#7 a little bit of A LOT
August Muse
This is ALBOAL #7 - August. It’s a little bit of A LOT of things: an update on my life, a small taste, short notes, bullet points, and something curated by Moi. I collect things I feel are worth sharing. I hope that for the people who are subscribed to my newsletter, there is something for everyone.
A LITTLE BIT OF A LOT is a monthly, sometimes more newsletter if I have other pieces of writing to share. If you benefit from my writing, I’d love the support of you becoming a paid subscriber or a free one, too. This is a reader-supported offering. Sharing my newsletter with others is another way to support my work if money is tight. You can click on the button below to share. It brings me so much joy to share a monthly collection of things I love as a newsletter and write sporadic essays for you to read. Thank you for being here!
Ange Thoughts + Updates
I wrote this on my personal Instagram a few days ago. I shared eight funny TikTok videos and this caption.
"I have nothing to offer besides these TikTok videos I saved on my phone. I have done nothing productive this summer. I have no idea how to show up here anymore since my ADHD diagnosis, and deconstructing from being a self-righteous yet outspoken shit head, I also miss her. In truth, I have been a bit of a heap this summer, so yeah—keep following for more inspirational shit and life advice from a 39-year-old early peri-menopausal not-so-boss bitch that hasn't paid her 2023 taxes yet. I shall blame that on Venus in Gatorade. #blessed #mentor #lifecoach”
Let me elaborate. I was being dramatic. I have been somewhat productive this summer. My all-of-nothing brain likes to forget that. I have started working with someone to create a grief education/support course. We are slow-moving, but I am okay with that. We want to be great, and that takes time. Plus, I am exhausted, and so is she. I wrote an op-ed, published in The Globe and Mail online and in print. Humble brag, a wee flex, blah blah, whatever—it was a big moment for me. (Paying the grief tax and other hidden costs of caregiving), but I forget quickly.
After returning from Italy and my book came out, I couldn't motivate or feel excited about starting something new. It turned into a SLOTH GIRL SUMMER for me. We are also moving in five weeks, but just down the driveway. We live where there are three dwellings and are now moving into the bigger house on the property where we rent, but still, a move is a move. We are saying goodbye to the sad girl cabin where I grieved my ass off and wrote about the deaths of some of my most beloved people for five years and counting. As Joan Didion says in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, my life changed in an ordinary instant. My friend's mom texted me that she had taken her life, and then life snowballed—two days after her funeral, I went to see my parents before flying back, and my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer the day I arrived. I brought him to his CAT scan, and I was the one who was there when he got the call the same day to go to his family doctor that evening. I was also there when one of the doctors told us they could do nothing for him because the cancer had spread. I knew what that meant. If you already know my story, sorry for the repeat; some don't. Even as I write this, it still doesn't feel real that everything happened so quickly, brutally, and heartbreaking. I feel a pang in my chest as I type this.
Since we moved into our cabin on Vancouver Island, so much has changed in my life. A new space may be good for me, for my partner too. Our new place has a yard, a place for a garden, and even extra room for me to see massage clients. I have been a mobile massage therapist for two years now. I guess I am a boss bitch, after all. I pray that my next hyper-focus will be gardening, herbal medicine, how to manage money, or making some? but I am not holding my breath. I am still profoundly entrenched in cult behaviour and human dynamics. I am trying to make sense of the human condition. What the fuck I will do with that, TBA.
As for being a self-righteous shithead, let me explain that too. How I was being taught social justice years ago was not it. It wasn't until I met an educator with a Master's and Doctoral Degree in Social Justice Education and a Master's in Organizational Leadership that I learned an SJ framework that made sense to me. One that allows you to learn sans being in a hypervigilant state, one that is trauma-informed. One rooted and focused on we (white people) healing our own shit so that we can be helpful in social movements, having an awareness of ourselves and the supremacy culture we are swimming in, understanding our trauma response, how our biases show up, and the importance of a liberatory stance: not using shame, blame and alienation as a counter to all the fuckery. The master's tools won't free anyone. I have learned and fucked up royally over the years. That is the price you pay, jumping before you look and sharing your thoughts and learning openly. I also don't think the undiagnosed ADHD helped.
I hate to say that specific social justice educators and movements can be culty, but they can be, and sadly, I am the perfect cult candidate; I am altruistic, I want systems that are oppressive to be dismantled, I see the bigger picture, but I was (am) a fawn response girlie, which used to make me good solider for a cause. I am sensitive to unjust systems and abusive relational fuck storms. I used to let man babies control me. I found myself in unhealthy relationships that I am still recovering from. I was also pretty naive about people's motives across the board. It's easy to point the finger and act in ways that alienate others, but when that happens to you, when you are boiled down the worst thing you said or did, or your trauma is clouding the complete picture, that is where we lose one another. If you want to know my politics, ask me. I am not down to shame, blame, or alienate others, because I went that way, and if I don't want to be treated that way, why the fuck would I treat others that way? Sure, I have boundaries, and I don't have to put up with people's bullshit, and I do believe we need a cultural shift. Culture wars are rooted in fear—look around.
