There is a particular exhaustion that comes from spending years inside language that was never yours.
Not the exhaustion of hard work. The exhaustion of translation — of taking what you know in your body and constantly converting it into terms that others find legible. Terms that fit the room. Terms that make the work make sense to people who were never going to feel it anyway.
You have been doing this for a long time.
You Were Named Before They Spoke went out Tuesday. If it landed somewhere in you — if something in you recognized the accumulated weight of it — I want you to know: that recognition is not small. That is the beginning of something.
This week, one question to carry:
Where in your life are you still speaking in someone else’s language?
Not as critique. As inquiry. With the gentleness you would offer a woman you love.
The field is open.
— Pam