Choosing Humanity

“It is necessary for us to become and to remain humans. That means a lot…we know deep down what’s right, and what’s true, and what’s needed. We gotta get there. We just have to.”

-Toni Morrison

Yesterday morning, I had the unenviable job of explaining to a nine- and six-year-old that this time, a bully won. My eldest cried and asked “why?” My youngest asked, “will there be war?” My partner and I did our best to assure them that they are secure and that Mommy and Daddy will protect them no matter what. But the truth is that I’m not sure what’s coming–or even that I will be able to protect them. As a parent, it’s the most terrifying fact of life: there is very little we can actually control. 

At a loss, I reached for the ancestral principle of Sankofa: going back to fetch the past that guides the future. I went back and found Toni Morrison’s reminder that within each of us exists a unifying knowledge of what’s right and true and necessary. We become human when we embrace the idea that the fact of our humanity affords rights like bodily autonomy, clean air and water, shelter, nourishment, and freedom to live safe and dignified lives with the families we choose. We remain human by embracing the truth of our shared humanity in all that we do.  

No election decides whether we remain human; we do. 

The truth is that the world we’ve known until now is shifting in groundbreaking ways. It is rough-and-tumble and difficult to find our footing. But it is also true that, in nature, when the ground is disturbed and growth interrupted, the first plants to re-emerge–the pioneers–grow out of the broken places and reproduce and develop quickly to create the forest floor out of which more diverse plants take root and form a mighty, self-sustaining ecosystem. 

We are pioneers. With a goal of creating a nation that serves our shared humanity over any party, we are building the forest floor from which those who will shape the future can grow. We know that our work started long before us and that the real work of remaining human will continue beyond whatever the next administration throws our way. Join me and help pioneer a more just and diverse (eco)system for us all. This country has taken so much, but “we know deep down what’s right, and what’s true, and what’s needed.“ We are going to get there. Together.

Your Diamond Destiny

I was talking to a woman I work with about trauma and pressure after failure; especially repeated failure. As someone who has previously and repeatedly failed at tests, fertility, fundraising, legal petitions, etc., I know that no matter how statuesque I attempt to appear, the pressure of repeated failure is enough to flatten even the highest standing marble to dust. Perhaps sensing my feeling of flattening or experiencing her own, the woman said, “That’s OK. Pressure makes diamonds.” 

I’ve heard the saying before, but something about that statement made me curious this time around. How do diamonds form? Is pressure really the key? I looked it up and yes, immense pressure and heat are necessary to form diamonds. But did you know that in order to become a diamond, a carbon atom need only connect with other versions of itself and wait? That’s right, carbon atoms find other carbon atoms that are the same and existing in the same space, and, eventually those atoms are diamonds. They don’t need to fight anything or seek heat, they don’t need to be conscious of the pressure they are under, they just connect to themselves, stay in position, and become a diamond. 

What if the real work each of us needs to do in order to become our strongest, most unbreakable selves is commit to finding ourselves over and over and over again. What if your diamond destiny wasn’t something you could possibly pursue or purchase? What if it’s just who you are?

But–and there’s usually a “but” in my doom-oriented, overthinking mind–what if you can’t find the other you’s in the space? Staying in place is not something I’ve done well historically…what if I can’t do it? In my endeavor to be more open and vulnerable, do I even want to be a diamond? 

I did some more research. Did you know that carbon--all by itself–is the chemical backbone of all life on earth? With boundless potential, carbon can bind with just about anything to become any living thing. Imagine the possibility of being a lone carbon atom in this universe–able to bond with atoms to become DNA, for example–the stuff that makes everything every thing. That potential-realized or not–is so big that it has a brilliance of its own; the brilliance of beginnings. 

It would seem that diamond or carbon - under immense pressure or free and full of potential – Starting or finishing or anyplace in between, your destiny is to shine!

And you don’t have to do a damn thing other than be exactly who you are to be brilliant!

Liberating Shadow

I am the shadow.

Black.

Beautiful.

I want you to know that there is no need for masks here

for, in me, eyes cannot see.

You must intuit the next move. You’ll have to feel your way.

