Tag Archives: writing

“Tuesday”

I am not going to pretend I feel normal. Tuesday has been going on for a few days. I purposely stayed away from current television and scrolling through social media to avoid hearing any election news. I watched Half and Half and Sex and the City so I could fool myself into believing it was 2004. Not that anything was perfect then but the country’s allegiance to the notion of white supremacy wasn’t so boldly proclaimed, at least not from the White House. I also didn’t have to wonder if I had a sticker supporting my candidate of choice on my bumper that there was a chance I could be boxed in by maniacs and screamed at by people claiming to be “Christians.”

Maybe there wore more people willing to wear the mask back then. Maybe I prefer the mask.

After avoiding incoming results, I went to bed but was only able to sleep for an hour. My restlessness continued until my wake up call for 5:00am Miracle Morning. I considered skipping but I am glad I didn’t.

We ended up listening to Amanda Maynard speak about mental wellness. She guided us through a powerful meditation but what really resonated with me was the group exercise. We were broken out randomly into groups. Each of us was tasked with stating our fear and then the rest of us were to suggest a solution to combat the fear.

One of the other women struggles with the same fear as I do: The fear of being seen. This may come as a surprise because I don’t have a problem with my work being seen. I separate Kristina from Kristina’s writing. I can press “Publish”, post a blog on a social media site or share my latest work or soon class with the people in my life. But constant networking? Going live? Though it’s not true, it feels inauthentic to me, as if I am pretending to be an outgoing bubbly person for the world.

As if I really believe all the world’s a stage. Since I truly want to be more engaged and have work coming I will be proud to share with the world, I need to be comfortable with being seen.

That whole breakout group revelation was before 6:00am. I logged out carrying hope with me and was finally able to sleep before starting work a couple hours later.

I am glad I got the little rest I did because it empowered me to be present for virtual self-care activities. My friend guided us through yoga class which eased the tension snaking up my back to my shoulders. I also facilitated a writing session with my co-workers I soon hope to repeat. We all showed up with our vulnerability and willingness to share of ourselves. I was honored and humbled to lead in this way.

I know “Tuesday” is far from over but I am leaning towards hope and acceptance. I am inspired to be ready to do my part, no matter the outcome, to be more of an empathetic leader and an agent for change in the world around me.

I Did My Part

She said ” We all hold a lot of tension in our hips.”

The she I am referring to is Alee Williams and it was said during this morning’s 5:00am session of Miracle Morning. My next thought was I am holding tension in more places than my hips.

I went to bed late because I knew after this morning’s session, I was off of work because of Election Day. I was tense, worrying about who would be our next President and more specifically, praying for a change in leadership. This person who could influence the country’s trajectory with climate change, equal rights, health care, forming an organized response to COVID-19, the way the U.S. is respected around the world and the future of my beautiful and innocent Black nieces and nephews. I know they are mostly teens but there is so much about this world they don’t fully understand yet. I understand whoever becomes president won’t fundamentally change racism and inequality.

That is a matter of the heart.

But this heart needs hope.

I gave myself some when my husband and I drove our immunocompromised selves, fully masked to the registrar’s office, waited 20 minutes 6 ft apart and cast our ballots over two weeks ago. I did my part. I left nothing to chance.

I hope you don’t.

I am going to gift myself the day to plan writing prompts for a class I am leading tomorrow, read Octavia Butler, pray. nap and distract myself with television that reflects a different reality than the one this country is currently facing–the one we are all facing.

Because I did my part to relieve this tension.

I gave myself hope.

I hope you do your part, too. Remember if it didn’t matter they wouldn’t work so hard to suppress it.

My New Normal

5:00am is not an hour I tend to ever see. It has been the hour I need to be up by for a long drive or when I have dragged myself to bed after passing out on the couch downstairs.

I am a night owl. I usually write or get ideas for writing at night. I have been known to pick up a novel at 1am when I can’t sleep or just in the mood to know what happens next. I like to discover new movies, shows or insightful interviews late night, too.

I am trying something new for the month of November. I joined the Miracle Morning challenge created by Amber Aziza. I will be rising right before 5am Monday-Friday to log into a Zoom call for an hour and listen to inspirational speeches, business advice, workout, write, journal or commune with an accountability group. It’s mission is to provide education and support while building a morning routine for women. The group definitely leans toward entrepreneurial women which is not really the category I fit neatly into but I found it doesn’t matter.

I think what matters is if you can answer this question with a resounding Yes: Are you a woman with goals?

