“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.” –Maya Angelou

Talking about death

I recently turned to my husband and asked, “When someone dies, can anyone write an obituary for that person?” He replied with a raised eyebrow of curiosity and slight amusement, and a measured tone assuming I would go on, “I’m not sure.” I continued, “I wonder if I should write one for my stepfather…” I wondered if I should write an obituary for my stepfather as an alternative to writing and giving a speech no one has asked me to give at his funeral whenever his funeral takes place.

And I was wondering about obituary versus speech as part of an evolving dialogue I’ve been having with myself about my stepfather’s death. He’s still alive. And like many of our deaths, I have no idea when he will die. And because he’s old, I like to assume he’ll die before me, but even that is unknown. And if this musing about death and worse than death for many, public speaking, has temporarily created  a moment to be grateful for being alive today, this glorious day I have never seen before, I will take that moment and hope you do, too. Today is a glorious day. Today is a gift.

Daydreaming

Many months ago, I began to daydream about speaking at my stepfather’s funeral. As a creative person, I can’t say that I necessarily daydream as much as I did when I was a kid. Daydreaming feels so specific to me, an often unintentional mind wander that for me is not connected to my creative process in a way I can chart. My creative thinking and seeing generates my writing and my art. I feel I am driving that process. Daydreaming is a repetitive and inconclusive process that generates materials that I can’t seem to make use of in a way I know originates back to the daydream. I know there is a purpose for it, I know daydreaming has many wonderful benefits. I’m pro adults daydreaming. But my daydreaming hasn’t been a tool I’ve used to create or to act. My daydreaming maybe has created the matter, the materials I’ve used in other processes that have led to solving a [broad term] problem I’m facing, or maybe I daydream more than I realize unconsciously and it is part of my creative process that I just don’t necessarily consciously recognize I’m accessing as I do with other processes and tools.

Maybe it’s all part of the same process and I’m being too rigid about categorization. Daydreaming and wandering, thinking, touching, smelling, tasting, mind’s eye, seeing the future, sleep dreaming, remembering and forgetting, learning, talking, body movement.

Whatever daydreaming might be, I don’t think I daydream that frequently or that long anymore. I don’t often catch myself daydreaming. Before this funeral speech business, I couldn’t tell you the last daydream I had, let alone recurring daydream. For a daydream to form, maybe that daydream came out of seemingly nowhere. A recurring daydream, for me at least, means intentionally getting into the daydream state and to set in motion the same daydream. And a disruption: are some or all visions of the future daydreams? If a daydream becomes intentional, is it just thought? If a daydream is recurring can it only be intentional? Around the maypole I go.

I have found myself a little surprised that I have been engaging in daydreaming at all, though not surprised about the topic in which my mind has wondered: a public offering from me to an audience about my stepfather when he is dead.

The Daydream

In my daydream, I can never see the audience at my stepfather’s funeral, sometimes I’m at a podium, sometimes it’s just my mind’s voice talking. I know certainly it’s his funeral, though there is no casket or urn or any indicator the space is in honor of him. No one talks to one another or to me…not really. Maybe sometimes there is a sense someone talks to me. I never complete the speech, sometimes the daydream begins with me already in midspeech. Sometimes the daydream is an image like standing up over and over again, glitchy, repetitive. I know I am hesitant if I should give the speech at all, and sometimes I am actually not sure if I will, and other times, I already have a sense that I will give the speech and the repetitive standing up motion is part of my initial nervousness to begin. Sometimes the glitchy repetitive standing up motion happens and the picture continues onward sequentially, or the standing glitchy repetition will occur and the daydream moves to another moment in the daydream entirely.

I know no one has asked me to give a speech. I’m not part of the formal programming and sometimes I give myself a way to approach the podium when, vaguely, there is an invitation from…someone (again, no exact words) to the audience if “anyone else” would like to say a few words. Sometimes, there is no invitation and I know people are surprised I’ve approached the podium. The setting is formal. It is not a celebration of life, it is a funeral and it is sad.

I never fully conclude the speech in my daydream before my mind is taken elsewhere by an interruption from reality–a phone call, my dogs barking, someone calling my name, or I just stop the daydream. How much control do you have over your daydreams? Do you still daydream? What do you daydream about if you still daydream? Do you like daydreaming?

