34. I Love Every Age Of You

In this episode hosts Sangodare and Alexis explore non-linear time, queer time, and the practice of loving every age of oneself and one’s partner. Using a conflict about an expensive pillow after mattress shopping, they discuss feeling unseen, re-parenting each other, and how multiple selves show up in adult life, while clarifying boundaries and rejecting any justification of harm to minors. They offer three “North Stars” and answer a listener question about date night as ritual. They announce a May 24 Revival service in Durham and June cohort registration for Chrysalis Life Purpose Roadmap.

• Love Every Age
• Timeless Love Lessons
• Intergenerational Orientation
• Boundaries and Date Night as Ritual

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hi, I'm Alexis Pauline Gums. And I'm Shango Dari Wallace. And this is September, a podcast for love ships.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

We're two lovebirds who decided to intentionally create a love ship and share the insights we gather with the world.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

For the past 17 years, we've been relating to our love ship as a sacred space for spiritual practice.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

This podcast is our space to reflect on the insights we've found and been given with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Whether romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, okay, situationships, every bond has the potential to become an offering to a higher vibration for the world. One choice, one act of care, one repair at a time.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

So, if you're ready to think expansively about love, community, and spirit, you're in the right place. So glad you're here.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Hello, little Lexi, who is always ready for two-too-laden dance party with or without any dance partners or company.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

True. And to keep it in balance, I'm also the one who gets instantly cranky when we've done more than two errands in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

And I'm the one who is always ready to drum on a drum, on a table, on my body, your body, but not necessarily dance.

unknown 1:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

So once again, we are two timeless people constantly being reborn, and we are exactly as lovable as you. Today we dedicate to our dear Jeanette and Kyla. Jeanette is a timeless elder and a newborn retired person. Woop whoop. Congratulations on your retirement. We're so excited for this rebirth.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Jeanette is historically what we call a somebody.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Somebody.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

When people say somebody should or somebody needs to do this or that or the other, Jeanette is often the person who does it, the one who knows it's possible, the one who is unstoppable about gathering us up for it, whatever it may be. Jeanette will take a dream, a vision, and run with it, sustain it, pour into it. Somebody.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Especially when it comes to Black Lesbians United, an organization she co-founded with Lisa Powell, Queen Hollands, and Yolanda Whittington.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Actually, that quartet of founders is also a love shit. I mean, be really think about it. They're also a love shit.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Truly. Their love, support, and collaboration with each other has created a whole field of black lesbian expression, safety, and relation that we benefit from so deeply.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, and several marriages. But now that Jeanette has achieved her retirement status, we're excited to see how you become somebody else. Sit down, serve on. Sit down and rest a little while. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Amen. And Kyla is a timeless, playful, eternal glitter fairy who brings joy into so many people's lives, including us.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Kyla has also revolutionized many people's relationship to sign language. We love seeing her on the stage with Grammy Award-winning artists providing not only access, but full, culturally appropriate swagger honey.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Seeing her on the blue stage, blowing our minds with sign language or expanding our minds through facilitating workshops or games or with glitter. And just like it was such an honor to celebrate you, Jeanette and you, Kyla, at your epic wedding last year, we are also honored to accompany you through this new big milestone.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Of course. And we do it in gratitude for all the ways you've been there for us over these past over 15 years.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Over 15 years. And for so many in our communities before that and beyond that.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

JV and Kyla, we love you. Okay, listeners. Remember, you also have the opportunity to dedicate your participation and your listening to someone or someone's who you admire. Maybe there are people who are supportive of you, who inspire you, who are magical, ageless, timeless.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

Yeah. Okay. Dedication launched.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Maybe you get into the heart of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Let's grow. And guess what? It's still September. Every week we have a technology for you from our journey and our teachers with North Stars that can guide you as you navigate your own happy and you know it dance of relationship and spiritual practice. And on today, we just dropped by to remind you love every age of each other.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Love every age. Today's sacred text is also a silly text. Actually, a meme that we first saw through our dear friend Laren Asantwa. The meme is about responding to a question that we actually get often and may discuss on a future episode of this podcast, which is Why don't y'all have children? And the meme spoke a wisdom that we have quoted ever since. First of all, I am children.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Such wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

