Tag: writing

We had a fight

Weekends around here are always a gamble for my husband and I. The weeks end up draining everything from us due to both of our insanely stressful jobs and by the weekend, every ounce of energy is just gone. It’s always difficult trying to even have social lives when, by the weekend, we cannot even be our best selves.

This past weekend finished up a three week stint of covering out of office co-workers with piles of tasks I had never done previously and had to learn for the first time amidst my own work. It’s been rough but strangely rewarding. This weekend started off in fatigue-land and, unfortunately, the hubby ended up having to teach Sunday morning. I think we have all been there, working on your days off when you are already spent. That feeling of being stressed and crunched for time to attempt to relax. It’s disheartening.

In the midst of trying to “do it all” in a day, tensions mounted and communications unhinged and, thus, erupted a verbal explosion. It does not happen often, once or twice a year, usually our arguments are mild and easily resolved, but every so often, that explosion occurs that sends the blood to your ears and makes every opposing scream a notch louder than the last. It’s not a brag; coming up in very difficult and abusive home situations tends to make you non-confrontational so your communication styles adapt to a pacifism. Screaming is a trigger for both of us so it’s always a last resort. Nevertheless, sometimes we scream. It happens. We are human.

I still remember that time the neighbors heard during our very early years of marriage. I was carrying in things from the car, post explosion, and one of the older neighbors stopped me, smiled, and said “It’s going to be ok, ya know”. I looked up reluctantly to let him see my tears and smiled back, “I know, I know it is.”

“At the end of the day, you’ll both realize it just doesn’t matter that much” he went on, “but don’t go to bed angry today. It’s just not worth it.” Part of me wanted to tell him to mind his business but I had to accept the fact that if we were going to broadcast our business, we should not expect people to turn off their ears.

The sincerity – in his smile and in his words still resonates with me during these moments when the explosions occur. Years later, as I ponder over this moment and those words, it made me have a thought. No one posts when they have a fight. I am not talking about airing your dirty laundry out in the breeze and providing all of the juicy details of your arguments for all to know.

As a church kid in an abusive home, fighting and a home in disarray were taboo subjects. We were strictly instructed to not speak on what went on inside. I grew up prior to the age of endless information and everyone owning a cell phone so seeking help during fights in our house was not easy. Between this and limited resources, the idea of a “healthy argument” was beyond my knowledge. This was just how normal people lived.

The day my father decided to chase my mother down with a frying pan after flipping a table on her, it was fight or flight. I could not have been older than twelve or thirteen at the time. After hiding my brother and making him stay in one spot, I escaped with no shoes, making a careful, tip-toed beeline to my best friend’s home for help, which was just shy of a mile away through a rough Philly neighborhood. Arriving in a state of shock, I had no time to explain before being caught and dragged back to my own home where the terror continued. I still remember looking at their faces over my shoulder, hoping, praying, please help us; please see me.

Unfortunately, there would be no help in our stars.

After that incident, we became good at finding hiding places huddled together until the storms blew over. I gave up on finding help because, for us, this was just our normal.

~

Is it strange to question the lack of normalizing fighting and talking about it freely? I really do not think so. I wonder sometimes if I had been exposed to more ideas of what healthy fighting looked like in the real world, if it would have made me more comfortable with continuing to seek help in the past, more comfortable with healthy debates, more comfortable being in the world. Fighting is healthy and normal, but there are clear ways of doing it that are not.

I love my husband more than any words can fathom, and we fight. It is not always pretty, and like anything, it is easy to forget that anything worth doing takes time, practice, and work. Growing together has strengthened our communication process, even when it comes to fighting, because we put the work in to making it better. Rome was not built in a day and I can certainly confirm that we are absolutely no Rome. We are still the little gift shop being built next to Rome selling cute tchotchkes to tourists; building, nonetheless.

We got through this blowout like we have in the past, by taking space to be angry and upset. By thinking over and then sitting down to discuss.

I wonder what young people think when they see happy couples posting nothing but happy shit all day every day and, not making an ounce of effort to talk about the times when it gets hard. These times happen. Make space for figuring out the best ways to resolve it and if you don’t know, phone a friend.

Also google.

Peace and love, xoxo

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slow boats

that faithful cigarette    
burns a hole
in her side,

displaced thoughts

           dance

along the corners

of her abandoned

room, as

slow boats rip

against

the high tides

of her troubled

                 mind

 

a selfless
suicide,             (vacancy)
plays a tune
behind those hostile
eyes;
her thin words
        etched

along the

    dotted line
 

who is she?
                    (a ghost?)
a piece of familiar
a shadow of
   yesterday
creeping up
from behind 
to pull you
under    
      (the ocean's 
      deep)


and the slow boats
still wander
just a throw from
the shore
as the waves still

          roar,

so i close

my eyes

and let the water

              in
~ A. L. Stippich
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June Flowers…

Yeah, I know, I said I would be back in May but sometimes my timeouts last longer than I would prefer. Even the best laid plans…c’est la vie.

