I will never have children, I don’t want to be a mom, I kill every green thing I touch, I will never get divorced, I will stay in the same job for ten years, I can’t do it alone, I am not that type of person – one who reaches for more.
Growing was change and change was scary. The pain of staying the same became comfortable. It became what I knew.
But then, from deep within, there was a rumble. A rumble that turned into a spark, a spark that lit a fire, a fire that could not and would not be contained.
I tried. I tried telling myself it wouldn’t work out. Why do you want to change, Bonnie? It would hiss. Trying to push me back down into comfortable silence. Shaming me for my efforts.
But I had already seen too much. I had seen pain and joy and hope and loss. I had felt it all before and survived it. Turned it into something more. And so, I quieted the hiss and released the fire.
I let it burn down my whole life and self. The pretty picture I had curated, gone in a flash of bright white light.
It was painful. After all, life is painful.
But in the end, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.
It is time for this old way of being, this comfortable painful way white people have been living, to go.
The rumble is too great to ignore now. It is time to let it burn things down, to awaken anew.
Do not stay behind. Come with us, join with us to grow and change. To become more. We are capable of so much more.
Do not repeat the things you used to say. Let them burn with the old, to make way for the light.
simple days with bonnie rae 
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