One step after another; carefully navigating an abyss that is not abysmal.

Walking towards a distant light–the reflection of pearls of wisdom that wait on the other side of shadow.

If you find your way through this—if you feel your way through this—you’ll learn exactly what you need to know.

Be Loved, Beloved

If you ever watched Iyanla, Fix My Life, then you know that the host, Iyanla Vanzant, addressed everyone as “Beloved.” I used to wonder why, of all the terms of affection, she chose that one: Beloved? Over time, I came to understand what Mama Iyanla already seemed to know: we need to be called into love. And, once we are in love, we can share love more easily. How else could a forgetful people like us continuously engage with love unless we are constantly reminded or re-called?

So, I call you, Beloved. And, like my muslim brothers and sisters understand, because we are forgetful people, we must call in the love we desire–the life we desire–at least five times a day. I call you beloved not once, but once every sunrise, mid-day, afternoon, evening and night. 

You are beloved!

Beloved, you are beloved!

Beloved, be loved.

Now that I’ve called you in, I ask with love: Why aren’t you sharing your gifts? 

Beloved, your gifts can only become what they truly are when they are shared, for a gift would be nothing without a gifting. An ungifted gift becomes like a lump of granite sitting in the corner; a heavy reminder of the lie we tell ourselves in order to keep our gifts inside and hidden: my gift is not good enough—it is not worth giving. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

The things that make you curious matter even if no one else seems to think so, because that curiosity paves the way to your gifts. Follow that compass of curiosity. As long as you do what you set out to do, as long as you stay on the path your curiosity paves, you will be successful! If you get lost along the way, call love in to guide you.

You are beloved!

Beloved, you are beloved!

Beloved, be loved.

Reproductive Injustice Launched a Civil War Before. It Can Happen Again.

We’ve been here before: American democracy on the brink due to the loss of reproductive rights. 165 years ago, the Supreme Court decided a family reunification case that divided the nation. The Scott family–Dred, Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie–had their freedom taken from them when their former owner’s widow incarcerated a free Harriet, Eliza, and Lizzie and rented out their labor to maintain her income. Dred Scott organized allies in a free state and fought like hell for eleven years to be reunited with them. I write more about the Scott family and implications for reproductive justice here, but suffice it to say that the case known as an inciting event for the civil war was a case of reproductive justice because it implicated the right to have a family, not have a family and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect.

The Scott Court found that because the Scott family was Black, they were not citizens and therefore had no rights of citizenship including the ability to self-determine their family structure. In declaring thus, the Court invalidated the Missouri Compromise–a devil’s bargain that sought to balance partisan tensions by allowing slavery in some states and freedom in others. Southern states and slavers celebrated the end of the Compromise and called for one nation unified under institutional slavery. Northern states and abolitionists cautioned that, with no guardrails in place, all of our citizenship was threatened and America’s very independence could be invalidated. A civil war ensued. Today, the guardrails are once again falling off and our country risks being torn apart by another reproductive justice case, Dobbs. 

Dobbs does not outright deny citizenship based on race, but considering the disproportionate and race based impact of abortion restrictions and criminalization, Dobbs may just be Dred Scott by another name. In addition to stripping half the nation of inherent human and constitutionally based rights to bodily autonomy, including the right of abortion, no less than a dozen states will make seeking or facilitating abortions a felony which carries with it a ban on voting. Dobbs makes a devil’s compromise by allowing states to decide whether birthing people making reproductive choices can fully enjoy rights of citizenship or whether we will become a second class of non-citizen residents unable to vote or avail ourselves of the basic freedoms outlined in the constitution. 

Black women will be most directly impacted as we are the group obtaining abortions at the highest rates in the nation (perhaps, in part, because Black women are also dying in childbirth at the highest rates in the nation). Add the fact that Black women have been described as the “most loyal democrats” 93% of whom voted to elect Joe Biden, and it becomes clear that the best solution to the democracy crisis before us today must centralize the experiences of Black women. 