On a positive note, I have been able to keep up the writing, designing, and creating, despite my silence on social media so before diving back into writing, I figured I would share what I have been up to.

SHOUT OUT TO BLACK OWNED SMALL BUSINESSES! 🗣

2020 was not completely hell, there were small positives here and there and I really am thankful for those moments. One of those positives was finding more voices of Color in the Fiber community. I cannot believe how many different Black owned yarn dyers I have been missing out on over the years and it is a bittersweet mix of sad and excited to get to learn about and try so much new all at once.

Black Owned Yarn Brands shown: Neighborhood Fiber Co., The Crochet Cove, Lolabean Yarn, Bzy Peach, and Lady Dye Yarns
Rainbow and Canvas Clutches, llama key fob: Broke and Crafty
Knitting needles: Hiya Hiya
Leather Project Bag: Joji Designs
Stitch Markers: DK Graham LBYC & Lady Dye collabs
Ball winder: The Knit Store (Etsy)

I don’t think I have ever considered how heavily not having a safe fiber community has affected me over time. I have taught myself how to do everything I know how to do today with no assistance. I did not have women in the family who passed on their stitching wisdom to me like a lot of girls did. Most of my teachings were to help me work through whatever trauma or life event that I was going through at the time so when I look at what I create now, in times of doubt, I try to remind myself “hey, you’re pretty okay, you took trauma and made it into something beautiful and functional.”

In lieu of social media, I’ve kept my mind busy being inspired by some amazing Black/BIPOC folks creating their fiber crafts, whatever it may be. I’ve also been keeping my hands busy getting to try new, STUNNING yarns from some of those amazingly talented women. While I’ve been creating from patterns, It’s been mostly swatching and designing my own for the first time in a very long time, and it feels really good. I am usually not a huge fan of my designs but it never hurts to try if it brings you joy.

I am going to be posting many handles on Instagram about these awesome brands, go follow me, follow them, and support small businesses. ❤️✌🏽

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the woman in the woods

she hangs her roses
deep
in the middle of
the woods

a thick tree
with a high
branch,
it groans under
the weight

she starts from
the top
and lets them
swing down, low
petals
graze the
mossy earth

(her roses sway
where her children
can’t see
from the bottom
of the creek
where she left them
to play)

and before they
drop
and before they
sway
her roses from the
branch
begin to weep, and
the children wail
from the bottom
of the deep
but their voices
won’t be
heard
for they no longer
speak

and in the middle
of the woods
where her roses
died,
the children of
the creek
will always cry
while the hunters
of the woods
keep their watchful
eyes,
though none will
ever understand
why
she hung her
roses in the middle of
the woods


~ A. L. Stippich
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seeds

i could shatter
to pieces,
words are only
fictions
for the broken to capture
and let
linger on the
tips of their
tongues;
frozen and desperate
they become
a small reason to
hope

important lessons are
left
in the hands of
the less capable;
how then is
a plant expected
to grow
when it is
begun from a
dead seed?



~ A. L. Stippich

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April Showers

The month of March has really beat me to a pulp, hence the lack of posts. Sometimes the emotional ups and downs in mental health are just too much and the idea of practicing vulnerability feels more like horror and suffocation and makes me want to hide forever.

With that being said, I am going to attempt to start April fresh with a hearty month of poetry (and plants. And yarn…).

What it looks like when I try to take a photo of myself but forget Midna has to check herself out first…

Enjoy.

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southern bells (mama)

Mama,
There is trouble in the dark folds of the clouds
There's a steady wind that's stirrin'
A foul chill from the southern 
towns

There is death on the horizon, 
Hatred hangin' from the trees
People trying to be heard but
Being brought down on their
Hands and knees

Mama,
There's a war that's spilling dark blood into the ground,
We tried to warn them with our words
But monsters swallowed up
the sound

Mama, mama, there is trouble, 
And we've hidden underground. 
The plague is ripe, the dead have grown 
And they are coming for us now

Mama,
There is trouble, breeding ugly all around. 
We were soldiers in the war, 
Now we're six feet underground

Mama, know I'll always love you, 
I hope you see me when you sleep.
I keep your picture in my mind, 
I keep your memory
buried deep


~ A. L. Stippich
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take me to church

“Religion is a breeding ground

Where the devil’s work is deeply found…“

~ Sleeping at Last

*Triggering Content Warning*

What does it mean to say “I grew up in the church.” Some of us make the statement without even thinking about the weight of it, myself included. Just a standard fact of observation, a piece of historical data written into your code. We do not talk about how it affected us, positively or negatively, how it shaped us to be outside of the church walls, and how we interact with other human beings on a day to day basis because of it. The environments with which we are raised define everything about the final product of which we become, and being raised in a church setting is not free of its destructive demons.