That's kind of a joke, but like all the best jokes base in a deep truth, which is that we are children.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

And we always will be.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

And we could quote beloved Caribbean feminists like Audrey Lord and Dion Brand and Erna Broadbur and Opal Palmer Edisa and Jamaica Kincaid and and and who all time travel to stand beside their child selves. Or we could have quoted Jack Halberstam on Queer Time and how in our queerness we refuse linear age.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

But instead, we'll do the childish thing and quote the joke. First of all, I am children.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

So time isn't linear, and every age of us remains with us. Even future ages of us are within us, guiding us, I think. My sister co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering. Happy 10th anniversary, Revolutionary Mothering. Yes. But Maya Williams, who has offered solidarity Reiki to people all over the world, reminded me that energy is not limited by time or space. And love is energy. It doesn't abide by the construction of time.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

And so part of our assignment here in Earth School is to love every age of ourselves, and in the context of love ship, to love every age of each other, the tickles and the tantrums.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

And sometimes in our love ship, it's really easy because we're both playful children at the same time and wise elders thinking with multi-generational vision at the same time and lusty teenagers at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

And sometimes, even when we aren't the same age at the same time, there is a balancing effect that happens because of that. In some ways, we reparent each other, providing patience and care when one of us is working through something, our wounded child feelings, or something else.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

And I'm especially grateful for the ways our ancestors speak to us through each other. And maybe this is what a timeless love means. Not a mythological love, but a love that acknowledges that love moves across and through time to do its work of transformation and healing and elevation.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yes. And sometimes it flows so sweetly, but sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. And sometimes we're not operating in the same age energy and are frustrated by that dissonance.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Slay too much.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Because there are lessons somewhere along our cosmic timeline that we may have been avoiding or may have not been ready to learn. And so those show up in some way that we can no longer ignore. Can't ignore them no more. And in Love Ship, sometimes we bring these lessons directly to each other on a silver platter.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Or a pillow.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Right. So we went mattress shopping and we were trying to find, you know, our first new grown-up people mattress. And so we were trying out different mattresses. They had pillows there. And I will say that this is a period where we were still calibrating around our relationship to money. And maybe that's a lifelong thing. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Maybe mattresses are a scam.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

We spent like a good amount of time in the store and finally decided on a mattress. We paid for it, set it up. They're going to deliver and all that. And I will say we got one of those expensive mattresses and turned out to not even be close to as comfortable as our IKEA foldable mattress with a memory foam on top of it.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Anyway, zero out of ten would not recommend.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

They delivered the mattress, and I saw that, Alexis, that you had gotten this really nice hundred dollar pillow. And I was like, okay, whatever, cool. I didn't realize that you got a pillow, but you know, whatever. Whatever. Turns out it wasn't for her. It was for me. And I was devastated. I was devastated to see that Alexis has gotten me this random pillow, random expensive pillow that I was not even interested in. And I had so many thoughts about the pillows in the store, none of them good. And I mean, I like gifts and things and toys, and that this is what she got me. I just felt so, I don't know, so unseen.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Well, I'm so sorry to your younger self and your current self for giving you that pillow. I thought you would like it. Do you want to say a little bit more about what being unseen brings up for you in terms of your child self?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, it's like, you know, you just weren't present with me. But when? Were you just not present with me in the store, or did you secretly want the pillow? Like I just cannot make sense of why you would, you know, would do that.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

And I was like, I don't get it. I was just trying to buy you a nice pillow to do something nice for your neck and your back. But thinking about it, I now realize that feeling unseen is something that multiple ages of you have experienced and really suffered behind. So thinking about what it is to be a young, queer person in school, church, family settings where that's not recognized or seen, I can see how Shango Baby, the younger of you, was so sad that I didn't really realize your critique of the pillows and internalize it.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

