My 2021 Revenge-Glow-Up

In January of this year, I shared with you all my plans for a “revenge glow up” (see below), i.e. my plan to channel my (not insignificant levels of) anger (generally at the world/white supremacy/capitalism generally, and specifically at people who knowingly and willingly abuse power and abdicate responsibility) toward self-care and self-love. It’s now July, we are halfway through the year, and I feel obliged to share a progress report, if only for my own benefit. I’m proud of where I am so far, and I could use some motivation to continue moving through the stuck places.

My skin is pretty glowy, at least in my opinion, and I’ve discovered that I like to rock a bold lip every now and again, but especially on days that I am feeling disempowered for whatever reason. It’s hard to ignore the fact that I’m a bad bitch when I see all that hotness looking back at me in the mirror! I’ve never felt very confident with makeup and spent ALL of grade school self conscious about my full lips. I am giving myself permission to play with makeup and try new things.

I am the most consistently hydrated I’ve been in my. entire. life! I owe 98% of this success to the Plant Nanny app, even if my husband rolls his eyes when I tell him about whatever cool new plant I’m growing. This is #notsponsored, just a true testimonial from a person who no longer struggles with perpetually chapped lips.

I can’t really say that I’ve been cooking restaurant-quality meals with any regularity, but honestly I feel fine with that. We eat pretty well from both a nutrient and taste perspective in our house, and meal-making is a shared responsibility. I’d say both of those things are more important to me personally than fancy schmancy meals all the time.

I feel really proud of my commitment to exploring the spiritual practices that feel right to me in this season, and feel like they are providing the grounding, healing, and comfort that I hope everyone receives from their spiritual practice(s). I’ve also grown more comfortable sharing with others what these personal practices are and why they work for me. That’s a big deal for me, and I’m proud of that too.

I’ve finished 7 books so far this year, and of course have too many in progress at one time at the moment. However, i’m getting a lot of enjoyment from reading more, something I haven’t done in some years. It feels good to nurture imagination, intellect, ideas, and wonder. I’ve also given myself permission to not finish an audiobook that I’d put on my “must read” list, cause it turns out I wasn’t into it. That’s a big deal for me, as a Taurus, to walk away from a commitment that absolutely no one but myself is holding me to.

In addition to spending a much needed two weeks in California visiting and reconnecting with my immediate family, I’ve also reconnected with an extended family member I’d been out of touch with for a long time. Family is complicated, am I right, theydies? I feel really proud of myself for recognizing that at any time I choose, I can put forth the effort to deepen connections with family however feels right to me. I need not remain limited to what these relationships have looked like in the past.

All right, time to own up to the disappointing part of the progress report… I have not yet made a fucking dentist appointment, and I was down to the wire with my taxes. I’m not super happy with myself about that, but I’m opening myself up to ask questions about why I avoid / put off certain things, ask myself if it helps or hurts, and trying to speak to myself in a kind and encouraging way when I fail to meet my own expectations. Emphasis on trying. Also I am making that fucking dentist appointment before this third quarter is up!!

Still in therapy, y’all! And I am really really working on listening to my body – my whole self really – and investing whatever resources are needed to get her what she needs.

Big ups to January Mawiyah for offering such tangible love and care to present / future Mawiyah! She’s the real MVP, and I am too, cause she is me.

If you read this and feel jazzed for how hard I am working on loving and celebrating myself, thank you! Basically the only way I’ve gotten through this pandemic (to this point) is by celebrating every single win, however small, and inviting (*cough* insisting) others to join me.

If you read this, and are like, “wow, she’s really out here telling the internet all her business, that’s… a lot,” then you are of course invited to just keep scrolling. But also, I hope you are celebrating yourself in whatever ways work for you, even if this isn’t it! My inner critic is SO LOUD ALL THE TIME, and when she refuses to pipe down, I have to check her repeatedly and also drown her out by gassing my own self up. I’m getting pretty good at it, and I find that it is much easier to continue towards my goals when I celebrate the incremental progress, and get curious about the reason for unmet expectations, rather than berating myself for all the things I didn’t do.

In conclusion… TAKE THAT BIRCHES! *twerks for the camera*

(Just kidding, I don’t really know how to twerk but I’m determined to learn. I have been practicing.)

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January 22, 2021

In 2021, I plan to take revenge* on my enemies and haters by taking excellent care of myself, even as they try to bring a bitch down.

I’m talking quality skin care products, I’m talking high water intake, I’m talking restaurant-quality meals at home.

I am upping my spiritual practice by keeping my ancestral altar space fresh and well-tended, and deepening my intuition by engaging it daily or as-close-to-daily-as-I-can-manage.

I am reading more books, fiction and non-fiction, so that I can deepen my imagination of what is possible, maintain hope for a liberated future, and deepen my analysis and engagement for this moment in our story as a people.

