When I was a little girl, I felt light, I felt free. I ran through the woods with my wild curly hair swinging around me and my conch shell tied to a leather strap from my neck. I blew it ceremoniously when I came across a sight that delighted me or when I encountered a dead animal that needed a witness to its passing. I choreographed dances and slid across the wood floors in my house. I scrunched my nose and smiled. I twinkled. [Read more…]
First came the anger.I needed to let myself feel the anger because for years anger had lived in me coated with guilt and shame. The old anger was wrapped in the feeling that I actually shouldn’t be upset, that I had no good reason to be angry.
But I deserved the anger without the guilt. “Let me have this anger,” I thought. “No one rush me to good feelings of reconciliation. You will not take this anger from me.” [Read more…]
I thought I needed to wait until you died to say this. Not that I wanted you to die. I didn’t. But I thought about the things I could do once you did, as if my words could not live while you did, as if they couldn’t breathe the same air.
Just wait until you can’t hurt anyone, I thought. Don’t destroy the relationship. Maybe it could change. Maybe he will understand you some day and love you how you need. [Read more…]
Kingston Frazier was a 6-year-old boy who died from multiple gunshot wounds after his mother’s car was stolen from a parking lot with him sleeping inside while his mother stopped in at a store. Three black male teenagers were arrested and will be charged with capital murder.
I e-mailed this reflection to a couple friends and mentors just like this, and I don’t know how else to post it.
I don’t want to be an irresponsible white voice. I don’t want to hurt people. There’s the hurt of truth that can bring good change and the hurt of words that actually do harm. Please let me know my blind spots and if this is a time when I would do more good sitting down and listening rather than speaking. I want to learn how to not be complicit in my white silence, but it feels really messy and scary to work through a constructive way of speaking. I don’t feel qualified. And I worry about my voice replacing voices of color.
I want to honor the life of Kingston. I want to honor the life of his family and the other three families involved. I don’t want to reduce Kingston to a cause. I don’t want to ride in as a knight in shining armor on my white horse as defender to black lives. I don’t want to speak as a white savior. I don’t know how to do this right, and surely I will fail in ways. Surely I am missing something or many things. [Read more…]
As a married woman, I have eaten alone with male friends many times. I have exchanged emails containing personal writings about my life and past. I have gone on long walks with a male friend. I have drunk beer alone in an apartment with one. I have stayed up talking to a male friend on our own couch after Lloyd has gone to bed and left us in the living room. We have texted and talked on the phone. Men who are not my husband have been confidantes. Sometimes we’ve hung out as a group with my husband, but I’ve had a distinct friendship with men apart from their friendship with my husband.
[Read more…]
I wrote most of this on November 9, 2016, the day after the presidential election.
This morning I woke up and felt numb.
From the moment my eyes opened, I could feel the weight of the night’s events lying heavy on my chest. I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My “Salute me I voted” sticker looked just as chipper as it did the day before, clinging to my shirt with the California bear walking on a rainbow. The bear, the rainbow, the stars and stripes. They held a hope that now rotted. I wasn’t ready to peel the shirt off and admit it was over. That would mean that what had happened was real, and it was time to move forward.
When I finally undressed and got in the shower, I felt the same shock, denial, fear, confusion, and sadness that I felt years ago on the day after the rape. The water rushed over my body, and I gasped as the tears came to the surface and trickled down. [Read more…]
