I’m proud of how 2018 is going, despite the heartbreaking reminders of what a terrible, unjust world we live in, country we live in, city I live in. There are sounds, breaths, smiles, whispers, words, text messages, emails, this week that remind me me how much I am held up, how much I hold others, how much we all hold each other and how will survive this and be survived – if we put some work in. If we put some love in.

I didn’t blog yesterday because what I wanted to share  – the rage I was feeling yesterday at so many things, situations, people, institutions – when I started to write so much came out – too much came out and it’s not for here. This isn’t the right medium for it. I poured it into my manuscript(s – because like Bianca wrote to me on twitter it’s a mash up that will turn into a brick y toma, Rosana said volumes). Oh have I lived volumes and we have lived them together.  

I’m proud of myself for sitting down nightly – even after feeling – even when feeling beat down and disheartened and just tired and writing. Writing for my blog, writing the book(s). This week I also start an online class on memoir writing because I’ve never taken a writing class in my whole life even though I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. And the process has been, is kind of amazing. Last night I wrote – furiously – about the cycles I have been able to witness and be a part of (for better or worse) and ended up smiling remembering the first time I learned to use a french press. And that memory – sweet, tender, fraught – was a metaphor for everything. How in the midst of so much we can and do still connect with people over the mundane and not so mundane. These are the touchstones to our survival.

There was also a bit of a panic yesterday – over the things revealed/remembered/recalled. Things that have not been made public that will see light and oh how ever would I do them justice in that light. How – technically speaking in terms of form but in terms of also the emotion that gets transferred in the process of remembering and trying to pin that memory down into a sentence, a paragraph, a page.

But today I am proud. Today I am grateful. Today I shared some time thanks to technology with people, mujeres who were part of an early point of my journey and I part of theirs and we spoke, planned, dreamed. Brilliant is a word that Lex uses often and rightfully so. This journey continues through the work we are all doing in our respective corners and the way we converge together.

It’s exciting and it gives me hope.