The faux gurus, the fear-stoking contrarians making money off mind-numbing culture wars and conspiracies, show us the brutal reality of oppressive systems still thriving but calling it an awakening. Who they are at their core, what they choose to do with their time and the deep need to control that is rooted in white supremacy, which is fear-driven, power-driven, and money-driven but snuffed out when people come together, practice community care, get voted into office, and keep living their joy despite it all. I am not trying to speak for the plight I will never know, but by observation of actual activism and by my experience as a woman who has been abused and no longer allowing that to shape my story.
Overall, it’s been good days and some pretty bad days lately. I am on a hormonal roller coaster. More on that next time.
#1 Art + Artist that make me…LOVE LIFE when that feels hard to do
I have had the pleasure of being in the orbit of Rachael Rice since 2015. She is someone I respect, someone whom, when I am grappling with big life stuff, I feel comfortable enough to send a voice note, and she graciously responds to my nonsense; I try not to bug her, though. She is doing her life beautifully, and it is nice to know I have humans like her to connect with and learn from or alongside. She always seems to be ahead of cultural and societal movements and waiting for others to catch the fuck up. I can imagine how exhausting that is. I, too, feel that way sometimes. If you check out her page and stories on Instagram, you will see the art is infused in her, the altars she creates, the clothes she wears, the words RR writes, and the veggies that grow in the community garden she started in her front yard with some of her neighbours. She's also a death worker, doula, or whatever people call it; she sits with the dying and has before it became "cool" or trendy to call yourself one. More of that, another time, about how there has been a shift of coaches becoming death doulas, which I call bullshit on, but not RR; she does the thing with no one watching. She is genuinely honest about where she is and why. Her ever-changing altars are inspirational, magical burn bundles and moon paintings. I feel cool by promity to somewhat know humans like her.
#2 Afro Cuban Funky Grooves with Cami Layé Okún
#3
Backwards
BY WARSAN SHIRE
The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life;
that’s how we bring Dad back.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.
We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear,
your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums.
I can make us loved, just say the word.
Give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,
I can write the poem and make it disappear.
Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass,
Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Maybe we’re okay kid?
I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,
you won’t be able to see beyond it.
You won’t be able to see beyond it,
I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love.
Maybe we’re okay kid,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass.
I can write the poem and make it disappear,
give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent,
I can make us loved, just say the word.
Your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums
we grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole,
that’s how we bring Dad back.
He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life.
The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
#4
The Art of Holding Space - Heather Plett. Page 106
When you’re in an intimate relationship with someone and wondering if you’re the right person to hold space for them, here are some key questions to help clarify whether or not doing so is healthy:
How impacted would I be by the outcome? Can I be effective despite this?
If I hold space for that person, to what extent can we both maintain healthy boundaries?
What are the unmet needs in this person that are beyond my capacity to hold space?
What are my unmet needs? Would my help entail trying too hard to get that person to fill those needs?
How much of a need do I feel to protect or fix this person?
What unhealed wounds (if any) does that person trigger in me?
Are there patterns of either of us hijacking space in the relationship? Is there potential to change this?
Can I truly remain detached and compassionate when this person struggles?
#5 Piacere Ears
#6 Ange’s Reading Room
Currently Reading:
Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart: A Memoir - Jen Sookfong Lee
I love this memoir. I have three hours of listening left and don’t want it to end. Here is a little write-up on it.
For most of Jen Sookfong Lee's life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams. Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her—the child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths.
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative- Melissa Febos
I just started this one last night and in all honestly had no idea what it was about, turns out it’s about writing and since I am in a bit of a writing slump, I am so glad to have come across it. Here’s the write-up on it.
In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller’s life and the questions which run through it. How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an author’s way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as “navel-gazing”—or else hailed as “so brave, so raw”? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong?
Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance - Kelly McDaniel
I am listening to this book on and off, and let me say I am one of the lucky ones in the mother department, but I did have more issues with my father; you hear a lot about mother wounds, but I am more of the father wound variety.
An insatiable need for sex and love. Periods of overeating or starving. A pattern of unstable and painful relationships. Does this sound painfully familiar? Trauma counselor Kelly McDaniel has seen these traits over and over in clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors-and are unable to stop. Many of us find ourselves stuck in unhealthy habits simply because we don't see a better way. With Mother Hunger, McDaniel helps women break the cycle of destructive behavior by taking a fresh look at childhood trauma and its lasting impact. In doing so, she destigmatizes the shame that comes with being under-mothered and misdiagnosed. McDaniel offers a healing path with powerful tools that include therapeutic interventions and lifestyle changes in service to healthy relationships. The constant search for mother love can be a lifelong emotional burden, but healing begins with knowing and naming what we are missing.
Sula - Toni Morrison
I just finished this one, I plan to read more of Toni Morrison, because well, duh.
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
#7 MARRIAGE will CHANGE you
I hope you have a decent week. I hope you do something good for yourself. I hope this newsletter brought you some joy or made you ponder.
Ange