The Total Femme

“Here’s my new honey,” says the glowing femme to here friends. “This time, it’s the real thing!”

How many times have we femmes uttered those words about a butch, a job, an apartment, a class, a pocketbook, an exercise regime, a new healthy way of eating, a career path?

We spend so much time seeking. We spend so much energy feeling bereft, left out, invisible.

In a culture that constantly tells us that we’re never good enough, we femmes can’t help but absorb this toxic message. We can’t help, sometimes or often, feeling less than. Because we’re starting with a perceived deficit – feminine but not straight – we are at risk of working incredibly hard on ourselves, subconsciously or consciously, in order to prove that we are good enough; nay, that we are perfect! And we are constantly scanning, waiting, praying for the real thing to come along.

The irony being that we are perfect, even without all that hard work.

The irony being that every single moment of our queer femme lives is the real thing.

There you are, in all your femme fabulousness. In all your femme despair. In all your femme brilliance, creativity, fear, bravery, getting-through-the-day-very.

There you are, so in focus. So surrounded by love.

There you are, you splendiferous real thing!

Every Monday (or Tuesday), I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was a fabulous straight femme, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.