCs, femmes of color, disabled folx, poor folx, indigenous folx, trans folx. All expected to exert emotional and educational labor in overdrive to allies and those engaging performative allyship, all the while being expected to express gratitude for just that, a performance.

I’m watching people all up and down my timeline exert their brilliance and energy into educating allies in overdrive. Sending links, writing long paragraph responses to questions, fielding inbox requests at all times of the nights and day.

Meanwhile, they struggle to pay bills. No matter how many times they ask for financial support and political education to be a reciprocal relationship, they’re blatantly ignored. Yet the requests for these same folx to continue engaging in that free labor with the utmost gratitude, sans critique for fear of driving people away or “fracturing the left” continue to pour in.

It’s as if This Bridge Called my Back, Cohambee River Collective statement, and other strains of liberatory thought demanding that the most marginalized will not be the mules and mammys of the movement didn’t happen.

And now because people are rightfully afraid of Trump, Zora’s words on black women being the mules of the world fade into the background and Audre’s ruminations on master’s tools and houses gets used to violently rhetorically bludgeon those into doing more for allys than they do for their own communities.

I get not wanting to harp on something seemingly so petty as solidarity symbols and actually encouraging the formation of new alliances, “ a stronger left” or whatever.

But it amazes me how the “fracturing of the left” is never attributed to the most marginalized being expected to give all of themselves, even when there is nothing left, to allies for free without ever receiving anything in return except scorn and derision when they aren’t performing gratitude enough.

Maybe folks are snapping cause they’re tired of laboring for free and they know their disposability, when they can’t do it anymore, is impending.

[buzzfeedreader]

How To Keep Black People Alive, a visual essay by Charlotte Gomez and Hannah Giorgis

[onetruerevolution]

My Achey-Breaky Heart

Amidst the joy, it resurfaces. Like the sound of waves lapping the shore, sometimes distant, sometimes closer. I am certain this feeling has accompanied me since childhood. It emerges quickly, suddenly, and eventually. It evolves. It creates a vast and deep well of empty and I have tried, throughout my earth-time, to fill it. But to no avail. There is no mystical elixir, no god in human form, no amount of social contact, nor informational or energetic download that will do the trick. I have repeatedly tried to create a panacea only to repeatedly discover  that there isn't one. The void is divine and only surrendering to it will do. And surrender, like other spiritual virtues as I understand them, is not as peaceful as it sounds. For me it often takes a lot of thrashing about, sleepless nights, countless cigarettes.  I flail limbs like a drowning woman until they exhaust. I peer under rocks, I flip pages of my spiritual self-help books and new-life programs manically looking for answers; I search myself, interrogate others, whimper into self-pitying collapse, and especially, especially, now that I no longer have my older stronger more precious vices (which I miss dearly like old friends), I wish my significant other were more like a stuffed animal-- always present, always available, always focused on providing for my needs-- my never-ending impossibly mercurial could not would not should not be met by a partner--needs. It's not that needs are wrong. Slowly and more slowly but surely the needs that actually belong in relationship--whose rightful place is in the space between myself and another--become requests and possibly mutual agreements, but those are not the ones I'm talking about. Although it should be noted that the development of wise discrimination is still murky and in progress and in process and involves a lot of holding each bejeweled need up to the light for a better look. And it also involves a lot of checking in with women older and wiser than I. The needs I'm speaking to here are the ones that bob afloat the dark waters of the aforementioned oceanic ever present well. The ones that, psychologically speaking, were born when as an infant I cried and wasn't always held, I hungered and wasn't always fed, I felt and expressed emotions that weren't always mirrored and even more disruptive to my development, were sometimes transformed before my young wide eyes into shame. When my deeply curious questions were met with disdain or dismissed, when the persons who peopled my world mistakenly sent me the message that there were "important things" that needed to be tended to, and I, in that moment, could not be one of them. Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of Calling in the One, recently echoed my therapist, and they both reminded me that my more-than-occasional lapses into insanity int the arena of romance was actually quite normal. Relationships are regressive; they can be little heart-mind-spirit bombs and explode us back in time, triggering all manner of unmet, unhealed, unresolved childhood needs and wounds. Without much conscious thought (no matter how much consciousness-raising mediation yoga recovery and other circuses of self-improvement rings I've stepped into, I'm still a samsaric-making machine of habit), I have repeatedly turned to The Person with an expectation, sometimes subtle as a sigh, sometimes overtly aggressive, but always manipulatively well-intentioned, that said person complete me, make me whole, save me from the abyss that is myself, and the existential well of empty. Like Woodward Thomas describes, I doggedly clung to the "fantasy that someone somewhere [would] come and make it all up to me" (p.142). Because I am in my late 30s, and as I joked about, I have a keen level of self-awareness and ongoing training in mindfulness and psychospiritual development, I am not just coming to this realization-- it is not my first time at this particular psychological rodeo. But awareness of our unhealed places is a spiral. I don't think our wounds ever go away, I think that over time, if we do the work and have the proper guidance, we gain a kind of distance that allows a different response. Acceptance, self-compassion, friends and therapists who are willing to peer into the darkness with us. New tools for the trade of self-archaeology. Woodward Thomas says that "until we are healed, it doesn't matter how much someone loves us. The heart will soon be empty again, demanding to be fed with a ferocious hunger that will not be abated" ( p. 141). That is until we take up the task of "re-parenting" ourselves. Of looking closely and clearly at the skills we didn't get taught like self-soothing, unconditional pleasure in our own being-ness, emotional regulation and skillful expression, boundary-setting and honoring the boundaries of others, listening to the voice of the inner child (the One That Whispers)and more concrete life skills like budgeting, cooking, creating and maintaining hospitable internal and external environments,. She writes, "It's time to cut our losses. It's time to begin giving to yourself that which you've been waiting for someone else to give to you." And that is where I am right now. It's like staring over the edge of the cliff knowing you have to leap.

