Dear Reader,

I share this photo as my mind-bridge to you between last post’s funeral-home trivia question and some recent reading. This post is more of a journal entry fused around book-report-pre-notes.

[Refresher on last month’s trivia:

Funeral-Home-Studio-Apartment-Wallpaper Trivia:

Q: How many rib bones does the human body have?

A: 24 (or 12 pair)]

In the world of whitemalegod my left rib-cage is so crooked, it’s deformed and I am unloveable. In the world of the Sacred Black Feminine, I am cherished and held precisely because “I am” and because my left ribcage is exactly how it’s meant to be.

Last month I read God Is A Black Woman by Dr. Christena Cleveland with my study group. To the extent that I can as a rural white-woman reader, I viscerally felt whitemalegod’s violence against—and extinguishment of—body, mind, and spirit while reading this book. The author brings her Dear Readers on an expansive journey of inquiry, repair, and sacredness in parallel with her pilgrimage. To answer the author’s question in Chapter 10 - god of white women: I will be continuing to “heal from my inherited white supremacist conditioning so that I am more likely to be a life-giving conversation partner for this sacred Black woman who was generous enough to share the title of her book with me.” (Thank you, Dr. Cleveland.)1 I am also grateful to the people who are not white women who have entrusted some of their experiences amidst whitemalegod’s world with me—in and outside of my study group. After reading this book, I feel like I have a more specific vocabulary to articulate thoughts and feelings that I did not know how to before. Although it is impossible to pick and choose, these are the themes I would write a book report about.

1. Deeper Power: “I could choose what I believe rather than simply accepting what I had been taught. I could choose who I want to be in relationship with rather than remaining in relationships out of obligation. I could choose to adopt the term Deeper Power rather than Higher Power because it powerfully rejects patriarchal and hierarchical thinking and relating to the Divine. And I could choose how I feel about my body rather than letting whitemalegod’s media tell me.”2

   ---

   I felt this quote in my gut when I was reading late at night. Dr. Cleveland once again is giving me the language for why I stubbornly balk and refuse in al-anon meetings/literature to surrender to a “Higher” Power. That has never felt right, safe, or true to me and has almost sent me out a meeting’s church doors more than once. It will always be Deeper Power for me from here on out in all aspects of my life and I have discussed this with my sponsor and friend.

   ---

2. Serpents = Feminine Wisdom: “But one day, while preparing for a sermon, I stumbled across an astonishing revelation. In the Judeo-Christian Creation story, the serpent is depicted as a cunning force that lures Adam and Eve away from God. The serpent is understood to be the anti-God, the anti-Truth, the embodiment of deception. This I knew. What I didn’t know is that the Hebrew people who first heard this story were shaped by the idea that the serpent was the symbol of feminine wisdom. [ … ] The serpent as feminine wisdom was the broadly held cultural idea. So, when the male leaders retold the Creation story, their choice to position the serpent (of all of the animals in the Garden of Eden) as the embodiment of deception was a direct attack on feminine wisdom. [ … ] forging the idea that divine feminine wisdom, like the serpent, is to be mistrusted and rejected. The cultural idea of male god bulldozes over scripture that clearly depicts God as a spirit who possesses both masculine and feminine characteristics.”3

   ---

   Why have I let myself tell myself I am scared of snakes for so long in whitemalegod’s world?

   ---

3. Chapter 10: god of white women (in its entirety): “White femininity is one of whitemalegod’s best disguises. [ … ] a white woman’s ‘I’m uncomfortable’ is always going to be valued over a Black woman’s ‘I can’t breathe.’ White patriarchy will always circle the wagons around white femininity, especially if it means it can continue to uphold the social pecking order by keeping Black women in their place at the bottom. As long as white women use their femininity to silence Black women’s pain, whitemalegod lives on.” 4

White woman to white woman: read Chapter 10. Think about how many times we have seen this happen or been complicit, whether knowingly or unknowingly. We must do better.

Related to these topics, I will continue to sit deeply with the questions Dr. Cleveland and many others are asking us white women. I will continue to work toward healing from my inherited white supremacist conditioning, and toward transforming my relationships, solidarity, and understanding of and participation in reparations. As Dr. Cleveland states: “[ … ] when white women hear the title of my book, the most common unsolicited response is an enthusiastic, ‘I know! I say that all the time: God is a woman and she is Black!’ I’ve received this response countless times, so I have a ready-made follow up. ‘So, tell me. How has this belief transformed your relationships to, solidarity with, and reparations toward Black women?’ Again, crickets.”5

Switching to this month’s book, today I started Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne.6 But I only made it to the introductory quotes before I fell down the rabbit hole of 17th-century pamphleteer-beefing:

“Moses describeth a woman thus: ‘At the first beginning,’ saith he, ‘ woman was made to be a helper unto man.’ And so they are indeed, for she helpeth to spend and consume that which man painfully getteth. He also saith that they were made of the rib of a man, and that their froward [difficult] nature showth; for a rib is a crooked thing good for nothing else, and women are crooked by nature, for small occasion will cause them to be angry.”

I had never heard this quote from Joseph Swetnam’s pamphlet “The Arraignment of Lewde, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women” before today.7 Regardless, it seems plain that cherry-picking biblical references and upholding them as fact through leaps of logic continue to be mainstay tactics of misogynistic messaging 4 centuries later—particularly through the pamphleteer-beefing of our time: socials.

In a world that too often feels pamphleteer-beefing and whitemalegod, I will be doing my best to increasingly and intentionally contribute to that which is Sacred, Black, and Feminine. The latter world is all encompassing. Need and pain are received and met through abundance, being in community, and love—not through denial, scarcity, punishment, “rugged self-reliance”, nor shaming.

In closing: on serpents and scope. I have always been scared of snakes. I bought the snake hairclip in the top photo this summer on a whim because I thought it would help me with some pseudo-immersion-therapy. And—despite my aversion to snakes—I thought it was objectively cool and that it would match my silver streaks well. This fall, I have regularly had the chance to be in close proximity to a nonchalant ~21-year-old corn snake named Princess. Then I read God Is A Black Woman. I have ignorantly allowed whitemalegod’s severance of my own connection with serpentine feminine wisdom for too long. With this new knowledge, I will be repairing my relationship with feminine wisdom by overcoming my fear of snakes and by trying to be in better connection with my body.

Relatedly, I am working on scope and trying to keep things simple. This is something I am continuing to practice in writing (with a coach), through al-anon (with my sponsor), and through structure and accountability with myself (re physical, mental, and emotional health). Although most of the time it feels like I’m receiving feedback that “I’m doing it wrong,” I’m reminding myself that I’m actively seeking out this feedback so that “I can do it right” some of the time. I am currently focusing my time, attention, and capacity to navigate slivers of discord and violence that have unexpectedly entered my life. I am practicing detachment in a way that protects me, my loved ones, my energy, and my goals. With this, I will be further narrowing my scope. There is too much to be grateful for. There is too much work to do for there to be any other option than to soundly move forward with Cardi B’s recent NPR Tiny Desk concert on repeat.8

Thank you for reading and I wish you a safe, joyful-when-it-can-be, fulfilling, and healthy November. Get out there and vote if you have not done so already. <3

-A lewde, idle, froward, unconstant, vain white woman (aka crooked by nature)

Donation Spotlight

• Loving Black Single Mothers —> Donate to Ecosystems of Care here

  There is an option for every type of donation, particularly going into the holidays. Or sign-up for the newsletter and/or donate one-time. Ethos: Through their ecosystems, they co-create economies of mutual support where people who are financially abundant, time abundant, or skill abundant are given the opportunity to redistribute and share their abundance by giving directly to Black single mothers.

Funeral-Home-Studio-Apartment-Wallpaper Trivia

Q: What New England town is known as “The Witch City”?

A: (You guessed it.) Salem, Massachusetts.

More on this topic later. I will admit that I am still plodding through Caliban and The Witch because there is so much to research and to understand. The footnotes and selected images are fascinating and unyielding.

Additional photos

Part 1—Introduction

TSF Theme Alert: Sexual assault and CSAM. Absolutely pass if not for you & please return another time as you see fit.

Dear Reader,

This is dedicated to survivors and victims among us seen and unseen daily—to the September Survivors Solidarity March, the 60 Million Survivors Rising campaign, and to survivors/victims of wartime and military sexual violence—including those in Gaza, Sudan, in US ICE detention centers, and our own neighbors who may be transient/unhoused heading into this winter. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Resources below in connection to some themes. Please note that I am a writer and certifiably not a mental health/legal professional.

• RAINN

• 1in6.org

• The Trevor Project

• National Immigrant Justice Center (Know Your Rights—What to Do if You or a Loved One is Detained)

• The SafeHelpline (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, National Guard, Coast Guard, Space Force, Department of War)

• World Without Exploitation

• NAMI Warmlines Directory

• Warmline.org

• Family Online Safety Institute

• Some 12-Step Programs

• 988 Lifeline

Part 2—But Nothing Bad Happened To Me

I continue to live above death. We all do. (I may be doing so more explicitly at this very given moment than you, but we will ebb and flow on this, Dear Reader). There are many ways to lose people. When you do, they are still always with you: realities and symbolisms shift. I’m finding myself on my knees a lot these days.

Especially when the black mini van with coach plates discreetly creaks and backs into the garage next door on a night run. Or, at dusk, when I can see the silhouette of what looks to be a shovel handle inside the funeral home garage’s frosted, semi-opaque panels.

Meanwhile, I’m having fun decorating my tiny space in goth/hyper-femme ways I haven’t before. A lot of pinks/blacks, intense craft-store seasonal florals, unicorns, titanium-coated quartz, skull and skeleton-imagery, a salt crystal lamp, and a floral grandma tea kettle I want to grow old with.

There is also an element of defective detective trope that I now just accept is part of who I am. Or, simply, living out of some boxes for-longer-than-what-I-keep-calling-a-little-longer. In addition to what I have made lush, pink, softly-lit, and homey. It’s all in the contrast of extremes, at least that’s what I have been telling myself. (6)

As I work with predominantly rural white 9th-10th graders in 2026, I am reminded that in an alternate timeline, I am still a white woman and mother to a white 9th grader. Their name is Jude.

What would I say to Jude about the fact that at least 10 Black people have been found hanging from trees in 2026? (Mostly ranging between ages 16-39, their names are Tasia Fortune, Demartravion “Trey” Reed, Demetrius Fleming, Justice Kai James, Kyle Bassinga, To’Nea Nicole Miller, Jerard “Jay” Jackson, Torrance “Tory” Medley, and two currently unidentified men. I bow my head, donate from afar what I can, and honor their names with documentation. It feels like nothing in comparison to the gravity of these young people’s lives and futures lost—and the irreplaceable holes in their families and communities. I was in a space this week in which I was told indirectly by someone that they don’t trust white people and that they are sick of “nice” white people. I really don’t disagree.) (7)

What would I say to Jude about the Epstein Files, ICE, AI, Nolan Welles, J. Doe from Cornell University—about our world? [I don’t know—are there words? / There need to be words and accountability.] But I know I love Jude in all timelines. And I tell them this, even if they hate me for what I have had to do and be to raise them in this alternate timeline. I am especially thinking of all you parents and children these days, Dear Reader.

I first learned what rape was after watching a Law & Order: SVU episode. I was maybe 11. My dad told me what this thing meant. For the next 6 months to a year, I cast my eyes down at any man I did not know and tried to stay away from them. (It was almost like my other phobia at the time—that one irrational—of botflies claiming me as their host in rural Downeast Maine.)

But nothing bad happened to me. On the last night of my freshman year at college, I was roofied by a friend of my teammate. (Let’s call my teammate Adam.) Adam’s friend, who none of us had met before, came out with the team that night. I believe we were at The Dirty D. Adam later took me safely back to my dorm in a cab (at the urging of my teammate friends for what could be construed as holding Adam accountable for his friend). I did not wake up until the next day late in the late afternoon to the blinking red light of 20+ voicemails on my dorm phone from my teammate friends (I did not have a cell phone then). Then I glanced across the tiny room and saw that my roommate had moved out completely—with the help of her family—while I had been passed out. Did they check on me? Why did Adam’s friend choose to roofie me that night? Was it because it was common knowledge that I had already been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning earlier that year and they thought that no one would believe me if something had happened? What would have happened if my teammates and friends had not been there?

Since then, I get closed-container drinks in bar environments when I can and keep eyes on the drink as it changes hands when I can. When I have bartended, I have always offered to keep drinks safe for others behind the bar, especially for people who are drinking alone.

Rape and pedophilic culture haunt us, our children who are our future, and our democracy daily—all with our White House’s base blessing. This is not new.

“[In 14th-into-15th-century] France, the municipal authorities practically decriminalized rape, provided the victims were women of the lower class. [ … ] On average, half of the town male youth, at some point, engaged in these assaults, which [can be described as] a form of class protest, a means for [working-class] men—who were forced to postpone marriage for many years because of their economic conditions—to get back “their own” and take revenge against the rich. But the results were destructive for all workers, as the state-backed raping of poor women undermined the class solidarity that had been achieved in the anti-feudal struggle.” (8)

This depiction feels unnervingly close to current economic conditions contributing to manosphere culture in 2026, and to the consequences we are facing from this culture.

