I live in Oregon now

(Nikki, girl, where you been?!)

I’ve been changing. Cocooning. Writing was difficult.

So (for a while) I lost a way to commune with you.

But, I gained a way to commune with myself. And now, my poetry is back. {The muse was gone for a long, long time. She only ever poked her head out of creative sleep in small moments, anyway. To have lady poetry as a constant companion these days is a gift.}

This communion with self came at a cost, as wisdom teachings often do. I had to lose my home, lose one type of Blackness, gain another, and risk giving my children over to the unpredictability of life.

The last time you heard from me, I was sharing updates about my experience with food systems and climate orgs, and reflecting on the first quarter of this federal administration.

In all of that, I was breaking.

After a quarter of supporting my environmental peeps through change management process after employee relations breakdown after conflict mediation {our collective and individual grief showed up in so many ways}, I then received our tax packet from my company’s CPA.

Seeing that number, seeing what the IRS was prepared to take from my family, from my work, {THIS IRS, IN THIS ADMINISTRATION}, my body just…stopped. I was in bed for a week. Couldn’t look at emails, couldn’t face the day. Crying. Spent. {How is my body going to, once again, increase productivity to financially survive in the Bay Area?}

And there it was. The Bay Area.

My home, for 17 years. The place that made me (although LA raised me). A place that has changed, so much, especially since the pandemic. A place with exorbitant, stupid housing prices (because even if I could spend that much money on a regular 2 bedroom house, that is not the way I’d choose to direct my funds). A place I had trouble envisioning my children returning to with their children in several decades. A place where driving on the freeway for 10 minutes raised my shoulders. A place where one play date takes a month to arrange with a 50/50 shot of cancellation because parents are burned out and tired (it’s me, I’m parents.) A place where my neuro-spicy children’s fits of running, and hiding, and having wide open space makes me panic when we’re in public.

A place with every flavor of Black folk I could ever, ever want. A place with infrastructure and community for every one of my identities. A place with festivals, and culture, and life, every weekend. A place with (still) my dream school for my children, Pear Tree {the pain in my heart, as I write this.} A place with medical infrastructure and practitioners and all the things you can only get from a city.

For months, with my therapist, I poured with frustration. All while hearing the quiet voice of my spirit. The life I want for my family is right there {but, sweet girl, it’s been right there for years?}. I just need to work smarter, learn new ways to be productive, be more efficient {but, my love, spaciousness is valuable.} My children need this place to know who they are. I can do this. {oh, precious heart: if they have you, that will be enough}.

This is the message that finally got through. I was not okay. Black women tend to die from epigenetic stress when we are not okay. Is that what I wanted for my kids?

Obviously not, but I was so afraid. A path was revealing itself, and I hadn’t been ready to walk it.

My husband (Galen) grew up in Ashland, OR. We’d been visiting multiple times a year since 2009. This place was also home. In 2024, my mother in law died. Her transition created a pathway for us to relocate. I was at war with myself.

{Yes, I know it’s home. I know my body feels better when I’m there. I know our cost of living would decrease and allow me to breathe. I know all of that. But, we will double the Black population of Ashland just by moving there (joking not joking). I will not raise my children in a place where they do not see themselves. I need to stay here, and fight. Oakland is also my home.}

This was level 1 resistance. Level 2 was much harder.

{I have always lived in California. Who will I be, if I this is no longer true? I’ve never lived outside of a city. I’m afraid to live in Oregon. I’m afraid to live in a small town. I’m afraid to see so few Black people every day. Will I disappear?}

Will “I” disappear with rest, spaciousness, a slower pace, and quiet? {Will the Blackness I know become something else, something unfamiliar, something I must surrender to instead of control?}

Yes.

I knew this. My resistance was a rejection of the ego-death required for my next phase of life. I was afraid to become.

And, it was time.

By June, we’d relocated most of our things. Summer was the fantasy. (Hanging lights in Lithia Park! First Friday Silent Disco! Green Shows before the plays!) It was also the relief and reality of a small town. (I can walk to my co-working space, and the grocery store, and my car repair spot, and, and…I can walk. I only see a few dozen cars a day instead of hundreds. People get together spontaneously, because everything is 5 minutes away. Neighbors talk to each other). Ashland is also Dead Indian Road {they did try to stick “Memorial” in there, but no one calls it that}, and Twin Peaks level spiritual warfare in the forest, and the dark side of the Pacific Northwest.

