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TuesDayNewsDay

AnitaLorraineMoore

“Learn to handle the valleys Quincy, the hills will take care of themselves.” -Count Basie to Quincy Jones

Dear Humans,

Here comes the new Anita Moore newsletter every Tuesday describing what’s going on with me musically, emotionally/intellectually, creatively, and about life in general and things that move, touch or inspire me. We’ll start with a #freshquote and dedication – the #LivingQueryoftheWeek (respond in the comment section) and #UpcomingShows !!

Dedication: Auspiciously, my late brother Skip used to start a new journal on October 1 every year. This issue is dedicated to him. I miss him so much.

Over the last few weeks, there’ve been a lot of life events that have given me great pause. My 96 year old great aunt Helen passed and I sang a few songs for her funeral, I dealt with a staph infection, and my grandfather had pretty serious surgery to unblock his carotid artery (with him being in the hospital it inevitably means that my grandmother’s going to be on edge as well – they are attached at the hip quite literally. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.) Lastly, the Supreme Court fiasco has triggered many feelings of anger, helplessness, and memories of not being believed, invalidation, and being ridiculed by my mother starting at the age of 7. Call your Senators people. Vote them out if they don’t act upon your testimonies. We cannot allow the perpetuation of this behavior with silence.

I’m working part time with Democracy Matters and have 10 wonderful chapters of students who are doing amazing awareness raising work from Florida to New York. Syracuse University, Gettysburg, University of Maryland, North Carolina Central University, a new chapter at UNC, Guilford college, the University of Miami, the University of Georgia in Athens, University of Florida in Gainesville, and the New College of Florida.

Music has given me quite a bit of inspiration. I am so honored and grateful to have been able to open that door when I did. Many, many other doors have opened subsequently from that divine choice.  This past weekend, I got to perform three shows w/Pete Pawsey. Sunday at the Carrboro music festival, I was a complete rockstar and dressed the part too! With the Radar Clowns – On that day an amazing five piece horn section, smooth piano, energetic drums, and rockin’ Pete on the guitar, I sang my heart out on several songs and we had so much wonderful reception. I felt very tuned in at that moment and realized how happy I am to have started this journey when I did. Thank you all for supporting me. I could not do it without you.

In my personal, therapeutic journey, I have learned a lot about myself and about my motivations for work, life decisions, and habitual responses that honestly I would like to alter for the betterment of my sanity and for the world in general around me. I found that I was doing political service work in such a way that I was avoiding my own process of healing and/or avoiding my own historical traumatic struggle. I was unknowingly convinced that the world was easier to fix than my pain. Well… I am not doing that anymore. I have begun to prioritize my own mental health and establishing boundaries. Going to an Al-Anon meeting weekly, I just began working with my first sponsor. I’ve been doing cognitive behavioral therapy weekly, implementing EMDR sessions throughout. There is a book I’ve decided to write, for which I have begun gathering sources. The album concept is complete and I have all but two songs completely recorded in a demo. Right now I am compiling a list of accompaniment and considering different production styles and offers. I have applied for a potential teaching position at Alamance Community College – critical thinking. *fingers crossed* PS: I love lists.

My struggles have been with food lately and maintaining some semblance of exercise. I’ve been paying more attention to patterns, realizing that hormonally there are some disturbances at certain times of the month when I become desperate, hopeless, depressed, irritated and lethargic. To start, going on morning walks has been really helpful. Waking up early to watch the sunrise is a blessing; I had forgotten how beautiful the sunrise is. This morning it was an amalgamation of all sorts of pinks, purples, and yellows and blue-grey clouds. The moon has also been especially haunting in a good way lately, happy October! *groovy happy dance*  

At this very moment I am sitting on what Bruce calls “the magic rock”, where the creek bends and the water forms soothing sounds. Birds are chirping all around and the crickets are playing their endless tiny violin songs.

With Love, because it saves the world,

ALM

#LivingQueryoftheWeek : What is your most effective tool for self-love/self-care?

 

 

Upcoming Shows:

  • Sat, October 20th – w/Radar Clowns, Rain Dogs by Tom Waits Theme
  • Fri, November 2nd – w/Radar Clowns – Day of the Dead Show
    • 8:00pm, Hillsborough @ #MysteryBrewingCompany
  • Sat, November 3rd – Me-n-Pete Duo
    • 7:15pm, Star, NC @ #StarworksCafeTaproom
  • Sun, November 4th – w/Radar Clowns, Rain Dogs by Tom Waits Theme
    • 3:00-5:00pm, Pittsboro @ #CITYTAPPITTSBORO
  • Fri, November 30th – Anita Lorraine with Bruce Horvath

 

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www.gofundme.com/anitalorrainemusic

Poem about the process and #SurrenderingtotheSacred continued from the last episode to catch yall up:

The Mystery Still

They used to call that old white lightning “moonshine” in these hills

How many lips of other those words or family ties it breaks and kills

Strawberry apple pie or dark cherry kinds

But I found a new flavor my fingers and heart longed to find

Paid heed to the unanswered questions I spent too much time tryin to answer

Somewhere down the line I met a spirit and she bade me to release her

She gave me the keys to an old wooden shed

Her hair was long and dark, she was only 3 and her granddad’s hair was red

She came from the deep, A dark despair trail of loneliness

She rows up from the ashes and held me through the hunger and distress

In that shed, she showed me the silver, the copper and the gold

She showed me the jewels inside me, once I thought I couldn’t hold

She said the way it worked was this,

“you fill it up here and it makes a little hiss,

What you put in it is who you’ve been

What comes out that mystery still is your destiny, my friend”

