Issue 3: Body by For Women Who Roar

The Body Issue

EDITORS NOTE Hello roaring friends,

Photography by Talitha Bullock

This has been by far the most difficult editor’s note for me to write to date. I have fully employed all of my avoidant attachment antics and have procrastinated for as long as I could. Why? I have a complicated relationship with my body. I have struggled to trust that this body is my friend and not my enemy. As someone that Identifies as survivor on multiple fronts–it has been a long process of learning to listen and love my body as a storyteller. Our body holds story, word upon word of often unsayable language. If you’re stressed, your body tells you through insomnia, headaches, etc. If you’re working through trauma recovery, your body holds the memory through phantom pain, dissociation, etc. If your body has endured illness, then you’ve experienced that war within your very tissues. Your body is truly the most sacred journal there is and it is filled with vulnerable truth, your truth.

Once again, I am humbled by the material in this Volume. Powerful stories, poetry, art, and photography from women around the world sharing their own experiences with body. I was moved by the profound bravery, beauty, and vulnerability in these pages, and I was challenged to step back into my healing journey with my body. I hope that as you flip through, that you allow yourself to see these women and to see yourself reflected back. Take your time, read and look slowly, stay curious.There is healing for you waiting within these pages, I hope you uncover it.

As always, thank you for roaring with us!

FWWR founder + friend, Megan February

FWWR MEGAN FEBUARY

NON-F IC T ION 01

Letter from the editor

FWWR AMBASSADORS

ASEYE AGAMAH

10-14

Hairology

102-103

DEBORA HELLINGA

The fire inside my temple

FWWR MARKETPLACE

98-100 KIMI CERIDON

It is simple, do not touch

P OET RY CHETNA MEHTA

60-63

It Started when I woke up

LISA JOHNSON

15 ALLIE W

Not that kind of special

72-76

The savage hours

RACHEL SKYE JORQUERA

22-23

Hunger Uncloaked

REBECCA NERO

I N T E RV I EWS 28

...and I hate my body a little more

STEF STREB

42-47

Q&A

BRENDA SERPICK

Affection

GEORGIE WILEMAN

86-91

Q&A

LILLIA MARIE ELLIS

34-38

How I am constantly reminded of my transness On metaphor and the trans experience Loudness Another trans poem I wrote

TRISIA EDDY

ART 40

JESRILL VELASCO

04-09

JOSHUA DUNLAP

CHETNA MEHTA

SARA VINCINI

The punishment

CARRIE MORAN

I am waking up I hold myself however I am

Nine pairs (Needled)

NICA SELVAGGIO

BIANCA CHYCZY

78-79

WHITNEY OBERG

84-85

Shorn Negative

NICHOLE BRAZELTON

Shift

PHOT O G R A PH Y KIMILEE NORMAN

Mantra

NIKKI DICUNTO MAGGIE SUGGETT

The female body

Water for feet

CHANTAL LESLEY K.J. LAFOLLETTE

SARAH VEZ

Whispers from society

24-27

Pin the fantasy on the female

Femininity in morse code

KELSEY CLAUDIUS

16-21

Just words

30-33

STEF STREB

42-47

Sisterhood

ALEJANDRA MARIA

Shorn

JENNIFER ADLER

52-54

One day we will all bloom Shades and forms

EMILY COMNICK

56-59

THE BODY ISSUE

Katie’s story (Katie Lund)

KATE HARRIS JESSIE MCCALL

63 64-67

Underwater bodies

ALEXANDRA GOMEZ

70-71

The fluidity of shape

MACKENSEY ALEXANDER

80-81

Embodiment

GEORGIE WILEMAN

86-91

This is endometriosis To thy own self be true

MELISSA VLAHOS

92-95

The unleashed project

CHRISTY BIG JOHNY

96-97

Embrace yourself

FWWR TEAM

DI S T R I BU T OR

MEGAN FEBUARY

SMALL CHANGES

Founder / Editor-in-chief

Pacific Northwest Region

MONTSE ANDRÉE Copy Editor

For stocking anywhere else please contact hello@forwomenwhoroar.com

LANDON FEBUARY Designer

Please respect the rights of our contributors. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited.

Artwork by Jesrill Velasco

HAIROLOGY

A Cultural Memoir by Aseye Agamah

HAIROLOGY

During the early years of my youth, my mother would braid my sister’s, and my hair. Hair Day was always an event, and a conflicting one at that: it was an excuse to watch TV and movies, but the process was lengthy and often painful, as I was always lazy about maintaining consistent upkeep of my hair. I thought having Black Hair was such a hassle, not realizing that if I just cared for it, if I learned to love my unruly tresses, they would learn to love me back. I remember I used to want to have White-girl Hair — or at least something like it, something that was slick and smooth and easy to manage, the simplest of wash-and-gos. I would sit on a cushion on the floor in front of my mother who sat on the couch, her knees at my shoulders. I would writhe and squirm under her hands; the tighter the braids the longer they lasted. She would say “Beauty is pain!” sometimes followed by, “So sit still!” but often the aphorism stood alone, potent enough in its simplicity. As I got older, I begged my mom to let me get a relaxer, and finally she relented. I thought I was trading the discomfort of detangling sessions and the tight pinch of braids for something less painful, but I was sorely misled. “Let me know when it starts to burn.” This is not my mother speaking but a friend of a family friend who has agreed to come over and give me my first kiddie-perm. She is not my mother, and yet she is caressing my head like a mother should, like my mother occasionally would. This woman is about to give me my first relaxer. “You just holler and let me know when it starts to burn so we can go ahead and wash it out, ok, baby?” This woman, straddling my shoulders, is a big woman with a round, pretty face and the fattest hands and feet I have ever seen. (It makes me think of that episode of That’s So Raven where Raven swells up from an allergic reaction to shrimp). Here’s the scene: It’s happening, it has begun. I feel it. Not even five minutes have passed before the first

pricks of a burn start to creep up from the nape of my neck, leaving a trail that feels as though it might light my head on fire — an Afro burning bush. Despite the increasing pain, I think of my mother’s words (“Beauty is Pain!”) and know I have to suck it up. I want this — I need this. I need my hair to be sleek and straight, like the girls on the box of the kiddie-perm, smiling up at me with their sleek tresses tucked behind their ears, coiled into fanciful updos, smoothed and accessorized with barrettes. Not in the way my mother used barrettes, but in a straight-hair kind of way. I need this, so I bite my lip and try not to wince, but the more relaxer she adds to my roots, the hotter my scalp gets. I feel it especially in the tender, raw places where I vigorously fought off an itch mere hours before this whole ordeal. The pain becomes blinding, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I remember asking my mother once about the pain of my birth, and she’d told me that having a baby was the worst pain she’d ever experienced. Obviously Mom has never had a relaxer! I think naïvely to myself. I’ve been putting up a brave front, but I eventually can’t help it: my shoulders snap up to my ears, an audible wince escaping through my teeth. The lady says, “Oh is it starting to burn, baby? I can go ahead and rinse it out, we don’t need to leave in for the whole 30 minutes if —” “Nope, I’m fine,” I insist through gritted teeth. “It’s not burning at all.” Anything for that flow, flat-pressed hair I can flip over my shoulder and tuck behind my ears. But the joke’s on me: when it’s all over, I look in the mirror and see that the kiddie-perm couldn’t stand a chance to my 4C kinky mane — I look exactly the same as before. Twice upon a time, I felt the need to reinvent myself. It happened once when I was living in Chicago and again when I moved to NYC. I felt this need for self-reinvention, both times, only to discover that the self I was seeking was/had already been invented

– and thus did not need “re-inventing”, but, rather, re-discovering. I’m talking about hair, about Black Hair. I spend time doing it, talking about it, describing it, because Black Hair takes time. And to have a conversation about Black Hair is to mimic the thing itself: a naturally tangled, artful mess, one that doesn’t necessarily need cleaning up, but one that invites you (only by invitation; consent is key) to wonder and explore the range of implications it holds for others and for yourself. At the beginning of D’Angelo’s song “1,000 Deaths”, on his album Black Messiah , we hear a clip from a fiery sermon given by an unidentified preacher: “ When I say Jesus I’m not talking about some blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned-relative-complexioned Cracker Christ. I’m talking about the Jesus of the Bible, with hair like lambs’ wool, I’m talking about that good hair, I’m talking about that nappy hair ...” I don’t know that I’ve ever felt a lamb’s/sheep’s wool (when it’s on a sheep’s body rather than on a sweater), and I don’t know if Jesus was really black black, but I do know that my own hair is “nappy”. And for a long time, it took me a while to accept that “nappy” hair is also “good” hair – hearing that preacher made me think about who was looking at Black Hair, and what connotations might they be inclined to associate with it. With society and pop culture telling me otherwise, I had grown up believing the two terms – “good” and “nappy” – were mutually exclusive. As a child, I’d read shampoo bottles labels “for normal hair”, thinking what the fuck does that even mean? But now I know exactly what the fuck that means. Or at least what it implies. Unlike the less-negative comparisons to “Jesus” and “lamb’s wool” (although any animal analogy always begs to be more thoroughly investigated), I’ve most often heard Black Hair compared to pubic hair or a scraggly bush: inelegant curls that ought not to be shown or seen, something to keep hidden. I read headlines about black children being sent home

