I’ve felt so depleted for the last few weeks that I’ve not been able to summon the energy to write a new blog post. I had wanted to write about John Lewis and his challenge to all of us to build what he called the “Beloved Community,” to get into “good trouble,” and the need for us to stand up for what we really believe. How important it is to tell the truth. Bush and Clinton, as well as the others who spoke at his funeral were so eloquent and inspiring, and I cried to hear and see Obama, to know so deeply what I’ve been missing. I wanted to hang on to that feeling of inspiration and yes, love. And to share it. But then the funeral was over and we were back to gratuitous bullying, idiotic tweets, deadlocked Congress, Qanon-believing potential Congress people.
Read moreOutrage, Again
I was going to write about something else for this post, even had it started—the wonderful Wyoming School For Girls where I made a connection when I was out at Ucross Foundation for a residency in March. I’ve been doing writing workshops with them on Google Hangout, and I wanted to tell you about how much they’ve meant to me and seem to mean to the girls incarcerated there. The director, Dixie Fox, with whom I’ve been dealing over the complexities of doing such an intimate experience virtually, is a stunning example of what a facility for troubled girls needs in a leader. I am mightily impressed with her and hope to continue to volunteer as a writing group facilitator with them until I get back to Wyoming, hopefully next spring. It feels so good to be able to reach out to these young women with all the poems and stories of my girls and know how inspired they may be by them; how I have missed this work.
Read moreSmooth Pain
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about a few ideas I have with all the things going on in our country,” Tarray messaged me yesterday while I was thinking about what I would write this week, knowing no white woman’s words could be as important as hers and theirs---my Touchstone girls, their poems and stories about violence and abuse in their black and brown lives, my passion to get them out into the bigger world. How I’d wanted the privileged milieu I inhabited to grasp what labeled these young women as delinquent—I wanted them to understand what led them to do the sometimes lawless stuff they did, the drug use and selling, the prostitution, the truancy, the assaults. That’s why I’d brought them to so many reading venues, started the joint group with The Hotchkiss School girls, tried so long and hard to get I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent published. And now, why I’m rejoicing that it has been, especially now.
Read morePERSPECTIVE
I’ve been here before. When our son died suddenly and shockingly in an accident thirty-two years ago, the ground shifted, the air smelled gray, there was no sun in the sky. Things that had once seemed so important ceased to exist a world that had shrunk to the size of a snow globe. Eating, sleeping, interacting with others became robotic endeavors; desire to do anything but grieve my lost boy, go to his grave and talk to him, stay close to my husband and older son and those who had known him, his friends, our families—all dissipated. We no longer wanted to go anywhere or socialize outside our home.
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