That I never conclude the speech feels like a sleeping dream, and a stress dream at that. You never make it to class, you never catch the bus, you’re running and don’t seem to make any progress, away, toward. But this daydream is not stressful to me at all. It’s okay that I never finish the speech, I don’t think that’s the point. I’m not sure what the point is, but it’s not that.

At certain times throughout the daydream, I feel the response from the audience I cannot see. At different times, slight shock. No one is clutching pearls or standing up to stop me, but they are like, ooohhh, shiiit, and a little confused. At different times, it’s grumbling when the audience begins to understand this is not a typical funeral speech and it’s okay to break the decorum of silence to ask your neighbor, what’s going on? The drum of the audience discussing the unfolding situation. At other times, again, silence as the audience listens to me. What I haven’t felt from the audience, or, what I haven’t allowed the audience to convey to me when I craft this scenario is a feeling of, don’t! Stop! Get off the stage! Not completely. And every once in a while is a feeling that comes to me, from the audience, of recognition, not of anger of what I’m saying, but of recognition, because the audience knows what I am saying is true. They know what I’m saying, they’ve known what I’m saying, and they’re not mad, they’re not ashamed they know, they’re not embarrassed, they’re not in denial, they just know. Not that the audience collectively knows every example or instance or moment that I am discussing, how could they. It’s the only time the audience has a semblance of individuality. The audience has enough exposure where some of what I am saying has been their experience, and extrapolating from the experiences they know are true into other experiences they do not know about firsthand, isn’t hard for them.

Daydreams really can be so deliciously uncomplicated.

In my speech, I do talk about the qualities of my stepfather that I like. But, talking about the best qualities of people, invited or not, doesn’t get an audience to say, *oooohhh, shiiit.

I daydream about the feeling of, I’m about to make up my mind to go up and talk. I’m still deciding. I don’t have anything written down, but I’m prepared. I am still deciding if I’m going to do it. For me, it feels like the feeling right before you plunge full body into water you know is going to be kinda cold and your head is the first to feel the water. Do you have that sensation too when you plunge into water? Do you know what I mean by this?

When I intentionally stop the daydream it’s not because I think it’s morbid and I shouldn’t daydream stuff like funeral speeches for someone who is still alive. I don’t think talking about or thinking about death and funerals is inherently morbid. I don’t have guilt or shame about picturing my stepfather’s funeral, which means I am visioning him dead. I am not wishing to expedite his death in any way. That might be a little morbid and asking for some unkind karma. He’s going to die at some point, we all are. And, I don’t stop the daydream because I think, eh, giving a speech at his funeral? That will never happen so what’s the point of putting in this mental energy. Which can be said about many of our daydreams, right? What we daydream will never happen. But in fact, I actually really do want to fulfill this daydream.

Translation

I don’t want to continue to daydream about the funeral anymore because more often than not, especially since it’s been a recurring daydream, I often mire myself in reality logistics that kicks me out of the daydream state. I’m looking for a piece of paper, or a specific notebook not nearby. In my speech, parsing out what is mine to say about my stepfather and what is not mine to say. How important is it for my speech to discuss parts of who I know him to be that are not my personal lived experience? Do I only want to stick to what I know and experienced? How vital to my speech are the pieces from someone else’s story? Do those pieces create a mechanism that allows for my pieces to work and become a working vision of comprehension of what I want to say? And if my speech cannot exist in the richness of communication I sense when giving it in my daydream without the parts that are not mine, I must get permission to speak these words and would those specific individuals be okay with me saying part of their experience? I don’t know. I have to ask them for permission. And then I think, well, before all that, what exactly do I want to say? What is the speech?

I’m not entirely sure what I want to say. I’m pretty sure what I want to say. What I vision of the speech is nebulous short snaps of a picture, it’s sounds but not always words and I know what I see in my mind’s eye, my daydream pushing into a different place of processing, comprehension and production where I am now engaged and shaping it, writing, talking externally to another person about it. When put into another mode of communication such as writing, now out of daydreaming into my mind’s eye and now into the writing process, often it’s not the same picture. How could it be? Why would it be?

The shore of my mind’s eye to the shore of my written word is expansive and the translation process is not just the waterway between shores, it’s the air, it’s the shoreline, it’s distant hillsides and a horizon beyond…And that’s just translating my mind’s eye. Translating a specific moment in a daydream that is muffled words and sounds, much unprocessed, anachronistic, repetitive, real, fake, imagined, intoned, protective and sheltered, raw, Hollywood-styled impactful and desired, oof. And have I ever consciously done this kind of translation before?

