Meditations for Queer Femmes – Spreadsheet Life

For some of us, our lives are spreadsheet lives. We need meds at certain times, we’re on medical diets, full of complicated fractions and fractious complications. Our days are made up of shuffling the hours so we can get our PT our OT our meditation contemplation divination rumination and whichever the other props and supports we need to get up and running, all parsed out amongst our work, our caregiving of others, our jim jams and flim flams, and frustrations.

            Spreadsheet life. There it is, in all it’s excel glory. This, then that. Plod, plod

            A friend tells me that people who look at the sky for 20 minutes a day are happier and more satisfied.

            Put it on the spreadsheet.

            A saying popular when I was young: Stop the world, I want to get off!

            How to address that intense desire for peace when you’re on the spreadsheet treadmill and one false step will drag you down and through until you’re flattened and flapping?

            Damn, that wasn’t relaxing!

            Yes, sure, some days you can flip it and be grateful for all the everythings that are helping you stay upright and somekinda functioning.

            Wonderful spreadsheet!

            How grateful I am for your guidance and greatness!

            You help me live my super best life!

            Consider the alternative!

            Other days…

            At least, sweet boxed in maxed out beloved queer femme beloveds, we have each other.

            For me, today, it comes down to that.

            You are with me. One foot in front of the other, marching, skipping, dancing. Perfecting your low-FODMAP, low-sodium, high-calcium, no-gluten, vegan Mediterranean diet concoctions. Locating walker-friendly nature paths. Loving your service dogs and letting them love you. Managing the ever-evolving FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE technological supports and crashing through the medical mishegas.

            Some of you speak up and out and I love you.

            Some of you manifest strength differently, more privately, and I love you.

            I love all of you, with your queer femme energy, out there – OUT THERE! – sticking it to the spreadsheet day after day.

            And today, flawed and flammable, wondering about the joy and the future, two minutes, two days, two months from now, here we are together.

            My deepest admiration.

            My most femmecentric thanks.

            I couldn’t do it without you.  

Many a 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

Published in: on April 24, 2023 at 10:42 AM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – On the Passing of Robin

           

Yesterday Tex and I attended the memorial service for Robin Maltz, who died last month after a long and difficult illness. Her butch lover, Rob, attended her devotedly to the end and she died in Rob’s arms. Rob’s elegy was deeply moving and I hope to be able to share part of it as well as Robin’s obituary in a future post.

I didn’t know Robin very well, but she was one of the very first queer femmes I met after coming out as femme. Like many of the folks who spoke at her memorial service, my first impression of Robin was anything but warm and fuzzy. This despite my hunger for queer femme friends and for butch/femme community.

However, according to Rob, about ten years ago, a friend asked Robin why she was so hard on people – and believe me, she really was. Robin took that to heart, effecting changes in her caustic interface with the world so successfully that, in the end, there was nothing but a joy for life and a sincere, loving generosity towards herself and others.

The people who spoke at her memorial, the ones who spent time with her at the end of her life, had nothing but admiration and love for Robin. When I think back to my first impressions of her – impressions that made it quite clear that I wouldn’t be pursuing a friendship with her – I am humbled to realize that had I reached out in these past few years, Robin and I might have had much to share and give each other.

Rest in power, peace, and pussy, Robin! We didn’t get there in life, but I will keep your memory alive, as Rob asked us to. I will remember your femme sass, your fiesty smart commentary on just about everything, and your many, many gifts, not the least of which was your inspiring willingness to reexamine yourself in order to make positive, loving change, even when the time was very short. Because of you, Robin, I came away from yesterday’s service pondering and asking: am I being generous with myself and with my surroundings, human and otherwise? Am I living the most genuine life I am able?

Bumblebees, angel wings, darling femme relishers of being alive right here and now, what or who are you hard on?

What might you be able to do, with baby steps or giant leaps or just a gentle stroll, to put yourself in an even more loving and genuine and generous place?

Take a moment, take a moment. And while you’re at it, give a shout out to the femmes who’ve gone before. Deep gratitude!

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.

