Happy New Year

I am not ambitious.

I do not want to climb corporate ladders. I do not desire to be a CEO or CFO. While I often contemplate my ideas and abilities, I am not sold on entrepreneurship.

Of course, I have personal and professional goals. I can articulate a vision for myself and my future. I see and consider paths to realization.

Still, I do not believe myself to be ambitious in the connotative sense of the word.

The majority of my heart's desires are neither tangible nor objective:

Inner peace

A happy home

Safe spaces & relationships 

Connection 

Contentment

"Belovedness"

Mental health 

Wholeness

A stable inner life

Authenticity

Self-acceptance 

Reconciliation

Congruency

Freedom

Freedom from debt

Freedom from stories

Freedom from shame

Being a liberating presence

As I write and consider, I think "Maybe that's ambitious afterwall." When I consider the direct, generational, and collective traumas I have, the existence I envision is miraculous.

I also see how I press towards these things. In therapy. In reading and self-study. In parenting. In friendships. In relationships.‭‭ "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but" I move in the direction of the "truest, most beautiful life I can imagine."

Someone recently told me, "One of your strengths is that you see yourself as water and not concrete." Sometimes it does not feel like a gift, but being fluid has brought and taught me so much. I prize the ability to reinvent.

This year I am refraining from plans and resolutions. 2021, 2022, and 2023 proved that, like life itself, I am ever-changing. As we go into 2024, I will simply remind myself, gently, ever so gently, to do more of the things that keeps this human watered and flowing.

Happy New Year, Friends! May we be "liberated from our own fear." May "our presence automatically liberates others."

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. 

- Marianne Williamson

MJ Chronicles - 6 Months Together

Today I've been excessively tired. My unstructured days are like this. When we're free from our work and daycare schedules, all the energy mustered to be timely, efficient, and effective leaves my body. 

Then it's just MJ and I.

This sweet boy with wide brown eyes, curiosity, and a crescendoing voice...

This exhausted woman with a tender gaze, anxieties, and an evolving worldview... 

We've been together for 6 months. 

My life has taken a shape I couldn't have imagined one year ago. I am a single mom. That's wild.

My entry into this path; the uncertainty it holds; and the love I have for MJ is often overwhelming. Doing this day in and day out without a partner or family proximity is a challenge. I am eternally grateful for my community of Aunties (and Uncles); their support is special.

My boy is sleeping. I should clean the bottles. I should put the toys away. I should fold the laundry. I should take out the garbage and finish January's  budget. I should ...

The to-do is long. But, I am tired. MJ is sleeping. And I can take a moment, as many as I can, to rest and relax. Among MJ's needs is a healthy grown-up.

Motherhood is equal parts beautiful and taxing. It alters bodies [of bio moms], lives, homes, plans, finances, and relationships. Children touch everything. Their presence is powerful; it is shifting. Some moments feel like a freight train; some moments feel like a cleansing, calming rain.

Whatever comes next, I am grateful MJ arrived in this Earth, home, heart, and life. 

- Same pants, different milestone

The Color Purple | Alice Walker

Shug say, Albert. Try to think like you got some sense. Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me.

He look at Sofia. She look at him and laugh in his face. I already had my bad luck, she say. I had enough to keep me laughing the rest of my life.

It ain’t me, she say, and her look say, Fuck you for entertaining the thought. She reach for a biscuit and sort of root her behind deeper into her seat. One look at this big stout graying, wildeyed woman and you know not even to ast. Nothing.

Dear Miss Celie

I write to express my gratitude. 

You bore shame. You experienced oppression, violence, degradation, and suffering. You wrestled with jealousy. You wrestled with comparison. You wrestled with understanding, worthiness, womanhood, sexuality, and even God. 

Your life told from your point-of-view resonates with this poor, black, maybe ugly, still here woman. You see and validate me. Like Sofia, I know there's a God because of you. 

You affirm that I am neither alone nor hopeless. I can be the redeemer of my story. You prove that sisterhood strengthens. I adore you for this. I love you for existing. 

You, dearest Miss Celie, are a master class in surviving and thriving in spite of unnecessary insults. 

Amen. 💜

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult. 

- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 

Miss Celie's Wisdom & Understanding:

But I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

He look at me. It like he looking at the earth. It need somethin? his eyes say.

Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown. She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let ’im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

All my life I never care what people thought bout nothing I did, I say. But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don’t think. Just sit up there glorying in being deef, I reckon. But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.

But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. Amen.

One look at this big stout graying, wildeyed woman and you know not even to ast. Nothing.

I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.

She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose. Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.

- Alice Walker | The Color Purple 

Merry Christmas

I hope you are in good spirits and company on this Christmas Eve.

Today I "discovered" a poem that stopped me with its poignancy. I read it silently a couple of times. Aloud a few more times after that. Tears streamed down my face as I sat in the beauty and truth of these masterfully arranged, simple words.

Moments like this make me glad for language, literacy, and comprehension. What a privilege to read. There are still poems, books, lyrics, and art to happen upon at the right moment in time. It is fortuitous. Apropos. Magical.

I now know what my Christmas wish is for myself and all of you:

May we live "with a full moon in each eye" and speak "with that sweet moon language" today, tomorrow, always.

Merry Christmas!

❤️ Kechia & MJ

Admit Something

Admit something

Everyone you see, you say to them

"Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud;

Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull in us

To connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying,

With that sweet moon language,

What every other eye in this world

Is dying to Hear.

- Hafiz 

Released

You are no longer on my mind's pedestal neither are you in effigy.