Action?

So then do I write my speech now? Do I write it later? When is later? Am I supposed to spend my time on this? What do I want to accomplish? What will happen if I don’t write this speech? Most likely nothing, but for how long will the daydream be intentionally brought up by me if I don’t act? Is the speech I may or may not want to write simply a healthy me prompting some processing in real life? Get the emotions out, tell the emotions in a story of feelings and then don’t hit send? I don’t know.

And here I am, intentionally going back to a daydream that just, from what I can consciously tell, started one day, a few months ago. I didn’t set my mind to that scenario of me giving a speech at my stepfather’s funeral. I hadn’t been thinking about him dying at that time, but I have thought about it at times–he is old. Just one day…I found myself daydreaming. But, I certainly set the conditions where I could daydream this specific daydream once it came to me the first time. And I’ve been going back, in short periods revisiting and exploring. And then one day I was questioning and adding logistics and making notes of things to do to generate this speech into my lived reality.

I will write the speech. I will ask for permissions should the final speech require permission.

So maybe I am solving a problem or creating conclusivity for myself where I would like some to be. And at some point, I had to know, what the hell is daydreaming, and found this happy article, “Daydreaming and Concentration: What the Science Says,” in The MIT Press Reader by Professor Stefan Van der Stigchel.

* And not to be missed is Joshua Johnson’s piece about “ooohhh.” Distinct from my oooh shiiit set up, but very on point.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. — Audre Lorde 

Sherry

As part of my compensation package at Food Recovery Network, the Board of Directors said FRN would pay for an executive coach. As the only executive level leader at the young organization, having someone that I could ideate, strategize and figure things out with, would be important. A member of my Advisory Board offered the name of his Executive Coach, Sherry. When Sherry and I spoke for the first time, I hired her on the spot. I knew. She knew. We would go on to work together for the next 7 and a half years.

And because of her ability to draw out of me and enhance my skills, my tenacity, to pull down my vision for Food Recovery Network and generate action, to support my instincts and challenge me when needed, I have been able to produce a very long list of incredible accomplishments across those 7 and a half years. I am forever grateful to Sherry and thankful to have her in my life. Sherry is no longer my executive coach, she has since retired. And forever Sherry is part of my family.

Ancestral Wisdom, Ancestral Strength

I mentioned in Stars → Inheritance Rodney King invoked his ancestors as a way to protect himself spiritually and physically when he was being beaten by LAPD cops because he thought he was going to die. If his ancestors could survive unknown horrors, so could he, in the moment of that beating. At some point, the beating would stop. He drew from their ancestral strength to endure, to survive. And, from that moment on, I knew that I, too, could tap into an ancestral strength, and that I probably had been, tapping into that wisdom for moments in my life that were troubling without knowing where my ability to endure and keep going came from. Moments like that in my life were solidifying to me. An uncovered known becoming uncovered. Forevermore, I can access my ancestral wisdom and strength clearly, intentionally and purposefully.

That’s what ancestral wisdom can do to shape us during our journey. And, if we’re lucky, there are many other moments that shape us for the better. I also experienced a healing and positive life altering epiphany thanks to the wisdom of Sherry.

Girl What? A Realization

Across 7 and a half years, Sherry and I dutifully had one hour phone calls once a week for most weeks for the first several years we worked together. Eventually, the calls reduced to two times a month once Food Recovery Network matured and stabilized. I talked with Sherry on the phone more than most people in my life. The only person I talked to more than Sherry was my sister.

When we talked, Sherry often started our meetings with the question, “How are you doing?” and on this particularly life changing day, I said, “oh, I’m good!” I was very chipper. And in the same chipper voice, I went on to rattle off about 5 things that were very not good. Things that I was trying to figure out at FRN, and some things in my personal life that were strained. Sherry listened to me quietly and when I was finished said, “Kiddo, you don’t sound good at all!” And I was so taken aback. I stopped for a moment. I was actually shocked by the disconnect of what I was saying and Sherry’s response to it.

After a moment, I admitted, yeah, things were not great. And I kinda laughed to myself. Things were not great!

