It’s finally fall in Central Texas. Months of relentless heat have finally begun to lift. There’s a palpable lightness to the atmosphere, to people’s demeanors, to the world around us. Things have finally begun to change.  

I’ve spent most of my life in the Central and Southern parts of Texas. The summers are hot and unrelenting. The heat and humidity just seem to draw on forever and ever, with no end in sight. You just grow to accept, even if not fully like, that this is just how life is. You get used to…

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If only it took a mere 3 days.

 

I love spring. I love Eastertime. I love how the earth (in the US at least) seems to wake back up. At home in Texas, chilly mornings usually give way to an unnecessary sweater tied around my hips by noon. The shoulders and medians on the roads become peppered with bluebonnets and black-eyed daisies and the sky itself is a different, deeper blue. Awake. All of it.

 

I particularly love how one morning, I can look out the same bedroom window I’ve glanced out every morning for…

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I love this photo.

I have never said that about a photo of myself. Ever. I love it because I’m learning to finally love the whole person in it. I didn’t share it to get everyone to “like” it or tell me it’s great. I shared it because for me, it’s an act for resistance. It’s flipping the bird to lies that have kept me tangled up for years.

I’ve been at war with my own body for as long as I can recall.

Over the last 3 years or so, I’ve been trying to…

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We can’t escape them and they’re inextricably tethered.

 

Momentum refers to the quantity of motion that an object has. Momentum can be defined as "mass in motion."

 

Since I was a little girl, I can remember noticing that when I learned something new, like tying my shoes for instance, or finally managing a real cartwheel, I’d have a rush of excitement and accomplishment, followed shortly by a feeling of “ya but, you’re really bad at being…

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Lately I’ve been wrestling with a low level feeling of despair.

It’s not the kind of crippling depression where you can’t get anything done; it’s more of a low-level background hum that never quite goes away, like a cough that you just can’t seem to shake. I think it comes from toiling day after day and feeling…

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It’s beautiful. Truly, it is. To come together in solidarity and stand shoulder to shoulder as we collectively move the needle forward.

 

But it’s simply not enough.

This morning we made our way to our local MLK March. We showed up with kids in tow and found our spot at the back of the gathering as it had already started moving forward. (Typical…I’m pretty much ALWAYS late.) The air was chilly, but the sun was out. We marched from a…

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Shame is a liar. If you know me at all, you know it’s my arch nemesis. I’ve been rallying against it, waving a flag of freedom to anyone who might need it, marching in protest of it, yelling about it and otherwise trying to help people escape it, for years now. (Including myself.)

I. Hate. Shame.

It’s very tricky… shame is incredibly insidious. We shame ourselves without thinking twice about it, without realizing it. We shame…

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I’m ready. Finally.

Well, honestly, I’ve been ready for a while. At times wanting to shout some of this from the stage or the top of a skyscraper. But I haven’t. And I realize those of you reading this most likely weren’t waiting with bated breath to hear these things…but I was to say them. I need to say all of this.

The truth about endings is that they’re often incredibly gut wrenching and simultaneously glorious. I’ve…

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There are bills to pay, songs to record, projects that are overdue, a generation of children starving to death in Yemen, school programs to rush to, children to raise, exhausted asylum seekers running from tear gas, women still earning less than $0.79 cents on the dollar compared to our male counterparts, a planet that’s screaming for healing from climate change, and a dear friend who just lost someone else to suicide. 

And…

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Cookies & GunViolence

Cookies & Gun Violence

Like so many of us, I’ve been thinking a lot about the shooting that occurred just a few days ago. Once again we all find ourselves in a numb confusion. Like a pack of circling vultures, the familiar rhythms of questions we know all too well begin again: why did this…

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