Aseye Agamah

from school; articles about the army making rules in regards to Black Hair; videos about policing dreadlocks and Afros, deeming them as “inappropriate” for certain spaces. At the time, when I was young, I know that there is something off, but I am not able to fully connect the dots: I am not quite able to realize or articulate that all of this is to suppress blackness in these seemingly trivial but very fundamental ways. But now I see it, and I feel this desire to lift a mirror to absurdity of our culture: the shit literally grows out my head this way, and you want me to change? You’ve no understanding what it means to have this hair, this life, this existence — no way of knowing at all. Ontological blind-spots. And even if you do have hair like me, you too might be susceptible to the kind of brainwashing I was fed in my youth, growing up in a white suburban, Midwestern town. Growing up I felt strange about the idea of being privy to something that my non-black friends don’t know about; their ignorance about something so integral to black identity (and how that kind of ignorance is not only permissible, but also something that gets thrust into/onto our own paradigms, even as little brown children). But now I realize that this shit is for us, by us , and that is more than ok. It’s empowering to be able to engage in the art that is Black Hair, especially if you have some growing out of your own scalp. But it’s hard to feel this, to come to this conclusion, when you’re young and everyone around you looks nothing like you. They have no real need to know about Black Hair as you do, to learn its language, become familiar with its (unpredictable) ways. For them, it is not essential. A boy exclaims, “You cheated!” when one of my braids falls out at school. A girl pulls out my extension on the playground; when she laughs, I am mortified and then angry. Others scoff, “Your hair is fake?!” or “That’s not even your hair?!” and I want to say, “It is too my hair because I (my momma) bought it so back the fuck up off me,” but

of course I don’t say anything — the “right” answer is too dense, too complicated to fit into the tiny space of those subsequent moments. Sometimes this fourth wall would be inevitably broken down like this and I wouldn’t know how to account for it, how to explain extensions, explain shrinkage, explain Black Hair’s relationship with water, explain about protective styles, give context about their history and its deeper meaning. Nearly every time I switch from protective style to natural to protective style, I feel this pressure to have to explain myself, to give people a minicrash-course of how this whole thing works, but mental fatigue often wins out over the pressure. When I first wore my hair out and it was in a baby Afro, a girl at school asked, “What happened?” as if I might’ve fallen ill or had an accident. When people say this, I know they mean what happened to my long braids, my banged weave, my Senegelese or Marley twists, or even a big, full Afro.... Why would I replace those longer styles with this short, boyish ‘do? But I can’t begin to explain “What happened” long ago when I, for years and years, relied on relaxers and flat irons: what happened to make my hair break off and become brittle and short. Once I got to college, I loved having a big Afro; and, sometimes, other people seemed to love it too — a little too much. Once, outside of a nightclub, a girl lunged drunkenly at me, excited, thrusting her hand into my hair before I even knew what was happening, and when I moved angrily away, she said, “What? I have black friends who let me touch their hair all the time.” “One or two voices are valid and necessary to listen to”, I wanted to tell her, but they don’t speak for the entire culture. Instead, I walked away. Back to the here-and-now: When I pull on my curls, no matter how gently, it sounds like a crackling fire inside and outside my head. I stretch out a coil, hold it between the tips of my fingers and pull until it’s as far away from my scalp as it can go, six, seven

inches beyond. The shrinkage is real; I let go and it snaps back down to earth — my head — to join the others amidst the wiry sea. Black Hair has a mind of its own. Anyone with hair texture more dynamic than “waves” could say the same, but Black Hair is a particular kind of dynamic, a kind of dynamism with its dynamic ness. It’s not just the material, physical thing, but its connection/association between black skin and noses and butts and bodies that were seen as inherently offensive, ugly, off-putting, deemed worthy of dehumanization, relegation to second-class citizens. Lately, I find myself thinking (more than researching — I ought to be researching...) about the physics of Black Hair, the way in which, and reasons why, it emerges from our scalp as so. Often, it’s as happy, springy coils that retract and bounce back when pulled and then released. Sometimes it’s spun cotton candy, not set to dissolve but to stay, not indefinitely, but quite definitely, until you (or life) decide to sculpt it otherwise. Hair that defies gravity, that does not always fall down your back but rises up and out, towards the heavens. Hair that is greedy, thirsty: for water, for moisture, time and love and care. The only greedy thing I know that rewards you when you love it; if you stick with it long enough, in the right way, there can and will be reciprocity: you’ll feel a surge of power, an ascension to a higher plane — it’s a divine experience, one that’s hard-won. If Black Hair was a sound, it would be a loud one — one that is difficult to ignore; and yet, in some cases, people become accustomed to tuning it out, turning or shutting it down because they do not — cannot — understand. Engaging with Black Hair is a ritual, sacred and profound, Black Hair is spiritual, with you and yourself, but also with other black people. It is a time of connecting, a kind of intimacy that can be found nowhere else but in the space between hands and hair and history. I trust them, these black men and women, because we share an experien-

HAIROLOGY

tial, existential familiarity. In college, my fellow black peers would do each other’s hair, as there was no Black Hair store in town, no braiding shops we knew of in close proximity to our suburban campus. And so we did our own sew-ins, our own Marley twists, our own box braids and bantus. Our own art, for us, for each other. There was no other option, but this unfortunate situation brought us together, a kind of bittersweet particularity. Most recently, it has felt sacred in a different way, as I’ve had to do my own hair myself. Most recently, I find introspection, meditation in the task of taking down my braids; self-intimacy. I watch as dirt and dandruff cascades down into the trash can, and if not there, it lands on the towel around my shoulders, my pants, my glasses. Bit by bit, I uncover myself, watch her emerge once more, a blossoming, bloomed living thing long in hibernation — or at least for the past few months. I’d forgotten how much I missed her. I’d also forgotten her power, how much she intimidated me (and others). Fingercombing, detangling becomes a painstaking labor of love, a reunion. Although it’s been on our heads since infancy, we seldom really understand or our hair’s growth pattern until we start approaching early adulthood. What does it mean for cells to be growing out of our scalps, forming complex patterns that change with the seasons? And what does hair have to do with our conceptualization of both personal identity and the individual in the midst of community? If you think about it, it’s a bit absurd to have spent so much of one’s life thinking about hair, feeling at odds with such a natural part of their existence (but then again, don’t we all in one way or another?). It feels all the more baffling when I consider the fact that nowadays, especially in less sheltered, more city-like settings, Black Hair has begun to be appreciated. The very thing that helped mark our difference and deem us unworthy is now something people want to celebrate.

Progress is here (in a way that is reminiscent of the Black Power Movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s), but not everywhere, not nearly enough. I cringe when I read headlines in fashion magazines referring to some Kardashian-Jenner’s “BOLD NEW LOOK” of cornrows, a ‘DARING, FUN” fashion statement of faux locs they don’t — can’t — even recognize or name as such; and I read the articles, because a part of me hopes that the author is being ironic, that it’s “daring” or “bold” because these celebs are about to get dragged and put on blast by some black person who’s had enough. But no — it’s always the same, the easy praising of these black features, these Black Hair protective styles, when it’s portrayed on white bodies. It’s a “bold” look because it’s “different” from the norm... and when it’s different from the norm, it often treads a fine line between being rejected and conditionally accepted. I still get upset when I see white people sporting Afros and blackface at Halloween parties... situational, conditional acceptance that can be taken off and tossed aside once the night is through. What would they say if I told them that what they see as a little respite from whiteness is actually the very embodiment of their privilege: the things they don’t have to think about or struggle with? And how to tell them, in a way that is both informative and loving? How to do this when there is so much hurt and anger in my heart is an unending conundrum. And yet — I feel grateful these days, once I ex out of those articles and find a space to witness black self-love. I feel a sense of gratitude for the fact that we live in the Information Age, the fact that I can learn about my history and that of others; that I can become educated, and also that I can feel less alone in what I experience on an ontological level. I always joke and say “Tumblr raised me,” but I’m lowkey serious: Tumblr, the Internet taught me, a little, sheltered Suburb Baby, about myself and my heritage. It exposed me to thought-provoking, illuminating

discourse, held up a mirror up to myself, taught me how to embrace my blackness, my femininity, my queerness, my hair. For myself, on my own terms. I look back at myself, in retrospect, when I first wore my hair out and short. I see myself becoming more proactive in playing up my femininity: I wore more makeup, grew my nails longer, dressed in a way that steered far clear of butch or masculine. Somehow this short hair “like a boy” needed to be countered with girl-ness to remind people (not even myself, the concern was always turned outward, towards what other people could and would think of me — I needed to be in control of their perception, I felt that I was still a woman. That my hair might resemble an animal’s but I was not one — not a beast or a man, but a Woman. I now feel less pressured to achieve this juxtaposition, but in a way, the balance feels comfortable; I feel at ease in this fluid space. And yet, there are moments when I yearn for people to see me as I want to be seen, in a way I can control.

Engaging with Black Hair is a ritual, sacred and profound, Black Hair is spiritual, with you and yourself, but also with other black people. It is a time of connecting, a kind of intimacy that can be found nowhere else but in the space between hands and hair and history.

