NAKEDJEN

Tag: fiction

  • Her Name Was Renee Nicole Good

    Her Name Was Renee Nicole Good

    This Did Not Have to Happen

    (and this is where I am placing my attention today)

    Her name was Renee Nicole Good.

    She was a prize-winning poet.
    A legal observer.
    A woman who spent her life taking care of other people.

    Yesterday, she was killed while doing exactly that.

    She was not armed.
    She was not threatening anyone.
    She was not looking for a fight.

    She was there to witness. To observe. To make sure that what was happening was seen and recorded and not erased. She was doing the quiet work that keeps the rest of us honest. The kind of work that rarely gets thanked and too often gets punished.

    This did not have to happen.

    I can’t stop thinking about how familiar she feels to me. A good life, but a hard one. A person who stayed tender in a world that rewards armor. Someone who showed up, again and again, even when it cost her something. Especially when it cost her something.

    We are living in a time when violence feels ambient. Like weather. Like background noise. It seeps into places that are supposed to be safe. Churches. Schools. Sidewalks. Courtrooms. Places of worship. Places of care.

    And our nervous systems are wrecked by it.

    If you feel jumpy, exhausted, angry, numb, or scared, you are not broken. You are responding appropriately to a world that keeps asking us to metabolize the unbearable and then move on as if nothing happened.

    What makes this loss so heavy is not just that Renee is gone. It’s that we’ve been taught to accept this as normal. To respond with sorrow but not with change. To call it a tragedy instead of naming it for what it is: the foreseeable result of choices we keep making.

    This is not about politics.
    It’s about how we value human life.

    It’s about whether we are willing to protect the people who show up with notebooks instead of weapons. Whether we believe that witnessing, caregiving, and accountability deserve safety. Whether we are brave enough to say, out loud, that this way of living is not okay.

    Renee was not reckless.
    She was not naïve.
    She was not trying to be a symbol.

    She was doing her job.
    She was doing her calling.
    And she should be alive today.

    So here is my very human, very non-partisan ask:

    Slow down.
    Pay attention.
    Refuse to normalize what is breaking us.

    Talk to your people.
    Check on your neighbors.
    Support the caregivers, the observers, the poets, the ones who show up with open hands instead of clenched fists. Choose de-escalation when you can. Choose care when it’s available. Choose to notice.

    This is where my Love Is Still Beating practice comes in.

    Every day, I’m committing to naming ten real, verifiable good things that happened in the last 24 hours. Not to deny the grief. Not to look away from the fire. But to remember that love is still moving through us, even now. Especially now.

    Today, one of those ten is this:
    People like Renee exist.
    And they matter.

    Say her name.
    Honor her life by refusing to accept her death as inevitable.
    Let your heart stay open, even when it hurts.

    This did not have to happen.
    And we are allowed to demand a world where it doesn’t keep happening.

    **********

    Here’s what you can do, today:

    Pause before you scroll.
    Check on someone you love.
    Offer steadiness instead of outrage.
    Support people who choose care over force.
    Pay attention to what keeps your heart open.

    This is how we push back against a culture of violence.
    One regulated nervous system at a time.

  • 💜 Purple Alert: Why I Still Search for August

    💜 Purple Alert: Why I Still Search for August

    People keep asking me why I’m still searching for August.

    Here’s the truest answer I have:
    Because I can. And because I hope you would, too.

    Because if your heart beat just a little louder —
    if you heard a tremor in the universe,
    a missing pulse,
    a soft human who hasn’t come home —
    I like to believe you’d go looking.

    Even if you didn’t know him.
    Even if he was 29, grown, and complicated.
    Even if the world insists adulthood equals safety.
    (Trust me, it doesn’t.)

    Sometimes a brain goes haywire.
    Sometimes it lights itself on fire.
    Sometimes a person walks away naked into the snow
    and doesn’t even know they’re gone.

    I know this because once — I was the one who wandered.

    New Year’s Eve, 2008

    (which was technically still 2007 because time is a suggestion)

    I had just moved to Salt Lake City.
    A blizzard.
    No friends yet.
    Just two black labradors — Buddha and Stella —
    who carried my heart on eight paws like it was their holy job.

    I don’t remember the seizures.
    I only remember becoming conscious in the snow.
    Naked. Disoriented. Freezing. Alone.

    Not metaphorically.
    Actually and literally wandering the city,
    no memory of how I got there,
    no idea where “home” even was.

    I saw the glow of a Smith’s supermarket.
    Closed. Empty.
    But a payphone in the vestibule leaked just enough light
    to feel like a lifeline.

    I remembered one number.
    Collect.
    My mother.

    “Mom… I’m naked and cold and I don’t know where I am.”
    “Jennifer, you’re in Utah.”
    “Why would I do THAT?”

    She called emergency services from Maryland.
    She told them where to find her daughter
    wandering state-newborn and soaked in snow.
    They found me.
    They wrapped me in blankets.
    They got me home.