But nothing bad happened to me. The specter of sexual assault undermining class solidarity brings to mind rape allegations made in Summer 2026—against someone I went to high school with but do not know personally—that had national and statewide political impacts. Enough has been written about this, there is nothing further for me to add, and I do not wish to interfere with any possible ongoing matters.

If our “American ideals” were heavily shaped by what had and had not worked for racialized patriarchy in Western Europe—like state-sanctioned sexual assault to splinter class relations—what measures of safety against sexual violence were built into our Constitution for adult citizens—let alone for our youth? This is with the understanding that our Constitution was drafted to preserve the property and power of cis-hetero-white people (men), and is currently being tested and teased back to its original (and more explicit purposes) each day. With this logic, it is in this group’s interest to preserve the use of force and sexual violence as a tool to uphold its power.

Fast forward to a recent constitutional example harming our youth from Summer 2026: braiding AI with the First Amendment, “in his decision, Judge John Z. Lee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, referred to two U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1969 and 2002. The first says people have the right to keep obscenity in the privacy of their homes and the second says child sex abuse material that does not depict real children is not child pornography and is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The judge also said that while he is bound by precedent, he is concerned by "the lines these cases draw." (9)

Simply put: child sex abuse material (CSAM) depicting real or “not real” children urgently constitutes CSAM and should not be protected by the First Amendment. I ask our judges and lawmakers to get “unbound” by precedent real quick in connection with CSAM, democracy, and the threat to our collective future.

Speaking of democracy, Rebecca Solnit reminded us last summer: “Democracy [ … ] means a society and system in which everyone’s rights matter, everyone’s voice is heard and everyone is equal under the law. [ … ] Rapists count on this not being true [ … ]. A society that perpetuates and protects this [ … ] arrangement is rape culture, and it’s been our culture throughout most of its existence.” (10)

But nothing bad happened to me. I remember feeling inexplicable—I didn’t have the words for it then—[shame] of my body for the first time when I was about 9/10. I became aware of a man in a public place—I didn’t have the words for it then—[looking me up and down].

None of this is new. Will we let our country continue to be defined by rape and pedophilic culture under the guise of democracy for the few?

But nothing bad happened to me. I once went to view an apartment in a rural spot during my lunch break and did not happen to mention to anyone where I would be. It was just a quick errand. It turns out I did not have cell reception as I pulled into the small business’s gravel lot with the apartment behind it. And, it was before location tracking was common. Upstairs in the small unit with close, sunbeaten air, time stopped the illuminated dust motes. I realized only then that an extremely large and muscular man—who looked easy with violence—and who I did not know, blocked the doorway with his towering frame while showing me the space. He owned the shop below. My heartbeat intuited the thoughts behind his eyes mirroring mine: that he could do something and get away with it. Then, just as quickly, the weight shifted in his heavy workboots and he freed the path to the doorway again. I think I had even made some lame comment to the effect of: “I need to head back to my job now that my lunch break is over”—trying to casually state that, yes, people knew where I was and were expecting me to come back.

Within these narratives, I can’t stop thinking about how irreparably rape and pedophilic culture harm us all—very much including men and white men—as clearly evidenced by 1in6.org. I would also gather that 1 in 6 is an inaccurate representation of sexual assault and abuse occurring against men due to under-reporting. This is heart-shredding, and deserves far more focus in our conversations and narratives to foster holistic understandings around crimes of a sexual nature (CSN) and trauma. (Including the fact that intra-family abuse is common and taboo, and that people who commit CSN are not always cis-hetero men; in particular, women committing CSN is less talked about.) And—unpopular as it may be—we need further examination and understanding around recidivisim and recovery to also break chains of further perpetration. I cannot speak to this knowledgeably so I will leave it here with this admittedly pre-DJT-2.0 policy brief from The Sentencing Project. In these realms, I am trying to respectfully understand more perspectives and learn about restorative justice to see in what ways I can contribute to the ripple effects of healing efforts. (11)

But nothing bad happened to me. I once hitchhiked home late at night in my early 20s after a retail shift when I did not have a car (it was an especially vulnerable time when my housing and shared access to a vehicle had unexpectedly fallen through; I was renting from someone who, for Svedka handles, all but went to the redemption center more than they did to the liquor store).

I didn’t intend to necessarily hitchhike but was walking home in the dark and a man stopped to offer me a ride. He had a nice car and seemed OK. He was probably 10 or so years older than me. He asked me a lot of questions. I lied in each of my answers. I think I said my name was Krystal(?) I planned to have him drop me off at the end of my road so he would not see where I lived. I could not help but notice as we drove through the isolated strip next to the tarn that the doors were child-locked. My sensations were dulled, muted, and all but anesthetized in that car: it was as if the entirety of the universe was in that one ride. Was this what it felt like without gravity? And I remembered how fond Edgar Allen Poe seemed to be of tarns. For the rest of the ride, all I could do was angst that he would pull over at the fork to drop me off at the end of my road. As if I had any power over the wheel. (Jesus certainly didn’t seem to in that moment.) And that he would not keep driving. As we approached the fork where my road was, I moved my eyes without moving my head to see if he would stop. My heart guttered when I saw what looked to be—again—indecision in his eyes. Then he stopped. I got out and said thank you like the good girl I was and quickly walked to safety at my Svedka landlord’s house. The man in the nice car drove on.

But nothing bad happened to me. It was bottles-deep in my shift at a rustic-fine dining restaurant—cash-only and attracting unimaginable pockets of niche wealth. It was a small, neighborhood, fresh-from-the-dock-around-the-corner, and seen-and-be-seen-scene for the summer colonists who gave me fat tips allowing me to save for my move to Nashville. (It is no longer in business.) I kept telling myself it would be last serving job. (Note: I know now that it probably won’t be and that’s totally OK.) That night, I was angling some delicate and larger tables that were my focus. So the seemingly down-to-earth father-son duo who was ordering beers and having a good time seemed like my chill table where I could buy myself buffer space from the bigger-tops. That was until the father continued drinking his beers and escalating in increasingly uncomfortable comments about my physical appearance and speculating what I did “to stay in shape”. As I navigated the delicate tables, now including theirs, I willed the minutes by and gave service with a smile. The father and son ended up being the last table and stayed after we closed. The father cajoled, and then insisted, that I come back to his hotel with him. Were he and his son into that shit together? (The hotel where presidents have stayed, he might as well have told me as if that was impressive and like I didn’t know—I could have told him that there is a now-40+-year-old unsolved murder of a 27-year-old woman all but on those same hotel grounds.) I politely turned him down (again, with a smile); the bartender and my boss watched from the side in discomfort while running through their closing tasks and keeping an eye on me. At least he will give me a good tip, I thought, going back to get the completed bill and to rhetorically ask if he wanted change. He said he was all set, made overtures of somehow(?) staying in touch, and then gave me a long hug. You know the kind. I withstood the hug and pressing as my coworker and boss stood near. The father and son left. He only gave me a 20% tip. I try not to think of him and his son when I eat goat cheese (they had asked for extra all night.)

But nothing bad happened to me. My boss would put his hand on the small of my back every time he came to the machine where I was working.

But nothing bad happened to me. I moved on early from two seasonal jobs at various points in my 20s for other reasons but the timing could not have been better in each. I did not want to be caught in the supply room with the line cook at the restaurant. It had happened once before and I saw how he watched me. Or—I did not want to get close to the belt in the back area of the processing plant because that was where a man who worked the forklift usually lurked. I saw how he watched me.

But nothing bad happened to me. A drunk family friend insisted that someone—and then that I—dance with him. No one else would and people urged me on to do so. He was very drunk. So I politely fell on my sword. But then it was his as he groped me, and told me to dance more slowly and to grind on him. I left his embrace as soon as I could without making a scene.

But nothing bad happened to me. A drunk and high-as-fuck friend-of-the-host put his hand on my ass in a room full of people. I could not believe that this was happening. I hissed “don’t touch me,” to which he promptly grabbed my ass again. I moved away from him but didn’t tell anyone else until later because I didn’t want to make a scene.

But nothing bad happened to me. I was in high school, zoning out, and walking with my brother out of the grocery store into the parking lot. My brother suddenly walked over to another car with a quickness. (What?) He all but reached into the car’s window and had words with the person in the car before coming back. I was eventually able to get out of him that the man in the car he had stopped had been taking photos of me without my knowledge or consent. I was conflicted on multiple fronts by this information.

But nothing bad happened to me. I was in London in a bar and an extremely drunk man tried to interrupt and insert himself in a conversation I was having with a friend-of-a-friend. She did not know him and I just said that we were talking and semi-turned away from him—maybe even with a gracious smile(?) “You’re a real asshole, aren’t you?” he said to me. After that I had a sharp retort and he then proceeded to aggressively follow me for the rest of the night to infiltrate groups that I was a part of until I got my people and left. I stupidly cried afterward.

But nothing bad happened to me. “She’s too nice” / “You need to smile more—don’t take it badly” / “She’s too formal.” / “Oh, so [teaching] fulfilled your need to be a mother?”—things decision-making men at levels above me communicated to me directly or stated to me in my last corporate role. All but one of these comments came from decision-makers who held the keys to my ability to earn a wage/salary. The happy hours and professional pressure to attend them as a now-non-drinker were unyielding. (A woman—who I am now connected to on Linkedin(!)—even cited biblical passage in connection with rape on a separate team’s communication channel. Such a great topic for the workplace. This same workplace also donated $250K to DJT’s campaign and/or inauguration and shares office space/contracts with Dell, another DJT mega-donor.)

But nothing bad happened to me. I have been individually stalked and threatened. In the woods. During a trail race, on and off the trail.

But nothing bad happened to me. There have been solo hikes, bikes, runs, and walks during which I wasn’t sure I would make it home safely—not because of nature, conditions, or lack of preparation.

But nothing bad happened to me. A new friend and I were out on Samaín in Galicia. It was a wild night during which I tried not to embarrass her while gagging on pulpo in a very local spot she took me. Earlier in the evening we had been sitting at an outdoor bar table and were speaking a mix of Castellano and English to get by between us. Two older Finnish men at a table nearby—one of whom was more assertive by half—asked if they could join us because they could speak English with us and were just in port for the weekend. They were both retired and sailing one of their yachts around. I believe their next stop was somewhere in France. My friend and I had loose dinner plans, but looked at each other: it was Samaín after all. So we let them ply us with the bar’s make-do romitottis (aka hot toddies which are for sure Scandi/Nordic/New England-commonplace but not so in Galicia). Then they tried to convince us to come back on their yacht. We said we had a dinner reservation—they pressed us on it, asked to join, and said we could all go back to the yacht afterward. My friend and I still parted ways with them and kept an eye on our surroundings the rest of the night—after painting our faces like cats and dancing to the Spice Girls at a nearby club later on. (That was honestly the last show-stopping hangover I’ve had since I stopped drinking alcohol.) (12)

But nothing bad happened to me or others. I have been told “no” in sober and non-sober contexts and listened to that as lack of consent from others.

But nothing bad happened to me or others. There were no Title IX complaints or incidents reported to my department when I worked as an overnight college campus security dispatcher. I, myself, had recently graduated college. But were there? Did things ever go unreported? There were brief minutes that winter when I had to break protocol, and desperately abandon my watch without being relieved by a guard—because they patched through that they were too far out on campus rounds in that moment—to sprint down the hall and retch my graveyard shifts with morning sickness. This happened fewer than 5 times, but I did not feel good about it and it did not feel good. I think about moments like these that happen because we are human. The security guards did not know I was pregnant on their watch.

Part 3—The Personal

I acknowledge that I have slipped off of my original proposed schedule of once-monthly Views From Above the Funeral Home pieces. I am going to call my bonus July piece “my August piece” and consider this as my September piece. Things I am working on:

1. Limiting scope.

2. Putting pieces out as I more-or-less write them. (This advice was imparted to me twice this summer separately in two very interesting chance encounters with people I had the pleasure of meeting but who I will probably never see again.)

3. Finishing what I start.

4. A project idea/writing sample for creative nonfiction MFA applications and taking feedback from a writing coach.

5. Applying to said MFA programs (low-residency + full-time).

6. Not limiting/damaging myself with time-wasting self-criticism.

7. Honing my craft through consistency and by taking myself seriously.

8. Building and creating in other aspects of my life for myself and others. (It doesn’t matter who is in the White House at the end of the day.)

9. Spending as little time on social media as possible, not using AI, and listening to the news in Spanish.

10. Doing fun things with people who care about the world, in ways big and small.

11. Celebrating going into my 22nd month of sobriety. My current apartment is the first place I’ve lived in my entire life where alcohol is not a fixture. It is peaceful, if not the tidiest ; )

12. Strengthening my body.

13. Continuing to work on my inverted assignment from Views From Above the Funeral Home: Respair, Not Being A Good Woman + Freedom Summer 2026

I continue to live above death and within racialized patriarchy. We all do. I’m still finding myself on my knees a lot these days. But I’m deciding it to be: I am on My knees. It is of my own volition and with humility. I will keep thinking of what to say to Jude, and by extension, to all the young people in my life. I will keep trying to protect their futures and to make our world a safer and more beautiful place in the small ways that I can.

