“For how else can the self become whole save by making self into its own new religion?” Audre Lorde, New York City, 1970
This is the quote I wrote on one of the first pages of (one of) my 2025 journal/ notebook. It’s a hard question to internalize into a mind and soul full of demands to be selfLESS. It begs the question: How can one be less oneself? Or more importantly, why would one want to be less than oneself?
I do not.
How does one make self into its own new religion?
I wrote a bit about this here in this blog post: Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!
And I wrote a bit about how important Audre Lorde’s writing has been to me here in this blog post: Tomorrow, I Will Learn to Whether I Will Become an Archer.
Yesterday, I wrote about my holidays and posted rather late in the day. I’m reposting it here because it’s connected to this quote about making the self into its own new religion. Celebrate This Breath and Then the Next.
I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I can write a longer post on this topic. Why? There on no word counts here. This post will not be graded or assessed in any way. There’s no one watching over what I write and telling me “not enough!” Well, except for me.
So I have to dig deeper. What do I want? Do I want to have a longer post? Do I have more to write about this topic at the moment? I must be quiet and listen to that deep, deep inner voice: the self. What do I want? What do I need? I need rest. I’d really like to read a little bit. I’m in the middle of two books that I’m really enjoying right now. And I’m rather hungry, so I’d like to get some food. And I’d like to get a few sentences written in a few other projects. I’d like to play the guitar. And I will do all of those things at some point today. None of these things feel like they are particularly selfish, even though they place my self (my needs and wants) at the center. And nowhere is my deeper self asking me to write more in this post. So I won’t.
Rhena Writes 