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Smile I see in the sky

I mirror back

every single time.

 

Never have I looked up and frowned

or wished they’d take that incessant light down.

 

The stars dance all around,

thousands of miles

I sing along inside as they whisper by

each with their own unique styles.

 

As the darkened treetops block my view

little windows branches make, so I can see You.

 

I was born when the Moon was growing

and now she tells me about who I am

when she is dark or even when she’s showing.

 

Her pregnancy of light

this waxing Moon

a reflection of many promises

of birthing, of blooms.

 

 

waxing crescent moon
Photo credit: https://www.moonglow.com/blogs/shoot-for-the-moon-blog/moon-phase-personality-descriptions (I was born on a waxing gibbous moon. Here’s a link to a photo of an art piece I did about the Half-Moon, waxing gibbous: https://anitalorraine.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/screen-shot-2019-05-30-at-12.15.04-pm.png )

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TuesDayNewsDay Vol.2 Issue 17, October 30th – CAUTION: Trigger Warning – this newsletter contains triggering sexual violence references. Please take care.

Dedication: Today’s issue is dedicated to my therapist Karen. Today, while going through what came up in therapy, I realized I would drive to the place, where in October of 1990, I was first molested. I was seven years old. I decided I would drive there, sit on the ground and take a photo. I would also take something of the earth to work with this healing. As the idea came to me, a light bulb exploded in my head. Karen said, “Anita, don’t take your wounded little girl there without your whole adult self holding her, seeing her, and telling her that you are there for her no matter what. You are her nurturing parent now, hold her in your arms.”

I pulled my car into the driveway for the first time ever on my way home from therapy, realizing I have never driven into that driveway before in my life.

This spot, which I have to drive by every time I go to my grandparents’ house, is also a block from where my mother still lives with the pedophile step-father just across the railroad tracks. When I say this healing is a daily, a moment to moment process, I mean it. Literally facing those places every day has wrecked havoc on my insides – but I am resilient and strong, vulnerable and honest with myself. The place is a vacant lot in a trailer park on Pomeroy Street in Graham, where my home used to sit. Now it’s an empty, dirty space with an overgrown concrete platform over which there was a carport. Under that porch, I remember having to take all of our stuffed animals outside to be thrown away because there was such a terrible flea infestation. I remember sneaking up late at night after everyone was asleep, turning on the television to watch Alfred Hitchcock and the Twilight Zone, my face about an inch from the screen, ever wary of any sounds coming from my mother’s end of the trailer lest I get caught.

Vividly, I remember the game we were playing that night in October. My baby sister, a developmentally disabled boy named Jason, and his sister Tasha and I were playing charades. Jason and Tasha were the teenage children of my mother’s red-headed boyfriend. We played in teams and it was decided we would go into the closet to decide what animal or character we would pretend to be. I was seven years old, my sister was 2. I was on Jason’s team. Jason was sixteen. (Typing this I can feel my heart racing and the old familiar anxiety aching in my chest and shoulders, my left eye and cheek twitching.). When we went into that closet and Jason molested me, I was too afraid to move, too afraid to scream, too afraid to fight, too afraid to do anything at all except to freeze. So, I froze. I could feel his icy cold, trembling hands on me. To this day I can still feel the darkness of that closet, the walls closing in around me. When we came out of that closet, I was sick. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember the game, nothing. I remember after they left that night, I told my mother what happened. She said to me, “Honey, if it happens again, let me know.”

Those words etched endless caves into the crevices of my heart. Those words are the haunting. Those words represent the moment I knew I was on my own. With no one else to turn to, my grandparents were gone to Disneyland at the time, I was completely alone. I prayed and prayed and heard nothing. Those words mark the day when I, as a seven year old, realized that god didn’t exist and that I wasn’t worth saving. Those words created children’s tears. They cannot be undone, and of course, it happened again.

