Becky Tillett

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Fearless and Raw /November 1, 2016 by Rebecca Tillett

“Rarely do I encounter someone so fearless and raw. I’m starting to remember why I was so fucking drawn to you back then.”
— M.C.
Posted in quote   Tags: quote, Rebecca Tillett, words to remember
← A Kind of Happiness We Came From Something →
“Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.”
— Clementine Paddleford
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Featured Posts

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There is Only Light
There is Only Light
about a month ago

I am much more protective of my feelings on motherhood than anything else in life. I am still working on unraveling just why exactly. I suspect because they are not always overwhelmingly exuberant, which I feel mothers rarely see mirrored or represented outside the darkest recesses of our minds. We are inundated with nothing but the happy wonderfulness so there is a built-in shame in feeling anything but, perhaps.

Our bodies rise again
Our bodies rise again
about 3 months ago

and when our bodies rise again,
they will be wildflowers, then rabbits,
then wolves singing a perfect love
to the beautiful, meaningless moon.

Mina Rumi's Birth Story [Graphic]
Mina Rumi's Birth Story [Graphic]
about 6 months ago

Mina Rumi Tillett O’Shaughnessy was due October 29th, 2018 but she was born just past 2 in the afternoon on October 10th, very nearly 3 weeks early. This is the story of her early arrival.

The First Pregnancy
The First Pregnancy
about 11 months ago

“That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don’t know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it’s just the horizon – and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it’s suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you’ve had the right shots.” —Emily Perkins

Saguaro and Buckhorn Cholla
Saguaro and Buckhorn Cholla
about a year ago

When I became lost in the separation of child and mother, 
Of myself and the other
When I became lost you became found
You climbed on to the backs of birds and
sailed between land and space for miles
Your back covered in feathers as black as the sky on a moonless night
each freckle an understudy for the veiled stars

Domino y Como una Flor
Domino y Como una Flor
about a year ago

Although I've done more than my share of trespassing, it was a bit nerve-wracking doing it so close to home.