Imagine if the Scott Court had engaged a reproductive justice frame and centralized Harriet and Dred Scott’s rights to bodily autonomy. The court would have had no choice but to abolish slavery because a Black birthing persons right to bodily autonomy and to raise their families in safety and with dignity and respect cannot exist alongside a system like slavery that relies on the invasion of those rights to persist. 

To meet this moment, democrats must utilize their majority to do more than compromise and secure some rights to abortion in some places. Instead, the party must engage a reproductive justice frame in all proposed policy measures. The democratic party has a chance to do what the past and current Supreme Courts did not: centralize the safety, dignity and respect of Black birthing people utilizing a reproductive justice frame. If the democratic party can make Black women’s liberation a key function of legislation, the benefits will reverberate throughout this union and reproductive freedom can (finally) be available freely and equitably to all. If the party fails to do so, all of our safety and dignity is at stake.

The leaked Dobbs opinion is just the beginning. Like the slavers after the Dred Scott decision, republicans are celebrating Dobbs as a victory and having discussions on outlawing and criminalizing abortion across the nation. Emboldened by the Dobbs decision, politicians in states like Texas, seek to erode all of our civil liberties with laws that criminalize trans youth and their families and remove immigrant youth rights to education. All of our civil liberties are at stake.    

This anti-democratic end is avoidable. If the democratic party starts at the base, Black women, and uses a reproductive justice frame to incorporate the safety, dignity, and respect of Black birthing people and their families into policy decisions, I guarantee that the benefits will reverberate throughout this union and reproductive freedom can (finally) be available freely and equitably to all. 

I’m Quitting My Job. It’s Reproductive Justice in Action.

Alone I sat at the large, wooden desk. I could never lift this thing, I thought. Since my first law job in California women’s prisons, reproductive justice—the right to have a family or not and the ability to raise the families we do choose in safety and with dignity and respect—framed my legal career. And here I sat at my first executive desk as the director of a center dedicated to reproductive justice. 

I traveled a long, winding road to get to this desk. After law school, I failed the California bar exam three times before passing on my fourth attempt. Between studying, I launched California’s first juvenile record sealing clinic, authored statewide legislation eliminating juvenile record sealing fees, and served hundreds of young people. Despite doing what lawyers do, no one would hire me without a formal license.

Too many smart and talented people of color like me falter as designed in the face of the barriers that keep us out of the legal sector. Legal hopefuls encounter a profession that is 86% white and just 5% Black, 5% Brown, 2% Asian and 0.5% Indigenous; where women of color have made up just 2% of equity partners consistently over decades; and in which, once licensed, women of color experience outsized discrimination. 

There is a solution: Legal apprenticeships provide equitable opportunities for people of color to enter the legal field. I created a nonprofit—Esq. Apprentice—that provides paid apprenticeship training for low-income women of color to become the lawyers our communities need without attending law school or sinking into debt. Over time, the organization grew and led me to this proverbial seat at the table of a leading educational institution training the next generation of bright legal minds and policy advocates. 

As I ran my fingers over the desk’s smooth wood, I distinctly remembered the relief and joy in having made it, knowing the many doors I could open for others. My days were a delicate balance between interacting with the next wave of world-changing advocates in the fight for reproductive justice and balancing the demands of motherhood. Black students sought me out as a mentor. It mattered that I, a Black woman, was sitting behind that cherry-brown desk, especially considering that women of color represent just 7% of legal academia. 

Unfortunately, the institution I served didn’t see it that way. Instead, I was questioned about my abilities to fundraise and lead. I was stripped of administrative support. Over the years, additional experiences—from denied access to budgetary documents to ignored requests for support—pointed to my race and gender and the intersections of both. The lack of dignity and respect afforded me misaligned with the reproductive justice principles the institution espoused. The weight of having to navigate a space that seemed designed to disregard me grew heavier all the time. And I knew that when it came to the inertia of bureaucracy and institutional racism, like my desk, I could not lift it alone. 

So, I’m quitting. Nearly 5 million other parents, people of color, and disregarded hardworking professionals are too in what has been dubbed “the Great Resignation.” 