Fully settled by September. I was so tired. Moving to another state with two small children is exhausting. I could not have done it without Galen’s Herculean effort to pack everything, get it up here, and re-arrange it in our basement.

I feel, about Ashland, the way I feel about Oakland, Los Angeles, my hips, my mind - the way I feel about all places I call home. Judgmental. Curious. Amused. In love. In grief. Accepting. Attached. Resistant.

The winter cold (my first full season in a place with snow, and I’m a warm climate person so WTAF) seeped into my ego, froze encrusted bits, and blew them away.

Some of what I learned, in all this space and quiet:

Learning #1: Be unpalatable.

Women/femme-forward folk are constantly negotiating ways to make our truth(s) more palatable. This is mental/emotional energy I am not spending caring for myself in a time of great disturbance. Some negotiation is a spiritual practice of meeting other sovereign souls where they are and respecting psychic capacity - this is not what I’m referring to, this work is always important. I’m referring to the reflexive care-taking of the ego-death occurring within the current status quo. There is no way to make what’s happening right now more comfortable. We are normalizing human rights atrocities. I am angry and find I have less stamina to make others comfortable in my alchemizing of the collective unconscious. Good. That’s my body re-claiming safety.

Learning #2: Unmasking is constant negotiation and vulnerability.

Earlier in 2025, I’d been diagnosed with ADHD. My journey:

1. A diagnosis! This is what’s been happening to me my entire life.

2. Stimulants are a miracle, I no longer lose the ability to think at 2pm, I’m not inherently depressed or anxious I just have dysregulated dopamine!

3. LIFE IS SOLVED!

4. Galen: you feel like a machine. Where did you go? Me: Do you want me to feel more and contribute less to our household and have regular nervous system freak outs and need more from you all the time? Or do you want me to feel less but be more stable?

5. Where is the weird, creative, absurd inner child (my favorite part about myself)? Where did she go? I need her in this time of change, she lights me up.

6. I can’t sleep, no matter which med I change to or what combo I take.

7. Inner voice: how could you structure your life in a way that supported you differently?

8. Stop taking meds and lean into radical lifestyle change.

9. Oh. Unmasking means my entire life revolves around soul-crushing vulnerability and honesty and transparency. It’s too hard {dangerous} to be neuro-spicy and Black and a woman in these times. I’ll be myself later in life.

10. My body: no, you will be yourself right now. I will just shut down your brain until you get it together. You can no longer contract your way through being a CEO, a mom, a friend, or a lover.

Current Status: I am in an active negotiation with my brain, nervous system, heart and spirit about unmasking. As I learn more about neuro-complexity and the depth of this rabbit hole, I’m finding that this active negotiation and the daily victories in self-and-other connection is the work. It is rewarding and terrifying and beautiful and explosive. It’s been hell on my husband, kids, and colleagues (shoutout to Beth, Joann, Vonda and Nicole for their grace over the last 18 months). I’m building muscle like I do with respectful parenting: I’m a good parent not because I don’t yell at my kids, but because of the reps in repair with continuous authenticity. Unmasking, like respectful parenting, is the emotional intelligence of action resulting from ongoing vulnerability. It’s hard AF. (I still have a stimulant prescription and will take it again. I’m grateful they exist, that they are a tool one can use at will.)

Learning #3: The ancestors dislike appointments in my Google Calendar.

I thought my 5:45am weight-lifting, 6:30am - 7am daily meditation, multiple times a week hikes, yoga, and scheduled joy was winning. (There’s a way this is true. Compared to barely surviving and not eating, this WAS winning, and I will not take this evolutionary accomplishment from myself.) I couldn’t understand why I was still tired, still overwhelmed, still PRESSED. My grandmothers whispered {babygirl, we don’t show up between appointments. You can’t hear us according to 1 hour blocks. We communicate in moments of deep flow, in the time it takes for a drop of dew to roll down a leaf, in the space between gusts of wind.} I hear them, now, when I walk to Lithia Park; as I sit in my backyard watching the garden grow; when my children are falling asleep on my chest at night. I had “time” for these actions, before - but my nervous system did not have space to receive.

—

Since moving to Ashland, I’m truly well for the first time in my life. I didn’t realize the extent to which I was performing wellness versus experiencing well-being. I didn’t have context for the difference. I’m very grateful I do now.

Cause’ it’s getting Medieval up in this piece. My mama warrior needs to be resourced.