I was announced as a finalist for the Women's National Book Association's Creative Non Fiction contest with seven other lovely humans. I also keep a bookshelf through the website Bookshlf.com that was featured on their top 100 shelves! I use this site to collect a bunch of articles that I need to reference again and again. The shelf I have linked here is just for fascinating and interesting stories, but I have another shelf about love, and one about prison abolition, and one about food injustice, and more.
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The Like-MindedLast Thursday, I started my first class for the Institute of Impacted Leaders. It's a 12-week program through Initiate Justice that trains system-impacted people on how to become effective organizers. We're going to learn about community organizing, how the policy process works in California, how to change statewide laws, and how to advocate for ourselves and loved ones in prison. One of my favorite parts about it is that I'm being trained in a classroom of folks from my city, which is to say, after the class, I might have made some new local friends with overlapping interests in this sphere. Yay!
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CareRocky Bulboa, my perpetually pregnant onion, is thriving. We've had two good years together. I'm grateful that she's taught me how to care for her.
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Re-learningI'm teaching the roommate how to knit! He's particularly crafty so I think he'll take to it easily, but in the meantime, it's great practice for me. The language responses of my brain have never really recovered from the strokes- except for reading and writing English which I dedicated hundreds of focused hours to. It's fascinating to understand what my brain considers a language- like, knitting patterns or code. I'm hoping that by working on it again, and verbalizing it as I teach, I can self-re-learn. The fact that writing and reading came back to me fills me with the hope that my brain does not have scorched earth parts, but simply, currently inaccessible parts.
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Dinosaur-heartI made my dinosaur heart into a shirt and I love it love it love it. It's a symbol that reminds me of every type of joy, all types of love, everything listed here, surely - re-learning, like-minded folk, care, small wins- and more.