The Total Femme

In her 2015 book, Accidental Saints: Finding God In All the Wrong People, Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Webber shares her “brilliant five-point plan for making it all work”:

1. Hire an assistant to deal with all my public communications and details for speaking events.

2. Make coffee dates and pastoral care appointments for right up to the time I leave and right away after returning.
3. Eat real food.
4. Get real sleep.
5. Get real exercise.

Later, she confesses that although the plan appeared to be about self-care, it is actually “just a laundry list of habits I adopted to ensure I could continue to overfunction.” Hmm. Sound familiar?

It did to me! We queer femmes are just so damn good at so many things that it can be nigh on impossible for us to just let it all go for the sake of a rest. The flip side of FEMME LOVE HEAL WORLD is that the need for the femme to heal herself first and foremost might actually get shoved to last and negligible. Especially where overfunctioning brings so many rewards, like visibility, kudos, good feelings about having done good work, a place to wield creativity, kindness, innovation, and queer magic, a place to be seen and needed – all things in very short supply for queers and as seductive as candy – then it can be pretty tricky to understand when it’s time for a rest. Even more importantly, I’m not sure many of us even know what resting looks like, or if we do have an inkling, we are unclear how to rest without feeling guilty and/or getting started on our next project (“I’ll just make a little list and then I’ll go to the beach,”) or, like Nadia, making our R & R just another To Do list.

In order to really rest, dearest brilliant whirlwind femme beloveds, we have to start by putting it all down and leaving it there. Can you believe that if you put it down, it will still be there when you’re ready to pick it up again? Can you trust that whoever you left in charge will be fine with that responsibility, even if they don’t do it exactly as you would? Are you willing to allow other voices, other hands into the mix; to make room for someone other than you to hold some of the jobs that (let’s face it) you actually do perfectly? But even the queen of the universe has to take naps.

Sweet femme sisters, settle in. Settle down. Let your energy sink. Rub your hands together and then put them gently over your eyes (take your glasses off first). Never underestimate the power of a few deep breaths. Reconnect to yourself, to the earth, to the elements and wild things, the beauty beyond what we can grasp, the cosmos. Feel where you are, where you belong, right in the great sweep of things. Natural and part of nature. Embedded in love and light. Give yourself leave to luxuriate in a bit o’ shut eye, as all living creatures need rest. Some serious down time. A restorative snack or bath or dance or stroll. For you, by you, all you. Come back to yourself, and allow for renewal.

You will be stronger, happier, more connected, and more at peace.

Shhh. Femme resting. Sacred space.

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.”)