Published in: on April 3, 2023 at 3:41 PM  Comments (2)  
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Meditation for Queer Femmes — Survivor of the Close and Play

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 Yesterday I visited my mom on the memory care unit where she is currently spending her 90s. One of the new aides, probably in her late 20s, was telling me all about how much she loves vinyl, what a rebel she is for adoring the Stones, the Beatles, all the good ol’ rock and roll, baby.  When I was her age, lo these many decades ago, I loved vinyl, too, so so much. One time I gathered together all my singles, from the one-off and strange comedy disks to the top-40 songs to the latest New Wave deliciousness, and made a mix tape for a friend. I thought long and hard about the very best order. I spent hours recording and refining, and then decorating the cover. It was a masterpiece! I called it Survivors of the Close and Play. I guess meeting the vinyl-loving aide is why I woke up thinking about that mixtape this morning. And about the word “survivor.” There’s a lot of pink-ribbon hoo-ha about being a cancer survivor. Technically, I survived breast cancer, but I’ve never felt an affinity for that whole yay-brave-survivor deal. Not exactly sure why, but one thing, I think, is because I’d just as soon move on. Also, I don’t want cancer – something incredibly scary and life-threatening, something I didn’t choose — to be my identity or affect how people treat me.  That long-ago mix tape, though. That was a heartfelt expression of who I was, where I was, what I was thinking about, what I cared about. A love letter to the music and spoken word that had accompanied me and shaped me up until that point.  Now you, my rare and wonderful Side A and especially Side B femme rockers and rollers and poets and shouters, what have you survived? What does survival mean to you, the positive spin, the swirl, the skip?  Today take stock, sit for a moment listening to your past and to your own femme theme song.   We are, we are! Alive and thriving. 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.       

Published in: on March 27, 2023 at 3:26 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Little Stick

                 

My almost 91-year old mother lives on the memory care floor in the “old folks home” she and my father moved to several years ago. At that time, he had Alzheimer’s; he has since passed away. Now my mom has vascular dementia. At her core, she is the same sweet person, but her giant brain works very differently. The dementia means she can’t remember details or even what happened a few moments ago. It’s also given her the ability to enjoy things she had no use for when she was a high-powered academic, like fancy Pride beads and glittery manicures. All this took a little getting used to, but I roll with it now. Every time I see her, I tell her I love her and she tells me she loves me and that is the most important and enduring piece of information either of us needs.

            Down there on the 2nd floor, things are always interesting. I never know what a resident is going to say to me or what will be going on. The activities director has her own special ideas, too, about what folks might or might not want to do. The other day, everyone was watching a reality tv expose of Hooters. As I walked with my mom to her room, someone on screen was yelling, “Are you ready to get Hooterfied??”

            But what I wanted to tell you today is related to the first paragraph about meeting my mom where she is now and not fretting about what’s lost. Or even what you can exactly name. On one visit, as I was heading out after hugging my mom goodbye, one of the residents stopped me with a hand on my arm.

            “I have something stuck,” she said, gesturing to her teeth. “Do you have a… a… a little stick?”

            I can’t tell you how satisfying it was that I fucking did have a little stick! Right in my purse! I gave it to her. She was happy. I was happy. Me and my mom love each other.

            I left, smiling.

You and I have lost so many things, I know. Youth, friends, health, hope, habitat, community, brain power, possessions, home, oh, the list can be so long. And oh, can’t we get stuck in that persuasive list?

I know, too, how hard you work, my beloveds. I know you are always wondering if it’s enough to make up for all the loss.

            It is enough.

            You are enough.        

Today pay extra close attention to all the little ways in which you grace the world. The very smallest, so often overlooked details and generosities that you take for granted but that are actually the sweetest and most lovely.

             If we’re paying attention, right in the moment, what is more satisfying than being given the right tool for the right job?

            Right in the moment, what is more important than saying “I love you” to your beloved?

            Loss and all, we are here. Right in the moment, here we are.

            Here you are.

            Right where there is enough.

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.

Published in: on March 13, 2023 at 3:29 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – The Joy of a Sloppy Mind

The sleuth in a 1994 mystery novel I just read is an early computer programmer. In one scene, a panicked client calls her after having lost an important document. The sleuth finds out the client has been forgetting to back up their data and proceeds to have a little fit.

