Ugly Like Me...

The drugs don't work.

 

I woke at 3 am like I do every God-forsaken morning. I am kidding. I like being up at this hour. I like singing on my ukulele as the sun rises. I was looking for the chords to The Drugs Don't Work by The Verve when I bumped into another page. My inspiration book comes with me everywhere. It's been ten years of writing articles that I'm paid generously to write, one book that was published (that all I see are flaws in), and then about ten other books that no one (probably) will ever see. A woman loses her inspiration after a while. So my book, comes everywhere with me, AND I have about 10-15 of them. There is usually one favorite at a time. I don't carry a library with me.

Anyway.I was looking for the chords and I bumped into another page. The words, grabbed me at first. I didn't know why or who. My cognition is being swept away by ten years with multiple sclerosis. I practice instruments, do brain games etc. My memory is still shot.

The one thing I ALWAYS know is that there's always a "who". God put me here for human connection and I am so deeply connected to others, that it's almost a problem. Whatever someone chooses, my heart pays a consequence. Especially, when you love so hard and their choice is suicide. I don't really know how to circumvent that, build a fort and live at the base of it - I pretty much just listen to sad songs for hours and hours in the wee  hours of the morning until my husband gently puts his hands on my shoulders and asks me to stop hurting myself. Sidenote: when it comes to clinical depression - I don't know how much of a choice it is. When depression takes hold, to wriggle yourself free can be nearly impossible. I don't believe he thought of this as a choice.

A record can spin like a blade to me. They leave me bleeding. Maybe I like the idea that I am sacrificing something of myself for them? I am my own masochist. Music is so carefully discerned and chosen. It isn't "light" to me. It's heavy, and it can be deadly. A psychic once told me that, and she's probably the only psychic I ever believed because she saw me in my office for hours at crazy times, listening to sad songs and crying.

She told me I needed to stop, or I too become ghost-like.

I was born mourning. Truly. I've always had this huge amount of empathy and love in my chest, non-discerning, and maybe God wants it there, but it's been such a bitch to carry, and so very hard for me to get up sometimes. People always focus on my multiple sclerosis. Physically, it has been easier to get up from MS than such losses. Without my husband's gentle touch on my shoulders, his eye-contact, I don't know if I'd still be on the ground from my twenties.

I just found this. It is for Scott. I have no recollection of writing it. If you are hurting and wanting to hurt yourself - God I beg you, go to bed. Wait 'til morning. The head is a bit more clear, and talk to someone, anyone. Call a hotline. Or, just drive yourself to a hospital. If you just hold on...it does get better. I know for certain. Scott may feel nothing right now, he may feel eternal peace. But I, have never gotten "better" or recovered. And it sucks.

The truth is, depression sucks. I'd rather he be better. That said, it still hurts and music still grips me for hours while I wonder where such a light can possibly go. He is not dim. Even an ocean can't swallow something that radiant.

Frightened Rabbits and the Undertoe  

Peace is a tear in my eye. Hate is some tattered tear in my second-hand heart. Or tare. Some counterweight to conclude I am barely there without you. I used to think they were world's apart, but I'm not so sure anymore.

It's just the difference before the peaceful shoreline and a raging shore. Wrinkling toes and a wave that drowns you. One is sand castles washed away like mandalas and the other is death. A fine, gentle line between.

Stitched up, you can see the seams where you tore me open when you decided to sacrifice yourself in the ocean. There's no reason you should've been thinking of me or my skin, anyway. Just wish you could've processed the skin you were in, how lovely it had been, for the most part. The alcohol was never kind. But it never touched your kindness or your fingers.

Sometimes I wonder how arrogant we must be to think the gods want us. It's arrogance or sickness. Maybe they are one in the same. But God bless you in your self-deprecating name. You were something else. More than that.

My heart goes back to, "I want him...here." And for a millisecond I am faithless. I put my cross down, close my eyes, and wrap my arms around your chest. Must pick it up again and go forward. Someday, someday.

I will feel this less. I hold out hope for that day.

I'm trying to shake the hands of "karma", forgiving you.

Knowing full well, karma doesn't "get" the things we do...to ourselves.

Sweating, your most beautiful melodies played, tipping your hate for yourself. You were always gracious about your talent. Open about this self-hate. If she would've stayed. If LA was kinder? You'd love yourself then? Not sure I believe in Karma anymore.

I just know my heart, sleeps at your mother's door, trying to hear a heartbeat. Making sure she's okay. Of course she isn't. My sleep there is fruitless. But the empathy in my chest will never leave. It lays there with a Scottish accent, always listening.