Discussions about the Great Resignation can overemphasize large, corporate employers’ needs and lose sight of the innovation and imagination we need to reshape the workplace. Applying a reproductive justice lens to the employee exodus shifts the focus from whether people are choosing to work to what makes the choice to work meaningful while centering the experiences of birthing people. With reproductive justice in mind, we can shift the narrative and create workplace environments where employees can thrive. 

Design a human-centered workplace. Birthing people need workplaces that operate as if their lives are of primary concern. For me, that looks like flexible work—in location and time—as a baseline benefit. Remote work options improve employee retention and can benefit employers. Further, UNICEF recommends such family-friendly workplace policies as workplace vaccination sites with reliable, safe, and affordable child care; regular COVID-19 testing; and free, high-filtration masks for everyone until this pandemic is over.

Prioritize people over profits. Nearly 1 million people have died needlessly in two years, and our nation is not OK. Yet there is a push to conduct business as usual under anything but usual circumstances. If, instead, we centered birthing people over profit, we would continue to provide guaranteed basic income like the child tax credit—which reduced childhood hunger for millions—did in the latter half of 2021. We would create workplaces that privilege mental health over corporate productivity because this pandemic is a mass physical and mental health disabling event and our current systems are failing to provide the mental and fiscal support necessary to better ensure worker safety.

Create new pathways into the workplace. I’m quitting my job because I can no longer contribute to business as usual. Instead, I choose to create a workspace rooted in reproductive and economic justice with Esq. Apprentice. By opening pathways for low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous women to become lawyers without law school via legal apprenticeship, we are creating a world of balanced, sustainable work for marginalized women of color. We are putting employees first by building into the organizational structure a more balanced, four-day workweek; an intentional investment in physical and mental health benefits; and steady stipend support for participants.

Other employers can follow suit. My exit from my job and those of thousands of others are not inevitable. If current institutions will not rise to meet the needs of a workforce that has kept the nation afloat throughout the pandemic, then it is time for that workforce to imagine systems and institutions that will. By placing birthing people at the center of those imaginings, the possibilities for our families and communities are endless. Leaving a job that does not serve my mental, spiritual, physical, or fiscal well-being is not a defeat—it is a victory, because it is reproductive justice in action.

Black People Been Free

As I showered in the sunlight
An ancestor came to me
And–as if she knew I was asking–answered
wake up my daughter!
We’ve always been free.

But,
I whispered urgently
barely more than peep
what about the evils of chattel slavery?

Ma Harriet came forward and said,
I was free before I ever left the plantation;
or else I’d never leave.
You get to decide
when you get to be free.
Free yourself first, and you’ll understand
how to bring others with you
to the promised land.

Ma Truth came up and said real direct,
That promise they made to give you freedom;
they’ll never respect.
My daughter wake up!
You get to decide
if you’ll take charge of your inherent freedom
or sit in fear and hide.

But,
pleading a case against myself,
the police and the prisons.
The violence. The guns.
How is any of it possible to outrun?

Sis Toni came up and said,
go talk to my Sis Ang.
These police and prisons
will not stand.
They were never mighty.
They operate out of fear.
And after 400 years of trying to kill us
–their nightmares of freedom–
little sister we are still here!

Sis Sandra came up with the most gentle, sweet smile
Wake up Sis!
Their violence can’t steal our shine.
I never stopped fighting for freedom,
and now freedom is mine.
It wasn’t theirs to give me so they cannot take it away.
Black people been free baby.
Let today be the day.

I searched every corner of my mind
for all the reasons we can’t be free.
And I found it hard to find
a single reason that did not begin with me.

Truth: Power based on fear simply cannot be true
for the minute I’m no longer afraid
such power cannot roost.

Wake up my brothers and sisters!
Sure, we have a legacy of unimaginable pain.
But our legacy of freedom
has never ceded reign.

Before we were gender
We were free.
Before we were light skinned or dark skinned
We were free.
Before we were Christian, muslim, gay or cis
Freedom is who we were and are
We ain’t new to this

Black people been free.
And we will be free
Again!

Create Something!