And the reality is that our multi-agedness is relevant in all of our relationships. Yeah. Our ages are not somehow stable while we're parenting or collaborating or creating art out in the world. Or just out here so-called adulting in very big scare quotes. Very scary quotes. Adulting is scary. And in many situations, our child selves, our elder selves, our ancestor selves, our multi-dimensional selves have something to teach us if we would listen. And sometimes they we speak through our relationships. One of the things I find healing about Love Shift is time travel is something Sharon Bridgeforth's work has helped me learn, which is that because love is not limited by space or time, I can receive love as every age of myself. I can even receive the forms of love I was shut off from by fear, even from people who have already passed away. There is no limit.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

No limit. And so this is something that is at play in our love ship with each other. But as a love ship, it's also a big part of our collective life. We both have what we call an intergenerational orientation.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Yeah, I've always been the one to sit with the elders and to ask them questions and to wonder about their perspective and also to quite seriously ask young children what they think and what they know. And of course, through archival research and creative writing, I even want to know about the perspectives of elders and ancestors that I'll never meet and future beings that are not being yet. And the love that they offer is real and it moves through time to reach us here. This is why our work with the Mobile Homecoming Project, experiential archive documenting generations of black LGBTQ brilliance, has been such a source of family and love for us.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yeah. It makes me think about like how in high school I didn't really have friends. My friends were the teachers. Like I would really, you know, be excited to come early and help grade papers or to, you know, to help collate and staple or, you know, whatever it might be. Um to, you know, the athletic director used to come to get me out of class, and I would go around and like help, you know, set up the fields and stuff for the practices after school. So my orientation to um elders has been definitely, you know, a profound sense of reverence and service and interest and curiosity. And it has really, you know, served me well to lean into that, to acknowledge that, and to celebrate it.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Yeah. I think that our desire to be in multi-generational spaces, spaces with the with the grandparents and the children and the and the people in the middle, um, is also a reflection of wanting to be in relationship with the multiple ages of ourselves. So I I love that. I'm just realizing that as we make this podcast. And I also want to be really clear about something. I don't think our listeners would misconstrue what we're saying to justify any form of abuse of minors. We're talking about love moving beyond space and time, but we know that we live in a world with systems of power and constructive vulnerabilities, and we're very clear that the expansive infinite love we're talking about requires care, loving boundaries, recognition of all kinds of power differences, including age. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

This is no excuse for no harmful behavior. This ain't no excuse for any abuse.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Our first North Star is love, like all energy, is not limited by time and space. Love is nonlinear, expansive, eternal.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Our second North Star is love every age of yourself, write to them, dance with them, listen to them, all of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Our third North Star is invite every age of yourself to love your partners, your community, this planet. We need all, all that love.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

We need it.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Do we have a listener question? Yes, we're excited to share another listener question from our live podcast in Durham.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Um hi. Um so when I think of y'all, I think of um ritual and how um ritual is such a part of your practice. And so I have a question around date night and ritual. I'm here with my partner of 11 years. And um, you know, hearing um and knowing y'all have been in partnership for 16 plus years. That's amazing. 17, you said? 17 and a half. Um, yeah, how do you how do you view date night and how is it in the context of ritual?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

I will say date night was not one of our superpowers. But it's an aspiration. It has been something that has re-emerged and Alexa to really stay in on the job. Um but when we do do it, um I feel like that the way we relate to it is what it seems often like one of us is inviting the other to it, or we're doing something, and Alexa's just like, this is a wonderful date. I'm so glad that we're like, we're doing the thing and she's naming it. Uh and I think one of one of my I think highlights of I think it was this this year or last year. I don't know what year, it was maybe last year. We went to um a loved one's a different city for a loved one's wedding. We went early and we related to it like it was our own honeymoon before their wedding. And just the spaciousness, I think really what a date is just for us, our challenge is uh the spaciousness to just be present with one another, doing something that either we both enjoy or is an adventure that you have both consented to.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I I think it's interesting because we have we do have so many repeated practices, and date night is not something that we have like, oh, this often we do date night. It's something I think about like the organic moments where I'm like, oh, I'm just feeling like so connected as we're walking. We might be walking through like, I don't know, the um beauty supply store? The beauty supply store while the car charge is on a road trip. Oh, right, you know, or whatever. Like we happen to be there. We didn't have to obviously plan this as a and if we were planning a date, we probably wouldn't be like go walk around the beauty supply store.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