So. That’s how I am, Dear Reader: in solidarity with survivors, victims, and lost people. How are you? I ask this genuinely and with grace.

Funeral-Home-Studio-Apartment-Wallpaper Trivia:

Q: How many rib bones does the human body have?

A: 24 (or 12 pair)

Does this mean men have 23 (11.5 pair) thanks to Eve?! I’ll have to prompt the America.gov chatbot to confirm.

References

1. Survivors’ Solidarity March (a national day of action on 9/26/2026 for survivors of sexual violence and harassment)

2. One Billion Rising (the biggest mass action to end violence against women—cisgender, transgender, and those who hold fluid identities that are subject to gender-based violence—in human history)

3. “The Silence That Meets The Rape of Palestinians”” by Nicholas Kristof, 5/11/2026, The New York Times (Opinion)

4. “When Gunmen Impose a Policy of Rape” by Nicholas Kristof, 9/21, 2024, The New York Times (Opinion)

5. An Investigative Database from Evident Media: Tracking the Toll of Mass Detention (compiled from court records, news reports, and government data)

6. defective detective trope

7. “A Series of Hanging Deaths Has Black Families Demanding Answers” by Alecia Taylor and Dalila-Johari Paul, 9/24/2026, Capital B News.

8. Caliban and The Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici, 2004, Autonomedia, 48-49.

9. “Judge ruled certain AI-generated child sex abuse material is protected by First Amendment. Here’s context” by Anna Rascouet-Paz, 8/29/2026, snopes.com

10. “The Jeffrey Epstein cover-up is an affront to US democracy” by Rebecca Solnit, 9/6/2025, The Guardian

11. Responding to Crimes of a Sexual Nature: What We Really Want Is No More Victims by Kristen M. Budd, Ph.D., 1/30/2024, The Sentencing Project

12. https://viajecaminodesantiago.com/en/curiosities/samhain-galicia-halloween-similarity/

Further Reading that Informed Me [TW: Sexual Assault, CSAM]

• Toi Smith’s Bookshop.org Library

• Motherless / Online Rape Academy / “Sleep Content” by Jordan Liles, 4/16/2026, snopes.com, 4/16/2026

• Jmail to help us navigate Jeffrey Epstein’s communications in a usable inbox format

• Pop-up Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room: An Exercise in Radical Transparency (@TrumpEpsteinReadingRoom)

• Epstein Cover-to-Cover Up Filibuster (24-hour, uninterrupted, live-streamed reading from the Epstein Files by survivors and other guests)

• “The disturbing rise of ‘gooner’ assaults at Dollar Tree stores" by Andrew Gumbel, 7/20/2026, The Guardian

• “Trump formally accepts defeat in $5 million E Jean Carroll sexual abuse lawsuit” by Molly Crane Newman, 9/29/2026, Akron News-Reporter

Dear Reader: A huge thank you for your support and encouragement. Here is a July 4 Weekend bonus post for you.

I feel like most of our Founding Fathers would have been wearing Nantucket Reds or Klan masks in the 1700s/1800s if they could have.

Question, Dear Reader, what do you call a collective of white men in salmon shorts (aka Nantucket Reds)? Similar question applies for a collective of white men wearing Klan masks. We’ll come back to this in the callback as some levity against the cowardice in the Capitol today. I mean, there are stranger things that have had overlap than Nantucket Reds and Klan masks.

E Pluribus. Full stop. That is the interplay of the textured beauty and richness among and within the peoples, languages, foods, music, art, cultures, traditions, works and craft, service, spirituality, honor, and regions of the United States. We are out of many and there is no unum—or one way to be. If anything, coexistence, interdependence, and the best of us at a people level is implied by the omission of unum.

E Pluribus is who we are.

Unum—to me—rather than connoting a union, connotes the systems that contain us, splinter off those of us who don’t fit the unum, control through terror, and keep us not free.

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Land of the Free: I don’t believe any of us is currently free in the true sense. Do you, Dear Reader? I think many of us may think that we are free, but it is often a cheap freedom contingent on one way to be via systemic oppression (the unum). Not true freedom (which comes with the e pluribus). If you’re playing by the rules (and, hold the “right” cards in terms of health, ability, thin/white/heteronormative physical appearance, docility, etc.) cheap freedom is leased and leashed. It lets you roam on a longer and more gentrified leash than others (hell, the leash might even be gold-plated). But the choke-collar snaps you back to obedience all the same through passive and overt violences hallmarking our allegiance to capitalism. Often guised in policy or masked authority or shell corporations.

Home of the Brave: This, I do not debate. In particular, I have met and hope to have learned from some of the most get-it-tf-done and unflinchingly brave people in the South. For anyone who tries to reductively dunk on the South: just don’t.

I am reflecting on where I was and what I was doing last summer. And: on how this summer I am in one of the most idyllic and coveted places to be for the season, how most people look like me (aka: white), and how it seems like no one is that worried about ICE or the Klan. Or, not as my friend in Tennessee, originally from Sierra Leone, joked to me before I moved: “living the American anxiety dream”.

Before I left my neighborhood in Antioch, I heard through-the-grapevine about someone in my neighborhood calling a household in “to the authorities” to be raided. I am taking this with a grain of salt as I did not hear it directly. But the terror was that, apparently, this same neighbor then aided ICE/CBP/whichever “authorities” came to forcibly remove people from the household. I share this more to sketch where we are at, even if it is partially unfounded. Particularly to show where we are at in Antioch after ongoing ICE raids in 2025 and 2026. This spring in Antioch, a journalist, who I have enjoyed crossing paths with in the past, was taken by ICE. She was released on bond after being detained in an Alabama county jail and then a South Louisiana ICE processing center for 2+ weeks, before presumably continuing to wage her legal battles ongoing. (4)

As long as our neighbors and journalists can be disappeared with limited or no legal recourse—anecdotally and in reality—I do not consider myself to be free. Do you, Dear Reader?

It feels like an architecture of containment is being tactically pressure-tested. Two other areas I am watching within the scope of who can now be taken, incarcerated, institutionalized, and/or marginalized:

1. The recent memo from the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel arguing that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504 requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. Having worked in special education compliance and as an educator, I believe this argument will further fracture state and district’s supports of people with disabilities. Low-incidence and high-incidence disabilities exist in daily life among people you know, your family, and, perhaps, you. This is our e pluribus. The coded language being used in the memo is nightmarish. It sets dangerous precedent-potential of interpretation to selectively decline or neglect services, which I have seen occur in special education—even with the protections of ADA and Section 504. (Also, is there anybody other than RFK Jr. who can be in charge of special education at a federal level? Literally. Any. Body?) (5) (6)

2. The use of free speech being used as “evidence” in the sentencings against protesters from last July 4 outside of Fort Worth in Texas. I am not focused on the details of the protest/what did or did not go down, but am observing—again, the precedent-potential, of—how communications, collaborative materials, and writings are now being use-cased as evidence to lock protestors up for longer than those who attacked the Capitol on January 6. (7)

Callback: thanks to @camillard’s retweet: “A collective of white men in salmon shorts is called an ‘allegation’” in response to @BellaJoyAncora’s “Scariest shit you’ll see is a school of salmon shorts swimming in your direction.” Or, after today, scariest shit you’ll see is to be the lone commuter on a tram filled with another “allegation,” Klanspeople. (9)

Now that I am back in New England, I will be carrying an Epi Pen in case of the Nantucket Reds or Klan masks (I’m not allergic to shellfish). In New England, it will be shocking and appalling that Klanspeople marched on the Capitol. Now that I have lived in the South—while I am still apalled—I am not shocked in the slightest and I see the map.

For today, I will do the most American things I can like going to my local farmers market, thinking about narrowing focus to libraries (the places that teach/remind us that there are e pluribus ways to be—watch The Librarians), writing, resting & resisting, constructively criticizing my government and society, and being grateful for life as I live above a funeral home. I will keep reading The Patriarchs by Angela Saini for my study group. Most importantly, I will not bow down, lick one boot, or give in to fear or numbness. (10) (11)

On this day above all others, I am not in the mood to be told to smile more and to performatively venerate those who rape, enslave, and indoctrinate—and those who make it so they can. Regardless of politics, I don’t think any American stands by that. Even the history books still allowed in classrooms indicate that false veneration is incompatible with true freedom.

Hold my neat mocktail, Dear Reader: let’s rebuild together. Time is of the essence.

References:

1. https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/08/13/west-tenn-town-approves-corecivic-to-run-immigration-detention-facility-after-chaotic-meeting/

2. @raydipietro—Instagram—7/2/25

3. https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default?BillNumber=HB1442&ga=114

4. https://nashvillebanner.com/2026/03/19/estefany-rodriguez-ice-custody-bond-release/

5. https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1446701/dlhttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-actions-signal-a-move-toward-institutionalizing-people-with-disabilities-advocates-warn

6. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-actions-signal-a-move-toward-institutionalizing-people-with-disabilities-advocates-warn

7. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/23/prairieland-ice-protesters-texas-sentenced

8. https://www.ilrc.org/redcards

9. @the_lastt_devill—6/21/26 post; ignore the weird AI synopsis and handle; I could not find the OP

10. https://thelibrariansfilm.com/

11. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-patriarchs-the-origins-of-inequality-angela-saini/6e10d9740ec191ea

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detention

13. https://www.de-icecitizensbank.org/impact/luis

14. YouTube: Fuck ICE by B-Dub

15. https://music-city-migrawatch.mailchimpsites.com/

16. YouTube: Palestine by KneeCap

17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecap_(film)

Trivia:

Although this is not a true Views From Above The Funeral Home post, here is the funeral-home-apartment wallpaper token trivia, so as not to leave Dear Readers hanging.

Q: When Armstrong & Aldrin blasted off from the moon, what fell over?

A: The American flag.

Music & Inspiration:

Post inspired by having the song, Fuck ICE by B-Dub, stuck in my head while weeding. (14) The song was included in a recent post by Music City MigraWatch of footage of ICE activity in Madison and Brentwood, TN. Support their work or buy something on their pantry/supply list from afar and have it delivered if you can. (15)

Fuck ICE will continue to be a summer anthem along with Palestine by Kneecap (love you, lads & we recognize and love that you are masked for art and not terror). (16) Watch their film if you have not already. (17)

I expect by blasting said tracks this summer, I will ward off allegations described above—or inspire discourse, in which I will endeavor to engage up to a point until it becomes unsafe or I need my Epi pen.

Note: To be gender-neutral, I have referred to all participants in today’s march (or whatever tf it was) on the Capitol as Klanspeople, versus Klansmen. I think they would really appreciate this inclusive language choice and I encourage you to use it. I jest, but, in seriousness: we all know now that white women sew the hoods and run the Daughters of the Confederacy. So, the Klan does include us by association. Any one else want to change this too?

I. Introduction

Greetings, Dear Reader. It has been some time. Old parts of me are dying, making way for the new. I am in my own tomb-womb / womb-tomb period embracing respair. I imagine it to be a space of being that every person encounters at some shade of life, however young or old. (1) (2)

If I wasn’t before, I am now most definitely writing to you while not being a good woman. The social consequences for the perceived threat level I present to society as a non-traditional/educated/currently-child-free/child-less/sober adult she/her-white woman do not rate in comparison to the childhoods stolen based on the perceived threat level they present, as described by Jesmyn Ward in her 2017 essay Raising A Black Son In The US.

Ward writes:

“I wonder at what age my wispy-haired social boy will learn that he can’t reach out his hand to every stranger. I wonder how old he will be when the immaculate ladies flinch. When the ruddy men will see a shadow of a gun in his open palm.” (2)

This essay is one of the many in Ward’s On Witness and Respair that I recently finished on my trip from Tennessee to Maine. I will let you read the rest, and I highly recommend that you do. I can’t stop thinking about her brother, Joshua, and their woods-of-Mississippi-sibling dynamic—in a number of ways strikingly similar to my own woods-of-Maine-sibling dynamic. Except for: Jesmyn and Joshua are Black. My brother and I are white. In 2026, this difference starkly still creeps into every facet of our beings, including our rights to life and to representation.

In response to this, Ward teaches us a forgotten word:

Respair (noun, obsolete): fresh hope after despair. (2)

The above themes are within the realm of what I hope to explore over the course of the next 12 months in a project I am calling Views From Above The Funeral Home. The plan is that this project will also help keep me accountable in engaging with the year-long readings, materials, and virtual study group I am participating in—Not A Good Woman, created/led by Toi Marie. (3)

So for now, I continue to get quietly comfortable watching people not-know-what-to-do with me. The real and good ones know what to do, because it is simple and true to know what to do. I will be watching false things crumble and die without feeling obligated to perform resuscitation or to keep up appearances. I will try to contain my mirthy smirk as I turn away from the rubble and protect my energy for what matters.

(And, yes—as my series title suggests: I am living above a funeral home. Again.

It is an odd comfort to me as I continue to tread griefs in a place where it is the every-day. It feels safe, even womb-like, as I return to my tomb. And like I don’t have to pretend or distance myself from death.