Sometimes I swear I can taste the spit of your mic. You ranted and raved how you were nothing. I finished your sentence inside my head...,"But loved. You are nothing, but so very loved."

And I am a simple woman who will never understand why that was never enough. So I keep spinning your music, looking for answers and bleeding willingly, feeling your depths, waiting for my husband to knock on the door and save me from jumping too.

You were my idol, but Scott...I can't be like you. It's a terrible thing to say, and needing to say it just pulls me under.

 

 

 

Emily Hayward passes from cancer at 25 years young, a hero to thousands.

Emily Hayward, the effervescent lover of working out, all things healthy, pretty hotels that stash cameras everywhere for visitors to take pictures and, most importantly, her wife Aisha Hayward-Hasan has passed away from an 8 year-battle with malignant melanoma. 

As someone with my own chronic illness, I found myself taken with Emily's journey on Youtube maybe six months ago. I wasn't the only one; she left behind over 50,000 subscribers. It seemed like every one of us noticed she hadn't vlogged in four days. We saw her eyes change, like a part of her was in the next world, a part here. Our eternal hero was MIA.

We wrote well-wishes and prayers on her newsfeed.

It wasn't until yesterday, when I opened Instagram, sitting on my porch, ten minutes from New York City, and a world away from Bromley, UK where she resided with her wife that I saw this:

What’s going on guys? After 8 long years of kicking cancer in the ass my body got tired, I achieved everything I wanted to and more. With all my loved ones around me I have now peacefully left you all. Thank you all for your love and support, but most of all thank you for always following my journey and believing in me. Love you all, peace Em x

I saw her leaving. As someone who's been dealing with illness for almost a decade, I feel like I witnessed the moment her spirit left her eyes, as her partner tried to talk her back and keep her here.

Even so, I was not ready for her to leave just yesterday. I sat on my porch and cried my eyes out. Another hero has exited this world. We will see her again.

I always note to my husband how I dislike it when people say, "She/he is gonna beat this! They're a fighter!" For me, it implies that all the little lights I loved that passed via cancer were not fighters. That's just wrong. Inaccurate.

Emily Hayward was a fighter, and so much more. She was a fighter, lover of so many things...she taught those of us who know we are dying a bit sooner than the rest, how to live despite that knowledge. She was a fighter and she's changed this world. I know she's changed mine.

Last night I stared at the moon, thinking this was the first moon I was aware of that she wasn't here to see. I was so in touch with that moon, with Aisha who was inexhaustible in her love for Em and her unwavering positivity, with her parents. I wanted to thank them for sharing her with us, with helping her help us, for everything.

Emily Hayward did not succumb to cancer. Cancer did not beat her. She accomplished her Divine Appointment, she fought like hell to get there, and went when she had accomplished all she needed to accomplish.

She won, and I am grateful. 

 

The Soldier

Twenty three years he spent

with sand in his mouth,

connecting in ditches, connected to bodies

trying to separate them from their humanity.

Almost dangerously close to the way

the enemy did.

 

He could only get close in pieces.

He had to separate, in order to live.

 

It was up to him, or them.

He couldn’t survive any more connections.

Each connection was a loss.

Hit.

Torn away

Limb from limb

So he tried to shut his mouth.

His heart.

 

Take the hit, in a silent way,

for the brother he could only love

On another day.

Twenty-three years away.

 

I’ll see you again someday

He'd think, as he looked at his feat.

The war defeated him in many ways.

 

Imagining his comrade as a child

AT the kite festival he grew up

 going to as a kid

Slivers of glass on his skin

Wounded in an innocent way,

Expert gauger of the wind

Like him.

 

They could be brothers then.

Only then.

Back home.

 

That was the highest he’s ever felt,

 And yet he was the master of it,

Not the part that could fly.

Ironic.

It was the first time he realized something in him

  Could be religious.

He might.

Ride the wind or clouds

Take to the light and heaven.

Someday.

 

But now it was about silo missile doors

And unstable floors

Heat and pain.

In a place that was always in desperate need of rain.

 

He’d find himself behind

Mounds of destruction that would

now serve to protect him.

Praying.

Head down.

Religion or fright.

Maybe just a kite.

Whatever kept him alive.

For a stranger.

 

Twenty-three years later.

Home. It felt solid.

This time for good.

 

He came home and everything had changed.

It was too much like that place, he was trying to leave.

A sense of heat and hate, a burning that lingered in the air.

