Branding

Vulnerabilities can become excuses not to speak. As it was with me.

I’ve always struggled with the idea of branding as a creator. I descend from cattle farmers, so the idea of branding is a ritual. A painful reminder that you belong to somebody else. It can also be a life affirming ritual, provided you belong to a good master. A matter of pride and security.

It’s hard to speak or create when you don’t know what or who you are serving. What forces speak most loudly, who you fear, that is what you belong to whether you are conscious of it or not. I found it hard to define myself because it conflicted with so many other narratives within my family. Even if my privately held convictions conflicted with those I was related to, I didn’t want to make it a matter of public debate or unnecessary conflict. Not that I assign myself importance, public in my mind is openness to my family. A terrifying prospect given the fact that alienation or straight up exile is a possibility.

This past election cycle changed that for me. Mind you, I don’t believe who you voted for is a reflection of your character. But why certainly can be. My relatives broadcast their baldfaced worship of Donald Trump. They were in love with the promises that would privilege them, their lifestyle, and their worldview, and completely unconcerned with the harmful ramifications for those who didn’t fit that template. Namely, nuclear church-going families, generally of European descent. I didn’t fit within this template. I was a single working mother who’d gotten a pretty nasty taste in her mouth regarding anything to do with the church or organized religion. These were people who knew my past and current circumstances. I soon lost my reason to reserve my feelings to the sanctity of my own home.

Why was I killing myself to be pleasing to people who had no consideration for me? Is it because I’m a fuck-up on paper? A single mother? A woman who didn’t choose a man who would live past thirty?

As a deeply flawed christian, this bit pretty hard. I was literally the least of these. The widow. A mother of a lady orphan. The world they longed for would leave us with increasingly less agency and voice. Whether or not said candidate would do as he promised was beside the point, they salivated over this vision.

A strong accusation. A strong accusation I understand too well because I grew up in and left the spheres that thought that American christians were persecuted and the only way to combat this was to seize political power over our perceived enemies. The same sphere that is more than happy to share an adulterous bed with millionaire presidents and unelected officials who’ve never heard nor understood the meaning of the word “no”.

All this time, I was hiding behind how I would “brand” my words. How I would “brand” myself. While I deeply appreciate elegant branding and the way it streamlines communication, my concerns as an unprofessional anything and everything were a very nice excuse for me to not speak. To remain in a non-threatening and appeasing position to my relatives. Until the gravity of the current situation outweighed my ego-driven fears. Until the gravity of the current situation outweighed my fear of the people who’d see my daughter labor under the same ideological chains I’ve spent most of my life wrestling off.

Me, my daughter, you, and everyone you love. We belong to our creator, the god of our own understandings. Not to billionaires, ideologies, or twisted theologies. We can have brands, but our bodies and souls are not for branding.