Love in the Moon's Shadow
Love in the Moon's Shadow
about 2 years ago

The trip was of course, wonderful, until the last 30 minutes of the drive home when Serenica's engine began stalling on us whenever we'd drop beneath a certain speed (hoping it's a minor fix!). Fortunately, after stalling out on several occasions and getting it restarted again, she died right inside our RV storage lot gate and wouldn't turn over.
“I guess my mom raised me right. She was very celebratory of her body. I never heard her once say “I feel fat”. Back when I was modeling, the first time I went to Italy, I was having cappuccinos every day, and I gained 15 pounds. And I felt gorgeous! I would take my clothes off in front of the mirror and be like “Oh, I look like a woman”. And I felt beautiful, and I never tried to lose it, because I loved it.” —Christina Hendricks —————————————— Model: @polyester_meets_acetate —————————————— #rebeccatillett #archive #beginnings #film #blackandwhite #woman #body #femalebody #love #appreciation #selflove #girlgaze #freethenipple #bodyimage #womenarebeautiful #model
Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her. —(From one of my favorite pieces of writing: You Should Date an Illiterate Girl by Charles Warnke) —————————————————- Model: @chelseighrosephotos —————————————————- #model #woman #colorado #cabin #read #nude #body #freethenipple #rebeccatillett #archive #summer #prose #youshoulddateanilliterategirl #love #bed #endcensorship
How capable are daughters of rising above the faults and limitations of our mothers? The pitfalls, weaknesses, and pride? To take the strengths and achievements and leave what remains to the illusion of the past? To truly give our entire hearts to not carrying the burdens forward, to perpetuate our dreams, and experiences without being tainted by the bullshit? How capable are daughters of loving their own daughters in big, vulnerable, terrifying ways that our mothers never could? The kind of love we know could kill us? The fearless, unrestrained kind, the kind children all crave and sometimes spend their lives waiting for? Seeking relentlessly as second nature. Always struggling to understand a more primitive language, always struggling to be understood. Oh daughter, I hope we speak the same language. ———————————————— #rebeccatillett #archive #woman #dual #mothers #daughters #mirror #reflections #selfportrait #body #girlgaze #freethenipple #writing #prose #lips #women #pastpresentfuture #love
When I became lost in the separation of child and mother, Of myself and the other When I became lost you became found You climbed on to the backs of birds and sailed between land and space for miles Your back covered in feathers as black as the sky on a moonless night each freckle an understudy for the veiled stars You rooted your limbs to the desert earth as thorns sprung from every pore Your skin becoming hard and thick and ripe with rain water as your body twisted and stretched in harmony with the saguaro and buckhorn cholla on the quenched landscape When I became lost you became found Returning yourself to the earth who birthed you Child and mother Without breach between each other . El fruto no cae lejos del árbol ————————————————— Model: @artxcassandraxelaine ————————————————— #arizona #model #rain #desert #nude #landscape #censorship #woman #freethenipple #rebeccatillett #southwest #february #saguaro #cactus #nature #life #beauty #prose #writing #love
Last night there was a dumpster fire across the street from our condo building, which is actually a perfect way to describe the buyers housing market in Denver right now (and this crappy neighborhood which we recently learned is the loudest area in the city). A dumpster fire. After falling in love with and bidding on 2 homes in the last week and barely losing both, I’ve learned some hard lessons: 1. No matter how well we think we’re doing and how much we’ve scrimped and saved the last few years, it’s not enough it seems. And 2. Pouring your vulnerable heart and soul into a letter to the seller practically begging to buy their lovely home doesn’t guarantee a damn thing, except feeling like a total rejected chump when 3. They typically always choose to sell it to the person flashing the most bribe money* in front of their face. Greed is thriving here, kids. The buyers enabling this behavior (usually out of desperation, I get it) and the extreme shortage of even semi-affordable homes are just as much to blame as the sellers. All I know is my heart is broken. It’s so hard falling in love enough with a house to commit to the next 30 years of paying for it, but remaining detached enough to not crumble into devastated pieces when someone with more hard cash in their pockets trumps your heartfelt bid. ——————————————— *otherwise known as the appraisal gap ——————————————— #denver #colorado #dumpsterfire #sellersmarket #killingme #wealthgap #thisplaceisterrible