Despite those memories buried deep in endless caves and my mother within shouting distance, I went. It was my nurturing, accepting, loving, and whole adult self who sat on that ground. I felt the cold, wet grass and soil underneath me. I looked at the trailers to the right and left of me. My phone was propped on the very metal bracket that once held that trailer to the ground. I snapped a shot of me sitting on that sacred ground. It took less than a minute. Leaving, I searched for a four-leaf clover in the tiny patch of yard, but found none. Instead, now a big green black walnut from that place is with me. I plan to do some ritual with that walnut. It tried to escape twice from me before walking up my back-porch steps in Saxapahaw. Something inside told me not to bring it inside my house, so I left it on the back patio table. It is not clear what kind of ritual will come about, but it is sure to be a powerful one of releasing the physical ghosts of that moment. It will be one of forgiving my mother for not knowing or realizing what she was doing. It will be a process of exorcising the grief and trauma which has been sitting in my bones and blood, blooming into the person you see today. Today is all I have.

Quote: Choice is all we get, change is all that’s real.

Song: Silence is the song today folks, listen to your heart beat. – my Tuesday video song series is available here: TuesDay Song Series Video on Facebook

Dear Humans,

Today’s post wasn’t meant to be this way. The events of today were not planned, but have made a mark. The words of my song, Darlene, record this event in a lyrical, symbolic sort of way. Being an artist is a privilege because it lets us put words and visions to feelings and thoughts. We are able to somehow transform our feelings into a universal language others can share. Today with Karen, I admitted to trying to let go of my fears: people won’t like my arts and I’m not good enough to walk in the footsteps of my idols. Slowly and purposefully, she said, “Let’s transform that. You are working on your language, so let’s start here.” So after thinking, my mouth said, “I am letting go of my concern for people not liking my art or me as a person.” I do not need validation of others to justify my existence. This self-work is Sacred. I feed on it; it makes me feel more and more alive and free every day to uncover and unleash the demons. Turns out, they aren’t demons at all. They are one scared, frozen little girl, stepping into who she is destined to be, not solely a victim of her circumstance. I looked Karen in the eyes today and spoke my gratitude for her being here with me this last year and a half of journeying, visioning and healing. It was the first time I’d ever asked to hold hands with anyone. With our feet on the floor, we grounded, I closed my eyes and saw little Anita sitting on my right knee. There Karen prepared me to go sit on that patch of grass, which someday, I will drive by without flinching. I will drive by proud to have been seated there.

Love, ALM

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Today’s weekly song series is up! Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/anitalorrainemusic/videos/535090620390659/

Dedication: This week is dedicated to Sandie Kennedy. She introduced me to Tarot when I was sixteen or seventeen and I could not be more grateful. For years I was ashamed of my mystical frou frou leanings. Growing up in a Southern Baptist church by non-woo humans certainly never leant itself to any out of the ordinary behavior (of which I was constantly involved) or witchy shit of any kind. Sandie was the first adult I ever met who was all up in the woo and made no bones about it. No apologies ever about who she was or in what she believed. I truly needed a woman like that in my life without a dogma, without an agenda. On top of that she loved motorcycles and had some amazing children all of whom I love to this day. Of course her own children may say of her what they want; I contend that she was one of the first women in my life who I looked up to for being unapologetically who she is. Go Sandie. Thank you for being. Period.

Quote: On Friendship: “…when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet speaking on the sacred topic of friendship. Today, I was reminded of how grateful I am to be able to count on my fingers and toes all the humans I love dearly, yet do not see very often. To those friends time cannot touch. Those friends with whom no distance can divide the love. There are many of you, for I have lived a privileged life of travel and adventure. You are all treasured and measureless in your meaning to me in this world.

Song: Lizzo: Soulmate – for those of us out here in the singles world, there are days when solitude can be overwhelming. Lizzo makes that fizzle away into the fire that is her music. The emblazoned words, “and I gotta testify, I get flowers every Sunday, I’mma marry me one day… cause I’m my own soulmate, I know how to love me, I know that I’m always gonna hold me down… look up in the mirror like ‘damn she the one!’” FYI, don’t listen to this around kids unless your kids cuss as much as I do… Lizzo does not give a f***. https://youtu.be/cORNQkOdYw0 I am learning to be my own soulmate, for I cannot give of myself if I am not whole. We gotta do our own work. Do the work! Soul work! (I swear, I will say this to everyone, EVERYONE needs therapy. Everyone needs someone with whom to talk about your inner junk. We ALL have it and this culture does not teach us how to recognize our issues, much less DEAL with them in healthy ways.) Thanks Lizzo for being a bit of extravagant therapy on the way to work every other day. Thank you Emily Miller for hooking me UP.

