Daily Ten - Week Two

Below is the second week of my daily ten observations. To learn more about my daily ten, and read the observations that came before these, you can read all previous posts here. 

TEN. EIGHT.

1. My mind wanders a lot during my daily repetitive activities, i.e., teeth brushing, washing dishes, showering, and makes me wonder what it would look like to be mindful even in these activities. 

2. Funny how emotional a response I have to 3 little numbers on a scale. 

3. Baby Nelms is very active today. 

4. It always feels otherworldly driving out of rain into sunshine -- looking at a downpour in the rearview mirror, while there's nothing but clear skies ahead. 

5. Saying no is still hard for me. 

6. Pineapple Turmeric Hummus. Delicious. Who knew?

7. I am getting better at spending time alone, but it is not my preference. 

8. I don't mind being around a lot of people (though it's not my preference) as long as there is a quiet nook for me to retreat to. 

9. I need to get more comfortable saying no. I need to embrace it as my right. 

10. Passing cars and cicadas songs and the gentle rhythm of his breathing. Nighttime sounds. 

 

TEN. NINE.

1. This rooms needs a desk. Maybe 2. 

2. I will have a new baby in less than 3 months. 

3. "You have to practice saying, "no," Mama. You have to practice saying no everyday until you get better at it." He said this out of nowhere. Sometimes I think he can read my mind. 

4. More cicada sounds. Do they ever sleep?

5. We come to the park at pretty much the same time every day, but there are always new faces. 

6. I have to make a conscious effort not to multitask. 

7. Today is a good day. Life is good. My mug reminded me of this. 

8. The squeal of Playmobil trains. 

9. My notebook is fraying around the edges. 

10. There is cat hair all over his black Batman hat, even though it's never touched the floor. Does that mean the cat hair is airborne? Is there cat hair in my lungs?

 

TEN. TEN.

1. I have grown used to this dull ache in my lower back. 

2. I am always surprised by how much my feet hurt first thing in the morning. Am I running in my sleep?

3. The sun doesn't wake me up here like it did in Vermont. 

4. There are tears waiting to fall. I can feel them in my throat. 

5. Not all rejection is created equal. Some of it you can swallow, but some will always sting. 

6. My wet hair feels good on my back in this heat. 

7. I am in need of a win. 

8. This time that I am able to spend with my children is a blessing and privilege. 

9. I have so much jewelry, but I only wear about half a dozen pieces. I thought I'd done a really good job downsizing my collection, but clearly I need to take another pass at it. 

10. Sometimes it's best to keep it simple. 

 

TEN. ELEVEN.

1. Some noises just fade into the background and I have to concentrate to even notice they are there. 

2. My tastebuds are racing to identify all the different flavors. All of them delicious.

3. Just the right amount of sunshine. Just the right amount of breeze. 

4. He's so dependable, so steady, so willing to be a rock when it is needed. 

5. All the laughter. 

6. The moon is so bright and feels so full. 

7. I can feel every shift of my hips.

8. My feet have puffed up so much that there is no space between the toes. 

9. Tonight Passion Fruit Ginger Ale and a giant vegan chocolate chip cookie mean "I love you."

10. My little girl is so big.

 

TEN. TWELVE.

1. The bamboo is closing the gap between itself and the ceiling. 

2. Pretty much anything you can eat for breakfast would be better with coconut flakes or shredded coconut.

3. My body keeps telling me it's tired, and I keep not listening. I need to do better.

4. I don't know why I'm crying. 

5. My body hurts. Maybe that's why I'm crying. 

6. Drinking a cup of tea always feels like a self-care ritual. 

7. His line-up frames his face perfectly.

8. My stretch marks are spreading. I am trying not to be overly preoccupied by this.

9. We brought some of Vermont home with us. I have no other explanation for these crisp evenings in August. 

10. My mind doesn't want to be still this evening.

 

TEN. THIRTEEN.

1. A kiss on my forehead. A kiss on my lips. A kiss on my belly. I love waking up this way. 

2. It's always harder for me to get out of bed on rainy mornings. 

3. All of a sudden it feels like fall. 

4. The biggest one and the littlest one get so excited to go to the library. It makes me so happy that they love it so. 

5. She is so limber and so graceful, stretching in the middle of the living room floor. 

6. I am going to blink and she'll be taller than me.  

7. We are enthusiastic tea drinkers. 

8. Even as an adult, I still like being read to.

9. He looks so serious. 

10. I would know his whistle anywhere. 

 

TEN. FOURTEEN. 

1. Voices outside my window take turns blending in and rising above the sound of passing cars.

2. Working on my posture is another exercise in mindfulness. 

3. I am standing at the edge of something, but I don't know what it is. 

4. Ours is an easy friendship.

5. I keep feeling like I am going to cry. 

6. I don't know that I've ever been this aware of the subtle shift, indicating the end of summer and the beginning of fall, this early in the year. 