(In thinking about tombs and wombs, I learned that I am unsurprisingly-and-very-much-not-the-first to do so. Neolithic burial structures in Ireland and Scotland, and even more recent burial structures in Jerusalem and Galilee, were often built symbolically to represent the anatomy of the womb. Apparently poet/writer Dylan Thomas described early works as being from his “womb-tomb period” although his direct attribution on this seems debatable. He died when he was one year older than I am now so I don’t know how that works for periodic perspective on wombs and tombs. (1) (4))

More on this later. Don’t worry, Dear Reader, if you’re getting concerned. I burned sage for my past self in the space and for the space itself.

For now, you will find a reflection below from the 5/16/26 All Roads Lead to the South event in which I participated in Montgomery, AL. It is focused on the impact the experience had on me and how I hope to pass this impact on in a constructive and regenerative way with a sense of urgency—and with wisdom imparted from organizers (see list at end) and writings/thinkings of people like Jesmyn Ward, Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and all of the new ideas I am already being exposed to from my study group.

Thank you, Dear Reader. Feel free to be in touch.

II. Freedom Summer 2026

At All Roads Lead to the South—from underneath the magnolia’s glossy green shade in front of the former temple of the confederacy—I listened to speakers from all over the country. They came to Montgomery, AL, on 5/16/26 to connect, show up, and to reground after the SCOTUS Louisiana v. Callais et al. decision and redistricting guttings across the South.

Or, as Tequila M. Johnson of Nashville-based The Equity Alliance said: “I’m going to talk to us. Because this moment is about us—[ … ] this ain’t about no vote, y’all, that’s what they want us to think it’s about. They want us to think that this is about one person, or this is about me and my organization, they want us to think that this is about one or two politicians, they want us to think that this is about a platform or an ego, but it’s bigger than all of that.” (7)

AOC reminded us: “They’re afraid of us coming together. They’re afraid of us protecting one another. Alabama is the crucible. Georgia is the crucible. Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi [are] the crucibles. So if you are not from here, it is time to pull up.” (7)

I am focusing on the “if you are not from here” part. Because I’m not from the South.

I’m from a white, population-<40 town in Maine. I grew up on a farm and my family slept in one bedroom in a camp until I was 7 or 8 while we built our new house next door, floor-by-floor as money allowed. This was not uncommon in my community and communities like ours, or in the Mississippi communities Ward describes. Or, in many towns and places across our country that aren’t depicted in the pristine homes and sets designed for our screens and to make us feel like we’re not enough to sell us more. This is not down home. You may live in a community like this now and know this yourself firsthand.

For personal and family reasons, I have moved back to Maine after close to nine years in Nashville. I am simultaneously grieving on multiple fronts, euphoric, and recognizing the privilege, compassion, and ruthlessness required to make this change. First: I need to get settled. Then: I’m going to focus on increasing access to education, opportunity and resources with eyes on those who identify as white women—and youth—in Maine. I don’t know how yet, but that’s OK. Hear me out as this may seem like an inverted way to pull up to the crucibles.

In listening to people/experts like Dr. Brittney Cooper (aka @professor_crunk): “For white feminists, organizing white women is the task at hand.” (8) White women collectively hold the keys in numbers as a voting bloc, in addition to being expected to inherit in part from the “horizontal wealth transfer” in the coming decades. (9) We have the power and, increasingly as a bloc, the resources. Despite what it may seem, or what we let ourselves believe.

White women played nasty repeat on controversial heartbreak in the 2024 presidential election: we once again revealed our sickly integration across class and education levels. Fracturing us further, we are divided across marital and religious lines. Note that education levels among Black and Latinx women do not seem to have a significant impact on voting trends like they do with white women. (10) (11)

As Dr. Cooper’s Instagram post from 11/11/24 states (in part): “On white women: y’all actually made some ground with college educated women so rather than blue bracelets you should actually figure out how you gonna reach the non-college educated next time. Black women don’t have this problem because we have more class integration in our families, communities, (and our churches.) Often the ones of us you know are the ones that have “made it” but many of the folks we talk to regularly have not.” (8)

These thoughts flow into Brittany Packnett Cunningham’s (aka @mspackyetti) words just over a year later on the 1/27/26 episode of We Can Do Hard Things (How We All Become Minnesota). (Note: Brittany Packnett Cunningham broadly defines “big-W Whiteness” in this episode as a thing providing sociopolitical and economic protection to people deemed “white”, and as being characterized by cultural dominance and rampant individualism—as opposed to collectivism/being in community.) (12)

“We expect white women to vote in a particular way and then forget that they weren’t taught sisterhood the same way we were. [ … ] So suddenly, I’m like, well, you betrayed me. Well, you were never on my team in the first place, ‘cuz you don’t know how to be on a team. Nobody ever taught you that. Nobody ever socialized you to that. I’m not blaming you for it. I’m saying [big-W Whiteness] is your conditioning. You have to be a traitor to that conditioning. [ … ] I know that asking you to be a traitor to the thing that raised you is hard. I know that expecting you to be traitorous to the thing that has made you feel warm and fuzzy inside for your entire life feels like an impossibility.

And yet, you are going to keep dying from the same cancer of systemic oppression that I am, if you don’t. You might not die as fast as me, you may not die as painfully as me, but it’s coming for you too.

And Minneapolis has shown a lot of people that it’s coming for white people too. And in the end, we should be building a world where it does not take people being disappeared, and abducted, and kidnapped, and murdered on camera for us to get that—and for us to stop choosing individualism when the only way we’re going to get free is together. A lot of white people don’t realize that they’re not free.” (12)

So, to follow Dr. Cooper’s assignment as I continue with the readings of the Not A Good Woman study group, I plan to focus namely on those who identify as white women—and youth—in a rural white state (that has a unique electoral college structure) (14) to increase access to education, opportunity, and resources. This is the specific lever I feel called on to pull to try to repair integration amongst white women. Based on the needs organizers I have been exposed to have highlighted, my own professional background/lived experience, and my return to my home state—this is my focus area to help drive outcomes that collectively get us free, chip away at systemic oppression, and build a world in which all of our babies can reach out their hand to every stranger. Consider it a work-in-progress inverted assignment. Like I said: I don’t know how yet. I am imperfect.

But I will also continue to be questioning myself in line with the writing of @toimarie (creator of my current study group). In a 5/24/26 Instagram post questioning white women’s conceptualization of matriarchy, she posits (in caption): “So the question I’m sitting with is: what does it actually mean for white women to “call in matriarchy” while remaining materially aligned with white social order, white comfort, white wealth accumulation, white family protection, policing, borders, extraction, and the protection of white men?”

The need for this study group is described by its creator: “Because the good woman isn’t just a personal identity. She is a political instrument. She is compliant, property-respecting, state-supporting, respectability-performing, and useful to empire. [ … ] The good woman is not simply a patriarchal construct. She is the feminized face of empire. She is one of the ways systems of domination reproduce themselves through women’s bodies, women’s compliance, women’s labor, and women’s emotional conditioning.” (13)

I will keep listening, learning, trying, fucking up, and figuring it out as I go. I will take accountability for impact over intent. I will keep loving the white men I love, having conversations with them that they don’t always want to have with me, and showing up differently in the world than I have in the past with other white men. I will acknowledge when I am wrong, apologize, and change course as needed to be and do better. We all are capable of this.

Like AOC’s message, I want us to come together and protect one another. To do so, I seek to alchemize the energy, urgency, lessons, joy, and strategies I have been absorbing in the South to the North, because the most strategic and tactical way I see for me to personally pull up to the crucibles is actually from afar.

As an originally rural white woman, I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not, or to know first-hand something I don’t, or to ask someone else to perform emotional/intellectual labor for something I should self-educate on before coming with sensitively informed questions and a willingness/accountability to learn and evolve.

I’m going to focus on my task from Dr. Cooper and on showing up differently in the world than I have in the past. (Aka, you have to be free for me to be free.) In particular—to Black women and to Black queer, trans and non-binary people—I don’t want us to let you all down—yet again. Like we have in virtually every presidential election. Like we have since 1619 and before. Like we did during Reconstruction and the abolition movement. Like we did in the suffrage movement. Like we did in Jim Crow and currently in our daily 20th/21st-century life. White women have never been able to afford the untenable costs—to others and to ourselves—of aligning our political power and interests with big-W Whiteness.

And, dear white women—if some of us need to look at it this way: the good and the bad news is that no one is coming to save us but us. We are in everyone else’s goddamn way. We are some of the key players upholding racialized patriarchy. We need to listen, to be intersectional, to reject “rugged individualism”, and—when needed—to genuinely say “I’m wrong, I apologize & I will change/not do this again”. Most importantly, we need to understand why (especially in the age of social media). We need to recondition our understanding of sisterhood. We need to do the work that will free us all—including for those who work against our own and their own interests. (15) (16)

I am already grieving having left my life in Nashville, its friends/communities, and its lessons. But I am also swimming in the joy of being closer to family, old friends, precious new babies, and my beloved ocean. I feel like I have unfinished business in Nashville, but I have to accept that I will need to transmute my efforts at amplification from the South to the North. (Note: Some unfinished business ideas in italics below for anyone who is interested—otherwise, skip to the end of All Roads to the South reflection further down.)

• If I were staying in Nashville, I would apply to Stand Up Nashville’s Boards & Commissions Leadership Institute (see @standupnash). I have now crossed paths with a few people who have done this program, lead it, and who are in the current cohort. I encourage you to apply for a future cohort here if you are interested, committed, and are in Nashville.

• Also, if I were staying in Nashville, I would continue to look into what is needed to run for Metro Council in District 28, either to have supported someone else’s campaign or to even have possibly run myself. (18) Our current District 28 Council Member David Benton does not meet the needs of the moment and his voting record does not reflect the needs of District 28 constituents, especially in the wake of the Antioch HS shooting and the ongoing 2025 + 2026 ICE kidnappings and raids in Antioch. We do not need CM Benton to cozy up to US Rep. Andy Ogles. We need the opposite, which I have told CM Benton in writing and public comment. With respect, CM Benton has always engaged with me when I have reached out and has provided clarifications. But I have never felt that my neighbors and I have been adequately represented by him in Metro Council. I implore Antioch/Nashville to put up a solid candidate for the District 28 Council Member seat :) In my opinion, with the right efforts and dialogue, a strong, multi-generational, and diverse coalition could spring together to support that candidate’s campaign. For example—like when we came together last summer (thanks in large part to Sunrise Movement Nashville, Experience Consulting and stop850.com) and quashed the most recent Franklin Limestone Road rezoning efforts. (19) (20) (21) In the 2023 General Election for District 28, there were only 928 votes cast for two candidates and five write-ins combined. Of which, CM Benton received 557 votes. I see opportunity here regardless of any future structural changes to Metro Council. My understanding is that CM Benton’s term is up in 2027. Who’s up next? I have hope. Or do we call it respair? (22)

I will remember All Roads Lead to the South for the rest of my life. I am deeply grateful to The Equity Alliance, Stand Up Nashville, and to all of the other organizers for their coordination, energy, patience, teachings, and the seamless bus rides there and back. They made it look easy—but saying so diminishes the countless, tireless, and sweaty efforts that went into their organizing efforts across state lines, organizations, and agencies on a tight timeline in the May Alabama heat. Their efforts are unyielding. Support their work and efforts ongoing on the front lines.

I have my inverted assignment. I’m pretty sure I understand it in the way it needs understanding, and I will evolve as I go to amplify collective efforts. I accept that my assignment is now in a different place and via a different manner than what I had thought. At a high-level, I am switching from defense to offense.

White women: let’s have Viola Liuzzo’s courage, humanity, and integrity. (Not Karoline Leavitt’s.) Let’s craft our world to be one in which Ward’s “wispy-haired social boy” can reach out his hand to every stranger. Don’t be the flinching immaculate lady. (She sounds awful anyway.) Smile and reach back to lovingly squeeze his precious little hand. I think we all want to live in that world, so let’s build it together.

As many echoed at All Roads Lead to the South going into Freedom Summer 2026: we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Some voices to follow and support, courtesy of @stillwerise and my IG list: @mspackyetti, @professor_crunk, @ashley_r_allison, @iampastormike_, @bookersquared, @blackvotersmtr, @rolandsmartin, @mslatoshabrown, @riseunitedvote, and @thezactivist @civictn, @theequityalliance, @standupnash, @tequilamjohnson, @aisforafro, @charlaneoliver, @senatorcharlaneoliver, @justinjpearson, @brotherjones_ @unapologeticallyqueen @jesslucywill @expconsultingtn @sunrisenashtn @toismith @feminist @stillwerise

Music (because always music and I am also very sad to leave Music City, USA for obvious reasons and because I am leaving my recording studio behind):

• Playlist: Rama Dawaji’s alleged Spotify playlist (love how among other things, the “article” criticizes her for the “bizarreness” of the playlist name—if only there was as much scrutiny on the subject matter (Palestine) of her alleged playlist)

• Playlist: Best of UGK (inspired by Jesmyn Ward and her brother, Joshua; dominant soundtrack to my drive from Tennessee back to Maine)

• Soundtrack: Is God Is (Aleshea Harris, 2026)

• Album: Fenian by Kneecap

• Album: Strictly 4 The Scythe by Denzel Curry and The Scythe

• Song: Solsticio by Baiuca & Carlos Nuñez (combo of traditional Galician music + electronica for my packing/storage unit trip motivation)

• Song: Bible Belt by Kevin Morby (a theme song to leaving TN/Nashville that just makes me tear up every time I listen to it—counted the crosses “haunting some highway and pinned down by some skyway”—on I-40E, there are noticeably more since 2025)

• Songs/Band: Guided By Angels & Big Dreams by Amyl and the Sniffers (because, I spend/protect my energy & have never been a dull one; and, because I have recent fomo of the Montreal show they played)

• Song: Comeback Kid by Sharon Van Etten

• Song/Cover: Beautiful Strangers by Kevin Morby; Beautiful Strangers as covered by Mavis Staples on her recent album, Sad and Beautiful World (aside: going to Mavis Staples’s 80th Mavis & Friends Birthday Show at the Ryman *Cryman* Auditorium was one of the best)

  • Can we all be beautiful strangers to Jesmyn’s son and to everyone?

