Page 44 - 2019 EMERGING WRITERS FELLOWSHIP ANTHOLOGY1

Before I begin with what my experience was like while at Esalen I suppose I should share

a little of who I am. I’m thirty years old and from a broken home with parents who were
high school drop outs. I am one of four kids and was always the smartest. I was doing my

siblings homework for them when I was six; one of them was nine while the other was
ten. I read every instructional manual to set up every television, computer or VCR we had

through the years. All this to say that I’ve always felt “outside” of the reality I was destined
to live. Always feeling, and hoping, that maybe I was adopted. As if by accident I was

placed in this family or this life. Suffice to say I was destined to live on the outside of where
I believed to belong. Writing was where I created the life I wanted, with a cast of girls who

were just like me but walked in my depiction of a dream world. One where my parents
were scholars, or my oldest siblings answered the questions that I had and not the other

way around. It was lonely growing up without guidance.

While at Esalen I had a class with Lidia Yuknavitch. She asked the class to introduce

themselves and say one word that describes their Esalen experience. Seven, maybe eight
others were before me and I rattled my brain trying to sum up what I was feeling in a

single word. When It was my turn, without a thought, my spirit answered for me - “found”.

It was June 23 , a Sunday, when I met Fullamusu. It was in our cabin which we shared
rd
with two other fellows, Leeanna and Jasmine. It was slightly awkward until we looked at
one another and Fullamusu smiled before saying “It is so white out there”. We laughed

and became sisters from that moment on. That single comment lifted the veil I felt that I
had to keep. I was living in a place that was submerged in white culture and my

intelligence has earned me a seat at their table. I hadn’t quite understood what kind of
bond I was about to create with other people of color in an environment that almost didn’t

seem meant for us. We would experience whispers of racism; the kind that if you spoke

up against, you’d look, well, crazy. From Fullamusu encountering an older white woman
who had the urge to touch her hair, though didn’t, to the woman in Steve Almond’s class

that thought the best way to describe how tough her friend was, was to write that “even
the black girls were afraid of her” whatever that fucking means. And lastly the woman

who, during the student readings kept saying Indians when speaking of Native Americas.

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