Green: Nature

Welcome back to another late blog post de moi!

Happy 2nd Anniversary to @thepositive_jdneal Est. June 18, 2018

Happy 5th Anniversary to my High School Graduation- June 19, 2015

Happy 155th Juneteenth. May each day bring us closer and closer to True Liberation.

With everything that's been going on in the United States, I haven't had the energy or the motivation to write, but, I figured this post was going to be relatively short. So here it is now!

I'm withholding a whole events from May thing, because not much happened... I was still staying in quarantine, talking to my students through distance learning, celebrated Liz B.'s and Liz J.'s birthdays through social distance hangouts, had therapy a few times, got a summer job and housing in New Haven with Rebekah and Roddy, and had some conversations with my roommate for grad school, Will.

I'm grateful and blessed that, while I'm trying to conserve and protect my own energies while violence is being done against people that look and sound like me, I'm able to be in community with people of color in my fellowship. Since we are isolated in our apartment building, we've been able to have regular hangouts and spend precious time reflecting and holding space for one another. I'm so thankful for them and so thankful that during this time, I have them. 

I could spend time on this blog unpacking injustice and attempting to educate people on why Black Lives Matter, and why we should abolish the police, and so on, but, right now, that can't be my job. Previous blog posts contain some of that information. My Social Activism & Self-Care Resources contains even more of that information. It's important for people, especially white people and non-black POC, to develop skills to educate themselves apart from relying on their black family, friends, and other educators. It's reparations work, and just morally right to either educate yourself or properly compensate the people doing that work for you. 

But, I digress. 

For some, including relatively close family members of mine, queerness is deemed unnatural. 

Rather than focusing on this, which was my original purpose for this post, I wanted to commit to doing something less harmful for my being right now. 

Green: Nature

Bluff Point State Park- Groton, CT

Green is the color in the Pride flag dedicated to Nature. 

For this post, I am writing a Love Letter to Nature. 

Dear Nature, 

I've spent a lot of time in your presence. 

Although, I spent much more time with you when I was younger. 

I'm sorry for disappearing so often and for so long now. 

I miss playing make-believe games in large open fields. 

I miss exploring the woods, even when I stepped in a stream and soaked my sweats. 

I miss going to the beach for hours and hours on end, during a time when work was but a dream.

I miss you. 

Thank you for the soil. 

The ground that holds me up, even when I can't do the same for myself. 

The coolness of the earth, under my bare feet.

For giving me an example of what it means to be soft, or rocky, but always fruitful and bountiful.

Thank you for the wind. 

For wicking my sweat away.

For the breeze that cools a hot day. 

For reminding me to be light and gentle.

Thank you for the trees. 

From the evergreens that constantly reflect my favorite color,

To the deciduous that show us that change is constant and necessary. 

For the leaves that provide shade from the sun.

For making our air breathable. 
For letting my cousins have fun by climbing their tall branches.

For showing me what it means to stand tall, even in the mightiest storms.

Thank you for the sun.

For giving us warmth and light. 

For feeding my melanin. 

For making my Black skin glisten.

For providing me with a reminder of what I strive to be in this life. 

Thank you for the ocean. 

For a place to swim when it gets too hot. 

For the waves that get a little too high and the riptides that get a little too strong.

For the times in which I've felt closest to God. 

For teaching me what it means to be powerful, loud, beautiful, and proud.

Thank you for the weather. 

The breezy autumn days, when the leaves fall and the foliage is beautiful.

The snowy winter days, for helping me appreciate the warmer ones more.

The rainy spring days with wonderful sights, smells, sounds, and time spent indoors.

The sunny summer days filled with smiles and laughter. 

The thunderstorms that produce beautiful and astonishing lightning.

The storms that let me know that life is not always going to be sunny, but that it's going to be okay.

Thank you for being a physical extension of God. 

Thank you for providing rich resources for us, even though we're so undeserving and selfish with them.

Thank you for life.

Thank You for Much, Much More than just this.

Thank you for your unwavering Love.

With So Much Love from your Beautiful Black Baby, 

Jamal Davis Neal, Jr.

Thanks for reading.

And Don't Forget:

BLACK LIVES MATTER