Loud Mouth Brown Girl

I’ve been keeping this project under wraps until it was ready, but here we are! I’ve written or collaborated, on at least, on two book projects this year. One was my own, and the other was for Surrey Shares. Today we’re aiming to get onto the best seller’s list, so if you’re interested in reading about the town that raised me, and the place I felt most safe…until I didn’t, then this is the book for you!!!

I’ve made some new friends run into some old triggers that I never thought I’d ever see again, and now I am finding I’m not sure what to do next. So I’m focusing on making my new apartment, a new home by doing all the things I found I was incapable of doing in my old house.

I’m finding that in this new space I am genuinely healing. The other day a neighbor came up to me, for no reason that anyone I know can think of and told me she wouldn’t talk to me anymore. None of us know why and none of us are asking, mostly because none of us care.

Here’s why

I live in a place where everyone around me has been traumatized by something in their past. Everyone. We all have trauma, and so we understand that some of us just don’t vibe. It’s not that we don’t want the best for each other, it’s just that we don’t like being around each other, and so we give each other space.

It’s fucking healing, okay? And mostly if I’m honest, I just met this person, so if for reasons they choose not to explain, they don’t want me in their life, I’m not going to cry about it. I’m going to move on.

I no longer cling to folks the way I used to. Family isn’t made up of people you choose, I don’t believe that anymore either.

I believe that family is made up people the universe deliberately puts into your life, their the ones that stick through no matter what and don’t give a fuck what anyone says behind your back, because they’re too busy making sure folks know better than to speak behind your back.

I have people like that in my life, and I have people in my world – read not my life – who think they can gaslight me, and after everything I’ve been through it’s terrifying to see how cold and cruel I can be, to those who cross me.

Recently a neighbor did a thing and treated me like shit before I even knew she did the thing, and when I confronted her she said “I thought you were picking sides,” I wasn’t, but I did because I didn’t like how she treated me. I won’t even look at her now.

It’s not that I’m being mean. It’s that I’ve decided how I want to be treated, and when I am not treated that way I no longer make time for folks.

I am setting boundaries, something I was incapable of doing when I wrote these stories and put them into books. I was “so” hyperfocused on writing, that I wasn’t letting anything stop me from writing but I also wasn’t living.

So…before you ask when the next one’s coming out…don’t.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl