When Inspiration Dies…
Thirty-nine is the perfect number. I am resting peacefully in the tail end of thirty-six, just three years space separating me from my Jesus birthday (33) and what I am now going to call my Goddess birthday (39). Thirty-nine has always been my favorite number. Take the number of moon cycles in a year and multiply it by three… multiply it by the maiden, mother, crone; by the past, present, and future; by the mind, body, and spirit; by the many ways we can interpret the holy trinity. Not only that, but if you add 3+9 you get 12… and of course 1+2 equals 3.
The number three carries the energy of creative expression, optimism, and inspiration. All of this explanation is to avoid writing about something that has hurt me for as long as I can. Speaking the pain makes it real. Nine days ago (three times three), I wrote about being comfortable in the face of death in a post I shared on Facebook. My work with shadow and spirit allows me to hold the space in transitions well. I shared that there are times when I learn about someone’s death and it is a punch to the gut, even when my feet are grounded in the holy knowing. Nine days ago I wrote about the passing of Vicente Fernandez and Anne Rice, two people whose work was integral to my life experience— tied to memory, to family, and to inspiration. Nine days ago I forgot that three also represents the beginning, the middle, and the end… and just as good things come in threes, so does heartache.
I have avoided speaking of bell hooks’ death for a week. Perhaps I was hoping that in the not speaking I could some how make it not true. Last night, while celebrating solstice with my family around the table, I grabbed her book off of the shelf and read the preface to all about love aloud. “Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak.”
bell hooks wrote of love in all things. As I found myself in education, bell hooks was the woman who gave me permission to show up with love as my primary teaching philosophy. She taught me that the most important thing I could do as an educator was to get to know who my students were, to connect with their families, their stories, and their backgrounds. bell hooks was my inspiration for teaching and for the radical place of self-love that I find myself in. I am sitting here with a question echoing in my mind, one that began in September 2020 when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed… how do we continue when inspiration dies? We step up and remember that, “There is light in darkness, we just need to know where to find it.”
The women who came before us, the activists centered around love, they laid the ground work. And it is up to us, regardless of our race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation… especially those of us with privilege, to continue to see this work through. To boldly follow our passions. To take risks. To speak our minds. But most of all, it is up to us to love. When inspirations die, we live on in love.
