Losing My Faith
One of the hardest things about choosing love and kindness is the series of days when it feels like an impossible task. Sometimes doing the right thing, and choosing kindness can be lonely. It doesn’t always make people happy. Sometimes kindness is calling out racism by name, after you’ve quietly and gently pointed it out […]
The Insidiousness Of Racism
A friend of mine is a Black man with a Good Job. He ended up allowing a couple White people to move in five years ago because they needed a place to stay and a break from the awfulness that is capitalism. During these years, he covered the bills. He paid rent and utilities, they […]
IEPs and Well Child Visits
I’ve been struggling for a few years now to get my son an evaluation through school and through his doctor for his neurodivergences. He has clear difficulties sitting still and making eye contact, and didn’t really speak until he was four. He caught up on language, but trying to get him to sit still or […]
Heirloom Arts
One of my favorite places to spend time in town lately is my friends’ tattoo shop. It sounds weird. Most tattoo shops around here are edgy, dark places, but not Heirloom Arts. It’s bright and uplifting. I don’t know if it has to do with the fact that it’s the only queer femme owned shop […]
Social Media Monster: Matthew Berdyck
Several years ago, I used to write for a clickbait political blog. I hated it. Most of the writing I did was not really supportive of things I believed in. I was writing liberal opinion pieces designed to uplift certain politicians while denigrating others. It was the usual political stuff. I’ve just never been one […]
Ukraine
When I meet others like me I recognize the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. – Warsan Shire “Aila, what do you think about this Ukraine situation?”I’ve been asked this several times. I feel like everyone looks to me […]
Making Dinner
I found my mama’s yogurt and shish barak recipes. She typed them out and emailed them to me years ago. I’m not gonna lie, I cried. I make yogurt in my instant pot now, I’m currently making my second gallon now with a third gallon in process. The first was for the shish barak […]
Lines
I recently had to set a difficult boundary with my sister.We haven’t always got along. We are very different people with very different values and very different goals in life. I am very much pro vaccine, pro racial justice, and socially conscious. I love folk punk, Arabic pop music and Appalachian folk. I collect opossum […]
For My Former Friend
I find it so difficult to write for this blog some days. It’s not that I have nothing to say, just that there are only so many ways you can rephrase the words be kind for kindness’ sake. And really that is all I ever have to say.Yes, my life has conflict. Sometimes more than […]
On Compassion For Perpetrators
CONTENT WARNING: This post deals with discussion of sexual assault, stalking, and harassment. I think about compassion within the framework of abuse and racism a lot. If we choose to live our lives with the core values of love and justice and community then we do so with the intention of providing everyone […]