Jessica Robles, Pacing 

One of the things that hit me a couple of days after seeing Jessica‘s work was the pacing and how she tells her story. It was a beautiful example of getting the pacing just right. Her story is very painful. Very hard, and continues to be on a daily basis, and when you’re living that—the experience is very overwhelming in the moments that you’re feeling the weight of it, but there are also moments where you get to recapture joy or peace and quiet. She included those moments—they were not lost in the trauma—and to me they look like victory. They look like healing. She did a great job of maintaining integrity to the experience through the pacing of talking about things that are really hard, but also showing herself at home quietly baking while she has some alone time, she shows herself having an unexpected moment of surprise and silliness with her children were they all laughed together. I want to remember that the pacing, the interludes of peace and joy still exist, even when we are living in the fallout of trauma. Notice them, nurture them.

My children are listening to fart noises while I wade through bureaucracy instead of active parenting.

“The worth of our stories throughout history have steadily been banned, excluded from all lessons. Our books are missing from the libraries or are being pulled from their shelves. We get sucker-punched without commentary or narratives.”
- Marcie Alvis Walker

Put it somewhere else.
You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that’s not within your body. Let it live in art. Let it live in music. Let it be devoured by building brighter connections. Your body is not a coffin for pain to be buried in.

Ehime Ora

“…books are the first plain on which certain battles are fought, as writers, what we do is remember. And to remember this world is to create it.”

- Toni Morrison 

VISUAL THOUGHTS
Mrs. Stewart / Cars that go boom
Cuidate on a yellow cone
Amate/target of intimacy Amantes

Animation of a balloon in the wind aggressively whacking someone in the face over and over. 

What happens if I talk about motherhood and Antarctica in the same sentence?
—Elizabeth Rush, the Quickening

Making and Being
We define Connection as “I am reliably able to form and sustain trusting, authentic relationships and to compel others to a shared vision. I am a supportive presence amid difficulty. I am able to give and receive grounded, useful feedback.”

Teaching to Transgress
In “Remembering the Body,” we remember the power systems of class, race, gender, sexuality, and disability, erased by the comfortable mind/body hierarchy and the “romance” of the mind freed from the body.

Next Level: Applying this idea to remembering the mind/ nervous system should be the next step. What kind of trauma lens are we unconsciously living from? How does an educator prepare for triggers in the learning space? How do we recognize when a student is triggered/ in active trauma? How do we become aware, and what coping skills can we develop to avoid blindly teaching through our own trauma lens?

The arts don’t just reflect reality but have the opportunity to create it.

What then is the responsibility of the artist to the self and to the community to create healthy and equitable realities? Gaslighting is also a form of shaping reality that lands under the category of relationship abuse. How do we teach artists to create and shape reality in responsible ways? How do we avoid creating “martyrs” and “saviors?”

Church notes

Revelation is in the repetition. What is god repeating, that you keep resisting? “We’re going to do this again, until you get it.”

READ: This is real and you are totally unprepared.

Witnessing

The ritual of bearing witness as opposed to collecting chisme for redistribution. Something here connects to Catholic Confessions and Galatians 6* “carrying the load, with caution”.

Confession offers a safe space, with a holy listener. It removes shame and offers redemption. It also keeps the priest close to the struggle of their parishioners and informs their practice of crafting divine healing messages, and lessons 

*Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load. Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.