He felt everywhere.

Even in the field, down by the river

Where the kites would frighten the clouds,

Lighting up the cityscape in the dimmed down

 Background.

 

These days, he could fly anything there,

It was never quite as colorful and loud,

As that heat in the wind.

It would never be anything that made

any sense to him.

 

He was aware now why his father drank.

He could see himself from his father’s angle

With the bottle, ice cold. Thick glass.

Never willing him to do or say anything that resembled

KIND.

 

He resisted.

He wouldn’t go down that road.

He picked up kinder vices, in the meantime.

To fill up his idea of this empty home.

 

He walked a lot.

He thought it was respectful.

A subtle nod to his comrades who could no longer.

Until he was able to hug his brother.

 

He continued to shave his head as well.

These little rituals willed him to keep going

in a world he no longer understood,

Stronger.

 

He’d done his time. He wanted his home back.

He wanted his kite. His brother. And Freedom.

 

He’d walk and ride the train.

Up and down again.

Still praying for rain.

A habit he never spent.

So much more to give.

More, more.more

Never enough.

 

Rain.

Cleansing.

Satiating.

Thirst.

 

Riding the train, the hate monger lingered.

Up and down the narrow width of the 25th.

Underground. Train.

“Trump has made America great again.”

The monster of a man, in sheer size alone,

 Screams.

He tries to close his eyes. See the blue.

His white water rafting with his Sister.

Aurora.

In Portland.

 

He can remember the name

of the place

The river

The streams.

 

And out comes the knife.

He could smell the metal a mile

 Away.

It followed him from a place far away

 he was supposed to be leaving

For the brothers he never got a chance to have,

 and for the strangers’ freedom.

 

The tongue was pointed toward a young women

In a hijab.

It’s okay

She’s was increasingly more fidgety.

Scared.

He found himself tasting sand, wishing he didn’t care.

He stood up.

Then two.

Then three.

 

Protecting the girl in the hijab and the man’s right to hate her. He thought this was just speech. But thoughts provoke speech and actions. Hurtful words, turn to hurtful action.

 

The knife turned from her, and stabbed him.

First one.

Then two.

Then three.

 

He couldn’t see, or swallow.

Fell buy the monster’s boot, the movement of the train

 Shifted him on the side, underneath a seat.

 

The three.

On this eve,

Of Memorial Day Weekend?

This was how his service would end.

He smiled. Felt lighter. Tasted no sand.

Just the red warmth that pumped out of him,

Beneath him.

The irony, he thought,

To die at home for her, and him, at home

Between them.

 

His soul was lifted, celebrated.

The lights embraced him like a long applause.

He didn’t need to be lauded, he felt his brother’s

Shoulders squeezing him. 

It was heaven.

All the pain and suffering bled out onto floor.

 

No longer between them.

He was finally home.

He did it.

Freedom.

 

 

 

Die like a rich boy...

The world is off without you. Anything with imagery of water and drowning sends me into my outward place. My safe space. It's not as much safe, as just empty now.

No one can touch me, reach me. Just the frequency delivered to my ears, with your words and your fears. I know them so well.

You're singing in the air, accompanying such a long lost stare out my window. I will not open it today. No air today.

You always made me feel less scared, less alone. Your humility and smile, understanding,  always seemed to get me home. So I keep playing your songs like My Backwards Walk and Holy on blast through my iPhone. 

You are gone now, for a while, but your music still gets me home. If you've never heard Frightened Rabbit... I feel like this one says it all:

I need to find somebody who can tear me away
From the car crying babies and switchblade days
The bark of the unemployment hounds
And the thought of the thick, white skull on the ground

I won’t die in the bony arms of the state
To be laid to rest in the wake of the faded town

And if the raincoats come to steal my home
There’s a big white house at the end of the road
I can see you wrapped in Egyptian thread
In a marble garden, immune to the mess

If you leave this world in a rhinestone shroud
We could finally make your father proud

If I leave this world in a loaded daze
I can finally have and eat my cake

 

I want to die like a rich boy diving
In a hydrocodone dream
You can die like a rich girl by me
Oh how the magazines will read
I ‘ll die like a rich boy bathing

In a milk bath I could drown

Want to die like a rich boy
Even if we’re as poor as we are now

 

Multiple Sclerosis - What is the meaning? What's the one thing the universe needs me to do before I go?

