Vixen Chronicles

There is a lot going on in America now, but I saw a Facebook post that really got me in my feelings. It was from a “friend”; someone I’d worked with some time ago.  We both have moved, but kept in touch, I mean actually kept in touch, by having drinks or dinner whenever I was in her new town a few times over the past few years, and of course, on social media.  We have both changed jobs a few times and follow each other on the "social"socials, and on the professional ones, like LinkedIn. I have followed her triumphs and through her posts, have celebrated her triumphs and her joys at work. We have more in common than a workplace. We do the same job function (not a common one), and our kids are the same age. Our daughters actually spent some time modeling together in middle school. I enjoyed the time I spent working with her, and we were as friendly and respectful as any two people of different races can be when they work together and like each other but aren’t really fri

I finished a book today that made me cry. Like boo boo and sob out loud. It was a story about people’s personal wars and the scars they leave, as well as growth, healing and forgiveness. It’s a story about wounded children of wars of lands and ideals that no longer exist. In it,   the grandmother posthumously tasks her grandchild with delivering letters of apology to those she feels she wronged in her life.   We woke up today with riots and demonstrations all over the country.   People are hurt and angry, and recent police killings and injustices are   the wind   that helped a fire jump its boundaries, a fire that has been fed by racism, Jim Crow, and economic injustice for over 400 years   and one for which we are still awaiting the apology letter. I’m not sure if I was crying because the book moved   me so much, or because I couldn’t see when we will heal from our scars and instead of healing we keep inflicting new ones.     We. We as in America. We are all hurt and hur

My baby is 23 today. That is really, like, all grown up.   I remember the day she as born, me in that crazy birthing suite with my sister,   my close friend, and not one, but two doulas. I was trying to have natural child birth but also trying to have her father present. He had already taken a job in Texas, and we lived in Arizona, so the doctor decided to induce me right on my due date.   It was an interesting time. The night before a major tornado had torn through Jasper, Texas, a town not far from where we would eventually be moving to, and a whole neighborhood had disappeared. I had been fired 9 months before when I’d stupidly told my boss that I was pregnant. I sued and won.       Anyway, the doctor starting the induction at noon, and since I have crazy high pain tolerance, it took awhile for me to feel anything. It was close to 4 in the afternoon before the labor got going well. I got right up to the end and I started calling everyone motherfuckers. I wanted some drugs. My