Aseye Agamah

Nearly every black woman I have ever known has a hair story, a hair-story that deals with Black Hair as a mark of otherness — some positive, but more often than not, unfortunate and damaging. Every black woman has a certain negotiation, a particular relationship with their hair — a relationship that is forever in flux, changing as she goes through the various stages of her life. Black men have it too, to a certain extent, but for them, there isn’t the same pressures of beauty standards or ideals of Western

femininity to contend with. Black Hair, oftentimes, feels like a choice between armor and expression. And, like most things at this particular point and time in my life, I’m choosing not to choose just one. I’ll have my cake and eat it too, thank you very much — I’ll rock a ‘fro one week and then switch up on you with a weave the next, not just because I can, because I know what it means for someone like me to do so – because I feel I’ve earned it. Only by going on this

journey of ups and downs of accepting my hair have I been able to do whatever I feel like with it — the freedom, I’ve found, is rooted in that self-acceptance. I used to feel as though I had to explain my hair changes to everyone, as if I owe them this.... But I now — finally, after decades of insecurity about what grows out of my own scalp — I feel free to embrace the versatility of my own expression.

Only by going on this journey of ups and downs of accepting my hair have I been able to do whatever I feel like with it — the freedom, I’ve found, is rooted in that self-acceptance. I used to feel as though I had to explain my hair changes to everyone, as if I owe them this.... But I now — finally, after decades of insecurity about what grows out of my own scalp — I feel free to embrace the versatility of my own expression.

not that kind of special Words by Lisa Johnson Photography by Koly Swistak

I didn’t come into this world viewing myself as disabled. If I am truly honest, I don’t think my family ever used that word. I think they thought it was a negative label. I get that. They were trying to protect me. But it didn’t work. I grew up with my brother singing Steve Holy’s, “Good Morning Beautiful” to me every morning as he made breakfast. I woke up early just so I could hear him sing the lyrics before he left. It made me feel beautiful. It made me feel special. But not the other kind of “special”. That would come later. I never self-identified as disabled. Not differently abled. Not handicapped. Not different in any way. I was just like everyone else, right?

Wrong.

I truly wanted to be healed. I felt completely broken.

Eventually, society seeped in and informed me my body was all wrong. Shame set it. Fear took over. Hiding began. I might not have ever known I was wrong without somebody telling me. But as time went on, hands began to be laid on my body. Prayers were sent up to heaven on my behalf. This was my first hint that something was off. This was my first inkling that my body was all wrong. I had never asked them to pray. Consent was never given. It was also never inquired. But I think I probably would have given it anyway. Once I realized my imperfections I couldn’t go back.

This brokenness was only perpetuated by the dichotomy of hearing I was wonderfully created, And yet, the creator needed to still fix a few things. So then, whose likeness was I made in? Because I didn’t feel God-breathed. And I didn’t feel human. I would wonder... What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have a body that matters in this word? One head? Two arms? Two legs? Ten fingers? Ten toes? If so, I must be otherworldly. Alien could be my true nature. Actually, I am alien in many ways.

T H E F E M A L E B O DY

A film photography editorial that celebrates the strength, beauty, and resiliency of the female body. It is a body of work that is inspired by every scar, dimple, and curve that women call home. It is grounded in the beauty of our diversity and unique differences. “The Female Body” hopes to evoke feelings of gratitude and self-love for the personal, societal and political hardships woman’s bodies have undergone and withstood throughout the test of time.

Shot On: 1978 Pentax ME Super Analog Film Camera, 50mm, Kodak Portra 400 Location: Toronto, ON Photographer: Nikki Dicunto Models: Chantelle Blagrove, Gabby Bevilacqua, Emily Veall, Lisa Kim and Priya Chahal

Photography by Nikki Dicunto

HUNGER

When I found my body red, raw and hungry in the woods, I knew I was finally awake. The earth was a velvet cape and I wrapped it around me to comfort a heavy sigh. I searched for my stomach in the leaves and found it full of branches and twigs. My hunger grew and I became the beast I could no longer tame in the wild woods.

By Rachel Skye Jorquera

UNCLOAKED

Once hidden, I now shed my fur coat. My howl tender and flushed like my breasts as they welcome the cold earth. I dig into the earth, flesh against flesh. I dig to find the wolves that buried my limbs earlier that night when I was just a girl. Now I show them that I am a woman and my body is home.

By Rachel Skye Jorquera

Photography by Chantal Lesley

... and I hate my body a little more

I’m eight in the dressing room at a JC Penney and none of the clothes fit me, I sink to the floor. My mom knocks at the door and says “Honey let me see, I’m sure you look pretty” But I don’t have the strength to tell her that once more, the clothes didn’t fit my shape. And I start to hate my body a little more. I’m 11 at a Weight Watchers meeting when the rest of the girls in my class don’t even have to watch what they’re eating. When the frazzled haired lady yells out my weight and it’s more than the 38 year old before me I wince in pain. And I start to hate my body a little more. I’m 13 and the rest of the girls wear a 00 and I’m an 11 I can’t even fathom ever changing in front of them in the locker room without feeling my chest clench. I never got undressed. And I start to hate my body a little more. I’m 17 and it’s late. 12am and I’m sobbing, begging God to make me normal. I’m writing a list on my phone of what’s wrong with me. The self-loathing seeps into me. Listing how my nose is abnormal and my cellulite is rampant. And I start to hate my body a little more. I’m 20 about to be 21 and after all these years of learning to hate my body I’ve overcome the fear. I look in the mirror and see a beautiful masterpiece that has carried me through when I couldn’t go on anymore. I begin to love my curves and how they swerve. The indents and the imperfections meant that I’ve lived and it makes me admire (them?) with great affection. For it is a temple that I now hold sacred and I refuse to let the world tell me differently. And I start to love my body a little more.

By Rebecca Nero

AFFECTION

I can’t remember exactly what she was angry about not when those clenched hands, all bones and chapped with eczema declared to the ceiling how she wished we were never born or pretended the bug she smashed into linoleum was her enemy, dead finally, life will be perfect with no husband to slap her, no aggravating children craving dolls or attention That morning she threw my doll across the bedroom, the one I gave unyielding affection, its leg carved into the wall and came off, one hard bounce on sullen carpet shocked at the violence, a clean and effective amputation I didn’t cry though, considering that doll afterward as my daughter caught in the crossfire of her anger, where we all were frozen, until she declared this is what you get

By Brenda Serpick

Photography by Sarah Vez

My ridged skin stretches over to contain me. I feel how the wind pricks gentle at the ripples, convincing the world to love me for who I am not. An eye at a time descends and they smile and my ridged skin smiles back. Left uncovered, the sacred, unmourned spots I feel they’ll see— as if they could, as if a part of me could peek through like light and all the other unshattered things left growing inside me. I have not yet turned into myself and so, to me, I am still an idea to be witnessed in another’s body, an I between the I. I walk, hitting the grass (noting how most people think of plants as feminine; or how the Romans thought of Natura as a feminine proper noun) careful not to favor the flowers simply because they are rare. What do I know.

HOW I AM CONSTANTLY REMINDED OF MY TRANSNESS By Lilia Marie Ellis

ON METAPHOR AND THE

TRANS EXPERIENCE People tend to resort to metaphor when words do not exist, and it is more or less impossible to think up new ones that people take seriously.

And sometimes I feel how easy it is to convince myself I’m doing fine.

Trans people often say “we feel as if we are trapped in the wrong body”. It is a metaphor we invented, so that language (and people) will let us in.

Sometimes I wish I could grab the words I’d need, as if they were down at the bottom of a paper sack; the slippery, direct words that would make people listen and change this world I’m stuck in.

(Have you heard that metaphor, the frog in the boiling water?)

As if. As if.

As if speaking were like throwing darts at a board, or turning pages, or listening.

I feel as if already the metaphors I speak come out like stones of silence, falling flat and heavy and crushing my feet below as I walk. I feel as if when I speak, people will take me as a parody of myself. As if.

(Sometimes I regret how separate I am, too, though I have yet to think of a metaphor for that one; if you have not also felt it, you probably won’t understand what I mean.)

Trapped. That’s a good one. There are many kinds of things which trap us (and by us I mean trans people; this is about us). There are many ways in which we can be trapped.

So please forgive me; I do know what I mean, incoherent and stumbling as you must think I am.

By Lilia Marie Ellis

Sometimes I feel the strangers around me are speaking English I can’t quite understand. I try my best to embrace their worn, stretched voices. They could’ve been my own except for the miles. And I can imagine it’s just a matter of listening, to know, I mean. I trip in the soundscape. Their words slip out through my fingers like those days that get away from you. Why is it that fog’s so easy to walk through— compared to waves, or even air? How in the midst of joy, it’s the sad memories which reach out, pulling at the ear in their hazily bright voices: too late, too late, but still, maybe...

Dreams make sense to their dreamers. They only unravel if you keep them in mind. Leave them, and they’re never less than real. I spend the fifth overcast day in a row wishing for snow instead of rain. It isn’t the grey I hate, it’s the lukewarm air, the scent of sameness, the humidity.

More lives, more names to absorb without having known them. When I was younger it was easy, because I knew some people but not others, and that was that. I hated rainy days, but loved sitting by the window, so I could feel it without getting wet. I don’t want to dream with open eyes, use my feet like hands to stand on. I don’t want the who I could’ve been to become heavier than the who I am now.

loudness By Lilia Marie Ellis

4. Sometimes I worry this snowglobe of a life will bleed out when I’m not looking, too young against the ground. I have noticed echoes are sometimes tidal. Right now it is close to evening, but not quite, so they near their peak. And so the people here in the dim light laugh, but only to each other.

