Fifty-seven years and counting

Today is my fifty-seventh birthday. I remember when I turned 29. That was a hard birthday. I was stuck thinking oh my I’m almost thirty and what have I done with my life??! I got through the day and back to living and doing and by the time I was about to turn 30 I had realized that actually I had done a lot in all those years. In 1995 Bill committed suicide I was not sure I would survive 42 and I found my way held close and held up by so many amazing people. Soon after when I turned 44 it was another hard birthday because my dad died of a heart attack while he was forty-four there was a weird part of me that had always believed I would die at that age also. I found out later that my sister had also felt that. And yet I lived to be now fifty-seven. I have had a mostly quite interesting life.

so far.

I’ve not posted much here lately and will try to do more because there is much to share. I’m pretty active on Facebook these days.

I’m happy to be getting ready to fly to Jackson, Mississippi tomorrow for the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition conference. I’ll be home on Sunday afternoon, hopefully in time for PFLAG-Olympia where the program is a screening of “Straightlaced by Groundspark.

So I’ll be in Jackson and then in the air coming home when the National Equality March happens in Washington DC on October 10-11 and when there are several over the weekend in Seattle.

For my birthday I want to leave you with this video by Staceyann Chin, spoken word poet, performing artist and political activist – created to support the equality march and the grassroots work before us all.

love to you all,
Gabi