Dear Humans, I have another quote to share with you. It’s a quote that rushed right out of my mouth when I was speaking with a dear friend in Florida this week. “To be a rebel is to ask for help.” (In America.). We were discussing how hard it is to ask for help and I added that it is sometimes hard even to know what you need, much less be able to ask for help with whatever it is! We all struggle with inner demons, whether we recognize them or pay attention closely enough with a mirror to examine from where they originate is a “whole ‘nuther story!”

There’s so much going on right now that I feel I’m on a roller coaster that hasn’t stopped. Thing is, it’s slowing down, I can feel it. I have antidotes, potions, remedies, medicine and restorative practices to slow down my heart rate and see things from a more objective perspective. There is a list of creative endeavors which give me great peace and excitement upcoming: Poetry Book, Moore On That podcast, and Surrendering to the Sacred album!

Without any upcoming shows, I don’t have a boatload of rehearsals or practice. I have been playing and singing, but only to myself (and to you people on Tuesdays!). It’s been quite nice! I have gone to a few shows, had some lovely dinners with friends, begun reading new books, worked on sewing projects, sold my bed and mattress, working on selling my vintage dresser and nightstand set, brought down my fall accoutrements and sweaters are EVERYWHERE. My newest books are called “Well-Read Black Girl” by Glory Edim, “Deeper Dating” by Ken Page, and the “Autobiography of my Mother” by Jamaica Kincaid. Tea at night and going to bed early are becoming habitual. I’m learning how to pray, how to incorporate it into my habits… this morning was filled with ritual and intention for the rest of the month of October. I’m struggling with addictions and habitual behaviors which are dictated by shame and guilt cycles. It is perplexing to try to find solutions to those cycles, but surely they exist. Bless all of you who read this and care, it means a great deal to me. I’m stepping down to rest a bit and to more carefully juggle my wild side with my disciplined self. This Summer was filled with work beyond my wildest dreams, madness which has helped me step closer to fulfilling goals of creating an album and living my life authentically and radical honesty and assertiveness. Cheers! Here’s to the Autumn of abundance and harvest. Let’s celebrate. (Minus the booze, thanks.)

This week in photos:

Enjoying sleeves, wool hats, vests, scarves, and my Paw Paw’s 83 Mazda pickup transporting beds across town. Damn I’m sleeping like a rock on my own mattress. *Thankful*
This was my spread this morning. 1. Where to dig deeper (3 of cups) 2. Where to rest (9 of pentacles) and 3. What will transform with this balance? (The Hierophant)
Still unpacking this set. It’s for focusing on the month of October.
This cute greenie was outside the Eddy last Friday night.
Although I don’t consider myself an alcoholic, this book on shame was so intense that I had to put it down. I haven’t yet picked it up again.
Some of my most top played songs of late.

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Monday… July 1st

Today, right now, I feel peaceful. I am sitting on the couch with my coffee, grey cashmere sweater score from the thrift store, tons of reading material and my ankle propped up on ice. This whole process of surgery and healing has taught me so much I never really understood – how important the pause really is. The caring for your body in a way that reflects that you ACTUALLY care about what happens to it and how it functions. It’s unbelievable to me that I went so long without really taking care of this ankle, or thinking about this at all… the life of childhood sexual abuse survivors perhaps – but I’ll only speak of my own experience. I think back and see so many unspoken, unseen barriers to recognizing the problem. I never want to be that distracted and oblivious again in my life. Therapy, Al-Anon, music, and most of all that Divine resilience spark from somewhere within me (and us all, right?) has put me in this place of submission. I know I’ll be taken care of. What a privileged feeling?