Some people I would like to meet but cannot. So I introduce the person I am not and make a mask of my mask. So I call myself by the wrong name which rusts my skin and claws its way down but I say it like it’s easy. Because as I get older I feel I’m closing in on myself, that any day now I’ll reach where I am and move in the shade, though my self is moving too, so that we’re always the same distance apart. When I ask other people what they think of me they say I should look in a mirror first; apparently for them it’s a less painful experience. At the river, you know how the mud joins and leaves the banks and oceans and isn’t any less for the ways it travels? I wish like those waters to leave my toes and go someplace else.

ANOTHER TRANS POEM I WROTE By Lilia Marie Ellis

The Fire Inside My Temple I was raised with the idea that you are a temple – and I could see that. I saw mother temples who radiated warmth and love, father temples which were stern and strong, and grandparent temples loaded with candy and sweets. I saw temples of black marble who made colours dance like I saw colours for the very first time. Temples where music resonated from behind blue curtains, and temples which contained so much wisdom I was left in awe. There were big temples, small temples, good smelling temples, calm temples, and they all had their fire burning inside of them. Temples who’d been hurt and temples who thrived on and on. In themselves, they were neither good nor bad. They were. And could be so much, potentially. Even my little brother, whose temple was tiny and frail back then, had a buzzing fire of joy and laughter. Back then, my temple was smaller and I looked at the flame in my centre. Staring at it, I wondered what it would grow into. It was nice in there with just me, my fire, and galaxies filled with opportunities danced on my ceiling by the flames. As my temple grew, I began to look outside again and I saw how other temples laid their foundation and began to feed their fire. Was my fire growing too? Would it ever be big enough to warm my temple, would my temple hold the fire? And was my temple good enough and pretty

enough? How could it ever be when I had no clue what kind of wood my fire needed? My temple grew and grew and I came upon wood I decided was the kind I needed for my fire. For three years I laboured, thinking I had found the right wood, thinking I knew what would lighten my flames. For three years, I slaved and struggled until I realized I’d been lighting torches in my hallway instead of fuelling my flames. Shadows crept into my hallways and a gnawing cold slowly slid inside. My curtains began to lose their colours and plants withered. I returned to old tactics, hoping they would help me this time. Maybe all I had to do was reduce some of the columns, or maybe I should hang up some more curtains? Maybe if I cut here and a little bit there. Maybe if I … Maybe... Maybe if I left my temple and just was – or was no more. Laying down at my small fire, I closed my eyes and exhaled. Not to leave or to go, but just to be for a moment. I had been running for so long that everything ached. At my fire, I found a moment of peace. One minute I cried, the next I slept peacefully, the next I was playing with my fingers. It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, all I had to be concerned about was myself and my fire. No, not concerned – all there was for a moment was me and my fire. Together we shared the room and the air. My fire crackled and I looked up at the ceiling. Fragile flames still managed to reach up high and its light began to dance. They created one person and then another, and then another. They grew into a tribe, a city, even blossomed into their own world. Another flame’s light touched the ceiling and created a new world, and then another birthed another world. People from those new worlds began to speak, began to think for themselves, and began to have adventures. Curious as I am, I took a pen and paper and discovered the tales along with them. Writing down whatever I saw was the fuel my fire needed, and it grew and brightened.

Slowly but steadily, I began to clean up. Sweeping, soaping, and sorting, I did it all. Once again, I had allowed myself and others to dim my fire – but no more. I swept and sorted and provided fuel to my fire. Looking outside, I no longer doubted my own temple. No, I saw the beauty in other temples. Competition had exhausted me, and I discovered the vibrant energy of encouraging and sharing. My halls began to lighten, my curtains retained a new colour. The scratches on the walls remained and they were welcome to. They had become part of my temple and I had conquered them. The other temples were no longer scary or threatening but became an inspiration, something to enjoy, or simply something I decided to not get involved with. I am mortal and my temple will one day fall to ruin. But the fire from the depths of my temple; the fire which lit my halls, created galaxies, warmed others, and brought colour to my curtains; the fire which was breathed into my temple by the Creator self, that fire will never cease.

By Debora Hellinga

These wounds are mine. The tracks cut as deeply into my skin as they do in yours. There is a pool of muddy water beneath my knee, the surface an iridescent cloud of oil, masking reflection. I inhale smoke, my lungs searing with empathy. My eyes full of dust. Another spring, another forest burning.

By Trisia Eddy

THE PUNISHMENT

Soft, smaller, dying, No longer pulsating With the presence of my son, My belly: A barren planet floating aimlessly In a solitary and unchartered galaxy.

By Sara Vincini

Q&A WITH STEF STREB Photography by Stef Streb

Stef, you are such a talented photographer! When did you get started in this work and was it something you saw yourself doing when you were younger? Thank you so much! I’ve loved making photos since I was a kid, but the path to get to the kind of work I do now was definitely not a linear one. I first picked up a camera when I was 14 years old, an old film Nikon of my dad’s with a broken light meter. I had signed up for a photography class my freshman year of high school, and my dad said if I wanted to use his camera he was going to teach me. He’s always been a great photographer, we had a darkroom in our basement when I was a kid and he’d always take these really beautiful black and whites of us. Portraits were always my thing, because I’m really interested in people. I’ve always thought the right portrait could tell so much about a person. So that early love led me through art school, to two years in New York City then back to Columbus, Ohio, and two jobs and five years, working as an in-house photographer in fashion and retail, and eventually starting my own business two years ago. And Goddess Sessions didn’t really begin until August of 2018. So like I said, not a straight path. But photography is the only career I ever really considered. The one thing I never quit. What is the favorite shoot you’ve ever done and how has it impacted your work as an artist? Oh this is a really hard question! I think my favorite would have to be the first self portrait I took in what would become my Goddess Studio space, in July of 2018. I had been taking portraits with local models because after 8 months away from my corporate job, I really missed the portraits I’d take with my models on our lunch breaks there. A lot of the shoots I was doing were bare, and I have a policy of never asking a model to do something that I wouldn’t do myself. I had also been working for the previous couple of years on my relationship

with my own body, which is something I’ve really struggled with my entire life. I wanted to challenge myself to let my body be seen, to be the one to choose to share it, and to feel proud of it. Something I’d never done. So I took a self portrait in my underwear. Seeing that photo, loving what I saw, and knowing it was true, was one of the most groundbreaking moments of my life. I realized how powerful this experience could be for women. To be photographed in our bold and naked truth, removing that shield and being seen as we really are, can change how we see ourselves, can change our lives. I wanted everyone to feel what I felt that day. And that’s how Goddess Sessions were created.

You focus on body positivity in your art–when did that become a theme in your work as a photographer? I think a lot of little things came together all at once to bring me to this body positive platform. I was a couple of years into doing the work to heal my relationship with my own body, and I started offering portrait sessions to all women, not just women who considered themselves models. I also knew that body image issues apply to all of us. The models I would work with at my old job had just as many, if not more, insecurities as I had. And if these women, who were the “ideal” of what a woman should look like, felt the same way I did in a body significantly smaller than mine, then the problem couldn’t be just about me, could it? It’s about all of us. Around the time that I found my way to Goddess Sessions, I also started doing group shoots for a local magazine, which led to my Sisterhood project. I saw how I could bring all these incredible, empowered feelings of a Goddess Session into a group setting, and that those feelings would just infinitely multiply. Breaking down that layer of vulnerability with a whole bunch of other women you’ve never met, holding each other’s hands and supporting each other so you don’t fall, cheering each other on through every shot; it’s a really beautiful community that I’ve been lucky enough to help build. And I think we all need it. We need to see all the bodies and know that they’re all supposed to be here. If I had seen more bodies that looked like mine when I was younger, maybe I wouldn’t have hated mine for so long. So I want us to be able to see them all now. Alot of your images are captured by the the water–Is that significant or carry a metaphor for you? I love shooting in the water! I think there’s something magical about it, honestly. Water is a lot like women. Beautiful and soft and tranquil, and at the same time fierce and strong and in constant motion. I think it’s really lovely to mirror those things together in my work. Plus, there’s this moment that happens in every shoot, right at the beginning. You’re nervous, obviously. You’ve likely never done anything like this. And whether you’re in the studio or in the woods or out in the water, you have to strip down and tear away that layer of protection, literally your clothing, and let yourself be seen. It’s not easy. But every time, there’s this moment where you finally sink down into the experience and you let the emotional layer of protection go along with the physical layer. And I think when you’re in the water, it happens as soon as you break the surface. You literally wash it away. And then I take your first shot and I show you yourself on the back of the camera, and I squeal that you look so beautiful because obviously you do and that’s you right now, right this minute, and you can’t deny it because you’re still there sitting in the water, and you believe it. You believe the truth about yourself. And the water helped us get there. It washed away your fears and left you in your power.

Water is a lot like women. Beautiful and soft and tranquil, and at the same time fierce and strong and in constant motion.

