Author: amini4

I must say, I miss the stars. At almost 9,000 feet above sea level they felt and appeared touchable shortly after the sun would leave us. They held timelessness. They held me, captivated me. I was transfixed. And the canyons, rushing streams, hummingbirds, endless chipmunks, deers both outside my window and along hilly, winding trails (Bambi and nem, y’all!), massive sweet-smelling ponderosas that predate this country’s awful genocide, woodpeckers, and even the flutter of odd birds whose names I didn’t know (because I’m just a city kid who likes anything that ain’t a pigeon) simply astonished me. There was so much green, copious amounts of trees and even some blue grass that I had never seen before that swayed with the breeze and held wildflowers and beautiful bees. It was wonderfully wild and lush in the mountains of New Mexico where I lived for a week with mostly dope people of color to meditate among the land and ancestors. I am so grateful.

It’s hilarious how when you’ve been on a silent retreat people expect you to talk all about it. Some only wanted to disprove its greatness, others just want to live vicariously through my experience and doubt its possibility for themselves. Thankfully some genuinely cared. I shared with a few and was overstimulated almost immediately, so shut that shit down and have been kinda hiding out minus having to return to work where at least I mostly just need to listen. Talk about relieved and paced! Y’all know I command many words on the regular and usually unnecessarily given how I like to process out loud, but I’ve wanted to say to everyone, “just go see for yourself or come with me next time” or something like that. And so I’ve avoided certain folks’ energy or said “no” with ease, being very deliberate about where my time and spirit abide.

Some gems have emerged during my time in the mountains and I have received them with gentleness. For starters, my long lost nomadic sister who struggles cognitively called me a few days ago, completely safe, lucid and cheerful. She’s been MIA for over a decade that even my wife and partner of 11 years hasn’t met her. Can you imagine the expansion of my heart and mind when I heard her voice and cracked jokes with her?! God is good! I also reunited last night with a beautiful childhood friend who went off the grid about 15 years ago and unexpectedly resurfaced at a mutual friend’s shindig. These are not coincidences y’all. Timing matters as does the readiness to receive. Despite having some recent career ambiguity, jitters and curiosities, I am mostly steady in my spirit and hella optimistic about waiting for what’s mine. And at the same time I’m not expectant. After poorly suppressing anxiety for years and playing it small, I’m calmer, bolder and more present. I’m confident and actually joyful. My smile isn’t masking fear for once. I’ve also cried as needed and said what’s true for me without punishing those who are closest and loyal. The abundance I feel from being freer with my heart brings a smile to my face even now. I found myself sending metta (loving kindness) to those that have repeatedly conspired against me and/or harmed me and those that I love. When someone recently disrespected me and a group of sistas in an unprovoked egoic, accusatory rant, instead of reacting I took deep breaths and pauses before responding and spoke very little when I did. I also saw my worst, scared self in her foolish tirade and extended agape, disallowing the shame she wore as armor to attach to me. Do you understand how I, a notorious conditioned fighter didn’t whip this person’s ass?! Listen kid, I’ve been in a few situations since returning where defensiveness could’ve been my default retort and instead I redirected the flow and gave grace. I’m grateful for the teachable moments. And I’ve forgiven myself for the times I didn’t heed others like it. Again, thank you Goddess and all the ancestors!

It brings me peace to share some of these blessings because I said “yes” to myself, remained faithful to the process and allowed the land and universe to bring me back to consciousness. These miracles are not lost on me as I find myself recharging in the stillness. Although life can be filled with awful suffering, it can also be quite sweet if we just let it be. I’m happy to remember my crown y’all and it’s not so heavy after all.

There are epic books in me waiting to pour out. But first some clearing and healing. And maybe a few chapters at a time.

One day you’ll stop being their favorite, so you must be your own.

What if what you think, believe, and ruminate on just isn’t true, or isn’t the only truth? How tightly must you cling to this story, to these thoughts? What are you trying to prove? And why must you be right?

When each rise is greeted by belly aches, a tight chest, the sharpness of tears in the throat that have somehow escaped past the first blink onto my pillow. This is anxiety.

I’ve lost the ability to dream.

Neglect, abuse and internalized oppression, both mine through inheritance and chronic exposure, has made me vacillate between love and rage, making one appear requisite for the other’s existence. Sometimes the two are the same and I nurture the fury and distrust the love, even my innate source.

Finding a voice somehow that no one wants to hear has taught me how to scream. I crouch to avoid tall glares, making myself small to dagger their ankles.

But I just want to stand up.

I regurgitate what has been force-fed. Silence is torture, but what words could I possibly utter?

Healing is a privilege beyond grasp or at best a catch-22.

I throw people away out of fear that they’ll never see or accept me, only my carnal shadow. And who could love that? This is self-hate.

Doubting what I know because knowledge only gets me in trouble.

Possessing the partial genes and interrupted nurturing of 2 severely hurt, damaged, forgotten people does not create a whole person, but a fragmented one. One with limited dreams that can only be realized at a great cost and joy, that may never be realized because survival doesn’t give way to evolution or the privilege of peace. Where reward or healing morphs into punishment at a moment’s notice. Or maybe there are no dreams, only nightmares in costume. This is generational trauma from a griot.

I get to grieve the childhood I never had. I also get to soothe that inner child now and grow her up. I get to show her off to my people and get loved on. This is completing the grief. It’s possible, this transformation. Actually, I really have no other choice.

