I’m Ash. Right now: I am a job applicant. I am grad student soclose to graduation. I am (feeling like) a C+ mom for all the time and energy that I’ve poured into school. I am a wife with a wife in a liminal space, a holding pattern. I am realizing most of who I am is relational and the other aspects of myself, my individuality, feel far away. I feel like I am planning a trip after graduation, but the trip is metaphorical and actually I am just trying to track down and visit all the versions of myself I’ve lost touch with and see who still greets me as a friend. I am a friend. After nearly a decade, I guess I am a Washingtonian, a Tacoman even, but I am equally a person estranged from my mom and my hometown, Bend. I miss versions of each that will never exist again. Their influence is baked into who I am though. So is the grief. I am a loser in the sense that I experience a sense of disorienting loss when I let myself look back or around or over there, yet I’m also an admirer and a believer and a dreamer. I am a radical supporter of messy human growth, a conflict alchemist, and a steward of big feelings. I am alive and I want to be.
I am also a reader and listener and appreciator. Thanks, as always, for the space you create and questions you ask.
I’m Ash. Right now: I am a job applicant. I am grad student soclose to graduation. I am (feeling like) a C+ mom for all the time and energy that I’ve poured into school. I am a wife with a wife in a liminal space, a holding pattern. I am realizing most of who I am is relational and the other aspects of myself, my individuality, feel far away. I feel like I am planning a trip after graduation, but the trip is metaphorical and actually I am just trying to track down and visit all the versions of myself I’ve lost touch with and see who still greets me as a friend. I am a friend. After nearly a decade, I guess I am a Washingtonian, a Tacoman even, but I am equally a person estranged from my mom and my hometown, Bend. I miss versions of each that will never exist again. Their influence is baked into who I am though. So is the grief. I am a loser in the sense that I experience a sense of disorienting loss when I let myself look back or around or over there, yet I’m also an admirer and a believer and a dreamer. I am a radical supporter of messy human growth, a conflict alchemist, and a steward of big feelings. I am alive and I want to be.
I am also a reader and listener and appreciator. Thanks, as always, for the space you create and questions you ask.