This issue is on the topic of body– how has your own relationship with body evolved over the past few years? My relationship with my body has changed drastically in the past few years. I spent the majority of my life hating my body. I believed that there was one right body to have, and I didn’t have it, so mine was wrong. I had so much shame around the way I looked and the space I took up and the food that I ate. My weight went up and down dramatically throughout my life, and my sense of worth went right along with it. I went back and forth between extreme binging and extreme restriction beginning when I was just a little kid. But because I always went from being overweight to still overweight but smaller, the fact that I wasn’t eating was never really addressed. I had to break that cycle for myself. And I had help. I worked with a coach who helped me see how I was using my body to hold myself back from what I wanted in life. I went from a person with a lot of shame and anger and hurt, who hid her body and tried to force it into a box that it was never meant to inhabit, to a person who knows that my body is good and that I’m allowed to take up as much space as I want. And that actually my body isn’t the most important thing about me. I was born with this body, and I’ve found a way to love it for all that it has done for me in this life, but the business I’ve built, the relationships I have, the people I love, and the things that I’ve done are just so much more important than something I was born into. And I’ve learned that sharing my appreciation for this body can help other people start to appreciate theirs as well.

I’ve felt silenced a lot in my life. I’m a naturally big presence, I have a big personality and big ideas and a big laugh and a big body. And I’ve had so many people try to make me smaller over the years. I’ve had bosses who called me aggressive when I was being assertive. Managers who gave me professional goals of “smiling more” while shooting for them for eight hours a day. Friends who made me feel out of place. And ultimately, myself. I silenced myself for so long. Because I believed I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do in the body that I had. “No one would listen to someone in this body, no one would love someone in this body, no one would respect someone in this body.” I didn’t stand up for myself, I wasn’t brave enough to do the things I wanted to do, I didn’t tell the people I loved that I loved them when I did because I thought that this body didn’t deserve to. But learning that this body is a good and worthy home for me? Now that made me roar! And I’ve been roaring about it ever since. What message would you give to your ten year old self? I would tell her that she is going to be so alive and sparkly someday. She is going to be a person that she would admire and love, but never would dream she’d get to become. That all of the things that make her feel different, would actually be the things she would come to love most about herself, and that others would love about her too. And that it’s okay that she’s going to take her time getting there. We all have to live at our own pace, no two timelines are the same. I would also tell her to floss more, because 20 years later that is still a habit I just cannot get down.

Can you share about a time you felt silenced and about a time that made you roar?

Photography by Stef Streb

N I N E PA I R S ( N E E D L E D )

Today I would say a four to five (relief) No, some days it’s close to ten (memory) I don’t like to take pharmaceuticals (trepidation) It was mainly for the depression (symptom) This weekend I had a day where I slept 14 hours (recovering) Correct, and I also get night sweats (insomnia) My digestion is the one thing I have dialed in (vegan) You shouldn’t eat that anymore, especially not for breakfast (relinquish) I’m the only one in my family with this (root) Sure, you can (exposed) Yes, it hurts in all those places (palpable) I’m thirty-three (saddled) I have, and I’m also covered in tattoos (calm) Being in nature (joy) If I had to pick, I guess happiness (today) I’m okay, thanks (stillness) That makes a lot of sense (Eastern) I’ll see you in three days, then (priority) By Carrie Moran

Artwork by Joshua Dunlap

Photography by Alejandra Maria

SHORN By Nica Selvaggio

my hair is a cloak a costume of desire long locks beckon for touch an illusion of safety in strands that hold weight carrying years of trauma. stories glimmer in the sheathes is that how the world wants me? beautiful. blanketed in pain. this hair witnessed my mother’s death the image of her burned face forcing me to italy. trying to outrun the haunting. a wife repressed. this hair watched my husband leave choose. another woman. not taken by the madness of grief and ptsd

this hair smells like too many cigarettes smoked. every inhale an attempt to disappear this hair has been pulled, yanked. by hands that did not tend to the fragile being beneath. eager to hear me scream possession. their aim. this hair has allowed me to hide. feral queer creature beating inside my chest lusting to be given a voice. a place. this hair. is not mine. it does not belong to me. i keep it. for judging eyes. outside of my body. believing that they hold the key. to feeling, belonging. of course. this is not true.

the scissors gleam hopeful and sharp edges waiting to bloom something ripe. sweet. consumed for no one else’s pleasure. but my own. and so it is time. dance the razor’s edge freedom draws near goodbye long hair your time has been served thank you for being a blanket during all of those black nights when I didn’t know if I’d make it to the other side i am forever grateful for all that you have seen and for helping me learn that i am not my story. there is beauty in shearing off all of that pain. my heart remains.

Photography by Jennifer Adler

It is simple, do not touch. My day started at a tavern for a fun afternoon of friends, food, drinks, and music. The sun shone through the front windows, and the crowd buzzed joyfully at the early spring weather. While waiting in line for the restroom, I leaned against the wall and looked toward the ceiling. I tried to let my closed-off and distant posture speak for me, “I wish to avoid awkward, waitingfor-the-toilet eye contact.” Instead, someone read my body language as approachable and inviting. Before I took my eyes off from dingy ceiling tiles, I found myself in full-body contact with another woman. She stood, squared up in front of me with her palms on my stomach. Her fingers made little drumming motions as she caressed my belly in circular strokes. I blinked down at her struggling to piece together why someone was fondling me in a public restroom. We locked eyes, and a wide, toothy smile spread over her face as she said, “Look who is expecting! When are you due?” I blinked and hissed, “I am not pregnant. I am fat.” My response wasn’t a spontaneous utterance; I had rehearsed it. People have been mistaking me as pregnant since I was a teenager. It happens a few times a year. When I was a kid, I was stick-thin, but around puberty, I started getting a round belly. Not a thick waist. I am not appleshaped; from front and back, I have a well-defined hourglass shape. But, in

profile, my paunch competes with my breasts for prominence. I’ve carried my paunch through every phase of my life –my thinnest, my thickest and everything in between. It’s been there through competitive paddling, triathlons, distance cycling, spin classes, hot yoga, and multi-day backpacking trips. One time a woman was admiring our dog. She turned to me and said, “The lucky dog won’t be an only dog in a few months though.” I shook my head and graciously smiled, “Oh no, we aren’t getting another dog.” She said, “I mean, he’ll have a little baby to watch over soon.” I sighed, shook my head, “No, no, he won’t” Persisting, she said, “No, I mean you’re having a baby, right.” I slowed a beat, purse my lips and said, “Ma’am, you’re not getting it. I am not pregnant.” She followed me down the path apologizing and blubbering excuses until I stopped, turned to her and said, “Just. Stop.” I had just finished a 12-mile hike and was feeling accomplished and proud. In just 30-seconds, she crushed me. I obsessed over that conversation. I came up with witty retorts for next time. “Yes, I am pregnant, but I scheduled the abortion for this Wednesday.” Big shiny smile. “I lost the baby last week.” A quivering lip and downcast look. “I have a stomach tumor.” Resigned sigh. I won’t lie. I am hyper-aware and self-conscious about my belly. It is funny-shaped and lopsided. These moments send me to the gym for crunches, starting a new diet or researching abdominoplasty, liposuction, laser treatment and cryolipolysis. But mostly, I battle myself trying to just be okay with my gut. I settled on responding with, “No, I am fat.” It was a pointed, disarming and honest statement. Once when a cashier at Trader Joe’s asked, “Aww. When are you due?” I fired off my new comeback. The cashier’s face flushed as she blurted an apology. I told her, “There is no need to

apologize; I am not ashamed of being fat.” I left and felt like owning my fatness was a bold way to claim my right to exist in the world with just four words. In the bathroom, things didn’t work out that way. The woman’s smile transformed into a questioning scowl. She lifted a hand, shook her finger at me and scolded, “Oh honey, you’re not fat. You are actually very pretty.” Her words instantly drained all the power from my well-rehearsed statement. I wanted to flee, but as she insulted me, she managed to lean in closer, and her other hand was still on my stomach. I was trapped. She only stepped back when someone emerged from a bathroom stall. I lunged for the open door then sat on the toilet with my face buried in my hands shuddering with a mix of outrage, disgust, and sadness. Thinking of her caressing my stomach with expectant anticipation made me repulsed. Her entitled look as she demanded intimate information sickened me. I wanted to scrub her creepy, invasive touch from my body and mind. Without the underlying fat-shaming, the idea that a pregnant woman’s body is public property disturbed me. I realize this woman heard me say “fat” and thought I was apologizing for how I existed in the world. Her perception is no different than many others. They see “fat” as a self-deprecating descriptor which encourages people not only to insult fat people but also assault them. I am done with thinking up clever and devastating comebacks. “Keep your hands off me.” It’s that simple.

By Kimi Ceridon

Photography by Emily Comnick featuring Katie Lund

Photography by Emily Comnick

IT STARTED WHEN I WOKE UP Parked in a dimly lit garage in the middle of San Francisco around 7pm, I sat in the driver’s seat, seatbelt still on, texting two different male acquaintances who had expressed sexual interest in me. “What are you up to tonight?” The resounding emptiness in me that craved to be filled felt like it was growing deeper as I checked my phone every few minutes for a response. After some time of getting immersed in social media, I receive a reply back: an invitation from one man to come over to his house for dinner not too far away. I drove over immediately, although more apathetically than intentionally. That night, I ended up drinking five glasses of wine too many and having sex with the man beyond my heart’s desire and conscious consent. As I left his apartment in the morning, I was dissociated from my body which held a gaping hole meant to hold my soul. Despite my loneliness and disconnection, I was able to distract myself. I was a woman in her early twenties with a stable, corporate job.

