Meditations for Queer Femmes – High Risk

Even though I perfectly well know the reason why my oncologist wants me to get a breast scan every six months, it was sobering to say the least last week when I read on my (happily all-clear) MRI results that I’m at high risk for breast cancer. I’m a word girl, so there’s that. Especially the written word is powerful, making things real, bringing them into focus. HIGH RISK! Right there on the damn patient portal. But it’s also something about having to get to know yourself in a whole new place. Who am I now, this high risk femme?

The older you get, the more you get. Creaky, forgetful, nostalgic, confused, fatigued, cranky, impatient, liverish, nursing many a regret. The time gets shorter and passes more quickly. Being an older woman doesn’t come with a lot of perks in our society. Ah, the moment when your medical caregiver begins to speak to you like a geriatric moran! It sneaks right up on you and suddenly you’re right there in the middle of it. Change after change. How can you possibly keep up?

I told my therapist the other day that I pretty much feel in my heart the same way I did when I was 25. She looked skeptical, cocked her wise head, and asked a truly (I almost typed “turdy”) therapist question, “What would you say to your 25-year old self if you could speak with her?” Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t know! And I also don’t know what she would say to my almost-62-year-old self. Enjoy yourself? It’s later than you think? My grandad had that excellent song on the 8-track player in his Chevy Oldsmobile.

Ok, maybe that is what I would say. My now-retired other therapist used to say that it’s our duty to be as happy as we can. Be happy first, spread queer joy second. Use your gifts for good. So what if you’re high risk? It would suck if that’s a reason anyone stopped doing what they can to feel like they’ve got a wee corner in the big picture, a sweet sketch that catches the eye of the people who need it and gives them an encouraging smile.

Focus, focus, focus, that is a tall order. It’s always been a tall order, I think, but it’s even taller and gnarlier what with our infolicious moment-to-moment click click click. Ding ding ding! Notification embarkation!

Today, my harried, textingmailingcheckingscrolling potato chip darlings, my in-the-middle-of-all-the-shit polymediamour persnickity hanging on by your fingernails bodaciousnesses, embrace it, embrace the high risk. Let it kick your ass in any way it can, even if, especially if, it means giving yourself a fucking break because look how hard you’re working all the time, on everything.

You are shining, shining, shining!

Every 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.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on November 20, 2023 at 10:10 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – You Hold On

You wake up already listing your needs and responsibilities. Your worries.

You may not think anyone would want to hear about those worries. They’re probably ridiculous, after all. And what a burden they would impose on others, who have their own stuff to deal with!

In fact, you may not be very good at articulating the things that weigh you down. You may not even understand that these things are worries. You might think everyone struggles the same way you do, that it’s perfectly normal. It might never even occur to you to ask for help.

You hold on.

You’re good at remembering all the times things went wrong. When you made mistakes, only you might call it “fucking up” or “being an idiot.” You go along for long moments in time assuming that this is your trajectory.

“Would you be that hard on a friend?” asks the therapist, the spiritual leader, the health practicioner.

“Oh, no!” you answer truthfully, but some nasty logic in your brain insists that no one is quite as off-kilter as you are, as messed up or undeserving.

Your heart tells you differently, my stars, my queer femme sisters, my spirits, my blossoms. Today let it tell you that truth.

You still yourself for a moment. You feel yourself swaddled in gravity, bouyed by atmosphere, washed in sunlight or rain or snow or wind.

If you’re near water, it flows.

If you’re near mountains, they speak.

Prairie or dessert, wide open and direct.

You hold on.

Until you can let go.

Every 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.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on November 13, 2023 at 10:56 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – The Doomed Tree Yet Lives

When I very first drove up to my October den, in those first few minutes after a long trip, I met a young man in the parking lot who asked if I was Paula.

I am not Paula.

But Paula is the one who wanted to hire the young man to cut down a tree that is growing very close to the back decks of this building.

It’s a beech tree.

It creaks in the wind.

It has a lot of activity going on.

There are wasps, two different kinds. Perhaps one or both are invasive.

There are a lot of flies, too, crawling around on the leaves.

Those leaves are pretty chewed up, but the tree still looks more or less ok. It’s still putting out leaf buds and it reaches up to the sun.

A song sparrow pair spend a lot of time in the branches of a morning. I don’t know what they’re eating, but they are very busy. The other day, I heard and then saw some finches in there, equally busy.

