Author: Sheree

Lighting Up Fear

| Sheree

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

This wisdom speaks right to my core and has me throwing my head back shouting an all mighty, “YES”. For the past few weeks, I have been gripped by fear about what I’m attempting to do here, as I develop Living Wild Studios into a creative business coming from the heart. I have questioned what right I have to imagine this, to action it, to even believe in it.
Who is going to be interested in working with me or buying my creations? How can creating stuff just for me to know myself deeper, be of any use to anyone else?
I know my fears stem from what happened to me nearly two years ago ( you can read all about it in rubedo). I know my fears have set up road blocks and excuses. Paralysed me. But I’ve been framing these fears around the idea of failure and never being good enough.
But this quote above has me thinking, that my fears, my reluctance to move forward with plans and creating new work could just as much be because of my light. I could be just as much frightened of my light as of my darkness. Of who I might become, becoming.
This idea is turning around in my gut, like clothes in a washing machine. An idea I hold it up to my light within and it matches. It sparks.
It is easier, more acceptable to play it small rather than take up more space with my glorious light. It is judged as being showy, distasteful and loving oneself, if you claims your full potential and shine.
Why and when did loving yourself, loving your own unique light in this world become such a bad thing? I think when society’s way of operating became one of competition rather than community, oppression instead of equality. When a few decided power would be better in the hands of the few, for the greater good you must understand.
I feel my power. I have a strong, bright light to shine in this world. A light that many have attempted to put out. But this little light of mine keeps on shining. And when it comes down to it, that’s all I want to do. Shine my light. If in this practice it serves others, then so be it. That does make my light shine brighter, so it can reach further, into the hearts of those who might have given up on themselves or those who never tasted freedom.
Naming our fears loosens their grip on our hearts. Identifying and acknowledging our fears starts to take away their power.
Here I am again, showing up, using my creativity to explore myself. If in the process of me exploring my fears has helped you to start naming and identifying your fears, then that’s a double whammy in my book. A result that is well worth showing up, practicing getting through my fears one step as a time for. Onward, with this little light of mine lighting the way.

Adrift in the Wilderness

| Sheree

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Surrounded by white upon white. Cold biting at all exposed flesh. Eyes search for some familiar sign even though this is my first visit to the Westfjords. Something, anything to anchor the self in place as I float unhinged from all that I know and all that I feel. Fear swims into this pause. Into this solitude. What happens if I don’t like what I find in this time and space alone? What if I don’t like who I am?

on one of lampposts
along the slushy street
a raven grates out kraaa

 

April – A Poem A Day

Untitled

| Sheree

Land of the Gods

Dry stone walls, covered in neon moss.
Soft hill voices leaking memories.
Brown churning water; a river of lost lives.
Yorkshire, the land of the gods.
The God was my father. A stowaway.
A mahogany West Indian.
Yellow palmed hands, large hands.
In the hot back room of our maisonette,
he tended tomato plants.
Quietly, he let me watch.
I watched his hands as they caressed
shiny leaves, squeezed and plucked
scarlet orbs of sweetness.
I thought. These hands can’t be the same
hands that slice into my legs when he’s vex
when I ask why
when I won’t be told.
These hands create life.

Nevermore( footnote After Edgar Allan Poe)

do I want to hear his last words
to see her last moments captured on film

nevermore
do I want to hear shots ring out
to see her body go limp under undue force

nevermore
do I want to hear murder was an accident
and then see the victim dragged through the mud and blood

nevermore
do I want to hear it was self-defense
and feel injustice gnaw my core

nevermore I say nevermore

should we stand by watching
a generation lost to the shadows

nevermore I say nevermore

should we allow history to be repeated
and rewritten

nevermore I say nevermore

black lives do matter

Bodies

The other day out walking, I see a crushed animal in the road.
At this level of blood, guts and fur, they all look the same.
I work out it was a rabbit just because its ears are still intact.
I wonder if I was run over by a heavy goods lorry if someone, anyone would recognise me?
Maybe it would be a process of elimination. Who lives near here? Who walks this path? Who belongs here?
Or maybe my black skin would be recognised, would betray me.

Racism is a wound that keeps opening. Again and again. Do I open it? Do you? I’m not sure I have a choice in showing you
my pain and suffering. As a representative, I carry such a huge weight. Expectations of a mountain to climb to reach you.

White Finger

I remember one time cutting my finger and leaving the plaster on too long that when I eventually took it off my finger was white. I run to mum shouting with about finally being white. Mum gets angry. Mum never gets angry. She tells me never to think like that. I’m sure what ‘that’ is.
She never explains. She never did.
It is much later that I come to understand the deep shadow of my heart. My deepest longing. My deepest fear. My internal racism.(85)

Childhood

I had a protected childhood. I’m not sure if that was out of love or ignorance. Poverty or pride. All the time growing up in Bradford, I didn’t know about the wild moors surrounded us. We didn’t have a car.

Knowledge opens doors. Shines a light into dark corners and valleys.

