Keeping up with ‘on the same page’

I’m in a bookclub with 5 lovely intellectuals, we have a bookclub called ‘On the Same Page’ and as someone with poor memory (brain fog and baby brain…I know, double homicide) and anxiety, I resorted to putting down my thoughts and feelings on our read of the month in my notes app. So I’ll be sharing my notes with you guys, perhaps you’ve read the books too and want to share your thoughts :)

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Between Religion and Spirituality

I have been going through a lot. Not in the casual, everyday sense, but in the full-on mental breakdown sense—the ugly crying in the middle of the night to my partner, the friend nursing me back to health, the “cannot be left alone” kind of going through a lot. In the midst of that, I jokingly made a comment: that my current life experiences are almost enough to make me revert to organized religion. But even as I said it, I knew that comment itself contained the very reason I have problems with organized religion. So many people turn to their belief systems in times of hardship only. And yet, that reliance has always felt conditional, inconsistent—like a crutch pulled out only when the world feels unbearable. I grew up Roman Catholic, as did most of my family. Catholicism is a world of its own, but when we moved to South Africa and entered a “church hopping” phase, I quickly became confused and unimpressed. Who exactly were we praising here? Something always felt off about what I was w...

Bloom Again

I hope this is the last time I’ll be this candid. I tell myself that each time — that I’ll keep my thoughts locked in a private journal. But this isn’t that. This is for the moments when silence feels heavier than the truth, and when the truth is met with the world’s strange discomfort with the word victim. I put the word in quotes because somewhere along the way, society decided it’s unseemly for us to claim it. Survivor is the softer, braver term. It’s supposed to shake off the pity in people’s eyes, to make us sound like we’ve climbed out of the wreckage and dusted ourselves off. I understand why some prefer it. But maybe it’s the literalist in me — I don’t understand why naming what happened to me is considered self-pity. I was wronged. I was harmed. I am the victim of a crime. That acknowledgment doesn’t mean I carry it as a badge or romanticize it. It’s just the truth. After putting my thoughts on trial I realized that it’s easier for me to think of things that h...

logic and emotion: a tale as old as the patriarchy

Dear Reader, I’d appreciate it if you read this blog post in the same cadence of Phaedra Parks checking Kenya Moore. It’s more fun. Or maybe Superman talking to Lex Luthor? Anyway. Here I come with another think piece that I keep hearing about, and I’m so tired, exhausted, and incredibly fatigued of hearing about it. You see, there’s a subspecies of human beings that wholeheartedly believe that logic and emotion might as well be oil and water. Mind you, basing your argument on simply sounding like the Terminator doesn’t really change anything. You’re just robotic and wrong, possibly even a weirdo. I remember back in my first year of university, our group chat was on fire. Someone had the audacity to say, “This is why women don’t belong in the noble profession; they’re too emotional to argue with logic.” I had a laugh. As I’m having one now. The way men think sometimes—it’s so obtuse and primitive, like evolution took a lunch break and forgot to clock back in. And ...

Six Ten AM

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