• Song: Voices Carry by ‘Til Tuesday (one of my all-time favorite songs & I still get excited when it comes on in a grocery store)

• Song: Alone by The Pretenders (going forward for now with Chrissy Hynde’s attitude)

References

1. Allegedly Dylan Thomas described some of his early work as being from his “womb-tomb” period. If you want to read the back-and-forth conjecture and are into that sort of thing, look no further: https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/31366/where-did-dylan-thomas-refer-to-his-early-poems-as-being-from-his-womb-tomb-per

2. Ward, Jesmyn. On Witness and Respair. Simon and Schuster. (2026)

3. Toi Marie Website (About Tab): https://www.toimarie.com/about

4. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womb_tomb

5. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_State_Capitol

6. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches

7. My own videos from All Roads Lead To The South on 5/16/26

8. @professor_crunk—see 11/11/24 post

9. Dickler, Jessica. “Women will get most of the $124 trillion ‘great wealth transfer.’ Here’s why.” 3/12/25. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/women-will-get-124-trillion-great-wealth-transfer-rcna19607

10. Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “How Will White Women Vote? It’s a Question With a Fraught History.” The New York Times Magazine, 11/2/24. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/magazine/harris-white-women-black-voters.html

11. Kohler, Julie. “Symposium: Can Women Save America? White Women: Our Most Divided Voting Bloc.” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Summer 2020 (No. 57). https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/57/white-women-our-most-divided-voting-bloc/

12. @mspackyetti; We Can Do Hard Things Podcast (1/27/26): https://www.iheart.com/podcast/274-we-can-do-hard-things-82211497/episode/how-we-all-become-minnesota-brittany-packnett-cunningham-319689716 (in particular the ~41-47 min marks)

13. @toimarie: https://www.instagram.com/toimarie/#

14. Rembert, Elizabeth “Nebraska and Maine allocate Electoral College votes differently than other states.” 3/18/24. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/18/1239107257/nebraska-and-maine-allocate-electoral-college-votes-differently-than-other-state

15. Jones, Claudia. “An End to the Neglect [ … ].” Political Affairs. June 1949, 28-29.
    Online version: https://anotherworldarchives.org/claudia-jones/neglect

16. Lynn, Denise. “White Women and Reactionary Politics,” African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) Black Perspectives, 11/12/24.
    https://www.aaihs.org/white-women-and-reactionary-politics/

17. Stand Up Nashville: Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute

18. Nashville & Davidson County: Candidates for Elected Office – Begin the Process Here: https://www.nashville.gov/departments/elections/candidates/begin-here

19. Instagram: https://sunrisemovementnashville.org/

20. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/expconsultingtn/

21. Ross, Braden. “Antioch residents protest construction of warehouse they say could bring hundreds more trucks to the area.” 8/2/25. https://www.wsmv.com/2025/08/03/antioch-residents-protest-construction-warehouse-they-say-could-bring-hundreds-more-trucks-area/?outputType=amp

22. https://ballotpedia.org/David_Benton

Bonus: If you made it this far, congratulations. Your reward is an authentic trivia token from my funeral-home-apartment wallpaper. I will share one at the end of each post until we run out.

Q: 1930’s sure cure for the “depression blues” was what new recreational sport?

A: Miniature Golf

Note: I played 18 holes of mini golf recently for the first time in years. I lost. It was not a sure cure, but was a little bit fun ; )

Disclaimer: I have not vetted trivia and answers—and have no idea of age or source of material. Feel free to debunk if you have strong feelings/evidence on the matter.

(Photo courtesy of The Smith Files: my Mum & me in the late 1900s.)

Note to Reader: This piece was mostly written mid-to-late summer 2025; then I had to walk away. I have left most material as it was to serve as a stamp in time. I have made updates where needed for clarity and to record marked shifts in my perspective. The focus is on my relationship with my Mum towards the end of her life; it is from my POV only out of respect for family and friends. (It is also written with great recognition that 2025 is a universally difficult year.)

PART I: MUM

I just finished removing my Mum’s email address from my list of The Smith Files subscribers. For me, most of 2025 has been spent unemployed, sober, and grieving. I left my teaching job in Spain early after unexpectedly losing my father-in-law; I returned to the US the day before the new administration took office. I would say it was meant to be that I moved back then.

In January as I continued to navigate my partner’s stark loss alongside with them, it simultaneously became all-too-clear to me how rapidly my Mum’s condition had declined while I was in Spain. She had autoimmune encephalopathy (AE), which occurs when a person’s own antibodies or immune cells attack various specific proteins or receptors within their brain. (1)

After a 15+ year battle—and a patchwork of compounded initial misdiagnoses and insurance denials preventing key treatments at key times that set her down a horrifically degenerative path of unrelenting pain, isolation and unyielding medical uncertainty—my Mum’s AE had finally come for her in full. I had been steeling myself for years. But I still wasn’t ready. I don’t think I ever will be. For example, I just went to call her today and then remembered.

I have yet to meet anyone with the same true-to-the-core soundness and light about them in the way that my Mum had. Not fake, not saccharine, not sanctimonious—she was simply herself. She was a quietly badass person, as actually badass people are. This is most definitely not to mythologize her or to say she could do no wrong. To that end, friends and family have been consistently reminiscing on what an “instigator of mischief” she was ; ) One New England family friend laughingly texted me that my Mum even had “the touch of the devil in her”—gasp(!) She had precisely the right amount, in my opinion. Apparently after knowing her for some time, her future father-in-law (my paternal grandfather) dubbed my Mum a “closet bad person” in jest. It was a sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth situation. Talk of sanctity and the devil aside, she was human—and an extremely rare one.

My Mum started talking to me in earnest about ending her own life when I returned from Spain; she was gone by my birthday and shortly after hers. This was not a new subject, and it had been one she and I had broached from time to time as a possibility within the systems, lifestyles, and narratives that do not reflect my family’s reality, or the reality of about 15 million people in the US estimated to be diagnosed with at least one autoimmune disease. We also now know that women are almost twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. (2)

From our initial conversations, I had and will always have complete respect for my Mum’s decision-making and choices. No one but she fully understood the isolation of her real day-to-day experience, her internal world, and the interplay of these with the external world. (*She did raise me on a farm, after all, where lessons of life and death are not contrived.*) There has historically been little funding for AE research around the specific variation of the disease that she had. Within the last two years, she had reached a lifetime chemo toxicity limit because she had undergone experimental treatment at lower dosages for more sustained periods over the years than is customary in typical chemo applications. She truly had tried everything with realistic optimism.

For many reasons obvious to you and not, Dear Reader, this is all complicated for me to put into words; there is so much more I will always be processing. Particularly because she was the person who knew me the best, loved me the most, and was my closest confidante (even though she could not talk on the phone or in person in the way that we both would have wanted due to increasing limitations and disabilities caused by AE). I have always told people that I do not know anyone who would or could handle AE in the manner that she did. Without sugarcoating her pain or being a martyr, she navigated the turn of her life and the turn of her death with the same even hand, humorous candor, and love and consideration for others that was her complete nature. She trusted herself and had planned for this in the ways that she could.

That said, I have stated that I am not mythologizing her. To take this further, I have been carefully monitoring my gapingly-raw-grief-wound’s healing stages (*hemostatic + inflammatory up until now*) so as not to glorify her suicide. I say this because I know that she would not want me to ruminatingly place undue significance on her physical end. She would want me to think back to farm life. She would want acceptance and for me to take my own path. I accept her, her choices, and her outcomes unconditionally. She lived fully and would have chosen life at every turn had that been an option for her. I do not know how I could be moving in this space without having A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (3) already stored in my being and consciousness. A book—once again: teacher, friend and mindshare—challenged everything I thought I had known around suicidal ideation, gravities of pain and suffering, and suicide in general. Additionally, I am exceedingly grateful for resources such as (4) and her Liberatory/Liberation Wellness Network (5) that had already shifted some of my thinking, and had allowed me to more deeply accept my Mum and her paths. I am only now able to write this because my my gapingly-raw-grief-wound is proliferative and seeks to remodel through maturation.

The grief gets murkier because I also feel as if I have lost my child. At various times over the past 15+ years of my Mum’s diseased regression, I have been her part-time and full-time caregiver. During some especially difficult and transitional times for my family, I have cobbled together jobs that would give more flexibility as a caregiver and have temporarily forgone my own health insurance and full-time employment. I have taken unpaid intermittent FMLA leave to help care for her. For a time—when she and I were in between housing—we lived in our friend’s house that was on the market. We would quickly tidy up and go for “drives” when the house was being shown—amidst the backdrop of my Mum’s ongoing chemo treatments. Later on, during the pandemic, I was fortunate to be able to buy another house with my partner using a Family Opportunity Mortgage loan. (6) My parents lived there during the worst of the pandemic before moving back up North to be closer to family and their support.

I don’t know what my family would do now if my Mum were still with us. She received primary benefits and access for her care through Medicaid. My heart shatters for other families like mine, clinging to critical provision of Medicaid services amidst gutting cuts and systems that often incentivize a lack of human care—all well patient/caregiver families juggle the next appointment, pharmacy run, lab result, assisted shower/bath, meal, or toilet arrangement post-chemo. The irony is that there were (and are) many doctors and medical providers on both sides of my Mum’s family. They range from a former Dean of Harvard School of Medicine and President of the National Board of Medical Examiners, to a current surgeon and dermatologist, to a family doctor who bartered his way through The Depression and was put through medical school by his Red Cross Nurse-of-a-wife (my one-of-a-kind great-grandmother).

This same great-grandmother was my Mum’s grandmother—and in many ways also her mother. My great-grandmother had an equal hand in raising my Mum, as my Mum had been younger than her siblings and my great-grandmother had lived with my Mum’s family. This last connection is interesting to think about from a biological perspective. Or rather—my Mum as an unfertilized egg.

At this stage, what would become my Mum would have already been sharing a cellular environment with my Mum’s mother (my grandmother) and my Mum’s grandmother (my great-grandmother, that same Pennsylvania-Dutch Red Cross nurse and lover of all things savory meats & gristle, as I’m told).

For example, as soon as my great-grandmother was 5+ months pregnant with her daughter (my grandmother), the precursor cell of the egg my Mum developed from was already present in my in-utero-grandmother’s ovaries. Aka, three generations were simultaneously sharing the same biological environment within my great-grandmother’s body. You could say that my Mum’s earliest traces were found within her own two mothers in this one environment comprised of her biological mother and her biological grandmother—who would jointly raise and influence my Mum. (7) What I know is that there are many different shades of mothering.

(*Note: My great-grandmother lived to be 99 and met me when I was a baby circa the title-photo era. Again, that was in the late 1900s. (She had been born in the late 1800s.) Separately, my grandmother will be 102 in a few months.*)

With these shades of mothering, I feel as if I have had to be my own Mum—and a Daughter-Mum to my Mum—for most of my adult life. I think you are with me, Dear Reader, that this is through no fault or choice of my Mum’s. She and I navigated this gulf in new ways of being mother and daughter. The relationship merged, blended, and evolved in ways healthy and not. Again, there are many shades. We were brutally honest with each other on almost all topics, *except for* this one gulf. We would talk around the edges of it. It was fraught. I have a number of specific regrets. And I have many of the-absolute-best memories with—and of—her that I will not trade for anything. But I am also trying to be easy on myself because I know this would be what she would want for me. (In fact, she was always telling me to be easier on myself.)

At the end of last year, I was in a very different place (literally and figuratively) and had a different vision for The Smith Files. I had been talking to my Mum about some things I had wanted to write about, and was already writing about. Right before Christmas last year, I received a rare envelope in my barren Spanish piso mailbox and the card inside was from my Mum (of course, who else lol? : ) (*It’s hard knowing I will never get another one. I say this not for you to pity me, Dear Reader, but with dumb incredulity as I write this because I’m realizing that I still don’t know what Christmas is like without a Mum.*)

I had just returned from a short trip to Madrid and Santiago de Compostela. I put my suitcase down (*where it would remain, partially unpacked for the next few days until I unpacked it and then repacked it to return to the US for the holidays—before returning to Spain only to abruptly shut my life down there and move back to the US*) and ripped open the envelope with the school bus global stamp she had used. She had written:

You have spoken of your writing and not wanting to catch us off guard with [certain] subjects. I will be 65 in March and am still putting together pieces of my past, trying to make sense of some things, revelling about others, and digging into some of the unknowns. Much ruminating but along the way is recognizing how all these things are what have made me the person that I am, some I like, some I question, some I’m not so happy about.

