On Newness, Sacrifice, and The Fool
The Sunday Post
FYI - the Sunday post will be The Advice Column next Sunday and beyond, but since we just launched this week and today is a day for peace - I’ll save reading y’all for filth for next week! Starting today, I will be accepting submissions at kendramorous@gmail.com. I will also be posting an open submission IG story every Monday, and save a highlight that you can always respond to with submissions on an ongoing basis. Of course, the submissions are held in confidence and anonymous!
Now that we got business out of the way - Happy Easter to all who observe and happy Sunday to all who don’t! Regardless, many of us will be experiencing the Sunday Scaries in a matter of hours if not already, in which case - condolences for the death of your reprieve from emails that do not find you even remotely well.
Growing up, Easter Sunday was at most a day to appreciate the healing properties of chocolate, which was most pleasing to child me and basically daily life for adult me. Not a single Easter passes without my astonishment that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups can come in so many adorable forms, and have a taste hierarchy despite containing the same ingredients? Is it the peanut butter to chocolate ratio? Anyway, the big Reese’s PB eggs are undoubtedly way better than the minis, and slightly better than the bunnies. Fight with someone else about it!!
My family was not particularly religious, particularly family oriented, or committed enough to appearances to be Chreasters so we went to mass on Christmas per my Irish grandfather’s request and to church service once every 5 Easters. Descendant from a long line of celebratory matriarchs, that Sunday morning still came with a little pizzazz. My mom used to line up colorful baskets filled with fake iridescent grass, sweet treats, necessities that we may have run out of like L’Oreal Voluminous Lash and razors, and always….always a pair of sandals to call in the end of winter. A celebration of the first gust of crisp, 60 degree Spring air and newness. This newsletter is not about Easter, but it is about rebirth, undressing, and what we may sacrifice in the name of ascension, and it all starts with a bike.
Frank Ocean’s Biking
“What is the earliest memory you have of that feeling?”
The feeling in question? The big F. Failure. Despite the fact that this is therapy, and I’m literally paying to have my silly little thoughts interrogated - I’m reticent to admit the day I decided I would no longer be engaging with failure. Simply was not my vibe. Activities I was not guaranteed to be excellent - not good, not okay - but excellent at, would cease to exist. It was the day I was given a pink Huffy SeaStar, no training wheels to start.
Because I was a big girl - meaning both a chubby, adultified black child that was nearly 5 ft tall at 6 years old, and figuratively pinned by all of the caretakers in my life with the gold star of emotional maturity - I was seldom offered training wheels.
“6 going on 30,” they said. You know what’s a scam? Being labeled mature or an “old soul” as a child. It’s not giving nurture, it’s not giving tenderness, it’s not giving grace.
Kids who are hyperconscious of not being an inconvenience or burden, often children of single parent families, divorce, low-income, households, homes where stress was shouldered on children, wear this proudly. The greater responsibility I was offered to excel at the highest level on comprehension tests, complete household tasks without being reminded, safely return home from school and manage to not burn the house down before my mom got home from work, the more worthy I felt of being cared for. It’s giving trauma response, but it feels like the highest confidence being placed in your pudgy lil’ hands when the world seems beyond grasp. A badge of honor I wore in high regard into adulthood, because….well, the will to survive depended on it. Even if I were offered training wheels, I would’ve turned them down, because my sense of pride rested in the fragile balance of not needing them.
More on that, but for now - back to the cul de sac where I first and last attempted to ride a bike - or so I thought. I got the creme de la creme of hot girl bikes, okay? The Huffy SeaStar was That Girl, and the pressure to be Lance Armstrong was on.
Swinging my heavy leg over the seat, I braced for the right of passage into the sweet, adolescent abandon that would come with hitting my stride for the first time on a bike. But I lifted my feet to let go, felt the shock of release and the gravitational pull of my round body jolting me forward, and put my feet down just as quickly. And then again. And then again, and on for about an hour as fear settled into my little bones, until I saw a life of riding around the hood with other kids slip away from me, until I started to cry. I’d never been bad at anything in all of my long, long 6 years on this Earth. The audacity of this damn bike to not glide through the air with ease, to make a fool of me in front my mom, my aunt, and god.
Pushing the bike on the curb, I stomped inside the house in complete defeat. Even then, I remember being at least mildly aware that it wasn’t about the bike. I had known embarrassment that day. I had known shame for the awareness that maybe my body didn’t move like the other kids, that even though adults saw me - a fat, black child who spoke like a political pundit - as far older than I was and more physically capable - that I was still a kid who needed some help. Who needed training wheels. I had no tools to express my needs, or to voice those complex esteem issues so young. I had known failure that day, I had not lived up to expectation, and I’d be damned if I did it again.
Throughout adolescence, I managed any excuse to not admit that I didn’t know how to ride a bike cause duh. The older I got, the more shame I felt for carrying the torch of “maturity,” and having barely earned the seal of childhood. As I made friends with much older girls who wanted to keep their hair nice, crunchy, and gel-plastered, I got off the hook - cooly replying that riding bikes was juvenile when asked. Like ma’am…you’re 10?
