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About Stories Matter

A challenging session with an assignment to interview someone seventy years or older and write their story. Our mentors this session included best-selling authors Lisa Barr, Marie Benedict, and Rachael Eckles, journalist Allison Weiner Hope, and Ninette Paloma, poet Aija Mayrock, Marci Darling, and Andrea Estrada.

For our mentoring session over these past several months I wanted to focus on being bold. What is bold? Bold is different for everyone. Everyone wrote about being bold and what it meant for them. The below poem by Madi Oty, I thought was particularly beautiful and wanted to share it.

“With These Wings” by Madi Oty

Bold is the release of the tightness in my chest 
Even respiration as vocals erupt from a cord of vowels 
When the consonants unravel to sing 
As a woman 
I will- 
Take flight 
Mockingbird in the sky 
Nudged from its nest to fly 
High-Hardly catching- 
         The shuffling wind beneath its wings 
As she steadies to flaunt her beauty 
Unconcerned of shots directed in her path   
I too will sing my song, 
The music of justice 

Going against the status quo,  
Battling forces almost out of my control 
My heart picks up a beat 
Palms perspire glazed in anticipation
My face blushes fiery red  
Fueled with passion 
Marked by embarrassment 
I keep soaring. 
Proclaiming my own truth 

Declaring war against myself 
My true nature, 
To hide 
Recluse into myself 
.
Silence 
.
I will no longer accept it  
For myself  
I will venture 
Inwards,
 I crawl beneath my own skin 
Turn it inside and out again  
To peel the layers of self devastation
And lay claim on what it means to have a “self” 
My-self, 
Selfishly, I am born again 
Broken free, 
I will shoot down my opposition 
A woman, fighting 
And you cannot silence me.

Stories Matter

“The Momento” by Madi Oty

“La Puerta Azúl” by Kimberly Quezada Carrillo

“The Painter on the Terrace” by Kiana Mohammadi

“Frozen Milk and Little Wool Suits” by Maya Salem

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