At night, moths are zip in and around the branches. Maybe they’re an invasive species, too.

There is a vine encircling bits of the tree. Pretty sure that’s invasive, pretty sure.

When this hub is gone, all that activity will have to move elsewhere if it can.

I pay close attention to this tree every day. I feel like I want to bear witness to all the kinds of life it sustains, including itself.

Its beautiful gray-green trunk. The sky through its branches. Tips of twigs wreathed in fog.

With all these invasives eating it, this tree was probably doomed before Paula got after it, and maybe that death would have been more painful than a quick removal. I don’t know. But there’s a lot of life in and around that tree that I get to watch every day.

I like the way the tree creaks in the wind.

I like the way the sparrows move through its branches, fluffing their feathers, giving themselves a nice scratch, moving in and out of view.

I like the flutter of the moths, the zzzzzmmmm of the wasps.

I like how the branches are sturdy and wavy even if a bunch of the leaves are gnawed up.

I feel a kinship with this doomed tree. Like me, it doesn’t know when it’s going to go. It stands there as best it can, weathering the invasives and the wind and the sun and the sweet sparrows, the flitting finches. It does the best it can.

Blessings on you, doomed tree!

And blessings on me and blessings on you, stalwart swaying proud and leafy femme sisters!

No one knows when the time will come.

But until then.

Grow.

Every 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.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on October 30, 2023 at 2:26 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Naughty

Here in the idlewylde of Provincetown where I am denning for most of October, here sandwiched up between Commercial Street and the cloud-filled sky above the moving ocean, one day last week I woke up and, in a moment of queer femme wisdom and grace, realized that today would be Total Femme Day.

All me.

All the time.

All by myself.

Ooh, what did you do? you ask, my doting dizzy delectable queer femme sisters.

Chi kung on the deck as the sun rose.

Bask in the blessing of a great blue heron flying right over my head I could hear its wing beats.

Breakfast reading my book.

Big nap on the couch.

Catch myself in the mirror – damn, I look happy! Relaxed, even, slowed down.

Ponder my current jigsaw puzzle, put in a piece or two, ahhhhhhhh, so satisfying!

Drive to the Truro library, browse, banter with the librarian, check out some books.

Run a grocery errand, stop in the thrift store, consider getting gas and decide to wait.

Back home to sit on the beach all bundled up reading my book and watching a cormorant in the waves, dive under swim, pop up paddle, dive under swim, pop up paddle.

I went out on the deck a lot.

In the evening I had a glass of wine out there. There was a moment when the seagulls flying overhead were lit up on their underside by the setting sun.

To light!

To flying!

Do do do tell, TTF, honey, what didn’t you do? you ask, my daring divine dishy queer femme sisters.

Screens. I didn’t do screens. No computer, no phone, no tv.

No

s

c

r

e

e

e

e

e

e

e

e

n

s

I’m not saying it was a breeze or easy. Even though I felt reasonably secure in knowing that everyone I care about is doing ok, that there was nothing pending I had to address right that day, that devastating news, nice news, connection and questions and hellos and oooh, that’s interesting could all wait, it wasn’t that easy.

But I came into it. I flexed some brain and heart muscles and gave myself a few little talking tos, and I came into it.

In fact, I started feeling rather deliciously naughty.

Like I was getting away with something. Like I was being such a bad, bad girl.

It’s not that I couldn’t feel all the nasty prickly icky nibbly teeth gnashing and crashing and trying to bite me back to the on-screen world, but I kept accessing my fuck no and you can fucking wait and I’ll fire it all back up to-fucking-morrow, and I let it prickle prickle prickle until it trickled away.

I got to where I just leaned into that delicious rebel feeling and went went went with it.

My own brain and heart and spirit and need and soul and imagination directed me, and I welcomed and embarced my marvelous, naughty, Total Femme Day.

Oh, you elegant biscottis, you cuddle puddles, you lessons in glamor and spitfire and ardor!

What does a day just for you look like? Manifest it, bring it into being, call it to you! The controls we labor under crowd out our own intentions and inventions and desires. But there is space for the taking.

Take up space.

Allow your mind to wander.

Do something that makes you giggle, makes you skip, makes you remember your absolute gorgeous unique and beatific deep down femme soul.

Be naughty today.