I grabbed my right hand with the other in an effort to stop the shooting pain running from the gap between my pinky and ring finger up through my elbow. Occasionally the pain stopped to throb in my wrist. I tried everything to no avail; ice, heat, hand stretches. Then I remembered that there was one more thing I could try.

Perhaps the Oracle was right when she stopped me on my way out of the Black-owned bookstore on 39th, one of about 125 Black-owned bookstores in the nation. There, with stained glass windows made by her brother and shelves lined with every shade of Black and fifty shades of freedom, she saw me shaking my wrist from side to side.

“What do you do?” she asked. 

“I’m a lawyer.” I replied

“No, I mean creatively?”

“Well,” as I thought of my latest endeavor, “I’m trying to write.”

“And have you been writing?”

“No,” I said embarrassed, but not enough to lie, “not creatively.”

The Oracle’s brown lips parted and I could see just the bottom of her overbite. She smiled as if she was proud that I had finally come around to the point, “when you don’t use your gifts, that energy gets trapped where it should be flowing. If a singer don’t sing, her throat will get sore. If a dancer stops dancing, his legs become restless and painful. Start writing and watch if that wrist don’t get better.”

I replied in the only way one can to a divine order, “Yes ma’am.”

Today, when my wrist started hurting, I remembered the Oracle’s words and pulled out my laptop to start writing. And, in just the time it took to write the above, the gap between my pinky and ring finger relaxed and widened. My wrist feels lighter. Nothing is shooting up and down my arm. Instead, everything is resting in place–as if each tendon was simply awaiting their assignment; as if my fingers were dancers backstage waiting for their cue. And once on stage, in the light swaying gently and swiftly within their purpose, they feel no pain. They just shine. Inevitably, the show ends and the lights go out, but the memory of that time in the light remains and heals when I am in my darker places. 

We all have gifts, and, as the Oracle said, when we fail to use our gifts the trapped creative energy can hurt us trying to escape. What hurts on your body? Where are those sore spots that no doctor will treat seriously, but that constantly nag at you? I am not as wise as the old sage in the bookshop, but maybe your body is telling you to let your creative energy flow through that place. Wherever that place is on your body, make something with it. Create something, and watch if it don’t get better. 

Insidious Civility

Sometimes I wonder how similar Congress' current negotiations around the filibuster/voting/investigating treason/immigration etc. are to Congress' earlier debates that led to the three-fifths compromise? 

Did they raise similar points of order? Were they also inappropriately civil as they quipped over the lives of enslaved people.

My people. Your people. Our people. 

Did they let politics get in the way of basic human dignity? Did they let votes and custom and precedent prevent them from being a higher version of themselves? Did they feel the weight of bargaining over human life in their spirits? Did they feel that weight and ignore it? 

Has this always been democracy?

I imagine the sounds are almost identical. Sure there is more range, harmony and discord. After all, women’s voices are now allowed. But the bargaining back and forth. The laughter among colleagues. The lack of uproar. Every record a hit on the soundtrack of this trivial pursuit of liberty that can never result in true freedom as long as it is only available to some. 

Similar halls

Similar rooms

Similar sounds

Over and over and over again.

We are living in an echo chamber.

Compromising our very lives.

And for what?

To maintain the walls--the very structure of this hallowed democracy?

These walls will become our prison. 

The ancestors say that our dark past teaches us faith

And our present brings us hope

May faith and hope form the melody of a new day’s song.

In harmony with trumpets of truth, may the next revolution shatter these Jerochoan walls.

Sacrifice

There are times—

some times—

when the Earth demands tears as sacrifice.

After long stretches of hurt

where humanity seems the infrequent succulent in a dry place,

Mother Earth—too long sober—seeks strong drink.

Tears must flow like wine to satiate;

placate Her.

Only mourning can end this drought;

this long night.

Think of what we have lost!

Terrified of the last flood,

we daughters of Noah

forgot our mother, and

damned the river of tears.

Afraid of drowning again

we forgot that, when we open the floodgates

and let the pain flow through our tears,

the sand and the heat and the dust cannot overtake us.

The drought cannot endure.

This time, we welcomed the fire.

Next time, we must welcome the river—

the grief, the healing, the growth.