Sometimes I’m simply too busy to spend much time on this app. Sometimes I’m just too lost in the uncertainties & doubts & not so shiny parts of my own life to endure the highlight reels of everyone else’s, & choose to stay away. I’m so hungry for authenticity & empathy & brutal human honesty; the day-to-day admission that more times than not, this shit’s hard & ugly & painstaking —- Tell me about lasting 5 minutes on the treadmill before gasping for air so hard you thought you’d die. Tell me about always hurting or aching. Tell me about how you got 2 hours of sleep last night because your baby would not stop crying. Tell me about how stuck you feel in your job or career or even the city you live in. Tell me about how scared you are you’ll never realize your dream of traveling to Italy or Greece or South America. Tell me about how impossible it is to beat an addiction. Tell me about how the 20th anniversary of your dad’s death is tearing you up inside. Tell me about how lonely it feels to have no one to share in that wreckage with you. Tell me about your fears of failure. Tell me about how much you worry you’re making the wrong decisions. Tell me about how bad you feel for not calling your mother enough. Tell me about your fears of never being able to retire. Tell me about how gratitude & discontent can coexist equally within you, neither ever victorious over the other. Tell me about how much you hate your body, & how beautiful or thin or fit you wish you were. Tell me how alone you feel in the world, how jealousy of others can consume you, how tired you feel all the fucking time. Tell me about giving up & forgiving yourself for it. Tell me that you know that nearly everything shared in places like this, is curated & choreographed & chosen specifically to make you feel never quite good enough & tell me how you’ve forgiven everyone for it, because no one wants to admit to feeling left behind and everyone just wants to belong. —- Even though I’m not here every day, liking or commenting, or observing the selected frames of your life from afar, I am still thinking of you, friends, & you are always on my mind. (& sometimes, for my sanity, I need it that way). ❤
Since I began my forsakebook project September of last year, I have posted nearly 2,000 (TWO-THOUSAND!) negative stories about Facebook and the shitty things fuckerberg does to us and society. (That’s more than 300 hundred stories a month, or ten stories a day if anyone’s counting—and yes, this project is time-consuming as hell, and I’ve yet to miss one mothafuckin’ beat, my friends. Hate is a powerful driving force.) And well anyway, this fantastic story written by Maria Bustillos for Medium is probably one of my favorites yet (and my god, out of 2,000 I definitely have a few!) You should read it, especially if you’re still using Facebook (I bailed for good at the end of 2017 but still beat myself up for using IG. “What the fuck are you doing, you dumb bitch??”
Is anyone opposed to me posting screenshots of my screenshots of my screenshots of my original ALREADY CENSORED post until Instagram finally bans me? Cuz that’s my new gameplan. 😁 #goals #instagraminception #donewiththisgarbage #fuckinstagram #fuckfacebook #fucksocialmedia #fucktheassholes #fuckcensorship #fuckdiscrimination #fuckgenderinequality #fuckfear #fuckshame #fucksurveillancecapitalism #freethenipple #getlaid #burnthisshitdown
How much of your brief little life do you live in fear? In anger? In sadness? How often do you say "I love you" ? How often are you paying attention? Staying informed? Standing up for something? How many injustices have you witnessed today alone? Did you feel more apathy than rage? What's your plan to rectify that? When exactly do you plan to start giving a shit? How often do you wake up in the morning and think "I just can't do it"? How many people have you ever hurt? Intentionally? Have you atoned? Made amends? Malevolence is repulsive and unsightly. Stifle it. Unintentionally? Made amends? Forgiven yourself? It's collateral damage, baby. Inhabit their pain and make it yours. Own it. Drown yourself in it until the suffocation is too much to bear and then let it go. When did you realize life wasn't fair? I was 4. I've spent the last 27 years in denial. When was the last time you fell? Are you still down? Get up, get up, get up. How often do you look at the bigger picture? Remember that life is so much fucking bigger than you? Yours is only one of over 7 billion puzzle pieces on this planet. This single planet in this one galaxy of hundreds of billions. Hundreds of billions, baby. Stay humble. And remember we're all mortal beings. Death comes for all of us. Enjoy the ride; transient and so beautifully concise as it so often is. ————————————————— #rebeccatillett #archive #writing #prose #life #love #mortality #portrait #blackandwhite #woman #wings #selfportrait #freethenipple #body #speak #injustice #pain #forgiveness #writingarchives #humility #death
But when will I see you again? And what happened to us anyway? ———————————————— #dailywriting #february #collage #digitalcollage #love #art #digital #iphoneart #denverartists #loss #rebeccatillett #sayit #life #mobileart
Once upon a time I gave someone my heart and she stomped on it. You have a similar story, don’t you? ——————————————- #nape #piercing #tattoo #neck #selfportrait #archive #napepiercing #rebeccatillett #corunum #deprofundis #love #noregrets #blackandwhite
But when I’m this high, I can almost smell and taste the sour and sweet in the memories of my past. Can it exist? A place I both yearn for but feel nauseated by? It smells like hot asphalt, and roasting green chile, and camel cigarette smoke, and chlorine, and rainwater and dirt, and gun powder, and the grass you smoke, and the grass you run around barefoot in, wet, and cracking vinyl, and hot pink plastic, and blood, and Boone’s farm, and menthol cigarettes. It tastes like pain and darkness stained with possibility and time. It tastes beautiful and devastating with a lingering aura of longing. Relentless longing. ————————————————- #dailywriting #collage #digitalcollage #emotion #feeling #raw #love #art #memory #memories #mobileart #rebeccatillett #denverartists #coloradoartists #expressyourself #nostalgia #yearning #forthepast