Every 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. This Monday, special post from the stoop of Womencrafts. xoxoxo

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on October 23, 2023 at 3:01 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – A Dear Little Bowl

I’ve rented a lot of places over the years, all over the blooming world, but right now I’m in Provincetown. Rentals are always a crap shoot and, especially when I’m stressed, I can get hung up on zeroing in on where things get wonky. Where the landpeople are doing things in ways I never would and what the heck is wrong with them anyway? If I were the queen of the world, tell you what I’d do… I mean, sometimes there’s no toaster, what the heck, no tea kettle, no sharp knives, and, almost always, no place to sit and read – sadly, a Provincetown constant.

All summer I’ve been on the move, away from home. Ructions and upheaval, lots of therapy, lots of bags in my car. My hairdo permanently in disarray from this hurricane wind of change. My family of friends has caught me and held me with generosity and love. A loft and love in Provincetown earlier this summer. A quiet, cozy room in Medford, a gathering up. Permission to take up space and just be in Brookline. Spiritual succor and long walks in Northampton. The comfort and company of an old friend in a scruffy hotel in Waltham where her dream one night eerily tapped into my psychic heartspace. We were wandering, wandering…

My therapist says, “When mammals are hurt, they want to go home.” In the absence of that possibility for the moment, I have denned with people who, some of them, have known me for over 40 years, who’ve seen me through so much and seen me in so many guises.

As I search and flail and try to remember who I am and what I need, they’re witnesses, wise counsel, insouciant companions who remind me to laugh. Compassionate, dear and dear.

Now, for the first time since late July, I’ll be alone for a more extended time. And guess what? The refrigerator sounds like a train. The bedroom gives out onto the busiest, noisiest street in town. There’s no wi-fi.

But oh, I had a snack of peanuts in the dearest wee bowl you’ve ever seen!

And I spent very needed recovery time reading on the very comfy couch. And the view, the view! Out over the bay and beyond.

You, my femme family, my wandering, soul-searching, exacting, zig-zagging, howling and stomping gorgeous hard working overthinking enduring bedazzled sizzling suffering heart burstingly queer to the core, be-sequined sisters, the longer we’re here, the more shit there is and the more shit there is the more likely it is to hit the fan. Let us ride the currents, honor the ups and down, be here for each other, hold each other up, call on each other when we’re both up and down.

Be each other’s company, knowing that being alone, however painful, is also a necessity.

Last night I dreamed I was wearing the wrong glasses, just going through the day not seeing things right.

Your company helps my vision to clear. Your company allows me to claim space and time alone so that this essential clarity can continue to enlighten and encourage.

Here together, on earth together, just for now, just for this brilliant moment. We’re not alone.

We find dear surprises.

We rest.

We take in the view.

Every 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.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here. Do you have a post you’d like to share? That would be fucking awesome! Contact me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on October 16, 2023 at 12:00 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – What’s the Problem?

Up in the nights solving. Staring into space solving. Walking of a morning solving. Drinking tea, showering, vacuuming, meditating – always solving. The trouble is, once I’ve made a little progress on the solution, whatever it may be and whatever it may be about, something else pops up in annoying whack-a-mole fashion (who thought of that horrible game, anyway?).

Seems like just about every second in my fast and furious brain another problem or ten is born. It makes me tired and it makes me wonder: Is my whole life just one big long string of problems? Sugar plum fairies, is yours?

Having a million problems is one more problem to solve. I want closure!

Closure, oh, Closure, you mythical beast! The more I search, the more you feast! Right, my endless quest for the closure I think will come by solving problem after problem they’re jumping like fleas, I tell you, well. From my head, my body, radiating outward, these problems, my personal Ps to the problems in the room, the house, town, county, state, country, continent, ocean, world. A fucking infestation.

And is the infestation a problem? Well, yes, of course it is, I guess, I mean, maybe.

It’s a lot of problems, ok? How do I manage the worry and heartbreak of the all of it, the melting ice, the suffering beings, the mounting misery? The unfinished project, the embarrassing misstep, my mother’s limitations, my father’s death (how those last tragic weeks return, they return), my own health, the health of those I love? The unexpected, the familiar? It’s hard and I want to fix it. Solve it. Manage and manage some more.

If everything is a problem there ought to be solutions. To everything.

It’s such hard work! Where is it getting me? On and on and on through problem set after problem set in some horrible, interminable, torturous algebra text book.

Oh for heaven’s sake!

