The Total Femme

We queer femmes can be very busy. We are often doing more than one thing at once – I’m looking at you, girlfriend, with your knitting, your correspondence, and whatever all else you keep in your pursetote to grab when you’re on the train or in a meeting or waiting to get the car serviced… I’m looking at you, beloved, as you grow extra arms and neural pathways to respond to your kids, your sweetheart, that quick finish-up of one or twelve urgent projects, the ten work emails that won’t take but just a moment… Ooh, we’re good at it! But when we are stymied in our desire to proceed full steam ahead, things can go from pretty to miserable in the bat of an eyelash.

There is a certain satisfaction about being efficient and available and good at our queer femme jobs, all one million of them. However. In one of those wonderful topsy-turvy’s of life, you can’t be satisfied with your satisfaction unless you give it a little room.

On Saturday, we put my mother-in-law on the plane, already a bit worried, as the travel time was a grueling eight hours. When we got a text from her saying she was in Chicago and facing a two hour delay while the plane was tended to, we flooded her phone with sympathy. “Oh, it’s all right,” this veteran traveller texted back, “I never bristle at maintenance or weather.”

Short and sweet, my darlings: today, find that space. Welcome the inevitable slowers-up. Drive the speed limit. Look up and out, into the sky. Allow for space. Make breath be everything. Find respite in needing to go slower because of snow or heat or just because it’s such a fucking beautiful day. The more space and time you give yourself to arrive and be and feel, the more you will be able to give yourself. The better you will be able to thrive and gift us all. Slow down just a few, my brilliant zippy kin! There is time for all your femme splendor. Now and here there is time.

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.”)