The Total Femme

So much loss. So much grief. On micro and macro levels, here right at home and all over the world.

I can sink some days in sadness. Sadness I must bear.

The other day, an article about how to travel more comfortably came across my desk. Just a little piece of fluffy filler, but it had such an excited vibe to it and was so hopeful: we can go places again! One suggestion the article enthusiastically offered to make getting from here to there a little less painful was to not carry heavy shit.

Ha! Don’t carry heavy shit! That simple yet quite tricky suggestion reminded me of the book title Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein joked about when I saw her speak, It’s Easier Than You Think; It’s Harder Than You Can Possibly Imagine.

Don’t carry heavy shit.

Well, I am carrying heavy shit. We all are. So that’s not an option, really, but what about finding ways to bear it? Redistribute the weight, bear up, lift?

What if there’s a way to release weight elsewhere to make the heavy shit we have to carry feel just that smallest bit lighter?

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night a lot lately. We’ve just gotten the inside of the house painted, so everything had to be moved out and moved back. There’s so much energy passing through, so many memories, many of them incredibly painful. So much we’re carrying around.

Plus, I have so much stuff! Books, records, cds, chotchkes. I adore collections and I have some really nice ones, believe you me! I love them so much, and it’s so satisfying to pet them and coo to them, oh, you lovely bookshelf of incredibly interesting and diverse social justice books you. You darlings!

Still. All my sweet collections require energy from me for their housing, their upkeep. They themselves also house various kinds of grief, like paths not taken, family fuck ups, reminders of pain. Lately I think they’re less keeping me company and lifting me up as draining me.

I want to send them back out into the universe where someone might need them more than I do, need them like I did when I found them, but it’s hard to let them go. I’m lucky, though, because with just a little bit of up-front work, I can find good homes for them. Womencrafts in Provincetown for my feminist book collection and LexPride’s library in Lexington for queer books, for example. I loved and enjoyed them when I read them, or fondled them after bringing them home from a yard sale, or whatever it may be. That love and enjoyment is part of me now. And I have other things I’d like to be doing that require my increasingly limited energy. I have books of my own to write!

Brilliant diamond lovelies, you and I are carrying such a lot. There is so much in this mortal world that we hold on our shoulders, in our hearts. That is to be human. That is to be alive right now. But today I’m asking you, what can you put down to make that burden a bit easier to bear? Where can you allow some lift in your lives?

And, oh, my sparkling queer femme sisters, oh! What might you find yourselves doing once your burdens are less weighty? What wonders might redistributing the load make room for?

Where will your travels take you now?

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

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three or four times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, Femme Friday on Friday, and (new for spring 22!) the occasional Sometimes On A. 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.”) And…as I go through life life life, I will post as I am able, Mabel.