Meditations for Queer Femmes – Healing

Femme Love Heal World. You’ve heard me say it many a time, and each of you, my sweetest of plums, spread healing every day with your femme magic. It’s in how you notice small details. How you respond to unspoken hurts and needs. It’s in your smile and in the way you move. In how you make love. In how you receive love. Your art, your work, your genius, the air about you. Your laugh.

            Heal world and heal self.

            Today, lovebugs, sit for a moment within your busy life and ponder: is there room in the every day to receive femme healing? You give so much, so much of the time. What about you in all of that? Are you needing some queer femme tlc? If so, take a look at the work these two beautiful and generous femmes are doing and see if you might like to allow them to shower you in femme love and healing.

Maria Cimino, LICSW, is co-leading a short course in Mindful Self-Compassion, online, six weeks starting Jan. 11. There is no meditation experience needed, and for mental health professionals, 6 CEs are available for the course. “Cultivate inner strength, kindness, and resilience.” $250. For more information or to register, visit www.mcphilly.com.

Constance Clare-Newman is offering Resilience Practices for Climate Anxiety five weeks, also starting Jan. 11, also online. She will be teaching skills in self-regulation and resilience to promote the ability to reconnect, heal from burnout, breathe, be in community, and practice rest, joy, and pleasure as an antidote to pain, sorrows, and suffering. For more information or to RSVP, email constance@constanceclare.com. And please visit Embody Wholeness, where you can learn about Constance’s work with the Alexander Technique: www.constanceclare.com.

Be well, be loving to yourselves, take in the sweetness and joy around you, beloveds. And let’s say it together, shall we?

Femme Love Heal World.

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.

Femme Friday – Shivani Davé and “Protect Your Femme”

I have a lovely shiny stack of back issues of Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal, such a gift that it’s still with us! The other day, I pulled the out “Lesbian Learning” issue to peruse. Edited by LB Johnston and Julie R. Enszer, it came out in Winter 2020. Imagine my delight at turning a page and seeing a poem titled, “Protect Your Femme!”

The poet, Shivani Davé, is NYC based, with a BA in biochemistry and an MA in teaching. In her bio, she says that she is “a queer femme educator, artist, and lover of plants, food, magic, and rituals of healing.” You can learn more at her instagram, @getyouashiv.

My favorite part of her poem goes:

protect your femme, they’ll tell you to tread water in the trauma and ride unconditional forgiveness to the crest, to forgo the high tides of healing and submit to appeasing.

Deep gratitude to Shivani Davé for her raw and vulnerable and hopeful poem! Thank you, Shivani, for loving yourself and other femmes so much, and for the healing love you dispense.

Every Friday, I showcase a queer femme goddess. I want to feature you! Write to me at thetotalfemme@gmail.com and let me shine a spotlight on your beautiful, unique, femme life! If you’ve written a femme story or poem or song, oh, please let me post it!

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.

Published in: on August 19, 2022 at 4:05 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Good in an Emergency

I have always prided myself at being good in an emergency. An early memory of this skill is when I was around 10. A friend and I were doing a little dawn skinny dipping at the beach when we noticed a local man watching us creepily from the shore. Our clothes were near him and it was getting lighter by the moment. My friend panicked, but I immediately came up with a plan: we march determinedly out of the water, as quickly as we can, ignoring the stupid guy, snatch up our clothes and run. We did it and it worked. Thank goodness!

There’s something about an emergency that focuses my attention and calls on my problem-solving skills in a very satisfying manner. I almost kind of like it. Everything else falls away, there are no distractions, just the one thing to deal with. In a way, it’s easier to deal with an emergency than to parse through the increasingly baffling mega-ton of stimuli thrown my way during any dull day. I understand and sympathize with those folks who routinely manufacture emergencies, who crave that excitement and challenge. I wonder sometimes if I might be one of those folks myself.

In Al-Anon, I’ve learned that the only thing I can control is my own response to things. Lately, what with one thing and another, I’ve been observing myself as challenge after challenge pops up in my life. Health challenges, my own and those of others in my family; troubling and dangerous local and world events; relationship challenges, and it goes on and on. There are no shortage of challenges! In reaction to these, I can flare and run into the nearest phone booth to change into my super hero outfit (and very fetching it is, too!), feeding my ego and rushing to the rescue, or, maybe, I can try and be a bit more mindful. Disrupting quieter, more generative and soul-nurturing daily rhythms and activities such as tending to my art, keeping up with friends, taking quiet walks, meditating, reading (ok, I never stop reading, never mind that one), in short making sure that I keep weaving sweet threads of consistency rather than giving all my energy to a mindless drop and rush, rush and drop, serves me and those I love so much better.

Magical queer femme sugar plums, I know you see the suffering and that you, too, reach out to offer succor. Your healing presence in the world is beyond compare and brings so much relief. Today, though, my most excellent dears and darlings, spend one quivering butterfly-wing moment sinking down into the steady heartbeat of day after day after day, sun and moon and wind and rain. Earth abides and you abide here on her. Abide a while and reconnect to that immense calm.