Importantly, I didn’t try to argue that sure, things were not great, but they weren’t awful. I didn’t try to make excuses that things were not great, but they could be a lot worse, so this must be okay enough. And after years of reflection, I can now see the same rationale with living in poverty. Things were bad, but I knew things could be a whole hell of a lot worse, so be grateful for the bad you have and grateful you don’t have that other kind of bad, because that is really bad.

It’s okay to not be okay, and it’s okay when things are shitty…for real

That meeting, Sherry helped me to just name a bad situation, full stop, without excuses. I never, ever considered that before. I was allowed to have moments that felt bad, or overwhelming, or were just shitty. I didn’t have to have a positive spin on the difficulty. I know that I was putting that positive spin on the difficulty because that is how I kept things together. Things had to be okay. I was in a pattern of defining difficulty as “okay”, even if I knew they were anything but. I knew at some point, the bad got taken care of and so what’s the point of saying things were bad when…it would clear up.

I hadn’t realized it, but I was afraid. I was afraid naming something accurately as it was, as bad or difficult or shitty might put a protective barrier around that difficulty, and with a protective barrier around it, that could mean I might not have the skillset to make it okay, let alone the resilience or fortitude to move from bad to better, to resolved. Better to just say it’s okay, it’s fine.

I talked with Sherry, caught in the act, about putting a positive spin on what was happening in that moment in my life. The conversation allowed me to put down my toxic positivity I didn’t even really know I was carrying. I could name a situation for what it was, and that didn’t mean my whole world was going to come crashing down on me. It didn’t mean the presence of a difficult situation, unless viewed as “oh, it’s fine!”, would immediately mean something terrible was going to happen that I wouldn’t be able to navigate into a good situation. I had to trust myself that I was in a safe place. And, by habitually falsifying the situation, I was actually causing myself more work by having to dig around the toxic positivity to get into the heart of the situation I needed to address. Naming things as they were accurately, helped me move further out of survival mode and into living mode. Bad things happen and I could say that and be okay, and I certainly did have the fortitude and mental outlook to weather through bad.

More and more, I was building spiritual safety. And by letting go of the toxic positivity, I was in fact, abling myself to acknowledge the safety I was capable of building, and to trust it.  And in that safety, I could grow my power by letting go of habits that were hindering me; that were slowing down my journey to get to a place in that journey that was further forward, that was more healed and authentic.

I’m grateful to Sherry. I wish everyone had someone like Sherry in their lives.

What didn’t you do to bury me / but you forgot that I was a seed. —Dinos Christianopolous

What do you think?

Have you noticed an increase in the frequency of discussions about Black joy? I certainly have and I love it. Knowledge of any topic, across moving time, shifts, grows, evolves, on a spectrum: you’ve never heard of it before; you’re kinda familiar; you’re very familiar and at the forefront of that topic. And another axis of another spectrum overlayed across moving time: you probably will not keep up with the topic; you’ll monitor the topic loosely; you’ll (continue to) follow closely; you’re at the forefront as part of the evolution of that topic; you’re generating subtopics. Another spectrum and axis: knowing about or learning about the existence of this topic makes you happy; makes you pissed; makes you hopeful; smug; confused; avoidant…what does it make you feel, what does it make you think?

When you hear the term Black joy, how do you feel? Why do you feel that way? Is how you feel about the topic how you want to feel or how you expected you would feel? Had you ever considered how you would feel about the topic of Black joy?

This is some of what I think

When I hear the term Black joy, some of the things that come up for me? First, how solidly multiracial I feel. Hybrids unite! I understand the very specific choice: Black joy. I appreciate it, I support it, it is me, it is my heritage and I still feel the pull to include my other dimensions. Trust Black women, stop killing Black people, protect Black children. I feel that deeply. That is me. And I am also a brown person. I am brown because for the most part, my mom is white and for the most part, my dad is Black, because of history, because of legacy that somewhere in my family some French, English, Native North American, continental African and Iberian folks got together and had kids. And for the most part, like Barack Obama, when viewed through the lens of less nuanced and impatient eyes, through the lens of enduring racial hierarchy dominance, I, too am Black.

The term Black joy is important to me, it’s life giving, it’s taking a stance, it’s taking psychophysiospiritual space and it’s an invitation. It’s an invitation into the past: our collective past, my past. It’s an invitation to the now of what’s always been here, and it’s an invitation into the future. Black joy. And, I love an invitation. I do. I say yes to that invitation.

