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I am Changing

Writer's picture: A'Leeyah PonderA'Leeyah Ponder

Hello Family,

 

The season has changed, nature is changing, and somehow, I am too. I keep hearing the song ‘I am Changing’ by Jennifer Hudson and Lillias White. This song comes from one of my favorite movies ‘Dream Girls’. The song resonates deeply right about now, and watching the scene where the song is sung feels a lot like looking in a mirror.

 

Journaling, friendship, prayers and creating more art has felt like the only things holding me together in the face of uncontrollable change. During my preparation for a presentation on ‘The Color Purple’ I decided to take a note from Celie and write to God. So, here I am trying to reconcile all this burn out, pain, suffering, and tired in one small piece. Here we go…


 

Sunday 2024

Dear Abba,

 

I started reading The Color Purple by Alice Walker yesterday.  The format of the book is letters, and somehow the reader gets ahold of a host of letters from this Woman Celie to God and her sister Nettie. I’ve struggled to make my way through the book. I feel like I’m invading someone’s privacy or getting an inside look to a world that wasn’t meant for me to see. I have to present on this book, and although I have a sense that it’ll be a bit easier than other books, we’re reading I am guarded by the secrets I carry and those of my foremothers. How can I properly analyze and even critique someone’s story when I should’ve never had the chance to hold it close? So, I wrestle. I contend. I sit in silence waiting to break like a vase that just hit the ground, shattered by who I am who I was and who I am becoming all living within the lines of a book that I picked up for the first time in September of 2024. What do we say to these things? That the red thread of our lives are equally bound to those that we know nothing about. That we can’t practice hysteria because mysticism is imbedded in the black woman origin story.

 

I am building my own sanctuary. I don’t intend to be the deity worshipped in the space though. Lord, I want you to be worshipped here. The desire to be inside of the church is growing dull. I miss worship and the fellowship of the saints, but the church politics and epistemology are altogether exhausting. I don’t know how much more I can take.

 

So, my sanctuary, for now, will be the binding of my notebooks, the typed letter head to “Abba” in my word documents, the bare white canvas or carved wooden panels I’ll paint my life on, and this house of mine that I feel will soon be done away with, just like my old habits. I am washed over with grief. I am washed over with yearning. I am washed over with tired. I am washed over with joy. I am washed over with orgasms, I am washed over with jovial songs and heartbreak songs, and somber songs, and Jill Scott’s ‘Crown Royal’ which also must be iced. I am overdone. I am undercooked. I am a kept woman with unkept tendencies. I am fighting for my life because I want to live now. I am fighting for my love and compassion because I yearn to be soft now. I am wanting better for myself, after years of being told by peers that I too deserve good things and don’t have to suffer for love all the time. I, like Celie, am reckoning with my existence as I carry my secrets and others bravely. I pray to God, paint to God, and now I type. The written work only felt right when the pen was in sight, and I didn’t have to flip my place upside down for a writing utensil. I don’t want to keep searching for tools to be understood in a world of misunderstanding when I can simply type. It’s easier this way – I don’t have to feel birthing pains through my fingers this way. I don’t have to ensure my hands can match the speed of my thoughts this way. I don’t have to… be anybody else this way.

 

So, since I’ve chosen to not be present at church another Sunday. I thank you for this sanctuary, and the warm bare sheets I lie on that hold more truth than some of my relationships do. I thank you for the silence of my heart, while the noise of my air purifier tries to drown it out. I thank you for my friends. Thank you that they’ve managed to notice a bleeding heart without words ever shared. I thank you for my home, even though the combination of asbestos, mold, and led make me feel far from home even when it’s decorated. I thank you for love – the love that holds me tight and won’t let go, even when I fight it, even when I lie to it, even when I come against it, even when I resist, it’s warm embrace keeps me, and carries me home.

 

I am tired Abba, yet still travailing in the face of tribulation. All I ask now is for peace like a River, that it continues to drown me with hope that even a color like purple can restore this soul. Even a color like purple.

 

Signed your loving daughter,

A’Leeyah


 

May you open your heart to all the newness coming and release everything coming to an end. God knows, but opening your heart in prayer, writing, or in other ways is another way you can build intimacy with God. May you give grace to yourself in this time of change and shift. You are not alone.

 

Be well. Be loved. Be you.

With love,

Miss Ponder

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