"She really tried to trick me!" A Reflection on Pronouns by Lia Grippo

I’ve been working hard at having consciousness around my pronoun use.  I’ve been striving to eradicate the pronoun "it" from my vocabulary in reference to all of my relatives; the trees and the grasses, the birds, the snails and slugs. And wind, and rain, and ancient stones. I’ve been working for years and years…and I slip all the time. 

But this morning, picking Toyon berries in the woods with two small girls, one of them walked face first into a thistle. She turned around and laughed, and said to me, “Look, she really tried to trick me and poke me in the face!”  When I heard that “she,” my heart rang with joy and gratitude. I may be imperfect in my efforts. I may slip up. But those efforts, imperfect as they are, are not wasted. There, at least, was evidence that the striving is worth it, not simply in healing my own relationships, but maybe in some small way, helping the young ones begin in intimacy, without the objectification of our relatives clouding our hearts and our actions.