Words

"If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got" - Moms Mabley

"Let there be light" - Zora Neale Hurston

May 10th, 2020

On this Mother’s Day, I’m sitting in my apartment in Burlington, VT, eight weeks into a shelter-in-place/quarantine/pandemic response that has left me walking a tightrope of tension on the daily. Thinking about gratitude.  In spite of.  And so for my first blog post, it feels appropriate to share some words I wrote for a room full of brown and black women who work for the earth, their communities and each other:

Praise

I want to praise you.  

I want to thank you for representing the power of your ancestors, I want to praise you for representing the possibility of your ancestors – I may not know them, but I know you.  I know your fire, your desires.  I know your love.  

I want to praise you.  I want to call out your beauty, your wit, your badassness, your always looking good, your freshness and your freshness.  

I want to praise you – all the colors of the earth reflected in your skin, in your eyes & in your dreams of how we might be better.   

I want to praise you – the sound of your voice is like thunder and rain and the ocean and the pain of knowing more than you should and being told you are less than you are.  I want to call out your children, those of your body and those of your heart who look to you and see the sun.  And it is warm.  And it is light.  And it is you.  

I want to praise you – for your laughter that feeds our spirit & releases us from the bondage of limitation that was never ours to bear.  I want to praise you for showing up and showing out over and over again. I want to praise you for knowing who you are and knowing who I can be.  

Thank you.