hi people how you doing? It’s been a pretty seismic (what my friend uses instead of “crazy” to donate extreme wackadoo batshitness) three weeks. extreme back injury, anaphylactic shock, huge grant, move, Harvard gig, love work. but it’s not -30 yet and the days are humid and semi warm. I just moved and lost my beloved Lavender Room office. somehow (goddess knows why- IDK, maybe a history of being poor and making the best of absolutely anything and dissociation ) I didn’t really think through that I was losing my first home office ever til I had moved a block away and was booking clients in and realized that I’d lost the first space that was all my own and not my bedroom to see folks in. I’m working on a replacement, and grateful to the folks who are able to see me in my pink nonprincess femme bedroom or another space in the meantime. but it’s making me think about class, how divination has always/ often been practiced by folks at their kitchen tables, and how much difference a tiny little bit of space makes.
we’ve got one more week of mercury in retrograde in scorpio, double eclipse, what the fuck season. I don’t want to mess it up but I’m kind of feeling… okay about it all? my knowledge of astrology is fully based on what I read on virgomagic.com and Chani Nicholas, but what I understand from them is: 1. this mercury in retrograde is scoprio is a time when stuff about intimacy, relationships and love, especially grief and mourning and knowledge that’s not quite done, comes back to face us. for me this meant that it’s a year since me and an ex I had a really loving, transformative and sometimes arggggggh relationship with were having a final time of happiness and commitment before some events that would fairly quickly show us that we needed to break up.
and I’ve been sitting with those memories and the knowledge that comes with it. because grief is not just grief. it’s so regular to be like BLAAAAAH I DON’T WANT TO FEEL THIS ANY MORE, HEARTBREAK, GO AWAY. as a femme, I’ve often wrestled with feelings of both failure when a relationship ends and fear of scarcity of good boos out there. because of ways in which femmephobia has colonized my understandings of my strong vulnerable, and also because relationship work/ love work is feminized, undervalued, invisibilized labour. out of both of those, it’s easy to slide into feelings of: if I didn’t keep the relationship going (cause that;s my femme work, natch), by that logic it’s a) all my fault. my relationship labour wasn;t enough. I was not enough. and for all the issh to slide into a big quagmire of, no, I do not want to feel my fucking feelings and grieve shit about a relationship tranistion.
but if we flip the script and a relationship transitioning isn’t failure, and if we’re not failures as femmes when we choose to leave a relationship or when a relationship ends- if intimacy is a big winding river that goes over mountains hits rapids and boulders and off cliffs and shit, if love goddesses are healers and tricksters who know so much more than us and who laugh and push us off cliffs themselves sometimes, so we can learn some shit we don’t already know- then this can be a time of deep dive, learning, doing sacred femme grief work of tears, snot, come, memory, discovery. Merc ret becomes less of a fuck you and more of a brokenbeautiful place to slow down, listen and open.
my friend and comrade cherry gallette once said something that’s stuck with me deep. She said (I’m paraphrasing) that she thought about how her ancestors hadn’t always been able to love and have sex the way they wanted, and how when she chose love and desire as a queer femme of color now, she was loving and having sex for them, out of their best hopes and desires. my friend and co-Healing Babe of Justice Mkali-Hashiki (http://www.theenstaticbody.com/) once told me that in her tradition, we were all born with the right to divine love and sex, the gods knew it was a need, not a frivolous thing on the side. Both of those femme of color wisdoms have stayed with me on my own journeys through lovers, love and sex, desire and loss, discovery, healing, being surprised.Our queer and trans of love and desires – in all their tangled web, plot twist, curve ball complex movements- are not anomalies, but what our ancestors want us to do.
this is a season where, in many traditions, the ancestors are close. and it’s good to remember that they want us to love and fuck. ourselves and each other. they want us to listen to them and they want us to ask for help. help and sex and love and vulnerability are all our birthrights.
I’ve got some spots open in this time leading up to Samhain/Halloween/Dia de los Muertos- email me if you wanna reading at brownstargirl @ gmail. com about love, sex, death, transformation, the deep dive, all of it.
I leave you with the following Badass Resilience Queer Femme of Color Love and Sex Affirmations that Kyisha Williams and myself wrote several years ago:
Badass Resilience: Black and Brown Femme Survivor Love and Desire Affirmations
By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Keisha Williams
I recognize and celebrate the Love I encounter everyday
I love myself unconditionally (no matter what)
I do not hurt myself, or act in ways that contribute to my self-destruction, the self destruction the world wants me to take part in. I also do not act in ways that are destructive to my community, because we are interdependent.
I have the power to heal, by myself and collectively, the trauma my body and spirit hold due to abuse and oppression.
I attract only healthy relationships.
All my relationships are loving and harmonious (including the one with self).
I release any desperation and allow love to find me.
I have the power to have my heart’s desire.
If I can figure out what I want, I can figure out how to get it
I make a beautiful life for myself out of my heart’s desires
My body is a site of pleasure and power.
Divine sex and love is my birthright. The ancestors wanted me to get down.
I understand that I am connected to All (everything).
I am a being whose home is among the stars, i am brilliant and full of light (darkness)
There is never anything to worry about.
I focus on my power, not my powerlessness.
I trust myself.
And when I believe and trust in myself, so do others.
I express my needs and feelings despite fear.
I embrace the velocity of change.
I trust in the process of life.
I am at peace.
I get to be surprised.
I get to make a new story.
xoxo
Brownstargirl Tarot 
AWESOME!!!!