7. I'm hungry but all I want to eat is pickles, maybe kimchi, and we have neither in the house. 

8. Maybe it's all in my head. But just because it's happening in my head, doesn't mean it's not real. Thank you Dumbledore. 

9. My temper is shorter than I would like it to be today.

10. The universe speaks quite loudly if you are open to listening. 

 

New Work - excerpt

Like many writers, I am usually working on a couple of projects at once. Right now, I'm writing a work of YA fiction, about a girl with heightened empathy that functions like a super power, and I am also working on another book, that is something like a memoir made of a patchwork quilt of poems and essays. I work on the former book (almost) every day, no matter whether I feel like writing or not. With the latter, I wait for the words to come to me. The nature of the material makes me feel like I need to take my time. 

I will be sharing bits and pieces of these projects in this space, and would love your feedback. Let me know what you think in the comments, or shoot me a message from my contact page. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Without further ado, here is an excerpt from the latter project, my memoir (kinda).

*************

Most of the people in my life, whether we are casual acquaintances or life-long friends, know that I am a writer. That's the answer I give when people ask me what I do for a living. It's prominently displayed on my social media profiles. It's what I write down on the blank line meant for "mother's occupation," on my children's school forms.

I am not lying. I am a writer. But it is also not the whole truth. I am also an actress and I have been an actress at least as long as I've been a writer, maybe longer. I've been an actress for so long that I don't even have to try any more. I just do it. 

Acting is my default and I have to work hard at being myself instead of creating a self. 

Acting feels like wrapping myself in a soft shell. A shell that can be bent and molded into whatever shape is most convenient for the moment. This person needs me to be funny. I can do funny. That one wants me to play the good girl. I can be that. Someone else needs me to be small? I can shrink my frame. I can compress my existence if it means that existence will be protected. Maybe not safe, but at least protected. At least there is one more layer between pain and me, so that the hurt will come close, but not quite touch me. 

Acting feels like survival, and I struggle with convincing myself I do not need it. 

Daily Ten - Week One

I subscribe to Alisha Sommer's blog, and she sends out the most beautiful emails. A few weeks ago, she mentioned a conversation she listened to between Krista Tippet and poet, Marie Howe, in which Marie said she challenges her students to list 10 observations each day without using metaphor. Marie said the exercise forces them to see. Alisha has been doing the exercises for weeks now, and I so loved reading hers, that I started making my own. It has helped me to slow down, to be more present, to be more alive. My first week of observations are below. 

 

Ten. One. 

1. There are ink splotches on the quilt. A writer slept here once. 

2. The fog is a blanket around the house, a moat made of air and water. 

3. Vermont. Maple. Syrup.

4. The fog has rolled away like it was never there. All you see is trees. 

5. There are no curtains in this house. There is no separation between the inside and the outside. 

6. I can taste the sunshine in these raspberries.

7. Outside the skylight looks more like a painting than real sky. 

8. Tonight's salad was green and red and yellow. The colors were all so vibrant, I felt like I was eating a rainbow. 

9. The way our bodies curve and make space for the other, without either of us having to say a word. 

10. The gentle jingle of my bangles. 

 

Ten. Two. 

1. Each room has been carefully and lovingly designed, but no matter what may or may not be in the room, there are always books. 

2. I had forgotten how much I like to take my time. 

3. Even when it is cloudy, it is still beautiful. 

4. He is always taking care of me. 

5. It is funny how much of a novelty a landline is to them. 

6. Everything is so green. 

7. A fly is trapped in the house. The house is quiet and still so the buzzing sound seems extra loud. 

8. The sun coming out makes it feel like a different day. 

9. I saw a hummingbird up close and it instantly put a smile on my face. 

10. Lightning flashed and it was so bright, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. 

 

Ten. Three. 

1. We are settling into this country life. Even the cat seems to have adopted us. 

2. The sun is shining this morning. The house looks a little different bathed in its light. 

3. I am torn between wanting to document everything and just wanting to experience it and let my memory be enough. 

4. Isn't it enough that I see it? That I am living it? Why do I feel compelled to take pieces of it with me? What makes me want to share them?

5. You can always strike a balance. 

6. Quiet means something different here. 

7. I think Virginia Woolf was mostly right. A woman may not need a room of her own to write fiction, but it certainly makes writing a LOT easier. 

8. I have not hurried while we've been here, but everything gets accomplished. 

9. I could watch the same movie a million times curled up beside him. 

10. Buttery, flaky, pastry, filling in just the right balance of sweet and tart. Delicious. 

 

Ten. Four.