Newly out of the hospital, enduring #steroid #withdrawals I've had the biggest #multiplesclerosis epiphany ever. The last ten years have been so heavy. God they have been so dramatic! Rightfully so! #Quadriplegia is a heavy prognosis. I was rushing to PROVE so many things. That book was to prove to my children that I was sick, that I noticed them. I wrote like a champion.Two years of such hard work. Made dreams come true. But I never shook this fear of quadriplegia - it was still there. My body would fail in different way, which to me, was a sign it was coming soon. Fast forward to the hospital this week, I believed I was never going to come home again. I'm happy for that. It taught me so much. It probably even saved me! People showed up for me. They really cared that I lived on this earth with them. The boy I liked in 6th grade sent me flowers! He remembered my name? How sweet! So many people showed for me. Way more than I feel worthy of, but I was so grateful. It's never the ones you think, by blood will show, but I have learned a long time ago - I am not entitled to that. I am entitled to NOTHING. Love still showed in any shape it could. I gave thanks to God. When I thought I was not going to wake up and this was it, it was HEAVY, but still very full of gratitude - we found that the RIGHT side of my brain was lighting out. Not my pesky brain stem. I would come home again. And all the love came home with me. I got a preview and it really has changed the trajectory of my life. Steroids and all, I just feel so in love. Such gratitude. So this was my blog the day after returning. Typing is getting harder, so I save for work. I'm assuming that is why I keep logging so much these days? I see a lot - terminal videos on Youtube and I see a common theme- fear, I implore you, if you have some looming clock counting gown...stop counting. Just be, In every moment. We are all wind and dust and sun and eyelashes on our cheeks and the wishes that sweep them away. Wishes in the wind. We are our children. The love we leave behind. Get that clock OUT of your head, and just love. And that list of the people that hurt you, the people who "slept" while others hurt you, even that doesn't seem to matter at the end. I remember just saying 'thank you' and then I remember waking up! Feeling grateful. Be THAT. When you go, it's none of our business until then when that will be. It is your business to be love until then. God bless you my friends. When you are at the end, I pray you feel me beside you in spirit. You are never alone. PS-Who knows what the universe wants me to say - I'm busy loving my husband and children <3

Adverbs

Adverbs

My fingers feel frenetic. Something is pouring through the tips. I’d say every page has been kissed, by them. But they’re not always kind.

“IF your life is crushing you, make it into a novel,” he said. So I bled. And I bled. Again and again. Taking his word for the truth. Writing mine… all the way through.

 It’s the only thing to do. I refuse to cry over the past. I only cry over beautiful things. I keep taking notes, sketching characters with words. Adjectives. How they move into adverbs. What was it that you do, or did, to me. Was it wrong, or was it you that took advantage of a fucked up kid? Perhaps, I was just a good kid that you fucked up? Nah, always default to accountability.

I smile thinking all I made out of ME despite what you did, or didn’t do. My head is high. I smiled when I said goodbye. My light was not a lie. I wish you peace. It really was a GOOD bye.

My God did not forsake me. He clothed and swaddled me. Potty-trained me and walked me home. He was the big puffy coat that cloaked me on the long winter walks home. I was so small and pale. Wore my dark locks like a veil.  I never felt alone even though she was gone – locked away while she frantically wept for a man she could never hold forever. She demanded guarantees in December. He’s just like the weather. She had an impossible dream. I walked home alone. I reveled in simple things. Like books and words. I was not her. I was relieved. Distance was my throne. It was better that way.

God loved me completely and unconditionally, always. I didn’t know God’s name. But I knew God just the same. From those years when I had no name.

And yet YOU, I never knew you. Just the things you did and still do. So, I plot them on paper, trying to avoid the anger. I don’t want that poison. Anything outside of my home, the family I created, is stranger danger. I stay away. Safer that way. And play with words. I carefully open. Confine them to paper. No more hurt. Enough.

But words are just as dangerous. Slaves were forbidden from learning to read and write for a reason. They are dangerous, they are power. Freedom. They are everything.

But you? how shall I name you? What is your adverb. How do you do? What did you do? Do you remember? Did you do it well? Is it for me to tell?

These are the questions I’m sketching, slowly. Some leave me so cold, I shut the window and bundle up and call it a day.

I’m slow and watching life with anxiety. I look still, but my frenetic fingers are on a pulse…of something. Memories framed, flashing parts of our past. Not all good. Not all bad. Inherently sad. You didn’t come back.  It’s all coming back too fast. So, I try to sketch and sculpt, as fast as they come. I try to strengthen the parts of me that are dying from illness, atrophied. Focus on willing my toes to move. I enhance my spirit to compensate. And I try to rewrite my ending with you. .

