Tag Archives: gratitude

there was glitter, poetry, rage and song

white spray-painted heart on red background, painted on Mass Ave sidewalk in BostonGood morning!  I’m back from my travels, and, as you can see, I didn’t manage to get any blogging done while I was out in New England — there was just too much happening! Now I want to tell you about everything that happened, which would require less of a blog and more of a book.

(Wow: it’s nice to be back here with you, though! I missed this space/time with you –)

What’s true is that I got to spend five days doing transformative language arts (TLA): thinking/talking/wondering about it, being with other folks who think/talk/wonder about it, visioning its possible futures, considering the next year of the Transformative Language Arts Network (of which I am the new membership coordinator — expect to hear a lot more about TLAN around these parts), all the while also practicing TLA.

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not of the carnal kind, but of the cardiac

graffiti -- sacred heart: stylized heart, wrapped up and burning...

(check out more of Marshall Astor's photography by clicking on the photo!)

Good morning! It’s a Monday — how’d that get here so fast? I’ve got decaf espresso on the stovetop (and yes still the magnet on my fridge, bought long long  before I stopped drinking caffeinated coffee, that says, “Decaf Espresso? What’s the Point?”). Mmm — espresso w/ cardamom and lemon zest, and a bit of sugar.

In a couple hours, I’ll be heading out to the airport, getting on a plane, flying East, for the Power of Words conference. First I get a day in Boston, with the Lady Miz M & her Lady, and then an early morning drive up through NH and VT to a day-long conversation about what Transformative Language Arts is and could be. Then, on Thurs, the Transformative Language Arts Network Council has its annual meeting. Then the Power of Words conference starts Friday — I get to talk about the liberatory power of our erotic story. I get to introduce Kim Rosen‘s keynote, and then, too, I get to facilitate a panel discussion about the ways that transformative language arts work can be social change work.

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people who hold your heart and meet you where you live

street art -- silhouette of woman raising her arm for hawk to land onGood morning — it’s a Tuesday. Today maybe we’ll go to the ocean.  It’s supposed to be hot hot hot again and so I can swim.

I want to write a bit more about the Femme Conference, about the struggle of being with all femmes, being in that girlfriend place that has been so missing most of my life, and how painful it is, what an awful ache.

Since Sunday, I’ve been feeling this kind of throbby warmth in the aftermath of the FemmeCon, like an afterglow. And here’s why, I think: last night, when I was writing about my own transition over the last 6 years, I recognized the breadth of my own femme support system, my circle of amazing femme friends and supporters (some of whom maybe I’m naming as honorary femmes), who’ve walked (with) me through this change from butch to femme, who walk with me as I keep on trying to find sure footing in this girlness:
The women from home: Molly, Juli, Carla, Lisa, Kathleen, my sister

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meeting ourselves where we’re at

graffiti -- girl blowing heart-bubbles up to the sky

a bunch of love from me to FemmeCon2010

Good morning good morning.  It’s still morning, even though the sun is higher in the sky than I’d prefer it to be when I start my morning blog — I like it still to be down lost over the horizon, actually …

I’m taking it slow this morning, this week. After a super busy femme-conferencing, writing-the-flood-ing weekend, this week I’m on furlough from my day job at UCSF, which means I’ll only be working one job this week: writing ourselves whole.  It’s kind of blissful. I got to have a quiet evening in last night with my mr. hubby, eating leftovers and watching Men Who Stare At Goats (which actually I’d like to write about later: there’s a lot in there about masculinity, I think, about the damage our current constructions of masculinity do to men and boys (and…), about the work required to undo that/those constructions, and about how much work is required to hold on to what gets loosed/freed up — it’s a funny-ish movie, but also really sad).

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what resilience and growth look like

femme conference 2010 -- logo and dates! August 20-22 in OaklandGood morning!  Today is Friday and according to my post schedule-thinking that I did earlier this week, I should/could be talking about writing ourselves whole in general, as a business. WOW-biz or something. It’s going to be a quick post this morning, ’cause I’ve got to get in the shower and get ready for FemmeCon, though, so here’s what I want to say about the business of running a business — I can’t believe that it’s something I’m doing.

For many (many) years, my main work-related goal was to have the easiest possible taxes; my only goal was to be able to file a, what’s that called, an EZ form every April, or to not have to even file the form because I didn’t have anything new or interesting to tell the government about my financial situation.  Now I’ve got this thing that I’m doing for love and for part of my livelihood, and I’m working toward having it be all of my livelihood, this writing, workshopping and talking about all of it.

I’ve been in the midst of this organic growing process (or not growing so much, often), and this year I’ve taken a number of major leaps toward having writing ourselves whole be all of what I do with my work life/time: first, applying to Intersection for the Arts’ Incubator project — as a part of the Intersection Incubator, I get to be fiscally sponsored, which means I’m sort of in this excellent inbetween land of nonprofit and not, where I can have access to grants only available to nonprofits and can accept tax-deductible donations, and also continue to do other social entrepreneurial work, grassroots work — that is, not be tied to the nonprofit model. I’m grateful to Intersection for the opportunity to participate in this amazing program, and also to my friend and colleague and role model, Peggy Simmons of Green Windows Writing Groups as well, who investigated and participated in Intersection’s Incubator program first, and shares continually of her wisdom, her learning, her ideas.

