This week’s post picks up on threads about changing my relationship with sugar, rethinking self-care, engaging in everyday resistance, and refueling for continued action. Over the past few months, as I dealt with energy loss and the mind-body split, I also found myself eating so much sugar—more sugar than even is typical for me. Now, as I move into summer and invest in resting, recovering, and restoring for what’s ahead, I’m also practicing a deeper self-love through a ... Read more ...
healing
Choosing to Tread Another Path
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently on paths. Established hiking trails and sidewalks, escalators and even rock crawls marked by arrows. And I’ve been especially appreciative for the healing that comes from this time walking—not only hiking, but standing, marching, experiencing the mobility associated with movement, strengthening and using my body, contemplating my embodied existence, and examining the various privileges and positionings associated with this ... Read more ...
Appreciating Rahawa Haile’s “Going It Alone” for the Hiking-Justice Connection
As someone interested in and impacted by the outdoors, hiking, human connection, harmful historical legacies, and ever-present white supremacy, I absolutely love and highly recommend Rahawa Haile’s article “Going It Alone”: Haile shares her experience through-hiking the Appalachian Trail as a queer black woman. Here are a few of my favorite lines: In trying to figure out why this piece so deeply speaks to me, I realize how much I crave stories of hiking ... Read more ...
Disrupting the Mind-Body Split
This past week I dreamed that I was standing before a group of students, guest-lecturing in a colleague’s class. In the dream, I was slurring and stumbling over words—making little to no sense. The colleague asked if I was confused, and I realized that I had a concussion. Not from any physical injury, but from the semester. The semester had given me a concussion! I woke with a strong sense that the dream was symbolically true, metaphorically speaking to me. Because, ... Read more ...
Gratitude for/on Earth Day
Earth Day snuck up on me this year. Though I wasn’t thinking about this annual event, I was in the midst of writing blog posts about why I’m vegan, how hiking supports my commitment to justice, and why there’s cause to be alarmed with the world right now. All of these posts communicate the importance of environmental justice and connections between how we treat the earth and how we treat each other. In other words, environmental justice is also about racial justice, ... Read more ...
Wrestling with Whether to Wear Pantyhose
I’m attending a friend’s wedding this weekend, and I wish I could say that I’m experiencing the joy, gratitude, and love associated with celebration. Instead, I’ve been experiencing worry, shame, anger, and grief—so many unresolved emotions and resurfacing memories associated with the trauma of sexism. I’m wrestling with a very real and raw question: Do I wear pantyhose to my friend’s wedding? I’m wrestling with the pit in my stomach that relates not just to ... Read more ...
Potato & Kale Casserole (vegan + gluten-free): Finding Comfort in the Growth Zone
These days I’m experiencing a lot of stress, finding myself quick to cry, and noticing both tightness in my chest and shallowness of my breath. Undoubtedly, this stress is both personal and political, particular to me and shared in our collective. Conversations throughout the day address concerns about the Muslim ban and travel restrictions, ongoing deportations and abuses of power, challenges to health care, an unwillingness to look for missing black and brown girls, ... Read more ...
Attending to Anger
“Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.” —Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger” (Sister Outsider) In my first post launching this blog (back in November 2016), I wrote about anger. I found myself sitting at the computer screen, typing “Arrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!!” I felt completely inarticulate, yet full of emotions—called to write, though struggling to find words. Today I’m finding the words ... Read more ...
Today Resistance Looks Like …
How do we work to align feelings, thoughts, and actions (heart, head, hands) with the world we’d like to see? How do we go about our everyday lives for the “ought to be,” for justice? I’m thankful for Jardana Peacock (of the Liberatory Leadership Project) for modeling a contemplative writing practice that I’ve been using to think through these questions. At the end of each day, I’ve been filling in the answer to her prompt: “Today resistance looks like …” I ... Read more ...
Living in Mess
This week I overfilled my hot cocoa, knocked the mug, and spilled sticky-sweet almond milk on the kitchen counter. Before thinking, I was already saying aloud: “Ahhhh, Bethhhh …” I could hear a parent scolding a child, over-reacting about spilled milk. And I was shaken—stopped in my tracks—because I would not like to respond in such a way to any person, let alone myself. Spilled cocoa. Sticky surfaces. Mess. Mess characterizes life, and I like to think that I’m ... Read more ...