By the end of elementary school, my protective persona as gifted and talented class know-it-all, as the smart fat girl who made friends with teachers instead of my peers, was impenetrable.
Dressed in Lane Bryant peplum tops and bootcut jeans at 12 because it was the only thing that fit me, the expectation to be chasing sunset, kicking balls, and cruising around on wheels was null and void. I was relieved to play my role as old soul, rather than venture into the unknown of self-discovery and play in youth. So I stuck to the rivers and the lakes that I was used to and kept my nose in a book, and assertiveness in student government. Over-functioning and evading failure straight through middle and high school led me to acceptance into a high school summer program in Palo Alto. I would spend the summer before my senior year taking classes at Stanford, my dream school.
June came quickly, and I sat with all of the parents and students accepted into the summer program on the lawn behind FloMo, our dorm and home for the next few months. We all listened attentively as the resident assistants discussed expectations and conduct, tips and tricks to make it through the summer on campus. And I froze on one detail that came up over and over again. The campus and Palo Alto were extremely inconvenient to get around without a bike. Everyone rode a bike to class, rode a bike to get frozen yogurt, rode a bike to the line of shops downtown.
Bike, Bike, Bike.
Ten years later, it was as though I shouted Blood Mary three times, and the pink Huffy SeaStar appeared. I was challenged to conquer what I thought I could grow, strive, and aspire out of. Turns out you can’t build an empire on a shaky foundation.
At one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, I was secretly learning to ride a bike behind a frat house on campus. As I rode in circles with my mom trotting beside me holding a handle, making a complete fool of myself until I got the hang of it, I understood fear more intimately. Fear is relentless in pursuit of attention. Fear of asking for help, fear of looking silly, fear of seeing your body jiggle and shake, fear of play don’t just go away. What starts as leaving a bike on the curb in defeat shape-shifts into declaring a major you don’t enjoy because it will result in higher paying jobs, ghosting someone kind who wants to take you on a date because you’re not sure they’ll really like you in person, keeping your creative ideas in your Notes app because they’re “safe from criticism” there as they wither away under your own. The rejection you think you’re avoiding is coming from inside the house! Alert: the enemy is inside the house!
It feels so silly to admit I’m just learning to play at 27 years old, but I’d rather look like BooBoo the Fool than stay rooted in the fear of failure. In the hero’s journey of the tarot, the story starts with card number 0. The Fool.
Dressed in humble clothes, an enthusiastic companion beside them, and carrying only a small sack over their shoulder, the person depicted in the card prepares to take a leap of faith, trusting in the inner wisdom of the call to evolve. There is no single card in the deck that feels more like Spring than this one, reminding me the only way to regenerate life source - to defrost the frigidness sinking into my bones, keeping me outside in the cold from own desires - is to shake some shit up and do what I’ve never done to become someone I’ve never been. My favorite feature of the traditional Rider-Waite illustration is the knapsack. You’ll notice - It’s not a suitcase, it’s not a duffle.
Bitch, it’s a Telfar mini!!!! Only room for a lip gloss and self-trust which is perfect for me, thanks. In ascension and the process of leveling up, your shoulders can’t act as an overhead compartment for heavy expectations, harmful beliefs, and survival mechanisms that have overstayed their welcome. There’s no space for your fears where you’re going - you gotta let those fears go. *Cue Erykah Badu’s Bag Lady*
Bag lady you goin' hurt your back
Draggin' all 'em bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold on to
Is you, is you, is youOne day all 'em bag goin' get in your way
One day all 'em bag goin' get in your way
I said
One day all 'em bag goin' get in your way
One day all 'em bag goin' get in your waySo
(Pack light, pack light)
Hmm, mmmBag lady, you goin' miss your bus
Moving into new, hopeful, and exciting phases of my life - relocating to New York to pursue media, establishing partnerships with people who are actually emotionally available, and this very moment in sharing my writing with the world - have seldom felt as light and airy as The Fool suggests. Ascension has demanded an undressing - ditching suffocating personal possessions, disconnecting from folks whose dreams for me were far smaller than my own, and abandoning my attachment to being someone who is good at everything and in need of nothing. I love The Fool in The Field Tarot because this person is butt ass naked and understands the imperative nature of being vulnerable in order to receive newness. There is a sense of unknown as nothing specific - no obstacle or destination - is in view, and the hero passes through the darker foreground get to the light in the future.
Coming into a healthy ignorance to life’s obstacles, released identification with The Old Soul, permission to be a student of life like I would allow anyone I love or care for, has resulted in greater gifts than I could imagine. Far beyond anything my fears would allow. Including all of you.
“Mature” was a badge of honor I wore in esteem far into adulthood, until now o’ clock in fact, when I’ve developed the tender strength of asking for training wheels, for a lil push in the right direction, some guided support, a cushioned bolster to the next leg in my journey. Because I am human. Because I fucking deserve it. Because I’m the hero in this story and can play The Fool when I damn well please. On bike, on foot, on plane, on train, I’m getting where I’m going. Failure is inevitable, facing the darker aspects of my person is required, and wholeness is guaranteed.
I feel so seen, thank you Ken!
Beautiful ❤️ Thank you