Lord that the river would mold mountains to sustain us;

full of trees that we may build our harbor.

Next time we will all drink together.

Numb no more.

No longer engaging in false modesties.

Extreme only in our desire for balance.

Content in the knowledge that our

sacred sacrifice of tears will be our savior.

Knowing at the core of us—at the core of all things—

we will be free in the morning.

Two Treats Away

On a Wednesday evening,

after a smorgasbord of

salmon sashimi,

sushi,

shrimp tempura,

udon,

and a cookie,

Dad decides to give the kids one more cookie; 

A rare, sugary treat in a house that does not allow pop.

He spoils them from time to time,

and they deserve it.

The eldest screams, "este es el mejor dia de mi vida."

Imagine that.

2 cookies = the best day of your life

What if we were all just two treats away from the best days ever?

In the New World

(to my husband on our 10th wedding anniversary)

We’re watching a space documentary

My Husband says,

“listen to this…

…it’s this man’s first time in space and

the way he describes it…well…just listen.”

The Space Man says,

“At first I couldn’t tell up from down.

Damn near lost my mind tryna figure it out.

But,

then I realized

It doesn’t matter;

up and down, it doesn’t matter.

They don’t matter.”

My Husband says,

“People aren’t ready to live in space.”

Then, he looked at me.

And, without saying a word,

he proposed:

My mind is clear

Are you ready to go with me to the moon?

We aren’t there yet,

but, one day soon,

we’ll be so high up…

up and down won’t even matter.

They won’t matter.

I blinked my, “I do.”

Estamos.

Juntos.

Los Astros

Strength in Weakness

While playing with a squishy ball, my child says, “I’m not strong enough.” Further investigation reveals that she was trying to break the squishy ball by squeezing it really, really hard. It wasn’t working. When something is living its purpose, it’s not easily broken.

She goes on to say, “It’s like when I tried to lift the couch—I wasn’t strong enough to do that either.”

“My dear,” I tell her, “you weren’t supposed to be lifting the couch. It’s too heavy for you.”

I gain new understanding. In weakness there is strength. I always thought that Paul’s Corinthian scripture was about God stepping in where I thought I was weak. What I understand now is that, whether She steps in or not, I shouldn’t be doing the things I don’t have the strength to do; the things that are too heavy for me.

What’s heavy for me may not be heavy to someone else. I can leave what I’m too tired—too “weak”—to carry, and have faith that, if it needs carrying, someone else with their own strength will pick it up.

If that’s true, weakness is a beacon:

a fire—a light set up in a high place or prominent position as a warning, signal, or celebration.

Weakness is a guiding light.

Every narrative denigrating weakness, especially those patriarchal ones, are quite literally

misguided.

When she gets older and finds her own place, my child may have to lift a couch. But by then, she’ll have all the strength she needs just because she kept on growing, ojala.

Weakness can also guide our years; signaling not just what to carry or let go, but when to move or stay in place.

That’s good news to me!

Rejoice in your weakness for it will guide you to the very things you must release.

Release not because you are incapable or inadequate, but because the load is simply too heavy for you at this moment in time. Let your “weakness” guide you to your strength—the place where you have all you need to carry your particular load.

May your load be light. May you receive all you need as you release what is not yours to carry. Ase.

American Dream

Things are not as I thought they were.

All this time, I’ve internalized struggle as necessary. Both my faith and family values contextualized work against slavery with phrases like “working like a Hebrew slave.” You can imagine the range of acceptable toil within that frame. This American system seems to require working up towards your death.

But there’s another system “working;” a system of giving and receiving. An entirely different system unlike that which requires lending, borrowing, keeping your head down and playing by the rules until you amass enough wealth to change them. The only rule of this other system—this heavenly system— is

be of service—to God, yourself, others, the spirit of love. It is a balanced place that only takes what it gives.

No toil without rest.

All this time I thought that the walls I was using all my strength and energy to uphold were walls of protection. I thought the wall of degrees and titles could protect me from suffering indignity. That the wall of income could keep my children from fear and uncertainty. The wall of apparent perfection and unimpeachability could guard against filial disappointment. The wall of eternal struggle could keep this nation sputtering on.