I am a woman with goals who would like to see what it’s like (even if only ends up being for a month) to gather with women from across the globe to honor what’s best in ourselves. To put ourselves first–not a spouse, a child or anything else.

Us. First.

Our first call is complete and I already have had the pleasure of meeting my new group and learned 3 ways to think about a journaling practice.

One thing I loved was Amber’s emphasis on giving ourselves grace and space. I know I am not alone when I say I am hard on myself when I don’t show up the way I need to every single time. This morning practice, in addition to building routine, is supposed to be a place where forgiveness lives.

I may not be in love with a 4:45am wake up time but I can get with any program that allows for that kind of grace.

Blog Like Crazy: Year 4

Against the advice of a few, I am back for year 4 of #Bloglikecrazy! What is it? And why was the advice so negative you may ask?

Bloglikecrazy is a challenge created by Javacia Harris Bowser of See Jane Write to publish one blog post everyday in the month of November. I have completed the challenge every year for the past three years. I have posted through sleeping on a cot beside my husband in the hospital, travel, during a strenuous 75hard challenge where I exercised twice a day while working my 9-5 and while I felt ill.

So why have I received advice against doing it this year if others have been so successful? Because this year my writing goals and dreams are starting to become more realized and the fear of the few who advised against it (and love me) are that I will drown in a sea of time management chaos.

The truth is their fear is not unfounded. In the next 30 days or so, I will be preparing for and facilitating two writing workshops, working on pages due for a big project in Spring of 2021, present at a virtual Writer’s Conference and Monday-Friday this month, I will be up at 5am for morning routine challenge led by the fabulous powerhouse entrepreneur Amber Aziza. There’s also this little thing called being a wife, taking care of home and working my regular job (remotely).

I will be the first one to admit it’s alot and in the past “alot” meant anxiety and panic.

But I also am going to make myself some promises:

  1. If I miss a day, I will not treat it as a big deal. The earth will continue to revolve around the sun. I will still be a writer committed to her craft.
  2. If I start to feel overwhelmed, I will stop. I am already working on writing I love. There’s no need to apply pressure.

I almost didn’t write today but the truth is as soon as concern was expressed, I wanted to write about it. I missed writing here and when I look back at previous years, I have no regrets.

An Offering

I don’t want to talk about me.

I want to talk about her.

She is mother’s mother

Matriarch and Patriarch

She is ancestor.

She is mortar and pestle on the kitchen counter.

Mayi moulen simmering on the stove

Floral and paisley painted on her skirts

Chanel lingering on her skin

Morning stretches in a pink mumu

Gazing at the miracle of Mother Mary on the wall, clutching her rosary.

She is a survivor who crossed oceans so the world could see

Her.

Throwing her head back while laughter and music floated from her throat

Joy unearthly

And we are tiny hands massaging her feet during Dallas and Falcon Crest on Friday nights

And sitting between her legs as she greased, parted and braided many a crown.

She is slicing with deft hands, avocado as an offering to us. 

the shape of her mouth as she said Ah-vo-ca-do

Haiti never left her.

Her presence made brothers and sisters out of cousins.

Her essence made brothers and sisters out of cousins.

She rests.

And I offer

These words to her.

Liberation

I want to be paid the highest compliment.

She. Is. Free.

I would be, too.

Free to take all my clothes off

On my balcony

In the dark

Brown full flesh kissing night air

Free to fall in

And out of love

As many times as

My big juicy heart pleases

Free to swallow kiwis and mangoes

And cherries

Whole

Remnants dripping

Down my chin

Pulp lingering on lips

Free to

Laugh with eyes closed

And mouth wide open

Free

To get it wrong

And let it go

Someone said

Black women don’t fall down

Someone said

We’ve got to make the time then.

To fall down

Grow silent

Scream until

Throats ache

Cry without hiding tears

That splash and slide onto the chest

Messy with no smooth edges

Nothing gets laid down.

I say

Only then

Would that freedom

Be

True.

Only then

Would that freedom

Be real.

Only then

Would that freedom

Be me.

 

 

 

Almost

I almost didn’t write this week but then I thought of Toni Morrison, scribbling away on her yellow legal paper all those early mornings.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I thought about how the sun burned my right breast through my T-shirt while I sunbathed on the balcony reading “Assata” on her birthday.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I saw a towering tree in the distance that persistently leans left, bucking tradition of all the others that surround it.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I saw my sister swing her twists while she gracefully spun and inverted on her pole, beckoning and inviting others to love themselves and her art.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I thought of my husband’s black and silver curls falling to the floor after holding it between my fingers, cutting new growth away.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I remembered how I sobbed in the shower when I heard a stranger talk about her miscarriages and her infertility.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I remembered how I deeply miss the hugs, kisses, the eye contact of people I love.

