I had the pleasure of joining fellow trombonist John Covelli for this "video podcast" about trombone playing. It was a lovely conversation and I'm excited to get to share it with you. 

It was not easy to get to the release of this album, and I'm proud of myself for finishing the project (finally!).

The creative aspect of improvising the music was the easy part. It was hard to get over all my internal critics about the ways I should be playing better and allow myself to be satisfied with how I was playing the week I had studio time blocked. I mixed and mastered the album myself, which while I have some sound editing chops, was a new process for me and I learned a lot. It was hard to get to text and album cover - while I had amazing photos from the original street performance project from Raquel Pimental, I needed to decide on the ones I wanted to use and design an image. I had to decide what I wanted to say. And, most of all, I had to find a way to believing that my creative voice is worth sharing - and that was by far the hardest part. 

I'm glad to put some art into the world. Imperfect and creative. I'm proud of this album, what's in it and behind it. Take a listen and I hope you enjoy it.

Francisco Martins wrote a profile about my family's migration story and the relationship to climate change, published here for Earth Day 2022. 

I'm proud to have done this interview in Portuguese and to be able to talk about important topics across languages.

One of my reflections from reading this is about how by telling a story, there are stories we are choosing not to tell. There are so many other stories about climate migration that all deserve to be told this beautifully, and there are so many other parts to our story. But this story weaves a powerful narrative, part of my story, of how climate change is impacting our lives. 

​That faint whispering that awakens us from our sleep, only to find silence:
Felt absence surrounding us again.
 
Grief comes in waves, but the red flag has waved unceasingly for too long
The crashing is loud, again and again, like curdling screams held inside us. 
 
Each of those numbers reported as deaths each day,
Each of them leave someone with tears streaming down their cheeks
Someone whose life feels like it is in a thick soup of cloud for the next year
A whole family being knocked over by the waves, unable to swim.
 
Dying is part of living and grief is profound.
But we are in an age of such vast grief that we cannot hold it.
 
We grieve the lives we are not living, the dreams that died.
We grieve the people we have lost to death or distances.
We grieve the connectedness that we no longer feel.
 
The heart strings that weave us together are neglected, fraying.
The profound beauty of grief feels blurry, and we are lost. 
 
We numb in distractions, isolated.
We fall asleep, again into dreams. 

I got to join Jeniece for a conversation about what we're up to at the Sibling Transformation Project and our upcoming cohort and programming. Check it out at www.siblingtransformation.org. 

I don't speak French, but was interviewed by Claire Richard, to be part of a podcast in France on whiteness and anti-racist activism. 

This is the beginning of this piece published in full on The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice. 

I am an old-school organizer — the outsider who knocks on the doors of strangers, creating a sense of urgency so that people will take action in their own communities. I was trained by some of the best neighborhood organizers out there, in the final years of ACORN and in the first generation at the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). The outsider-organizer model fed my strengths — getting the work done — while also fulfilling my desire to remain anonymous and unseen.
 
Like many organizers who mastered this model, I am white, college-educated, and dedicated much of my waking hours to my political work. And, like many organizers, over the past decade I have been interrogating this outsider-organizer model. The outsider-organizer, not from the community that they are organizing, holds power by nature of their position, though this power is often hidden and unacknowledged. We talk to all of the members about the issues, tactics, strategies, interpersonal dynamics, and action planning what-ifs — giving us power to influence communities that we are not a part of. The outsider-organizer model is a piece of the white supremacy culture that many of our organizations have upheld, as white organizers shape the agenda in communities of color.
​
I became an organizer because I have a brother with down syndrome, and, as we both came of age, I saw the lack of available support services for him. Believing in the interconnectedness of all of our issues, I worked at multi-issue organizations. Year after year, we organized for money for all kinds of social services in our city and state budgets, but our organizing never prevented the steep cuts to services for disabled people. As an outsider-organizer, it wasn’t my place to raise my own self-interest in fighting for disability services — meaning that my own organizing work did not deliver on what I most needed....

​This morning, as we wait for votes to be counted, many of us are feeling something about the number of voters that voted for Trump. We know that Biden won a majority of all votes, and we know that some voters get more power because of a system designed to protect white supremacy, and so this sizeable minority of the US that voted for Trump is on our minds as we wait. Some of us might be shocked, some angry, some grieving, or maybe numb, outraged, anxious, frustrated, or something else. Whatever emotion you are feeling, it is valid.
 
