Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.

How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use?

Institutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate.

It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.