May 31, 2012
Let There Be Peace
I saw Sweet Honey In The Rock several months ago. They performed this song and I was sitting in the first row. It gives me a chill. They have been working together for many years. Usually groups break up. How do they continue to get along? Maybe they take the words of the song literally. I don’t like the way the video abruptly cuts off in the end.
May 22, 2012
Cannot Relate To My Son
My son is 27 and lives with his girlfriend. My husband and I occasionally go over to visit. I cannot imagine how he feels or what that feels like. He has a mother and father and these days we can actually stand each other. He likes me to hug him. He calls and wants to talk to me. He asks, “Where’s my daddy?” Meanwhile I’m thinking he’s living a life I can’t understand. My father didn’t live with us and when he came to visit he was abusive. My mother was abusive and I couldn’t bear for her to touch me. What he has experienced is so simple and yet so valuable. I helped create something I might not ever be able to fully comprehend. Life can be strange.
February 29, 2012
A Child’s Book of Blessings Compiled by Sabrina Dearborn
http://www.amazon.com/Childs-Book-Blessings-Sabrina-Dearborn/dp/184148010X
I found this book at a library sale. It is so pretty and soothing that I want to share some of the blessings it has in.
Blessing For Peace. “Peace to you from my heart to yours.” Sufi
Water Blessing. “Waters of Life Pour forth upon our thirsty world.” Christian
Bedtime Blessing. “Great Owl of Dreams, Wings soft and furred with dark, Soar though my sleep To that tender place between the eyes and heart. Bring me the dream in your mother beak, The dream to feed me and teach me and guide me, Great Owl of Dreams.” From Celebrating the Great Mother
New Year Blessing. “May you have success in all endeavors. May you have peace and health in the four seasons. May your happiness be as wide as the sea. May all your comings and goings be peaceful.” Chinese
Fire Blessing. “Remember, remember the sacredness of things Running Streams and dwellings The young within the nest A hearth for sacred fire The holy flame of fire” Pawnee
September 14, 2011
Music and Poetry For Radical’s Kidparts.
My kidparts have always been cool, tough, and strong. They saved me and our mind. Those images of Des’ree side by side and in black and white remind me of my different parts of myself. Thank you girls. I am so proud to be a part of you.
sorrows
By Lucille Clifton
Source: Poetry (September 2007).
September 1, 2011
Another Excellent Article From Crunk: On Disappearing.
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/feminist-musings-on-showing-up/
People already think I am inferior to them because I am a large, black, natural haired woman, but this article really made me think of how I hide my selves from other people because they will think I am unintelligent or crazy.
May 24, 2011
“FOR STRONG WOMEN” By Marge Piercy
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/main_poet.html
“For strong women”
A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears
in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren’t you feminine, why aren’t
you soft, why aren’t you quiet, why
aren’t you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
April 15, 2011
What blows me away is
that my kid parts are able to see my adult son as their child even though they are younger than he is. How is my mind able to do that?
April 7, 2011
SECRETS
I think I finally understand why elders do not want to tell the younger people in their families about the horrors of the abuse that went on in the past. Now it is my turn. I need to tell my son some family history and I find myself editing what I am going to say. I want him to live his own life and not carry the pain of the past with him. I want to protect him.
I really resented my family for not telling me about the past, but now I don’t know how to feel. After all, I think I’m old enough to hear anything, but do people who are old enough to be my parent think so? I do not want to keep secrets, but I don’t want to cause someone to hurt or agonize unnecessarily. Or maybe there is no way to protect the younger people in my family from the pain of what happened in the past. Damn!
