Unsilenced Woman

A new generation finds its voice

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I was a freshman in high school when the planes hit the Twin Towers. In the weeks following I sat in front of the TV for hours and hours of new coverage, stories of lives lost and family members left behind in despair. I made a collage of the devastation, cutting photos and headlines out of newspapers. My heart hurt, and my hands had to do something. The ink from the newsprint smudged my fingers black, and my fingertips grew sticky from the glue.

Something else stuck with me, too: the hurt of the country, the hurt of the world, and questions of what it means to love and fight for my country. [Read more…]

If my son’s going to be from Mississippi

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unsilencedwomanJackson, Mississippi was still thawing when Former Governor William Winter took the stage for our state’s bicentennial celebration and the opening of the country’s first state-funded and state-sponsored civil rights museum.

Friday brought the biggest snowfall we had received in 35 years, and Saturday two Mississippi museums opened as we made a stand for teaching and honoring unveiled truth. In the opening of the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, we said:  This is our history, and we’re going to stop hiding it. This is the darkness, and as bright as the light may be, we won’t stare into it so long that we let it blind us to the darkness around us that still needs illumination. [Read more…]

To the Church: Your love is hurting us

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After writing parts of this, I spoke openly to a couple clergy members about my feelings. New questions and perspectives arose, but it was important to me to preserve the original sentiments and voice I captured in this piece before I had insights gained from dialogue. This will be the first of a series in which I explore being a Christian, specifically an Episcopal Mississippian, in America today. Each piece will be in conversation with the others as I continue my own conversations with laypeople and clergy. 

A litany of hurt

The first time church hurt was when I learned what prayer felt like. I was preparing for my First Communion, and I started out two steps behind, like a kid who goes to kindergarten not knowing her colors or shapes and feels defeated before they’ve even begun. [Read more…]

The hard truth I can’t ignore in Kingston Frazier’s death

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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…]

Why we marched: Because we refuse to go back

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I do not speak up comfortably.

Any situation that requires speaking UP and over a powerful voice or strong ideas makes me shaky and feel physically ill. It takes so much strength for me to say those first words that I become an emotion balloon, and all logical reasoning and retort power feel like they’ve been sucked out of me.

I’m not quick with facts; challenge my ideas, and I will forget my supporting argument and doubt speaking up in the first place. I will fear that I have done my cause more harm than good because isn’t this what “the other side” wanted? To prove that what we believe is empty, hollow, nothing but a Mississippi snowflake that will melt as soon as it touches the ground. [Read more…]

In my president I see the man who abused me

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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…]