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Repost @womenforblacklives • Get over yourself
Get over ourselves
I’d also like to add First Nations lives to this list.
White comfort and white tears will never fix this white mess. We need to fix this, and fixing things means that things have to get painful and uncomfortable.
Baby’s first COVID test
He was not thrilled that the gargle was off the table, but he had his swab like a big boy. Now we hide him away and await results!
He described it quite well as feeling like getting pool water up his nose LOL
It’s been at least a month since I have pulled out my oracle cards.
It has been more than that since I returned to my mat.
I think it is time to recentre myself. To accept my stress and anxiety, and to sit with it.
To stop sitting in it. To take time to be calm. To take the time to feel myself reconnect with the universe and my soul.
To allow myself silence and reflection.
To breathe.
It doesn’t matter what you are addicted to, a relapse is always shameful and painful. It might be drugs or alcohol, or, as in my case, shopping for things I do not need and cannot afford.
It’s easy to say “oh just this one thing is fine”, but one thing leads to two things, leads to three things, leads to a shame spiral, leads to hiding things from family and friends, leads to a full relapse.
I applaud Shepard for his honesty and willingness to be vulnerable, and I understand how hard to it is to admit that you have an eating/drinking/drug/shopping/exercising/self-harming problem.
Dax Shepard Shares He Relapsed, Opens Up About His Battle With Pill Addiction
I have cycled out.
The dark, wet slog has begun to brighten and dry, leaving me free, coated in fine dust.
The dust is the residue that resists the cycling out.
There. In my hair, on my hands, clinging to my eyelashes, on everything that I have touched or ever will touch.
I have cycled out.
The exhaustion and heavy eyelids are replaced with a thrill that makes my mind race and busies my hands.
Ignoring the dust, I pick up the pace. I can’t be
still.
I wipe at the dust from the last time and dance and laugh and sing too loudly.
I have cycled out.
The heft of the burden of the last is there. It’s in the knotted hair and the fifteen days of hot dogs.
It’s in the 50 books that were started and stopped.
It’s in the unwritten blog posts.
It’s in the grabbing at the ephemera that should be words filed into my brain.
It’s in forgetting important dates and meetings.
It’s in the snapping at my kids and wishing that I hadn’t.
It’s in the refilled prescription bottles scattered around the house.
The weightlessness holds hands with distracted ness.
I have cycled out.
It’s in the 15 household tasks that were started and abandoned.
It’s in the movies and books and music.
It’s in the mass consumption of food and books and groceries.
It’s in the single-mindedness of devouring everything that strikes my fancy.
It’s in the fancy that is struck.
It is in the missed sleep and increased migraines and in the Cheshire dreams when sleep does come.
I have cycled out.
And I will fall forward again. The dust will congeal and the dark, wet slog will pull me forward.
I will cycle back.
I always cycle back. The back. The dust. The missed sleep.
It will always draw me back from the mire. I just need to be patient.
I have cycled out.
I have cycled out.
I will.
Shop my first book – How Not To Blog: Finding Myself One Post at a time
Justice Ginsburg was a powerhouse, and continued working into her late 80s to try to keep the bench as balanced as she could.
No one should go through the pain of late stage metastatic pancreatic cancer, while also knowing that the balance of power in her nation depended on her ability to continue to do her job.
She remains a great hero of my life, and I am appalled, but not at all shocked by the disregard and disrespect shown her loss by the GOP.
If you expected any class or dignity from that administration, you haven’t been paying attention for years.
Let’s all try to remember what Michelle Obama said – “when they go low, we go high”. It’s painful, but we must try to remember and honour RBG’s quiet resolve by refusing to lower ourselves to the level of the muckrakers and fear mongers.
We are grieving, and this classless and outclassed group of people cannot be allowed to bring us down to tha nastiness and name calling for which they are known.
Rest In Peace, Justice Ginsburg. And above all, rest knowing that you have done more than anyone should ever have to.
Fake it til you make it!
This week the kids are back to school and we are trying to get back to normal. I decided that the best way to feel like I was going to work as normal was to dress like I was going to work as normal.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have also streamlined my wardrobe and make up, so that if I pull something out of my closet I know that it fits and I will like it. I started looking at other plus-sized women who dress nicely and took my cues from their suggestions.
The result?
I felt good about myself everyday, and was not productive this week. All in all – I think this is a good tool to keep in my sanity toolbox.
14 years. We have been married for 14 years as of today.
The social média thing to do would be to write “14 years married to my best friend!!! No one else I could imagine on this crazy journey called life! I will spend every single day holding your hand, baby!!!! I love you soooooo much!!!!”
That would be the social media appropriate way to celebrate our marriage, but that’s not what I am going to do here.
In addition to being married for 14 years, we have been together for 21 years. The difference between Baby Kali and Baby Dave and us today is incredible; we are completely different people now than we were then. We have to be. We’re in our late 30s (mine are more late than yours, I know), and we need to grow and change.
Over the past few years, we have faced so many hurdles that it is almost impossible to put them all into words (but I have… this this blog and the journal in my bedside drawer lol). We have built an expansive life full of wonderful people, our kids, our experiences, our grumpy old cat. We have seen marriages, births, deaths, cancer, depression, boundless happiness, and searing sadness. We have loved each other to pieces, tolerated each other, yelled at each other, cuddled each other, stormed out on each other, laughed til we cried and cried til we laughed. We have a story. The story of us.
People often tell us how cute we are or how lucky we are to have this marriage, and I hope that is true, but I also think it can be a lot of work, and that marriages are like anything else – you get out what you put into them.
We are on a new path, a course correction, a new life again, as we enter this new year together. We are working to be the best versions of ourselves and the best partners, friends, and loves that we can be. I am so grateful that the Universe gave us the chance to create this next version of ourselves, and I am so glad that we have the chance to write a new, better, more fulfilling chapter in the Story of Us.
I really love you, baby, and I honestly cannot picture walking this life with anyone but you. Happy anniversary! Here is to many, many more chapters together.
Love you from the bottom of my heart ❤️
Happy Friday!
It’s September, which was always an exciting time for me. My sister suggested a couple of years ago that September is another New Year, and since then, that is how I have tried to approach it.
This New Year, I am continuing to be mindful with spending/saving, I am continuing with educating myself as an anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc., halfway decent human, I am working to teach my kids to be good people, I am going to continue to declutter and remove things from my home that do not “spark joy”, and learn to live with less, (a la fellow British Columbian, Cait Flanders!!!).
And, regardless of COVID, and forest fires, and racists, and sexists, clutter, and fibromyalgia, and depression, and all the other things that are around me, I will look for the little moments of joy and beauty.
Back to school 2020 is a bit different than previous years, but the perfunctory first day of school photo is an old standard. We painted that door red for our girls’ first day of preschool 9 years ago, and every year less and less of it shows up in their pictures are they grow.
Today is the first day of her last year of elementary school (grade 7) and his first day of grade 5. After 7 months of no formal, standardized schooling, my little man was so excited that he was up an hour before his alarm and dressed and ready to go! She, on the other hand, was willing to just carry on with her lockdown.
Happy first day of school! Good luck teachers, and kids!
Kali J Desautels 