By Chetna Mehta of Mosaiceye

I also had a part-time job that got me out, socializing and exploring the city. On paper, I was an ambitious, busy and beautiful social butterfly living the dream on paper, earning a six-figure salary, collecting stock options, saving for retirement, and dating eligible bachelors with city pads. When mum expressed concern over my social life because of all the time spent away from my family, I responded to her feelings with agitation and dismissal, “there she was again, being overly sensitive and ruining my fun”, even bringing her to tears when I told her that I wanted to move out. Being a collectivist South Asian mother, it made no sense to her why I’d want to leave home to live in an expensive metropolitan apartment with strangers at age 24. Rather than evoking compassion or understanding, her tears angered and frustrated me. Two days after my disembodying sexual encounter, I had a booked day of hot yoga at 5am, a full day at the office, then an hour-long drive to an evening celebration for my part-time job. That night, after receiving

and celebrating a promotion to a senior position on my part-time team, I began the drive back home just past midnight only to wake up to the winds of a cold, lonely highway. It was Wednesday morning at 1am when I woke up in the middle of the interstate to chilling wind on my skin, clouds of gray smoke rising and the smells of burning rubber and gasoline sharp in my nostrils. Moments before, a bush that grazed my windshield jolted my heavy eyelids open for me to witness the dizzying spin across four lanes, a tight, uncontrollable steering wheel, and then within a blink, crashing metal and shattered glass. I fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into the highway center divide. And within seconds, there I was, a swollen face from the airbag that had just hit me, shocked before the sight of blinding headlights on cement and thinking, “Is this a dream? Pleeease let it be a dream...” The loud cars behind passed me by, my body - ridden with pain - thrusted me back into the realization that this was not a dream. Lifting my leg in throbbing agony: a

heavy, disconnected foot with orange toenails, dementedly hanging like dead weight. The police officer that found me came by to peek into my car through the wreckage, flashlight blinding as it pointed at my squinting eyes and pained body. He told me that the ambulance was on its way before he went back to his patrol car that felt miles away. I worried that he had moved far away in case my car exploded; I was petrified of dying there on that freeway from the flames of this grave mistake. The blinding sterility of the hospital emergency room at 2am was cutting - cutting of the green chiffon dress I had just celebrated success in; torn straight up the middle. Cutting open my underwear without remorse, cold scissors sliding over me, leaving me vulnerable and without a voice. I was exposed on a cold, hard table overlooked by shadows of examining strangers. One kind ER nurse took some time to tell me, “everything will be okay,” and I held on to his words for my dear life. After hours of tests, drugs, and incomplete memories, I discovered my fractured left hip, broken right ankle and need for emergency surgery. The call to my parents at 6am that morning was the hardest one I’ve ever had to make. I woke them up to tell them that I had been in the hospital for the last four hours, was in horrible shape, and needed emergency surgery which they needed to be present for. Dad also had to track down the ‘95 emerald green Civic that they gifted me as a first car; impounded somewhere unknown and unrecognizable to us all. In the months following, I was in a wheelchair, non-weight bearing on both legs, and unable to independently bathe, go to the toilet, or prepare food myself; forced to slow down, reflect, and tune in with an ailing body and spirit. In doing so, I began to see more of the support, love, and presence of my family who rallied to take care of me, my friends and colleagues who offered their patience, visits and bouquets of flowers that adorned our living room like

a florist’s shop. This is when I first began to meditate and to pay attention to and study my thoughts and emotions and what it was producing in my life. I began learning how to find wisdom and peace in empty space, to not fill it with busyness or incessant chatter, and to listen. I saw my legs and arms atrophy and thin out with flesh hanging. I began to find small joys in the mundane: the luxurious feeling of cleanliness after taking a “bath” in the kitchen sink with a wet towel and my mother’s assistance, the fresh breeze on my cheeks when I was taken out for a walk, the thoughtfulness and hospitality of my younger brother who prepared fresh fruit bowls for me and my friends when they visited. I healed to accept the ramifications of falling asleep- literally and metaphorically, I began to recognize and question our culture’s propensity for “compulsive doing over being” filled my critical mind, and noticed the values that I had internalized which were not true to my heart. The messages of Eckhart Tolle, Carl Jung and Thich Nhat Hanh came into my life; as well as the notions of mindfulness and self-realization. The identities I had carried like designer purses were suddenly made irrelevant; the superficial relationships I lent my body to, felt wasteful; and my loneliness was alchemized into gratitude as I sat with myself through this transformation. And over six challenging months in a wheelchair and out into physical therapy, I witnessed my body heal itself. I’ve grown to realize how disembodied I was before crashing my life away as it was. Busy living on autopilot, leaving little time to check in with myself, I was acting like I was in the passenger seat of my own life. If I had paid a bit more attention to my body, I would have likely realized that I was tired, in need of rest and nourishing ways to express my feelings. I wouldn’t have made the decision to go to yoga at 5am the same day as a work celebration that was expected to go into the night; or I would have found a safe friend to

stay with in the city. I wasn’t listening to the wisdom my body was giving me and I wasn’t listening to anyone else, my mother included, who expressed love and concern. Little did I realize that I was in the driver’s seat, literally and metaphorically, holding the power to destroy my life in the blink of an eye. Seven years later, I think back to this time of trauma and healing often. Since gaining my capacities and independence to walk, run, bathe, and feed myself again, I’ve also studied my body with psychological training, intuitive movement, and somatic therapy. I’ve become deeply attuned to my physical and psychic senses. Whenever I fall back into old patterns of giving myself away to external factors in hopes of being filled, I remember this time of my crash. The pain and fear on the faces of my parents and brother when they arrived at the hospital to see me for the first time after the crash is especially seared in my mind. I remember too that this precious body is telling me something with every step taken, and that it’s up to me to listen and take care of it with attentiveness and devotion.

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophies.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Chetna Mehta

This experience has catapulted me into the work that I do today- using my expertise in my own life to be a kind, challenging and compassionate mirror and collaborative gardener for the well-being of others in the expansion of self-awareness; to plant the seeds of trustworthy spaciousness, to bring in knowledge through education and reflection, and to ask questions for deep introspection and self-realization. My given namesake, Chetna, means “awareness” or “consciousness” in Sanskrit. I use my name and my life as a guiding light and reminder of my purpose: to unfold + expand awareness of the wisdom within us so that we may each be more embodied, attuned and compassionate citizens of the world.

Artwork by Chetna Mehta of Mosaiceye

Photography 2by Kate Harris

Photography by Jessie McCall

SHIFT

Tide rising cannot cover it sun setting cannot hide it I am finally surfacing, climbing out of youth. Now deemed sexless, slack-skinned and hanging, rounded curves – but not the sexy kind, the kind that seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time always needing to be shifted (like my thoughts). Age is shaking loose all my crumbling pieces. They looked like marble

once

but I prefer them now as sand inviting delicate filling

until it scalds your feet, as it blows into your eyes, your mouth if you open too wide

sticking

in every crevice, no matter how you try

to cover yourself. Weeks after visiting, you will still find grains of me in the most inconvenient Places.

By Nichole Brazelton

MANTRA

I am a peach with a stone pit in my stomach. I am full. I am colossal-elephantine. I am magnetic with the earth’s core, no man or beast could lift this body from its bed I am full of every word I’ve ever said, tangled up in a ball, filled to the brim. Perhaps if I opened my mouth they would come tumbling back out again.

By Kimilee Norman

Photography by Alexandra Gomez

THE SAVAGE HOURS They say there’s ancient magic in a name – that you’ll own your demons if you can utter their true names, like Rumpelstiltskin, like witches and fairies and changelings. It must be a kind of metaphysical resonance: give a name to something, and you shiver it to pieces with the power of its own nature. Or maybe when you give a name to something, you concretize it, ball it up in your mouth and spit it into your fist, now a corporeal little thing not so monstrous anymore.