1. I haven't turned on any music or podcasts since we've been here. I've just been listening to the peace and quiet. 

2. My bones are shifting. My body is settling in. 

3. Pregnancy feels quick and slow in cycles.

4. Vermont feels like a different country to the littles. 

5. I am still amazed by how tired I can be after doing what feels like not much at all, though I suppose when I consider that at all times of the day I am making a human, no matter what else happens, I am doing a lot. 

6. I don't think I've ever seen a city this green. 

7. That little white house that you can barely see above the treetops has been our home away from home. 

8. The five os us all sitting at the dinner table together is one of my favorite things. 

9. We are teaching our children to embrace new experiences and new ways of being. 

10. I love being with him more than I love sleep.

 

Ten. Five. 

1. I have been spending a lot of time inside my head this week. Speaking less. Thinking more. 

2. When I am feeling irritable, I notice it most in my chest and my stomach. 

3. "Are you angry, or frustrated, or irritated?" He knows me so well. Such emotional intelligence for someone so young. 

4. Sweeping feels like equal parts meditation and stress relief in a way that vacuuming does not. 

5. I like having a schedule or a plan. Not having one makes me antsy. 

6. I never imagined I would have such delicious southern food in Vermont. 

7. Every time I think my belly can't possibly get any bigger, that I can't stretch anymore, I do. Perhaps this is a metaphor for life. 

8. We are efficient packers.

9. I live for his commentary on all the things. He makes me laugh so hard. 

10. The temperature of my feet determines the temperature of the rest of  my body.

 

Ten. Six.

1. It is harder to be observant when you're not feeling well. 

2. The mind is incredibly powerful.

3. The further north you are the greener it gets. I wonder what happens when you go south.

4. Sunsets are beautiful. Always. 

5. We can talk for hours.

6. The closer we get to home, the easier it is to breathe.

7. After being away for a week our house smells foreign to me. 

8. The baby seems annoyed that I am moving so much so late at night. 

9. There are cicadas here. We didn't hear them in Vermont. 

10. This daily recording of ten has become a habit for me. It would have felt weird not to finish them.

 

Ten. Seven.

1. Oatmeal is the ultimate comfort food. 

2. A good breakfast makes the day feel brand new. It allows you to see everything with fresh eyes. 

3. The look on his face when he drinks seltzer water. Be still my heart. 

4. I was never quite this relaxed while we were away. How does my body know we're home?

5. Rainbows caught inside of bubbles. 

6. I've brought some of the peace from Vermont home with me. 

7. I'm having a very optimistic day. Everything seems possible. 

8. Every day when I step in front of the mirror, it feels like an optical illusion. Some days I feel like I'm not that big, other days I feel huge. 

9. White is one of my favorite colors on him. 

10. Patience must be practiced, like gratitude and self love.  

 

self care as stillness

A few Saturdays ago, my husband found me sitting at my computer, brows deeply furrowed, typing furiously at the computer.

"Babe, everything ok?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I replied not even pausing to look away from the screen.

"What are you doing?"

"Just getting some work done."

"When's the last time you took a day off?"

My fingers froze. I looked at him, then up at the sky and tried to remember. I couldn't.

"I don't know," I told him. 

"Why don't you take the day off my love. The work will still be there tomorrow."

Without allowing myself time to second guess whether I could afford a day off, or whether I deserved a day off, I closed the computer, because he was right. He had held up a mirror in front of me right when I needed it. 

Sometimes self-care is me curled up in a chair furiously writing in my notebook with a cup of tea at my side. I acknowledge that. I need to write to feel like myself, and there is something about checking items off of a to-do list that always gives me a little bit of a rush. But sometimes, self are can also be a morning spent doing nothing in particular, a morning where life happens as it would like without me propelling it in any one direction. 

for my sister on her wedding day

I found it poetic that my sister asked me to speak about love at her wedding when my first memories of love are of loving her. I think what I remember most from the first time I met her are her little wrinkly feet. It amazed me that they fit so perfectly into the palm of my still small four-year-old hands. 

I loved how soft they were having not yet touched the ground. I loved to press them against my face, and photos on my grandmother's walls can confirm that. 

My first sister. I loved her. Love her. Will always love her. It is this warm feeling that starts in my core and spreads out into every inch of me. It makes me feel like I am glowing. It makes me feel more alive. It makes me feel both strong and frightened at the same time. And maybe more than anything else, it makes me want to be better. And isn't that what love is after all-- the very best of us.

Love encourages us to be patient. Love reminds us to be kind. Love compels us to forgive and to be our most compassionate selves. Love inspires us to be honest and communicate difficult truths. Love gives us the courage to come undone, because we know it will be there to put us back together.

And because of this, can there be any greater vow that we can make, than when we vow to love and be loved in return? 

And because of this I find there is nothing greater I can wish for you both today, than love. I wish you love. Today, tomorrow, and every day of your forever.

making room

If you walked into my house you might not think that a minimalist lives here. You might look at my shelves full of books or my son's truck collection tucked neatly under the coffee table or the shoes lined up by the front door or any number of things, and think, nope, no way.

