Woke 2022

Although Black is my skin color, my faith has not faltered. The dreams I had growing up in Denver still exist. Yes, even in today's climate of civil unrest and unknown solutions to problems I thought we'd solved after decades of unjust and prejudice. In 1948, I was born a colored girl in a world of democratic possibilities. In 2020 I watched the emergence of a new day resembling partocratic in-sensibilities. Covid-19 affects Black and Brown folks because of daily underlying conditions we deal with. It has brought to light the inadequate health and economic issues within our communities. I believe the pandemic is another way to separate the have from the have nots, to put the small businesses we've successfully run in dire straits….. a position we will never overcome without policy changes.

Please wake up, my people. Changes are abundant, and without our voices, commitment, and actions, we will stay in an economic pandemic that has wrecked our psyche for decades. As long as I am alive for my child and her children, I will be staying awake to causes that make living life in the light a bit tougher these days. Watching my daughter and grandsons accomplish personal goals is exhilarating, but I find it difficult to regulate my emotions. To see dreams realized after a period of deep sleep in a metaphysical sense is my only comfort source. Now, I remain in the moment no matter how the darkness of today's violence, poverty, unequal opportunities prevail. Never again will I attempt to escape reality by drifting back into the fog that kept me groggy for years before I awoke. Fortunately, I changed the way I thought decades ago, and it changed the way I feel today. When I abandoned my self-destructive habits, I could then move forward. Before that, the psychic clutter in the darkness of the unauthentic life I lived held me hostage to the people, places, and things that came with living addicted.

I was not mindful of anything that didn't pertain to getting and using cocaine. Living and learning through gardening has made me conscious of cocoons, the changing, the met-amorphous of life. When I plant in the Spring, I see the seeds of past plants go into the ground. After a few weeks, that seed becomes a growing organism that keeps changing until it returns to the source. That has taught me the life journey is a mass of cocoons. We are constantly evolving. I lived for a cause to protest and stand up for in my twenties. After I turned thirty, I wanted to travel the world to open my mind to new ways of living. At forty, I had my first cancer experience and felt my life had been wasted in the depths of my cocaine addiction. Fifty brought on a partnership with a woman my daughter's age in hopes that I could be a sober mate. Not so. And the death of her, my father, another cancer episode, my mother's brain aneurysm woke me up to the realization of how short my life span was becoming. Last year my mother's death impacted the way I see the world and my mortality. Going with the flow of my journey, I am optimistic about the future, though fear is a constant reminder in government policies, media, and the faces of folks in the streets. But I know the only limits to success are in my imagination. My emotional intelligence surely outweighs my spiritual intelligence now. In the past, my interpersonal relationships were never important to me unless they were in crisis mode. Friends and family were not a priority because I didn't see them as ways to further my ambitions in the drug world. Now, my family and friendships are the only things that matter. Angela has woke me to my ongoing parental responsibility. Because of her, I have become a better conscious human being. Her social-emotional learning ability is much more cognitive than mine, and she's taught me the value of being in tune with others' conditions no matter what race or neighborhood in which they reside.