It then read like a communion of her mind with mine from our gulf, edge-to-edge. Her intuition had always been deeply refined, especially (as I found) towards the end:

I am curious about your reflections of me being a Mum. I have often lamented that I feel a deficit as not being a Mum for you to fall back on now, but I remind myself that we are not alone in that situation.

I am so proud of you for what you are doing in Spain and trying to seek out what makes you “tick”. It is a big and brave way to step out in the world—to step out and not be stuck, unhappy, and conform. You have so much to offer and so does the world. It sounds like you are meeting people of varying ages who are doing similar things for reasons of their own. That too must broaden your views.

This is where I go from here. When she was alive, I tried very intentionally to live to the gills so that I could share my experiences with her. I am even more committed to this now. You could say that I am still seeking what makes me “tick”—I don’t think that will ever stop for me and I am slowly coming to terms with this as something to embrace, and not to be ashamed of. Or to compare my journey to those of others, especially as I get older. Continually seeking and ticking can be exhausting. And deeply, deeply humbling. But I recognize that seeking and ticking are fundamental to my nature. If I stop to think about this, I would not want it any other way. That would be boring to me.

Observing my Mum’s dwindling confidence in her own abilities over the years devastated me. (Aside from other parts like her being in constant unimaginable physical and mental pain, or me being afraid that she-was-not-breathing-and-dead-in-bed *every* time I checked on her post-chemo.) She had a host of disabilities and limitations due to AE ( + some just-plain terrible luck) and had not been able to legally drive in years. It makes me too sad to go into this further. But I raise this because it gives me a burning sense of urgency to just let it rip. To exude confidence even when scared shitless. To ask questions out of curiosity and for clarity without being intimidated. And, most importantly, to always be able to laugh at myself. As they say, life is short, and life is long. I am also aware that I have a higher likelihood of developing an autoimmune disease given my family history; I speak with my doctor about this ongoing, do my best not to live in fear, and try to make healthy choices within reason. At a young age, I learned on my farm that you simply do not take good health for granted. It is the biggest gift you can possibly have.

One small and strange comfort at this time is that my memories of my Mum have somehow recalibrated within me after her death. What I mean by this is that I have always considered my memories of her to be pre-AE (*up to age 19-20 for me*) and with-AE (*my adult life*). Now that she is gone, all of my memories of her hold equal space, time, and significance within me. Before her death, pre-AE memories of her seemed like dim, painful falsehoods that never could have really happened; I would shut them out. Whereas now, I am sitting peacefully with all of these memories as they slowly span out and buoy to the surface, bobbing on equal levels within me. This year, a friend who has experienced great losses told me that “one day, you will even find it pleasurable to think of the person you lost”. I am now closer to this on some days than on others as my slightly-less-gapingly-raw-grief-wound seeks to remodel and mature.

I feel like I am in the right place at the right time—even though it may not seem that way. Tennessee is not my home forever, but it feels like home right now. I have lived here longer than anywhere else in my adult life. The South: She’s not done with me yet. She challenges me. I think I am meant to be here now for a variety of reasons that I am still sifting through despite desires to leave. So, in the meantime, I will continue to take my cues and learn from her beauty, her vibrancy, her complexity, her good faith, and her natural power. I will also learn more from—and how to more effectively stand against—the environmental violence, racial terror, and religious indoctrination falsely perpetrated in Her Name. I will continue to swelter through land-locked Middle Tennessee summers of seasonal affective disorder as a hopeless New Englander who never tans. I worry that one day I won’t belong anywhere: while continually pining for the Northern pines and Atlantic, I realize I’ve come to love the wildly rich cultures and relationships unique to Middle Tennessee. Plus, there is a lot to bear witness to and work to do here.

In closing Part I, an old friend told me this summer that I have always reminded her of Miss Rumphius (aka The Lupine Lady). I cannot think of higher praise (*thanks, M, although I may be taking on the silver streaks too literally!?*). I do not know what life holds and that is OK. That is the magic and the mystery. My Mum knew that better than anyone. From this, I have my mission to honor her: in what ways can I make the world a more beautiful place? (*It is easy to be cynical; it is difficult and often cringe to be wholesome, sincere and optimistic.*) In what ways can you make the world a more beautiful place, Dear Reader?

Part II. SOURCES & RESOURCES

SOURCES

1. Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance

2. De Widt, Lynda, The Mayo Clinic, 1/6/2025: ‘New study calculates autoimmune disease prevalence in U.S.’ <https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/new-study-calculates-autoimmune-disease-prevalence-in-u-s/>

3. Yanagihara, Hanya. A Little Life. Vintage, 2016. (*kind of obsessing over the artwork of this four-volume set*)

5. Liberatory Wellness Network—A community of justice-rooted practitioners committed to anti-oppressive & anti-carceral care.

6. Family Opportunity Mortgage (Investopedia)

7. Wolynn, Mark. It Didn’t Start With You. Penguin Books, 2017. (p. 25-26)

RESOURCES

• Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance

  • I now donate directly through my paycheck to the Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance, which “strives to educate physicians, establish a supportive community, and to facilitate research toward a cure.”

• Death with Dignity—Since 1994, Death with Dignity has advocated for the fundamental freedom of choice in end-of-life options for all.

  • As much as I wish otherwise, Death with Dignity was not an option for my family. We fell through a crack.

WARMLINES & LIFELINES

• Inclusive Therapists: Crisis Warmlines & Resouces that avoid police intervention.
  

• 988—24/7/365 confidential support. (English/Spanish/Deaf & HoH)

• The Trevor Project—24/7/365 confidential support for LGBTQ+ youth.

  • The Trump administration officially closed the national suicide lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth in July 2025.
    

• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSA)

PART III. PATH FORWARD (MISC. & ON TRYING TO BE CONSTRUCTIVE)

Here are some things that have been bringing me comfort, purpose, stability, and/or joy at this time—even amidst living in the year 2025 in general and actively planning my Mum’s memorial (*Update: since having written this, the memorial/party has taken place; it was extremely difficult and also just-right*). To be clear, there have been days where I have just stayed in bed as able. But—doing my best here.

• Finding very specific/actionable ways to organize and align with others and things that I care about.

• FRIENDSSSSSSS near & far.

• My partner and my dog.

• Seeing and spending time with family, especially at this time.

• Trying to be in the 3D World (offline) as much as possible and to be intentional about the 2D World (online).

• My magical year of coffee dates with really interesting people doing really interesting things, who have been extremely generous with their time, attention, and connections. New friends and old.

• Continuing to improve my Spanish with great classes at my beloved Spanish school, and through their new conversation groups.

• Volunteering.

• Exercise when I am consistent about it [ … ] which is not always.

• Music always. (*Update: List below is where I was at circa July/August 2025*—I am onto my Fall 2025 playlist now, which includes a lot of Galician music and Hayley Williams : )

  • Currently deep-dive revisiting the TV On The Radio discography to prepare for seeing them in September—why is every track/record of theirs so good? (*They were indeed so good in concert and I was really excited because Adia Victoria opened for them.*)

  • Still spinning from wearing sparkly pink gloves and going with one of my BFFs to see Karen O/Yeah Yeah Yeahs play with an incredible strings section in July—what a bucket-list time.

  • Also enjoying Snipe Hunter by Tyler Childers and Lei Keli ft. 47 / For Promotional Use Only this summer.

• I have plans to finally plant a front garden at my house that my Mum had planned for me years ago. (*Update: this may take a back seat due to honesty below ; ) I am still going to keep trying in this department and focus on my houseplants for now.*)

  • My Mum WAS KNOWN for her horticultural expertise. Let’s just say I did not inherit in this department. I have been doing my best to not-kill 6 plants since May and have even enjoyed repotting them. Fingers crossed!

• Starting a Banned Book Club with some high school friends.

  • By the way, guess where I was when I found out about my Mum? A library. In the middle of a different book club meeting. I don’t know if I can ever go back to that library.

• Finding and reading an old English/Language Arts journal with responses from my beloved teacher at the time, Ms. Smith. *Another source of TSF inspiration—she was the Ms. Honey to my Matilda. And, of course my Mum saved this journal. <3*

  • Absolutely hilarious—I love when Ms. Smith repeatedly red-pen calls me out throughout the journal at an age when I was trying to conform to an environment in which it was not cool to try or to succeed (example below).

  • Thank you for pushing me, Ms. Smith.

    

• Not drinking alcohol.

• Exploring and participating in some Al-Anon Family Group meetings.

• Starting a new job.

  • I have navigated multiple hiring freezes and delays this year when I had reached final-round/offer discussions—and many/many/many rejections + weird job market times.

• Journaling, meditating, and speaking with mental health professionals as able.

• Reading, reading, reading.

  • For fun/should anyone want to talk books/be interested, here is what I’ve been into:

    • Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

    • Perpetual Motion Machine by Brittany Ackerman

    • Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

    • The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon

    • The Complete Short Stories Vol. II by D.H. Lawrence (used book I bought from under a bridge in London; now I want to read the rest of the collection)

    • Fairy Tale by Stephen King (this was the book I was reading when I learned my Mum was gone; I found it to be a good way to escape)

    • Stolen by Anna-Helén Laestadius (I thought the Netflix movie adaptation was really good and had watched it before reading the book)

    • Codependent No More by Melody Beattie (audiobook)

    • Dynamite Nashville by Betsy T. Phillips

    • The White City by Karolina Ramqvist (re-read)

    • Surfacing by Margaret Atwood (I could not stop thinking about this one)

    • The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez (finally read after getting the book at an author reading in 2023; I was reading this when I went to my father-in-law’s celebration of life this summer)

    • Motherhood by Sheila Heti

    • Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (½ audiobook + ½ physical book)

    • Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

    • Faith Fox by Jane Gardam (this one was a sleeper that caught me by surprise)

    • Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Jessica Guerrerri (went to an author reading this summer)

    • Sarah by JT Lero

    • The Gospel of Orla by Eoghan Walls

    • On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

    • A Well Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings

    • Never Flinch by Stephen King

    • The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

    • Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

    • The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (½ audiobook + ½ physical book + movie) (also could not stop thinking about this one and somehow had never read it)

    • Stop Letting Everything Affect You by Daniel Chidiac (extremely practical)

  • In Progress:

    • The Harder I Fight The More I Love You by Neko Case

    • It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn

    • A Burning by Megha Majumdar

    • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (my next Banned Book Club book)

  • Next Up:

    • A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern

    • Slowly continuing to pick my way through Elena Ferrante’s Recommended Reading List compiled by Europa Editions.

As my grief wound continues to becomes less-gapingly-raw, I’m leaving you somewhere between “Gratitude” (inflammatory→proliferative) and on the way to “Grace” (proliferative→mature) by IDLES.

[That gratitude / cuts through my veins /]

• at the reminder that I am my mother’s daughter forever in spiritual, cellular & other forms;

• for the discovery that there are many shades of mothering and that the gulf never truly existed in the way that I had thought; and,

• that my grief wound will remodel into new ways of being—and that in the future it can even be pleasurable to think of my Mum.

[Love is The Thing/Fing.]

Thank you, Dear Reader. In closing: should even one person find this and feel less alone by reading it, I consider this to have been a worthwhile endeavor. Even if that person is just me. Thank you to everyone who has been/is a part of my life, particularly in this past year. To those who support me, and to those I continue to learn from. <3

This is based on the author’s memory. The events depicted are accurate to the best of their knowledge, though some may remember them differently. Some identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals described. Kindly respect the pen name.

If you or someone you know needs help:

Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) / Text “START” to 88788 / Visit thehotline.org / Resources

Part I: My Once-Friend 

Once upon a time, a person and their family showed me kindness and included me at a time when I had few friends. I have never forgotten this even though we have all since lost touch. I will forever remember this person as how I once knew them to be: an extremely capable, technically-minded, fearless, rugged, and true badass. I will also be up-front in stating that we were never best friends or anything, nor did we even see each other on a regular basis.

This year, I learned that my once-friend had died by homicide.

Out of respect to this person and to their family, there will not be much detail—instead, remembrance. I had not spoken to this person for about 15 years for no real reason other than we had been living separate lives in different places; for a long time, I had been meaning to reach out to them. I thought there would always be plenty of time for us to maybe get back in touch. I was mistaken; their life was cut horrifically short by another. It is my understanding that my once-friend had also once been in a serious-and-unrelated accident in the past—from which they had not only recovered, but had since become increasingly involved in their community to help others.

I am doing my best to remember my once-friend for who they were and how they touched my life—and not as a statistic, or for the fact that they were killed by their former partner in connection with domestic violence, a form of gender-based violence. (1)

This summer, another friend recommended a book to me called Carrie Carolyn Coco by Sarah Gerard. (2) Although Sarah and Carolyn’s circumstances were extremely different from mine and my once-friend’s, this book helped me navigate the concept of grieving-from-afar for someone who I had not been in contact with, but had still once been friends with. 