But on my journey to streamline and simplify my life, I have learned that what minimalism looks like shifts depending on the lens of the person imagining it. 

When I walk through my home I see space where I once saw clutter, order where there once was chaos (albeit organized chaos). My life feels calmer and it feels like there is now space for the things I've been working to manifest. 

I have been asking the universe for abundance while my life was already full to the brim with things I didn't need, things that had long since stopped serving their purpose, things that were weighing me down. Where was the universe supposed to send that abundance, and even if the universe sent it, where would I have put it? I had no room. 

I have been surprised at every turn by how much more clear my mind feels as I clear my physical space, and how full my life still feels despite having so much less. 

 

P.S. My journey through minimalism has been greatly aided by my best friend Patrice King, CP Patrick aka The AfroMinimalist, Brown Kids, and The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. 

Summer Reading, Jr.

My husband and I weren't terribly excited by the Summer Reading Lists our daughters came home from school with, so we decided to make our own. In case you need inspiration for your own littles, here they they are.

 

Naomi's Reading List (8 years old)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis 

Holes by Louis Sachar 

Amina's Voice by Hena Khan

Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Amber and the Hidden City by Milton J. Davis

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

 

Isys's Reading List (11 years old)

The Odyssey by Homer

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Ink and Ashes by Valynne Maetani

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak 

 

loss + gratitude

In 2012, I was the mother of two kind, intelligent, compassionate, beautiful daughters. They were four and six years old at the time, and my husband and I had decided to expand our family. My husband is one of four children and I'm one of three so we figured that was about how many children we would end up with too. Getting pregnant with my daughters had been easy...startlingly easy, and I naively assumed conceiving and carrying our third would be much the same. Until it wasn't.

When I experienced pregnancy loss, I was heartbroken. I felt sure I'd done something wrong or was being punished for some past sin, despite being trained as a doula and childbirth educator, therefore being fully aware of how common miscarriage is. Rationally, I knew it wasn't my fault, there wasn't any fault to be had, but the pain of that loss wasn't logical. 

When I shared what I was going through with a few people, a couple of them (I'm sure they had the best intentions) decided to remind me that at least I already had two daughters, that even if my body wasn't up for having any more children, at least I already had the two.  

I initially balked at these words, appalled that one, or two, or however many children could be seen as a consolation prize for losing another, but yet and still something about those words resonated with something I was already feeling and they stayed with me.  

I don't talk about my loss much and that is mostly because there is a part of me that thinks my loss is less significant because I had two children when it happened. I worry that talking about my loss is insensitive toward women who have not yet carried a pregnancy to term and birthed their rainbow baby. I worry that talking about my loss makes me ungrateful for the blessings I do have. 

This feeling has intensified now that I've gone on to have my third child and am pregnant with my fourth, but the memory of loss is still with me.  

In the first trimesters of my pregnancies with my third and soon to be fourth children, I still agonized over every twinge of pain or discomfort in my lower abdomen. I still spent and am spending my current pregnancy praying I won't see any blood in the toilet when I go to the bathroom. I still hold my breath in those moments between when my midwife turns the Doppler on and when she finds the baby's heartbeat. 

I feel all of these things and more, I just don't talk about them because I feel like I'm not allowed. But, I am learning in this experience and in other areas of my life, that the only person I need permission from is me. I have to give myself permission to feel my loss and share that loss when I feel moved to (like now). I have to remind myself that I can feel loss and gratitude at the same time and that one does not diminish the other.  

This is Bigger Than Trump

The morning after the presidential election I was disgusted. I was angry. I felt very, very tired. But I was not shocked, and I was not surprised. I did not wonder how my country could have elected such a man. I didn't wonder who these people were that came out and supported him. I was not baffled that tens of millions of people thought he was the best option for our future, and this was largely because I am a woman of color. A Black woman. 

My community has long been aware of the overt and covert individualized and institutionalized bigotry threaded throughout our nation. 

I do understand the outrage people are feeling. I feel it myself. And I understand the need to resist all of the xenophobic, misogynist, bigoted policies that seem to be sprouting up every day. But, if we are to affect real change in this country, we have to go beyond resisting this current administration. We have to go beyond our bi-partisan system. We have to change hearts and minds. We need to dive into our history, tell the truth about our origins, make amends where we can and reconstruct our country in a way that is inclusive of all its people, and that is going to take a lot longer than however long Trump's presidency lasts.

Donald J. Trump didn't create the people who voted for him, they have been here since before he ever even entertained the idea of being president. They have been here since forever.

They have been lying in wait for a man such as Trump to be their vehicle, but make no mistake, Trump is not the disease, he is just a symptom, and we must treat him as such.