Adieu. (from the light of the San Francisco Bay)

Me @ the Oakland Airport, where I drafted this post

I began this blog after having an experience with Ayahuasca.

Within that first journey, I understood that I needed to write more poetry as a means of communing with my soul. I also realized that I needed to take my work as an essayist seriously. I sensed it would be my source of income moving forward. I also felt a deep sense of appreciation for my relationship with my husband--while simultaneously understanding, and beginning the process of accepting, the deep truth that our marriage was most likely unsustainable long term. Related to this, I felt the importance of following my own intuition regarding my physical and psychological health, as well as my spiritual well being. I knew that remaining compassionate for others, while authentic with myself, was a skill I'd need to practice and honor in a way I had never before. Finally, I understood this process would take time and would be best lived through by focusing on each moment as it came--both open to its influence and grounded within a sense of my own truth.

Over five years have passed since that journey.

I am now moving through my divorce, stepping away from the leadership of my instrument company, embracing my role as a professional writer and attempting to care for myself and children in a healthier way than I have in the past. It's a slow, emotionally complex process, intensified by the fact that I am also on a journey with breast cancer, in its very early stages.

I am grateful for my marriage, and I am grateful for my husband's support of my freedom. I am grateful for all friends and family who have held space for me and my children as we've been processing trauma and moving into a space of gratitude and peace. I am also grateful for my caregivers at the clinic ACPM and for all the connections I've made on my recent travels through Las Vegas, Sacramento, Portland and Oakland.

With this post, I am retiring this blog.

Some of my best posts, and my NORML Mom series, will be available via Medium.com. My other writing will be available via my portfolio site www.thewordwitch.me. Finally, I'm actively seeking supporters for my imprint BAMF Books, from which my full length poetry collection, Cancer, Or Something Like It, is forthcoming. Additional anticipated collections include Tales from the Deep and Dark Swallow. 

I'm going to conclude with a photo essay which fills in the gaps between the last months of my life and holds within it seeds of my future. Thank you all for your support.

Poetry & Politics (with a nod to Mary Jane & John McCain)

At my hotel window in legal Denver, CO

All things move slowly forward. Meanwhile, time also seems to fold in on itself as I feel my core memories being re-defined by the collective energy of all the other experiences I've stored in my cells--processed and re-processed with each passing era of my short, ancient life.

I can still see a house surrounded by unkempt, but intentionally placed, plants I've chosen to ramble there, good music and sweet smells inside, original art on the walls, smoke and sunlight in the air. Now, I want a covered, heated pool as well and a bog where the frogs, and snails, and salamanders can dwell in peace. This will come One Day.

As I've aged, I've realized that I have been co-dependent as f--k and also that I like a crispness in the air--partly because I look good in stockings and knitted hats but mostly because I like the sensation of walking under cold moonlight and coming home to a living fire. The hearth is the center of desire.

There is more progress for me to make yet--circles to close with grace, new creative empires to seed, improvements to my health, and stability to my wealth--in brief. When it becomes overwhelming, I breathe and remember how much bigger the world is than me and how far it has come in such a short time. As imperfect as our system is, there are persistent reasons to hope. Here are some imperfect, hopeful things happening near me these days.

1. At the Georgia Capitol today, there was a public hearing on allowing in-state cultivation of medical marijuana.

2. In Texas, a jury found a police officer guilty of murder after he shot and killed an innocent black teen. Up to this point, the precedent has been to let the officers go free.

3. In Florida, black progressive underdog candidate Andrew Gillum won the democratic nomination for governor. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Stacey Abrams did the same and also made history as the first black woman in the USA to ever win a major party's nomination.

4. All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the US Senate will be contested during mid-term elections this year. I am voting on November 6, 2018 to turn congress blue.

Despite the culture of trauma, abuse and misdirected grief which persists in contemporary America (my treasured home, despite its many faults), I see pervasive evidence that destructive generational cycles are also breaking all around me. In his autobiography, the recently deceased senator John McCain wrote:

What an ingrate I would be to curse the fate that concludes the blessed life I've led. I prefer to give thanks for those blessings, and my love to the people who blessed me with theirs. The bell tolls for me. I knew it would. ... I hope those who mourn my passing, and even those who don't, will celebrate as I celebrate a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued success is the hope of the world. And I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine.


