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A Good Enneagram 1

Posted on January 7, 2021 by Danielle

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I lovingly gaze back on that girl in bangs with a twinge of sadness and note of pride and wonder at whose idea it was to  smear heavy on her warm insides the idea of personal responsibility for  every person’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Aging, Church, Grace, Ministry, Politics, Women Tagged Christian Church, Church Kid, Enneagram 1, Evangelicalism, Growing Up, Liberating Theology, Poetry, Spiritual Growth, Unlearning

Every Other

Posted on December 11, 2020 by Danielle

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E V E R Y O T H E R some thingsskip generations likebuying generic and wearing bathrobes.for me it’s hearing the story of your birthand pillowing your face into your mother’sleftover skin from when you were in her.my mother’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Adoption, Children, Family Systems, Grace, Health, Women Tagged adoption, Body, Family, Motherhood, Poetry, Pregnancy, Skin, Stretch marks

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Milestone Posts

  • Life Unfurled
  • We are not so separate.
  • Every Other
  • Your Crying is Safe With Me
  • A poem for the authors: Dots

Archived Travels

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Celebrating all those who love like mothers and reflecting on how trying to has changed me.
“Let’s love each other,
Beauty in the brokenness. It shouldn’t be broken; it doesn’t make it right. It wasn’t “God’s plan” and it will be misunderstood by almost everyone. But along with all those things, there are also new edges to catch the light and, eventually, cut the darkness. There are new openings hospitable to those who were just out of reach before. There are ways this will become your strength. Don’t run too far. Don’t shift to easier tropes. The crying, the bleeding, the godawful truth of what’s happening inside of you, is the exit route. The compulsions that pull you from the deep, from the listening, don’t make up and don’t add up. The exit resolves not in escape but in integration. The breaking becomes a part of the whole, and that is the beautiful brutal secret.
Being a vessel of justice and love does not take on the behaviors of toxic masculinity. So often I’ve witnessed and at times participated in well-motivated but misshapen assertiveness that finds its roots in the worst of leadership and the very patriarchal power plays we’ve identified in others and supposedly war against. It’s especially painful as an Asian American woman to see other women of color undercut and malign people, often each other, in ways they learned as a target in their effort to be bold and brave. We are better than the leadership of past egos. We are braver than the playbook of capitalism and competition. We are truer than false choices and cutoff. We are richer than individual recognition and single story achievement. Justice and love expand the choices, the strategy, the conversation and the compassion; they break out of the toxicity and trapping lines.
I love Los Angeles so much. Not the theaters, glamour and sports as much, though that is fun, but the color, the abuelas selling champurrado and Dodgers keychains, the moms watching each other’s kids and the music from cars and event tents and fruit stands and driveway mechanics. The intersections with signs in three languages. We visited a house the other day whose seller had lived there since she was two. She’s retiring kind of, moving to Texas with her DJ equipment having raised her kids and grandkids, off to the next adventure. In elementary school she used to ride the bus two hours to the valley to attend a good school. There’s so much injustice and forced resilience, so much history and beauty, in this story alone. And it’s leaving, like her next door neighbor, and their next door neighbor. Central Los Angeles is changing so rapidly, so destructively and so many of us are attached but spinning to stay in touch.
// behind and before //

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