Let’s think about bodies for a moment. My precious and somewhat dinged up body, and yours. Like you, I expect, the longer I’ve gone on, the more my collection of crotchets and companion pains has grown. Just today my chiropractor and I were discussing my knee. Hello, knee! And ouch. Well, ok, so what I’m trying to say is that if I’ve got a body, if I’ve been kicking around for 61 years, I’ve got stuff, thanks to gravity, chemicals in food and water, inherited genes, repeated motion, hobbies, propensities, and all the rest of it.

After all this time, I’ve found that I’m much more comfortable with a practitioner, doctor, dentist, whoever, who will say, “Hmm,” and then either just keep me company and give me context or give me a maybe this will help, maybe not. This feels so much more honest and respectful of mortality and reality than an enthusiastic and clueless this will cure you and it might have if I was 30 again but maybe not even then and if it doesn’t work it’s on me not on Enthusiastic and Clueless.

Some things you can’t fix, but you can live with them.

Back to closure, oh magical closure! But can I handle it? Can I really put something down, let it rest, so I can rest? Few and far between. Sometimes – lots of times, I forget stuff, a kind of closure, but the very devil when I remember it in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep for hours, nibbling and gnawing at it, trying to come up with a solution.

I can’t solve for misery. I can’t solve for mortality. They are the companion pains of existence and there is no closure.

So maybe it’s less solving and more co-existing. Less nibbling and gnawing and more allowing. A little more watching what my brain does because that’s what my brain does and a little less grabbing onto each new bit of info aka problem and piling it on.

Not that I particularly know how to do that, but perhaps that “Hmm,” is a good start. Gives you a hot second before you barrel down the familiar giant slide that never stops and never stops, no end, no friendly wood chips to catch you at the bottom so you can say, whew, that was a wild ride.

Darling darling dear queer femme sisters, oh! How skilled you are at problem solving, I know you are, I know you exel and abound at it, I know, I know.

Today, for just this instant – an instant where a problem can pop up, ack, there it is, I can just see it forming its problematic outline in the gorgeous gray matter of your gorgeous brain, well, smile, say hello, say goodbye, say I’m just going to be here for a moment in all my beauty, in all my imperfection, in all my insolvable femme mystery.

I am, you are, we are and will be. Here together. Heart together.

No problem.   

Every Monday (except when I post on a Tuesday!), 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.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here.

Published in: on September 25, 2023 at 1:45 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes — Hold Still for a Minute

In the overload of a few unprecedented unmoored months, I’ve had more trouble than ever finding even a few minutes to be at rest. Everything is at a frenetic pace, everything is demanding my stressed out attention more than ever.

I’ve heard similar stories from many friends and acquaintances: something in the stars, the water, the zeitgeist, our frantically beating hearts. This season of disconnect and untethering where dads have died and relationships have taken hits. Health has crumbled, children have struggled, friends are facing tragedy and more. Not to mention the wider world. Oh, my sweets, the wider world!

It’s one thing right after another, boom, boom, boom. No moments of respite, no recovery time.

This morning, though, I managed a walk through the neighborhood and down by the river. No phone, no book, no computer, just the busy in my head. Very, very busy. And and but, the grass was wet and the wet got into my shoes, pulling me down to the earth. A swan flew over, some geese flew over, the sound of wings and honking pulling me up to the heavens. A lollopy old dog shuffled by with his lollopy old owner. The dog barked hello, making me smile.

I say I can’t find a minute to rest, but this morning there were those moments and more, in and around my busy, my must-do, my why-did-I-do, my what-will-I-do-next.

A great blue heron rose into the sky.

A yuppie jogger gave me a huge smile and a cheerful good morning.

And, to my relief,  I was able to pay attention to how the busy held still for a minute.

My queer femme acrobats, are you also facing immense transition? Veering, zig zagging, dodging, piling on, stripping off, blundering about in response to increasingly confusing daily challenges? Is the world closing in on you in ways you never before thought you would have to manage?

That transition and zig zag, that challenge and blunder, they travel along with the wet grass and the friendly jogger and the exquisite great blue heron. The crickets in the bushes and the little kids on the playground talking earnestly about you-can’t-quite-hear-what but they’ve got their heads together and they’re smiling a secret smile at each other.

Just a brief lens switch for just a brief breath.

Hold still for a minute.

Let yourself be held for a minute before you rush on.

Hold still for a minute and hold on!

Every Monday (except when I post on a Tuesday!), 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.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here.

Published in: on September 19, 2023 at 9:58 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – What Am I Reading For?