But there are no walls in that other system—that heavenly system. There are only cycles of gifting; giving your gifts as freely as you receive the gifts of others—never ever looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I realized. I was not holding up walls of protection. I was keeping my cage intact.

Maybe rest, when done well, doesn’t just look like sleep. Maybe it looks more like letting the walls and the systems those walls uphold crumble.

Perhaps radical rest requires divesting from the system that only lends freedom when convenient for the maintenance of control. Divest from the system that keeps us working…

…working off a debt we may never repay because,

well,

we didn’t take out the loan in the first place.

You don’t need to borrow anything to be of service.

Today, I forgive all debt. I no longer owe anyone and no one owes me.

Every wall crumbling into earth. The only work that remains is to till all the new soil and make fertile ground for each one of us—not knowing what comes next, just knowing we are safe and kept and loved.

Knowing we are free.

I’m losing pieces of my mind trying to figure out when freedom became a radical idea;

trying to understand why America exists only in dreams.

Things My Kids Teach Me II: Hell on Earth

I woke up to terror.

Today, instead of sun and clouds and light, I woke up to an orange glow of smoke and impending doom. First, I thought that our time was up and the fires finally arrived. I looked at my sweet babies and my hubby. I don’t want today to be their last day, I thought. I could die, but my kids should get to see the other side of this; they should get to know how wonderful the world can be.

I checked the news and CalFire’s twitter. Once I realized that the fires were still far away, I relaxed—a very little. But the dread remained.

Can we go outside at all? I opened the door to take a whiff. The air quality wasn’t so bad. Maybe I could give them 10 minutes of play outside…maybe.

My daughter runs up behind me and looks out the door. She becomes quite excited, “It looks like Halloween!” By the furrow in her brow, I could tell her brain was hard at work. If it’s Halloween, then its fall. It’s getting colder. Then, in true Libra fashion, she yelled, “It’s my birthday!!!”

I don’t know how she could possibly look at the same hellscape I was seeing and rejoice.

These kids are my saving grace. They remind me how easy joy is. They teach me that even hell on earth can’t take joy because hell didn’t give it—something stronger than hell did. She brought that joy with her from whatever slice of heaven she lived in before she came to my womb.

I don’t know where I lost it, but I know that protecting her joy as long as I’m here is my primary responsibility.

This means I have to fight to save our planet and heal mother earth because, if my daughter sees too many mornings like this, she may lose the ability to make it joyous. I have to fight for the transfer of wealth from greedy corporations and our violent, militaristic institutions into low-income communities so she can properly be her social butterfly self; the kind of kid who takes every negative thing around her and weaves it into a cocoon so, when she’s ready, she can push through it and fly over and away from everything that would keep her from freedom.

The current leaders of our nation are terrorists. My daughter reminds me that you can’t negotiate with terrorists. Instead, terrorism’s defeat may lie in that slice of heaven we brought with us into our mother’s wombs. That’s how my ancestor’s survived. That’s how we’ll survive.

I woke up to terror. I started writing out of dread. I’ll rest with joy.

My kids remind me that, even with hell rising on earth, I can still be joyous. I can still find peace. We are the sun. And that—well—when I think about that, it feels like it really must be my birthday!

Nurturing Nature

To work and think constantly without ceasing is against our nature.

Take birth, for example.

Though the movies would have you believe that it all happens in a scream and a blink, labor can take hours or days or, in my case, weeks if you count the early part. All of these things are normal.

When labor is active, it builds over time. The pain of each contraction outmatched only by the relief that comes when the contraction ends and the body rests; often longer than it contracted.

If you’re like me, the rest periods went from two minutes long to thirty seconds in about three hours. Quick as it was, there was always,

ALWAYS rest.

Even a babe in the womb knows to build strength and energy for nine months before embarking on a difficult journey. Before thought, the baby knows that a big push requires even bigger rest.

Rest begets life. We know this much before knowing.

Decades from birth my mis-education takes (strong)hold:

I don’t rest. Not for an hour. Not even for a minute. Even my dreams play and replay scenarios from the day before and worries over an imagined, apocalyptic future.