I am being in better touch with family members.

I am narrowing the length of time that I put off undesirable tasks; I am making a fucking dentist appointment.

I am going 10+ years strong in therapy and recognizing that there is nothing wrong with still having work to do to heal. I am investing money in every dimension of my health while I have money in the bank to do so.

I am using a planner to organize my time, tasks, and goals, knowing that the act of planning makes life easier for future-me, and that is an act of love and service to myself.

I am cultivating these things as habits already in development and holding the truth that these practices are attainable, and also committing to celebrate whatever incremental progress I make.

*I am also continuing to talk shit with those in my intimate circle, because I am who I am today, and today I’m not one of those, rise-above, love-your-enemies, “we go high” people. And, I am not called to be a saint, and also, talking shit is acceptable to me if it allows me to name, acknowledge, and release big feelings, rather than wishing active harm toward anyone in my life, *even* if I’m convinced they really deserve it.

How are you stuntin’ on these heauxs, haters, and enemies in 2021?

Am I depressed, or is it the pandemic? (It’s both)

*This post is 100% my own thoughts, feelings, and experience, and does not legitimize or delegitimize any other persons’ decisions or feelings about their own mental health.

Well y’all. I had a good run (18 months) of managing my mental health without antidepressants. And while I’m not at the crisis point I’ve been at other times in my life, I certainly wouldn’t say that I’m feeling my best. (I am aware that none of us are.) By most societal standards, I’m still “managing” pretty well, which is to say that I am producing well at my job, I shower and show up for work (in front of my computer) each day, and I do not go off on people for no reason (or for good reason, at that).

However, performing for other people does not meet my criteria for actual well being. So, I’m consulting with a doctor about going back on antidepressants.

To be honest, I’m extremely unhappy about it. It feels like I’ve lost a battle. Like I’ve acquiesced to a mental health model that I believe in less and less, and I say this as someone with a social work degree, and as someone in close community with people who are mental health professionals. I am not a mental health practitioner — I am someone who has received mental health treatment for acute and chronic challenges, and I must say that our societal models for mental health diagnosis and treatment feel, to me, wholly insufficient and sometimes harmful. I believe that we generally pathologize the wrong part of the equation. I don’t believe that the root cause of my depression or anxiety is a biochemical imbalance in my brain. I think that racism and sexism and capitalism are fucked up, and they fuck up my life on the regular. I feel fucked up everyday that I am pressured to interact with these systems as though they are normal and acceptable. I would rather be maladjusted to a society that glorifies productivity and demeans care, than lift up my ability to survive under dehumanizing conditions as a badge of honor.

However. I am so fiercely committed to my well being, so fiercely committed to joy, so fiercely committed to building a better world, to the fight for better working conditions, for movements that are sustainable and liberatory, that I’m swallowing my [pride is not the right word], and taking the meds, with the desperate, and hopefully not futile, expectation that they will grant me a wider margin to fight for the things above.

Let me be as clear as I can: there is nothing shameful about taking medication for mental health. It is such a personal decision, and a lifesaving one for many. I respect any one who chooses to, and I respect any one who chooses not to. For me, inside of my experiences of depression and anxiety, I have felt better during this year and a half not taking medication than I did the two and a half years prior when I was taking medication. In that year and half, I reconnected to my body and cared for her with more intention than I have since I was diagnosed with cancer after I’d lived 29 years doing all the doctor-recommended health behaviors, at which point I realized that health is not a merit-based system. I began a spiritual practice for the first time in SEVEN years. I went for long walks everyday that I could. I drank water. I slept. I did my best to be present with my body. I was also working only part time and could go to a gym class at 4pm, and take mid-day naps whenever I wanted. After 8 months of working full time during this pandemic, at a job that has not ramped down at all, during the most stressful election cycle I’ve known in my lifetime, while sustained uprisings for Black lives continued across the country… I‘m tired.

I’m SO tired, y’all. And personally, I don’t believe I should feel like I have to take antidepressants to keep up the energy for the fight. I wish that authentic care and extended rest felt like viable options, broadly accessible to all of us. But it is what is, and we are where we are, and I do believe we are headed somewhere better IF we can all get on the same damn team and decide we really wanna get free together.

I feel like I failed even though I know I haven’t. I don’t have a tidy package or quippy ending. I just want someone to hear me talk openly about my experience, so they can feel permission to do the same if they choose.

How will I die?

Ideally, I will die comfortably; old, rested, peaceful, on a pleasant day, in the immediate or nearby company of my child or children, and grandchildren, and my partner if he has not preceded me.

But, during weeks like this one, it’s hard not to wonder if I will die tragically. There are so many options for how to die a tragic death when you are Black.