A friend and I read together. People, we are a rockin’ two-woman book group! Our main topic of interest is depictions of faith in children’s and young adult literature from all the decades. So we started out with Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret? by Judy Blume (1970) and have gone on from there. It’s a blast!

We’re not so rigid, though, that we don’t read other kinds of books, too, including adult. If one of us reads something that troubles or interests us, we ask the other one to read it as well and we talk about it on our next call. For example, she asked me to read The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford to discuss the take on healing from generational trauma, and I asked her to read Private Way by Ladette Randolph to discuss the take on “don’t say gay” and also because it’s set in Lincoln, Nebraska (we’re both midwestern girls) and is part of the University of Nebraska Press’s Flyover Fiction series.

Our discussions build and expand, and one of us always has something to say that the other one hadn’t thought about.

So satisfying!

Right now we’re in the middle of the big and fun project of reading E.L. Konigsburg’s entire oeuvre. We started with Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (1967), and are now up to The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper (1970). From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler (1968) is still amazing and so fun to read, for the adult characters, the way the kids take care of themselves in the museum, and the gorgeous writing. I think About the B’nai Bagels is my favorite so far, again for the adult characters, especially the mom, and for being real about how middle school boys may very well be interested in Playboy magazine.

Not all her books are as wonderful as Files or Bagels, and some of them are dated in ways that don’t hold up well, but there’s always something interesting to explore.

I recently found some notes I’d taken when we read A Proud Taste of Scarlet and Miniver (1973), and would like to share them here. They’re like a character study of me, just so indicitive of what I’m interested in, what delights me, what troubles me, what I’m probably going to be thinking about until the end of my days.

  • p. 167 “(John was) snot and sinew” and raised with no music
  • bastards are talked about “none my wife allows me to admit to”
  • merchant class; charters; hospitals; roads – Eleanor of Aquitaine
  • information on the roots of our culture and government, according to one viewpoint
  • great man/woman theory
  • woman working behind the scenes; courtly love, etc.
  • p. 193 “girl who can control her own time can control a kingdom”
  • p. 175 “great assortment of four-letter words”
  • convenience vs. enclosure
  • uniform systems
  • measures and coins
  • “rebellious”
  • a huge amount of tragedy and violence glossed over – the lot of a leader
  • p. 186 “save” the Earth for Christianity, then distribute it

After finding these notes, I thought about you, dearest bunnies, femme dragonflies, luna moths, adorable ones. What constant in your life grounds you and challenges you and brings you both deeper into yourself and out of yourself into the interesting and unknown? Knitting patterns, cookbooks, old sheet music, poetry, photos, art, quilting, support groups, oh, on and on!

And then, who in in your life to share those wonders with? Who do you bring yourself to for fabulous connection and a wider even more delicious discussion?

How marvelous, how good it is!

Take a moment, my always dears, hold still a moment my sugar plums: there you are, here we are! Ourselves in all our glory.

Fierce.

Fabulous.

Femme.

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. Would you like to offer up a Meditation of your own? I would love that! Send it along to me at thetotatalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on July 10, 2023 at 10:52 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Taking Care of My Little Space

It was Tex who got us into RV-ing. She bought our little TAB camper at the height of the pandemic and got us hooked up with RV-ing Women, a group mostly made up of lesbians on the older and/or retired side, with their dogs and various kinds of rigs; with their personalities and opinions and histories. We started going to rallies together, and then, when I was in Japan last month, Tex went on her own and had a great time. So great that she blithely signed up to co-host the Maine rally, the one everybody raves about, I think mostly because of the lobster feed, but also because it’s lovely up there.

            On Friday of the rally, Tex was off wheeling and dealing, making plans A, B, and C, dependent on the very changeable weather. I stayed in to do an after-lunch clean up (my asking price: one kiss, freely and sweetly given). As I tidied the very wee space that is our very wee camper, I caught myself smiling a happy, quiet smile.

            It’s a lovely feeling to be able to make everything ship-shape in just a small amount of time, to show respect and love to our little rolly home, making it cozy for the two of us so we can enjoy the campground, the flora and fauna, the surrounds, our sister RV-ers, each other.

            Outside, birdsong, raucous dyke laughter chipmunk scurry, the breeze in the trees.

            Inside, a brief but deeply satisfying order.

            Ahhhh.

            This sweet feeling is a very rare occurence back in our rambly, jumbly big ol’ house.