But or rang them all in a small seat.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Right. But we're just like having the opportunity to connect, to be together, to be. I mean, and we we could choose to be like, well, you go in the beauty supply store, I'll wait in the car. Or we could be like our phone, so we could, you know, but those moments where it's like, oh, we're actually both really here and I'm really just enjoying being with you. Yeah. Sometimes that that's when I'll say stuff like this is such a great date. You know, it'll seem completely random.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

And I'll say, I would love to make a team date. Because I don't know, I will shoot, I won't forget. Okay. I feel like if there were more restaurants in Durham that we loved, we would take more days. That's true. I know that we should not be stopped by that, but I think well, no, I mean, I think it's real.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Our food systems don't actually support uh our particular dietary needs. And I think if there were more like public spaces, or maybe if there was like some rotating, we all could for each other, I don't know, like something accessible like that, because that that's actually an access point.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, and like a movie, I have to go like, oh, well, if we go to a movie like not engaging each other, I would rather than something like that, just stream something at home, which yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Yeah, because then we can like talk to each other, then we can pause it and be like, yeah. Um, but I have um been in something that feels kind of like an art project of finding like what are things? And some of them have been at home, some of them have been out in public where I'm like actually inviting Shango Dari, like, oh, will you go to this exhibit with me? Or oh, one that we did was um I asked Shango Dari to come to my high school dance with me. Like in the past, it was a time travel date. Um, and so I like made a playlist of the songs from like when I was in high school or when I was like 16 and you would you would have been 19, so I don't know what, but you know. Um and I like literally like wrote a little note and was like, I just think you're so cute. Do you be my date to the dance? Um and then we just did that, like in in the living room, which was which was really yeah, fun. So I do think there's a creativity in it and I think it's a really worthwhile form of creativity. And you know, there have been like amazing creative things. Like when you put like pictures of I really love the big cats. Shanghadar like filled the room with pictures of um lions and cheetahs and had the sound animal sounds. You know, like just like we're not gonna necessarily like go, but we don't even animal cats in the bottom. We're not gonna go to a zoo. But you know, like there there can just be ways to uh to do that, which is ceremonial and it is ritual, but we we don't relate to it with the type of repetition that we relate to some other things with which I think is interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And I'll say I think that you're inspired to start this practice more intentionally, because I was saying something about how first day, like, oh, that's my thing, some big show of affection, you know, it's raining, rose petals, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And then, you know, you're trying to get into routine. And I was like, you know, like hey yeah, I used I used to do all of that, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. But now, now I don't think I said it's your turn, but I think maybe you got from that, so it's your turn, which I appreciate.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Yeah, that's true. And I think maybe there's just different seasons, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. All right.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Do we got any announcements?

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yes, we want to invite everybody to come celebrate with us at a revival service in Durham, North Carolina on May 24th at 11 a.m. You can see the location details on our website, mobilehomecoming.org slash love ship. That's right. And registration and registration is open for our Chrysalis life purpose roadmap. Our first cohort starting in June. You can see information on our page about that too.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

All right. Well, until next time, farewell.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Thank you so much for listening to the September podcast. If this conversation spoke to you, we'd love for you to share it with someone who might need it. And don't forget to leave us a question to cover on an episode and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps more people find the show. Until next week, stay in the ship as an offering for yourself, your community, and our collective spirit.