Month: October 2025

Uncategorized

Dear Drunk Driver,

ADOrduna

I am glad that you survived your crash on our property and able to walk away with what looked like not even a scratch. You could have died by hitting at least two light poles and about 4 trees. Yet your angels were watching over you. 

I understand this wasn’t your first DUI and you have faced other law enforcement engagements. And yet, there was a little girl’s backpack in your car – a child perhaps? I am glad you will have an opportunity to speak with her again.  

While my first reaction was shocked at the damage you caused to our property, I then boiled with anger when I realized how you could have driven into the studio office where my finance was working. I am grateful to our guardian angels for protecting us, him, our home, even you. At that moment, I felt you were selfish and careless. How could you drive? Why did people let you drive home? Why didn’t you call an Uber or Lyft? I initially didn’t care if they locked you up, yet the human in me both felt sorry that you would have to spend the weekend in Twin Towers – a place no one should ever enter, and wondered if you had been there before, what difference would this time make? 

I obviously don’t know you, and yet your presence will linger in our minds for the rest of our lives. You interrupted our sense of peace. I don’t think people really reflect on the wake their actions leave – no judgement on the quality – just the fact that there is always residue of our spirits left behind. 

We have spent the weekend readjusting the energy to secure our house back to peace. Hugged the tree. Swept the debris. We aren’t rich in money, but live modestly in careers that we love. A friend connected us to this place for healing – my partner from his pending divorce and my recovery from breast cancer and grief from the reality of never being able to have a child. 

Our home is our sanctuary – the place that nurtures our creativity, the place to rest, the place to prepare home-cooked meals that feed our soul, and a place where friends and family can visit for shelter, respite and safety or simple laughter. A place we hope to age together.

Now when I open my door and see our twisted railing, tire tracks across the ivy, metal pieces projected into the tree, and as I sweep up endless shards of glass and other debris – I feel the connection of our souls through the intersection of our paths early on a Sunday morning just after midnight. 

I can’t imagine internal wounds or simple addiction to the alcoholic taste, I just hope you find a way to honor this chance to live another day, have another conversation with your daughter and loved-ones, and even more importantly love yourself to see many, many more days ahead.  All of our actions impact our living environments, even when no one is hurt or killed, a call to all to remember our interconnectedness.

Drunk driving doesn’t just impact the driver. It impacts the entire community.

Uncategorized

Be Free

ADOrduna

I hate meetings before 10:00 as they stifle my morning moments – yet at this risk of being late, I had to write these words that came so demanding in my twilight dreams and so clearly in between yoga poses.

Recalling Thomas Jefferson’s words of “what to do with the Negro?” in Notes on the State of Virginia I understand that there will always be a certain set number of people who since the kindling of the idea to create the perfect union where European paupers could become kings of their own plantations; and whom are so deeply wounded with moral injury of consciousness from kidnapping, trafficking, raping, killing, and enslaving fellow human beings – Biblical descendants of Ham- that their collective unconscious refuses to see today’s Black person in skins of a radiant hues from honey-milk to copper brown to royal purple and indigo black – as human.

From a dream of the white gaze

To them I say – be free. Stop obsessing over our Blackness allowing us to live rent free in your mind, dreams, ambitions, and fears. Free yourselves and enjoy your all-inclusive segregated ecosystems of people who look like you – your neighborhoods, schools, restaurants, stores, travel clubs and golf courses, board rooms and state rooms. Live in your gated communities. Love who you love. Measure your own merit and achievement on your own standards of those who are like you. Collect your own taxes and profits from one another or not. Hire those whom you trust. Speak freely without fear of cancellation. Continue to vote for candidates who think like you and dare to be governed by them.

In short – live your life in the ideal world of your imagination without waiting for us to disappear. Take all of this and be free at the simple cost of forgetting that we exist and NEVER speaking of us again. No policies, practices, violent encounters, jujitsu words, selling/marketing, listening to our music nor adapting our dances and rhythms, praying to our gods, stealing our medicines, spying on our innovations, stealing or poisoning our lands, entering our communities, raping our women and children, incarcerating our men, or collecting income of any sorts from us.

Be you. Because thankfully, you are actually a minority. The rest of the world, including many who look like you, live in a higher consciousness of a world of abundance and divine intellect built on a web of belonging where everyone and being of the animal and natural world – have a contribution to make, and it is our interdependence – not just our diversity, that makes us stronger. Stop fighting. Stop jarring with words. Stop the violence. Simply Be. Be free.