The Total Femme

My birthday is tomorrow – 57 femme years on this earth! Oh, deep gratitude, for sure, but also: every human challenge and sorrow. The full sweep. Birthdays have traditionally hit me hard, as I appear to be constitutionally inclined to focus on the negative, the haven’t dones, the don’t haves. The good news, however, as my therapist is wont to say, is that I linger there less long, thanks to many teachers, many books, many gifts freely given. Many queer ancestors from whom I continue to learn and with whom I continue to think about queerness and other human issues. Many queer contemporaries – including, you, my sweet sisters! – who inspire and accompany me. With whom I can agree, disagree, laugh, cry.

A difference from the birthdays of my youth when I thought I was straight and what a miserable straight girl I was! is that I now face the beamish day as a full-on femme. I’m sort of used to it now, being queer, I mean, although the force of heteronormativity and all is such that I sometimes still encounter an odd quizzical moment where I stop and cock my head like a puppy and think, “Wait – is this really who I am and what I’m doing? Whoa!” But for the most part, I go about everything I do as my queer femme self with my queer femme sensibilities and knowledge and wisdom and creativity and stubbornness and all the rest of it. It’s a daily gift, and a gift to consider on the day of my birth.

Talk about negativity! I’m not even going to list the horrible things that are going on as we speak – you see and think about them enough, and I know you are doing every bit of what you can to counter them, in all the myriad, marvelous ways we queer femmes know how to do. It doesn’t matter what it is; there are infinite ways of translating human love into action and it is always blessed work. The cynic in me, and my long habit of focusing on the negative may whomp me tomorrow, at least for a bit, but I am counting on you. I am counting on me. Let’s together remember that queer femmes – and not just us, but so many other dear sweet humans on this earth – are dealing out, gathering in, showing up, sharing, marching, dancing, making love, writing, arguing, making art, singing, calling out, protesting, celebrating, rescuing, healing themselves, others, their neighborhoods, their cities, the world. We are all capable of healing work. It is our biggest gift and perhaps our biggest challenge, especially now. Today, tomorrow, help me shift the focus. It starts with our birth. It starts with us. It starts right here.

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.”)