I almost didn’t write this week but then I opened a lipstick that made me smile wide when I painted my full lips the color of deep red wine.

I need to capture it because one day, hopefully many many years from now, I won’t be here to “almost” at all.

Diving

“We never forgot about you.”

“We came looking for you.”

“And we found you.”

I heard those words in a video around 1:30am. I had one blank page left in a brown leather bound journal on my side table. I wrote those words down because I never want to forget them.

They had meaning. It was life-giving.

It was spoken by a diver. She is a member of a group: Diving with a Purpose. Their mission is to deep dive into oceans on the hunt for shipwrecked vessels that once held captive Africans. They teach people how to measure the ship, collect vital information and preserve history. These men and women, many of whom are Black, feel compelled to learn to dive, become guardians of history to find us.

Those who never made it.

Those who chose the sea.

I wept a little as I watched. Their resolve was clear. Their bravery and curiosity stoked flames in me.

What will I deep dive for?

What will I fight to preserve?

What will I not let slide anymore, desperate to believe he or she or they “didn’t really mean it?”

What is my battle cry?

What will I live for?

What am I willing to die for?

I may never bear children.

But that does not mean I will not have legacy.

It does not mean

I will never give birth

These words

I believe in their power.

And they come from

Me.

 

 

 

Nostalgia

This weekend I watched “Star Wars” for the first time. I don’t shun sci-fi at all but I was never drawn to that particular franchise (I grew up in a Star Trek household). I may not have fallen in love with it but I tried to see it through my husband’s eyes. He was a child when it came out so while the technology and the acting made me cringe at times, he must have seen nothing but magic and heroes stretch the fabric of reality and his budding imagination.

It was a sweet reminder of the power of nostalgia. I can instantly connect to how I felt  jumping rope in my cousin’s backyard on Long Island, pouring over the pages of “The Baby-sitters’ Club” books, dancing to Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul in our living room and watching with bated breath to see if Whitley and Dwayne were finally going to get together on “A Different World.”

I love that I don’t care if any of it was perfect. I didn’t want flawless. I wanted fun. I didn’t know it then but all I needed was simplicity. Laughing hard until the breath sputters and there is guffawing. Pumping the volume up to dance and sweat. Turning the pages, losing myself in hours of uncomplicated storyline.

I hope to reconnect with more of that..the simplicity. Fondly remembering what was is beautiful but being able to carry its essence with me now–in the present moment–is priceless.

 

What Unfolds

Recently, without realizing it, I developed an obsession with the concept of time. Well, not so much time but the concepts of an alternative future and time travel.

This is not something I would normally write about but this is where I am.

No matter how silly it was (re: Seth Rogen’s Hulu Original Future Man), innovative and emotional (Amazon’s Undone), groundbreaking (the writers’ doomed vision for the world’s future in Westworld) or how prolific (Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred), over the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been able to tear my eyes or hands away from it.

IMG_20200423_112951
Octavia Butler’s “Kindred.” I am only sad I didn’t read it years ago.

Screen-Shot-2019-07-28-at-12.19.00-PM
“Undone” on Amazon Prime.

It was happening and for some reason, I didn’t connect the dots or recognize the common thread.

Each time I read or watched, I was asking myself if I would make the same choices.

Change the past for a better future. Alter a minute detail for a shiny, new me. Attempt to take control over what’s already done.

These stories have made me examine choice in a way I haven’t in a long time, if ever.

I understand there is no sense in longing for a past that never was or clinging to a hope I will one day bend reality to my whim.

But my analytical nature examines why I made the choices I did–picked up the phone at a particular moment, took long aimless drives, booked that flight, didn’t take the leap to pursue teaching overseas when I had the chance, grew silent when I should have been shouting or simply why some people have floated in and out of my life like nameless ghosts and others seemingly tethered to me, part of my DNA.

I have found myself indulging in the fantasy: if I went through this door, maybe I would have been a dancer or an activist or a healer, adorned in vibrant headscarves and crystals or a suburban woman with a brood of children or a tightly wound, bespectacled corporate drone in a more metropolitan setting.

I will never know the truth of any of those closed doors, those unexplored lives.

Choices have been made. Deals have been struck.

And thankfully, more will come.

Everyday, I am living in the abundance of choice, the beauty of possibility. Even now, in the midst of this uncertainty.

I think that’s enough to take with me as I watch and read, in awe at the boundless imagination of others and my real life unfolds.