The gesture of my teenage daughter and I washing our hands together enacts a desire for healing. In an effort to reconcile a changing, intimate relationship with my daughter, I reflected on how I unconsciously uphold oppressive structures of power, especially as a parent. How does power and intergenerational pain move through me? How do I ask for forgiveness and how can I forgive those that have harmed me? In working with efforts around reconciliation with my parents and children, I have come to realize that some things are very hard to speak. An embodied action can be more powerful than words.

it takes friction
to create a lather
holding this body
in a slippery space
between us
vanishing as we
listen washing
what can’t be seen