The Total Femme

This morning an older woman with a cane was in the gym locker room when I got there. As I started changing shoes, she wobbled a bit, then caught herself, laughing a little.

“I’m on tilt,” she said.

Yesterday at the grocery store, the man in front of me was extremely brusque with the cashier, and after he left, she and I got to talking about how stressed and in a hurry people are this time of year. Then I asked the bagger how he was doing with it all, and he shook his head, looked down like he might spit, and muttered, “Customers.”

Somewhere in this post I also want to put that there was a woman in the grocery store parking lot with a sign about having left an abusive relationship (I gave her a dollar, in case you’re wondering) and I heard her talking with someone about how she’d gone to college, she has a BA.

I’m going through our cds and listening to them in the car, seeing if there are any I don’t need anymore. I’m on the Prince section right now. Usually, I listen to books on tape in the car, but right now, I start ‘er up and there’s Prince, skuhreeeeeeeming and creaming and talking about pushing up on it and how he’s not a man of war. You know I’m keeping my Prince. I am so incredibly grateful for his art. His music surrounds me and keeps me and reminds me of things I forget in my sadness, missing my parents, who are dead, missing and worrying about my elder son, who is estranged and mentally ill. Hitting the wall over and over with having LADA*, oh, girl, it’s been almost two years since diagnosis, aren’t you all ok by now? Shut up complaining already!

So much else to worry about, also, do I have to tell you that, my queer femme sisters? Our people, our animals, our water, our ecosystems. So sad. So disappointed and where is our recourse?

All these different bits of spark and art in the day, the tilt, the customers, the BA’s and coming back from abuse, and death, and mental illness and addiction, everything we wallow in get drowned in swim in surf in paddle about in sail above. All these different moments, observations, glimpses and glances. Oh my sexy dancers, my crying doves, my most beautiful girls, my raspberry berets and my little red corvettes, how we so always do and must keep our eyes and ears open, there all around us so many ways to only connect, for a moment, for a lifetime, for a lifeline, a laugh, a smile, a shake of the head, another reminder of so it goes, how it goes, here we go

                        together.

I hear you.

I see you.

Yes we are.

*Latent Auto-Immune Diabetes in Adults

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

The National Day of Mourning is my most holy day of the year. This past week, I was there on my own, due to a wave of feeling under the weather washing over the other people who would have joined me. I got there in time for the prayer, thank heavens. I am so grateful for the prayer. When I knelt down to touch Mother Earth, I just kept going down until a woman behind me caught me and gently pushed me back up. We smiled at each other through our masks and I thanked her, laughing.

So much gratitude, so much to do, so many all of us there wanting healing, wanting community, wanting wiser heads and ways and hearts to prevail. Wanting to know we’re not alone and that what we feel and follow is worthwhile, healthy, sustainable, and loving.

The message from the Mayan Elders this year was short and sweet: “Ok, kids, it’s your turn to fight.” Eyes of the world on the US. Next year, Leonard Peltier told us in a recorded message – from his own home!! – he hopes to be with us to celebrate, to mourn.

When we got to the pebble (known by some as plymouth rock), the march stopped for more speakers. Me and my crew usually go up the hill so we can see, but this year I decided to just sit on the wall at the bottom of the hill. There was an open space beside me, and people kept clambering up. I would offer my hand if they needed a boost, which many of them didn’t, limber dear things that they were, but some of them did. One little boy did, and the incredibly practical way he took my hand has stayed with me. He took my hand because he needed a little help up the hill. He took my hand because it was there, because of course a random lady would offer to help him because he knows himself to be loved and cared for. He took my hand with a trust that was healing balm for my broken mama’s heart.

I was thinking about Seth that day, there on my own, surrounded by all the people. My troubled, angry, unwell and unhappy boy. How he used to listen and ponder at NDM. How he read a book about Leonard Peltier, how he – the boy he was, the man he is in his heart – would be so glad to hear Leonard’s voice. How he would listen with care to the speakers. How he would join in the prayer and the chants.

Seth doesn’t seem to be able to let anyone help him, me, his other mom. This morning’s latest go-round of angry, accusatory texts from him just about did me in. What went wrong? Where did I fuck up?

“I think we just need to give ourselves grace,” wrote a dear friend, whose son is also somewhat estranged. “We parented the best we could.”

I know that, I know we did. And still, and still.

I can’t help Seth, other than holding him, always, in my heart and prayers and love.

But I helped that little boy, and up he went.