It is absolutely vital to remember these things can happen to you, me, or to anyone. They don’t just happen to other people in different places. Or in a vacuum. You never know what is going on in someone’s life, behind closed doors, or in a different tax bracket. Please check in. I did not. In no way am I conceitedly saying that—by checking in with this person—I would have changed the course of events. I do not presume to know the details of their life and cannot even say what their response to me reaching out would have been. However: I still wish I had reached out to them. Now I am too late. They do not get to live happily ever after.

Part II: Contra la violencia machista

Today at the high school where I am working in northwestern Spain, most teachers and students dressed in all-black to commemorate November 25, which is the United Nations (UN) International Day Against Gender Violence—and to stand against la violencia machista. (3) Despite this being an international day since 1981 in commemoration of the Mirabal Sisters, I had never encountered any version of this day prior to today. (4) (5)

Today starts 16 days of activism relating to gender-based violence, culminating in Human Rights Day on December 10. Fliers (similar to below) have grimly festooned the school for at least the past week marking names, ages, and details of women who have been killed in Spain in connection with gender-based violence. This year alone, 41 women have been killed in Spain. (6)

Standing with a bunch of Spanish teenagers today—dressed in black & in silence (the first: not-so difficult for teenagers; the second: difficult)—was a powerful reminder that “if you don’t name something, then it doesn’t exist.” The quote by Beatriu Cardona i Prats—a Spain-based feminist activist—appears in this article—which also discusses groundbreaking Spanish legislation over the past 20 years related to gender-based violence, as well as efforts from the far-right Spanish Vox Party to minimize and erase the concept of gender-based violence from public consciousness. (7)

*If you don’t name something, then it doesn’t exist: Example 1—even the title of this day and UN literature do not name or overtly address violence against those of us who are LGBTQIA+, in particular violence directed at Black transgender women. I find no mention of the word “transgender,” “trans,” “lgbt,” or “gender expansive” using a quick search in the UN’s most recent report on femicide here. (8) This makes me question data points provided by the UN and conjecture that there is likely underrepresentation and underreporting of the violence being perpetrated. This needs to be named so it can be changed. It is also interesting that “Gender Equity” is listed as #5 out of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The *Top-4* SDGs are: No poverty; Zero Hunger; Good Health & Well-Being; and, Education—all well & good, but coming before Gender Equity. I believe it could be argued that by reprioritizing Gender Equity as an SDG, there could potentially be significant, effective, and collaborative leverage to more tactically achieve the preceding 4 goals through equitable representation and direct participation.)*

*If you don’t name something, then it doesn’t exist: Example 2—our incoming US President is not required to be legally designated and registered as a sex offender—nor is it required to have the trappings of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue listed as a registered sex offender’s place of residence. Because: a sexual abuse charge (in addition to a defamation charge) for which our incoming US President has been found liable was tried in civil and not criminal court. (See verdict form from jurors here.)* (9) (10) (11)

It is dangerous when we do not name things. 

*With this in mind and out of respect—I will name my once-friend Someone Great.* (12)

Part III. Further Inquiry

• Femicides in 2023: Global estimates of intimate partner/family member femicides (UNODC and UN Women, Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member).
  

• @feminist_collages_nyc / Feminist Collages NYC linktr.ee
  

• UN 16 Days Against Gender Violence—Get Involved
  

• Le Monde with AFP. “Gisèle Pelicot says 'macho, patriarchal' society must change attitude on rape.” 11/19/2024.

  • According to the internet as of today (November 25), prosecutors are pushing for a 20-year sentence for Pelicot’s ex-husband; the verdict is expected to be delivered by December 20 at the latest.

Note to Reader: Although this is written in loose personal/op-ed style, I strive to be fair, accurate, responsible, and transparent. I recognize that I am discussing topics that may be sensitive to readers. Please contact me with constructive feedback or corrections needed.

Sources

1. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-based-violence/what-gender-based-violence_en

   • Here is the US Department of State Gender-Based Violence Prevention & Response website; it will be important to monitor this ongoing for comparison to global norms and best practices. For example, something as seemingly small as changes to terminology/naming conventions could adversely impact future funding, healthcare access, and legal precedents. Example: Currently in Spain, the Vox Party is making moves to try to replace the term “gender-based violence” with their preferred term, “intra-family violence.” (6)

2. Gerard, Sarah. Carrie Carolyn Coco. Zando, 2024.

3. https://www.un.org/en/observances/ending-violence-against-women-day

4. https://www.un.org/en/observances/ending-violence-against-women-day/background

5. https://time.com/5793594/mirabal-sisters-100-women-of-the-year/

6. https://www.infobae.com/espana/2024/11/25/el-movimiento-feminista-vuelve-a-las-calles-este-25n-para-clamar-contra-la-violencia-machista-y-exigir-que-el-miedo-cambie-de-bando/

7. https://time.com/6296840/spain-election-gender-violence/

8. Femicides in 2023: Global estimates of intimate partner/family member femicides (UNODC and UN Women, Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member).

9. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65531098

10. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/read-the-full-trump-e-jean-carroll-verdict-text-here/

11. https://www.scribd.com/document/644110955/gov-uscourts-nysd-590045-174-0-1

12. “Someone Great,” LCD Soundsystem. Sound of Silver, DFA and Capitol Records, 2007.

    
    
    

I had a surgical abortion in Colorado when I was 23.

In no way was I the first; in no way will I be the last. I was in the process of moving from Maine to Washington state alone in the midst of a nebulous breakup. I had very little to my name, and had sold my powder-blue Chevy Malibu before moving to finance my flights. I was 12 weeks pregnant and had not told anyone. To say it was terrifying, sad, and isolating would be a gross understatement. The recovery was painful, uncertain, bloody, and across multiple state lines. I only told three people at the time out of necessity. I will be eternally grateful to those three people for their care, discretion, and understanding. I did not tell my family or friends until closer to a year after the procedure. I say this all, Dear Reader, *a day late* in a divisive post-Roe world because my personal story does not matter. People will vote the way they vote. The important universal things remain unchanged:

• Treat others with kindness, compassion, dignity, and non-judgment.

• Protect and respect yourself; do the hard things that may be necessary so you are equipped to care for yourself and others. Because only you know your unique circumstances. *Yes, all right: put your own oxygen mask on first.*

• Do not be silenced by others. That said, you have a right to privacy and sharing things is up to you and how you feel at any given time.

• Ask questions and respectfully disagree when needed; trust but verify; advocate for others when needed; leave when needed.

• Find and protect good health, love, happiness, and fun along the way—in ways that are true to you.

• The world is watching; our actions here in the US have real implications and direct consequences.

• Do everything you can for our futures: that is, for all of the children out there and in your lives. Like with most cliches, the morsel of truth is that children truly are our collective futures and deserve the world. *For The Children.*

At 23, I would have been completely bereft and wholly damaged as a person and as a mother if I had not had access to essential reproductive healthcare. I would not have been able to provide my child—let alone, myself—the opportunities, housing, resources, or peace and security to develop age-appropriately, have a sense of autonomy and play, and to—*God forbid*—thrive. I very likely would have been confined to the rural town of fewer than 40 *yes, people* where I grew up, and would have had extremely limited options and resources. It is a beautiful place, and I even have fond memories, but it is not where I wanted to end up permanently. I very likely would have abused substances. I would have been marginalized. I would have been deeply ashamed. I would have never even begun to scratch the surface of life’s richness that I now know, and hope to know.

I have reconciled all of this within myself and continue to do so ongoing. It takes time.

Back to present: we need to examine hard truths. For The Children.

General ballpark reminders about the US landscape relating to birth, children, and child care that bear repeating. There are clearly many moving parts at interplay that I will not be addressing directly through this forum; however, for context:

• Within the 18 months post-June 2022 (when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade), it has been concluded that hundreds more babies died in the US than expected (1)—with legal restrictions requiring that a number of incompatible-with-life pregnancies be carried to term.

  • *It goes unsaid—so I’m saying it louder—the extreme danger, risk, and lack of autonomy these women, mothers, and birthing parents faced.*

• The US is the only OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) member country that does not provide federal paid leave, according to this bipartisanpolicy.org download from January 2020 (2).

  • *Ask me sometime about when I used to work as a leave of absence (LOA) specialist.*

• It is the only high-income country in the world that does not provide universal health insurance, indicated by this 1/31/2023 Commonwealth Fund issue brief (3).

  • *Ask me about my own personal and family experiences with this statistic.*

• The infant mortality rate in the US is at a disadvantage to (aka higher than) that of its peer countries, according to research published by Emily Chen et al. in the 5/8/2016 issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy (4), with sobering and large racial disparities continuing to exist in maternal and infant death rates, outlined in this 10/25/2024 Kaiser Family Foundation article by Latoya Hill et al (5).

• The fertility rate fell to its lowest rate in 2023 (55 births per 1,000 females aged 15-44), according to an 8/20/24 CNN article by Deidre McPhillips (6).

  • *I am not currently in Camp 55 of this statistic; maybe that will change in the future; I don’t know.*

• Simply put, the cost of child care can range between 8% and 19.3% of median family income per child, per this 1/9/2024 Census.gov article by Adam Goudy (7).

  • *Ask any of my friends or family who have children about this. They will be quick to tell you.*

• Currently, the number-one cause of death for a child in the US is by gun violence (8).

  • *Appallingly, ask anyone about this.*

  • One small and local bright spot in today’s news definitely worth highlighting, despite the sadness of how it came to be: one of the newest Tennessee state representatives is Rep. Shaundelle Brooks (D) from House District 60 in Davidson County (9). In 2018, her son Akilah DaSilva was one of four people killed in a 2018 Waffle House shooting close to where I live. She has been a gun-law reform activist since then, and will be joining others in Tennessee working toward change. I will be looking for her blue hair. You already know. Here is a photo by Nashville-based photojournalist Ray DiPietro that captures the energy I want to focus on (10). I love his work. (The photo is also included below in the Sources section in case it is not accessible via the Instagram link above.)

Meanwhile—domestically—as political intractability and strife on these topics continue to stymie and endanger the lives of our youth: abroad, more than 16,900 Palestinian children have been killed in one year due to ongoing Israeli genocidal acts (11) (12) (13). There have been more women and children killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in one year post-10/7/2023 “than in the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades,” according to OxFam analysis (15).

Similar to the failure to act domestically on matters of lifesaving urgency to our youth—according to a 10/31/2024 Al Jazeera article citing reporting by both The Washington Post and Reuters (14)—the US government is failing to act on matters of lifesaving urgency to youth abroad in connection with the close-to 500 reports of US-supplied weapons used to harm or kill Gaza citizens by Israeli forces. These reports have been collected by the US Department of State’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance since 10/7/2023. It appears that the State Department has taken no discernible action yet on these reports.

But, these “genocidal acts” by Israeli forces have not yet been legally designated in concert as genocide in accordance with the procedural mechanisms of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (15). It would somehow seem that the legal case (or is it really a business case?) for genocide has not yet been procedurally justified for the purposes of the ICJ’s designation. That legal distinction would create further uncomfortable questions about complicity and accountability for the US on the world stage.

Let's pause.

The number [more than] 16,900 is not some dusty fucking statistical footnote. Instead, these are more than 16,900 bright, young (many so-very-young), vibrant little lives, futures, and generations snuffed out through violence, hatred, and destruction. In one year. With respect, I acknowledge that this is a more specific topic, but it impacts every single one of us; it also deserves a wholly separate forum for the complexity of which I am not professing to be an expert; however, it needs to be our focus. We need to look. If it can happen to children and life in one place, in our lifetime, on our watch, post-WWII—it can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. *I am also naming the horror of the fact that the OxFam statistic only captures “the past two decades” and the fact that this scale of genocidal acts is not isolated.*

Bringing it back: to the children in our lives at home and abroad, we must commit to doing better by them. There are no excuses. Whether you are an aunt/uncle, a neighbor, a doctor, a grandparent, a much-older sibling/cousin, a parent, someone who wants children but cannot/has chosen not to, a teacher, a family law judge, a childcare professional, a person who is perfectly content not having children, a mail delivery driver, or maybe someone who even thinks children are loud and annoying(!)—love, care, and families (biological, chosen, and otherwise) come in many different forms. It really does take a village.

Regardless of who is in office, you will find me doing my best to make the world around me a better place for the future. This may be through ways that might seem trivial, or—I hope—more impactful. It energizes me that there are so many others doing the same domestically and abroad—too many to list here. Some are on the cutting-edge of AI training and security to safeguard youth privacy/mental health and to combat non-consensual intimate image (NCII) proliferation and abuse; some are in the classrooms day-in & out; some are attorneys working with VC geared toward social and environmental good; some are artists and musicians; some are working parents or caregivers; some are writers; some are involved in their communities and advocating directly in different forms; some are just getting by. Most are a combination of some of the above—and more.

Currently I am writing to you from Spain; I am extremely grateful to be living here for the academic year to teach English. (I will write more about the good things another time, I promise!) I starkly, starkly, recognize my privilege in being able to safely travel and cross borders at this time—let alone to live my life in the way that I am choosing, because of the way that I look, because I carry a US passport, because of my education, and because of many other factors.