Our emotions are the way in for us. I coach white people about white supremacy, and emotions are the way in for us to understand how our white supremacy is showing up. When we are triggered, these emotions take over, hijack our whole system and drive us. And when that happens, we align with white supremacy and perpetuate its patterns. For example, when I am stressed to meet an urgent goal, I lose any sense of being centered, drink too much coffee, and project an urgency that demands results without regard to the process – and in this state, I compromise on my commitments and I leave people behind. 
 
We need to learn these reactions that we have. They often come with an emotion, a physical sensation, and a narrative that plays in our heads. To continue my previous example, my emotion is feeling stressed. I feel it in my chin and neck, leaning forward, and being on edge. And the narrative is that I have to get it done at all costs (and why). 
 
I work with white people to find these parts of themselves that align with white supremacy. They are learned reactions that we can find as we grow our awareness of our emotions and our bodies. 
 
Most of the time, the parts of ourselves that align with white supremacy have been learned to protect us from an experience of trauma in our lives, often in other channels where we are oppressed. To continue my same example, this part of me that stresses and performs in urgent situations is one that learned its job to prove myself worthy as a woman. As a small girl, unaware of the dynamics at play, I was socialized through many incidents where my intelligence or sense of possibilities was lessened compared to my male peers. I learned how to align myself with the urgency of white supremacy culture as a way to be seen as smart, good at things, and worth promoting. I bought into the idea that if I worked hard I would succeed, and that meant delivering results under stress. 
 
So, in a minute, I’ll get back to these Trump voters, but first I want you to check it out for yourself, fellow white people. That emotion you are feeling right now, is it distancing you from the Trump voting white people? You aren’t like them, can’t understand them, don’t know what to do with them, etc. So locate that emotion and isolate it if you can. Take some deep breaths. When you think you have it, breathe again some more. Really feel your weight being held by gravity and feel the expansiveness of the air above you, and breathe again. 
 
Now, locate that isolated emotion in your body. Where is it and what does it feel like? This is important so you can recognize it when it comes back sometime later. Breathe again, and notice how it feels in some detail if you can. Then notice what narrative it plays. 
 
Now, that part of you that is saying this is bullshit, ask it to just step aside and let you try this out. See if it will give you the space to see if this checks out before you decide about it. 
 
Now breathe in a few more times. Whatever grounded energy you feel, see if you can add to it another 10%.
 
Now, ask this part of you, the one that holds that isolated emotion, to just loosen up. Ask it to hold on a little less tightly. Breathe a few more times. Make sure it can sense you are separate from it. You are not this emotion, it is just a part of you.
 
Now, thank this part of you for protecting you. Give it gratitude – it has been working hard for a long time. Let it receive that, and it will likely loosen up a little more. Then, ask it what its job is. What does it do for you? And what is it protecting you from? What is it scared of? Feel free to spend as much time here as you like, asking any other questions. And then, thank this part of you again, take 3 long slow deep breaths, and come back.
 
So how was that for you? Did it work for you? It’s ok if it didn’t – this might be hard to do on your own this morning, and you might just need more support to check it out. If it worked… What did you learn? Does my theory check out for you? Is this part distancing you from Trump voters and protecting you from trauma of other oppression you have experienced? (I’d actually love to hear your responses on this, so please do share!)
 
When I do this with my coaching clients, we find ways that we align ourselves with white supremacy to protect ourselves from ways other oppressions have harmed us.
 
So, as we look at the Trump voters, they are white folks without college degrees, white folks in rural places, white folks in the “flyover states,” white folks who are working class or poor, white women in suburban and rural places, and an increasing amount of non-white and Latinx men. (Yes, there are also some rich white men, 1%ers, who are more clearly aligned and to benefit from Trump’s reign of terror. I’m not thinking about them in the same ways.) 
 
These Trump voters are often someone’s parents, sibling, friend, neighbor, family. They are, or are like, our family members we need to set strong boundaries with in order to stay in relationship together.  We set the boundaries because we know we cannot change them. We know they are suffering and hurting, but that to change, they have to want to engage and do the work. We cannot force them to do it. So we set the boundary. We’ve set boundaries so we can maintain our own health, do our own healing, and engage in our own transformation. (Or we haven’t and we are suffering).
 
