Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

Can a badass white lady like you make room for me?

the problems in the hood are systemic. I know that my neighborhood is stuck in a sanctioned and fully funded cycle of poverty,

PS: How do you take your coffee? This will help me decide if we’re compatible social justice superheroes or not.

All the moments where I was made to feel like an outsider in a group that was supposed to have room for me added up and left me feeling so much shame.

It looked like the Salvation Army of bookstores, and who doesn’t love a little dig through salvation?

I got myself here. I didn’t need anyone to hold my hand, even if I was hyperventilating half the time.

I wondered if there was a price to pay for this type of peace.

You want answers. Make your own religion out of doubt and curiosity. Don’t go running after one God.”

We need to create our own understanding of divine presence in a world full of chaos.

My God and my understanding of God are centered on who I am as a person and what I need to continue my connection to the divine,”

I held my truth in my throat.

kept that hurt to myself. I locked it inside my chest cavity. I laughed off its existence

Zaira’s embrace was like having motherhood and a fortress wrapped around my body.

They looked like they worshipped the sun and bathed in buttermilk.

White allies, we ask that you respect this space, own your privileges, and remain open to your own journey.

Submit your story but most of all submit to joy.

Libraries had zero tolerance for bullshit. Their walls protected us and kept us safe from all the bastards that never read a book for fun.

What did painting women as untrustworthy or whorish have to do with God’s love anyway?

the people interpreting the Bible were misogynists and didn’t care about anything a wise woman had to say.

My parents raised me to believe that I should be proud to live in the land of the free. But what the heck did any of that mean if it came at the cost of other people’s countries and lives?

The underbelly of America creeped me out; the sociopathic patriarchy was still some old devil who never got put down.

Ask the questions that make you feel like your heart is blasting out of your chest.

“There’s a lot of wisdom in the world that’s been discarded because it comes from traditions created by women, indigenous peoples, and other non-white-dude customs.

Those assumptions live inside people and they do their best to dodge them and intellectualize around them, but they’re still there.

“Your one job is to just accept what a person feels comfortable sharing about themselves. No one owes you info on their gender, body parts, or sexuality.”

Her consistent linking of genitals to gender as an absolute is violent as hell. It’s a closed fist instead of open arms,

“womanhood is radical enough for anyone who dares to claim it.”

You gotta question everything, especially who you give your love and respect to.

You’re destined to evolve and understand yourself in ways you never imagined before.

It felt good to pray, to remember to give thanks and feel connected to something beyond the confusion of being human.

masculinity is forever linked to the feminine and to all other forms of gender expression.

I couldn’t spill my guts to someone who wasn’t asking for them.

How could anything as huge as feminism be universal?

only you can change your world,”

reading would make me brilliant, but writing would make me infinite.”

my love for you is the sun, the sky, and the moon. It’s the air I breathe. It lives in everything I do. It’s better than good. It’s everlasting.”

once you’re able and confident enough in yourself to leave, the world changes you, and you’re not the same person anymore ever again and that’s the beautiful part,”

“People you love fuck up,” Zaira said, she touched my knee. “You weed out the assholes from the warriors. Pick up on folks who aren’t soft spaces for your heart. Move with forgiveness but listen to your instincts when it comes to eradicating the unworthy from your spirit.

thing. My story, my truth, my life, my voice, all of that had to be protected and put out into the world by me. No one else. No one could take that from me. I had to let go of my fear. I didn’t know what I was afraid of. I wondered if I’d ever speak my truth.

I love you, but I refuse to continue loving someone who won’t be real about their shit and change up their actions to match.”

The fear was making my lungs tighter and I refused to let it take me down. Fuck fear.

Question everything anyone ever says to you or forces down your throat or makes you write a hundred times on the blackboard.

Question every single thing until you find the answer in a daydream.

Don’t question yourself unless you hurt someone else.

Apologize when you fuck up.

Do not be afraid. Do not doubt yourself. Do not hide.

Be proud of the things that the world uses to make you feel different. Love your fat, fucking glorious body.

Love your breasts, hips, and wide ass if you have them and if you don’t, love the body you do have or the one you create for yourself.

Love the fact that you have ingrown hairs on the back of your thighs and your grandma...

Read all the books that make...