Ever since I can remember, I’ve processed my feelings through writing first, then, when I haven’t kept things hidden in the way back part of my mental refrigerator behind the outdated ranch dressing and mostly empty jar of banana pepper rings, I talk through them with friends and family. Today was no exception. I wrote a short memoir piece about an event, or series of events, that happened when I was in high school and which I have never shared with anyone except the other person who was involved. I plan, in the very near future, to talk through it with real live people. Maybe, since it seems a lot safer, my therapist will be the first person who hears this one. Writing first helps me to make sure that what I want to share with others is something that needs to be shared, is something that I can’t process on my own, and is something that I won’t be embarrassed that I shared after I share it. I also write through it because sometimes memories are too painful to speak out loud without first creating myself as a character experiencing that memory. Anyway, I am so grateful for writing and the role it has always played in my life.
I am grateful for diversity. I am grateful for the experience of working at a computer company in a city where there are people from all around the world. I am grateful for having a diverse, as Gholdy Muhammad calls it, textual lineage. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without the diverse books and other texts that I’ve consumed throughout my educational and leisurely reading. I am so grateful for my foremothers in academia, the ones who blazed the trial for all of us who are part of various marginalized groups.
I am grateful for art. How can you look at this painting and not believe in everything lovely?
Reason Breeds Insanity 