 ***Panda gave their consent to use these pics & share this info***
Heart Friends Near & Far, As some of you may know, I am a single mama to a beautiful future ancestor named Panda. Panda is my heart that beats on the outside. They are a big reason why I have managed to stay alive as long as I have, & their 10th birthday is a big deal because everything about Panda's life is a femmiracle! Panda is always teaching me about the perks of the panda femme lifestyle, staying soft, the importance of playing with friends, & holding the hope of falling in love. & OMG THEY ARE STILL ALIVE. WE ARE STILL ALIVE! In the past year we have survived (barely, it feels) not having a place to call ours for several months // moving three times in 6 months, Panda & I being bullied & harassed by one teacher, one principal, one school counselor, & multiple students in three different schools. We are painfully aware that these acts of violence & displacement are because of our positionality as indigenous queer femmes with chronic depression & anxiety & not enough money or access to resources. In spite of it all, we are still here, breathing, loving, dreaming. For their 10th birthday I need your help in paying their May tuition for their school (where they finally feel safe, thank SPG) & gifting them access to therapy! We saw a wonderful therapist for years, but had to stop last year due to lack of access to public assistance & financial resources. This has been something Panda has asking for ever since. In addition, I am asking for help in accessing mental health resources for myself because this is an important way I've been able to support & love Panda & facilitate all the intergenerational healing we partake of.
All donations can be made in person if you live near me, or through my paypal, yellow button located to the right! If possible, choose the Friends & Family option, rather than Goods & Services so there's not a paypal fee taken out. Thank you all, from the future, because we trust how much you have already loved us! Please boost, share with networks, send woo, love, prayers, & all the gifts from the femmiverse! XOXO, Panda Mom & Panda, time traveling femmebabes ***UPDATE***
keep your palette of beige & bland & boring keep outta my high pigment, deep pigment, nothing here for you pigment no need to contour or blush or youtube search femme magic keep your fingers, your mouth, your goddamn tongue to yourself my precious glitter palette name nowhere near  road tripping to process heartache end of march 2015. sometimes it works, sometimes not as well as i'd like. maybe today is the day i talk a little bit about being a death eater. i have been sad for a long time, for so many reasons, some of which i have already talked about with you, here, some of which i haven’t yet. last year i had my astrological chart read, & one of the most important pieces of info to come from it was the fact my chart is heavy with pluto energy: death, destruction, rebirth, regeneration. this is basically my fucking life. pluto is what allows me my grief // sadness // wtf life things super powers. yes, super powers. because i can sit with these feels & not die. i have survived so many waves of trauma that i now have chronic depression, anxiety, & varying intensities of ptsd. i have died in so many ways over the years, mostly unwillingly in the beginning, but after losing everything & everyone enough times, my unwilling turned into some kind of willingness. i have become adept with grace when it comes to making the call to burn a bridge, cut the energetic chords with someone i was in relationship with, crushing the bones so something else // that we WANT can be ushered into our precious lives. the astrologist also explained that because my chart is so heavy with pluto, it means i can sit with someone, witness their feels & process, & then do this digestion thing—like bring their grief & feels into my body—& then transform it into something else before giving it back. “it doesn’t hurt you or anything. you don’t even take it on!” this is true. this is exemplary of my death eating powers. there is this ancient part of me praying, bring me your almost dead parts, the pieces you don’t know how to let go of, the selves that need to die so you can come back. so you can come back, come back from the dead. coming back from the dead is the surprising part for me. like, i can sit in grief & sadness, but i’ve learned that the ancestors don’t want me to stay in that state. they also want me to claim my destiny of plentiful love & springtime in the body—springtime in the body is my counter balance to death eating, the acts of being alive that bring my death sodden body warmth. while in the beginning of my buffy watching experience, i found myself asking a question that continues to shape my life: what do i come back from the dead for? the following is my what i come back from the dead for // how i bring springtime back to my body // because i stayed alive that one day i got to experience a miracle later that week gratitude list:
 chicago, end of march 2015 06/29/13