By Allie W

My monster had and still has no stable or meaningful name. Giving a name to my monster couldn’t bridle it, but giving it a countenance in my mind did: red and shiny slick, as though made of raw meat stretched drum-tight over sharp cheekbones. Deep-set eyes. Jutting growths at either temple that twisted upward and fanned and tapered into – I couldn’t tell – antlers or branches, maybe both. We met face-to-face in a dream when a wan-faced receptionist in a mindscape waiting room told me my therapist was out, and that the supernatural being clip clop-ing on hooves toward us would take over my file, instead. After all, he’d been keeping silent watch over me for years. He clasped both longfingered hands before him and angled his head for me to follow. He filled the doorway and more space besides. I couldn’t look away from him. In his office, I rolled a set of family restaurantgrade waxy crayons across a desk beneath my sweaty palm. “Draw me something. Whatever comes to mind,” he pressed gently, so I did: myself, with too long and thin for my head, complete with five-petal flowers, a grassy green field underfoot, and a resplendent kindergarten-worthy sun. Blankly, he watched me color. I became aware of a change over a decade ago. Something heavy sat in the front of my brain, or maybe around it, and I was continuously aware of a tightness about me, as though I were straining against the walls of a tiny box. Like being on an airplane with too little legroom, with a stranger pressing an elbow into your side and your seat back disagreeably upright, a dull rushing roar humming in your throat and ear canals – that was how it felt to think or to string together a thought not buoyed entirely by anxiety. I possessed a dim memory, barely accessible, of confidence and purpose, but they felt as far away as childhood relics, distantly and tragically cozy. I was fuzzy and unfocused, as appeared the person-shapes who floated

around me. I thought constantly, frantically about my embodiment, and how I appeared in others’ eyes. I couldn’t think about anything except that there was this body, and it felt like mine—it hurt when bruised and weakened when hungry—but I didn’t want it, and every day I spent encased in it was another day I spent pushing outwards from inside its skin, wanting to shed all of it and find refuge elsewhere. The fixation began when it occurred to me I’d rarely been told what I looked like – in the way no one tells a toddler he can’t draw. Over the years, I’ve hoarded impressions, shadows, and oblique insinuations to puzzle it out. I learned to locate my own plainness in the spaces and silences between words. When I was eight, my grandmother stood me next to her coffee table in her Tainan home when her friends came over for tea and cakes. Together they tut-tutted and called me zhuang, or stocky. How would I ever be beautiful one day if I were shaped like this now? My relatives would pinch my brother’s cheeks and declare that one day he would be handsome, but they told me that I was tall for my age, and that I was guai, or well-behaved. My mother opened pile packages from grandma in the center of our living room shortly after that trip. I watched her lift frilly dress after dress out of each cardboard box, and each unwearable piece would immediately join a donation pile. They were all at least a size too small. Once I asked my mother if I should lose weight to fit into those beautiful dresses. She said first I would have to lose my mind. I was ready to do that. I was suffering spells of big-screen, proper-noun Hurting watching smaller, prettier girls become precocious experimenters with young love and exchange presents with boys during holiday seasons. The closest I came to that experience was finding a Valentine’s note tucked in the cubby of my desk. For hours, I sparked with pride, relief and excitement until I worked out the reason for the mystery

letter: it had been delivered for the girl who shared my desk in a different class section. In middle school, I asked a friend after we watched a pageant show if she thought I might get anywhere in a competition like that. She paused. Carefully, carefully, she said it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I would enter one anyway. One spring, a boy told my friend she was “too pretty to be a scientist.” Not yet old enough to see the gendered insult for what it was, she and I bristled. “I want to be a biologist,” I added. He shrugged and said it fit. The silences between words screamed. What might it feel like to be beautiful and to be embodied in the right way: in exactly the way others would want to see me, and in a way that would give me presence? Never having been the kind of beautiful that could fill a room and leave everyone in it breathless, I puzzled painfully over beauty with the curious, alien diligence of someone looking for life on Mars. A puzzle piece

“I possessed a dim memory, barely accessible, of confidence and purpose, but they felt as far away as childhood relics, distantly and tragically cozy.”

Allie W

fell into place the day a seventh grade teacher told our sleepy morning class that anorexics often belong to highpressure households. It had never before occurred to me that I might frame the problem in my head as a control problem, not a food problem. It sucked the guilt out my fixation. When things spun out of my command, I told myself it was just a coping or grounding device to push food around on my plate until the serving appeared demolished. Breakfast brought onto the school bus went into the trash. Packed school lunches followed, a few hours later. Pounds melted off. I felt unceasingly dizzy but clean in the beginning. Razor-focused. A good friend of mine joined me. Together we threw our sandwiches away and thrilled in our solidarity, sitting across from each other in a crowded lunchroom with nothing on the table between us. She brightly announced her updated weight one morning, and I felt my stomach drop in envy. If I couldn’t be the Pretty Friend, I’d at least hoped

to be the Skinny Friend, and even that was taken from me in the end. In my desire to measure up to my tiny friends, I developed a genuine and intense terror of food that carried into unconsciousness. Even in dreams, I didn’t eat. An old journal details a month when my most terrifying nightmares involved family outings to food courts in malls, outings during which I’d make excuses for not wanting a chicken wing or an ice cream cone. In those dreams I desperately and fearfully fought offers of food while I carefully kept my features arranged in expressions of polite refusal, like a spy refusing to crack under pressure. I wasn’t hungry, I’d say. I’d had a big breakfast. But I was always hungry. TV dramas imply that high school is when the unfortunate-looking become swans, often in the days before senior prom. Nerds blossom into beauties; geeks get gorgeous. If pop fiction is to be believed, plain teen girls will suddenly and invariably transform into stunning young women full of flirtatious

confidence as if by providence of some heretofore-unknown fairy godmother. But I stayed the same even while I prayed for change. So I punished myself with reminders: filed away somewhere in my childhood bedroom are collages made from glossy magazine clippings of models with sharp cheekbones and elegant shoulder blades and ridges of ribs beneath smooth, tanned skin—souvenirs of my freshman year. In college and beyond, few things made me moodier than having to eat. I would be eaten up with guilt afterward. Friendships became endangered if I sensed someone else’s weight loss journeys were accelerating faster than mine. Brunch hangouts became oblique posturing wars with each party escalating humble-brags about shedding body fat. I leapt impulsively from strategy to strategy – from HIIT to Weight Watchers to intermittent fasting to lifting – using health and fitness routines to shield my disorderedness from scrutiny. Behind my building one year was a winding path that parallels a

T H E S AVAG E H O U R S

perpetually muddy creek. It is my means of egress. Often, after a meal, I’d be seized with the sudden desire to run away, with an urgency that at the time felt like a matter of escaping suffocation. I would walk the trail until my heart rate slowed and I felt safe again. She died on a Monday, a girl I knew in college, bright and bubbly and award-winning beautiful. A pageant girl. I cried on and off until Friday, locked in my room by the sheer magnitude of my inexplicable monstrous guilt for hours at a time. Tangled in clammy sheets, I wondered if I were metaphysically responsible, and if her zest for life had been poisoned by my petulant ambivalence for mine. It was years before my family agreed I should try light medication. Because, my father said, my problems were not real. Back home, everyone dealt with their demons. I told him, back home, uncle’s neighbors drink to cope and wear briefs for pants six hours a day. Back home, my aunt’s chest seizes when she

passes a graveyard, and she sleeps with talismans of quartz in the corners of her bedroom and beneath her pillow. I told him, back home, my grandfather died of a broken heart living alone in a concrete house after my grandmother’s stroke. The first dose was electric, and I was ill prepared for it. My typing stopped mid-sentence. I lifted sparking fingers from suddenly silenced keys. They are very careful about telling you how introduced chemicals flow in the head. I picture a sticky sweet liquid spilling across terra cotta tiles and into porous, staining grout, the excess running down grooves and channels to paint on the floor a grid of shining wetness. I didn’t feel the deepbrain flooding until my fingertips began tingling on the morning of the fifth day. Until then, some form of bodily control was something I assumed I had, and I felt cold despite the unseasonably warm winter. Newly medicated, at four in the morning and many mornings in a row, I’d wake, cotton-mouthed and

dragged out of uneasy slumber like not enough paint across canvas with a too-dry brush. There would be a woman’s voice on the other side of my bedroom door, barely audible. Either she spoke very softly or she was very far away, seated on my couch at the far end of the apartment. Individual words were indistinguishable; instead there was the lilting up-and-down melody of a story being told, or a polite request being made, or an otherwise cautiously expressive tumble of sentences that sounded almost like my mother’s singing to my pricked-up ears. Minutes would ooze by and I would listen, absolutely still, straining for the words. I’d listen until I felt so sick with fear that returning to sleep was my only option of escape. The intruder had already breached the bedroom door; there was nothing for me to do. When I next woke, my tall, antlered creature would be standing at the foot of the bed, and rather than dry-mouthed fear, I’d feel comfort. His presence meant I was dreaming. But

Allie W

as for the woman’s voice – I always had the spine-tingling feeling I’d been conscious every time I heard it. These days, compulsively, I take photos – that is how I exercise control instead. The pebbled weight of my camera settles into my left palm. The fingers of my right curl around its side. Don’t even need the viewfinder to know if my subject is in focus. Silhouette it against the dipping light on the horizon. Exposure is set by instinct. By snapping a photo, I can make a scene or person look exactly how I want them to look – as if to compensate for not being able to make myself look the way I always wanted to look. I have nightmares about being someplace beautiful, witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime event, dropping a hand into my camera bag, and discovering that my equipment has vanished. It helps me to share the photos I take. But online sharing is a twoway street, and I can’t help but glimpse what other people are up to. What other people are wearing. What other people are eating or not eating. What workouts are trending. I follow and unfollow influencers and models on social media, often feeling just one profile or flattering selfie away from sliding into old habits. Months after I met my creature in a dreamscape clinic, I met with my therapist again. Abandonment, he confidently assessed, this was classic fear of abandonment. You weren’t able to see me at the office, and you were

