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I am 30 now and I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, startled awake by my own giggles. I greet my ancestors every morning now and every so often I sit in the peaceful warm embrace of my great great grandmother’s love. I’m trying to document how I got here and as usual, I’m bringing you along with me, with all the chaos of a stream of consciousness…
Continue reading “Surrender”
Word to the wise: “I wish somebody would’ve told me/warned me/prepared me” is a shitty feeling. If we wanted women to succeed we would stop selling them fantasies. It’s not informed consent if you don’t know what to expect. We teach girls that they “become women” at menstruation, that they’re destined for motherhood (conveniently omitting sex as the path to said motherhood) and condition us our whole lives to become wives (“no one will marry you if… “) but somehow they still fail to tell us the truth. The whole truth. Fantasies are for children and continuing to perpetuate them robs us of our agency.
Continue reading “[Un]informed consent”
I don’t like writing about medicine if I can help it (ya’ll have asked). But as I start preparing to rejoin the clinical fracas (death by a 1000 cuts) I would like to reflect on power: I think we have a profound misunderstanding of the amount of power we wield over one another as colleagues. The damage we do. I’m going to tell you a tale of casual cruelty that stuck with me longer than it had any right to. But it illustrates my point perfectly *minor details changed for obvious reasons*
Continue reading “Casual[Cruel]ty”
It’s been super gawky being reborn. Turns out that if you’ve accidentally been using your survival instict as a default function, over time it becomes your standard operating system. It’s been clunky unmaking and remaking myself, rediscovering and improving myself but here’s what I’ve got:
Continue reading “[Un]made”
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Letters of resignation,
A cathartic overdue reflection. This is not a manual on how to quit. It’s a meditation on what happens when you get caught in the spin cycle of grief (Denial, Depression, Bargaining, Anger, Acceptance) and what happens after each stage of the tussle: a lovely mess.
I take friendship seriously and it is a hill I’m willing to die on. Platonic intimacy is what keeps our human cylinders firing and we’ve collectively allowed it to become a secondary function of relationships. Your life partner will love you and do things to and for you that a friend cannot (eg. change your last name or bind your bloodlines) but what they cannot do is fulfill and round out your life the way friends can. Friendship is the prize. Always.
I think I have this idea in my mind that I’m a very laid back person . It’s dawning on me (at an admittedly snail’s pace ) that that’s simply untrue. I mean, there’s a lot that I don’t mind but there’s plenty that I do. And thats the secret: minding is OK!
Continue reading “Minding & Maintenance”
Dare to be happy, to be you. I dare you (because your life depends on it).
‘I want to be happy‘ said by a toddler sounds innocently profound and all the little human happens to be talking about in that moment is that she’s taking a nap in the sun or getting an extra slice of watermelon. A dare used to be a call to adventure. Be yourself sounded like bogus advice: kante what have I been doing? The simplest terms have become the most complicated.
My favourite adjective-come-verb in the English language is: to disarm (adj. Disarming). It’s such a lovely compliment to call it “a disarming smile.” as in: Your countenance has moved me in such a way that I’m dropping my weapons/I didn’t see you coming and you knocked the wind out of me/I didn’t have time to put up my walls/we could’ve been at odds but instead you’ve won me over. You disarmed me. This is the story about my fight with beauty and how lipstick of all things, is what eventually disarmed me.
Sticky Post
I’m learning to listen to all the dreams I whisper and “joke” about so that I don’t have to to reckon with the extent of my longing. The whispers are like seeds: tend to them for they’re trying to tell you the things that you’re not ready (or willing) to know about yourself yet.
Collaborative Eavesdropping 