My grandma likes to tell me, “Ever since you were a little girl, you always asked me about my past. ‘Where were you born, Nana?’ ‘How do you say this in French?’ You always asked. You wanted to know. You were curious about me.”
All alone in a room full of people: Anxiety and authority in my first years teaching
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.
Where imagination met reality in my birth
The story of my son’s birth was mysteriously erased from my computer. Centimeters of dilation lost, timeline lost, contraction history lost, direct quotes from my doctor lost. The medical story, the story of facts and numbers, vanished.
At first I despaired in the loss of history and record. I thought, “I need to write it as best I can again before I forget ALL of it!” But when I thought about re-writing the whole thing, it felt like a bore, like a labor I did not want to endure. Maybe that was the universe sending me a message: That story does not matter. Or, that story is not your story. There is another story underneath that story. A story of inner journey. A story of the senses. A story of imagination and the worn landscape of birth. [Read more…]
Why I have eaten alone with men who are not my husband
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…]
Hello, world. The silence brought me here.
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…]
