To Seattle, With Autistic Love
Growing up in the South, stigmas can run wild, branding you. Queer? Hide that shit. Autistic? Mask it at all costs. I learned to let people perceive me like a shadow. I showed enough of myself to let people get a sense of me without letting anyone in too deep.
Perennial Conventions: Spring Awakening
Welcome to Spring! The season featuring wet earth, chatty birds, wardrobe uncertainty, and soon…babies, babies, babies. Both a season on its own as well as a transitionary period. Winter fitfully thawing into Summer as the frigid rot fertilizes the new growth.
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: No More Dry Biscuits
I have realized that my heart, the very center of my desire, has the amazing capacity to recognize beauty in more than one mirror. I find myself in a season I never expected: navigating deep feelings while standing firmly on newly discovered ground. This wasn’t a planned destination; I didn’t set out to audition hearts or be out here all in my feels. But here we are! As a woman who has been refined by the scorching fires of two divorces, I have realized that healing doesn't make your heart smaller—it makes it more discerning.
A Meditation of Self-Love this Black History Month
Black history month comes every February, but before, during, and after my brown skin shelters me. The first line of defense between the softness within and the harsh exterior. My mind has been cultivated to love everything about myself.
Perennial Conventions: Tending
I no longer have social media (future article on this to come), but I do watch a lot (too much) of YouTube. And for me, January 1—and earlier, in truth—began the seemingly endless bombardment of New Year-inspired content. Planner updates, journaling tips, weight loss and dieting advice. Mere weeks after winter has begun we’re inundated with peppy people telling us how to get our lives together. I’ve never really bought into this, though I know how easy it is to be swept up into the fervor of goal-setting energy.
Perennial Conventions: An Invitation
As we approach the Winter Solstice, it is an appropriate time to remember the cyclical rhythms that guide our world. These rhythms are constant and the effects they have on us are evident, but in the pursuit of capital and perfect efficiency, we humans have lost the familiarity with the world around us…and I truly believe it is destroying our ability to cope.
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Art of Healing Out Loud
There are seasons when life gets so loud, whispering stops working. You stop tiptoeing and walking on eggshells around your own truth. You stop shrinking to make other people comfortable. You stop pretending you're “fine” when your soul is over there banging pots, trying to be heard and have that hurt validated. At some point, you match the volume. That’s where I’ve been — healing OUT LOUD. Not in a reckless way, not in a messy way, but in a “my heart said testify” kind of way.
Trans* Talk: Finding Joy
This month has been harrowing for Trans* folks all over the country, with the government shut down due to—among many other things—a disagreement between parties about Trans* healthcare expenses, a few troubling responses to the ‘No Kings’ protests over the past weekend, and more medical misinformation being spread by the current administration. It has been a difficult news week.
For Colored Boyz Beautifully Presents Black Men in Their Own Words and Worlds
On September 5, I attended the West Coast premiere of For Colored Boyz (On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown/When Freedom Ain’t Enuff), written by Bryan-Keyth Wilson with direction by Lynette Winters and Ry Armstrong and choreography by Jimmy Shields. Brought to us by The Underground Theater, the play was described as a choreopoem, utilizing poetry, movement, and music to detail the unique intersectionality of being a queer Black man in America.
Pongo Poetry Project Provides Creative Therapy to Struggling Youth
What would the world be without poetry today? Poetry, a quintessential art form, always needs more attention, affection, and appreciation. The Pongo Poety Project, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, is just one of many that continues to keep this art form alive while fostering new writers into its environment.
