Sumiko Saulson

I saw these beautiful multicolored leaves this week as I was leaving a Queer Woman of Color intentional breathing space that I was recently involved in forming. This was the first collective meditation space I had been in several months after relocating from sunny California to (really) chilly Ohio . As we held this tender and compassionate space for one another to share truths and shed tears, I thought about the intimate ways our tenderness as women & femmes of color of all genders is consistently unrecognized. I thought about the damage done as we inherit intergenerational trauma that inflicts wounds on our hearts and spirits. I thought about the institutionalized forms of violence that we continue to be subject to both systematically and interpersonally; reoccurring patterns of the same violence that our foremothers and femme ancestors endured. I thought about how effortless it seems for people to refuse to…