To not notice because I am so overwhelmed with grief about my own child would be to refuse what is good, what is sweet and loving and true.

I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to live like that. Alongside my grief, joy.

Bartlett pears, golden kiwis, nice ripe bananas, crisp and blushing McIntosh apples, my queer femme sisters, my travelers on this human road of it all and all of it, everything we never dreamed of and more coming at us at unstopping unstoppable speeds, reach out your hand.

Here.

Here’s mine.

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

         

This morning I was stopped at a red light right behind a big ol’ SUV. Yep, there I was, gayly assuming we were both going gayly forward, when, right in the middle of the intersection, that big ol’ SUV slammed to a halt and turned on their left blinker. Oh, now you tell me! At the time I was quite justifiably annoyed, but now the whole thing kind of makes me giggle. That classic Boston driver move, straight out of the manual*, is just exactly what it is. Reminding me that out of everywhere else in the world, this is where I live, this is what happens. Reassuring and grounding, somehow.

Part of the reason I think I’m oddly grateful for this devilish traffic maneuver is that I’m feeling very floaty and out of it today. Everything is swirling around in my mind and my heart, and by everything, I mean all the sadness, all the negative. It isn’t everything, actually, if it’s only the negative, but it sure does feel like a lot. Funny, isn’t it, how something negative helped punt me back into the actual everything, because then…when I pulled into my driveway, there was a gust of wind and a gorgeous swirl of oak leaves tumbling and skirllng and I sat and watched and I breathed and smiled.

How is it that the Boston driver prompted me to write this post, and not a friend’s head-explodingly cute very new puppy I had only this morning been holding in my arms and she fell asleep? Heavy and round and so soft. She opened my heart and lowered my blood pressure, for sure, but somehow it was that sneaky left turn that got me to you this morning.

Dancing, twirling, tumbling, orange and crumbly at the edges oak leafy autumnal bonfire beautiful and queer femme sisters, don’t we sometimes need a slightly salty reminder, tugging us back to the whole? Don’t we oh-so-often tend to veer? I know I do, getting bogged down in all the sadness, all the disappointments, turning it in on myself and wanting-not-wanting to stay there forever.

Be it a puppy or a regional annoyance or something completely different, how can you use that crazy thing to remind you to pause for a moment today in the all and everything instead of the very specific and infuriating? Even if the thing itself is infuriating? Ha! Life is weird. Do what you can do, my beloveds.

And remember: always use ya blinkah!!

* The Boston Driver’s Handbook: Wild in the Streets by Ira Gershkoff and Richard Trachtman

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

“Trammeled” is a lovely word and so fitting for these modern times. It’s so soothing to be able to pull some old-fashioned comfort into a world changing so quickly that AI appears to be the answer to a lot of people’s love, parenting, and medical challenges, all things that used to be offline (remember offline? it’s hard, isn’t it, even for old timers like moi). Even just saying “my trammeled life” gives me leeway to slow down a bit, put things in perspective a bit, think about things from the inside out and how they affect me, personally, me, the Total Femme, instead of just hunkering down for the inevitable minute-by-minute barrage.

I have been thinking about the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and how the guy going into space talked to his daughter and wife on TV. It was so wild and weird and unbelievable! Obviously, it made a huge impression on me. But now… As I may have mentioned here before, it was so much more fun to read about or watch weird future-y things like computers and robots, than it is to live hand to jowl with them now.

My pixie-a-late-bloomers, my screen shot sugars, my jubilant updates-for-your-conveniences, let us pause (oh, for a pause! a healing pause), just for a moment, a momentary pause, to shake it off, all the crawling, mewling, grasping trammel-inducing clamors for your attention, no, your fucking soul, let us pause.

Look around. Rest your eyes on something old, something from before it all, something that has been always offline and still is, thank you, thank you, thank you. For me: my upright piano. Our tablecloth from New Mexico. Vinyl records (round and round and round!). A fountain pen. The cat. The dog.

Now imagine how you might keep just one of them untrammeled.

“As soon as they make us all have tablets, I’m quitting,” a fellow alto two said to me recently as we watched our director poke and fuss at hers.

She and I are untrammeled when we sing from sheet music on which we have scrawled notes and reminders.

I am untrammeled when I walk the dog sans phone, saying hello to other dog walkers, stopping to look in Little Free Libraries, watching his sniffing and purposeful peeing, hanging out with him in his world, as much as that’s even possible with my incredibly stunted sense of smell.

I’m not saying you have to unplug and go hide in a yurt in the woods (although Tex and I fantasize about that quite frequently), just remember a bit, untrammel a bit. Remember who is the boss of you.