            With a sigh that was closer to a growl – how could people have such sloppy minds? she thought savagely – she sat down at her desk and picked up the phone.

            I kept reading, but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore. Instead I was having a wee spot of PTSD made up of memories of excruciating afternoons sitting with my father as he tried to help me with my high school algebra as well as many, many moments in academia and at work where I completely failed to understand things linear, logical, and supposedly self-explanatory. “You’re smart!” my father would say. “Just think it through!”

            But my smart just didn’t work that way.

            Like the sleuth’s hapless clients, I have a sloppy mind. At least, when it comes to algebra and details like remembering specifics about computers.

            It’s taken me years, but I am much kinder to myself now than I used to be when it comes to things like being forgetful or losing track of details or getting really anxious about, say, balancing my checkbook. If I need extra time or a helping hand for those things, it’s balanced out by my ability to see the big picture, intuit what a student will really connect with, noticie interesting and subtle craft details in a book I’m reading, seeing gaps where a little community organizing will make all the difference. My strengths – my heart’s work – place me outside of the mainstream, but they are strengths nonetheless.

            My own dear queer femme sleuths, what are your strengths? Might it be that they are positives that you’ve been taught to discount or not to notice? I know you show up, clean up, free up, rise up, whip up, move up, lift up, zip up, grow up, and generally are on the up and up all day every day. Do you notice the work you’re doing that hasn’t been held up as “real work”? Do you allow those who do notice it to love you, praise you, thank you?

Today, my singular, dearest and darling hard working queer femme geniuses, celebrate your life-giving, soul-loving, queertastic, essential and influential WORK!

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.

         (Above quote from Something to Kill For by Susan Holtzer, St. Martin’s Press, 1994)

Published in: on February 6, 2023 at 3:55 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Oh, Anxiety, Up Yours!

            Through the kitchen window of an evening, I can often hear my neighbors, a sweet family consisting of a mom, a dad, and a tween girl. Yesterday as I was doing the dishes, I could hear the mom exhorting her daughter to come outside and help train the dog.

            “Your head is fine!” the mom was saying. “Your head is all right! There’s nothing wrong with your head! You just have anxiety, like half the rest of the planet. It’s a complete epidemic among teens right now. Nothing is wrong with your head! Now, let’s make a plan about what we want the dog to do: a sit/stay? A down? Bring the treats!”
            This morning, in the park with our own dog, who is old and slow and recently not feeling very well, I tried to enjoy the kids playing, tried to feel excited about the day. On some level, I did both of those things, but on another, like my tween neighbor, I just couldn’t help feeling like something was wrong. For me, I feel it in my stomach. A feeling of impending doom. Coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. It’s very yucky.

            I can intellectualize it to death: my paternal aunt is dying and that grief brings up grief about my dad, who died while I was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. That grief brings up grief about my elder son, Seth, whose whereabouts I do not know and who does not currently choose to communicate with us. That grief brings up grief upon grief upon grief and you, dearest queer femme reader, can of course fill in the blanks about everything that’s grief-filled in our world today.

            I think that, even with as many supports as we can manage to gift ourselves with (meds, therapy, exercise, loving company, recovery community) there will still be these moments. How can there not be with all these challenges coming at us relentlessly, all these things we can do just about nothing about but that rip out our hearts? I won’t talk about those supports here, although I wish for you nothing but the best and most healing ones.

            Here, let’s just be in that feeling. There is nothing wrong with us, but we are sad. We are feeling the weight. We are grieving.

            Darlings, sweetnesses, perfect loves, there if nothing for it but to feel it. Today, for this moment, we are so fucking sad. We are so fucking worried. We are mortal and we feel it. The world is in deep trouble and we feel it. There is tragedy, up close and personal, and happening elsewhere to all beings. We hold it, we can’t ignore it, we can’t just cheer up and move on.

            Today, my queer femme companions, feel your sadness. Feel your anxious, upset, frenzied feelings. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your head or your gut or your heart. It means you’re human and aware. Me, too.

            Human with you. Human like you. Human today.

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.