A controversial figure himself, McCain strikes me as having more class and compassion than many. I admire the man, just as I hope for the ultimate demise of the patriarchy which produced the platform from which he grew. Such is the way of things. May there always be more to come. I will continue documenting my journey here as I grow. For now, I'm including a few pics from my landmark trip to Colorado earlier this summer.

Thank you all for showing up and bearing witness to my stories. 

Colorado State Capitol Building

Downtown Denver, Union Station

In-flight Reading 

Irises Everywhere

Denver's LightHouse 

Mutiny Cafe

When I Found the River

Sunset Over the Rockies from the Train

Street Life on the Mall

Dorothy in Denver

Scattered Thoughts (On Power, Religion & Purpose in an Age of Trump)

Perspective

After returning from the Tellus Science Museum with my parents and children, I head to the bookstore and begin eavesdropping on some kids talking rather loudly at the table beside me. One is doing Christian Cool—all James Dean swagger but without the whiff of drugs, sex or secular rock n' roll & without any awareness of the irony. It has to be a difficult act to maintain, grounded in repression. I'm heartened that the other two at the table don't exactly seem to be picking up what he's putting down—especially the young woman. She commands the conversation with real grace, holding space for friendship with both an open mind and reality checks. I see the same abilities in my daughter, and I am grateful these women seem more skilled than my peers at holding their own without burning bridges to the ground.

On religion, I have a few observations:

1. Those with the most prominently stated faith in God often have the least faith in themselves. Personally, I have compassion for this feeling but anger for those who propagate it. There is no sin in being human. Demanding people believe in their inherent “evilness” or “failure” for the purpose of giving all over to a more “perfect” God may seem kind but ultimately is an act of cruelty which robs us the gift of forgiving, understanding and embracing our authentic selves with gratitude for life, in all its wonder and pain.
2. When it comes to pious leaders, however, many define God in terms far broader than their parishioners. Talk to them long enough, and they seem to be spiritually agnostic people who choose to experience life through a religious mythos, while recognizing that this is genuinely one of many viable paths. I have compassion for them too, but I do question why so few share this truth with those they guide.
3. Finally, there are people who consciously use religion for the purpose of manipulating others—to gain wealth, territory or psychological control. I wish I could say these few give a bad name to religion. However, they are not a handful who taint what could otherwise be sacred. They are instead parents of the movement to remove individuals from their personal relationship with divinity by mandating organizational control of a holy union.

As someone who came of age within religion and then rather nonchalantly outgrew it, a pillar of my approach to piety is to trust that wise people will ultimately find their own way through it. However, that approach felt safer when my country's leadership felt more secure. There is supposed to be separation between church and state in the USA. However, now, just past the turn of the 21^st century, moderate church leaders helped pave the way to the election of Donald Trump—a controversial real estate and entertainment mogul known for objectifying women; promoting racist agenda; and removing or blocking industrial regulations intended to protect people and the planet. As president, he is an unqualified disgrace.

Critical thinking and a deeper respect for our inherent humanity may have saved us from him. Unfortunately, neither critical thinking nor respect for our inherent humanity jive well with religion. As a result, not only did many religious leaders make the major mistake of directly endorsing Donald Trump, they also made the mistake of thwarting the type of intellectual development which would encourage citizens to critically evaluate his platform.

I support an individual's freedom to know and experience divinity through religion. I recognize that it brings many daily comfort and a sincere sense of long-term security which sometimes is actually what inspires them to be their best selves. I want people to experience comfort, security and motivation to do their sincere best. I also recognize that, historically, religion strips people of their autonomy and their agency. Like drugs, it can be used responsibly as a tool for exploring life and one's individual role within it; however, mandating that it be the tool by which all people understand life and themselves is a dangerous act of oppression. In the aftermath of the Donald's election, especially here in America's Deep South, I am on high alert for signs that religion may be further overstepping its bounds.

I am also looking to everyone for common ground now. At the table beside me today, the young people were discussing tattoos, books, Kung Fu Panda, travel, nature hikes and their parents' stories. These are windows through which we can connect with each other—the art we enjoy, the spaces where we feel whole, the histories we share. I take heart in this. As long as we ultimately desire a world to grow up in together, we will evolve—moving slowly toward a more sustainable existence.