            Oh my blueberry smoothie salt water taffy totally scrumptious femme biscuits, do you, like me, sometimes utterly despair of being able to make headway in your rambly, jumbly dwellings? Did you ever fantasize about having to live somewhere like a lighthouse or a teensy cottage in the forest where whatever is there is what you get and then you can actually finish something before other things pile up and demand attention?

            Like me, do you get distracted by history, failed good intentions, unpleasant surprises coming over the email or phone, other people’s needs and asks, work and health and family and and and to where you just need to sit down with your book and a cup of tea and dust bunnies and piles of things be damned?

            If so, and even if you don’t have a husbutch who brought a camper into your life, perhaps there is another little space where you can have your way with clutter and experience a nip of satisfaction. And other ways you can give yourself some boundaries: set the timer for 5 minutes, maybe 15, and focus on a drawer or a patch of yard or a cupboard. Don’t think too hard.

            We can’t fix all of everything, and if you’re like me – an ever-optimistic, magical thinker of a femme pack rat – dismay about our helplessness can be a great burden.

            A small corner where it’s shiny, at least for a bit, radiates out, calms and sweetens.

            Let’s keep each other company today, my darlings.

            Grounded.

            Grateful.

            Glad to be here.

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. Would you like to offer up a Meditation of your own? I would love that! Send it along to me at thetotatalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on June 26, 2023 at 10:02 AM  Comments (2)  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Sorry, Guy!

The other day, I made a serious driving misjudgment and pulled out in front of a biker, cutting it way too close. I didn’t even notice this until he started screaming at me.

“Are you fucking crazy? ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY? Really??”

It was awful. I felt terrible, for the mistake I’d made, the accident narrowly averted, which would have been my fault, the stress on the guy, the shock of his yelling right as he passed a toddler out for a walk with a caregiver, and just everything. Perversely, I was mad at him, too, and wondered if he had to be such an asshole about it. Dude wasn’t even wearing a helmet!

I so didn’t want it to be my fault, but it really was. Not his reaction, of course, but what I did to cause him to react.

In Al-Anon – any twelve-step program — there’s a lot of talk about making amends. I read something recently about the difference between an apology and an amends. Sometimes you can’t apologize, for example, like I can’t apologize to that biker, even though the past couple of days I say, “Sorry, guy!” every time I walk the dog past that block. Today I thought, hmm, should I give some money to a biking organization? It’s an idea. Mostly, I’ve been sitting with the fact that I seriously fucked up, could have caused a serious accident, and thinking about how deeply grateful I am that I didn’t. I’m also thinking about how I can be more careful in the future. Not be quite so comfortable and spaced out as I drive; be more aware of where I am and where the car is and where everybody else outside of the car is.

I want to be able to make it right, but it’s just not straightforward, and there’s no one perfect answer.

Walking the dog today (“Sorry, guy!”), I got to thinking about a certain genre of books I’ve come across lately. Written by men, they feature female main characters and sometimes there are almost no men at all in the story. I’ve been puzzled by this but I’m starting to form a theory: these men are trying to make amends. Perhaps they routinely apologize for bad behavior in their daily lives to women around them, but I’m wondering if they are also called to go deeper and more with their art. So they focus on women. They tell women’s stories.

In the sixties and seventies, white authors would sometimes write novels featuring black main characters – their response to racism. Is that what’s going on with all these male authors? If so, it’s not landing well for me. It feels like another way of taking up space, of talking over the women in the room, of telling us what our lives are like and maybe waiting for us to praise them for their subtle and nuanced observations and renderings.

It feels like I’m sitting in on their therapy sessions, asked to watch them toil away at getting better and spend time reading that story. Perhaps not what they had in mind.

Complicated.

Honey biscuits, cherry pie bites, beautiful summer salads my queer femme sisters, what do you do when you fuck up? How do you forgive yourselves? Is there a way to make it right? What does that even mean, “make it right”? Who are you “making it right” for? What are the lasting effects?

Today, remember how hard you work, how much you want to be a good creature, and how, in the end, that good creature comes back to the fore, again and again, even if you fuck up trying to make your earlier fuck up right. You work so hard. You do so much. Life is so damn complicated.

We humans are always blowing it somehow or another. And then we carry on, don’t we?

We carry on.

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. Would you like to offer up a Meditation of your own? I would love that! Send it along to me at thetotatalfemme@gmail.com

Published in: on June 12, 2023 at 12:00 AM  Leave a Comment  
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