Obviously, I could be murdered by the police. Obvious to me anyway. Perhaps not obvious to my now-grownup classmates from childhood, the ones who told me, I wasn’t “really Black;” they didn’t “think of me as Black;” I’m not like those* Black people.

*Those niggers.

I’ve never actually been called a nigger. Not that I know of anyway, not to my face. I have complicated feelings about having been spared this awful rite of passage. Does it point to my economic and educational privilege? I don’t know, as I’m certain that many a professional Black person has been called a nigger. I am the “respectable” sort of negro, at least I present that way. Conditioning is hard to overcome. But then, many a respectable negro has been lynched, by both modern and old-fashioned methods, for minor to non-existent infractions.

I live in Alabama, and my partner is white, and I wonder if it’s a matter of time until someone calls me a nigger. If it happens, I hope that my partner isn’t around. Anger might get the best of him, and he might hurt someone, and then that someone might call the police, and then the police might murder me, the nigger – the victim of the original verbal assault.

So, that’s just one option.

I could die during pregnancy, or childbirth, due to either the medical negligence that treats Black women’s pain as less severe or alarming, or due to the poorer maternal health outcomes that plague Black women, outcomes that don’t give a shit about class, or education, or respectability. They know: a nigger, is a nigger, is a nigger.

So, that’s a second option.

I could die in the midst of a mental health crisis. Depression could swallow me whole, and if I can’t find my way to the surface, I might die.

That’s three. Let’s stop counting.

During my worst depressive episode, I admitted myself to the hospital emergency room. I stayed there for several hours before they moved me to a nearby medical facility. The police transported me from one place to the other. I was handcuffed before being put in the backseat of the police car. I think the cop who put them on was a Black woman, I can’t remember for sure. She apologized, and said something about “protocol.” At some point during the drive, the two cops in the car had to make a stop somewhere else. Maybe they moved me into a different car? I don’t remember. Another cop asked the first two if I definitely needed to be handcuffed, said something about “compliant.” They agreed that I was that, and took the handcuffs off.

If I wanted to get creative, I could combine options one and three, and go off in the middle of a mental health crisis. Be a little less “compliant.” I thought about that option that night. I’m glad I stayed compliant, respectable, checked into the facility, and eventually, got “well.”

Ideally, when Black people are murdered by the police, and videos and images are circulated widely and constantly on social and news media outlets, I would be wise enough and boundaried enough to stop scrolling, to call in sick, to lean into healing rituals, and be the one to protect myself in a world that’s not interested in protecting Black women or Black people.

Ideally, I would center joy, and healing, and resilience, and I would not write honestly about the fact that my grief and fear drive me to imagine the tragic and violent ways I might die at the hands of white supremacy.

In a world where Black people must keep very strict control of their emotions, and words, and behaviors – in a very literally futile attempt to avoid death or destruction at the hands of white supremacy – it’s hard, or perhaps unreasonable, to maintain that level of control over one’s pain and grief and fear. I find myself consulting my over-scheduled agenda, assessing when is the most convenient time to finally allow myself to unravel, while minimizing the impact to my work, because I am, and must remain the “compliant!,” “respectable!,” nigger.

More of us will die. This is the hardest part for me. I do my best to choose hope, and joy, and healing, and resilience, but it’s difficult when I remember that we have been here before, and white people have woken up, and gone to anti-racism trainings, and graduated from allies to accomplices to co-conspirators, and Black people have grieved together and healed together and leaned into community with each other, and still we find ourselves here again, mourning and fearful.

Our progress is simply too slow to save us all.

So, what are our options?

As for me, I will lie down underneath the soft warmth of the blanket handmade by my mother, and remain still and quiet until my breath has evened. Then, I will get up and drink a glass of water. I will go outside and go for a walk. I will, eventually, turn to my ancestors and allow them to remind me that our legacy is one of survival, of looking out for one another, of creating beauty and magic out of next-to-nothing.

Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. Tony McDade. Four new ancestors. We honor you.

National Coming Out Day 2019

Today is National Coming Out Day.

I am queer. Or bisexual. Meaning I am attracted to people of my same gender, and people of other genders. I have known this about myself for a hot minute.

Many people who know and love me, including my partner, already know this about me. Others don’t.

Face to face, I’m usually not too reluctant to make people aware of this part of my identity. But for friendships/acquaintance-ships that don’t happen face to face, I have struggled in deciding whether it is really anyone’s business.

Partly, I worried that it would confuse people or invite unnecessary questions about me and my partner’s relationship. Bi-erasure and biphobia is real in both straight and queer communities, but contrary to popular belief, a queer woman partnered to a man is not any less queer, and a bisexual person is not any more apt to cheat than a gay or straight person.

