My Heart is a Bloodbath

Deer Sweet One,

Recently, I felt inspired to share my writing once again. I took a short story writing class at the beginning of the year, during my brief stint in academia again, and I think that class was the whole purpose of starting school again (that, and paying my rent with student loans lol). 

Writing while the sun is still rising is such a joy, and one I’ve struggled with since the class ended. I’m a morning person by nature, clocking out around 3pm cuz my brain gets tired and I’m prone to meltdowns, and adding the short writing prompts felt like honoring a part of me I’ve neglected over the years. 

Self-neglect / self-abandonment is a habit and wound at this point. One that is hard to heal and be gentle with myself about cuz I was taught to change through suffering, as if I could change if I were in enough pain. What I know now is that pain causes me to shut down, not stay open, which is essential for growth.

So, here I am, choosing to open my heart and soul, inviting you to enter if you please, through my precious, little zine of poems and short stories. I want to share because I know someone needs to read these words as much as I do, as much as I’ve needed them throughout my life. Yes, some of them are horrific, some are sad, but underneath it all, I want my stories to inspire hope — kinda like a promise that you, too, can traverse the landscape of your life and live to tell. 

I’ve tried to tell these stories since I was a teenager, but I was often met with disbelief that minimized my experiences, and I learned to stop talking as a way to protect my shattered heart. So, I carried them, not knowing how or when, but trusting that someday I would share them with someone, and I would know that I mattered.

This is where it can get tricky. Cuz I didn’t receive the kind of love and care that can foster self-confidence or value my own opinions, I have often sought out (and still do) approval and validation from others. This time is different. Yes, the inception of my desire to share was inspired by someone who is not me, but I think that is my future ancestral self telling me that writing and sharing my stories is important work!

I sat with the idea for at least a week, then hurried up and put my writings together before doubt could make a home inside of me, and breathed life into it. Now that it’s taken shape, my job is to share it.

This collection is about my family horror, how I survived as a brown baby femme, intergenerational trauma that haunts me still, and forgiving myself so I can accept and celebrate who I am.

The cover is a picture of baby me and my ex-mother, a moon who is a better mother, sandstone mesas, where the tangled roots of my family lie, 

the desert night sky of home, where I learned to love stars, and the white hands turning the pages of a bible, cuz the Seventh-Day Adventist church that perforated my family, both my ex-father’s and ex-mother’s side, fucked everyone. My ex-parents and siblings, my aunties and uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Everyone has been touched by the hands of white men and their white gawd.

This genocide is still shredding my family into pieces. I am still purging the deep programming of hypocritical white christian shame presented as values. I am confused, then horrified, when I discover how shame and guilt have shaped me — my queerness, my body, my sexuality, my access to ancestral and traditional teachings, my elders, my spiritual development, my autonomy, my ability to have a loving mother and father, my beliefs about love and safety — and there are more ways I haven’t uncovered yet.
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My therapist recently reflected back to me how revolutionary it is to choose myself, my joy, my truth, my peace of mind, my safety, my pleasure, my boundaries, and they’re right. 

This is me choosing myself.
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xo
Violet 🐳

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