Right now, my mind goes to the families on the border of our country, the refugees trying to find a safe place, a home, the war-torn families of people across this world who truly DON’T know that they’ll be taken care of. Sitting here, I truly don’t know what to do about that. Is there something to be done? Is there nothing to be done? I can’t take on the weight of the world alone. How is it that my conscience (I’m teaching about conscience and morality in my Critical Thinking class this week.) is so heavy from the knowledge of what is happening around me but also the feeling of being incapable of doing anything about it. Is that not the essence of trauma? Am I wrong that everything will be taken care of? Is this a false sense of security in some unseen force? When I have been abused in the past, I didn’t know what to do so I froze and allowed it to happen until is was over and I could escape. Some don’t escape. My escape was in my mind, as my body was being invaded. What of right now? Is my escape the comfort of my mind since there is this seemingly limited amount of impact I can make on the atrocities of this world? (I made 74.50 Friday night performing to send to the Border relief organizations sending lawyers and food/water/proper care to those families.). It seems like so little… I curiously don’t feel shame. That I am proud of, however there is guilt – the healthy spark to do something to rectify wrong-doings comes from guilt. I didn’t create the system in which we live, yet as I live and breath, I benefit and continue to perpetuate its eventuality.

Are we all going through trauma right now, on a cellular and spiritual level right now, if not physical (since it’s all connected)? The world feels to me to be chaotic and mean, and while I sit here with my coffee, it’s hard not to think of all those who are unsafe and literally grasping for their lives.

From therapy, I learned that many truths can be simultaneously existent – the ever-present paradox – the both/and – not simply the limiting either/or. Literally, I believe this is the only mindset which can release me from my own rambling, concerned yet paralyzed state. Also, it’s the only perspective which can shed light on numerous co-existing perspectives of abundance which are hard to see while thinking about the suffering of this world. I never just think about the suffering, I FEEL it. Everyone can. It is impossible not to (even if you are unconscious of it, it impacts you. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)) – it is all recognizable and at times, insidiously invisible. So why is it that the joys and the love and the light is so hard to absorb and hold? Again, that shift in lens is the antidote for the tunnel vision. A trusting that somehow, those positivities are truly out there in and amongst the negativities. …and if you venture out to the furthest reaches, perhaps those challenges (in hindsight) give us the tools we need to survive.

In an attempt at gross summation and perhaps even over-simplification – maybe we can cradle in our palms these painful knowings and trust that they are providing insights about how to better live, how much more aware I can be to not only see and recognize, but to act upon those recognitions to create a more just world in one fluid, unnoticeable and perpetual movement with the intention of good?

“On Good and Evil” – Kahlil Gibran (I find deep feeling insights every time I open The Prophet.)

“And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil. And he answered:

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.

Yet when you are not one with yourself, you are not evil.

For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.

And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sing not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.

Yet you are not evil when you seek to gain for yourself.

For when you strive to gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.

Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, “Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.”

For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,

Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.

And even in the stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.

Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.

Even those who limp go not backward.

But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and yo are not evil when you are not good,

You are only loitering and sluggard.

Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you. [I am brought to tears at this moment reading this line again.]

But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.

And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, “Wherefore are you slow and halting?”

For the truly good ask not the naked, “Where is your garment.” Nor the house less, “Where has befallen your house?”

Another memory I heard singing in my ears while typing this, “I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, “You must not ask for so much.” I saw a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more? Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir …I have tried, in my way, to be free.”

– Bird on a Wire, by Leonard Cohen.

Nothing is left unresolved, only momentary feigns of understanding…

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I began to think about a subject again this afternoon that I discussed this morning in the midst of a crisis that should, in the future, be easily avoided from insight provided by the past.  I think very similarly about Black History Month they way I feel about Valentine’s day (if you haven’t read the earlier post, here’s a quote from that day: “Valentines day is so ridiculous because we should be giving love in such an obscene way EVERY DAY!!”)  This is how I feel about Black History Month.  Why don’t we celebrate famous Black history month all year long? And WHY, my friend pointed out, is it peppered with a bunch of white dudes being commemorated, one of which (ahem.. Washington ((who’s birthday is celebrated today))) owned slaves?   I must say however, the benefit of having Black History Month is beneficial and enlightening to white people, who any other time, may not take the time to be curious about anything but things that concern them… like these facts:  Toni Morrison was born today.  She is the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Read The Song of Solomon, it’s a stunning book.  Also today in 1688, Quakers in Germantown, PA adopt the first antislavery resolution in the country.