home is that place on her tongue she doesn’t even know it’s there she doesn’t know i call it home home is that place below my last rib where Christianity got it wrong & said i sprang i birthed myself home home is dinétah red & brown like me soft & rough like me can kill you if you lose your way i didn’t tell you that? it’s true don’t quote me on that quote her quote the desert home is when i soften & my leobabe smiles it’s when i find myself tickling their child body with my feet they know how to coax me out of my everyday struggle & hustle to keep us alive & fed it’s in their hand that fits in mine that’s home, too home is what it felt the first time i heard “it’s because you’re queer & brown that you can see everything you do it’s because you’re queer & brown that you can carry everything the way you do you know what you know because you’re queer & brown” home felt like bursting like turning every lie inside out & tasted like all the salt of all the tears i never knew how to cry Deer Tender Souls, I am writing to you to ask for your help. This past month I have been gifted doula trainings at a discounted price. I say gifted because I know shináli Lucy (my grandmother, who returned to Spirit this past New Years Eve) is answering my prayers. During her transition back to Spirit, I was able to act as her death doula, & in her last hours this side, all kinds of clarity was communicated between us, including the fact she was also a birthworker. Postpartum doula care could be one way to describe shináli's work. She held new birth parents as they held new babies. She fed them, bathed them, & kept their space tidy. All in all, she spent her working years simply loving them. This is what I want to do, love & care for & support new parents & their families. The femmeiverse is all about this life path for me! I asked shináli to help me if this was really what I am supposed to do, & as soon as I gave myself permission to be in the world as a femme birthworker community healer, these doula training opportunities just started coming my way. Even though these trainings are at a reduced cost, it is still more than my broke ass can afford. I'm squeezing by & fronting the costs, hoping that you & other folks can come through to help me out with expenses. As of today, I am needing help with $315. It breaks down like this:
***02/22 Update: Only $240 left to raise! ***02/28 Update: Only $125 left to raise! ***03/04 Update: Only $60 left to raise! THANKS FOR THE DONATIONS! xoxo Any monetary support you can offer will help me continue living the luxurious lifestyle of a single mama, buying groceries & tea, gas for rides, keeping us warm with the lights on, with lipstick. I'm happy to arrange a pickup or drop off if you're in Salt Lake, or you can donate to my paypal through my email [email protected] or the paypal button on this website. Thanks so much for reading, for any woo & love, & for sharing my ask for help. Please help my dreams keep coming true, & if & when you want a doula in the Salt Lake area, it could be me! XOXO, Lettie  beach babe. 2015 Deerest Lettie, you're not busted. you're diving & shedding. whatever or whomever can't handle the pressure of your daily depth is gonna fall the fuck off because they had no business here in the first place. i know you're lonely. i know you're hungry. i know you're tired. i know you keep having to let go of things // people // relationships you never believed you could // never wanted to imagine a future without. i do. i know. for those it-shoulda-never-happened kind of loses, i want to say i'm sorry & i love you. even here, from the future, it doesn't make sense either. there has been no epiphany as to the why, & all that we can offer in these times is the smooth hand of time to wipe your tender, brown brow. i'm so sorry & i love you. these were not some elaborate test of your willingness & surrender, it was simply a heartbreak there was no way around. & the way you survived ever single one, that was something other worldly--i bow to you from here, the future, in complete humility because i still don't know where that comes from. i know you pray to me, future ancestor lettie, because i am the parts of you that have survived, but always remember that i came from you. it is you that brings us back from the dead again & again, heart burning like the star it is, fire enough to burn bridges never to be recrossed this life. the attributes you glow for me i glow for you. you are my survivor badass femmescientist witch whose heart i am so grateful i live inside. from here we read all the signs, roast all the veggies, write all the poems, pray with the ocean, carve out the softest rendition of home. you are a miracle, a femmeiracle, my femmeiracle. all my springtime warm body love, Lettie 
"SWEETIE." 2015