Maybe your shoulders and your jaw and your gut will unclench. Maybe you’ll see something that makes you smile. Maybe it will help you next time you’re so stressed by technology that you just don’t know how you’ll go on.

I think untrammeling connects us to each other way more than connecting online. We do lots of that already (you know I would be coming to you in a column in a hearty queer IRL newspaper if I only could!). In person, people!

See you in the park.

See you at the concert.

See you!

* “something impeding activity, progress, or freedom as if by a net or a shackle” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, my emphasis

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

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

How often have you heard someone say, in reference to themselves and their very real upsets, “I know that it’s a first world problem and so many people have it so much worth,” effectively negating their own struggle although not really because they did talk about it before commenting on it and then also let you know that they’ve got privilege so actually they’re not really allowed to complain so ok, we’re all good here. Urk. That is very convoluted!

No matter what you’re issues are, someone else has it worse. Someone else has it better. Someone else has it similar. Someone else, someone else! But who are we talking about here? Let’s talk about you! Let’s talk about the only person in whose body you are, the only person you can directly call yourself. Me, myself, and I. Moi. Ich. Watashi. Other words in many other languages for the indescribable, magical, tremendously complicated you, you, you.

Now I’ll tell you a story about me. The other day I was in the gym, laboriously going through my labor-intensive table exercises: core! hamstrings! glutes! Not far away, one of the gym staff was working with someone else: let’s try 10 more, one! two! three! And also not far away, another client was doing reps of some other kind. Suddenly, she said, jokingly, “Hey! You’re messing me up with your counting!”

The staff member (quite a jokester) responded quite loudly, “Twenty-nine! Seventy-two!” which caused me to start laughing and say, “Oh my god, you guys!” and then all four of us cracked up.

It was a jolly little moment of gym levity. Everyone was working hard and then, just for a wee snip, we were all laughing together. Then we went back to our respective reps.

It was a tiny bubble of respite and renewal.

If you’re human, you have human issues. Things get hard. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or if you live in a country that’s not at war – I wish we all did, and I know you do, too – or that you don’t have cancer or whatever you think other people have that have it worse than you so that you think you don’t get to take your upsets seriously. You’re still sad. You’re still stuck. You’re still whatever it is you’ve been talking about before you trashed it all by saying it’s a first world problem.

And you need tiny bubbles, lots of them, to give you back a little joy, to make it that much easier to get back to the reps.

Twinkle toes, peonies, red autumn leaves, angel hair, bumblebees, don’t be so hard on yourselves! Today, two things.

One: Allow yourselves to feel all the hurts, all the upsets, all the sadnesses, just acknowledge. You get to be sad. You’re human and all humans have all the emotions. Don’t disrespect yourselves by dismissing what is human.

Two: Allow yourselves to find solace and eensie-weensie bits of joy in those tiny bubbles that present themselves all over, because as sure as there’s sadness and frustration, there’s joy and happy surprise. Notice those bubbles. Take their gifts with you back into the fray.

And if you have a moment, write in about your tiny bubble. I told you mine, won’t you tell me yours?

Together, and onwards!

*I couldn’t resist using this for the title today but it is NOT about drinking and if fact, don’t drink to find your bubble! That’s not even remotely what I’m talking about, people.

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

My ex and I have been getting extremely difficult and troubling texts from Seth the past few days. For whatever reasons, and there may be hundreds, including mental health and substance abuse issues, Seth was and is unable to use the strengths my ex and I had and have as parents. Nothing we have and had to offer seems to have helped him grow into a reasonably happy, healthy, functioning adult (he is 29 now). When I think about it that way, I feel a slight relaxing of worry and guilt, because there is no one I can be, could have been, was, other than myself. With my own unique strengths and weaknesses. That Seth and I, for all the places we connected and loved each other over the years, turned out to need very different kinds of things to situate ourselves in the world is no one’s fault. It’s just luck of the draw.

Knowing that doesn’t really stop me from feeling sorry for myself, as I was over the weekend in the aftermath of Seth’s decision to dump a lot of pain on me and my ex. I am so jealous of parents who get to hang out more or less happily with their adult children, whose adult children understand that everyone is flawed and end up being able to show their love for their flawed parents regardless. I’m so exhausted from worrying about Seth, who lives far away and who sees fit currently only to share his pain in terrifying ways.

I was also feeling sorry for myself for many other reasons: health, other family stuff, work and money, what’s it all coming to and what can I do about it…stressors coming in from all directions, local and global.  