Published in: on August 29, 2022 at 11:30 AM  Comments (4)  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Game Girls

            This afternoon when I called over to the Memory Care to talk to my mom, she sounded a bit flustered. I asked what was going on, and she said, “The lunch situation is not the best situation.” It took her a long time to get out the details, and I’m still not sure I understand exactly what happened to make her say that, but basically, like all of us, she’s dealing with other people. And once she finally managed to get some words out, she had a lot to say.

            “They want to be in control,” she said. I sympathized.

            “It’s all right in the way I can take hold of it,” she told me reassuringly (she doesn’t want me to worry). “I can more or less do the words, the things that I have to keep going. I can manage it, but it is a little on the difficult end. It is a bit of a drag, but I’ve managed it so far.”

            “Yeah, Mom, we just have to keep going, don’t we?”

            “That’s the only thing I can do, and I’ve done it so far. It’s the only thing you can do if you’re going to get through the things you need to. Some of the people are mostly the good part of what happens. There are people who are very good hearted.”

            Recently, a friend of the family told me, “Your mom has always been a very game girl,” and went on to tell me how this very upright and honorable university professor shocked her colleagues and students by demanding quarters and rushing off to the slot machines during a professional conference held in Las Vegas. You’ve got to try and fit in with local customs! That is certainly something she always taught me. At 90, with vascular dementia making it more and more difficult for her to express herself, she is still a game girl. Still working hard to fit in with local customs, be polite and not cause a ruckus. Find the good parts of where life has taken her.

            Dearies, precious hearts, my buttercups, I know that you are also game girls, finding love and humor and joy in and between the scary, sad, difficult, and dreary places your lives have taken you. I see it in the swing of your hips, your giggles, your songs, your kisses and hugs. I see it in our femme community of healers and lovers and artists and sisters and beloveds.

            Today, take hold of it, be aware of it, how you manage and move through and forward and beyond.

            Your neighbors, your family, your co-workers, the people you pass on the street, they are all – we are all – so much the better for your sweet, generous, big and fabulous femme hearts.

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.

Published in: on August 15, 2022 at 4:48 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Bear, Lift, Fly

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.

Published in: on August 1, 2022 at 4:06 PM  Leave a Comment  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – Not Gunna

Aren’t there days when you just feel like you’re not gunna? I mean, where you’re up against this responsibility and that responsibility and this email and that text and something you forgot, something you’ve been meaning to do, someone who wants something, a promise you made but that keeps getting put on the back burner, the vacuuming undone, the greens you bought a week ago waving limply at you every time you open the fridge, you know, things like that, and you keep saying stubbornly, “I’m not gunna.”

It’s not that you aren’t a responsible person. It’s not that you don’t get the job done when the job needs to be done. It’s just that sometimes you need a little moment of fiery fuck you. Of giving it all the finger for just a few fine moments. Or to be a little less potty-mouthed, to turn some of that responsibility-taking-care-of energy in on yourself, to give yourself a sweet surrounding of respite. There’s so much damn stuff out there (and in here) that we actually can’t manage, that is unmanageable, at least by one sole femme, no matter how determined, no matter how principled, no matter how hard working. For me, that stuff can pile onto the stuff I do have control over and topple me but good. If I don’t give myself the medicine of a few not gunnas on a regular basis, that is.

I might not gunna cook today.

Not gunna call my mom.

Not gunna do the laundry.

Those aren’t all that hard, since we’ve got leftovers; I saw my mom yesterday and she’s doing great and is benefiting from time for herself getting used to the new facility she’s in; and I still have clean clothes.

Harder are things like I’m not gunna fret about all that I can’t change, from near and from far; I’m not gunna lose myself in a book when I’ve got a writing deadline coming up; I’m not gunna give myself a hard time about all those other not gunnas…

My magical and marvelous femme sisters, let us try today to not gunna the cold pricklies that can sometimes swarm us.

Today, let our not gunnas be generative, warmfuzzy and comforting, rejuvinating and restful.

Let us allow ourselves some not gunnas that contribute, in the end, to all the wonderful gunnas that we have ever and always inside.

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.

Published in: on June 6, 2022 at 10:43 AM  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.

Published in: on May 9, 2022 at 8:52 AM  Leave a Comment  
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