That way, my hope for you and for me, is that after the emergency – and perhaps even during – we never lose sight of that immensity. We never completely lose ourselves.

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.”) And…as I go through life life life, I will post as I am able, Mabel.

Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Breaking and Healing

I recently read Nnedi Okorafor’s lovely book, Broken Places and Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected, where she talks about how a botched operation that left her paralyzed from the waist down – what she calls “the Breaking” – was the beginning of her path to being a writer. In her book she mentions the Japanese art of kintsukuroi, which, Roshi Joan Halifax tells us in her blog post “The Golden Repair,” “is the art of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold or platinum mixed with lacquer, so that the repair reflects the history of breakage. The ‘repaired’ object mirrors the fragility and imperfection of life— and also its beauty and strength. The object returns to wholeness, to integrity.”

Nnedi and Roshi Joan, you get one pingy-dingy each! Thank you for reminding us that broken does not mean The End, and that frailty, human and otherwise, can add to our understanding of what it means to be human, what it means to find strength.

http://www.nnedi.com/books/broken_places_outer_spaces.html

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter, love, and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

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 I recover from treatment for breast cancer, however, I’m just going to post whenever I can manage.

Published in: on September 9, 2020 at 5:47 PM  Comments (2)  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Boredom, Waiting, Illness, Healing

Way back when I used to homeschool my kids, there was a story going around about one of the many homeschool gurus. This woman was wise in the ways of children, learning, creativity, and play, and I am sorry I don’t remember her name. When her children complained that they were bored, she would respond with a vaguely interested, “Hmm,” and go on about her business. Usually and pretty soon, her kids would figure out what they wanted to do next, and they, too, would go about their business.

Think about now. We are never bored. We are petrified of boredom. And waiting — we still have do that, in line, at the laundromat, before appointments, for the movie to start, but we don’t have to do it with our feelers out, our brains idling in neutral. When we are feeling punk, or are up against a recommended medical test, we never have to check in with ourselves if we don’t want to (and when you’re scared or even just concerned, it’s often hard to check in); we don’t even have to figure out how best to heal or even what being healthy means, because we can look it all up online and chose from among many, many strong opinions on the subjects. Our devices connecting us to the friendly internet skies are always, always there to keep us company. We are not encouraged to let our minds and hearts float free.

This has been a year of many health issues, my own and those of my family. We have spent time doing research, trying one thing after another, connecting to Spirit and waiting for various kinds of information.  I’m using the word “information” deliberately, preferring it to “results” or “diagnosis”, because, when faced with a health issue, we are trying to do our best to suss the meaning out about what’s going on and how we want to proceed in a way that is as much in harmony with our beliefs and best interests as possible. We want to feel centered, surrounded by love and support, and connected to each other and to the great web of being so that our path is wider than a panicked fast track to medical intervention or a relieved denial about mortality. We want to find ourselves in the process.

Time spent waiting can be been both excruciating and mundane. With the help of the Serenity Prayer and a full year in Al-Anon, I have the rudiments of a spiritual program I can use (when I remember!) to slow down my extremely creative, busy and crises-oriented imagination around all this family health stuff. I have work, and my students bring me so much joy. I have chores. I have pets, friends, my kids, books, a new course of studies that will begin in July that I’m deeply grateful for and really excited about. I have my butch husband who is a fucking rock – thank you, My Love! I have responsibilities to and love from my elderly parents, including my mother-in-law who is such an ace at lighting candles and sending healing energy. I participate in the life of my community. I have the practice of this blog and my other writing, and I have a piano and singing and right now I’m sitting in our Provincetown rental looking out at the sea: full tide, a bit choppy, grey, huge, cloudy sky. Earlier, some of the clouds were in spirals – I’ve never seen that before. I am grateful for the sea and the clouds and for the reminder that I am part of all of these natural systems and that we all have a natural system inside of us. Just as in Al-Anon we learn that the alcoholic is not wholly defined by their addiction, despite how it feels, I am allowing that I and my family members are much more complex as humans than simply an illness or an exhibitor of certain symptoms. I am allowing that an illness itself might be a symptom of healing.

Embodied, fragile, infinitely strong of spirit, glorious and beloved femme sisters, today revel in boredom, in waiting. Do not reject it! Leave the earbuds behind on your walk, smile and look around when you’re in line, use the cashier instead of the automated check out, remember: you contain multitudes. Take a moment or more to connect with yourself and with the nature around you, and by “nature” I mean everything, including humans. We are here for such a limited and precious time, my ornery and delightful darlings. We are here. We are here. We are 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.”)

 

 

 

Pingy-Dingy Wednesday – Al-Anon

I think, but I’m not sure, that I had some very vague notion that Al-Anon existed before last spring. Some kind of self-help thing, I figured, a twelve-step thing. Like I had any idea at all what a twelve-step thing might even mean. Oh, sisters, how grateful I am now to have so much more knowledge! I’ve been attending Al-Anon meetings since the spring, and have recovered so much love and light for myself, I can’t even begin to tell you.

