Full Exposure

I never planned on sharing that poem publicly.

I wrote it after chopping kindling, the day after the bus tapes came out that aired the lewd conversation between Trump and my old college buddy Billy Bush.

The words circled in my head, and triggered the young girl in me, who felt the need to talk back.

After I performed the piece at the poetry slam, a young woman asked me to share the poem online. Hesitant at first, the idea grew on me, as I asked myself: "Why not?"

Because people will know I'm a survivor of sexual assault?

That wasn't my biggest fear. 

It was admitting that I enjoy sex and can please myself.

That's what scared me the most. Something so natural seemed so terrifying to say.

As a woman, my body is sexualized from the time I'm a girl, but my own sexual impulses unspoken, unnamed, stifled, cut off, as if I am only a photograph without nerves.

Its hard to climb out of all these layers of how I'm suppose to be, look, feel, seem, appear...

I also worried about sharing the poem here, as this has been more of a parenting blog, and I was revealing an entirely different persona.

An intimate side where the personal and political collide.

Though 98 percent of the feedback that has made it back to me has been positive, I know I probably made some readers cringe.  Or lost some.

Please know this blog will return to its previous subject matter after this short poetic pause.

In fact, after 13,000 people and counting have watched and listened to me say the word "pussy" out loud, I am eager to return to chronicling my children's antics and turning the light off me.

Part of me wants to hide after exposing myself so fully.

And yet I don't regret it, because I released a couple of my inner judges in the process of writing and sharing that poem.

And though politics may have originally stirred me to write it, despite one viewer's assertion that it was paid for by Clinton, the only person who paid for the poem was me, and the content was there long before Trump gave me some new terms to use in its creation.

Another viewer of the video wrote in the comment thread of someone who shared it:

"Speaking as a woman I found it a bit silly. (She's also anti-Trump, apparently, which is no surprise. The entire poem is an ode to anger about his hot mic moment.) You know I work in the gun industry, which is a male dominant world. I understand and cheer female strength. But I think the empowerment thing has gotten out of hand."

To this I say, I can think of far sillier things then sexual assault and the work of reclaiming one's sexuality.

And though Trump provoked my inner girl to speak, my story lives in its own realm, separate from this election and who I support for president. (The commenter made it political by making an assumption about who I won't vote for in November.)

And "an ode to anger," ...hmm...

Am I angry that some men see women as empty vessels for their own pleasure?

Yes.

But I don't live and write from an angry place.

I live and write as honestly as possible, which helps me feel whole. I write to heal, and to find the beauty that exists in every painful situation.

Not an ode to anger but to lifting a veil I've worn too long. To reclaiming a part of myself that never should have been taken in the first place.

(Not sure what guns have to do with my poem, but as an Alaskan, I am all for the proper use and regulation of them.)

And as to: "the empowerment thing has gotten out of hand", I know when I watch my daughter cartwheel across the cabin, turn a box into a seagull, shimmy up Alder trees, roll on the couch in a friend's embrace, I want her to be nothing but free to be herself.

I want to unravel the threads that bind me, and not have the core that emerges dismissed as a mere smudge of a political campaign.

I want to admit I can find sexual pleasure and not be stoned for doing so.

If this is empowerment out of hand, then I hope it flies out of reach, till the stars above shine the light of gender equality. 

Till the moon smiles at the fires we light.

As for me, I will continue to write.

Comments

[Colby Sc]

LOVE!!!

[fleming]

you always speak your truth and I love you for that. don't change a thing. xox, fleming.

[greta]

We are with you. It saddens me to hear women (your recent critics) speak hatred against us and themselves, exposing how deeply misogyny runs. Into and out of our core. Makes me aware that there is still so much work to do. Your art exposes these buried currents. We NEED the beauty you craft from harm, shame, grief, healing and love. Thank you for sharing your gift here.