06/28/2022
WE ARE HERE TO TEND THE BRIDGES | i was accompanying someone through their birthing journey when i got the news friday. A cocoon of inner worlds and raw vulnerability so small it perched on the head of a pin. the fall of roe was an anvil puncturing this intimacy, making the weight of the world just beyond those four walls surreal, a reality seen through the most terrifying of parascopes that if i could just fend it off for a few more minutes...
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it has taken me some time to process this experience, but these are the words my heart has settled on: we are here to tend the bridges. i know i can show up in this post Roe world because i showed up for that person that day. it is the same work. it is a bridge that has been built for generations, tended by strong hands and deep, watery hearts, and fortitude beyond intellectual comprehension.
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this work is not new. this work is a continuation of centuries of struggle, ingenuity, and survival. in the face of white supremacy, of medicalized patriarchy, of unjust state power, generations of black, indigneous, and q***r peoples, folks who have never been cared for by systems of power, have been caring, loving, surviving, and thriving. it is work i approach with humble curiosity and unyielding compassion as i learn where to lay my bricks along the foundation and how to shepherd folks who tread these paths.
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i feel the sadness and the fear and the hurt, but i feel this work more. these bridges will always be here. no matter someone's reproductive journey. and we will tend to them, bricks and mortar and bodies and spirits. always.
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[Image ID: black text surrounded by black and grey leaf outline reads simply "we will tend the bridges"]