[onetruerevolution]

[onetruerevolution]

10 posts!

[sicilyjoy]

They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.’

1984-George Orwell (via sisoula)

[onetruerevolution]

Protecting The Happy

I don’t know what happened. Or how it happened exactly. Perhaps it was all of the almost unbearable suffering that was 2014. Perhaps it’s because I finally went back to therapy. Perhaps it was all of the nights I spent on my knees, whispering help me into clasped hands. Perhaps it was holding the hand of my closed-mouth friend. Or the trip home sleeping in the ancient bed and warmth of my mother’s shadow. Or the trip to New Jersey and the smile of my glorious cousin Cassandra. Or the sermon and laying on of hands at her church. Perhaps there the Holy Spirit finally found me. Maybe it’s because I started going back to the gym. I think it’s the grace of God that led me to do all of those things in the first place. Grace: it’s not what you think it is. It’s messy and scary. It’s supposedly unmerited divine assistance to restore us to proper functioning. Anne Lamott wrote, “I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” All of this just to say, that by the grace of what I call God, I have found some joy, some happy.

What is this strange creature that, as Rumi says, has finally opened a window to find me knocking on its doorstep? It is a buoyancy in my being, an invisible tulle skirt that has made me feel light and graceful, a clarity around the need for an internal “no” to things I don’t want and a resounding and child-like enthusiastic “yes” to all else. It is my willingness to speak to strangers on the bus, to ask for a kiss or to say come here to my beloved, to call him my beloved, it is laughter laughter laughter and a smirk when laughter would not be welcome. And it is not without fear.

There is plenty of fear. Fear that I am forgetting something important that once remembered will cause me to scoff at myself and say how foolish of you to think you could be happy. Fear that those who say they love me are just pretending. Fear that something dark and shadowy lies in wait. To allow myself this respite in joy then takes courage. The courage that comes from knowing this too shall pass.

But in the meantime, I am choosing to bask. To raise my happiness set point. To allow my brain to remember this, savor it, and thus rewire. To look up at the vast blue expanse and say yes, thank you, more please. To let my body have this memory for when the clouds roll back in. I whisper to myself like a child, it’s ok honey. Go play. Whatever it is that comes, we’ll manage. I’ve got you.

