Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Ghost of 22
It wasn't until my life was threatened that I found the boldness to move. I learned that staying isn't succeeding if you are being annihilated in the process. It is always, always okay to leave a table where love is no longer being served—even if you’re the one who set the place.
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.
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Luxury of Letting Go
“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. You look ten years younger.”
That’s what a man told me recently, and I had to smile. He didn’t know he was looking at a woman who had survived a tsunami. He didn’t know that just as I had finished a hard, honest conversation with myself about the state of my marriage, a hidden betrayal hit me with a force that nearly annihilated me. I had no time to brace for the impact; I just had to decide if I was going to swim or float away aimlessly.
Dark and Tender: Healing Black Men with The CUT Project
Aaron Johnson (he/him) is on a mission, the type of undertaking that comes to you through lived experiences. Ben Wilson (he/him), the producer of and participant in the short film Dark and Tender, invited me to attend the film’s screening at the Seattle Black Film Festival. The film, which aims to be a larger documentary, tells the story of the CUT Project.
Kink Subculture Can Provide Liberation, Decolonization Through Consent + Expression
It’s very different from my experiences growing up moderately religious in the South. It took away the shame and self-blame. In heteronormative, vanilla sex, there are too many unspoken expectations, too many assumptions about what’s going to happen, that some people just begin following the script without any sort of communication. This, I believe, leads to situations like what 17-year-old me experienced, where I left thinking I had led someone on and realized years later that I was actually assaulted. I don’t know if he knows this though.