 When I think about the all and everything we have coming at us, sometimes I just don’t even know how we do it. The cards we pulled, the dice we rolled, the color we picked as the wheel spun round – how do we manage when the result is a bolt from the blue, a terrible trouble? We do, though, don’t we. We sure do.

  Oh, look at you! Look at us! How we use our queer femme magic to navigate the waters. How do we do it? Today I am here with you, drawing in the love of knowing you’re out there, making art, making love, making due, making muffins, making your right there and our shared places receptive to more love. You are here with me in your days of what the luck of the draw offered you and how you femmed it into your own precious presence in the minute by minute.

Oh my sweet sips of ice tea, my boba at the bottom, my steaming mug darlings, my hot beverage beauties, oh, you shimmering, shivering, striving queer femme sisters oh sisters, thank you for your every day. Thank you for always coming back to your femme magic, your infectious laugh, your smile that says: hell yes!

Thank you for being the company we need.

             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

The clock ticks. The sun rises and sets. Our pets run on a faster mortality timeline than we do, and they get grey and creaky and they die. Our cells die and are replaced. The time will come, as we know but can hardly imagine, when we, too, will die.

We aren’t very good at thinking about that in this particular culture. I certainly am not. Much of my adult life has been spent in search of things that “work” to stay healthy, aka, young-feeling. Starting with health food in the 70’s and moving on to all kinds of other “answers”, I’ve been an acolyte of everything from macrobiotics to Atkins.

What is health? At 63, having gone through everything I’ve been through, it is no longer acting and feeling like I’m 24, which is the age my brain so often seems to be stuck at. Just now I was lying spread eagled on the bed after finally managing to clean the upstairs bathroom, something that has been on my chore list for the whole week.

“That do ya in?” asked Tex, gazing at me with sympathy from the doorway.

Uh huh. It’s something I would have breezed through when I was 24 and then gone on to do 80 other things, but not today. Today, I have already been the gym after a rough night of diabetes hell, and there was no breezing going on in any sense of the word.

To the best of my ability, at this ripe stage, I would like to do the things that matter most to me, having to do with art, rest, going deeper and ever more loving with friends and family, doing what I can where I can to put more love in the world. And reading.

I was so shocked, as a young femme, when I learned about the concept of planned obsolescence, that evil capitalistic sneak trick. But today when the phrase cropped up in conversation, I started thinking about how it could be applied in a much healthier manner to one’s waning existence. If you plan for it, when things like dashing-about energy and razor-sharp brain shit start to malfunction, you’re ok. You can plan for less get up and go (cuz, you know, that shit will get up and be gone, gone, gone, there is no question) by, say, having calmer, more expansive and restful passtimes like a nice recliner. A birdbath you can enjoy (my dad always said sparrows were the most enthusiastic bathers – what do you observe?). A regular phone date with someone you love but who lives far away. Coming straight home after work, taking a shorter walk, an earlier evening, a puzzle, a game of cards, a nip of gardening or sewing or ukulele strumming or just sitting and watching the evening draw in. Most of all, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could plan to honor everything our beautiful bodies and brains and hearts have been through in our lives, honor ourselves by observing who and where we are now.

Patty pan squash, eggplants, potatoes, blooming basil with bees buzzing, my late-in-life sisters, femme elders and wisers, will you settle in to your where you are with me? Give yourself a break from self improvement or whatever else you’ve been calling it?

Oh, for a moment of peace from the noise, especially the noise from our own belabored thinking.

Oh, to sink into it. Oh, to feel lighter, non-judgmental, less worried, less exhausted.

Will you plan for it with me?

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

Yesterday was a sweet day here at the end of the land. A dear femme friend and I drove around in a most relaxed and joyful manner, flitting about like a giant femme butterfly duo. She finally got her adored summer soft serve deliciousness (hey, about time, halfway through August!) and we enjoyed picking up take out in Truro and eating it in jolly togetherness. Along the way of the day, we discussed what’s going on in town this week. It’s Carnival, Provincetown’s biggest influx of people, a huge parade, tons of drag queens doing their thing, a pool party for people “of the sapphic persuasion,” and so much more. Just contemplating all those things exhausted us. We had to laugh.