Will we actually make it there—to that point where our destructive tendencies no longer outpace our ability to live in harmony with nature and each other, as proactive members of a web of life rather than as a dominating force? Perhaps not. But trying will mean peeling back so many layers of repression that, even if our species ceases to exist, perhaps our souls will finally be free. Maybe that's the point.

The young woman from the bookstore today did not introduce herself to me directly, but she returned her chair to my table, looked directly at me and wished me a good night as she left the book store. I thanked her and wished her the same. Then I reflected on all I had heard, and I wrote this with hope that it will bring something positive to those who find it.

Some Reminders:

Humanity is young.

We are destroying our Earth and each other.

We are still capable of changing this.

Money is a tool which can be used responsibly, or abused maliciously, to influence the evolution of individuals and society, until capitalism ends, as one day it will.

Art matters.

Nature matters.

Science matters.

Our personal stories, rituals, mythologies and moralities matter. But what defines us as individuals is not the same as what defines us as a whole.

Race, gender and nationality matter to the degree that they shape the stories, rituals, myths and laws which define, confine and direct us.

We must pay attention to what we create, as well as to what we protect—when it comes to personal and cultural legacies, both new and old.

For more information about what I create and protect, please click HERE and HERE.

For Nini, With Love

Nini  & I, Dec. 2009

I wish I had reached out more to my grandmother Nini, given her more hugs and let her know more often that I'm grateful for the care she showed me in childhood.

Then again, life has an odd way of distilling emotional truths from complicated circumstances.

Perhaps, the taboos of my adult life would have proven too much had I shared more of my mature self with my grandmother. If my stories of infidelity, agnosticism, protest and shamanic quests had stood in the way of her receiving my core truths, I'm confident she'd agree that would have been a greater travesty than my relative silence—especially since I did share carefully selected reflections on making music, running a business and caring for my unique children. As I age, my experience with Nini has inspired the following goals:

1. Never place the burden on the children to keep in touch. Instead, continue reaching out to them, sharing tidbits of life as an old crone, reflecting on memories of their youth, encouraging them to discover new things and to keep taking action always.
2. Keep taking action always within a community large and loving enough to offer support to my immediate family when I die.
3. Continue exercising the ability to hold space for loved ones without casting moral judgment.

Maybe it's odd, but I am very thankful for these goals. I am also especially thankful for my last three visits with Nini.

The first happened last winter. My cousin Will, a fellow only child and thus substitute sibling, had come to visit Nini as well. He'd made the trip by plane from Virginia, and I drove down from Northwest Georgia, where Nini had spent my childhood across town from me and my parents.

Scene from Nini's Memorial

On last winter's trip, Will and I had a lot of time alone together. We delighted in the ways our paths have paralleled and diverged. We addressed deep family stories about the way love and fear have created limitations in our ancestry, and about the ways we are re-writing some of these patterns in our lives. Near the end of my visit, when Will and his father were settling into their own rhythm at my uncle's apartment, I took one-on-one time with Nini. We sat at the kitchen table laughing and talking. Were it up to me, I could have stayed through the night, but there was (as there often was) something pressing against our time together. It has always felt a little as though my grandparents open a portal to communicate with me—their world on the other side marked by more complexity than they ever wanted to show. I remember standing in the driveway hugging Nini. I showed her my new car, and she was concerned that my children could crawl out the back seat. I assured her they traveled safely there.

Playing TerraPan @ Nini's Memorial

The second visit happened in a Columbus, Georgia, ICU following Nini's first stroke. My mother (Nini's daughter) and I were allowed back together with no other guests. I had brought a TerraPan with me, but my mother insisted I leave it in my car because she feared it would create a stir with the staff and upset her father and brother. I obliged and focused instead on a drawing my daughter made of herself and Nini standing on opposite sides of a rainbow bridge. I also brought a stack of photographs. Most of the time my mother and I were present at Nini's bedside, Nini slept and snored just the same as she had on long trips back from Florida. Fortunately, she woke before my departure. She couldn't speak or focus well, but it was clear she knew I was present. I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to say only what felt most important to me:

I love you. I see the parts of your story which you could not fulfill. I thank you for giving me the chance to nurture those in my own way. I live with immense gratitude for you, for my parents, for my friends and for my children. You have influenced how I treat all of them, and everything is exactly as it needs to be. I will always remember you and will greet you with joy should our souls meet beyond death.

