February Reflections

Hello Loves,

So much has happened this month.

I joined a gay choir! Oh the joy of singing at the top of my lungs. How freeing. And the sense of belonging is heart-opening. There’s no competition or judgement, just the beautiful intertwining of our voices and energy. We are silly and laugh often. We are serious and sing for peace and love. How healing it is to sing. Here’s one of our empowering songs by Elizabeth Melvin: Stand up, and make good trouble. Speak up, and make good trouble. Get up, and make good trouble. Rise up, and make good trouble.

In the first week of February, my feisty and loving cat died. She had been in my life for 13 1/2 years. She was such a beautiful soul – loyal like a dog, following me around from room to room and wanting to be fed table scraps. She was protective when I felt scared and nurturing when I felt sad. Her death was not pretty. She did not want to leave this world. It was incredibly hard on my heart to see her suffer after I’d tried all of the vets recommendations. I felt like I had failed her.

While grieving the death of my cat, I was working 10-12 hours a day editing my memoir. My editor and I had been going through my manuscript word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph for months. Chopping away the excess wordiness made me feel spiritually lighter. My memoir is finally edited! It is an incredible book about my incredible life. One day you will read it!

By mid-month I got some surprising news in the mail. For Christmas I was gifted a genetic testing kit. I spat in a tube and sent it off. There had always been a mystery in my family as to why I had olive skin and dark hair, which came from my Dad’s side of the family. There’d been stories and photographs of my relatives in caravans, and everyone thought my family might have Roma blood. All my life people have thought I was Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, Indian, Indigenous, Mexican . . . People, for as long as I can remember have asked, what are you? Well, quite shockingly, I’m not any of those nationalities or ethnicities. I discovered that I am 68 % English, 11% Swedish-Danish, and 8% Irish. Then a few more percentages of German, Welsh, and Scottish. I’m still getting my head around this fact.

All of this in twenty-eight days: choir – a new beginning, my cat’s death – an ending, a finished edit – an ending and a beginning, and my DNA test results – a new understanding. I love these monthly reflections. Writing them out helps slow down this wild Aries so I can appreciate my life. It reminds me to honor the many emotions and feelings that come with having this human experience.

-In Sisterhood