The Total Femme

Recently, at a local art opening, I had occasion to divulge to an acquaintance that less than two years ago I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and how impossible it’s been.

Rather than sympathizing (she had just asked after my health), she blurted out, “Did you have a sweet tooth?” Ignorantly, innocently, idiotically.

We were in public, I like her, I was wearing my very most excellent chicken dress, Tex was by my side, so I found the wherewithal to say, as mildly as possible, “It’s an auto-immune disease,” just as Tex was repeating, “Type one.”

Even more recently, at another local art event, I had occasion to think, probably for the first time in my life, about visual art and people with visual impairment or blindness. It was a special accessibility evening for an art exhibit, a Visual Description event, attended by both sighted and non-sighted folks.

I work with words, but even still I use descriptive language referring to visual things all the time, along the lines of “as blue as the sky,” or “as cryptic as the Mona Lisa’s smile” and etc. How do those things land if you’ve never seen blue or a reproduction of the Mona Lisa? If you can’t see a piece of visual art, how does a description of it by the artist render it in your heart, emotions, mind? How many times do blind people have to field stupid as shit questions about all the above and more?

To her credit, my acquaintance shaped right up and made much more supportive and kind remarks once she got the drift of things. I have friends whose pancreases work just fine, but who have made it a priority to learn about adult onset type one so that I feel a little less alone with it, not bearing the entire burden on my shoulders and my shoulders only. One even just wrote a deliciously snarky comment to the NYT (thanks, Jones!) encouraging them to get their shit together about being clear about the very large difference between type one and type two – everybody always thinks diabetes means type two and they don’t even know what that means, witness my acquaintance’s witless comment.

As for me, now that I’m aware of this beautiful, community-building Visual Description event, I’m all in with the organizer to try and get every art exhibit in the area to embrace this model. I plan to bring it to the attention of the art and the disability communities.  I’ve also let the artist who organized the event I attended know that I’m ready to read at any time should he need me. Little by slow, as we say in Al-Anon.

Delicious and scrumptious left-over Halloween candy squirreled away for a weekday treat, my cream tea darlings, my apple cake yummies, my Danishes, my apple cider donuts, are there things integral to your hearts and lives that people get wrong or denigrate or dismiss all the fucking time? That you pretty much have stopped talking about in public because it will for sure just bring about grief? How lonely it makes us feel!

There’s a difference between protecting yourself and deep down horrible terrible isolation. Femme sisters, don’t we know it! But if you can, my popcorn kernels, my walnuts, my cranberry muffins, reach out when you can to educate and bring more allies and friends into the fold. Not because you have to in some moral high horse way, but because it builds all of us stronger, because it makes life more complex and varied and good.

If you want, start by telling me. I love you. I’m listening and ready to learn.

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