Dear friend,
If you’re reading this, that means you’re still here. What a miraculous, merciful thing.
I am thinking about this lucille clifton poem. How “everyday something has tried to kill me and failed.” I am thinking about Celie in The Color Purple, saying “but dear God, I’m here, I’m here” — twice like an incantation. I am thinking about my grandmother, 97 years old as of a few days ago, who greets each morning with surprise and praise. I am humbled yet again by all the mystery that led us here and now.
I don’t have many profound things to say at the end of this year. As I get older, my belief that all the things we experience have a meaning tangible enough for us to decipher, continues to wane. This year I’ve heard this lesson clearer than ever before: most things are not for us to know. I do not understand why someone I love moves through each day riddled in physical pain and my body runs, dances and reaches without an ache. I do not understand why bombs take the lives of thousands of children and I navigate most moments free from the incessant threat of annihilation. I remain bewildered by the daily mercies that are offered to some and not others.
While walking through a Kehinde Wiley exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston last week, I was struck by the tenderness and openness of his paintings. Each subject seemed to surrender to something neither benevolent nor sinister, but radiating with a stunning kind of energy. My core softened as I encountered each image and figure. In the bodies of these beautiful, melanated humans I saw the manifestation of a feeling I still lack words for. A kind of visual dance with mercy and survival.
This same kind of momentous, dynamic wonder is what calls me to writing.
So much of what’s anchored me through this very tumultuous year is my writing practice. At the start of the year, I made the decision to reactivate Sugar From Sun as a way to create external accountability for my writing. I knew I wanted to see myself stretch and grow in regard to the type of writing I was developing and sharing. Through the support of community writing classes, co-writing buddies, editors at my local newspaper and paid subscribers to this newsletter, I’ve watched my writing blossom in ways that felt nearly impossible last December.
Writing has always pushed me to places I wouldn’t have journeyed on my own and revealed myself to me — guiding me deeper into the truth of who I am and what I’m capable of offering the world. In a class I took a few weeks ago about writing personal essays, we were offered many reflection prompts including: “What are you devoted to bringing forward?” With little hesitation, I typed:
I’m devoted to publicly sharing what I witness and learn from being alive. I’m devoted to stretching myself to be more vulnerable, authentic and true. I’m devoted to letting the electricity of the divine move through me and onto the page. I’m devoted to becoming the best writer I can be — committing to this craft so I might represent the unspeakable and mystical to the best of my ability in this form.
At the heart of those lyrical words is a desire to radically witness (myself and the world) and responsibility to seek out out mentorship from people who want to see of my words grow stronger, clearer and more powerful. Writing in this way means opening myself up to the discomfort of looking closely and being curious about what I encounter, even when writing about it and sharing it frightens me. In the coming months, I hope to step into this more courageous exploration around themes of ancestry, queerness, love, pleasure, accountability and spirituality.
As I aspire for a deeper, bolder relationship with my writing, I hope to evolve what my monthly offering to subscribers looks like, as well. While I love curating lists of meaningful content I’m encountering in the world and making playlists for paid subscribers, I want to reimagine what it looks like to create and offer something of value, that challenges me to grow as a writer. Next month, I hope to share more about changes to the pace and breadth of my writing as well as the offerings provided to at different subscription levels.
For now, I’m continuing to let mercy move through and around me like reverberating sound waves. May the transition into this new year prove merciful for you as well. Below is a little something for paid subscribers.