By Rev. Shana Chivon
*This essay references the near death of a child.
What do you do when you forget your care?
Over a month ago, I leaned next to my 16 year old son’s body, devoid of breath. Somewhere between here and there. My hands had to move from holding my wails to the bottom tip of his breastbone. Suppressing my cries and compressing his chest, living for him to the tune of Prince’s Purple Rain, since it is 113 beats per minute, praying that my child did not meet the same fate. Living for him as I did once before in my womb until help came. Strong arms, holding a small vial of Narcan, moved me and helped my child choose here.
The days since have been cloaked in a curtain of grief and action. Advocating, searching, sharing all while trying to maintain my sense of self in a protesting body that is often not able.
I felt myself wilting. Forgetting to water myself, turn my soil and face the sun.
But help came.
Help came in a new friend named Ferniesha. Ferniesha was my beloved wife’s pick from an excursion to a nursery in town. I was not immediately attached but they made it home with us in all their fern glory.
Moving about in the house, passing by their luscious leaves, grounded me and made me take a moment each day to love on them. After a while, my whispers became Ferniesha’s advice to me and I too began to reach.
To reach for hope. To reach for wholeness. To reach for the trinity of earth, sun and water to nourish my aching soul.
I want that for us. I desire that when our arms are tightly wrapped around our bodies that we find something, someone, someplace, ourselves to reach toward.
Reaching without premise or preamble. Not seeking permission or feeling the need to perform.
Reaching.
Reaching because it is our prerogative to reach, to crave, to desire, not out of only necessity but as an answer to the beckoning other.
Reaching for our lushness. Reminded that it is our portion.
you
are
so
lush
standing on purloined land that still remembers
the crawl of the turtle that held the beginning as she fell from the sky
you
are
so
lush
the soles of your feet connected to the sanguine roots of stolen people that built and bled
onyx skin glistening in unfamiliar places in hard tongue they did not understand.
you
are
so
lush
liberating yourself from oppressive altars
instead finding divinity in cards, crystals and your chosen communities
you
are
so
lush
hearing names that never touched your heart
trying on other ones until the one that makes you weep when whispered lands on your lips
you
are
so
lush
searching for cisterns that quench your thirst
without apology
full of discernment
you
are
so
lush
when everyone acquiesced to years of yes
recognizing that no carried the anointing of rest
and only to that would you give your allegiance
you
are
so
lush
shirking constructed social binaries
authentically being one without a zero in sight
you
are
so
lush
finding light
though darkness often abounds
bursting forth…blooming
you
are
so
lush
thriving
synthesizing
breathing
inhaling
exhaling
releasing
choosing
living
beginning again and again
enfleshed
embodied
enthralling
you
beloved
are
so
lush.
Rev. Shana Chivon finds home in their audacious, Black, queer, gender non-conforming, sacred body. They labor with love at the intersections of trauma-informed community care, anti-racism and creating thriving, inclusive, divine spaces. They are the Pastor of Epiphany Ministries, a faith community moved to radical love, revelation, redemption, and reconciliation, and is affectionately referred to as a Chaplain for the Culture. Rev. Shana Chivon is also a writer, educator, doula, and a voracious reader that advocates for non-linear approaches to wholeness that feature and reference a loving, affirming Creator, who they often refer to as their transformative non-binary bestie. They believe that practicing liberative living for themselves and those in their community means encouraging us all to lay into radical truth telling, radical rest, radical joy, and radical wellness. Shana Chivon is a New York Times crossword puzzle solver, newly married to her wife, Ingrid, and has a teenage son.