Al-Anon, you get one pingy-dingy! Thank you for your spiritual, kind and gentle program and for the healing you spread.

https://al-anon.org/

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter, love, and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

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.”)

 

Meditations for Queer Femmes – Crow Prayer by Miel Rose

For the earth, for each other, for community and caring, here is a prayer by my dear femme sister, Miel Rose. May our collective love align with the power of the universe to shift us all towards deep and lasting healing.

Bless Us, Crow

Let us find the right tools

For the right job

At the right time.

May the faith we hold in ourselves

And our own capabilities

Never waiver.

May our connection to Source

Remain strong

A constant line to nourishment

To wisdom.

When we are bogged down in the details

Let us gain inspiration from you

And fly to the tallest vantage

To survey the whole.

With hearts overflowing

We thank you.

Miel Rose is a witch and healer living and practicing in Western, Mass. She offers her gorgeous wares, femme-made and filled with femme love and healing, including hand embroidery, sacred votive candles, altar cloths, skin medicine, magical honey sweetened chocolates and more at her etsy store, flame and honeycomb.

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.”)

 

Meditations for Queer Femmes – Mountain Lioness Prayer from Miel Rose

Today, sweet femme sisters, a beautiful uplift from Miel, whose writing, healing, and strong and inspiring presence is such a gift. At a recent “Naughty Femme Stories” at Womencrafts in Provincetown, I read this prayer to open and bless the space. Thank you and deep gratitude to you, Miel!

Bless Me, Mountain Lioness

May I stand whole unto myself

Beloved in all my parts

May the voice of authority I heed closest

Always be my own

Let my desire reside firmly in my heart

A compass to guide me down the Golden Path

When I feel caged and leashed by over acculturation

Let me take my inspiration from you

Knowing intrinsically that I am a creature of wilderness

And holding first and foremost

To myself.

With a heart overflowing

I thank you.

Miel Rose is a witch and healer living and practicing in Western, Mass. Check out her etsy store, Flame and Honeycomb: an eclectic line of magical offerings, including sacred votives, herbal skincare, magical honey sweetened chocolates, hand embroidered art pieces and more!

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.”)

 

Meditations for Queer Femmes – Femme Love Heal World

I just read an article in the local paper about two parents of color whose 4th grader had been called racist names by classmates. One of the way the parents responded was by applying for and receiving a grant from a local education foundation to make a series of posters celebrating people of color in STEM, to be displayed at their child’s elementary school. The school happens to be the same one my college-age sons attended, as well as the site of a project colleagues and I worked on that is funded by the same educational foundation: the Rainbow Alliance, a pre-GSA. Middle schoolers had told us that bullying around LGBTQ+ issues begins in grade school, and this is one of the ways we responded.

          Do these stories sound familiar? I mean, in that members of the targeted population are the ones doing the innovative and creative work, responding to the bullying and effecting positive cultural change at the school. This is so often the case!

            I was so glad to read about these parents and already have ideas about how we might combine forces to make even more of an impact. How about including some LGBTQ+ people of color in STEM? Whatever we might come up with together, we will be more powerful together, not to mention feeling less alone. This is exactly the kind of collaboration and connection I am always looking for in my organizing work.

            I’m now remembering back to when I was part of a UU church congregation and we had a gathering of queers in the church one evening, a pot luck. There were a couple of straight, cis, white men, also members of the congregation, who took it upon themselves to show up and work quietly in the kitchen while we queers chatted and enjoyed ourselves. It was an amazing moment for me. Although that church and I parted ways when it finally became crystal clear that this Welcoming Congregation was actually dedicated to assimilation instead of radical change, one of those fellas washing up that evening is now my most trusted straight colleague. He knows how to listen, ask, offer his considerable organizing expertise, and then step out of the way, unless, of course, he can be useful on chore roster! I learn so much from him about being an ally myself.

            In addition, we queer femmes do our own hard work, every day, so that we can live and love as fully queer, fully ourselves, healthy and vibrant, and this gives us an understanding of the kinds of indignities and worse faced members of other minority populations.

Today, dear, busy, thoughtful and kindhearted queer femme sisters, celebrate what you do to support and spread love to others on the front line of oppression, violence and hatred. Who do you see that others don’t?

            I’m not suggesting you take one yet another project, because I suspect you’ve already got more than enough going on. I want you to care for your precious queer femme selves! I’m just hoping that today you will honor those connections, those points of contact: a smile, a shared glance, a quick word, an “I see you!” nod: all of these are part of the love you spread, and are part of the beautiful queer femme healing that is your birthright and your gift.

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.”)

 

Meditations for Queer Femmes – Bless Me, Ancestors

Thank you to my sweet femme sister, Miel, for allowing me to share her incredibly moving prayer with you today. May it connect you to those who came before us and inspire you to imagine a future world in which we will be the beloved and powerful ancestors.

Bless Me, Ancestors

a prayer by Miel Rose

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 grown 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

Miel Rose offers her gorgeous wares, femme-made and filled with femme love and healing, including hand embroidery, sacred votive candles, altar cloths and skin medicine, at her etsy store, flame and honeycomb.

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.”)