forced to see yourself instead. And how did that make you feel? “Proud,” I said, and he blinked. My creature was not pretty and it was not a tiny thing. It stood eight feet tall on hooves, wrapped a rope-like tail about itself, gripped my hand in bony fingers and cast shadows like a great oak tree when his antlered head turned toward me. I could find savage loveliness in knowing I had been part spectral beast all along – embodied in a way not beautiful to others, but beautiful, for the first time, to me. The key to that beauty was management, knowing how to hold the worst of the creature at bay. These days, I eat. But something else has shifted and one day I will need to square with that change, too. These days, I am a creature nocturnal – but rather than shape-shift on the night of a full moon, I shapeshift indiscriminately, any night at all, and spend hours so-late-they-are-early busying myself, possessed, in the apartment. Nothing escapes the reach of my night-dance. The carpet is vacuumed, the bathroom scrubbed, the cat so thoroughly brushed that she snaps irritably at my fingers. The closet is reorganized, dishes are seared spotless, and between errands, I stop in the chill of a courtyard to peer at the stars that peek out, little pinpricks of light, from behind wisps of dark cloud. The more I do and the busier my hands, the cleaner and

brighter and realer I feel. When I at last settle down, the clock reads four, and my nameless creature with the flayed face still stands tall in the bedroom corner. He puts a bony finger to his lipless grin and I know it is time for bed. The light outside is a half-light threatening to dissolve soon into white glare. I lie on my side to avoid being crushed by ghosts and think about anything other than how I feel about my body. I think about golden light on a southbound highway, about running my hands through the brassy curls of a sleeping dog, about speeding down the coastline to a favorite lodge. I think of chaotic potlucks, of the feeling of returning home, and of a champagne toast with friends at the New Year. I picture my old campus, red and orange and gold in the autumn, and remember screaming moods and shouting matches with lovers that ended in tearful peace after all. I remember friends who have died. I dream about pictures still to be taken, and I dream about places and faces I will not see for years and years yet. I wonder where I will live, what I will do, and what it might feel like, one day, to stop wanting to unzip this body and let my insides out. The strain of fond imagination is different from the strain of recent years, and I shake in a cooling puddle of my own panicked tears, breathless...

...and I find a heightened, frenzied love of living life in a body in those savage early hours, a love that borders on fear.

WAT E R F O R F E E T

body: frozen water: steaming dog: clawing at the door he doesn’t want to be alone not right now, sweetheart just give me a minute to breathe hhhhhhh but he can’t understand or even hear over the harsh hot water streaming against my back shhhhhh these burning teardrops do nothing against the numb cold of my skin i have to wait for warmth to seep in slowly who knew little droplets could be so ferocious? ddddddd each drop an imprint of whence it came – the lake – blossoming with rough waves against the rain tonight – each bead carrying pieces of me my old body, lost skin miniscule molecules atoms I’ve never seen yet they were a part of me were a part of me as they run down my arms, legs carrying away the cold pulling it down down down as life returns to my frigid limbs my feet are last feet only ever get cold water beating down from elbows and split ends hhhhhhh shhhhhh ddddddd feet carry the weight of this life and their reward is cold used up water full of used up atoms at the end of this used up day the dog still scratches at the door

By Maggie Suggett

Artwork by Bianca Chyczy

Photography by Mackensey Alexander

FEMININITY IN MORSE CODE

-... .. --. / ... -- .- .-.. .-.. / -... .. --.

Big, small, big. By the time she’s eight she cuts paper dolls with hips. She’s learning women have different sizes and shapes and the way to address this is to label them fruits before the bite- apple, strawberry pear, banana- choose one and duplicate across sheets of monochrome, but the choice is not a choice: ample bust, cinched waist, trending booty. When she stretches them, pretty chained playthings walking the line, I say nice work with the big-girl scissors and force a smile at the hourglasses holding hands instead of sand because that would give this substance. No, let’s not get granularstep back twice and squint because once a silent-film star spoke and said this is how we find humor instead of tragedy. Look at it like a Seurat and you’ll find, when lining up adjacent hourglasses, the empty space between, the anti-silhouette in the dressing room when I’m sixteen looking at bay-window mirrors that lock you in until your clothes are off. look, don’t look, are you looking? Modest chest, thick waist, narrow hips, clicking tongue I say to my sister, I am the space between, I am The Inverse. Statistically speaking, someone had to be this way. We laugh, but when I ask the child what became of the scraps, she points to the trash where I find them, gestalt left-overs crowning beneath a slimy browning apple core. I deliver them, flatten their wrinkles, and hold them up to the light.

... -- .- .-.. .-.. / -... .. --. / ... -- .- .-.. .-..

By K.J. LaFollette

WHISPERS FROM SOCIETY

Maturity is a luxury for young boys running through grass fields yet, a necessity for young girls holding down skirts and blocking developing bodies from wandering eyes the weight of developing breasts and fruitful hips should not be an accessory shiny, fashionable, on the arm of an individual teaching un-promiscuous behaviour over respect, is the necessity boys are not given

By Kelsey Claudius

Artwork by Whitney Oberg

Q&A WITH GEORGIE WILEMAN Photography by Georgie Wileman

Georgie, your photography is so inspiring and really speaks to the human experience, especially experiences that our often forgotten. What prompted your photojournalism career? Was it something you always wanted to do? I previously worked in fashion photography but always found myself gravitating back to photojournalism and capturing real people, in their real environments, being their true selves. Photojournalism allows me to bring together two things that are really important to me - giving a voice to individuals and groups of people who perhaps don’t otherwise have one. And capturing moments of beauty, even in difficult or bleak times. This issue is on Body and the stories our bodies tell– Does the body as a storyteller resonate with you? Can you share about a time when your body was speaking and you began to listen? In my project THIS IS ENDOMETRIOSIS, I was really responding to my own changing body. The dramatic daily changes of swelling and pain, and the longer term effects of having many surgeries all leaving their own marks. Capturing this story was both cathartic and deeply painful. I began photographing other people with endometriosis, their own unique scars and stories. And then I took the same concept to other marginalized groups, like the trans community. I’ve always been amazed and heartened that other people seem to find the same catharsis at having their stories, and their bodies, captured.

Your project This Is Endometriosis was so powerful and resonated with so many. What prompted that project for you? Living with Endometriosis comes with limitations and I’d spend months on end bed bound and wheelchair bound. I saw my life in photographs — myself curled in a ball on the bed, light casting shadows on my wall, the hospital band around my wrist. I started to capture those mundane things because they were beautiful, and also to show the world what it truly means to have endometriosis —a disease that is at best mischaracterized and misunderstood, and at worst ignored.

What was your biggest take away in gathering these stories from This Is Endometriosis? Any one story that set with you in particular?

like these. I find when I’m taking the photographs I am free of it all just for a moment. My love for the medium takes over. It’s the editing that’s hard.

Endometriosis is a very lonely disease, the biggest thing I learnt from gathering these stories from fellow sufferers was that we have all lived such similar lives, and yet all felt alone in it. The most difficult experiences to hear are of people who have had multiple surgeries, where the disease is burnt away. This invariably only causes more damage and pain. I have had three of these procedures myself before finally discovering excision surgery - the ‘gold standard’ treatment for endometriosis. I have heard of people who have had more than 10 of these burning operations. That truly breaks me, knowing that 10 times they have had such hope, only to find that again and again it failed them.

What does it mean for you to roar today? How have you learned to step into your voice voice, power, and body as a woman? I’m 31, and still figuring that out to an extent. Life can turn out not how you expect it, and there’s lot more I want to do and be. For me now, I’m lucky to have a voice and a platform, albeit a small one, to tell my story and try to influence and change things for the better. THIS IS ENDOMETRIOSIS started that — before that project I felt like I didn’t have a voice, having spent years ignored or not believed by doctors, friends, colleagues, when it came to my health. Knowing that feeling of powerlessness, I wanted to try to tell the stories other people in similarly desperate situations —for me what it means to roar is to try to give a voice to society’s most vulnerable people, and to use my platform to let them know that they’re not alone.

This storytelling work is so vulnerable and even exhausting to hold space for–how do you take care of yourself before/post shoots? Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve figured that one out yet. I have PTSD from multiple surgeries, and I still struggle on shoots

“Endometriosis is a very lonely disease, the biggest thing I learnt from gathering these stories from fellow sufferers was that we have all lived such similar lives, and yet all felt alone in it.”

Photography by Georgie Wileman

You also recently did a project titled, To They Own Self Be True: Portraits of Trans Lives In America. What was your goal with this project and has the response been what you expected so far? The work was a response to the current administration, and their reactions to the trans community. I wanted this piece to give space for trans individuals to shine and tell their own stories, alongside truthful portraits. The project meant a lot to my subjects, and that’s incredibly rewarding. How has that project shaped you and who you are as a photographer? The project helped me to become more educated on the challenges faced by members of the trans community. And to become more of an ally. It has introduced me to new friends, and brought me closer to old ones. As a photographer it has made me realize the extent to which trans people are underrepresented and mischaracterized in the media and that’s something that I’m keen to help change. What encouragement would you give to artists and photographers just starting out in their craft? Anything you wish you had known when you began? To do what you love, and the rest will follow. Don’t force styles or genres to match what’s in magazines and newspapers at the time, find your own style and be true to yourself.

“I wanted this piece to give space for trans individuals to shine and tell their own stories, alongside truthful portraits. The project meant a lot to my subjects, and that’s incredibly rewarding.”

Photography by Georgie Wileman

Photography by Melissa Vlahos

Photography by Christy BigJohny Photography

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Adlina Ysf

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