If you’ve not been through this phase, particularly as a female-identified human or person with a uterus, I gotta tell you: rough. It’s been the greatest opportunity for me to dig deep and try to tell a new story try to learn how to give myself love, grace, and time for healing. One thing that’s 1000% helped is getting my groove on.
Some people will talk about community advocacy work as “empowering,” or even that they are “giving voice to the voiceless.” I like to think that every person I work with–every kind of person I work with–has their own power, their own voice.
People travel all the time. Maybe less so these days, but it’s just something that happens a lot, for personal and professional reasons. Can’t tell you how many times I see on dating profiles that a potential partner will judge you as unqualified if you don’t have enough passport stamps.
There once was an island made up of seven kingdoms, evenly divided by high rock walls that emanated from the center of the island and ran all the way to the sea (kinda like a giant Trivial Pursuit piece). Unfortunately, there was no source of fresh drinking water on the island. Each kingdom hated and feared the next.
Despite all that, my most visceral memory from that year will always be sitting in a car on a cold, rainy, fall afternoon with the mother of one of the shooting victims. We formed a friendship during that season and had gone out to a local school to talk about resilience. When we got back in the car to leave, she checked her voicemail, had gotten a call from her son who was refusing to go to school. Again