A Year Ends With New Sight

Yet Another Book Update

As many of you know, I have been writing a book over the past year and a half. Yes, I’m still working on it. I say that with some shame because I thought I would be finished by now. But as I wrote in my last update, this art is a vehicle for me to find my belonging — to be able to stand within my story while being connected to the world. Here’s another update for you before we begin another year, enjoy!

This video was recorded in July 2023 when I received a package of documents, surrounding information about my father, in the mail from my mother. These documents included an ID of my father, some letters that my mother wrote to my father that got returned, custody and child support case paperwork, etc.

I stopped the video short because I realized how touched I was to receive this package, which acted like a time capsule, and I decided that feeling its impact was more important than documenting it.

It’s a longer and quite somber video, but I wanted to share it here because receiving new information, seemingly out of nowhere, has been a major part of this book project. Experiences like this have often recalibrated the stories and timelines that live within me. I have found these internal amendments supportive in understanding and coming to terms with my father’s absence, but at the same time confusing when it comes to writing a coherent storyline.

I notice now that good writing faithfully takes a bite out of what is chaotic and muddled, meeting the incongruence with the eyes of curiosity, and through the digestion process the writer surfaces what was before hidden, which helps the story “make sense” to a reader who can identify themselves within it.

I am in the digestion process of my own story. This means there has been much more energy put into feeling, sensing, and taking bites out of the substance of my history, than writing. I trust that understanding will emerge in time (and likely significant details, facts, and other particulars to underpin such). Therefore, a book can be written, in time. What I have right now is a cluster of discombobulated stories, which I have no self-actualized meaning for. In other words, the incoherence in me is reflected in what I have already written.

The naïveté of a first-book-writer is that he or she has no idea what they signed up for. Like many things in life that we launch into unknowingly if they would have known before starting, they would have been less likely to start.

On another note, the push of our results, data, click, and production-obsessed culture nags at the heels of the creative like a pesky Chihuahua. I have felt this consistently throughout what I initiated almost two years ago. Since the book is deeply personal and something yet to be fully worked through, my muse laughs at timelines and agendas. Shame abides at times, knowing so many people have encouraged me to do this - not only with their mouths but also with their finances (thank you to all those who have donated - over 50 of you! - your love and support is with me ceaselessly).

The way that I’m writing this book seems to go the opposite direction than the cultural engines at mass. I have come to terms with this in the last months. It will take as long as it takes. I’m still diligently attending to the process even if it’s largely internal at this time. What will emerge in the end will be nothing like what I thought I had set out to do. After all this work surrounding my father, the book may not even be about his absence and its effect on me. Who knows? Whatever the result, the initiation of such an investigation has already been so important for me in the process of individuation.

What’s clear to me is that there’s a significant amount of digestion needed to take place before anything integral arises. I will not rush. In a world that moves faster every day but continues to move past, around, or over essential details, I will not rush.

Next Steps

These three letters were the most touching items I discovered in the package from the video above. They were all letters to my father from my mother which had been “returned to sender” because either she had the wrong address (she spent lots of time trying to track him down, but that’s a whole other story) or he just sent them back.

What was both sad and remarkable was that the letters had never been opened. They were still sealed from the time my mom addressed and sent them circa 1995. She saved them. I was now the one able to open and read what she wrote.

I cried rivers reading these letters. They all included pleas for my father to be a part of my life and how beautiful of a baby I was. I could feel her sadness and pain of being left as a single mother and how grief-stricken she was for me to not have my father around. I got to read her hand-written and live processing of the experience like I was shot back to 1995 to watch it all unfold.

This gave me so much gratitude for the mother I’ve been delivered to. Her strength, persistence, and unwavering love have always shown. I have a strong bond with her and I believe it’s because we went through the abandonment of my father, together. We share this experience intimately, on a cellular level. So, I thank you mom for what you have done to advocate, reinforce, promote, finance, and love in me. These letters helped me stand in your shoes.

Another significant piece discovered was that my father was born in Trinidad. The family immigrated to the Bronx, New York at some point when he was a young boy. So, one of my next steps is to visit the island. I have no expectations for that, but I feel being on that land will bring insight and further information. I have a strong sense that it will also help me see where this diasporic longing for home stems from.

As I said before, this package was a time capsule. It showed up because I initiated this book project. I may not have received those documents for many years if I had not been in the depth of this project.

It’s proof to me that information shows up once we take a step into the unknown. I’m continuing to walk with this in mind. That I have no idea what’s to come. What opens could be the most powerful resource to, as Rilke put it, “not now seek the answers,” but “gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

I want this book to be an embodied and living answer. An addition to the soil from which I grow into the fullness of who I am. And with a bonus, touch the lives of people with resonant experiences, whose mourning may turn into hope.

As always, thank you for being a part of this unfolding with me. I appreciate your presence, the love and care that extends to me like the sun’s rays on a blooming flower. May we all walk into 2025 with new vision - sight of how we can be in the world and express who we are with authenticity, transparence, and unwavering transmission.

Much Love.

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