My mother and I formed a circle with her then and meditated on the colors of the rainbow, washing through each of us, affirming our bond, giving us courage despite our fear. Leaving that day, I felt I would see Nini one more time.

Will & I @ Nini's Hospice

After my son's 7^th birthday and the solar eclipse this past August, Nini had a second stroke and moved to hospice. My mother and I drove to see her there, and my cousin had again come down from Virginia. This time, Nini was deeply asleep and could not speak. I touched her and attempted to connect with her thoughts. All I saw was hummingbirds. It reminded me of an experience I had once during an indigenous ceremony when I felt myself die and then be reborn. In that meditation, I was carried back from the depths of myself to my waking life on the wind of hummingbird wings, which beat around me and whispered deep truths about my choices, triumphs and fears. This August, I felt Nini readying herself for the hummingbirds to take her far beyond the proverbial veil. I felt her tell me only to go get my instrument and play.

Again, my mother feared this would create a disturbance. However, I walked calmly past her and sat down outside my grandmother's room in the sun. My grandfather and uncle sat in rocking chairs guarding her door, and I said I was going to play for them. When I finished, they made the request that I play for Nini. So, I did. Her breathing seemed to calm, and the music set a peaceful tone for the gathering of me, my mother, my cousin, his father and our grandfather as we embraced and connected with the few other guests who came in that day—my great aunt Meg, always regarded as being particularly smart and strange, and my grandmother's baby sister Patsy, the organizer of big holiday gatherings from years past. When I left that day, I felt it would be the last time I saw Nini. I touched her tenderly and said goodbye. My mother drove me back to my town, and we waited in the park for my children to greet us there. They came running toward us drenched in the special sunbeams which fall at dusk from the north Georgia sky.

Nini & Grandaddy's Visit After My Son's Birth

Nini's body is ashes now. My grandfather eschewed the burial ceremonies he'd long championed and instead made a small altar for quiet reflection within his home. Meanwhile, my mother and I planned a memorial within her home for me, my parents, my children, my husband and one dear friend to attend. With my father's help, we cleared a garden area near the sun room and placed a bird bath there. We dedicated it to Nini and hung a print of a hummingbird on the wall inside. I shared a eulogy and played my TerraPan. Afterward, we scattered seeds and seashells around the bird bath in the drizzling summer rain—a group of soulmates mourning and moving on.

I still struggle to tell all my family how much I love them. Nini's death also helps remind me this might not matter that much. As much as I love words, they have always created as many barriers as bridges.

A month after her death, my mom and I traveled to Nini's house to help my grandfather sort through her things. He told us then her last moments there had been in the kitchen, sitting as she had with me last winter. She had been looking out the window, watching hummingbirds.

In Nini's honor, I would like to share the eulogy I composed here:

Painting a Birdhouse @ Nini's Memorial

Laura Alice Allen Yarbrough, affectionately known as Nini, spent 81 years alive on this earth. The time I remember her best was here in Rome, Georgia, taking me on after school adventures, falling asleep (against my orders) during movies, giving tours of the plants in her yard and making sure that everyone had enough to eat. She had a bold sense of humor and a level of social and academic intelligence which surpassed the norms of her time, especially for women.

Her final years of life centered on the challenge to take ownership of her own healthcare. In may ways, she succeeded in this. Nonetheless, her body still had its final say, and she gracefully released her soul to become part of whatever exists outside our human perception on August 24, 2017. While this process always comes with some level of sadness and regret, it also comes with joy and gratitude. All life is a fleeting part of a much greater whole, and death the natural culmination of life.

In addition to whatever cosmic form her energy now takes, Nini's spirit will continue to live through everyone she has ever touched. Together now, we carry forward her story with a focus on gentleness, transition, change, hope and love.

We light a candle for these things now and draw their energy into this garden grove to be dedicated in her honor September 5, 2017.

The formal obituary my grandfather wrote is here: http://quattlebaumfuneralhome.com/tribute/details/1881/Laura-Yarbrough/obituary.html

Thank you for acknowledging these stories.

Me, my mother & my children--returning from our final visit with Nini.

Turn Your Back on Hate. Change Starts at Home.

