Use your voice!

It’s election eve and the house has a strange sort of pulse. Eliana and Jeff are making campaign calls in separate rooms so I have to move through the space quietly. Sol is playing basketball outside. And I’m trying to figure out how to blog on this gorgeous new website that my friend Becca just finished making for me! I’ve always been good at disassociating, and this seems to be a prime example. Don’t get me wrong. I’m talking to people. I’m reading and listening and engaged in my own way. My 8th graders were writing their own definitions of democracy in English class today. Yesterday I taught a workshop and at the end we listened to Brandi Carlile and Alicia Keys sing, “A Beautiful Noise.” The room was pretty dang full and we’d been writing and dancing and laughing for almost two hours at that point. But in that moment, most of the women found their way to the floor. Women were in child’s pose, hearts to the earth. Others were lying on their backs, arms outstretched, their structures supported by the solidity of the dance floor. I was still in motion, the beauty of the harmonies making me spin and spill, arms outstretched. One another woman, an old friend and changemaker, Christine, was dancing too. Dancing and singing with her gorgeous Christine voice. At one point we held hands and turned and turned like young girls on a playground, like sisters on a summer day. Like hope. Like hope and hope and hope and hope. Let’s sing out people. Let’s spin and pulse and reach and push. It’s time.