questions

From Audre Lorde

1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, “for what do you not have words, yet?”]
I do not have words for the relationship with my oldest brother. I do not have word for push pull between where I once lived and where I know live. I do not have words for my values or principles.
  
2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
I love my daughter
I fear for her health and self care and therefor her future
My choices for partners are failures
I try every day to be a good person to understand myself and the people I work/live with
I am lonely

I need to say that I no longer have community, feminist community. Part of what made my life possible was the women's movement which gave me feelings of empowerment, and then the gay movement which did the same at an even deeper level. Both worlds feel not as familiar and both seem out of reach for me now.

3. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?  [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.
Fear of old age of sickness of not being able to care for myself
The scenes in my head of former abuse that play in  my head everyday
my fear of being abused again

 4. If we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language, ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” [So, answer this today. And everyday.)

People will not love or respect me.