My daughter enjoying #keystorome

Whether I'm a brave adventurer or certified homebody depends largely on whom you ask. I will jump in a car at a moment's notice to make the hour long trek to Atlanta, Georgia, or Chattanooga, Tennessee. I didn't blink at loading 3 children under 10 into a van and driving them 11 or so hours to see their father during summers he spent working in West Virginia. I hopped aboard a bus filled with strangers and road to Washington, DC, where I got lost after the Women's March and walked alone from one end of the district to the other, arriving at a crowded stadium with no clue which bus was mine about 10 minutes prior to its departure. However, in almost 35 years of life, I've only been on 2 round trip flights to anywhere and have never once left the United States.

As a local student at an international boarding school, I used to say: The world comes to me. This notion has continued into adulthood as the future owners of my company's musical instruments often travel from abroad to collect their new TerraPans. Through each of these ventures, I have helped make Rome, Georgia, a temporary home for people from virtually every continent. Yet, sometimes, I am still surprised by the ways my hometown, and the surrounding areas, reveal themselves to me.

Kingston garden bounty

I had an opportunity to revel in this a couple weeks ago when the local group Turn Your Back on Hate hosted Change Starts at Home, an evening of merriment and music in the courtyard of Schroeder's Deli in downtown Rome. A raffle was scheduled during the event, and I needed to drop off my donation, a CD of TerraPan music performed by the local artist John Hand. I intended to attend the event in the evening with my husband, but I enlisted my children to help me deliver the CD earlier in the day. Our journey was fruitful. It began with a stop by the gazebo south of Rome in Kingston, where a family of gardeners were selling herbs, vegetables, wild flowers, painted pots and snow cones. I live in Kingston and loved giving my children an opportunity to make a meaningful purchase from neighbors whose child had sat in my former middle school classroom just after my daughter was born.

Afterward, my now 8-year-old daughter settled down at a piano on the corner of Broad Street in Rome. She has always had an incredible knack for free style lyrics, and the keys added a welcome dimension to her playful, spontaneous art. We walked back and forth between Rome's new gourmet frozen pop shop Frio's and its landmark deli Schroeder's, each time seeing familiar faces and entertaining new ones with original songs.

The piano my daughter played exists thanks to the project Keys to Rome. Keys to Rome is one of many efforts supported by Turn Your Back on Hate, and its sister organization Peacefully Engaging the Rome Community. TYBOH and PERC exist to empower people to find their voices through artistic self expression, and the prevalence of this goal in Rome is one of the things which makes my hometown special to me. 

My husband, performing TerraPan at Change Starts at Home

One of my most vibrant memories of late childhood takes place in the Schroeder's courtyard. I attended a poetry reading which marked the publication of one of my favorite high school teacher's chapbooks, as well as his farewell to the south. He would be heading off to pursue new opportunities in New Hampshire in the morning. I spent the evening marveling at how the combination of a sudden rain storm clearing in the moonlight, my teacher's powerfully delivered elegy to a friend who spent many years courting death, and my chance encounter with a college student bound to protest with the Zapatistas in Mexico made for powerful memories in real time. However, the highlight of that evening was a familiar shopkeeper named Seth taking the stage with his band The Strange. My bare feet felt so good splashing in the puddles as I danced.

Twenty years later, with gray weaving its way through his otherwise red beard, Seth and the most recent iteration of The Strange took the stage at Schroeder's again the other Saturday night. So did my husband with his TerraPan. So did my friend Jessie Reed—not just as a performer, as I used to know her, but also as founder of TYBOH and PERC. Observing this, I felt the power in having spaces which hold constant. These spaces remind me how my passions have seeded and grown over time. These spaces also root us in our own stories—ultimately giving us more ground on which to stand and relate to different cultures, calling now more than ever for our compassionate attention, exploration and understanding.

Easter Weekend (An Abstract Take)

Usually, change comes slowly. This insight probably offers no surprise. Nonetheless, I find myself too often feeling overwhelmed by the creeping sensation that every day brings nothing but more hardship, an endless string of obstacles with no uniting thread in sight. The uniting threads are those which give a sweet shape to the daily tragedies, weaving them together into something of worth. I've discovered the trick is to keep going. These threads rise up naturally from what can feel like monotony. Another way to think of this is to imagine walking through a dark forest. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, and then, a door.

In the course of answering routine email selling TerraPans, I encounter a client who connects me with a world far larger than my own. In the process of sitting nervously waiting for my turn to read some poetry, I accept an invitation to make history with the Women's March on Washington. I visit my friend Haley in her new store and suddenly I'm added to her Facebook group discovering new opportunities for my voice to be heard after I post photos of the walls of my office and a snake on the ground.