I am working in a high school (ages 12-16). Sadly, since I started this fall, many of my students’ questions about the US have been less about American English phonetic pronunciation—or even American Football vs. Soccer—and more about gun violence, school shootings/safety, and inflammatory language around the US election. A number of students even brought lifelike toy guns (big and small) to school for Halloween/Samhain and pretended to shoot people. It shocked me. But I reminded myself that guns are illegal in Spain and shootings are not commonplace. *It is the direct inverse of my experience as an educator in the US.* So, to those students, toy guns are exactly that: toys. These are difficult questions the kids ask me; I answer them honestly in the ways that I can, and engage them in conversation as they practice English and I practice Spanish. They are part of our collective future and are taking cues from us, as all of our youth always is.

The sun will rise tomorrow, although sometimes it might be behind clouds or smog. *No, that is not in reference to Annie, The Musical, although that would be a warped-ly apt metaphor.*

For now, I will choose to enjoy the sun, my tea, and today’s Blindboy Podcast episode (#377 Ratworm Lung Disease) as it comes out because I am in CET rather than CST now. It is strange to be observing the US election results in this way. I feel like I am on the outside looking inward, and simultaneously on the inside looking outward. Don’t worry, I’m not going to act like some sanctimonious asshole who has lived in a European country for less than two months and wants to judge. That would be reductive, plain unhelpful, and smarmy. For now, I am focusing on the future that we share, and on the work that I will do here and when I return to the US in 2025—wherever that leads me. I’d like to think that we all can agree on a child’s right to quality of life, safety, and innocence.

I’ll leave you with this: one day, I hope to be wizened, spry, and irreverent—in a better future with today and tomorrow’s children—blathering irrelevantly about *how things used to be* as they roll their eyes and forge the path onward for their own future generations. I will then give a nod to my 23-year-old self. Vamos a ver.

Disclaimer: Any errors in statistical analysis interpretation from sources, or in my understanding around ongoing armed conflict in the Middle East and ICJ governance procedures, are my own. I welcome constructive and thoughtful feedback to correct and to better understand in the spirit of collective improvement and accuracy in communication.

Note to Readers: 

As the title states this started as an Instagram post. But, social media makes me feel uncomfortable for many reasons. To the point where I have never had or used TikTok, have not had Facebook in ~6+ years (and only have it again now in order to gain access to obscure Spanish FB groups relating to my specific interests); for now, I only access Instagram periodically and from my trusty laptop. I also currently have two phones (US phone & Spanish phone) so having social media on both would be entirely too overwhelming. I know I will have to “re-learn” all things social in the future, but not now. And, simply, there was too much to say.

A little about my writing & The Smith Files: I have an undergraduate degree in journalism and technical writing. I have written many responsible, analytical, boring, and useful things for others. I do freelance editing as well for grants, essay applications, resumes, and whatever else. I love editing for others: it gives me crisp, clear runway and vision in a way that drafting/editing my own writing usually does not, and I enter a flow state.

For now, I want to experiment a bit with writing for myself. It is something I have always had crippling anxiety and confidence issues around. *So cliched, I know.* Case in point: you can see an attempt here with a short story (first-ever Substack post) B-A-XY. I am going to let it stand instead of trying to go back and tidy it up.

But, with today’s news and my newfound temporary status living abroad, I am going to try writing here on Substack with more confidence and some frequency. *No promises.* I think it might also be a helpful way for me to process thoughts, information, and communicate with others while I am abroad in a way that is not overwhelming or subject to time-zone differences. 

As you can see, I overuse em dashes (—), semi-colons (;), colons (:), and sidebars *in italics* egregiously. Forgive me, Dear Reader: this is just how my brain works. For the time being, I absolutely refuse to commit to any sort of Substack delivery cadence. Some of my writing will be cringe; some of it will be close-but-*not-quite* as I continue to practice. I’m sure some of it will be disturbing or uncomfortable (particularly for those who might know me personally—or think they might ;-), and some of it—I hope—will be on the way to developing some sort of sound craft. 

Writers who have made me stop and think in the past 18 months include: (in particular) Brittany Ackerman, (as I said) Blindboy Boatclub, Zoe Heller, Mieko Kawakami, Hanya Yanagihara, Sarah Rose Etter, Otessa Moshfegh, and the one-and-only Elena Ferrante. (I also love a good mystery by Tana French, and of course I am a Stephen King fan.) To be honest, I have been reading embarrassingly little as of late with my move, and cognitive overload/language fatigue between English/Castellano Spanish/Galego. Although I did just *yes* pick up Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and The Hidden Girl by Lucinda Riley *ahem, cue the escapism.* As you can see, I particularly enjoy fiction. For nonfiction, I like to read history. I welcome any other suggestions, Dear Reader; variety is the spice of life. Trust me, I am not a literary snob—in fact, they intimidate me, and I get very nervous going to any sort of writing-related events where they may be lurking. I am trying to be better about this.

At The Smith Files, it will be a hodgepodge of genre, form, and style depending on my energy levels, I’m sure, and because that is *again* how my twisted brain works. Rather than giving in to controlling and perfectionistic tendencies to untwist the twists, this is going to be an exercise in letting go and embracing the twists. Feel free to join in and watch the show; just know it could get weird or maybe uncomfortable, like in life.

Lastly: For anyone who may be wondering, The Smith Files was named in memory of arguably the biggest influence on my own education, literacy, writing, and free thought from infancy: Marion B. Smith.

Thank you for reading. Over & out.

Sources:

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/22/baby-deaths-roe-wade-abortion-bans

(2) https://bipartisanpolicy.org/download/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/PFL6-FInal_.pdf

(3) https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022 

(4) https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20140224

(5) https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/racial-disparities-in-maternal-and-infant-health-current-status-and-efforts-to-address-them/

(6) https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/20/health/us-birth-rate-fertility-final-data-2023/index.html

(7) https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/01/rising-child-care-cost.html 

(8) https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens

(9) https://nashvillebanner.com/2024/11/05/shaundelle-brooks-gun-control-victory/

(10)

(11) https://www.dci-palestine.org/a_year_of_lost_childhood_palestinian_children_in_gaza_suffer_amid_ongoing_israeli_genocide

(12) https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/west-bank-and-gaza/

(13) https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6437/The-bloodiest-face-of-its-genocide:-Israel-has-killed-2,100-Palestinian-infants-and-toddlers-in-Gaza

(14) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/31/us-fails-to-act-on-500-cases-where-its-weapons-harmed-gaza-civilians

(15) https://www.vox.com/politics/378913/israel-gaza-genocide-icj

(16) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-children-killed-gaza-israeli-military-any-other-recent-conflict

(17) https://shows.acast.com/blindboy

(18) https://www.brittanyackerman.com/

*Title photo by my brother. The original was high-resolution and panoramic. I have since butchered it for this post. He may forgive me.

His eyes open. The light in the room is indistinguishable—day, night, he has no clue. He feels soft skin. It is his own, he thinks. He shifts, unintentionally and painfully ripping his skin from the leather couch’s surface. Leather couch. He is naked. He sees every magazine he could have ever wanted to read organized on a frosted glass coffee table that likely cost what he could make in a quarter. Skin still sticking to the buttery, cinnamon-orange leather, he rolls over and rubs his eyes. There had been a woman. She had assured him she had used a condom. They had both been extremely drunk from those pitchers of rum punch at the Jamaican dance hall, and he had gone along with it. 

He thinks he has to go to work soon because it is an office day; he can’t find his phone or clothes. He gets up and sees that some of his clothes are on the ground, folded neatly, at the foot of the sofa. Who folded them? He sometimes finds that his level of precision becomes the direct inverse of his level of inebriation, as if in his drunken state he is trying to prove to himself that he’s capable and in control. It can be telling. Whose apartment is he in? Where is that woman? Where is the rest of his stuff? He hurts. The crushing silence of understated opulence puts him even more on edge. Did they use a condom? Probably not. He can’t think about that right now. Now he must quickly find his shit and make sure that no one else is here in what appears to be not an apartment, but a house. Not his apartment. That’s for sure. He cautiously gets up and looks around; the place feels labyrinthine and is intentionally lit. The quiet rooms even smell like wealth. It’s not just because he’s hungover as fuck—the abundance makes him feel so small. 

He quickly determines that no one is home and that the woman—whoever she was—has left him to his own devices, for which he is thankful. He throws what clothes he has on. No briefs. What happened to those? He looks under the sofa. No phone either. He softly cruises the halls to leave and go to work. There seem to be no clocks. Squinting at the overcast early fall day, he steps outside and solemnly hefts the dark Baroque wooden doors—somehow both polished and weather-worn—shut. He makes sure they are locked out of some strange sense of duty. Loping down the stairs, he realizes he is on the Upper East Side. 

The beginnings of a migraine threaten to crumple his body; he walks about seven blocks to a CVS and stands in line for B-A-XY, the morning-after pill. He can see from the pharmacist’s clock on the wall that it’s 7:55 a.m. He still has some time to get to work. The commanding young pharmacist behind the counter looks him up and down knowingly. Likely still in pharmacy school herself, she—loudly and without turning away from him—requests that her middle-aged male colleague retrieve a package of B-A-XY from the distribution wall. The colleague scuttles, shoulders hunched beneath white lab coat lapels, and silently places the package on the counter. She wordlessly rings up the purchase with decisive keystrokes. It is $45 plus tax and a bag fee. At least he has his wallet and cards, he thinks. After leaving the pharmacist’s appraising stare, his migraine roars back. Shit, he should have bought extra-strength ibuprofen as well, he thinks. He had been too busy focusing solely on functioning through that interaction. 

He had to go to work but did not know where his car was parked. He hoped his phone was in there too. He was too old for this. 

Because he had been in such a hurry to leave the pharmacy, he had also forgotten water and needed to find a bathroom or private area to take the B-A-XY. He would have to go into work as is because there was no time to go to his apartment in Greenpoint beforehand. Although somehow his appearance was not horrific—only slightly rumpled and unshaven—at least judging from furtively self-assessed window-front reflections. He squinted down the street, stepping to the side to avoid being in the way, as he continued to orient himself. He saw a coffee shop ahead and started walking toward it. Things did not feel right inside of him so he started walking faster. He held the door open for a woman on her phone as she strode out in an immaculate grey suit and matching roller suitcase. She gave a curt nod of acknowledgement without breaking stride or conversation. He felt his forehead bead with sweat and chills course through his body. To get the bathroom code, he waited an excruciating amount of time in line and was not sure he would make it. Finally, when it was his turn he ordered a green tea. The barista’s mouth upturned in a slight smirk which he ignored as he rushed to pay. “I almost forgot, what’s the code to the bathroom?” he asked. “It’s 5840” she replied without looking at him and moving to the next person in line. The din of clinking dishes and voices echoing off of the industrial chic concrete walls made his head sing. 

He grabbed the tea from the other side of the bar, spilling it a little bit on his coat, and walked to the bathroom in what he hoped did not appear to be a desperate manner. Because of this, a woman beat him there, accented by brisk heel clicks and a definitive click of the locked door. There was another bathroom that opened up moments later. He locked the door, pulled up the toilet seat, and vomited until there was nothing left. The tang of bile and alcohol in his mouth was rank; it felt yellow. He shuffled over to the hand wash sink and washed his mouth out with water. His stomach churned and groaned so he rushed back to the toilet, unbuttoned his pants and took a soft coiled shit that reeked of rum. He put his head in his hands while still seated on the toilet. He needed more water. He needed to stop drinking. He wiped his ass repeatedly and then felt the need to piss. Midstream, he noticed something filmy, gossamer-like, protruding out of the tip of his penis. What the fuck. The substance continued to protrude further out the tip as he reached the end of his stream. After shaking dry, he started to slowly tease the film out. It was violently uncomfortable and alarming. All he could think of was that this was a cock tease. As the filmy substance took shape and he was able to remove it completely, he realized that she had worn a condom. They had both just been too drunk. Thank God he had picked up B-A-XY.

Persistent knocking distracted him. Pants down, he realized now that the knocking had been going on for some time. “Someone’s in here!” he shouted, trying to sound assertive but instead sounding squeaky and breathless to himself. He then heard the doors on the other bathroom open and close and the knocking stopped. Thinking back, he had been in there for a while now and needed to get himself together. And take the B-A-XY. He hastily mopped up the toilet with toilet paper, pulled up his pants, and washed his hands and face. Slurping more water from the sink, while being careful not to put his mouth to the tap, he held water in his mouth, tore into the B-A-XY packaging and took the first pill. He would have to remember to take the next pill in 12 hours, and told himself he would set a reminder on his phone when he found it. He threw part of the package in the trash can but made sure to wrap it in a paper towel and bury it lower in the trash can.

Taking a final assessment of the bathroom and his reflection, he patted his hair down and dabbed the tea stain on his coat with a wet paper towel. He haltingly walked out of the bathroom into the thrumming shiver of sharp, smooth, glittery women waiting on their orders. They felt silver and predatory. He moved carefully toward the door, heart beat spiking, as he tried to not make direct eye contact, and to reason with himself that because he was not prey or chum he could make sudden movements if needed or wanted. He imagined the women’s partners at home with their children. He could not afford to get pregnant. Not now. Maybe not ever. Crossing the street, he realized he had forgotten his green tea in the bathroom on top of the diaper changing station.