Shináli, my paternal grandmother, transitioned back to Spirit this past New Years Eve. I was asked to write a poem for her funeral, spent all night on this one, & want to acknowledge that I did edit myself. For example, I wanted to write about how she knew about my queerness, the way her prayers kept me alive, how we are both birthworkers & this is part of her legacy, & about her mother & first born. But I didn't. I was, & still am to some degree, afraid of what might be said in response. I still like this piece. It is still accurate. The love is still present. ........................................................................................................... i imagine she was so busy because she wanted to leave as little as possible to chance her constant state of prayer was how she kept her whisper contsant in god’s ear her constant state of prayer was how she kept god’s whisper contatant in her ear there are lots of things i’ll never know about the woman Lucy Pete Holiday, but i know two things: i know her as shináli & i know her love is proof that we never survive alone. my memory of shináli is seared with her signature hairstyle of short black curly hair with blouses, skirts, & an apron to wipe her hands on with the soft clang of drawing water, metal brushing metal with the soft pad of socks & sandals about her linoleum floor my memory of shináli is laid out on her kitchen table covered in clear plastic & place mats in her perfect yeast rolls in the sugar-free jam that hung out with her reduced sodium salt we had to use & the small jar of nutella in the way she would sit & drink her sanka before anyone else stirred my memory of shináli wakes me from sleep with the sound of peeling potatoes of frying bacon & eggs of the ever present oatmeal of her sing-songy speak my memory of shináli talks to me like the bubble of her secret pubby crunch-crunch recipe that made our own dog chubby with care that made it easy for our pubby to say goodbye from her gate do you want it? the recipe? maybe you have one of your own, but here’s hers: keep all your leftovers & vegetable peelings put them in a big pan begin to soften them with water add leftover meats keep stirring keep singing & then add the gravy i have no recipe for let it cool down dump into the pubby’s bowl keep their devotion forever & ever, amen my memory of shináli is accompanied by the familiar way wood & coal used to sit by her door, the way bullheads would hide in the walkway, the mint green ant-looking patterns of her kitchen floor, the summer our feet were the same size & she gave me all the shoes, of folding myself up to fit in the cab of her truck so we could all go to blue coffee pot in kayenta, & in all the bottles & jars of lotions & perfumes lined up atop her dresser. my memory of shináli cools my anxious skin like her laundry room with shelves of treasures—jars of buttons & shelves of ivory soap & the bleach that kept everything & everyone clean. my memory of shináli vibrates in my bones like her daily devotionals & soft metallic glint of her smile & high pitched easy laugh & the way she never wanted to fussed over & how we almost melted her cake one year we lit all the appropriate candles & she had to blow the out by fanning with a paper plate. our birthdays are a week apart—i wonder if she liked that? i imagine that we share qualities of tough exterior to those that don’t know us, soft, glistening interior to those that do, a penchant for feelings that betray us, & a devotion to home & family that digs deeper roots as time passes. she knew that she was ready, that this world is often too hard to wrap finite minds around, & that is why i know there are some days i am only able to keep my feet here because of the strength of her prayers for me. my memory of shináli is alive through me.  selfie in her house, the end of a long, long journey. 2015. found curls trapped in the pattern of my tights from the day we spent first snow swimming with all our might towards each other, but the ghosts still came back to sing our names & slather our hearts with mud. i will always curse the ones who hurt us, whose hands never stopped squeezing. curse them to burn in their want for as long as we burn at their memory: may our soft bodies haunt their home like fingerprints may our voices melody through their floorboards & in their cats’ meow because their false i love yous have obliterated every umbrella we fashioned to weather the flashback of our femmestories, no matter the materials: bone & waterproof-skin this, metal & waterproof that may they forever weep, never be able to hold the loss of us quiet, & may the other tremble before their quake splits the hill to expose meat & brick may they shuffle their furniture around that cavity of a house, always shifting to find some kind of click of release may they compulsively give everything away, try to refurbish the rest, but still move in the world with splinters just under the body of skin may cars continue to be broken into by all they did not return may they never trust each other may they never come in the ways they once did may the moon remind them of our smiles & burn through curtains & comforters may every pan that emerges from the oven clatter clumsily to the floor & may they never forget our names & never be able to speak us again. 
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Photo by Wit López, 2016
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Photo by Wit López, 2016.
High Moon Femme
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