The Total Femme

This morning, I went with Tex to a doctor’s appointment. Our route took us past the carnage wrought by a local private school who, despite passionate protest, razed precious remaining woodlands to make a parking lot. They didn’t even bother to make the pavement porous, the demon assholes.

From small to large to largest and larger, attacks like these surround us and plague us and if we don’t drive by them, they’re next door or down the street or streaming relentlessly onto our devices and into our bleeding, wounded hearts.

What can we do, what can we do?

How do we carry on, keep our medical appointments, keep an eye on our precious health, our work, our Work, our family, our Family, our neighborhood, our communities, the creatures under our care, wild and not so wild and right now sitting on my lap purring?

“A dog would just make things easier right now,” a neighbor told me recently, their sweet old pooch having recently crossed over the rainbow bridge.

No kidding.

But beyond dogs and sitting in a cozy chair with a big old kitty, where do we go, what do we do? How the fuck do we garner the wherewithal?

Working and playing with like-minded people, yes. Illuminating as we can with our beautiful work that is so different for all of us, so different and so important. Filling in the gaps. Observing, discussing, dissenting, agreeing, protesting, singing, all this, yes, yes.

And I think we need something deeper, something that’s not dependent on the vagueries of the march of time and the every day. Something on beyond communities that aren’t always permanent, and shouldn’t necessarily be permanent, like those of us who got together to protest that fucking parking lot, or, along similar lines, turf fields in our town instead of grass. These communities, families, friendships, neighbors, all of these come and go, giving and taking, feeding us, educating us, helping us mature and grow, yes, yes.

We hadn’t driven past the fucking parking lot in a long time, and seeing it again really hit Tex hard. She started fantasizing about going out there at night and spray painting something REALLY GOOD that would fuck things up and DO something. But then we both agreed there would be cameras and it would all end in tears.

But I heard that righteous anger, I feel it myself. How to nurture it, how to honor it?

Woad!

“Tex,” I said. “You have to put on woad!”

Woad is the blue stuff that made Tex’s Scottish ancestors the fiercest badasses around back in the day. Thinking about it immediately cheered her up and switched her self-defeating spray-painting energy into something more profound and uplifting.

We all have ancestors. We all have some equivalent of woad in our long human histories, something that can connect us not only to our lineage, but that arises from the particular strengths of where we come from, who and what we come out of. Something we can learn about, lean on and lean into, something that connects us to our unique and enduring human-ness. Something that we can interpret and use as guidance as we muddle through.

For Tex, thinking about putting on woad and a kilt helped her brainstorm how she could be a warrior and fuck things up without getting arrested. It fueled her fierceness in a more positive manner. Someone just told me about a guy whose tires were slashed because he had a Trump bumper sticker – really not going to help that guy think anything good about people who voted for Kamala. The anger is undeniable. The expression makes all the difference.

My kith, my kin, my hungering, seeking, vision-filled venerables, from whence do you arrive here in this whirling, cackling, smiting world? Ancestors, both queer and living, related and dead, might well give you courage and guidance. What do you know about them? How might you find out?

Today, my loves, reach into the positive past, into your hearts, and situate yourselves in yourselves.

Your strength is inspiring and beautiful.

Let’s fuck things up.

Many a Monday I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

Do you have a meditation to share? I would love to welcome you here! Email me at: thetotalfemme@gmail.com