Monthly Archives: October 2012

breasts and ceremony: my first mammogram

Posted on October 13, 2012 | Comments Off on breasts and ceremony: my first mammogram

(Yesterday morning my website wouldn’t load; something going on with the isp. So I’m sharing yesterday’s post today!)

On Thursday, I got my first mammogram. I’ve turned forty, it was time. On Wednesday, when my doctor was giving me a quick breast exam during a checkup, she felt at the tops of my breasts and said, Where are you in your cycle? She said, This just feels all lumpy in here. She called it grittiness — the tech explained to me, We call that nodularity.

I didn’t feel worried: my breasts felt like my breasts. Not smooth maybe but nothing out of the ordinary. Still, I needed to get a mammogram — don’t they say you’re supposed to get them once you turn forty? This would be my rite of passage. What if we had other welcomings into the different phases of our life? Continue reading →

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coming out and out

Posted on October 11, 2012 | Comments Off on coming out and out

magic marker graffiti: Be Gay -- I <3 U(some explicit language about sexual trauma in this post; just be easy with you today.)

Good morning! Here’s the candle and this new light and a slow waking. Here’s a day of new beginnings — here’s a day of breathing in with fear and exhaling with fear and watching how even this is a place I want to be able to unfurl into.

What’s got a strong heartbeat in you this morning?

Today is National Coming Out Day, intended to be a day when LGBTQ folks can stand in solidarity in their openness about their lives: Yes, we’re here, we’re queer, and you already love us. It’s a day to honor those in our lives who don’t already know that they love (or know, or care about, or work with, or are friends with) someone lesbian or bisexual or trans or gay or queer by offering them that information.

Last night, just before bed, while working on a grant proposal, I spent about an hour with the self I was back in 1993 and 1994, transcribing that young person’s words from our old journals. She had plenty of coming out to do. Continue reading →

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attending to the natural rhythms inside our own skin

Posted on October 10, 2012 | Comments Off on attending to the natural rhythms inside our own skin

street art of a tree growing out of a heart next to the words, "she knows more asleep than awake"Good morning this Wednesday morning — my eyes are creaky and still feel hazarded with sleep. I imagine draping a yellow warning sandwich board across this post: blogging while sleepy — look out. How are your eyes fingers neck shoulders belly back heart this morning? How are all of your inside parts communicating with your outside parts?

This morning I want to write about sleep — about letting ourselves have the sleep we need and not feeling ashamed about it. Continue reading →

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sailing into this big

Posted on October 9, 2012 | Comments Off on sailing into this big

graffiti/wall mural of a bird and vining flowers taking over the side of a brick buildingGood morning — it’s still  morning, right? Outside the day is fully open, and I’m just getting into the blog at nearly 10. The notebook called to me during the dark time this morning, so I lit my tall candles and fell forward onto the page, recollecting what I could of my dreams, and my intentions for this day, this week, these unfurling next few months.

Just went into my thesaurus to look up synonyms for the word unfurl, which has become one of my standard-bearers (alongside thick and generous and grateful and slick and lit — the words that I find myself reaching for over and over, almost without thought, words that carry an extra load, words I am a bit obsessed with, words I ask to do more than their share), and I found that the thesaurus that comes standard on the Mac had no synonyms for ‘unfurl’ available. So I tried the dictionary, and my little Mac came back with this:

make or become spread out from a rolled or folded state, esp. in order to be open to the wind

Mmmhmm. Right, yes. That’s exactly how I feel right now: unfolded, exposed, stretched out and vulnerable, buffeted; a thing to be of use, to catch the wind, to ride what’s already available and freely given. Oh. Continue reading →

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begin again

Posted on October 8, 2012 | 1 comment

graffiti of a stone self wearing a manacles that have broken free of their chainsGood morning this Monday morning. Outside, the light is just bringing me the green of everything that’s finding fall to be a delight; inside, the candles remind me that the day is still early. I tend to berate myself if I haven’t started writing before 6 (let’s not even mention 7), but today there’s a different voice in my head. The dog has her ball. Today, morning looks like something of promise, not a place of loss.

This is the song in my head this morning, ringing over and over, singing me into this morning. And this is what I want to say today – it’s not too late.

Begin again. Continue reading →

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writing the joy

Posted on October 5, 2012 | 1 comment

the bottom right corner of a window with a green shutter -- and just to the right of the corner are three graffitied musical notesGood morning good morning good morning — I’ve been half-awake for about an hour, dancing with the snooze on my alarm, curling in around pillows and covers. It’s hard to get up extra early these days; I wonder if my 4am writing mornings are behind me. It’s hard to believe that could be true — more likely, my body is just needing a bit more time to process all the life we’re living when we’re awake, and wanting more room to move around in dreamspace. The dark is still clinging to the city outside my windows, and candlelight makes my apartment feel both cozy and tendriled with illumination.

This morning my heart is pounding, and during the moments I was awake during my snoozy last hour, I was beginning to compose this blog post, writing liminally. My heart is racing a bit today, but with delight and pleasure and anticipation rather than with terror or panic. Continue reading →

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breathing into providence

Posted on October 3, 2012 | 3 comments

Candle, genmaicha, and fast-moving fingers this morning — the puppy is just about ready to go out, and I got started late because I needed to have some notebook time.

(some straightforward language about trauma and violence this morning, just to give you a heads-up, my friends…)

This morning I am thinking about fear, and about what we do with it.

At the end of this month, I will be leaving my part-time day job, in order to open up space in my work life for Writing Ourselves Whole and for the writing that I need to do. I gave notice about a month ago, and spent the first couple of weeks in exhilaration and planning/idea-generation mode. Then ‘reality’ began to set in: What in the hell am I doing? Continue reading →

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an externalized memory

Posted on October 2, 2012 | 2 comments

stencil graffiti of a garden archGood morning from the house of crunch and panic. What’s the name of your house today? I’ve got the candles going, the tea all asteep, and got myself up early enough to actually do my morning pages. The pen on the page, the hand moving, the thoughts mustering themselves into order enough that they can fall into sentences or phrases or just semblances of particular letters: that all helps.

I’m in my small writing room that is filled nearly to the gills with old writing notebooks. Where does this want to go today? There are notebooks here from 1992 and 1993 — next year will be the actual twenty-year anniversary of my last assault, the anniversary of my decision to break contact with my stepfather. Continue reading →

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what’s not there

Posted on October 1, 2012 | 2 comments

stencil graffiti of a man contemplating an empty (?) picture frameGood morning on this Monday morning. In front of me are the steady flames of two tall white pillar candles,  two tea candles, and their reflection in the window. I’m ensconced in my writing corner at the end of the kitchen table, trying to convince my body that we’re ready to move into the work of this day. The dreams are still slightly shredded around me — was there a road trip, an overstuffed RV? There were children, teenagers, a young man who got his hair cut short. What had been wild and bushy was now cropped short curls tight to his head, and all the girls in his circle adored the new look. He wasn’t so sure. There were lots of dreams, my subconscious was busy last night.

I want to write this morning about the writer’s grief that my adored writer friend and colleague Renee (check out her blog and work and daily writing prompts and general ferocity) talked about a couple of weeks ago. She said that no one talks about what our writing selves mourn, the writing we haven’t done, all that we haven’t dedicated ourselves to, all the time and words and poems that we’ve lost.

Continue reading →

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