When I first started meditating, thirty seconds of stillness felt like a lifetime; five minutes, an eternity. My mind was always thinking. Some someone always needed my service, my energy, my work.

Work.

Working—producing for everyone except myself.

I have lost the lessons I carried with me here from on high. This may be one of the casualties of slavery: my ancestors could not rest and, now, I don’t know how. The slavers made every attempt to separate us from the lessons we brought with us. Their children still do. Lessons like: we are human beings who deserve every dignity of humanity; we are fearfully and wonderfully made; we deserve to live long and well; and yes, we deserve balance. We deserve rest.

We must rest.

As I process the depths of what has been stolen from me and my mothers and my fathers and my siblings and my husbands (just kidding. there’s only one husband…for now), I learn that rest is necessary for my rebirth.

And I want to be reborn if for no other reason than curiosity: what if I was never mis-educated into believing I’m less than anyone else? What would I be like if I internalized my genius instead of my insecurities?

I imagine a superhero replete with bulging pectorals and RR across the chest for Rested Rachel. She is cloaked in red, black, and green, and Black. Whenever she walks in the room Bob Marley rings out “Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery!” Everyone in a 400 foot radius stops what they are doing, releases everything they are holding, and begins to process safely. They cry and laugh and eat and nap. Babies again. Reunited with the most high.

Fear of Falling

At certain times, especially now, it feels like the world is

falling…

…falling apart.

I panic.

Then. I remember.

Some of my best memories are falling…

…rain—a steady, summer Georgia storm;

that multi-colored parachute game we played in grade school;

the sheets falling on top of me as my parents made the bed;

trying to catch leaves falling from the trees, summer’s last play before winter sets in.

Everything around me falling.

And when the leaves and chutes and summer rain fell,

so to fell my burdens.

If only for a moment, I felt relieved.

Alive.

Could the joy of falling be greater than the fear?

Reminder

I’m reviewing some work with my husband—basking in gratitude for a partner with whom I can strategize;

one who makes me better.

“You’re gonna have to pay me for this level of advice,” he jokes.

“You wouldn’t be at this level without me,” I remind him.

We agree. We increase each other’s value.

This isn’t every relationship.

I’ve had friends and loves whose value increased only at the sake of my own. As they moved up and on, my value decreased…they left me worthless.

One day, my worth won’t be tied up with others.

Until then, it feels good to increase with him in Him.

Just had to write it down, because what I really didn’t know is that Road Dawgs also ride your last nerve ‘til the wheels fall off.

Eggshells & Coffee Grinds

I dropped a whole egg into my cake mix.
And yes, it was the KitchenAid stand mixer I saved up years to get.
The motor, set at 6, immediately crushed the egg,
and shattered the pieces into a million more pieces.
I stopped the motor and attempted to pick out all the shells,
but there were too many.
One egg, easy to handle,
became many shells, impossible to divide.

I baked the cake (my supplies are not unlimited)
When we bite in, little shells here and there add an...interesting texture
I tell the kids it’s an adventure cake because with each bite
You never know what you’ll get!
Eventually, I threw the cake away despite my children's protests.

The next morning, I forget the coffee in the french press
(My supplies are not unlimited, but I’m a healthy kind of bougie)
When I finally remember and go to pour my coffee,
coffee grinds pour out with it.

I’d like to believe I’m a good cook and careful person.
So let’s just say
I’m choosing a lot of adventures these days. My belief informs my interpretation.

What if the United States believed, fundamentally, that me and my people are human;
and treated humanity as one whole body?
Wouldn’t that be easier to handle?
Instead, hate shatters our body into pieces;
then a million more.

Which adventure will you choose?
Are we in this together or will we let them eat (eggshell) cake!?!

Shouting News

My 4-year old asked how the TV charges? I told her that the TV doesn’t charge; it’s connected to a plug in the wall, and, as long as the power source is working, the TV should work as well.

We are a lot like our televisions.

As long as I am connected to a power that keeps on giving—that’s God to me—you’ll be able to catch my shine in prime time. Watch me!