[Updated to add new memorial posts. They are underneath the Basho poem at the bottom.]
I think Niki Massey would be astonished by the lives she touched and the impact she had. When you’re living in a country that values white skin, conventional beauty, thinness, able bodies, religion, heterosexuality, and political conservatism, it’s horribly difficult to feel good about yourself when you’re none of those things. But because Niki defied pretty much every convention ever, and wasn’t quiet about it, she was the kind of person who means the world to need an advocate. She was someone who didn’t pull punches. She was someone who didn’t suffer injustice in silence. She was someone who felt the fear and didn’t always succeed but tried her heart out anyway. She was someone who kept going no matter how much she wanted to quit. She was everything to us.
A lot of people have memorialized her beautifully. I’ll be sharing as many of those memorials as I can over the next few days. Today, we’ll start with one of my favorite pictures of her, and the blog posts I’ve found so far. Please do feel free to add links to any of them at Ronja Addams-Moring’s Facebook post or in the comments here. And if you want to add a message to those who are remembering Niki, please do comment at my Facebook page. I’ll be collecting those tributes into a post later this week.