The Total Femme

Sometimes I feel my Grandma Daisy’s spirit rising in me. It’s in the narrowing of my eyes and in the set of my mouth. In the way I rush around cleaning or cooking, fast, precise, taking no prisoners. Grandma was no joke. Once she ditched one of her exquisite pumpkin pies down the disposal when one of us had casually remarked that the pie tasted slightly different than usual. From this former beauty queen and secret smoker, I inherited a stubborn insistence on perfection and the isolation that results. Or rather, let me say, the tendency towards those things – I’ve been in therapy a long time, not to mention all my Buddhist readings, and last but not least, my Al-Anon.

Still. Sometimes I feel her spirit come down over me and it’s like I can’t help myself. “No!” I will say, when my deep-down really wants to say “Yes!” “Fuck you!” I’ll say, when my deep-down really wants to say, “I’m scared, I’m lonely, I need love!”

Why am I like this? Because I come from the people I come from, and they are who taught me how to be a person.

Grandma Daisy was also a voracious and wide-ranging reader, to whom we were always sending books, way up into her nineties. She was an astute political observer – boy, did she hate Nixon! I can’t imagine how she would have cut Trump and cronies up into miniscule pieces and ditched them down the disposal! And she had an enduring, endearing sense of humor. I can see her now, in her powder blue pants suit, her white hair in the same style it had been in for decades, a wee pinch of a woman, snickering and even doing a small bit of hooting at the jokes and absurdities of life.

She rises in me in those ways, as well.

Butterscotch kisses, gumdrops, licorice allsorts, why are you the way you are? Whose expression is on your face, in your movements? Who is directing your actions, those times when you let down your guard, when something takes you by surprise? We do have our default settings, don’t we?

Today, reflect a smidge on some of your influencers, those folks who made up the blueprint you followed without thought to adulthood. The negatives and the positives.

Discard.

Allow.

Say, “No thank you!” and “Thank you so much!”

Be still with the discrepancies and hidden gifts. Complex, maddening, filled with grief and gratitude.

Memorize my sweet wise friend Miel Rose’s prayer that you may have it close at heart for when you need it:

Bless Me, Ancestors

May I live each day

Honoring my connection to you who came before

However complicated

Knowing my inheritance is rich

In both wisdom and wounding

Choosing which legacy continues with me

And which is put to bed

Buried in the healing Earth

May my heart beat in time with those Ancestors

Reaching back

Who lived in a deeply balanced relationship with all things

Those who recognized and honored kinship

Past human relations

Those who lived attuned to the cycles

Through abundance to scarcity

Birth to growth to death to rebirth

Waxing to waning

Let my heartbeat recalibrate to yours

And may this change ripple outward

Creating exponential shifts within and without

I claim you and am claimed by you

And may my steps through this life

Be in alignment with your sacred legacy

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.

Since 2016, I here at The Total Femme have done my best to post thrice a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy Dingy on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on you know when. I’m pulling back the reins now, darlings, and going down to once a week, this Meditation. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear from you. Send me your poetry, your musings, your art, your wonderful you, and I will love you and hold you and feature you right here. So let me hear from you! thetotalfemme@gmail.com. And stop by on Mondays for a bit of sacred femme space.