It is a different story each time. Some people have had amazing experiences within a church setting growing up while others drift away from their church, often from experiences that are starkly contrast.

My experience was the latter.

In our world, gossip was currency. One prayer for a juicy detail that would make its rounds through the slacked jaws of the church pews until it came back to you, diseased and distorted. Emotional manipulation, blackmail, and racism were just a few more of the first things I learned about what it meant to be a part of my church.

My experience has far too many layers to gather within a single post or even a chapter. So lets just start from the beginning.

~

“By the time I was a preteen, I was a bible hugging, awkward, and overly curvy brown girl with hair no one knew what to do with, nor wanted to deal with. To top everything off with the sweetest of cherries, I grew up having no inkling on how to socialize outside of warped, cult-like church beliefs and ideas. I felt like the divine recipe for a walking disaster. I was always saying the wrong things, giving the wrong looks, talking too much, talking too little, and everything in between. With body parts most preteens had not even started growing yet, I had no self-esteem and was surrounded by dozens of skinny, straight haired, white girls who could wear their hair down and adorn scant bikinis while a simple two piece was considered ‘inappropriate for a body like’ mine.

I can recall as early as ten years of age having my body stared at, discussed, and over-sexualized by adults in the church community in open and public conversations in front of me, sometimes even pulling in their own children to demonstrate my iniquities of having a shape.

“look at my daughter”, I vividly recall one mother boasting loudly in a hall bustling with my rowdy peers. She roughly yanked at the bottom of her offspring’s man-sized, knee length, tie-dye monstrosity to indicate minimum length requirements. “Modest, Christian girls wear shirts like this, not like yours,” she huffed in disgust as her gaze scanned me from head to toe.

I was wearing a t-shirt and a club vest.

How I looked was always being picked apart by adults who just provided their children with ruthless ammunition to make their own assessments of my body. I became a constant target practice for the girls within my religious clubs, made up of non-profit evangelical groups, that my parents had enrolled me in at the age of five. Bullied incessantly for my hair, the way I talked, and more than anything, the way I dressed; my thrift store clothing purchases were never the talk of the town.

I still remember my first pair of Nike shoes, white with baby blue lining that almost glowed. I was beyond excited to finally have something that would help me fit in. It was not even a week later when I would be shoved into a dark corner away from adult eyes, pinned against the white washed, brick wall, having my Nike adorned toes stomped on over and over while being accused of buying fakes. It was around that moment that it began to feel like nothing I could change about myself would make things different.

Even pedophilic men within the church, some fathers themselves, were no strangers to myself and my female peers body types. It was not uncommon to hear a man in his forties approach a father to inform him that “his [twelve year old] daughter’s tight fitting look was causing himself and other men in the church to stumble.”

Translation in the real world – a forty year old man and his buddies, who could not keep it in their pants even during Sunday church services, were struggling to not find a twelve year old as a sexually viable candidate and it was the child’s fault. It was always the child’s fault.

~

These same men who cheered on their sons as their one night rendezvous were tallied up between high school and college like a competing scoreboard that defined masculinity the higher the numbers grew. The same men who, when women approached them for safety from spousal abuse, no matter how beaten, bloody, and bruised, would give the same repetitive, monotone advisement –

“That’s something you’ll just have to work out with your husband…”

In the church, even from childhood, I learned two very important things about how the sexes should behave and obey. Men were given every single excuse in the book on a golden platter while women were instructed to keep their men “happy” in the bedroom and in the kitchen or else they deserved every ounce of disrespect, infidelity, physical and emotional torture they were dealt.

A fresh take of hell on earth, surrounded by adults catering to sick thoughts, family structures, and the poor moral judgements of other adults. A cult under the guise of a steeple.”

~ For No One, by A. L. Stippich

Our stories are important, no matter what the elements are that make them up. To ever believe that your history is what should define your road moving forward, however, is not moving forward at all.

Many will ask me today where I am with Christ and if I am a Christian still, and while the Ron Swanson part of my narcissism would prefer to say I’m a “practicing none of your damn business,” my answer is usually just ‘yes’ and then it is time to move the conversation along.

My faith is my own now, and for the first time in my life, it is protected and healing from the decades of war caused by others tearing it down. It is not for anyone to dissect and analyze under an equally flawed microscope. My faith belongs to me, and my spiritual journey is no longer defined by a building filled with other broken human beings.

It is between me and my god.

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