Most day going to school I would take a different route. This was freedom and solitude and wild. I walked spirals of pathways from my home to school and back again. Behind our flat was a school, a church, a hospital. I roamed around the buildings inside and out. No one noticed me. I was invisible.

I became visible when I got tits. Andrew Ryan, my first boyfriend, said we should keep us going out a secret. We met behind the garages so he could feel my tits. I let him because at least he wanted to be with me, even if no one else knew.

Thomas Biggins, another boyfriend, said on walking behind me into the Dene, that I had good child bearing hips. I took it as a compliment at the time. Now I’m thinking he was just spouting an age old attitudes towards black women as being hyper-sexual, promiscuous and breeding machines.

Footnote

All that remains are two chimneys.
Two, stark sandy columns that draw the eye.
Up close, they grow green, surrounded
by ancient oaks and horse chestnuts and spirits.
Cotton over water. Water over cotton.
Into gloomy valleys all over this fair land,
I carry a ship in my shoulders.

Alone in the Darkness

Walking down the dark hill. Darkness all around.
Raw wind rustling leaves. Think you sense someone behind. Instant fear that sends sharp waves of prickling fear up your back, up your head, under your hair. Nipping at your flesh, crawling around your skull and cheeks and jaw. It is your own shadow bobbing along behind you, beside you, ahead of you.

Sisterhood

For the past three years, I haven’t spoken to my sister. This stems from finding out via Facebook that she was a grandmother. I called her out about this, asking how come she had told me nothing?

What do you think, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for the last few months?

Apparently, my nephew isn’t taking responsibility for his son. I’m not to mention it. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

I apologised to my sister, if she felt that I hadn’t been there for her when she needed support. But I can’t agree with what’s happening. I wouldn’t be silenced.
Stop talking to me in your teacher voice, she said and hung up. We haven’t spoken since.

How I can I talk with, about and for my black sisters when I can’t even talk with my own sister?
I confide in white women. I share my experiences knowing that they haven’t experienced racism. There doesn’t seem to be any judgement when I share my pain. Whether I’m black enough. Or not.

What happens to black people, sometimes, is so intense that it’s frightening to share with each other. So many silences, things left unsaid. The language to explore our internal worlds and our vulnerabilities and our fears is missing.

Liminal Space

At the sea shore, I find myself again and again. Like a selkie in reverse, I strip off my skin and dive back into the sea, returning home. Becoming instinct and fluid and free.

Work in Progress

Photowalks

| Sheree

PhotoWalks, care of Vivienne McMasters, keep me sane. All I do is walk out there, with no aim in my feet, with my iPhone. And I pay attention. It takes me outside of me as well as inside of me. It sits me into my body. And I love them.

This morning took me towards the sea. My favourite walks are always by the sea.

 

 

threads

| Sheree

threads

#liberatedlines:: amplify :: day 6 #threads

Yeah man, I’m a strong black woman. Independent, resourceful, push me down and I get back up. ‘Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down. ‘ As the advert used to say.

Hell I’ve even been proud to state that I’m an independent black woman. But that’s not my whole story. This is not all of who I am. Something I have to explore and step out from behind this cardboard cut out of a woman of colour. And something those looking at me and judging have to realise; I am more than just one story. I have many multicoloured threads running through me that I am just starting to be brave enough to explore.

I’m an introvert. I hate crowds. I’d rather stay quiet that speak up and out.

I was a girl who idolised her daddy even though he beat her to keep her quiet.

I was a young woman who didn’t want to be like her mama; a virgin till married and then only being with one man for her life. So I slept around at Uni so I could at least feel I had variety. Even if none of them touched my heart or my ‘g’ spot.

I was the career woman following education’s path right up to doctorate level thinking at least then they would listen to me. Take me seriously. I was wrong.

I am the mother who is constantly second guessing herself if she’s doing a good enough job or not. This time, this energy could be better off just giving them my attention. My love.

I am the wife now who lives like a virgin.

I married a man who each day expects me to be that strong black woman. When each day all I want to do it climb into my woman cave and write. I want to dive deep inside of me to give in to all parts of me. To embrace the light and the dark. I want to be able to play in my shadows 24/7 and not have to worry I have to come back out to make the tea or go do the school run. I want to be free of this strong black woman hashtag so I can break apart, break down with the aim to build myself up in a different way. In a way more aligned with my soul, my heart, my voice. Not influenced by any outsiders or societal situations but staying true to the multicoloured threads that take their hue from the rivers flowing inside of me. Wild and free.

#liberatedlinesamplify

ready to roar

| Sheree

iberated lines :: amplify :: day 5 #readytoroar

she’s been small and silenced and caged for so long that when everything crashes down around her, she is lost. she doesn’t know what to do or say or be.

scared of this nothingness and fearful of stepping into freedom, into the arena on her own terms; pure and clear and naked.

she curls into a tight ball, curls in on herself.

tight in her protective sphere, she hears her heart beating. knows she lives. she gives thanks. breath in breath out

away from the public glare, she starts to sense a fluttering in her core. a gentle coaxing of wings, caressing out waves of love for herself.

these feelings talk with her heart. small sounds. quiet whispers echoing through blood and bone and skin. there be singing. singing to herself of the trees and seas. singing with her shadows. singing through her shadows.

and through the process, she’s uncurling, unfolding until like the blousy blooms of peonies, she’s standing in her truth. beaming out her light; a beacon. a guide for others to see and to feel and to be.