Except in the most intimate of safe spaces, relegated to therapy and a few family and friends, I rarely share my specific stories of abuse, neglect and molestation. Only in recent years have I called myself a “survivor” related to that combination of things. It’s as if growing up poor, black and female shouldn’t include more trauma, or that it’s so obvious given my identity and upbringing and moot as a result. But there was catastrophic trauma and oftentimes I keep quiet and rage inside because no one wants to hear another story from someone like me. I don’t share the inappropriate touches and sexual assaults because ignorant and/or hateful people want to make that my reason for being queer. It doesn’t seem worth it to discuss the constant beatings and verbal violence from my grandmother until about age 11 because people won’t hear the immense love she also had for me and protection she offered me out of constant fear that my mother’s partners might rape me. No one ever considered the women, random children and babysitters, unsurprisingly. Grandma had reasons to be afraid. My mother was kidnapped, gang raped, drugged and impregnated with my older sister at 14 after all; something I wouldn’t learn about until my 30s, after that sister, my mother and grandmother had all been dead for over a decade.

Occasionally I’ll reference my witnessing of the domestic violence and sexual exploitation in my home growing up, which caused my mother to be detached emotionally at critical times since she was barely holding onto herself then. This trauma marked all of my childhood and still wears on me. Usually this is raised as a matter of fact and through humor – sometimes through twisted stories, all true, of me coming of age through violence as retaliation, school and local violence or when I thought I had learned to harness my own sexual power with countless boys and many more men before I was a woman and even after I was. It’s difficult to share these stories or to remember them. It sounds like justification for bad behavior. The numbness that’s sometimes required for me to function and serve others is all I have in my most vulnerable times. I shut my shit down when I’m still more fortunate than my black and brown peers or their offspring. So I let other believable women and men and underrepresented and discounted transgender people take the lead. I let liars exploit our stories for profit so I don’t have to be abused further. Because no one wants to hear this from me. Or they do, but want to hear only this from me. Because I’m supposed to be nothing.

When I skip to resilience without these stories, I’m disjointed. When I remain silent, I suffer. When I share though, I’m sometimes bare and uncared for, or people just don’t know what to do with it, or then I’m positioned to care for them since it’s too heavy for them to digest. Every now and again, someone asks, listens, abstains from judgement and offers comfort. And if they’re really loving they don’t use it against me in conflict. Thank you to those. In moments of their support and celebration, I’m told to write books about it since that’s the only way people think a story can be told, because capitalism, and our obsession with certain narratives, as if it’s not perpetually living on my soul, eyes and skin telling all kinds of stories. Still, I don’t know what to do with all this pain, all these stories, all this harm. It’s a litany of traumatic experiences before the age of 18 to have to recount and use for God’s glory, mostly before the age of 11, before I had even caused my own harm to myself and others. And it feels really fucking unfair in moments like this. But I blog anyway. Some good must come from this. And today, I don’t feel much like a survivor so I’ll fake it til I do.

Making peace with the conditions of my life is a required daily practice. It is frequently annoying in its simplicity and accessibility because I realize I am the one in the way of my own happiness and solace. I am the block in the road, the one that splits it into two or more complicated lanes and spins myself dizzy before journeying down a dreaded path. Peace is not elusive when I stay in touch with myself and welcome what has happened, when I allow myself to see and love who I am and what I can imagine, let alone build. Peace, harmony, and connection with myself and others are clearer when I accept what is, no matter how it occurred. Acceptance can feel so far out of grasp when I want to grieve the hurt and inadequacies by maintaining conditions that make these losses persist. When I resist and retract, I kill a bit of myself, or at minimum I put into a deep sleep all joyful and exploratory possibilities that I can create. I uproot what has been sown in me, prophesied, affirmed. I stymy the options I’ve manifested successfully, beautifully many times over and despite this concrete proof, I convince myself that I’m stuck with no way out. I become a slave to my mind and narrative instead of a beacon of my power. And I only look outward for comfort and validation, for escape, lamenting when I don’t get it from others on auto-pilot or command, or when I actually get it I shun the purveyor for not giving more. It’s like pouring out a full cup of actual goodness onto the ground at every refill and blaming someone else for my being parched.

In this state, I simply don’t ask for help and encourage others to pity me and agree that all is lost. Or I isolate entirely and allow abandonment to poison me instead. It’s also possible in this self-made misery, many would call it suffering, to resent people who believe in me when I reject my own peace in this way. When I don’t accept myself, the ones who lied, died, met their expiration in my life in other ways, didn’t choose me, or when I allow myself to feel cast out after a rejection that had nothing to do with me, I create pain, not peace. When I seek anything in my resistance that will further keep me separate from myself, I have intentionally anchored myself in despair and delusion.

So I’m aware in this hard moment and committed to working on the art of being at peace. Because I know what’s on the inside of it and have tasted this balance before. I’m beginning by forgiving myself and saying “I love you, just as you are”. Manifesting peace will be, as it has always been, the labor of my lifetime. I’m accepting this process as a sliver of lessons in impermanence. Everything ends, including my own life and I get to choose joy in this awareness. I’m breathing in a bit more patience to get me through to yet another breath. This is the constant necessity even when nothing else is apparent.

Occasionally in my meditations, someone gets choked. Human.