radical acts.

Hello.

It’s been a minute. Damn near 4 years since the last time I wrote a blog post.

A lot has happened in that time. More than I want to get into right now. But I’ll provide a greatest hits, for some context:

  • My career as a TV writer was going incredibly well — until a profound illness in 2022 and 2023’s double strikes forced me to pause.

  • I used the pause to focus on my health and well-being. Doing so allowed me to find greater joy and purpose in my life. I traveled. I wrote. I got weight-loss surgery. I got some tattoos. I joined a church and became a Unitarian Universalist, finally finding a spiritual community that aligned with my beliefs and questions, many of them conflicting. And it helped me deal with the pain and stress that was still unavoidable, which included losing 3 people close to me.

  • But recently, a combination of tragic and traumatizing events have forced me to once again be more intentional about my healing. These events include another death, being verbally and emotionally abused for over two months by an employer, my hometown erupting in devastating wildfires, and my country of origin deciding to embrace a fascist regime.

My faith and my healing journey have expanded my capacity to be like, “I don’t know what the fuck is happening. And I don’t know if it’s going to get better anytime soon. But I guess I’ll ride it out and see what happens.”

This is really fucking hard. Personally, I have never felt more alone and less sure of where I’m going. Professionally, I have had to accept that while I deeply believe writing and telling stories is my divine calling, I chose an industry that enables and empowers individuals to behave in ways that I find disgusting and deplorable. I also chose an industry that suffers from a “poverty of imagination,” in every arena, as one of my colleagues put it a few years ago. Politically, I am scared every single day — by the death, destruction, and dehumanization this fascist neo-coup promises to bring. But also, demoralized and discouraged by the seeming lack of organized and purposeful mass resistance, especially by the people and institutions who have the influence and resources to do something.

Some days, it feels impossible to maintain hope. So much of who I am is bound together by a sincere and deeply-rooted belief in goodness and justice. I was raised by Black public school educators with radical politics and radical faith, who themselves are descendants of enslaved Africans (and a few Indigenous folks) who survived genocide, the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, and the Jim Crow South to give me life. And while my primary profession is a TV writer who has mostly written on family dramas and coming-of-age shows during the Peak TV Boom, I became a writer because I was inspired and shaped by fearless and prescient writers, singers, poets, and filmmakers who have worked across time, genre, medium, canon, and culture like Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Laurie Halse Anderson, Rachel McKibbens, Ava DuVernay, Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse, Beyoncé, and so many more — including my beloveds, Tonya Ingram and Aziza Barnes, who are no longer with us. And I was also inspired and shaped by so many other writers and artists whose names are not well-known, but whose impact on my life and my creative work is undeniable. They have been colleagues, mentors, collaborators, and co-conspirators. They know who they are.

Hope is my birthright and my inheritance.

And right now, in this current era of confusion and despair: Hope is a radical act. Hope is the only true defense any of us have right now. Because hope lives deep inside us. It cannot be stripped away. It cannot be killed, massacred, or destroyed. It cannot be imprisoned. It cannot be criminalized or legislated out of existence. Hope lives everywhere and with everyone. It even lives with those who try to harm us. Because hope requires a commitment that we will not dehumanize and violate those who do the same to us. Otherwise, that is not hope. That is revenge. Hope dictates that on the other side of these crises, there is right action, redemption, and reconciliation. Hope is the balm, the prayer, the spell, the promise that we can survive the worst and create something better and more beautiful from the wreckage.

But this is also true: Writing is also a radical act. I did not become a writer to pitch to studio mandates and survive one toxic writers’ room after another. I became a writer to celebrate and honor the incredible people, histories, and lineages I come from. To imagine new ways of being and connecting. To document that I was a Fat Queer Neurodivergent Black Woman who lived. Period. To document that there were many of us who did not endorse or succumb to Trump, fascism, and the final desperate and devastating roar of capitalism and white supremacy. To remind myself and those who have tried to harm, abuse, silence, and erase me that I am still here and my pen game is still so much better than theirs will ever be. To rediscover the wild joy, beautiful labor, and divine magic that writing has always brought to my life.