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this buoyancy: workshops, holding space, and the netting we create for one another

spilling tea graffiti

the description of this image says its spilled coffee, but look at the tea bag tag hanging off the side -- let's say it could very well be tea.

a lovely way to wait for the tea water to boil: wandering around the kitchen, grabbing allspice berries, clove buds, breaking off bits of Mexican cinnamon stick, cracking open cardamom pods and coriander, all to put into the tea ball for spiced green tea. Now it’s simmering next to me and smells like goodness, smells like cool mornings, smells like something clean and differentiating and sharp.

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Seeking office assistant/ promo help — will trade for workshops!

Writing Ourselves Whole needs assistants! Are you one of ’em?

Do you love the writing ourselves whole workshops but are unable to afford participating right now? Do you have online-promotions, flyering, and/or office assistant skills? Would you be interested in trading those skills for writing workshop time? If so, please email me and let’s talk!

I’m expanding the number of workshops I’m offering, and find that, finally, yes, I need some help with the admin side of things! You’d be welcome to work with me in the writing ourselves whole office space, if you have a laptop (and can help me figure out how to set up internet access in the space!) — but you’d also be more than welcome to do your work from home.

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no wonder everything hurts right now: birth is painful

image of new stars being born

"Massive Young Stars Trigger Stellar Birth," Spitzer/Chandra telescope images

When something major is falling apart around you (or/and inside), sometimes you have to let go of the reins for a little while.  At least, that’s true for me.

I’d set up a practice of writing in the blog every weekday — then, Thursday and Friday of this week, I just couldn’t do it.  What I wanted to write about I don’t have words for, and if I did have the words, I wouldn’t yet be ready to share them with the world.  So I took a break.  I slept a little bit more.  I did my Thursday workshop with the MedEd folks, worked on administrative tasks (finally got the August writing ourselves whole newsletter out), got my hair cut (again, finally), watched movies. I’m thinking I should re-read Trauma Stewardship. I’m making space to cry, to curl up into a ball. Space, too, to laugh. Yesterday afternoon I went to Bolinas and talked to the sea.  That’s an important part of my self-care routine, and I just don’t do it enough.  I wanted to swim, but forgot my bathing suit or a change of clothes (the last time we came to Bolinas, I had a different pair of jeans in the car, so I went ahead and got all the way in the water in my shorts and tshirt, and it was perfect) — so I just kept rolling up my jeans, and sister ocean kept on splashing me big enough that they got wet no matter how far up my legs they were.  It was a good talk.  I watched the little black dog-heads of sea lions peeking and poking up now and again, far from the little boys running and screaming and throwing logs to their shaggy, soaked dogs. I scoured my feet in the sand and found excellent shells.

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open our notebooks and let truth fall out

butterfly emerging from its chrysalisLast night I heard an owl in our back yard, the kind they record for movies, loud and sure of itself.  It woke both Fresh! and me up, over and over hooting into the quiet neighborhood. Fresh! said, did it wake you up, too? We were quiet, listening, in thrall.

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Tonight, Pat Schneider will be at the Pacific School of Religion, (7 pm–9 pm, 1798 Scenic Avenue in Berkeley), talking about the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method that she developed and has been practicing for lo these many years. She will show the movie Tell Me Something I Can’t Forget, about the Chicopee Writers, about the women she worked with in a housing project in Chicopee, Mass., women who altered their lives and reconnected with their voices through the writing together, through the writing however they were drawn to write, through the treating everything as though it’s fiction, through the confidentiality, through the talking about what we like in the brand new writing folks offer to the room, through the remembering that no one has to read — we can write whatever we want because, remember, we don’t have to read it.

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far away from where we started

Good damn morning, San Rafael – thank you for the incredibly loud noise, the jackhammering, the slamming doors.  Now, yes, I get it: wake up early, Jen, and you will be able to focus before all this starts.

San Francisco graffiti - circle dance. (mpujals' photostream)My sister and her sweetie are here and we were up talking until 1:30, about relationships and friends, about addiction and getting help of all kinds and more.  I set my alarm for 6:30, hopefully, but of course completely ignored it. And had dreams that were sort of about crime again, about being a part of a crew who were escaping, or helping a group of folks escape. Or maybe I was pat of the group that was gathering to bring those folks back in, but they were friends of mine, the folks who had escaped, maybe I was sort of a traitor but they didn’t know.  At the end of the dream, I’m trying to dance up the stairs like/with a teenage boy who’s just sort of learning to pose and preen, and he and I are posewalking. We’re strutting up the stairs to The Miami Sound Machine’s “Do the Conga.”  I can’t really dance, can’t make my body do what it feels, it’s like I’m constricted.  Which frustrates me because I really start feeling the music, or maybe what I start feeling is the dancing.  There was stuff in the dream about getting taken in, caught – somehow I knew that the authorities were coming, and I was a part of the group getting caught.  We some of us went and folded down when the authorities came.  Is that right?  The one authority person who came in first was a tall lanky dyke, and our friend gave herself up, she went and bent down for her, and when she bent over her dress fell over her body, and she was skinner than toothpicks, she had no fat anywhere and hardly any muscle, she was barely sticks, emaciated, starved, gone.

Last night I was looking at my sister while she talked and she sounded like she always has, like my little sister. As though her voice hasn’t changed since we were small.  It’s her forever voice, the one that lives in my body, and I get to have that pleasure because I was already here when she was born, and so I have known her voice since it came to be in the breathing world. So there’s this sense that we’re still small, we’re still young, we still have time – and then I look at her face, and see these small crinkles around her eyes.  This isn’t about calling out age: this is about realizing that small girls don’t have those particular crinkles.  Those are a woman’s crinkles.  We are aging.  I thought, we’re running out of time.  What if we don’t make it before….?

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