    And when we arrived?
    Every single light in my house was on.
    Front door wide open.
    Two dogs sitting guard — waiting.
    Holding vigil over whatever was left of me.

    If I hadn’t found that payphone,
    if I hadn’t seen those lights,
    if Buddha and Stella hadn’t anchored me to this world,
    if — if — if —

    I could have disappeared.
    Forever.
    Just like that.

    No alert. No network.
    No hey Utah, one of us is missing — go look.

    That is my WHY.

    That is why I search for August.
    Because someone should.
    Because his mother deserves not to wonder.
    Because he deserves to be alive and found if he wants to be.

    Because there is a world where that night was me
    and nobody knew to sound an alarm.

    Utah doesn’t have a PURPLE ALERT.

    But it should.
    Every state should.
    A Purple Alert for adults who wander,
    who are neurodivergent or vulnerable or lost in the fog of a burning brain.
    Not a punishment.
    Not a trap.
    Not a “gotcha.”

    Just a net.
    A community rally.
    A lifeline in the snow.

    It is not a miracle.
    But it could save one life.
    And that is enough.

    I have systems now.
    Layers.
    If I go missing again — alarms will go off.
    Texts will fly.
    People will look.

    Not everyone has that.

    August doesn’t have that.

    He is missing.
    Still.
    And I’m not ready to stop searching.

    If you’re reading this, you don’t have to know August to care.
    You just have to remember something simple:

    There was a night I could have been the one you were searching for.

    And every mother deserves to sleep knowing
    that if her child wanders naked into the snow —
    a city will rise like hands to catch them.

    💜 Utah deserves a PURPLE ALERT.
    💜 August deserves to be found.
    💜 And any one of us could be next.

    If this moved you — share it.
    Talk about Purple Alerts.
    Help me make noise.

    We’re still looking for August.
    Let’s not stop.

  • This is not the end of the story…

    Today I hiked in the sunshine with Clyde.

    It was a Tuesday — just a regular Tuesday — and we walked into the foothills the way we always do. Clyde investigated every sagebrush like he was conducting a scholarly examination of the state of the world. I let the sun warm my face and tried to remember that my body is real, and here, and mine. Two feet on the ground,

    While we were climbing, my phone pinged — an email from NBC telling me all about Bravocon in Las Vegas. All the Bravolebrities. The VIP lounges. The velvet ropes. The Important Lanyards. The whole spectacle.

    And I laughed.
    Because there was a time (blogger years are geological time) when I went to events just like that — shipped home boxes of absurd SWAG because it was too much to carry — and once rode an escalator completely naked:

    Down.
    Walked around.
    Back up.

    A perfect loop.
    A Tuesday.

    I texted my friend Lydia — who works for NBC — and asked her why we were not attending Bravocon, because obviously we would be trouble with a capital T and a glitter cannon.

    She laughed.
    She agreed.
    And I also reminded her — gently — that what I truly want is to be Snoop Dogg’s sidekick for the WINTER OLYMPICS in Italy in 2026.

    And the best part?

    Lydia could actually make that happen. Ratings Bonanza! xo

    This is what I mean when I say: life is bizarre and beautiful when you don’t pretend to be smaller than you are.

    After the hike, Clyde and I ran into Joesephine (hello, Love Beets) and through the ancient art of neighborhood witchcraft, we managed to skip the entire line at Coffee Garden and both got our coffees exactly the way we like them. No fuss. No apology. Just a little everyday magic.

    Joesephine looked at me — the real kind of looking — and said:

    “If you’re applying for jobs, only apply for dream jobs. Don’t shrink. Don’t back up. Don’t forget who you are.”

    And here is the part I have been circling around:

    I’m no longer at SLC Qi.
    The ending was sudden.
    I didn’t get to say goodbye.

    There’s sadness there.
    I spent years welcoming people, holding them, tending a community like a flame cupped in two hands.
    To leave without closure feels like walking out of a story mid-sentence.

    But this is not a story about loss.

    This is a story about return.
    To myself.
    To spaciousness.
    To possibility.
    To mischief.
    To joy.
    To Tuesdays that begin in the mountains and end with delicious espresso magic and olympic-level daydreams.

    This is the part where I remember:

    I have a lot to offer the world.
    And I am now available.

    So if you’re looking for:

    A storyteller.
    A community builder.
    A joy conspirator.
    A dog-led pilgrim.
    A woman who knows how to hold grief and glitter in the same hand—

    I’m here.

    Not under a bridge.
    Not disappearing.
    Not diminished.

    Just in the doorway, barefoot, grinning, hair a little wild, absolutely ready.

    The world cracked open a little this week.
    I felt the draft.
    I stepped toward it.

    So stay with me.

    We’re packing snacks.
    I’m even making sandwiches.
    Clyde is doing important sniff-based reconnaissance.
    The universe is already rearranging furniture.

    Italy just might be calling.
    Snoop Dogg is warming up.
    The glitter is unbottled.
    The mischief is humming.

    Let’s fucking go.