023: Finding Real Kimaya
In which I accidentally re-invent Internal Family Systems therapy
Listen to this post in podcast form here.
Today’s post is a ramble.
I haven’t really been doing very well lately. I’ve been in a deep depression – partly due to my brain chemistry and partly because of Global Events – and a bunch of health issues have been cropping up, including a head-to-toe stress rash condition!!! Woo! Having a difficult body is challenging at the best of times, and this is certainly not the best of times.
Lots of people I know are having it a lot worse, but many people I know are also feeling determined to work for change, and I’m grateful to those people for keeping the light on.
Boom, abrupt change of topic!
My brilliant and hilarious sister Makeda started a new podcast called Commuter Friendship Journal, which provides a Monday-morning companion to those of us headed into work at the start of the week, whether we’re actually commuting in a car/train/bus or “commuting” from our beds to our desks. It also features a genius jingle by my spouse Jacob that you can hear at 15:12!
Another abrupt change of topic, woo!
I have some shows coming up, and I’d love to see you there!
February 6 – Westerly, RI – The Knick Taproom (FREE!)
February 15 – Northampton, MA – Edwards Church
Special album fundraiser show! Help me make my goal of $28,000!
Buy a ticket here or contribute without buying a ticket.June 22 – Greenfield, MA – Green River Fest
I’m on Sunday at 7pm!
Ok, back to what’s been going on
Like I said, I’m really not well right now – physically or otherwise – and it’s been hard to see the point of anything. Some might call that depression classique, and they’re right, but there’s also something more going on because my body feels like it’s falling apart, and the world feels like it’s – not on fire, but maybe sinking into magma? Or something?
I’ve been trying to practice what I preach and lean into creativity, and let me tell you, it fucking works. Weirdly enough! I’ve been digging into the new songs for the album and preparing to make demo recordings. I’ve been building a powerful through-line between my songs, and writing interlude songs that I’m really excited to tell you about later.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how weird it is to make art when things that you care about are falling apart, whether it’s scientific research being scrubbed from government sites or the increasing efforts of erasure of our trans siblings, or the government-sanctioned undermining of women, veterans, disabled people, and non-white people in the workplace.
It’s like…what song could I possibly write that could convey what I think about a slew of wild executive orders? It’s 2025, and 60’s-esque “fight the power” didactic folk anthems don’t really cut it anymore. The times they are a-changing? Um, duh. I mean, we clowned on Macklemore for “Same Love” in 2012, and we’re a lot more jaded now.
Some of my creative work is meant to send a larger message. But most of my creative work is self-love, self-soothing, self-processing, self-proving, self-possessing. I create to make sense of what I experience. I create to make something out of a feeling of nothingness, and to show that when I feel as though I couldn’t move the needle if I gave my life to do so, that I can take the reality of my smallness and say “listen, here’s a song.”
Consuming and creating are different sides of the same coin – or halves of a circle. What I watch, read, and listen to feeds me the nutrients I need to make things. Right now, I’m deeply inspired by Doechii and her vision of Black girlhood, movement, and pageantry – this performance is pure musical theater and I love it. She shows me a new possibility for Black women – an aesthetic world steeped in singularity and authenticity. She makes me ask how can I show the world who I truly am?
Searching for my real self
I’ve been realizing more and more that my identity as an older sister has shaped who I am in deeply-engraved ways. Most of those ways are good – I’m a good protector, advocate, fighter when I need to be, host, and I’m good in an emergency. But I’m coming to see that some of the traits hold me back: I rarely feel able to take up the most space – literally, physically, sonically, metaphorically. I feel afraid to be truly known, because I feel responsible for how my actions reflect on my family – I mean, I had to make a conscious decision to write the way I talk on this Substack – it’s my first swearing on the record. I literally wrote “fuck” in my first post on this and I spent 2 days wondering if I should delete it. But it’s how I talk when I get passionate about something, so it stayed in, and in doing so, in letting myself have this tiny public display of selfhood, this Substack has become one of my most meaningful avenues of self-expression.
You might be able to tell that I was a “good kid” growing up. But I was also a sad kid – not gloomy, but, like, congenitally blue. You might have called me an “old soul,” but in a kind-of-weirded-out way. I’ve always had a vision of who I am and what I might be able to accomplish, but that Real Kimaya has always existed alongside the version of myself that I think I should be, and feel compelled to be. Because Real Kimaya is louder, wilder, fiercer, the other half of me keeps her in check, and I don’t think I’ll be able to make my best work until I can find a way to integrate those parts of myself.
Okay, I see that I’ve just reverse-engineered my way into inventing Parts Work/ Internal Family Systems Therapy.
But really, having this powerful part of me that I instinctively suppress takes a toll – it appears in sadness and a feeling of loss and disconnectedness. I never felt it before I lost my mom, but when she died (in 2021), I felt a dozen little doors slam inside of me, closing off strange batches of seemingly-unconnected memories, thought patterns, and nipping of a budding connection to my truer self. (I know for a fact that there are several therapists subscribed to this newsletter; feel free to reply with your professional opinion! I don’t have any money, though.)
The best way for me to access the most powerful part of myself is to create. Whether I access what I need through characterization in a song, the boldness of working through a real-world conflict within lyrics, or simply in the physical feeling of playing with my voice, making music gives me an opportunity to become whole, if even for a brief time.
Oops, I feel the little tentacle of depression telling me to stop writing, because depression doesn’t really like it when you accomplish things on its watch. I’m giving you the live updates because…I don’t know. Welcome to my brain, I guess?
Anyway, before my brain makes me stop writing, let me say this:
Make something. I’ve said it many times. Make it at all costs. It is not any more or less important than showing up for yourself and your neighbors in other ways. Your song or painting or poem won’t change the world, but it will change you, make you more human, make you wiser.
I’ve also said before that “softness will save us” isn’t really part of my worldview – if it is for you, then I wish you all the softness you crave. Is it pessimistic of me to believe that the experience of being alive is simply just a series of opportunities to become ever more resilient until you die as a hard but brilliant diamond? Idk, maybe! Therapist readers, perhaps this will also give you food for thought. As I said, I am not doing my very best from a mental perspective, oops.
Ok, that’s all I have to say today. Thank you for reading.
WOMEN FOREVER. TRANS PEOPLE FOREVER. BLACK PEOPLE FOREVER. IMMIGRANTS FOREVER. CHILDREN FOREVER. OUR DAILY BREAD. CLEAN WATER. HOMES FOR ALL. HEALTHCARE FOR ALL. PEACE IN OUR TIME. PEACE IN OUR TIME. PEACE IN OUR TIME. PEACE IN OUR TIME.
Is it a prayer? A demand? A mantra? An affirmation?
Yes.
That’s all I have to say. Love you, bye.