iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 12/10/2026

Today's #WIPSnips word is "cousin" but this 2-part excerpt is more so about my feelings surrounding my grandma's death and the parts of her last months that kept coming back to mind. #bvm #QueerWriters #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #memoir

Mostly, I've been thinking about conversations that happened when my cousin was staying with my grandma in the hospital. Like the day he asked me if I was coming back up there to visit my grandma again and I told him no because I had school. I don't know why but I almost
wish I had told him the full truth. I almost wish I had told anybody in my family. Maybe, I just want confirmation they understood.
I didn’t go back up there a second time once my mom came home on emergency leave because I knew if I did, I would never come back. Not to grad school. Not to my dream. Not to the near grasp I have on the layers of this calling that still evade me.
How could I finish grad school after watching my grandma die?
How could I live through this hell with her pain as my last living memory of her?
I was never strong enough to survive that with my hopes and dreams in tact. Maybe, I'm selfish or weak or a little bit of both, but I always felt — I still feel — like my grandma understood and was okay with it.
She never once asked me to take another trip up there and we talked every day until she couldn't. Even when she had my cousin call me in the middle of the night, when I felt so certain

it was the moment, she would ask and I’d throw everything away to be with her, she only told me she loved again and again until I told her she needed to rest.
She had to have known if she had asked me to come, I would have dropped everything for
her. She had to have known, I would have dropped out of school and never looked back.
I don’t know what I would have gotten out of explaining that to my cousin. Maybe, I just wanted someone to tell me explicitly it was okay. To make the hard choice instead of going to be with her. To believe that it was the choice she wanted me to make.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 27/09/2026

Today's #WIPSnips (brought to you by synonyms and vibes) is about some of the feelings I had in my last months of college about community, about speaking up, and about what graduation would mean for my relationships. #bvm #QueerWriters #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #memoir

It has felt like the greatest miracle of my life to come to college and meet more people than I can count who actually want to know the many complicated versions of me. Who don’t care if we met the first week of college or just this semester when deciding whether to treat me
like I belong. Now, with graduation looming like Death itself waiting to slice down the platonic intimacy I've spent my whole life dreaming of experiencing, every potential moment of speaking up about something uncomfortable feels like dragging my friendships to the guillitone [sic] myself.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 15/09/2026

Today's #WIPSnips is about some of the things I was grateful for immediately after my first romantic breakup. Things I'd still say I'm grateful for years after that relationship ended. #bvm #QueerWriters #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #memoir

Being with REDACTED, especially over the past few months, has taught me so much about listening to my body and my heart and showing up as my most authentic self and I'll always be grateful to her for that. But, I'm most grateful for the way experiencing deep romantic love for the first time has pushed me to let my friends love me in ways I used to think were impossible. Ways that, even through my heartbrokenness, are molding me into a better, more genuine version of myself who can hear my own voice even when it's soft and shaky and saying words I never wanted to hear from my own mouth.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

I officially crossed the halfway mark of my writing project goal today! I feel like I should celebrate but I'm sleepy and just want to eat something and watch the OC tonight. Maybe this weekend I'll think of something to do to recognize this milestone! #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #bvm #QueerWriters

A Project Goals pop up dated September 11, 2026. Current Project Word Count = 37,705. Words Left to Write = 37,295. Day Number = 89. Days Left = 111.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 06/09/2026

For today's #WIPSnips, I didn't have the word "sigh," so I went with "breath" instead which led me to an excerpt about why I chose to apply to a Women's Studies May Term in Oregon my sophomore year of college. #bvm #QueerWriters #WriteSky #memoir #WritingCommunity

It doesn’t make sense to me — this budding need that contradicts — but I cannot shake the desire to live 4,000 miles away for most of a month. I cannot ignore the way REDACTED makes attending a Women Studies May Term sound almost mystical. Almost like the sound and taste and texture of Spirit calling from the deep.
Through her words, I see myself in the woods of a state and region I have never known. I feel myself expanding in the way only a full breath can engender, sinking into a peace 19 credits of class does not allow. I feel the questions still wrapped around my heart from freshman year unraveling into the Oregon sky, making space for the answers I have yet to find.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 01/09/2026

Getting in a late night #WIPSnips posts because I haven't done one in awhile and I don't know the next time I'll be able to do one. I didn't have the word chip so I went with crack(s) instead as both make me think of kintsugi. #bvm #QueerWriters #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #memoir

After I break up with [redacted], poetry trickles out of me. After I cut her out of my life completely, poetry bursts from me like flood water through a dam. Everything I couldn’t say while we were dating. Everything I didn’t know how to say or how to want to say. I find language to say when I transmute it to poems. I write poetry like it’s the only way to keep on breathing. I write poetry like it’s sealing gold into all the cracks in my heart. I trace lines from present griefs to grief past and narrowly missed and to shadows of my mother and grandmother woven through all my relationships.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 29/08/2026

The way they made sure she was not in the finale of BMW after inconsistently utilizing her for years was bad enough but the way they handled her in GMW was egregious and I will never get over it.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 18/08/2026

This summer, I set out to write 25k words of my WIP. Yesterday, on my last night of summer break, I had reached over 30k! I'm not sure exactly what my writing progress will look like now that school is back in session but here's hoping I can knock out the 44k left by the end of the year. #AmWriting

A project goals tracker tab for August 16, 2026. Current Project Word Count is 30,824. Words Left to Write is 44,176. Day Number is 63. Days Left is 137.