When I hear the term Black joy, I feel ancestral. I connect into hundreds of years of people I do not know, but who are family. many were brought to this land where I now live and survived, many lived all over the globe and many still were born where I was born. Black joy and the ancestral connection means we survived, thrived, changed the physical landscape, dreamed, hoped, infused knowledge further ancient still than they, amalgamated knowledge to adapt, joked, invented, fought, created…created life, changed the trajectory of their families in ordinary ways and in ways that historian Stephen Greenblatt would describe as a swerve—forever changing the course of human history. Black joy is in part a bucking of a long oppressive demand, the insistence to only see Black people as cowered, as lowly, as fearful, as surviving on scraps in order to maintain a fairytale of “better,” of “superior”. Black joy is part of the lived experience passed down to me by a familial current; it is the truth of an existence, one which understands and understands deeply the fairytale told and reproduced by others to justify depravity and understands that fairytale is quite literally, the farthest from the truth.

I think my white grandmother would have read these books. 

A literary genre that I love is the Victorian and historical romance novels featuring Black female protagonists. I love them because my Meme loved romance novels. She had dozens of books with Fabio on the cover all over her bedroom in Massachusetts. Even when I got older and I was allowed to read them, I never did, but seeing this very old (and very profitable) literary genre emerge melanated, makes me so happy. I love that melanated Victorian and historical romance novels have uncovered yet more racists. Exposing racists is important and I am not sure these talented writers would have predicted that would be a consequence of their art. These racists demand there was only one way Black people showed up in history and therefore historical fiction and it is as enslaved, as illiterate, as poor and how dare these authors alter the facts and allow these characters to have dignity, and experience love and desire.

I love when racists are confronted with the reality of a whole group of people that they just cannot comprehend, period, let alone comprehend expansively, let alone comprehend that their comprehension is faulty to begin with. They get very uncomfortable. And like in the case of Black people singing country music, demand their racist comfort be considered and the offending narrative be rewritten to fit the fairytale they were told. And quite literally fairytale with the Little Mermaid being reimagined as brown, or Captain America as Black. The anger, the hatred that rises to the surface. I wonder if those people are ever shocked by their own anger. Not just their anger to maintain the fable they were told about racial hierarchy and history, and art, but just their anger in general…I wonder.

We could just assume dignity for everyone…we could.

At Food Recovery Network, one of my most constant messages, and one of my favorite messages is to remind people that, in chronic hardship people have found joy. They have. They have found ways to make art, to share their possessions, their shelter, their food, their hope. Even in chronic hardship, people maintain their dignity, their humanity, their capacity to love, their ability to wish better for others, to trust. I invite people, who may not otherwise, to think about the daily life of people who do not have the consistent access to the food they deserve and consider how similar we all are; some of us just have the food we deserve while others of us do not. In all of us are the same capacities, why wouldn’t there be? And in situations, some of us are able to still live as fully as we can with less. Living fully is the option taken. Joy is sought out.

James Baldwin discussed the concept throughout his writing and debates of the [learned, maintained, reproduced] ability/function of the dominant not to consider the lives of those constructed as other, as less than. He noted the complete lack of interest or consideration an entire group of [white] people had for an entire other [Black] group. It’s quite remarkable when you really think about what that means. And of course, he notes the other side of the dominant mindset: their assumption that all other groups not in their dominant group want to be in the dominant group…and the terror (often manifested in the form of racialized violence) when the dominant realizes that is not the case for many outside of the dominant group.

Some people are interacting with the concept for the first time in their lives that, during hundreds of years of genocide, suppression, oppression, violence, betrayal and lies, that people were able to find…joy. Today, some people are seeing videos come across their Instagram feed, or the nightly news, or in musical collaborations that are saying…huh…Black people are happy. For the first time, some people are considering that.

When I think about Black joy, I feel protective.

When I think about Black joy, I think about all of the things out there in the world to consider, to try, to see, to touch, to write about, to talk about, to smell— I feel revolutionarily ordinary. I feel the gift of the day, the invitation of just today, and I accept with love and with joy.

We cannot know how far we can soar until we are tested.” —Coretta Scott King

Willfully moving toward difficulty

Being a nonprofit executive director is a notably difficult role. The number of skills one must possess is astonishingly long. The demand for visionary thinking, fundraising prowess, productive people management and in the weeds task management can often leave one feeling whiplashed. And that is not even the extensive list of skills an ED is often required to have. And if the work is not accomplished smoothly, the blame typically wrests on the shoulders of one person and one person only. This kind of role is not for everyone, and this kind of role is definitely for me.