It’s how I make sense of everything I knew. I let you draw me. I let you see through. Naked. Eve. No shame, before you placed blame on me…for eternity. But now, I get to name you. There’s a power in that. I pick the adverbs. I define your character. Judge what you do. But what about what I do? You may take my actions and depict what my choices drew. I pray I made you feel loved and like you were somebody. Everybody is somebody worth drawing with gracious adverbs. I can testify to great charity and mercy in my life.

Norman Mailer. What was it that he said? Ah Norman Mailer, “Every moment of one’s existence is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.”

Oh, how I die to tell your story. I retreat, to remember and sculpt and write. For hours.  Guess in living, in writing, I’m dying. Taking up precious time. Every word cuts and bleeds onto paper. To make peace with our reality. The gravity. Pounding. Pain. Resounding.  In a way, I thought I was being productive, by resigning it to live only in paper. But with every plot I write, I realize, it’s the same as dying for you. Over and over. But then I laugh, hiccup a little.

We always knew I’d die for you.

And so I get, the last word…I choose the adverb.

But what confuses me, how do you die for someone you really never knew?

Multiple Sclerosis, Pain Free...

SO I stopped writing about multiple sclerosis for a while. I just didn't want to anymore. I am more than MS, and politics and working towards peace took precedence. Until THIS happened. I read two books and wrote 200 pages of my book in one day. I also did tons of adulting!? Wth? So, I will just lead with today's post and vlog on Facebook.

So here’s the problem. Or the greatness. After 20 years of pain (#multiplesclerosis related), I woke up #painfree. It’s strange. It’s like I’ve had this 500 lb man on my back for two decades of my life. I’ve devoted 20 years to him! Wth do you do when he falls off? My friend once said to me that finding a #cure for his #MS terrifies him in one way. For almost three decades he’s been on disability and used a cane. Wth would he put on his resume to integrate back into the work force? Thirty years of blank space to fill! I’m on par with that question right now. So here’s me getting back, being free, no pain meds, doing planks, talking about why you should choose your undies carefully, and how I get sad thinking about my doctors. We’ve been together a long time. They have to watch me fade. I know they aren’t supposed to connect, but we have. My absence would hurt them. Get a doctor that makes you think of their feelings instead of your pain. Oh and I have a sports bra on so my boobs aren’t really out. Be well. Go forward. Try. #uglylikeme #jamietripputitus! #GardenStatePain#NeilSinha

 

The big picture...

 

 

Because there's been a great deal of discussion, yes
About the properties of man
I mean, animal or angel
You were carved from bone, but your heart is just sand...

 

 

 

Those who do...

Those who do…

Where did my sunshine go?
I haven’t written in months.
Where’s my last post?
Was that a question or a boast?
I give him the stink eye and keep working.

Always thinking.

They buried her in September.
So I’d feel the chill of December
And trace translations of her ghost.

I do not know you.
And still, and calm, I love you most.

Invisible and close.
You are impossibly intimate.
Worn through.
I keep clutching this sacred touch I never knew.

I wear you well, but still I’m tired.
Nodding out and into you.
Blinking from the sunshine you let seep through.
She’s gone. She’s Impossible.

This embrace I never knew.
This year’s December blew…
Through and through.

I’m so thin, and still it was a cold I never knew.
Sort of like being stranded.
On a blank, cheap, sheet of paper.

I don’t want to write.
I just want to hold onto you,
And dream about this light I never knew.
Let the sunshine bend... on those who do.

 

*Photography by Linwood K. Regensburg Jr.

Ugly Like Me Broadcast for Jessi Zazu (I didn't mean to have a breakdown, but we grieve, we must grieve in order to be authentic).

I promised I'd embarrass myself and share the broadcast for Jessi. I lose it. But, she was worthy of my grief. That said, I am in a much better place and not crying all the time. Here is the feature on MS&Me Radio

 

Ugly Like Me: A Tribute to Jessi Zazu

In this particular broadcast you are hearing about Jessi Zazu’s death and my love for her, Those Darlins (consisting of her, Nikki and Linwood), her art and what she represented on so many levels. This Ugly Like Me broadcast started by going in one direction and… I end up on a total other planet. My heart wouldn’t let me go anywhere, but THAT planet. And so it is. At the time of recording it, Jessi had been gone for just a few days. I was struggling hard. So, I basically have a meltdown on air. If I do say so myself, it is a rather..eloquent breakdown. So they kept it and used it as a feature! Huh? Right? I know!

