Mississippi Winter IV

“My father and mother both used to warn me that “a whistling woman and a crowing hen would surely come to no good end.” And perhaps I should have listened to them. But even at the time I knew that though my end probably might not be good, I must whistle like a woman undaunted until I reached it.” - Alice Walker

Waterford Mississippi - 2024

The thing they don’t tell you about most major life shifts is that, you don’t get to call the shots. Or maybe you do get to call the shots but you don’t get to make the rules - it is in my nature to believe that I can somehow do both, but every dog has its day. My grandma would say to me, before sending me to go pick a “switch” off of the pecan tree in her backyard, “boy, a hard head, make a soft a**”. It wasn’t until I was well immersed into the living that I knew what she truly meant. Flowing in this state of surrender, I turned to the writing of Alice Walker when I couldn’t find my own words or make sense of my own feelings — saturating myself in all things of resonance, familiar, and unfamiliar. It is through the simplicity of Alice’s words that I was able to keep a tether to myself - furthermore, to know when it was time to cut the chord…

Thank you to the good folks of SAYN & Saafon for your invitation of love, kinship, re-memory, and everything in between — and to the entire Hollowell Family, and the land of Foxfire Ranch for being the container for it all.