I kept putting off writing today. I was waiting for something. I didn’t know what until I read the words of Brianna Albers. who is the founder/editor-in-chief of Monstering Magzine. I’ll tell you more about Brianna another time because I hope to get her to write a guest post at some point fairly soon to tell you about her work.
She writes,
i’m writing 50,000 words of a novel this month. four weeks ago, i was ecstatic. i couldn’t wait to get started. but now, i’m in mourning, and i don’t know how to move past the grief and towards something productive.
i want to protest. i want to call my representatives, i want to help organize grassroots movements, i want to resist. but my body refuses. (my life is an exercise in refusal, and i am so tired of being told no.) i can’t march alongside the people i love. i can’t speak on the phone. i am boxed in on all sides, a pattern of parameters, and i have to pay attention to that. i have to listen to what my body is telling me. thus, the question becomes: how do i forgive my body for its limitations?
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i don’t know what to do. so i admit that. i stand in that space. and then i go and do the next right thing. whatever is in reach. whatever i can do.
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i’m writing 50,000 words of a novel this month, and it seems like a waste of time. in the face of all this, it seems like a waste of time. there are lives on the line. i can offer my money and i can offer my mind, but i cannot offer my body, and i don’t know where my words fit in those parameters. what can my words do? please, tell me what my words can do.
She put words to something I was trying to put together in my head. I don’t know what to do. It’s just that simple. “I don’t know what to do, but I know what to fight for.” She could have been channeling the thoughts that have swirled in my head for the past two weeks.
Then she gives us the gift of the quote pictured above.
Writing is a way those of us whose bodies don’t work can participate in a riot of ideas. Our writing can make things right.
Sounds like a call to activism if I ever heard one. I told you all that you can take the woman out of social work, but you can’t take social work out of the woman. I’ll keep preaching from this virtual soapbox–keep writing, rioting, and righting!!!
Finding Our Voices Together 