The universe 🪐 threaded us together, tightlywoven like my favorite hand-me-down sweater. Our friendship holds me tighter though, with a softness that rivals the finest silks. Though ‘friendship’ feels incomplete, and the syllables of ‘sisterhood’ makes far more space for who and what we are to one another. One year has passed since we first linked up and I’m so very grateful that the magic of our ancestors and mentors stitched us together. With you, this patchwork quilt, my sistren, of kinship brought me much solace and laughter in one of the most challenging chapters of my life.

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My mother is an enigma. She held secrets in the furrow of her brow and decades of unheard wishes in the soles of her feet. A cryptex wrapped in cinnamon skin, I always wondered what lay beneath her rigid backbone.

My mother knows obedience like the back of her smooth hands and holds tight to convention the way we cling to one another during every goodbye. In the years we felt like strangers, I wondered if I could ever decipher the riddles of her true nature.

Happy Birthday to THEE Icon

You first came to me in regalia and delivered a convocation speech fused together with Words of Fire.

In dog eared pages of Gender Talk, I scribbled in the margins questions of reclamation, power, and found the courage to intertwine the syllables of feminism with those of my own name.

We shared mojitos and piping hot tea ( ) in conference hallways and ornate hotel lobbies, shared scones and secrets, late night calls and long hugs.

You held me through our shared loss and grief, encouraged me when the doctoral journey was depleting, and continue to remind me that my writing ain’t skimpy but worthy of being read.

Beloved Valerie,

It feels surreal to place your picture on my altar, to watch the flames of each candle wick dance across the contours of your smiling face. There are no words that suffice, no string of syllables that sound as comforting as your laugh, no way for me to express how much you are loved or how grateful I am for your gift of friendship.

And so I have taken the time to listen - to follow your example and embrace the strength of silence and distill what my body, my spirit, my heart is telling me as I consider your passing.

My father is weaver. He takes broken things - like hearts, promises, and relationships - and works to bind them whole once more with his love and grace. I watched him weave melodies and bass lines into new rhythms that begged my feet to dance. I grew up hugging blankets of security that he created with forgiveness, crazy glue, patience, and hard work. He took threads of our cultural history, passport stamps, prayer, and pinky promises and wove a bond that feels unbreakable in our family.

As a little girl, I did not dream of wedding dresses or happily ever afters. More of a magician than a princess, I played pretend in make believe libraries. I lost myself in the comfort of second hand books and wished I were a heroine in a 90s Bollywood film. I wanted to grow up and be everything my mother couldn’t. I plucked the unfinished blueprint of the American dream from my father’s back pocket and held it to my chest like a compass. There’s a certain safety in planning out your future - to curate a type of happiness that comes with complacency. I earned 4.0s, won the awards, and let the weight of other’s expectations steer me forward. I did not have time to dream about wedding dresses and happily ever afters. It was always easier to be a supporting actress than to take center stage as the heroine of my own story.

When I speak of you, I turn my face to the sun. The warmth of its rays feel like your embrace and the comfort of your guidance. I searched for wholeness in others - stitching myself to pain narratives and wayward souls, looking to mother my way into confidence. I came to you in pieces and learned to find peace in my own reflection. I untangled mottled chords of assimilation and self-abnegation and reclaimed a voice wrought with confidence and rebellion. When I speak of you, I turn inwards and have found your support in the fire of my backbone. I know what it is to stand tall with you as my example.

Our kinship helped me learn how to save myself - to choose me over and over again, to find joy in the fight for our lives, and to reach through my dreams and cradle the strength of my ancestors. I fell in love with polenta and finally understood neoliberalism. I retired my comedy act and voraciously dove into alternative knowledges and traced your words in sites of struggle. We shared laughter and style as I watched you grow into the fashionista you always were while I inherited the chicest attire and the language of one bad ass Marxist feminist.

Hiram,

How fitting it is to celebrate this new chapter of your life mere days before we celebrate my own? The universe made no mistakes in the weaving of our stories - we were meant to be bound together, the way smooth leather contains the chapters of our favorite stories.

My dearest Cancerian twin flame, happiest of birthdays to you! I cannot believe it has only been seven years since you came into my life, when it feels like I’ve known you since I took my first breathe. Lucky and blessed do not hold enough syllables for the love and gratitude I have for you and our siblinghood. To say you are special does no justice to the magic you bring to this world.

I remember how the soft click clack of my heels found its match in the cacophony of sounds coming from your computer when w first met. The click clacks of your long acrylic nails atop your keyboard sounded like each of my footsteps. I like to imagine we’ve been in sync from the very beginning, perhaps our whole lives.

I came to know you in the way I came to know myself. I’ve refused the title of mentor or role model- partly because I feel the heaviness of my own mess, but mostly because I have come to grow into the possibilities of my own proverbial shoes... filling them with confidence under your own tutelage.

I envisioned something different- an oasis of sorts buried in the foothills of this seemingly impossible to climb (if you're able bodied) campus. I thought I'd find my people and excitedly imagined what it would finally feel like to ... be.

To "be" is less a Shakespearian dilemma and more a practice in performance. I was, and still am, tired of the mental gymnastics - of having to dance around topics, ignore painful -isms, and stifle growing disappointment when colleagues, peers, loved ones, or family dead named Caitlyn Jenner, argued against prison abolition, said [insert racist, homophobic, classist, ableist, xenophobic, or oppressive quip] in response to my profession or values, or celebrated the boundaries I put up with everyone else until those same limits applied to them.

If I were to write your biography, the title would be “Giiiiirl”. Give or take an “i” or two. It is the perfect moniker for what is sure to be a whirlwind of a story. I, myself, can piecemeal the juicy tidbits with a few memories of my own making. The search for good Malbec at hotel bars overlaps with stories of playing cards with your girlfriends down the block from your man. I remember frequent side eyes will debating kinks and other sexual proclivities, many shared calamari appetizers, and scrambling to put out enough chairs for one of our joint programs. Interwoven in these memories are soft exclamations of “Giiiiirl” before you wrap me in a hug and ask me how I am. It is now five years of friendship, but they feel like forever; so, I’m sure I could produce some strong pieces on the woman I’ve come to love. Truth be told, I think we’d need multiple volumes to encompass a life as rich as yours. How does one begin to pen the adventures of Beverly Guy-Sheftall? Describe the way your sense of style mirrors the uniqueness of your spirit, how your friendship is more like a sisterhood, or how hours spent gossiping end up feeling like just a few moments?