A project goals project stage goals tracker tab for August 16, 2026. First Draft 1.5 is listed with a full status bar with a goal of 25,000 words by August 16, 2026. Stage is complete. First Draft 2.0 is listed with a partial status bar with a goal of 75,000 words by December 31, 2026. Days Remaining:137.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 12/08/2026

Today's #WIPSnips is the last paragraph in the last chapter of the second to last section of the book and is about hope in the midst of grief over a heartbreak I didn't want to see coming. #bvm #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #QueerWriters #memoir

I’m choosing to believe that the version of me on the other side of this heartbreak will be stronger, bolder, braver, and better. Because she’ll be able to hear her own authentic voice more clearly. Because she’ll understand more clearly that love does not exist in opposition to her voice, it exists alongside it, just like the friendships that helped me get to this place. If I don’t hold onto anything else months after this relationship ended, I pray that I can at least hold onto this.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 10/08/2026

Today's #WIPSnips is the beginning of a chapter about how trying to stop running from my very queer calling led me to apply for scholarships to attend, what was at the time, the Gay Christian Network Conference. #bvm #WriteSky #QueerWriters #WritingCommunity #memoir

Back in May, just before REDACTED moved away to be a priest in another state, she told me she knew that I was meant to be doing something bigger than being a part-time church assistant for the rest of my life. She knew there was some vocation my spirit longed for and she wanted to know what I was doing to get there. I haven’t told most people about that conversation. I couldn’t even bring myself to write about it after it happened because it almost broke me to be seen in that way in the midst of all my recurring frustrations about going between the church where I work and the church where I worship and not always being seen the way I crave. Not acknowledging it in a concrete way for all these months felt easier than admitting the truth she yanked out of me that day: I've been
running away again.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 10/08/2026

I don't even know when I'll have time to read this book but the Black LGBTQ+ history nerd in me is so excited to finally own this piece of Black gay literary history! #AddToBlackLGBTQ #Booksky

Photo of the book In The Life: A Black Gay Anthology edited by Joseph Beam held up by my hand

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 08/08/2026

This #WIPSnips about how it felt putting on the skin of my old life for the rest of the summer after meeting a freer version of myself during 3 weeks at a Women's Studies May Term is still relevant to how I feel about sharing my full self sometimes. #WriteSky #bvm #WritingCommunity #memoir

Nobody can handle the full story, so I am refusing to share it. Instead, I weave in and out of silence and honesty, secrecy and truth, fumbling to craft an image of myself and May Term that fits other people’s limits or needs. I dream of returning to college dorm life and ripping through the veil I have crafted. I fear not even Eastern can handle all of me.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 06/08/2026

For today's #WIPSnips, I didn't have the word "frontier," so I went to OneLook and decided boundaries would have to do. #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #bvm #QueerWriters #memoir

I spend so much of this year in a haze of grief where everything feels distant and less real than my pain but somehow, I see some things so much clearer in this brokenness. At Eastern's second LGBT Solidarity Stand, I speak in front of dozens of people and can see a future just around the bend where Eastern protects LGBTQ+ students and faculty. At the Center for Sex Ed’s training on their upcoming curriculum, I see a world where I don’t have to teach about other aspects of sexuality besides the ones I want to teach about. I speak to school counselors currently or recently in schools and the picture of what kind of counselor I will be starts building. I take multicultural counseling and understand the need for better LGBTQ+ competency amongst school counselors. I proactively protect myself from people hurting me in my grief. Somehow, I know I am in the worst year and the best year of my life to date. Still, I'd trade my clarity, my voice, my boundaries, and every connection this year of my life brings, if only I could have my grandmother back.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 29/07/2026

I'm very slowly making my way through Living for the Revolution by Kimberly Springer and am loving this quote from her interview with Barbara Smith. It describes my feelings to a T. 💙📚💭

"You do need reform simultaneous with radical or revolutionary kinds of demands and initiatives. But the difference, of course...between a radical and a reformist is that reformists think that those reforms are enough. And they have much more faith in a system that has proven itself to be motionless and exploitative..." - Barbara Smith as quoted in Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 22/07/2026

I did not have today's #WIPSnips word or even synonyms of it in my WIP, so I chose an excerpt featuring the word "grandma" since her death while I was in grad school had a huge impact on my life trajectory. #WriteSky #bvm #QueerWriters #WritingCommunity #memoir