In 2013 I was able to attend a week-long leadership academy while working for an antipoverty nonprofit that I loved called LIFT. The program was designed with the individual in mind, agnostic of where the person worked. It was well-known that people often left their current employer to work somewhere else, somewhere better suited for their abilities or of a higher responsibility level as some point soon after having completed the academy. Having come from an individual leadership organization called Coro Center for Civic Leadership prior to joining LIFT, I was thrilled to participate in this academy and fully immerse myself in the opportunity to further work on my own abilities.

The blueprint knows

I had come very far from willing a very nascent goal as a kid into reality: to not be poor. I noted in my offering Hardship, through that moment of expression to not be poor, for me, a blueprint that I could access emerged. Very hazy, much of the design indecipherable in the first moments it was revealed to me. But it was there, and I knew that blueprint was me, it was my life and within my life, my purpose. As the years unfurled before me, my personal blueprint had more clarity to it as I moved along my journey. Not all of the details were sharply focused, of course. I would have to live seconds and minutes and days and years for there to be clarity through reflection. I’m certainly not clairvoyant. Each year, my blueprint, which also entailed my purpose became clearer and a distant future, though still hazy, became more substantive in its meaning; I understood more and more what I was aiming to do with my life.

It was during this leadership academy, when I was paired with an executive coach for an hour, that I externally articulated a goal for myself— for my career. A new goal. A new goal I knew I was going to achieve and in doing so, further clarify my blueprint. I knew I was going to accomplish the goal, I just wasn’t sure how I was going to go about achieving it…yet. My paired coach asked me where I saw my career in the near future. In a few years from now, what did I want to do? And I said, with my whole heart, “I want to be an executive director of a nonprofit whose mission aligns with my values.” PHEW! I said it. I said it without needing approval, without self-doubt that I was aiming too high. I probably drew my fingers to my mouth as if to say, “it’s out there, now I have to do it.”

When I began to steer my career path toward being an executive director, it was because I was ready for the challenges that kind of role demanded. I knew I was ready to make decisions and take on the responsibility of caring for a mission-driven organization. Importantly, I knew I wanted to be an executive leader so that I could specifically be the boss. It didn’t mean I wasn’t scared or nervous. I absolutely was. But I was also sure.

A boss was born

Why did I want to be the boss? Well, as I mentioned in Stars → Inheritance, I’m a Capricorn and of the many traits I identify with in being a Capricorn, it’s our strong desire to be the boss. And more seriously, taking on an executive leadership role was how I felt I could help more people. Across my many jobs and as I entered into my career in the nonprofit sector, I had gathered so many skills from those roles, as well as, importantly, from volunteering in my community and joining boards of nonprofits. I knew I possessed the hard skills needed to succeed. But, when I entered into my career in the nonprofit sector, I didn’t have a direct boss who Inspired me, capital I, who was a multiplier as described by Liz Wiseman: someone who drew from me more than I thought possible because of their leadership and vision. I had many nice bosses, and I had a fair share of toxic bosses and I knew my personality and leadership style would foster the kind of work environment that people deserved. Many of my friends across private, nonprofit and public sectors struggled with toxic work environments, lackluster bosses, problematic colleagues and so on. I had insight into several work environments, spent years at Coro, the individual leadership organization, to prepare people for a variety of workplaces, and I knew what I wanted to create.

My hour-long executive coach didn’t bat an eye when I told her my goal, and if I were being frank, from looking at my resume and hearing what mattered most to me, she was definitely gently pushing me to say what she could already tell. So, it was at this moment that I allowed for an articulation: I was a boss and I was going to be the boss.

Said a different way:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ― James Baldwin

Capricorn from New England

When I state that I am a Capricorn from New England, to me, that is shorthand for characteristics I believe I exhibit because I am a Capricorn and because I am from New England. It’s a fun way to think about myself. I know lots of people from lots of places around the world exhibit the same characteristics that I have and are born in different months and maybe don’t even believe in astrology. I’m not even sure if I believe in astrology, but I do know humans are supposed to know and see the stars every night of our lives. I believe we’re supposed to. Not believing, it’s all fair, but is it fun? Believing, it’s fun. Let’s have some fun.