These things have happened and are happening.

The most beautiful times are those with my children. In my autistic son, there's deep, prolonged silence followed by speech. Precious words stand together in sentence form, and he is doing things like telling knock knock jokes, wading for hours in a mountain stream and sneaking my phone away to snap selfies with a pretty older girl while I speak to her mom, thinking my boy is playing video games.

Meanwhile, my daughter is quiet and shy, sitting alone and judging herself until she isn't. I help her find gateways into people and places, starting with herself. This weekend, the gateway was the creek. The children gathered there slowly, seamlessly letting her in as she jumped from bank to bank, whispering to the water, humming music from Five Nights at Freddy's. With common ground established, the children left to explore together. They hiked up a mountainside and passed round a talking stick in the clearing up top, a clearing where I've sat before in ceremonies which opened up so many doors inside my mind.

The things I hope they will ask me, they do in their own time. The things I want them to see come up gradually in their dreams. Then, on the other side of that, there's always so much more for me to know of them. And of me. And of my work. And of love.

Like Haley said in a recent interview, “We will never arrive.”

My March Story (Part One: Personal Reflections)

At over 500,000 strong, the Women's March on Washington made history January 21, 2017. I was there. I rode up on a charter bus from Decatur, Georgia (near Atlanta) and then jumped out about 12 hours later to chants of "Climb the wall! Climb the wall!" as a handful of us hoisted ourselves over a guardrail onto a bridge crossing the Potomac.

The scene outside the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

I felt ready for anything and had little idea what I'd be facing. I followed a sea of women in pink pussy hats to a super crowded Independence Avenue and made my way as close to the 3rd Street stage as possible. Stopping about 4 blocks short, I ended up sandwiched between strangers at the corner of Independence and 7th, right beside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. From my spot on the ground, I could see people hanging from a large sculpture for a better view, as well as scaling up portable toilets to make camp on top.

I could hear the speakers from the main stage as well as watch them on one of many big screens set up along the rally space, which stretched up and down Independence Avenue and onto the historic National Mall. While I enjoyed everything, my favorite presentation is hands down Ashley Judd's performance of the poem "Nasty Woman," written by Tennessee teen Nina Donovan. Her words struck deep, and the fact that a poem could incite so much solidarity and controversy encouraged me as a poet and was itself a personal call to action.

As more leaders and celebrity activists sang, spoke and led us in rally cry after rally cry, the crowd grew into a tighter and tighter mass. Our bodies all pressed close, we couldn't move independently of one another and had to shift as a unit each time we were directed to clear a path for ambulance drivers and law enforcement. The closeness required an extreme level of trust and surrender, both in one another and in the fact that the march itself would progress as planned, that we would be set free to do what we'd come to do. Anxiety began to rise, yet we strangers soothed each other, and it felt very much like this waiting was part of the process. We made it through without riots or major misconduct, and ultimately blockades moved aside, unleashing us like a flood on Washington just after the mothers of black citizens recently killed by US law enforcement led us in saying aloud their children, the victims, names. 

Rather than walking in the neat line from Constitution Avenue to an area outside the White House as planned (and even described in certain articles), the marching crowd spilled out across the district, peacefully overtaking streets which hadn't been fully closed down. I moved with this mass in intuitively synchronized solidarity, feeling my humble smallness within the greater whole, something at once familiar and mysterious, an angry mob shot through with a sense of purpose, whit, and even joy.

 I walked with the mass well past the Trump Hotel until I suddenly began to feel that I'd miss my bus if I didn't turn back. Navigating Washington, DC, alone, as the march dispersed, may be the greatest part of my journey. I'd given my energy to the crowd in order to gain something myself, which I assimilated slowly and gently over the forty city blocks I walked back across on my own--seeking limited help from locals and law enforcement, my old motorcycle boots carrying me from the Virginia/DC line, past the major monuments and museums, past the halls of Congress, through trendy, wealthy, and low income neighborhoods, all the way to RFK Stadium, where I finally boarded the bus for a long ride home.

I left emboldened by my role in unfolding history, empowered to be ever more part of myself, and reflective about the society we share. The most common thread I noticed is the call to actively participate, to realize that government is smaller and more accessible than it first seems, something which we can hold accountable and shape, as long as we remain active and aware.