And I’m protecting my happy. As the witch in The Wiz sang, don’t nobody bring me no bad news. I’m keeping my distance from all things drama-inducing, from soul suckers and crazy makers, nixing as Mary Oliver poetically describes, the voices crying “mend my life” unless they are those dear to my heart in need of help or unless it’s clinical and I’m getting paid. Otherwise, honey, ain’t nobody got time for that.

Protect your happy and spread it like chocolate icing.

[greenseer-blog]

A fun thing to do when people accuse you of “thinking people should just have stuff HANDED TO THEM! ! !” Is to just cold be like yes. I absolutely do believe that. I think every single person should have their needs met unconditionally without ever having to prove that they “deserve” it based on arbitrary criteria of usefulness. You got me. Busted.

[onetruerevolution]

The Roots new single off their upcoming album "And Then You Shoot Your Cousin" Coming Soon on Def Jam Recordings.

[onetruerevolution]

[onetruerevolution]

Being Strong.

This has been a season of challenge.  And yet, even as I write that --as I squint my eyes to look into the past to see if I can determine when this season of challenge began, there is no set start date because I cannot remember seasons of ease.  Perhaps I am the sort of person who is easily challenged.  Perhaps I have welcomed challenge and so it has taken up residence in my life, in my psyche. I don't rule out these possibilities.  But I can say that these past couple month have been challenging in a way that is so subtle I find myself repeatedly surprised at having to muster my inner resources: having to bear down, buck up, brace, surrender, release, re-enter, get my sea legs and my big girl panties, be graceful, pray for grace, be merciful, pray for mercy... challenged so subtily I have to wonder if it's my imagination (knowing that all dharmas are dreams) and simultaneously challenged so monumentally that I can hear the question lurking in every corner. 

Who are you?  Who are you, really?  Are you who you think you are? Are you who you say you are?

Who have I been believing myself to be?

I am a strong woman.  And as I have explored in other writing, to be strong as  a black woman is not a choice.  What does it mean to be strong? There is the physical- and I do train in increasing my power in relation to navigating the physical world.  "Able to perform a specified action well and powerfully"-- yes, I am that.  Given a specified task and the minimal requisite training, I have the type of mind and being that will perform well more often than not.  "Exerting great force"-- Some element of choicelessness  surfaces.  In order for a black woman to have equal or greater impact on her world as that of a man, or that of a white person, she must learn to exert great force.  So much so that even when conditions are such that they do not require great exertion, the habitual tendency to struggle and overcome is deeply ingrained and perhaps to be otherwise must be unlearned.  

From the outside, this need to exert great force is often misinterpreted or mislabelled, "aggressive" "defiensive" "dominating" "overbearing" "outspoken"-- a personal character flaw marking the individual. And because we as humans don't like being flawed, I dedicated myself for at least a decade to attempting to soften, become less jagged, round out the edges, feminize, tone down, de-bitch, unfurl, rein in, to apply less force and pressure to living-- to the embodied articulation of my right to exist.  Only to discover that the social forces at work around me and internalized within me-- the vicious and pernicious forces of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forces of oppression--required a certain being-ness of me in order to be withstood.  

"Able to withstand great force or pressure."  I am strong and must grow to accept how my strength manifests, wisdom or neurosis.  Perhaps, my strength is best captured in the word resilience, "the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties."  It's in the getting up every morning with faith-- often the faith of a mustard seed--getting up even though all external signs seem to point nowhere, and even though the voices both externalized and internalized wish to convince me that there is something pathological in my difference from who I am and who they think I should be or who they are, in the getting up and getting through and getting over it and on with it-- there is the practice of resiliency.  

These are things I know to be true about myself and I am grateful to this season of challenge for rooting this knowledge more deeply in my being. 

[onetruerevolution]

Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move"- Matthew 17:20

[onetruerevolution]

{I said this is my flesh he said so what I said  this is a toe I've stubbed on sharp corners

 it sends hard-to-articulate sensations to unmapped parts of my body & I become paralyzed &  my eyes close.

he says I know I've stubbed my toe thousands of times.

I say then why don't you get it.

                                                                                                                            *

Before the age of 15

the word pleasure was spelled in candy. I remember being little & putting my hands

where they didn't belong

deep down into a barrel of powdered sugary smoothness.