It aches to try to talk about how God felt so near to me as I stood, hobbled over on the sidewalk, shaking with sobs, unsure if I'd be able to walk what should have been 10 minutes home the night my grandma died but I can’t stop asking where was God for my grandma in her time of need? When she called telling me she was scared. When she lost the ability to speak. Where was the God she prayed to and worshipped day and night?
I don’t trust most people to handle all the hurt and contradiction and uncertainty in me because I feel like I'm hardly handling it myself. I don’t even know how I'm making it day to day with these feelings. There’s really no fucking roadmap for grief like this, grief for the one person in the world whose love I never questioned even when I knew there were parts of me she could not accept.
I just keep fumbling through it. Dragging myself to work, to school, and church over and over again. Hollow. Fractured. Somehow still breathing. Somehow still moving forward. Somehow, convinced in some hidden place in my soul that one day the words I'm looking for will come.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 18/07/2026

For today's #WIPSnips, I'm doing something I've avoided since I started participating and including a portion of my book that is explicitly religious because, despite being very secular, this book is framed by my experience of having an (unwanted) religious call. #WriteSky #bvm #QueerWriters #memoir

In what felt like the blink of an eye, I found myself sitting next to her, letting her fall into my arms, and rocking her gently. And as we both cried, I found myself weirdly brought back to what Pastor REDACTED had told me last summer about what God had called me to do. Even though I didn’t end up saying anything to her as I held her, even though I just sang over her and prayed the words would inject the love of God into whatever hurt she carried, the whole experience still felt like a step in the right direction towards understanding who God has made to be.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 10/07/2026

Today's #WIPSnips comes from a chapter about that time I decided to write a blog post calling my alma mater out for not doing more for queer students and faculty and it became a much bigger deal than I thought it would. #bvm #QueerWriters #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #memoir

I keep thinking back to the beginning of the month, staring at my laptop, and choosing to write that blog post calling out Eastern’s queer-exclusionary definition of justice. In those moments I wrote and published that blog, it felt like I was some alternate version of myself. Someone brave and bold and systemically aware in the ways all the women who post in that FB collective I've joined for women of color seem to be. Someone who didn’t care what Eastern would think or say or do if they saw my blog post because of my need to ensure no other queer students feel as emotionally unsafe there as I did the past two years. Someone no longer worried
about the risks of being out to the college community I both love and resent.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 04/07/2026

I realized my previous #WIPSnips have both been about grief, so today I wanted to share a more positive snippet from a moment that healed part of the heartbreak I expressed in my first shared snippet. #bvm #QueerWriters #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #memoir

It was the way she told me in her own way what I’d always known but struggled to admit because I felt so unworthy: she’s not like CENSORED. She won’t drop me because I care too much, because I'm too far away, because I'm often needy and afraid. It was almost as if she'd heard every voice in my head that has told me on repeat to
silence and shrink myself because I would never deserve the freedom of being full and open and brave and lovable. She heard them and then she cast them out one by one. If we had more time, I would have told her about this new version of me too. The one who is learning how to be honest about who she could love. It was the first time in our
friendship that I ever felt like I could. But now, I feel like we have a new foundation that will make it easier the next time we talk. I feel like love is bigger than everything I've feared. I feel more deeply than ever, it has not been foolish to hold onto hope.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 29/06/2026

Today's #WIPSnips excerpt comes from one of the hardest chapters I have written so far and features a passing reference to my favorite singer, Tori Amos, whose music held me through a grief I'm still coming to terms with all these years later. #WriteSky #bvm #QueerWriters

Even now, feeling adrift in my grief, I've been listening to “Metal Water Wood" by Tori Amos, to hold me together, which feels like a roundabout way of leaning on Taekwon-Do. Leaning on everything he taught me about moving through space and mind over mattering the
body. I think the hardest part about all the unfinished business wrapped up in this grief is that even knowing what I know now, I still don’t know if I would be able to make completely different choices if I had the chance to go back. I can’t tell if experiencing this loss in this way is better or worse than whatever I would have felt if I'd taken the risk of learning how he felt about the woman I grew up to be.
I want so much to be the type of person that could have made a different choice. The type of person who could be authentic no matter the potential cost. Sometimes, I even see that version of myself show up, like when I proactively told my students I needed some grace because I was grieving him. Or when I wore my bisexual pride earrings while working with students over the summer. But after all this time, I still don’t know how to make her stay. I wonder if I ever will.

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Angélique "Angel" Gravely @angelgravely.blacksky.app · 24/06/2026

Somehow, it feels very true to my nature that my very first #WIPSnips post is on the word "finale" (or, in my case, "end" since finale doesn't show up in my current writing project). #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Part of me keeps thinking maybe I overreacted. Maybe I should have just waited to see his response or texted him again. Maybe he’s not ignoring me. Maybe he’s just too busy or he got a new phone or something bad happened that's keeping him from getting to me.
The other part of me knows that this is really the end for us, though, because this isn’t like any of the times we fought or cut each other off before. I don’t think time, distance, or a conversation can fix what went wrong this time. No matter how much I want it to. I really bared my soul to him in that letter I sent in the spring. Really told him every fear I
had about our relationship and losing him and how I would give anything - do anything - to stop him from slipping away the way I felt he was. And his response was to just not show up for me ever again with no explanation. Now, I'm left here trying to focus on the future and consider maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe, we've squeezed out all we could from our relationship and it was time to move on as we step into whatever life after high school has for us. Maybe, this was the only way to break the cycle of breaking up and making up we’ve been on since we were 13. But I miss him.

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