Laugh slightly ruefully, I admit, but laugh all the same. We’re both 63, we both deal with chronic illness on a minute-to-minute basis, and many, many of the things that would have been de rigeur in our callow youth are no longer so. No, we decided, as much as we would have loved to see the amazing-sounding Pattie Gonia show – go, Pattie, with your bad-ass environmental activism and sexy dress made out of a tent! – it starts at 8:30. FOFA* wins out over FOMO these days every damn time. Not to mention the bounceback toll: pushing hard to do something like a late night show often takes so long to recover from (I’m talking days) that it’s not worth it.

For the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with relaxing, breathing, being happy the event/drag queen/parade/whatever exists and is out there in the world, then letting go of me having to take any responsibility other than that. I don’t have to be in the audience or the crowd this time. I can roll through the back roads of Truro, enjoying a jolly chat with a friend, and be in bed by 9, happy and content.

Pomegranates, Carolina wrens, baby raccoons, hedgehogs, sunflowers, fragrant apple muffins, is it all too much sometimes? A lot of the time? All the time? Please, please remember that you don’t have to do everything, even if your bounceback is at its peak. We live in a time of way, way, way too much, and it does a number on our heads. If you know about it, need you engage with it? No. No!

Happy, healthy queer people are so necessary and precious. That’s how our love and our fierceness will get out and do the most good, if we ourselves are rested. If we have gorgeous queer clarity about who we are right now, what we are able to contribute, where to focus our gazes, who to bring into our hearts.

My femme darlings one and all, reach for the jolly, be mindful of the bounceback. Don’t do it all, just do it with care and queer finesse.

Cherish yourselves, as I so deeply cherish you all.

*Fear of Falling Asleep

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

Every once in a while, don’t you just want to whine? I mean, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine! Like the most unhappy, tired, grumpy, have-to-pee, hungry, angry, frustrated, denied, ignored, befuddled, emotionally depleted, no-fucks-given toddler who’s been dragged on way too many adult errands all day?

Adult errands. I mean, honestly, how fucking deadly can you get?

That’s how I’ve been feeling just about every day lately. And lucky Tex got to hear me whine, a wee bit. Ok, a lot!

I don’t waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaana!

Everything combinded, as my boys used to say, is dragging me down. From the wide world to the closer world to the very most personal world, the responsibilities have piled up to such an extent that I am about to suffocate. Or implode. Or some damn thing.

Waaaaaaaaaaaah!

Every time I want to eat, I have to stop and figure out how much insulin I should take, then wait 15 minutes, and then I’ve probably calculated wrong, so I go low or high and then have to deal with that.

Every phone call I get might be bad news.

Every time I peek at the headlines, well, I don’t have to tell you.

And yet I step up, and step up, and step up, because of course I do. And I know you do, too.

But doesn’t it just make a femme body tired? Don’t you just want to let out the biggest, queerest, loudest, most heartfelt whine of all times?

Yeah, me too.

This morning I hauled my whiny butt out the door and to the farmers market. A very grumpy man was playing the accordion – it was excellent. The guy who sold me Swiss chard threw in a few wilty stalks for free cuz I was just planning on coming home and cooking it. I don’t mind a little wilt; shows character. I splurged and bought a bouquet of sunflowers, gorgeous tawny, stripy, cheerful faces, one strain of which is called Strawberry Blonde, the flower seller told me. As I was walking away, getting ready to head home, on to the next thing, let’s go, let’s go, better check your texts etc., don’t you have a list, etc., isn’t there shit you need to do, etc., a bee flew down and landed on one of the sunflowers.

I had to stop. I had to just slow the fuck down. The bee had shit to do. It was an absolutely beautiful bee, with a spot on either side of its abdomen and busy, busy gathering legs, important pollen, strawberry blonde pollen, lifegiving, rich and dusty.

Really, was anything more important? No.

I slowed my damn roll. I watched and admired. I listened to the wind, the music, the people around me. The bee did its thing. The bee took the time it took. I waited for the bee.

Thank you, bee. Thank you, grumpy accordion man. Thank you, Strawberry Blonde sunflower, thank you, wilted chard.

My irridescent, shimmering, buzzing, flitting, stinging, gathering, busy, busy, busy femme sisters, are you feeling whiny? Are you feeling a great big dollop of responsibility fatigue? So much to do, so many things to correct, so very very large amounts of taking care of everything that needs to be taken care of. Have you just about had it?

Darlings, beloveds, sweet honeybunch adorables, wherever you are, find the bee. The catbird. The spider. The ant. Someone – anyone – who is running on ancient time. Lean in. Breathe. Let go and come back to your own ancient femme magic.

Oh, thank goodness, oh, thank goddess, oh thank you, thank you, bee!

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