Loving and Sistering Women: A Rant

   So I've been wondering just how close and crucial writing, speaking, loving, and connecting with women in general is to my survival,
my clarity and overall feeling of safety,
identity building/discovery/creation,
the shaping of home, and in healing.
I mean it’s in those spaces and at those times (with women) that I feel the need
   want
      desire to place my innermost on the table - Whether it’s through tele-sound waves, on a pc screen, or through ink. 

   Loving and Sistering women, is what helps me to sit and make peace with myself and the wavering energies that flutter within and round'n about daily. It’s in these circles or between these one on ones that I reach out for safety and grip hold to something strong and binding on the other end. I take the creations,
    creativity,
       tears,
          shivers,
             sighs,
                exhales,
                    nods and yes ‘sums,
                        wavering hands,
                            the eyes/that look, 

                               the laxness and intensity back to school, back to the classroom,
   on my walks through Harlem, Philly, campus, wherever,
      my mother’s home 
         an aunt’s house 
            church
               the stoop
                  to meetings
                     the park 
                        the bus/charlie/trolley stop and subway
                           the cafe
                              lab 
                                museum 
                                  to eat there or sometimes here
                                     that store, or in that cab, with memories and the knowing that home, like minds and like love and vision is not is real is truth is not far away. I take my fillings of those meetings wherever I go so that I may not ever be caught without a weapon or defense or courage. And cause I know I'm not alone, I know my voice struggle fight lives in many.
There's a power, a revival that comes from those meetings moments and shared words that I think need to be
   to be
     to be
       to exist more freely, abundantly with more safety more rage and more love. With less competition 

   envy 

      negative energies of hurt 

         lies 

           and self-loathing. There is a need for some true community village family sisterring thinking knowing and doing. There is a need for the hate

and hate
   and hate that lives within us individually and as a collective persons to be understand holistically and rid from our bodies minds spirits families and communities. We've allowed them to break and tear us down for too long and the destruction and death and disappearance and suicide and killing has to come to an end before were all extinct and parish and fade into white...seeing as how we know, live and exist in the dark too well and for far too long. There needs to be more of a fight for visibility and fight for a loving and collective visible we. I want
  I want
    I want a lot and very little at the same time and am willing to put in the work. Am simply in need for the energizing of my loves my sisters to occur alongside my walk with a collective of tired minds bodies and spirits with me! My rant and continuous plea as I rest the days thoughts for some nighttime rest!

In Peace and With Much Love,

Ladi

Redefining the Politics of the Body

So I am in a steady battle of coming in and out of the type of language and labeling I place onto my body and onto my struggle with this constant changing of my politics and sense of who I am within my struggle as a queer Black woman in this society.

Changing from the idea that I am "trapped" within a body that society, media, and this western/euro-centric worldview deems as other, hyper-sexual, inadequate, and without voice and womanhood to a language that separates the blame from that which I live and breathe in, to the actual root. Changing the notion that my body is the root to my oppression as it operates alone within society, detached from my being, allowing the placing of labels, meanings, and definitions to be carried with me without my sanction. Transforming those notions to a language that clearly identifies the actual source to which my struggle lies instead of using language that directs to my external being, my flesh as the outer layering of who I am.

I'm moving away from this siding of accepting this feeling and hurt that correlated with this sense of "trapped-ness" to a body that's constantly targeted with harmful images, messages, and misrepresentations of my Black womanhood, my queer identity, my "poor" socio-economic status, my African cultural aesthetics and retentions, etc.
However, I recognize that I am forced to move through society with these additional concepts of my being that are in opposition to the self-concept and perspective I hold for my own body and person-hood. I just wonder where and how the line be drawn to separate the two. Are the methods of resistance just not enough, as I am young woman who is in search of a higher level of consciousness of the matters that are going on around me, my community, and globally, yet in still, I struggle with finding a concrete grounding to loving myself within this body. What are the resistive methods that need to take place here? What are the solutions to building a barrier that will allow younger Black and Brown girls to be confronted with all that this society throws at them without the internalization of such? What does such intervention look like, and how do come to a place to hold our communities, families, educational systems, and ourselves accountable for doing this work?

As I've just begun putting together an interactive forum for middle school Black and Brown girls to receive the message of moving these questions to their conscious forefront, I hope to make the necessary connections of what can be done and in what ways we can make our efforts effective. Hopefully the writing and dialogue around this discussion will shed more light on ways to maintain our sirvival actions.

In Peace,

Ladi