Patriarchy, Paper Cuts & Dopamine Rushes

Untethering from the Little Things That Cut Deep

Oakland, the city where my maternal side landed in the early 1940s as part of America’s Great Migration, is also the city of my rebirth. It’s where I bottomed out, getting clean and sober in April 2016. And to paraphrase writer Polly Frost, this city, home to my family for nearly a century, is also the birthplace of my untethering from the language and …