Burn (it all down), baby, burn.

A little over 6 months ago, I had plans. Plans that I considered big, given the enormous shift they required to change the trajectory I’d been on for the last several years.

The prospect of 2020 was brimming with personal hope and reclamation: I could finally see a light at the end of the stay-at-home-parent tunnel. Parenthood had been a vacuum comprised equally of overwhelming gratification, all-consuming anxiety production, and hair-triggered grief. With J’s departure to school this fall (so big now!) and A’s entrance into part-time daycare, I’d be able to grab the reins of my career as a budding writer and creator and jump back into ticking off boxes on my personal goal list. While it had been a privilege—and a triumph—to almost exclusively raise my living children during the early formative years of their lives, I was ready for change. More than ready, I was desperate for it.

Last year, I knew I was losing myself. After nearly six years of pregnancy, birth, the devastating loss of our sweet Max, more pregnancy, more births, immeasurable grief, and autoimmune disease, I was exhausted. My body was spent, creaking and crackling with staircase trips and the constant scoop of small, crying people needing comfort. My spirit had nearly been crushed by the emotional demands of having to exist simply for the sake of other people’s needs. My internal inferno of inspiration was barely lit, reduced to a little flicker of flame. I’d managed to shield my fire from being blown out completely by the storm, but I was on the edge, wondering if it’d be better to snuff myself out rather than gather the necessary kindling to nurture the fire again. It was a scary place.

For as long as I can remember, the fire that burns within me has been fueled by music. At 2, I stomped my feet to Paul Simon’s Graceland album in my family’s living room, counting off “1, 2, 3, 4!” emphatically offbeat (luckily, personal rhythm came later). A little later, I remember looking through my dad’s car console for the Flashdance soundtrack cassette tape, begging him to play “What A Feeling” as we drove. Soon after, I was dancing around that same living room, attempting my version of “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva. When Mariah Carey’s Vision of Love album was released, my first projections of a life in music were, too. The omnipresence of music gave me a language in which to feel, to dream, to escape, and also, to deal with the traumas of life. Music has given me an imagination and with it, the ability to dream of a better reality.

2020 has stretched the capacity of the public imagination. Headline after awful headline detailing the death and disparity in our country, and countless lives ravaged by—and lost to—the pandemic and to the strangling grip of systemic racism, have challenged our collective ability to function. But we forge ahead anyway, in all the ways that we are capable, to make our individual contributions toward greater change for every person, every child, every community.

If I’ve learned anything over the last 6 months, it’s that the gifts we possess are nature’s requirement of us. Life is bigger than all of us, but we are the arbiters of life. We are the ones who make it worth living. We are indebted to each other’s dreams.

I still have gifts to share. Nature isn’t done with me yet. So with that, and in the spirit of getting Trump the hell out of office, defunding the police, and overall redistribution of wealth, I’ll leave you with words from the extended cut of The Trammps' 1976 immortal classic, "Disco Inferno”:

Don’t you rescue me / (just can’t stop) / let my spirit burn free / (when my spark gets hot)