And so, for as long as it feels generative, productive, and necessary, I will be posting on this little forgotten blog in my little invisible corner of the Internet. I don’t know if it will be daily or weekly. I’ll see what feels good and natural. I don’t know what the content will be — probably some random combination of essays, poems, short stories, lists, liturgies, and musings. I do not plan to promote or announce these blog posts on other social media platforms right now. So if they reach others, I am so grateful. I genuinely hope these words do find and reach others. But it’s not the requirement.

So much of my professional creative writing is always for others or to achieve other means: For producers and showrunners and studio/network executives. For audiences and streaming platform subscribers. For a paycheck and health insurance. For recognition and prestige.

But here, I am not writing for anyone other than myself, God, and my Ancestors. Asé. Amen. See ya next time.

Onward,

Michelle

I Should Be Asleep.

I should absolutely be asleep right now.

It’s 2am. I never stay up until 2am. 2am is usually when I wake up on my couch or laid out on my bed and go, “Oh, shit, time to go to bed for real.”

But tonight (this morning?), it’s 2am and I’m heating up pizza and watching The Office and feeling reflective and peaceful and a little expectant/anxious. But I am also tired… But I want to eat my pizza. So I figured I’d really dig into this rare moment — where I find myself awake and present and active at 2am — to update this blog I always talk about writing, but never actually write.

I think maybe three people on the Internet read this blog (and honestly, I’m OK with that), so forgive me if y’all aren’t into spiritual or woo-woo shit. But I’m big into spirituality and woo-woo shit. And in this moment, I’m feeling particularly spiritual. Also, reflective. I think it’s because it’s very late/early and I’m very tired and I just spent a good chunk of time writing, which is just as much a part of my spiritual practice as it is my creative or professional practice.

I find it’s easier for me to root myself in my spiritual practice more when (a) I want something, (b) I’m anxious about something, and/or (c) my schedule is more fluid. But also, it’s easier when I feel empowered. And in the last week or so, I’ve been really feeling myself and my power. Somedays, it makes me feel… Scared. Uncomfortable. Frustrated. Humbled. Somedays, it means me feel… Beautiful. Held. Big. Audacious.

This past year, I’ve oscillated a lot between feeling powerful/empowered and disempowered. There’s a lot of reasons for that. Some of them are very obvious (COVID, lockdown, election, racial reckoning) and some of them are less obvious.

For all of it, I’m grateful. Because I am at my best when I am growing and learning and healing and in communion with the world around me.

Anyway… My pizza is ready.

I Want to Have a Difficult Conversation…

I’m making an effort to (a) bring One True Thing back and (b) be even more unapologetically honest and vulnerable than I was before.

I enjoy having frank conversations about race with people. All people. While there’s usually an ease or safety to talking about race with Black people, I also find a lot of value in having these conversations with all of my friends — yes, including my white friends.

At this point in my life (31 years and 8 months old), I only know how to show up in every space and every relationship I’m in as myself. Y’all might get different slightly varying flavors depending on my mood and the context, but the meal is always gonna be the same. So if you’re gonna rock with me, you have to be able to participate in uncomfortable conversations about race, racism, Blackness, white supremacy, all of it. Truly.

For the most part, all of my friends — no matter what their ethnic or racial identities — are able to and seemingly enjoy doing the same. Sometimes, there are disagreements. Sometimes, there are blind spots and assumptions and things to unpack. Sometimes, there’s fervent agreement. Almost all of the time, there is a kind of learning that happens. It’s why I have not yet given up all hope on humanity, on our futures, on the possibility of better, kinder, more just, and more liberated days ahead.

But y’all, the one thing I notice my white friends have a really hard time understanding is how deeply impactful, harmful, and dehumanizing racist microaggressions really are. Seriously. It’s where all liberal white folks’ anti-racism training from June 2020 goes to die. By now, most well-intentioned, left-leaning white people understand that using racist epithets are wrong, that extrajudicial killings of Black and Brown people are wrong, that not trying and convicting those killers are wrong.

