Aspiring to keep business hours with my email: M-F, 9-5. Thank you for your patience!
My signature line is a small step in giving myself more mental space. We queer femmes are so dang busy. There’s just a lot to keep track of, in so many arenas. We’ve got our families, our jobs, fields, interests, and more to ride herd on, and then there’s all the queer stuff: shows, books, all the kabillion things online, and news, news, news. The more we see, the more there is for us to do and think about and the less time and space there is for us to settle down and reconnect to our most sacred and enduring femme heartbeat, that queer engine keeping us afloat.
I’m old enough to have lived through many of the changes plaguing us, from typewriter to keyboard, from letters to email to however people are communicating today, from phone to PHONE, from books to e-readers, from vinyl to however people are listening to things nowadays. It’s been utterly insidious, the creeping crud of technology lapping at our ankles, our knees, our asses, rising higher and higher, and even a proud luddite femme such as myself finds herself gasping for breath. And now, as my butch and I face more transition than we’ve run into in years, prioritizing our own dear dreams, our health, our marriage, and honoring the gifts we’ve been given in order to gift the world, are all we’ve been talking about lately. Doubling down on these imperatives is impossible with all the noise. An example: as thrilling as it is to know about umpteen new queer shows, I am learning to just be content that they exist. Rather than figure out how to find them, let alone make time to watch them, I would rather put energy into unsubscribing to all the stupid things we already have, given that those subscriptions come at a steep price, and wouldn’t I rather be: meditating, doing something outdoors, making love or cooking or doing a puzzle with my butch? Fuck yes! So I choose not to invite them in. This can be hard, really hard, seeing as how I grew up and came out with such an incredible deficit of queer, but it’s worth it, especially since I am now dedicating myself to turning inward. To honoring my simplest self.
Who are you, my dear femme bunnies, deepdown in your queer femme souls? When do you let her come out hopping, ears flopping? Despite the ever-increasing hoopla, there is still so much time. So much space. So much quiet. It just takes a slight shift in focus and there it is again, in the sunrise, in the full moon, in the scooting clouds. Make time to notice passers by, the little girl who smiles at a dog or has a full-blown and very public tantrum. So delightful! And all so much a part of our world when we notice, a direct line to our own precious queer humanity.
Today, my darlings, try turning it all off and then peeking inside your rich and marvelous queer femme dreams. What you find there is medicine. Is sustenance. Is gold.
Every Monday, I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, kind, and wise and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.
At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)
The Total Femme 