I’m sitting here this morning wondering about how they can engage and heal. There’s 66 million of them (and counting) in the US. What are the ways that we, as anti-racist white people - who often have some class privilege over them, are often more educated, often have moved or have been born in a place more highly regarded (often for reasons we see as good) than they live in (such as the Coastal cities), have more job security, are more supported in our sexual orientations, more supported in our gender non-conformity, and are more likely to have some practices in place (like therapy or yoga or running or coaching) to support our transformation – what are the ways that we can support their healing so that they can disentangle themselves from white supremacy?
 
 I don’t know the answer but I have a few hypotheses to try on:
 

1. If we engage with disentangling ourselves from white supremacy more deeply, beyond book study and developing an analysis to call each other in, and heal our own trauma that the parts of us complicit with white supremacy support, then we will be more resourceful in any anti-racism work we do. We need to start with ourselves.
2. If we are engaging in practices that distance us from these Trump voters in ways that perpetuate their traumas, we can pay attention and seek to change those practices. For example, perhaps we might quit using the term “flyover states” and seek to see there are beautiful places in the Midwest and Plains states. We can pay attention to our elitism, and work to tone it down. Etc.
3. If we are holding boundaries with friends and family to stay in relationship despite political division, we can look at what the boundary is. We can seek to create boundaries that keep us safe, but allow us to engage and invite them along with us. This won’t work in every relationship, but we can look for places where it might work. 

 
What is most important to me as we think about these voters is that we recognize that they are minority of this country with an unfair amount of political power. The strategies we choose to engage in should not be micro-focused on them, but should be in alignment with ending white supremacy everywhere, not just seeking to court their votes in the next election. These three hypotheses do that. 
 
This is incomplete and imperfect. But it is the morning after the election and these are the thoughts I have, and I want to share them in their imperfection. I hope that you have new clearer insights and thoughts, and I hope you might be in touch to share some of how this lands and what you are thinking. 

In the early days of being pregnant, the mystery of creating a new life inside of me welled up in moments throughout the days. I was filled with hope that these cells would indeed grow into a life, knowing this gradual process so often ends abruptly. Slowly, very slowly, this hidden mystery became real.
But, the sacred mystery became distant as I rounded into the second trimester of my pregnancy. Amidst blood draws and ultrasounds, I felt like my medical record number was trying to claim my entire identity. The medical system reduces us down to 15-minute visits with doctors who order tests and procedures, who dictate exactly how much weight we should or should not be gaining.

Meanwhile, in social settings, I faced the constant inundation of nonconsensual comments about my body that was growing rounder and slower. Again and again, I was asked to repeat the status of how I was feeling — “Fine now, but I did have a lot of nausea before” — followed by other parents projecting their deepest regrets of parenthood onto their advice for me. Non-parents, particularly people who had chosen not to give birth themselves, projected the narrative patriarchy had fed to them on me: that either you could have a successful creative interesting life OR you could be a birth parent, a mother, and settle for a life of diapers and bedtimes. 

I fell into depression. Did you know that depression DURING pregnancy is actually MORE common that post partum depression? But, because post partum depression impacts babies too, and depression during pregnancy only impacts the birth parent, our health system’s embedded patriarchy provides little support.

Pregnancy and new parenthood are located at an intersection of patriarchy and ableism, with a society believing that birth parents entire identities can be reduced down to their pregnant and post partum bodies. 

As a pregnant person, patriarchy placed me squarely in an antiquated role of mother – that soon, my life would end and I would take on motherhood. I would spend my days at home taking care of a child, while my husband would work, and together our social life and creative life would dwindle down to nothing. Strangers felt compelled to go to great lengths to comment on my body and proscribe my identity to me. 
And, as my body became bigger and rounder and my movements slowed down to grow a baby, ableism saw me as incapable, a subject to be tested and monitored, and a data point in the medical industrial complex. Ableism created a doubtfulness about my body, such that when I shared that I had a gig at Yoshi’s the night before my due date, people were surprised and sometimes questioned whether it was indeed possible to play trombone while 9-months pregnant. (It was.) Pregnancy caused many changes in my body – impairments in the terminology of disability studies. Accessibility to me meant having scent free spaces, chairs, and no narrow passages to squeeze through. In a social model of disability, it is society’s lack of accessibility for our impairments that causes the experience of disability – and in pregnancy, ableism dictates a narrative of helplessness and lack of choice, and being incapable and less than as our bodies reach their limits. 