But it shouldn’t be the federal requirement of a nation to get people to commemorate and appreciate the amazing works, unique history, and fallen heroes of a particular group of people – these things should be celebrated and honored all the time and with equal time and attention as everything else.  The fact that we need a Black History Month just goes to show that we’ve gotten only slightly further down the road towards equality.  (please see: http://www.dayinblackhistory.com/ )

I dedicate my blog today to all the rest of the months in the year that are left lonely without the presence of remembrance and beauty that ALL people embody and present to this world.  I also dedicate my blog today to all the slaves that George Washington owned and only after he was dead were they emancipated.  Sending out love to you, all of our ancestors, and current victims of hate, because you all have stared at a sunset such as this and been mystified at the possibility that some greater power is working to make things right, and if there isn’t such a power, our strength comes from the knowledge and satisfaction that we DO work against inequality and the oppressed will not be as such forever.

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I watched the Presidential State of the Union address last night, and went to bed rather deflated.  I was impressed by his bold nature, but I wish he would have talked about Syria and all the violence going on around the world.  Drones would have been a topic I would have liked to hear more about.  I am glad he talked about gun violence.  I am happy he talked about raising minimum wage.  It would have been nice to hear a stand AGAINST the environmentally dangerous process of fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline and FOR publicly financed elections.  He did give a shout out on how corporations and rich individuals are flooding politics, but we need MORE than a shout out, and that’s where all of us come in…. so on to today…  In 1960, France detonated its first nuclear bomb and last year on this day, Washington state become the 7th state to legalize same-sex marriage.  GO WASHINGTON STATE!  I’ve always said that when EVERYONE can get married, then I’ll think about it.

…This morning, around 4am EST I awoke to pee and then went back to bed.  I don’t think I slept very much after that, in and out of dream land where everything is cloudy, yet very clear.  Dreams are things that remain an enigma to me, when I wake up I wish sometimes that the dreams were real.  Sometimes when I wake up, I’m thanking my lucky stars that it was only a dream.  I dream violent and murderous dreams, where I’m fighting a battle with an old enemy – one that in waking life truly ruined my family.  Sometimes when I’m not battling, I am creating and flying and doing things that I have never done.  In my waking dreams I dream

about being like Mother Teresa and inspiring hope and love on all things and making the world a better place, all the while highlighting injustice in the world.

I dream about having a garden that I eat from and also feed others.  I dream about having a solar garden too, that helps cut down on energy costs.  I dream about living in a hole in the ground, with a big, round, and wooden door.

Image

 

I dream about graduating and receiving my Masters degree and I dream about speaking Spanish.  Sometimes I think I dream in a language I’ve never heard of.

 

(((((((((((((((((This is me (pictured to the right) with BIG dreams!)))))))))))

 
When I awoke again around 9 this morning, I looked out the window and saw a beautiful red cardinal.I dream about raising children (not my own) who have no parents and giving them love.  I dream about making music and being badass, singing around a fire of loved ones.

 

With a huge smile I made up my bed (while still in it of course), placed Cornelius and Hobbes in their rightful places above my flannel covered pillows, and put on today’s clothes: a re-sweatshirt made by Jill Boogie and my favorite jeans.  I lit a stick of smelly-good incense, thought of a fond memory, smiled, then went downstairs to see that I’d
This song is also amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=4_GgE7zF3wo&feature=fvwp “Sun”received sweet message from Jill.  I love her.  She sent me lyrics to a Donovan song – First There is a Mountain.  This reminded me of this song, that I love so much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H19qNpG46A8 “Catch the Wind”