I am a lot of things, but in the capsule of being a Capricorn from New England, what that means to me is, I am a very ambitious person. I set goal after goal with the expectation that I will achieve them. I have high expectations of people, but none higher than for myself. I value being intelligent. In Mud → Lotus, I reflected on how I came to be a deeply patient person who eyes a future distance, many, many years away, and is prepared for the long, long journey toward that future distance. There are many positives associated with this Capricorn New England combo, and there are of course, some disadvantages. I’m just going to stick with the positives for now. Later, in another offering, I will describe a disadvantage that emerged for me from all of these characteristics I was unknowingly carrying and had to let go of—unceremoniously, of course because Capricorns do not eff around.

Urgency with Serenity

I have urgency to end poverty in the United States by the means necessary that I have gathered, learned and crafted, borrowed and honed both individually and importantly, collectively. I was working poor for such a long time, I know the havoc poverty wreaks on a person’s mind and body. I cannot, in good conscience allow for the perpetuation of such an unnecessary station. And, as ambitious and talented as I believe myself to be, I know I cannot help everyone. It’s a reality that I have had to come to terms with over time, as I know many before me have also had to do. To be more effective in my purpose, I had to come to terms with this realization.

How do I move onward knowing that there are people who still need and need tremendously? There are adults who struggle because of illiteracy, children in foster situations that are anything but care, dogs, cats, sealife, and other animals suffering because of humans, humans who do not have enough food to eat? How do I not become immobilized by sadness? For me, to “keep it moving,” is a practice in calm, in resiliency, in accepting my lived reality for what it is, while I pursue methods to make it what I think it could be.

As part of my practice, I remind myself that as I am working in my career and my personal pursuits to end hunger and poverty, to help ease our burden on Mother Earth, others still are also helping through their legal practices, their art, by being teachers and health practitioners, by being scientists and journalists, and librarians, by starting tool shares and community gardens, by car pooling kids and being mentors. I am surrounded by people who’ve similarly dedicated themselves to helping. That gives me calm…most of the time.

Serenity with ancestors

But, when I’m being honest, understanding that others are helping too, sometimes doesn’t make me feel better about the suffering I see around me. When I am not calmed by knowing so many incredibly talented people are using their gifts to help people and communities out of poverty because I see the numbers, I see the numbers of people and their families being lowered into poverty, or their lives being forever negatively altered because of medical debt, I look elsewhere for solace and calm. Because when I can work with my very old and very loving amygdala to say I am physically okay, I’m just very sad and emotionally scared, I can be calmed, steadied and therefore most consistently effective.

When I see the numbers of unhoused people getting larger, electricity bills and the cost of eggs getting higher and higher because of corporate greed, or people making difficult decisions in their budgets to make ends meet in the most creative of ways, when I see that racism, transphobia, antisemitism, misogyny and their cousins phobia and isms out in these streets without a mask on, I am afraid. I am sad. I am angry that I can’t do more than I am, it is in those times I think of my ancestors. I think of all of our ancestors when they were in deeply difficult circumstances with no end to their suffering near. My ancestors made art. They taught the youngers traditional dance. They sang. They intermarried and welcomed new, welcomed heterogeneity. They made jokes and cracked smiles. They took care of their elderly and their babies. Suffering is not inevitable, but neither is thriving. None of it is inevitable, and I have chosen to take a position to help. And like so many before us who were born into and lived through very difficult times that maybe didn’t lighten even through the day they died, I know many people laughed, and shared their food, and protected puppies and transferred knowledge.

More Weight

My thinking in this way was solidified by Rodney King. Many years ago, I heard part of an interview with Rodney King where he was reflecting on the moments when he was savagely beaten by Los Angeles police officers Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno, Rolando Solano and Timothy Wind on March 3, 1991. He said, the whole time he was being beaten, what gave him the strength and the will to survive was knowing that his ancestors had endured far worse than what was happening to him, and many of them survived the brutality brought down upon them. That surviving is active, it’s not passive, it’s willful to live and go on. If they could survive, so could he. That is an old, ancestral strength that he can draw from. And from that time onward having heard him impart that understanding, I knew I, too, inherited that strength. And that perhaps, those who are living in suffering right now, who may not be reached by me today, or the others who are working so hard to end the suffering we have manufactured, they too, are active, they are not passive. We are reaching toward one another.