I have been silent here, partly to let others be heard during this week of historic unrest, partly because I have been struggling with a life-threatening kidney infection.
But my heart has been in the streets of my city and country, where protests have been righteously, rigorously practiced even as law enforcement thugs have responded with pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, police cars—anything they could weaponize (even The New York Times). We know light shines only when we turn it on, and I feel deep gratitude and reverence for those who have been doing so–for all who’ve brought their precious soft underbellies into these lethally police and pandemic-addled streets.
As many of you know, yesterday would have been the 27th birthday of Breonna Taylor, the black female EMT who declared joyfully in tweets that 2020 would be her year. 27 is a make-it-or-break-it age —when you begin your Saturn Return and journey into authentic, rewarding adulthood. I have such confidence that this beautiful soul would have done exactly that had she not been murdered in her own home by cops conditioned to plunder every physical, legal, emotional, and moral boundary of a person of color. It is no coincidence that yesterday also was a massive lunar eclipse–in social justice-seeking Sagittarius, no less.
So let this enormous celestial release of energy—for that is what an eclipse truly is— support the release being rightfully demanded in America’s blood-lined streets.
Let the solar return of the soul of Breonna unite with these big big stars. Let righteous light, righteous labor, righteous love burn down the American infrastructures built on the backs of brown and black bodies whose work, let alone humanity, was never honored. And by the light of this bright full moon let something more enduring, encapsulating, and ennobling rise like a phoenix its place.
In every way I can, this middle-aged white woman will practice more reckoning and self-reckoning to resist the injustice built into this broken land. I am grateful to all else who do so. May Breonna’s birthday song ring around the world.
For concrete actions you can take to commemorate Breonna’s life and the fight for justice, here is a list.
