How to Love a Girl – a Cassendre Xavier Museletter

Tuesday, May 17, 2011



Greetings, folks!

Just wanted to remind you that I’ll be hosting (reading and performing live music at) the Women’s Writing & Spoken Word Series tomorrow, Wed, May 18, at Moonstone Arts Center, 110A South 13th St (at Sansom St), Philadelphia, 7pm. Featured readers will be Jesse White and Lee ScottLorde. $5 admission.

Jesse White is an Expressionistic painter, writer and altered book artist. Conveying emotion through themes of love, loss and spirit, her writing is deeply personal, honest and often raw. She finds creating to be both restorative and spiritual. Jesse teaches the process of cathartic art making through her organization, Pigeon Arts. A Leeway Foundation grant awardee, she has facilitated her workshops with the Trans community, teen writing groups, spiritual communities, youth survivors/witnesses of domestic violence and murder, adults with chronic illnesses, and the general public. Contact: Jesse(at)pigeon-arts.com


Lee ScottLorde says: “I am a Temple University bred performance poet who has been writing poetry for the last 13 years, and professionally performing for two. I write now for the same reasons I began: to inform, entertain, liberate, and give a voice that will destroy the silences that bind and render us invisible. Poetry is so many things; political, romantic, spiritual or religious, and therapeutic. For me, poetry is an extension of living, and time. In a poem, I have the honor of experiencing every moment again and again, be it pleasurable and joyous or hard and mournful, just as I, he, or she, felt in that moment. In a poem one can even write to change history. It’s makes tangible the statement “If I could I would…” because in poetry you and I can. However dreaming and speaking it is only the first step. We too must live out our words. Currently I am in the process of establishing Sweethearts For Charity, a nonprofit bakery, that will fund-raise to support organizations and causes that aid undeserved populations in Philadelphia and writing my first book of poetry, Lopsided Warrior: The Silent Battle of Motherhood.” Contact: Lee.ScottLorde(at)gmail.com

Hosted with live music by Cassendre Xavier! Always includes a Mixed-Gender Open Mic! Streams LIVE at www.moonstoneartscenter.org, click on the Watch Live button. Founded in 2002 by Cassendre Xavier, the Women’s Writing & Spoken Word Series is a nurturing environment that celebrates women in the craft of multi-genre writing. For submissions and other information, please visit www.WomensWritingSeries.org.

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Also,

Thursday, May 19, 2011 6:00pm FREE! I’ll be singing at Elixr Coffee, an acclaimed espresso joint in Center City. 207 S 15th St. (at Walnut), Philadelphia, PA 19102

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How to Love a Girl
[My friend Alisa Raymond sent me this. I asked if I could share it. She said yes, so I'm forwarding it to you all. Please feel free to share it, following the permissions info at the end of the article. Thank you and enjoy!]

How to Love a Girl Who Hates the Skin She’s In by Alisa Raymond

1. Tell her to stop apologizing for her body. tell her sorry's are serious things and she shouldn't go wasting them.

2. Tell her she's beautiful.she is unlikely to ever believe you but just hearing it will bring that crooked smile to her face.

3. Undress her when you're in bed together.she will fight you tooth and nail because she hates the body that she ended up with, let her know its not as bad as she makes it out to be, but don't ever lie and say its not bad at all, she'll resent you for that.

4. Kiss the soft, loose skin that remains where so many pounds used to be. don't stop when you feel her cringe or when she says "you don't have too" she's just exorcising her own ghost's that have been haunting her for years. Assure her that "you ain't afraid of no ghosts" and help her rid her house of them.

5. If you're serious about loving her,love all of her, unconditionally, from her barely there hair follicles to the tips of her always pedicured toes and everything in between. She may not look like the girl you always dreamed of laying next too but she has the heart and the everything else of the girl you want to wake up to everyday for the rest of your life, and keep in mind, dream girl will be old and grey one day and the one thing that drew you to her will have faded. Stick with the girl who has heart.The heart has staying power.

6. Understand when she insists on only making love when its dark. Don't ask that the lights be on, or candles be lit. Learn every inch of her body in the pitch black like braille, let the fire you start inside of her be all the light that you need.

7. Tell her you like her better without her wig. tell her it's because she's relaxed and more herself. tell her she's beautiful regardless but her comfortable and beautiful trumps any other way.

8. Tell her she has sexy collarbones or wrists.pick a piece of her that wasn't ruined by the surgery and pay extra attention to it. let her own these sexy parts of her like some people do their entire bodies. help her be proud of a small portion of the body she's ashamed of. make her understand that we're all made up of pieces, some bad some good, but either way we need them all for our puzzles to make any sense.

9. Let her know that when she constantly makes negative comments about her body that it hurts you too, that it feels like she is trying to convince you that she is too hideous to be loved and that your love no matter how great will never be good enough. tell her it feels like she is pushing you away, also tell her that the way she obsessively critiques and puts down every inch of her makes you think that she is doing the same to you. That she is silently judging all of your parts while she loudly presides over her own.

10. Hold her hand and keep her busy, because when she's bored she binges and binging inevitably leads to purging whether its an accident or not. There's a tornado of emotion inside this girl that no amount of food will quell,but she can't stop trying, she's a storm chaser. Rescue her from the fingers that mud slide down her throat, from her eyes that burn brush fires into her ruined skin, from her mind that makes her believe her body is a tragedy. Be her disaster relief.

To post comments, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/5vzl6ps
(Source: http://cassendrexavier.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-love-girl-who-hates-skin-shes-in.html)


Thanks for your time and attention, everyone,

Cassendre Xavier
Suburban Station's "Subway Siren" Since 2005
"A cross between Tracy Chapman, Sade, and Enya" –Steven M. Wilson, Borders Music
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