#liberatedlinesamplify #readytoroar #atthecrossroadsofshouldandjust #hygge #alchemy #compassion #patience #water #authenticsheshe #beyourownbeloved

ready to roar

naming my bones

| Sheree

naming my bones

liberated lines:: amplify :: day 2 – Can you class teeth as bones? As when the North wind blows and gusts straight through me as if I am air, I smile. Later my teeth ache, like the cold has seeped into my teeth, into my bones.

The cold can nestle within my womb for days. I feel it bedding down. Not bothering to warm through. Instead content on chilling me from the inside out. Right through to the tips of my fingers and toes.

I look at my hands and wonder. You can have more than 206 bones, you know? Unnamed bones that develop in areas of friction and tension and stress.

I feel unnamed bones in the in the palms of my hands. Because I’ve always tried to please, giving away parts of myself in the hope of being validated and loved.

I feel unnamed bones in the soles of my feet. Because I’m trying to walk back to me now. Trying to get back to my whole self; the self who was lost behind masks others forced upon me and the ones I took up eagerly, if it meant I belonged.

Gut and bone and bleed. I name these as authentic me. Sinewy strong fibres knitted close together. Taking up the slack. Gut and bone and bleed. Lined up like rows of teeth, ready to do battle, ready to bear my soul. Gut and bone and bleed.
#liberatedlinesamplify #namingyourbones #authenticsheshe #alchemy #belovedbodypeace #hygge #practice #wildsoulwoman #voice #standinginmytruth #patience #compassion

there is darkness

| Sheree

there is darkness

liberated lines:: amplify :: day 1

There is a darkness … I am the mother who sleeps in late because I skywrite my intention days before. It’s Monday morning and I’m playing hooky from expectations. I scrunch my pillow up closer feeling into the silence of the house, holding my dreams of the day.
I am the tender of others even when alone. As I put the washing in, prepare the evening meal, wash the dishes, dry the dishes, turn the dishes over. I am a healer while still healing myself. But isn’t that always the way?
I am bed and pen and computer and toffee-nut coffee. I navigate the bends in the river, I want to say with grace. But I know with strength.
In the darkness, I bed down, make myself cosy as I know here, layers of self echo and shed, amplify and shimmer.
Right down to the bone and soul, there is alchemy with patience, alchemy with compassion. I am becoming, always becoming into my truth.

#liberatedlinesamplify #throughouttheday #hygge #alchemy #intothedarknight #compassion #patience #authenticsheshe #liberatedlines #belovedbodypeace #alchemy #atthecrossroadsofshouldandmust

In Bed With SheShe

| Sheree

in bed with sheshe

I know it’s not all about me …

I took my mother-in-law to her radiotherapy session this morning. Her last one. Yes!!! She got to ring the bell afterward; the sound telling the world that she has completed her treatment.

We do not know as yet if all was successful. But we accept this moment with joy. She has undergone her treatment with courage and grace. And I’ve told her as such.

So when I say I know it’s not all about me … I’ve come home and I’m just so tired. I am exhausted and have just come to bed to rest. To switch off and recharge.

And there is a part of me that wants to beat myself up for being such a wuss, for feeling so tired. I know there is a sense of shame because I feel I have no right to feel this way. I haven’t just undergone cancer treatment. I haven’t been fighting cancer like my mother-in-law for the past year or so.

I’m trying to quieten this critical voice and just let things be; to acknowledging my tiredness which is an accumulation of a number of things. To stop beating myself up if I reach for the next chocolate or chuck of crusty bread instead of that green smoothie or handful of nuts and seeds.

I’m practicing letting it all be and surrendering to how things are, how I feel. How exhausted I am. And it’s hard. It means stripping away a lifetime of beliefs and behaviours that include holding up everything for everyone. That’s the way I should be, the way I’m expected to be by myself and others.

I cried today in the hospital when I saw that frail old woman almost skip into that treatment room. She couldn’t get it over with quick enough. I cried for what she’s been going through. For her family, for us, for our lives, for our fears and for our love.

I cried in surrender as I couldn’t carry on any more with everything packaged up so tight inside, a practice I’m so expert at as a means of just getting on with things.

I realise that the world will keep on spinning if I decide to take a rest now. Life does go on with or without me. With or without you.

This is starting to sound like a Jerry Springer moment, but really take care of yourself so you can take care of others.

I’m learning this and practicing this.

Trying to silence those voices of shame, guilt and selfishness. It’s not. It’s self-care. It’s self-compassion. It’s self-love.

#hygge #alchemy #authenticsheshe #compassion #practice #belovedbodypeace #cancertreatment #family #love #shame #surrender #voice #letitbe #letitgo