What they don’t understand is how moving through the world as a Black (or Indigenous or Asian or Latinx or Middle Eastern or Arab person) person and constantly encountering white people who say and do seemingly small or indirect or subtle things that are rooted in racism and discrimination isn’t just inconvenient for us. (Because we don’t necessarily experience those things are small or indirect or subtle…) Microaggressions harm us. They negatively impact our emotional and mental health, which then also often impacts our physical health as well. They dehumanize us. They make it impossible for us to move through the world with a sense of comfort or safety.

When I’ve explained to friends the racist microaggressions I’ve encountered at work, they do their best to be sympathetic. But they usually go into minimizing or justifying whatever the microaggression is. “Maybe they didn’t mean it that way…” or “Well, do you think it was actually…?” When it happens over and over and over again, it then becomes, “Ugh, I’m sorry. That sounds annoying/frustrating/exhausting…” Yes, but it also harmful, dehumanizing, and a threat to my safety and wellbeing. (Not to mention, the questioning and minimizing of the microaggressions are also… microaggressions.)

In the wake of Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah, so many of my white friends have engaged in conversations about the Royal Family’s racism and treatment of Meghan — whether with me or on social media. They think what happened to Meghan and her son are terrible. What they don’t understand is… that same shit is happening to their friends everyday. Every person of color I know has experienced microaggressions in the workplace. Especially in Hollywood. The stories are always bad. The wrongdoers and the perpetrators are always protected — by the studios, by the networks, by the agencies. And often, by the very people of color they’ve harmed and victimized. Because we know when we speak up, our careers and livelihoods are on the line — not the people who have hurt us.

Let me clarify: Micgroaggressions aren’t annoying or frustrating. Racism is not a mere inconvenience. Microaggressions, especially when repeated consistently over a long period of time, harm us. They traumatize us. They are a reminder that many white people deep down truly believe that people of color are less deserving of our humanity than they are. We don’t deserve to be treated with compassion, care, or respect. We don’t deserve fair, authentic, and equal representation. Our stories and our lives are not worthy of the same nuance and complexity. Our labor, our talent, our brilliance does not hold the same economic or social value.

And of course, this is true for ALL marginalized and historically underserved communities and identities. But in the ongoing racial reckoning we’ve been having — starting with anti-Black racism last year and the current efforts to combat anti-Asian racism — I’m still waiting for the day the white homies will listen to me and say, “I hear you. I see you. Your experience and your pain is valid. You don’t deserve for these things to be said or done in the first place, let alone excused and minimized. It’s not up to me to decide how long you’re allowed to hurt, or how you should be allowed to cope with it. It’s awful that you must protect the people who have harmed you, in fear of retaliation and more racist behavior. It’s disgraceful that working in this industry often means you are forced to choose between your livelihood and your personhood.”

Hopefully, we’ll get there.

I Made Myself a Home.

It’s been over two months since the last time I blogged.

Oops.

The only things I do consistently are eat and sleep, and even then… There’s a lot of variability. So it would check out that as much as I love One True Thing and blogging, I would fall off. It was inevitable, really. Especially because this summer was A LOT.

But one of the best things I did this summer was make myself a home. Like, a true home. (Well, almost. I didn’t buy a house.)

I moved into a one bedroom apartment — in the same building as one of my best friends. I thought it would be tough to move out of my studio. I really loved my building and my neighborhood. (Los Feliz, I love you always.) And while I had started to feel like the walls were closing in on me during this pandemic, I also loved my old apartment. She had great energy and she allowed me to do a lot of growing and healing.

But there came a point where a bitch needed a bedroom that was not also her living room and kitchen. I wanted a shower I could sit down and cry in. I wanted a space I could invite people to hang out in (lol). And so, when this apartment showed up — an apartment I’d been in before and knew I loved — I knew it truly was meant to be my home.

And it’s been my home for the past seven weeks. My haven. My sanctuary. My temple. Whatever you want to call it — it has been that for me. I know it is my home because I don’t miss my last apartment at all. I did everything I could to leave my old place in gratitude and in love. And I think I succeeded.

And my love and gratitude for this place lives with me here as well.

Maybe I’ll share more soon about all the ways I’ve made this place mine. (I do floral arrangements now!) But for now, it is enough to share: I made myself a home. And I love it.