002 - a love note to my subscribers
of which, there are 58 as of this writing.
good morning, gorgeous,
i hope you are well. i have been thinking about you since my last note. i enjoyed writing to you in letter form, and i’ve decided to make these into a weekly series. these won’t be essays about black feminist thought, the soul of black femmes, or introspections on my identity. we just gon' hold space for each other. shoot the shit. blog like we did in 2009.
think of the energy behind a love note. think what it means to have a feeling so big, and deep, and good about another person, that you want to contort an entire language to convey the weight and levity of it. to make it immortal. to make it as real for others as it is for you.
that’s how y’all got me feeling this week.
Something has been happening to me, a change that has been a long time coming. I want to be real.
so here i am.
real.
and the thing i crave most right now, is to be known by you. all the things i write on this app are a desparate attempt to show myself as i really am, to be seen that way by others, and for others to say “i’ll stay for that”.
today is father’s day.
i woke up at 3:33am this morning with a lump in my throat. i’ll probably write about this in a proper essay that has some kind of overarching metaphor, but this morning, all i have been able to think about is how my daddy used to burn me custom CDs.
my daddy used to have this hobby where he would make custom mixtape’s for people, burn em to a CD, create a track list, album title and cover art, and give em away. He had a library of over 100,000 songs before i stopped caring enough to keep track of the number. He printed out his music catalogue and bound it into a spiral book with music categorized by genre so that his friends could flip through it to make song selection choices. he kept a detailed list of all the album mixes he had created and given away.
he would make me tapes all the time.
“this right here is some good music, baby girl. give this one a spin.”
on sundays, he would be in his little office on the computer, and he would DJ for the family. all of a sudden out of nowhere, you would look up and daddy would have stevie wonder, or the four tops, or diana ross playing from the speaker. him and mommy would laugh and sing along to the beatles and simon and garfunkle (who i hated as a kid, but you can pry 'a bridge over troubled water’ from my cold, dead, fingertips). we would shimmy and shake to queen, and elton john. it was a lot of funk and a lot of motown in my house.
and this morning, i woke up and thought to myself. how can all these good memories coexist with all this anger? what concoction does hatred and longing create? what does it mean to miss the ones that hurt you?
i don’t know.
but i know, with you by my side i can find out.
happy fathers day. happy sunday.
love y’all. mean it.
if you love me back, Buy Me A Book!
Here are the posts you may have missed from me:
all i have to give
“I am writing this first letter from bed. I lie here on my left side, peeking right hand from underneath the empty duvet to type. It is not practical, but it is necessary because I’m in pain again and depressed again, and this is all I have to give today.”- Cole Arthur Riley
i might be pussy
The worst thing somebody could call me when I was coming up was a pussy. Thanks for reading The Soul Work Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. If somebody said you were a pussy in 1999, it meant you were easy prey. You were a target. For ridicule. For violence. For the kind of particul…
Bethany, thanks for sharing this. My Dad and I bonded over music and there was a lot of hurt too. Parents are people. People are complicated. Multiple truths can be difficult to grasp, but to do so is a big part of healing. Nice note x
Father’s Day is strange one for me too. My dad and I don’t talk. I’m a widow and I celebrate Father’s Day with my partner.