Living with mortality has never been easy for we humans; and it’s currently a hundred times weirder. It seems almost impossible to make decisions, large or small, everything seems to weighted. The word “coronertia” came to mind yesterday, making Tex and me laugh, since we often come to the end of the day and can’t remember what we did, let alone if we made any progress at all on any of the many projects we know we’d meant to get to. A couple weeks ago, I started writing everything down, just to prove to myself that I was indeed doing my work, bashing out a chore or two here and there and just generally going about life as best I could. My brain on pandemic is just as fritzy as can be.
Our friend who is a veterinary surgeon tells us that people who acquired puppies during quarantine are freaking out when she tells them the price of spaying or neutering. “But we’re out of work!” they protest, and she wonders why they didn’t think of that before getting a dog. I have sympathy for those folks, though, as impulsively as they may have acted. “Now,” they thought to themselves, “let’s finally go ahead and do it!”
Every day, every moment, we make decisions. We put off something we want, we force ourselves to do something we dislike but feel a responsibility towards, we wibble and wobble about other things. It’s hard enough at the best of times to sort through all of this – which things can wait, which things have come due and are calling our names so loudly our ears are ringing, which things have nothing to do with us and which things we can’t afford to ignore – but during a worldwide pandemic, I think our reasoning has taken a huge hit. “I don’t think I’ve ever busted my ass so hard in order to produce such mediocre work,” a zoom-weary friend complained recently.
You have heard it before, my stressed out and suffering queer femme sisters, but hear it from me today: be gentle with yourselves. If you can’t decide, put it down. If you pray, pray about it. If you don’t, perhaps the answer will come to you in a dream, or after you’ve taken a walk, or stood barefoot on the grass or sipped a cup of fragrant tea or finally allowed yourself to take a nap. Allow for the idea that whatever you’re fretting about, it may already be good enough, done enough, big enough, gorgeous enough, or that it might not look like what you expected but it’s robust and jolly and will get the job done.
When you ask yourselves, for the umpteenth time today, Now? Not now? open your hands and unclench; open your hearts and find that frequency, your own steady pulse, the low, sweet hum of connection to ancestors, family, the river of love that is the sisterhood of queer femmes, the delicious spring, the always possible. You are surrounded and held, by your own dear body, your community, your spirit, the great sweep of things of which you are one dazzling and resplendent spark.
I know you will move forward with grace.
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 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.”) As recover from treatment for breast cancer, however, I’m just going to post whenever I can manage.
The Total Femme 