Seriously though, I was haunted by dreams of her tiny body. I will not give details. It wasn’t awful in that it was scary or gross. It was actually quite the opposite. She actually looked beautiful. It made me ache. I’d wake up hurting more than I already did, in places I didn’t know I had. Even sleep couldn’t relieve me of her passing. I kept looking around at the world for the first time, knowing she wasn’t in it. I was beside myself; so I caved, finally, in this broadcast and I am so grateful I did. I know we are the future of the MS movement and we are UP and all for positive change that will lead to a cure, but sometimes we need to be human and feel and GRIEVE in a HEALTHY way. This was part of that process.

Linwood, of Those Darlings, has been a darling to me, telling me happy stories of her at the end, and just really helped me when HE was the one who just lost his best friend. He was so kind and also let me use a Those Darlins song to open this show since it isn’t commercial and it is for the ill. That was a BIGGIE to me, that and he is meeting me in Nashville soon. Both of those, and this show, these little lovely earthquakes have helped me coped with the loss of Jessi. Jessi was not my best friend, we didn’t have sleep overs etc., but she was still someone I looked up to, especially after her announcement that she had cancer…and it spread.

I no longer felt like a geek super fan after that announcement, I felt like her peer. A sister she could look up to. A woman she could fight for rights with. My entire life and look at Jessi, tilted in a big way when she announced her cervical cancer, stage 2, and then that it had spread. The song she wrote three years before her diagnosis, Ain’t Afraid, that was more about getting sober, began with, “There’s a tumor growing on my body, and I don’t know what lays in store. But I… (hold that I for a long time) ..ain’t afraid, I ain’t afraid anymore.” Ironically, or not, THAT became her battlefield cry…thousands of adoring fans wore shirts that said Ain’t Afraid and rang it out with her. We stood by her. We stood with her. We were her. Only, we are not. Know I am still sick, but I am still here. I feel like Jessi left something behind that I am supposed to pick up and run with. It is the strangest feeling.

I can’t say everything I need to say about Jessi in four paragraphs. She deserves a book, a trilogy even, but I can say a few things about her that will connect to YOU and your illness. Jessi WAS afraid of her illness. She knew that she basically didn’t have much of a chance in that last year, as she walked around with a breathing tube running up her nose. She was so beautiful, tubes or not. But Jessi refused to feed that fear. Instead, she fed her art. She insisted she wasn’t afraid and just kept plugging away, doing anything she could to mold this UGLY into something BEAUTIFUL. She had music sessions with Linwood where they created music (Linwood, I pray you really do see it as your job now to go forth with that music. You rock. You can!, no pressure!), art exhibitions, decorated the hospital rooms that were bare for other patients, won the hearts of nurses who are now, according to Linwood, Those Darlins’ fans. Listen to her. Look at her art online. Learn an instrument. Create. Turn this ugly monster of a disease into something beautiful. Just like Jessi did.

“Sending you all The love and gratitude in the world…j”

Jamie Tripp Utitus

Assistant Radio Network Manager

 

 

R.I.P. My Darling Jessi

The loss of Jessi has been so overwhelming. That's all I can say really. My next MSandMe Radio broadcast of Ugly Like Me is...for and about ... her. I think I get it out and say what I need to say on that broadcast, so I just wanted to share her "cervical cancer announcement" video here. A memorial of sorts. I pray it inspires women to get checked. Especially YOUNG women who don't think they need to get checked yet, or worry about such things yet. You do.

Also, remember always, that you know your body better than anyone. If someone won't listen when you claim something is wrong, make them. Jessi didn't stop until someone listened. Be like her.

I didn't think I had anything to say regarding Jessi because I am still so FEELING it, but there is one thing I have to point out -  Jessi didn't "lose" her battle. I keep seeing those words, "Jessi Zazu has lost her battle with cervical cancer..." I know what people mean. I know there's no harmful intention, but I also believe that words matter.

Jessi beat cancer. She shone through it and it didn't stop her from creating and blooming, it made her go harder. Bigger! Jessi made it art. She created feverishly until the end. Her body isn't here, but she's still everywhere. Her music (Those Darlins), her art, her spirit. Her voice is ringing through my speakers in the kitchen. She didn't LOSE. Quite the opposite. In fact, because of her, we all won. Thank you Jessi. Thank you.

When the broadcast airs, I will post it. I'm a smidge embarrassed because I am SO upset on air, but in true Jessi spirit...I ain't afraid. I'm sticking with that.