The mystery still, a belly full of unknown

Stands in that shed just waiting to be blown

Open side, all the ingredients are there

You

“You just gotta believe” she said, “in yourself, if you dare”

I’ll show you the way cause you couldn’t even see

No matter how hard you tried, that spirit… What will be will be

“and that’s the magic” she said to me

Of sacred mysteries that come from pain and grief

Do you know her name, down this path you must go

Of surrender and sorrow of joy you can know

This still don’t make moonshine, but the Moonglows here still

Upon deep waters, wet and a tear stained two dollar bill

The birds are all calling and cannot be boxed in

Your dreams are free and aloof just like the wind

Ask for them to come and to you they will find

Their way through the core, the ground, from the mines

The caves you dug a long time ago

We’re dug by the same shovel that now makes you grow

This girl she smiled, as I sat down in awe

Bowed my head in silence, in reverence; I had no flaws

Suddenly I was sacred when I drink from that still

I’d learn the hard way, then she screamed, her voice hard and shrill

“your mantle, your fireside, your magic, I live inside.

You must off and stoke the fire and feed me” she cried

You never are done, don’t think you’ve made it

Each day, remember to keep the right flame lit

Don’t let it go out, else you’ll have to start over

And axe to this still, and your spirit sinks lower

Out of reach, out of time, out of luck, out of rhymes

Just put back on your skates and roll outside all the lines

You’re still is your own,

Every seed you have soon

Weights and yearns for your return

Build another fire to burn

If you still don’t know what this still is about

Think of a soul, longing to get out

As in distill, intoxicate your beautiful self

With the mystery of what is, take it down off the shelf

You open a portal and let spirit in

You release your control over who it is you’ve been

That little girl who showed me the way

She’s a firestarter, pyromaniac it play

She can blow up some shit because she knows no better

But refined… She is genius and shakes her tail feather

The horizon cannot hold her, this child of God and Moore

She put in the time and said Grace for her store

This mystery still she’s found out how to use

Is a vertical prayer, open to gnosis and truth

I’m learning to use it, growing day by day

Excepting my feelings, no judgment, and a loving and kind away

As she hand me the keys and I return to make my shine

She lies back, relaxes and daydreams all the time

I long to filter out what I’ve been told versus what I know

My innermost yearnings, the balance, the flow

The gut, the tingles, the pangs and the blood is still warm

I’ll tell me the truth, like a pouring down storm

It’s like talking to God, From a sacred, me – shaped telephone booth

The mystery still takes me, shapes me, and provides me with the truth

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As of late, I have been learning some very important information about myself. This information comes from years and years and years, perhaps my entire lifetime of searching for something that I could not find. I could not grasp. I would venture and dare to say that it was held back from me, until the right time, which is now. I can’t tell you anything that has meant more to me than the realization that an aspect of my personality, learned as a very, very young child has come to the forefront of my awareness. I was first introduced to the notion of codependency about 3 1/2 weeks ago. At first I was completely turned off by the term. I was in a therapy session and the term offended me. I said out loud, “codependency? That’s not me. Fuck that! I’m not my mother!” Right after I said that, ironically, I softened, felt guilty for expressing my feelings to my therapist (ha!), and accepted the book my therapist handed me. I didn’t realize what I was opening myself to. Just reaching across the room, with the curiosity I seem to have an insatiable amount of, has changed my worldview. I took the book home and devoured it. I read and highlighted that book with fervor that I can only express as a voracious need to heal, because I have work to do. I have a world around me and somehow I feel driven to be an agent of change. I have so much gratitude for the support and love of everyone in my life. Right now however, for the first time, I am showing up for me. I’ve been showing up for everyone else for so long and I can only do the work of fighting for true justice if I can give justice to myself. The small child inside me deserves justice just like all the other children in this world deserve it. All of the other children and children of children and adults who are still children. We don’t deserve to stay broken, and this journey is helping me put the pieces back together. Whether you have experienced sexual, emotional, or physical neglect and/or abuse, if you resonate with anything that I’m saying right now, please listen to this podcast and take notes on the resources that are discussed. I will further explain and update about this process. The eternal, or rather seemingly eternal replay of self deprecating words and thoughts to myself and about myself are slowly beginning to dissipate. I feel more liberated right now than I have ever, I am crying right now just saying these words out loud. I lived in fear most of my life, and I am sure that surprises most of you, because what you’ve seen throughout the years is a glimmer of who I am but also a very clear view of who I wanted you to see. The conflicted person who, I should say this with gentleness, very much hated herself and thought she deserved nothing was very much ashamed. Through much sorrow, they say, comes much joy. (insert Kahlil Gibran quote here http://www.katsandogz.com/onjoy.html)

 I don’t know that “Joy” very well at all. I learned very early on that nobody and nothing in this world was safe. I learned this before I was two years old. I learned it over and over again, in fact, I was learning it up until three weeks ago. Thankfully, my grandparents offered temporary respite from the world I lived in as a little girl. Even more thankfully, I am offering respite to myself now.  I’ve only seen the shadow of joy and I want to truly experience it and relinquish my need for control (out of fear that I might lose it), this I am working on. Sending all of you so much love and appreciation, and yet also I am now beginning to send myself the same love and appreciation. Again I have work to do, and I may only get this lifetime to be aware of it.

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/codependency-no-more-podcast/e/42583301

https://www.google.com/amp/www.goodtherapy.org/blog/wounded-attachment-relationships-of-survivors-of-childhood-sexual-assault-0627135/amp/

Careful with this one, very explicit: https://ritualabuse.us/research/sexual-abuse/how-childhood-sexual-abuse-affects-interpersonal-relationships/