Put one in my mouth & let it roll over my tongue.  

My mouth puckered with white dust the store clerk called me sweetie

then called my mother over the loudspeaker.

I learned there is nothing innocent about any of it. 

                                                                        *

Already at age 6

I am in the coat closet with a boy who runs from me during recess.

I am faster than he is

but already I know I am not supposed to catch him. 

*

At 15,

 I fall for a boy, let's call him John, he has a kind of city drawl,

takes me to the movies, buys me candy, calls me star.

I know there is only so long I can hold him. still.  He says candy is for little girls. He says it only hurts for a minute & then it's all love.  Says love is a verb & comes wrapped in other words like always forever & now.   He says other things in the dark like hold still & hold on and I keep holding my breath. I want to be his movie, his star.

 I feel the body which was once mine give in & up & I learn

to let the mind shoot scenes from a wide angle, to let the mind dangle like tiny spiders

from the corners of the room, watch what we are doing from afar.  

In the dark, like a movie, like a star. 

                                                                        *

At 17,

 I have learned to speak the language of lipstick & tight jeans

how to dangle the promise of later like a glistening red lollipop.  How to lick my lips absentmindedly when I know he is watching. I learn to wrap love in legs & arms to cover stains in sheets to blink myself from one dark space to another.  I have remembered

how to put my hands where they don't belong under t-shirts and half-buttoned jeans how to undo belt buckles with a quick flutter of fingertips & listen for the deep exhale.  

But I am still a child.  I don't know what to do when the lights dim except remember

to make my mouth form O &  Ah & claw at skin & open & close & squeeze & say god & fuck &  please.  

roll over pull away before he does.  occasionally get wet around the eyes.

                                                                        *

At 22, O's & Ah's come more easily.  I lay back & inarticulate sensations swirl. I become a painting by Georgia O'Keefe: larger than life I cover the walls with undulations of muave curvature. Envelop him in petal, pistil, stamen, pollen.  

A blade of grass, I grow wild & sharp.

In the dark, after the heat, he leaves the windows open, & my softness becomes bitten by frost. 

It will never grow warm enough.

                                                                        *

I say see here this is my flesh he says I know I’ve seen you naked I say see here this is my finger slammed in a door when I was little see how the nail never grew back right  he says ouch looks like it hurt I say yes now do you get it. }

[onetruerevolution]

[onetruerevolution]

On my way back

When I even think about my return to the blank page, my stomach filps-- though perhaps that is the US Airways coffee I drank and the subsequent panic that it will keep me awake while my boyfriend snores beside me in blissful slumber.  I take a deep breath in hopes of gathering evidence to support Fritz Perls' assertion that, "Fear is excitement without the breath."   I feel afraid.  What am I afraid of? Afraid that my life will swallow me whole, my life which in this moment glimmers with an eerie claustrophobia like flowers in the attic or the secret garden.  No, that's not right, that's a bit too dramatic.  Maybe it's more like a garden gone wild--overrun with unidentifiable growths--rambling vines--prickly brambles that can't wait to sink their thorns into that tender spot behind the ankle bone--rapid movement in the tall grasses.  

I am a woman perpetually at a crossroads which in my younger years felt noble and true, but now in my ripe middle age, I wouldn't mind a boring old map with a "you are here" star, or a wisened old traffic cop in a florescent vest drunkenly teetering on his neon diamond-shaped sign which indicates the proper speed and direction I should obey.  I've grown weary of my own manic cycle of trying to figure it out--the elation of thinking I've finally got it, the disappointing sound of my rusty habits bringing forward momentum to a slow halt, the slippery downward spiral into the moat of depression, the enormity of clawing my way out, to rest bewildered in the winter of my discontent. (On a side note, I am remembering with warmth some friends in graduate school #1 that would answer the phone, you've reached the winter of our discontent,  and then remembering that Dorothy Parker is said to have answered the phone, what fresh hell is this,  and the thought that I too am in just the right place in my life that answering the phone in either fashion would make perfect sense makes me exhale with relief).  A slight smile comes across my face.  Perhaps I don't have to play by the rules.