At the intersection of patriarchy and ableism is a narrative that fits into the archetype of traditional motherhood – the woman who is forced into staying home to parent, whose body is not her own, who lacks choice and agency in her life.  

Pregnancy did not feel like a sacred and mystical experience. It exhausted me and wore me down.
Yet, we long to connect to this embodied mystery. We have so few experiences in our lives of profound sacred embodied connection – this has been taken from us in the sterilization of spirituality. Our patriarchal religions deny us access to embodied uterus mysticism, negating the voices of women, and giving the creation of life to a god gendered with he/him/his pronouns. We are removed from birth and death, separated from our bodies. So, people want to talk to us about our pregnant bodies, in a meager attempt to connect to this mystery, though our cultural norms don’t give us the tools to authentically be with the fullness of the mystery.

Instead, we reinforce patriarchal beliefs about parenthood and ableist attitudes about our bodies. Instead, we confine our identities to a singular narrative – two parents married choose to have a baby, and do so without complications, fitting neatly into antiquated gender roles, and feeling joy the whole time. We are reduced down – though none of us really fit this narrative. And we lose the mystery. 
But, this embodied mystery is still there for us to reclaim. Pregnancy and birthing ARE an incredibly mystical embodied experience. Creating a new life in our bodies and then laboring to birth that new life into a new human being is sacred.

I know this from birthing Ina. We were lucky and we had the birth experience I had hoped for – fully embodied natural childbirth, in the comfort of our home.  Moving between yoga balls, the bathroom, the bed, the birth tub, I labored, embracing the intensity of the contractions and the beautiful moments of rest in between. Even as I started to push, I dozed off in the birth tub between contractions, holding calm and embracing the intensity that was to come. I was at choice in how I wanted to birth – choosing what next step to take at the pace I needed, without pressure, or the impositions of norms. I found my strength, and I reminded myself, this is how all of us get here, and the only way out is to have a baby. And I did, and at the end of it, Ina laid on my chest, and I fell absolutely in love with her. 

But, the story doesn’t end there. I haven’t really been able to breastfeed Ina.  A series of challenges compounded upon each other and suddenly in the midst of a pandemic, I’ve ended up almost exclusively pumping and feeding her breastmilk from a bottle. This is not the choice I wanted to make, and still not the choice I want to make as we continue to talk to lactation consultants. In another time and place, other lactating women and breastfed babies would have supported us with the experiences we needed to really get it figured out. But, we lack enough access to elders and support, made even worse by pandemic, and so we struggle on in isolation. Lacking this choice has been an experience of grief.
​
When we reject the singular narrative dictated to us, and embrace the embodied mystery of pregnancy, birth, and sustaining new life, we must embrace both the beauty and the grief. There is grief in the lack of choice we have in our human bodies that we cannot control. But, there is also grief we must hold created by humans in the systemic oppressions of our society. We must be able to hold the miscarriages and infertility, unplanned pregnancies and abortions, pregnancies caused by violence and parenthood that survives despite domestic violence. We must be able to hold the grief of unwanted interventions and traumatic births, emergent C-sections, of stillbirths, of maternal deaths. We must hold fully that there are disparate impacts of maternal outcomes by race such that black women are 4 times more likely to die in childbirth than I am. Holding embodied mystery means holding all of these stories and all of the many more stories not named.

We must also hold the grief of the lack of choice of the world we bring our babies into. For us, choosing to get pregnant meant choosing to bring Ina into a world where climate catastrophe would happen in her lifetime, where she would be another white person in white supremacy and thus cause harm as we all do, where patriarchy will try to take away her freedom of choice, where injustice and oppression are overwhelming. But, we thought at least she’d be able to dance and hug and sing with others. But amidst pandemic, we also grieve the isolation we all now face. 
​
This holiday is one to honor the embodied mystery of creating and sustaining new life. It is a holiday to honor the people who birth this new life, and also those who do not birth but are the village that sustain that new life.  We celebrate the joy in the smiles of the babies and how it lights us up as parents and community. We celebrate the full village that gives wisdom and love. And, we grieve all of the experiences of loss that come with new life. When we move beyond how oppressive forces reduce us down, our hearts must grow to hold the fullness of the love surrounding this embodied mystery. May we be able to know the stillness to hold this mystery now, even in this world. May our hearts grow to hold all the love needed. May we all live into the embodied mystery fully.

This was shared as a Mother's Day reflection at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco and can also be found on their blog here.