Turning 37 - Expressing Myself Even When They Want My Silence

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is important must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” - Audre Lorde

While mindlessly scrolling on social media this past April I saw the headline, “Where to Watch The Total Solar Eclipse.” As a space lover, I wanted to know everything I could know about this celestial phenomenon. This total eclipse would span across North America to cast complete darkness during the day for a few minutes, with another not recurring again in the U.S. until 2044. I quickly googled where I could view it in NYC, which wouldn’t have a total eclipse but a 90% totality which would still be dope to see, and invited some homies to view this astrological event with me. 

The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens was the perfect location to catch the sun being one-upped by the moon, a piercing orange in a grey sky, viewed through my free Warby Parker branded eclipse glasses handed out to attendees. I’m a believer in the woo woo and energy around us, and read eclipses are a great time to manifest ideas and goals. During those 4 minutes where I definitely stared a little too long at the sun with my eclipse gear and had a mini headache later, I had an epiphany. I wanted to create a new routine with my creativity and self-expression, something I had relegated as a hobby, a thing to use to serve clients, but not something I often used to just express myself. 

Self-expression is a tricky thing. We learn early that being our full selves and expressing our ideas and perspectives isn’t always desired, and often seen as a threat. Studies show kids are highly creative and expressive as a way of developing and exploring the world, but have a sharp decline in creativity around the age of 13, often not because they don’t possess the skills, but silence and stunted expression is demanded of them in trade off of discipline and control. 

I’ve always been a creative person, busting out silly performances for family as a kid, recording hilarious talk shows on tape recorders (clearly aging myself), belting songs in choirs and acapella groups as a teen and young adult, and now as a public speaker and facilitator. Although I’m an artist and creative at heart, I viewed self-expression as a hobby and the older I got, the more my writing and expression outside of a corporate setting became as sparse as Trump’s hairline. 

The eclipse was a turning point for me and sparked off a new routine for me that I called Musings, Meditation, and Movement. Each day I write for a few minutes, whatever comes to mind, meditate for 15 minutes, and do some basic movement, which is often a long walk in Prospect Park across the street from my apartment. It was during this daily routine my self-expression exploded. I began to write maybe what would be considered prose? Poetry? Whatever its formal structure, ideas began toppling out of me I wasn’t aware were bubbling under the surface. It felt freeing expressing myself in ways that I had ignored or hadn’t even considered. I kept this ritual up for 6 months, until I lost 90% of the writing in a data snafu with my iPhone (watch out for iPhone notes, they are not good even with backups!). Luckily I had saved a few of the pieces I loved, and in honor of turning 37 and keeping up the annual tradition of reflection and writing on my birthday, I wanted to share them with you. Each piece is a small snippet of a moment in time, a fleeting thought, past emotion, or experience that I wanted to capture. I hope it inspires you to pick up whatever thing you want to express yourself through, because it is never too late to share your voice and express yourself, especially in a world that constantly demands our silence and deference: 

That’s not how bodies are made 

Belly braised with striped marks. Stretched by time and enveloping space. 

I grew through the protection of my body storing the extra glucose it couldn’t process into mounds of soft moldings over my bones.  

My lineage adapted to feast and famine.  

Pain, punishment, and loss. 

By storing more than it needs.  

A body resilient and shaped for past tragedies.  

Ready for an infinite rainy day that never seemed to end.  

A shape society says is unhealthy. 

With no regard for how bodies are made.  

Like that doctor who assumed I ate sweets for breakfast, without taking a single look at blood work or knowing I’ve walked miles and lifted heavy and ran through places they cannot conjure, and twisted my mouth through every misguided diet of bullshit built off of discrimination and control - not for vitality. 

That’s not how bodies are built. No.

The cheat code to real health is accepting the core of who you are. Gently forming your parts through practice and attunement.  

Connecting with the universal energy you’re born with. 

That knows when you’re no longer hungry. 

And can tell when you don’t feel well and need rest.  

Your body is a wise guide to wonder.  

Don’t let them lie to you about anything else.  

Oxygen

I learned the lie that love requires me to exit my body and hand it over as hostage to your wounds. 

My mind bound up and gagged as a play place for your delusions and projections and fears. 

My needs don’t matter to you because your care requires invisibility and pouring into a cup that never has enough and always desires more. 

My love language is a Rosetta Stone to you - gibberish like that nonsensical Ryan Leslie song no one remembers but imma sing anyways. 

Reciprocity feels like a threat to the small sanity you’ve cobbled together in your mind. 

That whole spiel of you better put your oxygen mask on before you asphyxiate yourself trying to be captain save a schmo, isn’t just a plane ride lullaby. 

It’s a roadmap to salvation. 

Because real love doesn’t require you to become dust, pouring into a cup as deep as a black hole. That never has enough and always desires more. 

Love is assured and secure in the boundaries of our beings and the boundless inner knowing we care for one another. 

Love is homoeostasis - finding our balance even when one or the other is tipped over by the climate change storms the future will bring. 

We both get oxygen. We both breathe. In and out. Deeply of the sweet relief of synchronic give and take. 

Ghost 

I ain’t ever planned on being a ghost.  

Even when they tried to snuff out my essence and siphon my joy. 

Hoping I become a translucent shell. 

They are terrified of others, turning flesh into ash when any trigger arises, justifying their violence through their heirlooms of paranoia. 

I donned my brightest colors and crooked smile.  

Dusting off the graves of expectations they want to bury me under. 

Casper may have been friendly. 

But I will rock your shit with my prose.  

Know that the width of my nose and the swing of my hips.  

Signals my ancestors strength to not be erased and to live on my lips. 

Because I ain’t never been a ghost. 

I write 

I write for every ancestor whose pen was stolen. Whose voice was muffled under the crushing weight of survival. 

Whose tune could only be heard in the cacophony of grinding to make ends meet.

Whose creativity was hijacked by anxiety and fear.

Whose ideas were lost from literally or spiritually having their lives cut short. 

I write for every person whose ideas are barges and bridges to salvation that haven’t been built yet because of the fears projected upon their beings. 

I write for my younger self who didn’t see someone like me. Free to make up life as they go, to generate stability and security through astute insight, delight, and service. Whose creativity is their spirituality and guide. 

I write for me. To document the chirps of birds in the morning out my Brooklyn window. To memorialize the dance party sweat and the beautiful first date and the park hang in the sun for fun. To process the turbulence of emotions change and growth brings. 

I write.