I also think we are altogether too nosy about other people’s gender and sexuality. Yes, we should endeavor to create spaces, large and small, public and private, where people feel safe and comfortable to present as their full selves, that we might know and accept them in the fullness of who they are. But also, the spaces trans and queer people occupy are often not safe, and even when they are, it’s their choice what they disclose to whom, and they/we don’t owe anyone shit. Often times our interest in knowing people’s gender or sexual identities is, at best, rooted in our need to categorize people, and at worst, a voyeuristic curiosity about their genitals, medical history, or bedroom behaviors, and we need to cut it out.

On the other side of the coming-out argument, while it’s true that it’s not anyone’s business, it’s also true that people sometimes struggle to recognize the humanity of folks different from them, unless they have a personal relationship with someone who holds that identity.

It’s infuriating, really. Why does a woman have to be someone’s sister, mother, or daughter to merit your compassion and protection against assault and harassment? Why do you have to have a gay brother to understand that your church’s policy restricting non-straight non-cisgender people from serving in leadership positions is fundamentally homophobic, transphobic, and is in direct contradiction of your supposed “love” for all God’s children? Why do you have to know a woman who survived sexual assault and then needed an abortion in order to make the (insufficient) concession that *some* people with uteruses deserve bodily autonomy *sometimes*?

I think this dependence on proximity in order to acknowledge an individual’s or a group’s humanity is pretty shitty to be honest. But I also want to do everything in my power to get us freer quicker. So, if proximity is what you need to get on this collective liberation train, then me coming out in this space means that I am now available as a point of reference for you to understand that queer people are literally everywhere, and we deserve every shred of dignity, joy, and recognition that we are fighting for.

A more important motivation for claiming this part of me publicly is: I love myself. I love and embrace the complexity of my identity and my story. I love the community I have found with other queer folks, and especially other queer folks of color in the south. I love the analysis that a black queer feminist politic offers us – the invitation to center and uplift the most marginalized among us, to see that wins for the freedom and well-being of queer black women (trans or cis) are wins for us all.

Even with this new public declaration, my relatively privileged position in society remains, as a cisgender, able-bodied, U.S. citizen with multiple degrees and a middle class background. I am committed to the active work of solidarity with people who lack the privileges I enjoy. That means educating myself on the experience of trans and nonbinary people, queer and trans folks who are poor, or immigrants, or disabled or any combination thereof. It means putting my body, my money, my vote, and my social standing on the line. We are each other’s business. Ain’t nobody free till everybody’s free.

To my queer and trans and non binary compas, wherever you live, whomever you love, whatever level of visibility you embody at this moment, Happy National Coming Out Day.

Hello, it’s your depression

Hello, I have returned.

When I am gone, you hope that maybe this time I will stay away for good. When I am back, you say to yourself, “of course, I was foolish to think that I would live my life without your presence.”

Rest assured, I am not here to stay forever, though when I am curled up beside you in your bed, it feels like I may never leave.

I am not always an alarm. I am not always a crisis. Sometimes I am inevitable. Certainly, in this world, in this country, with the identities you carry, I am the likely byproduct.

Might you see me as a gentle reminder? Might I invite you to slow down, pull back, turn inward, and take stock of what is happening inside you?

You are tired. You are so tired. You have pushed yourself too hard. You have fallen for the lie that your worth is defined by your productivity, by your ability to problem-solve and fix problems that you did not create.

I am an invitation for you to ask for help. Oh, this most vulnerable, challenging, humane behavior. You are your most beautiful when you are honest enough to say, “I am struggling. I am hurting. I am not perfect. I crave control and do not have it.” Don’t you know that the people around you have the same thoughts, and need you to model this most human of behaviors, needing other people?

I am here to remind you that life is hills and valleys, joy and heartache, victories and failures. We live our lives in seasons, always.

Can you feel your heartbeat? Curled up here on the couch under a blanket? Can you feel and hear it pulsing through your flesh and reverberating in your ears? Good. You are alive. You are breathing.

In the past, I have brought darkness for you, but today I bring a quiet and heavy companionship. Not hostile. But somber. I have pulled you out of the world and into a small quiet room, for us to sit together and observe the goings on from a distance. What do you see? Do you want to be in this world? Me neither, not now. It is broken, but not beyond repair. You know this. I am here to tell you that it is ok for you to rest today, and tomorrow and days after if necessary, and after those days have past, you may take up your tools and your gifts and continue to rebuild with the freedom fighters around you.

Where are your tears? I am here to call them forth. They are a gift to you. They are release, they are healing waters. You carry oceans behind your eyes, and the riptide is pulling you down. I will keep you company at the bottom of the sea, I will gaze with you up toward the light, as you gather your strength to swim with all your might.

I am urgency and uncertainty, all at once. At this very moment, I am weight and inspiration for your fingertips as you write brave words to share with the world about the view from your small quiet room. You are a gift. Fragile and precious. I am here to remind you that you need protecting.