Unsilenced Woman

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…]

A marriage built in the fog

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He called me “steel wrapped in cotton”. Resilient. Upright and tall in my demeanor despite all I had been through. Unyielding in my soft welcome.

He saw me as stronger than I ever knew I was. I liked who I was in his eyes. He made me feel like he was right, like the person he saw was the real me. That I was strong. Stronger than where I had been. I fell in love with him, and I fell in love with myself. 

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Raising the warrior son the world needs

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I just knew I was having a girl. I felt it in my heart. I sat in the sun on the playground one day watching my students run by in a blur, and as their 10-year-old energy swirled around me, I had this anchoring feeling that I was having a girl.

Imagine my surprise when the ultrasound tech said, “And that’s a penis. You have a boy. Congratulations!”

“A boy? Are you sure?” As much as that little cocktail weenie nub floating on the screen looked undeniably like a part of a boy, I was shocked. I am a highly intuitive person. I thought I would sense the sex of the baby growing inside my body. I thought I would be able to sense the presence of a penis within me. [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…]

All alone in a room full of people: Anxiety and authority in my first years teaching

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The teaching dreams. They haunt me. In them I have no control, no power. Students laugh at me, ignore me, and challenge me. There is a cacophonous symphony on every side. Chaotic chords in the minor key. My heart pounds in my chest. My face is flushed. My mind goes everywhere and nowhere. I can feel everything slipping away. Every last bit of control.

Five years later the dreams still flare up when I am anxious, uncertain, or afraid of something in my life. I wake up feeling sick to my stomach, and my head knows I don’t have to walk into the classroom that day. But the classroom is still in me. Class is in session. In my dreams I am frozen in time.

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Hello, world. The silence brought me here.

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I had a dream the night I secured the domain name UNSILENCED WOMAN.

I unexpectedly found myself in my ex-boyfriend’s house. When I realized I was there, I scrambled to get out. I left so quickly that I forgot the notebook where I had been writing down my ideas for this blog, my whole vision. [Read more…]