A May Day’s Musing

April was the reset month.

After making plans for the year, 2026, April was a time to reflect and reset after the first quarter of the year.

April didn’t go to plan.

April is always a funny, awkward, weird month for me, what with it being cut up with Easter holidays. And both my babies being born in April. This year was also another April birthday as we welcomed Nath’s partner into the fold.

April is something and nothing.

April, I thought it would be a good time to review the situation. It happened I suppose but not to the depth and width that I would have like. That I probably needed.

April has come and gone.

Come the end of the month and I don’t feel any further forward. And it feels like last year, when I couldn’t get traction after an elongated winter hibernation. Every month that came along was like a reset, a restart as I had no momentum.

I’m not sure if I’m that bad this year but there’s that lingering feeling of what am I doing? Where am I going?

April, Who am I?

I could blame the menopause as I feel as if I’m in that stage of life now. Everything is slowing down or giving up working ‘properly’ bodily, emotionally and psychologically.

Some days I’m missing the plot , dropping the ball, checking all the way out.

In these moments of losing myself, or any kind of sense of self and direction, I fall back into trusted routines and rituals.

I go back to the start, back to ‘go’ and don’t collect my £200. But restart anyway.

I invest in my morning rituals. Those habits that ground me and set me up for the rest of the day.

Waking up early, getting some fresh air into the house and my lungs. Making fresh ground coffee and grabbing my visual journal and letting everything spill onto the page. Get ready and walk out. Walk where? Anywhere. Just be outside and give thanks to be able to {BE}.

May. This is my plan for May.

To stick close to my morning routine and everything else can follow. The sea and Mother Nature are in there too, no doubt.

Hopefully, putting down this trusted track will help support getting me back to myself.

walking and talking with June, shares the load and eases the pain

Is it only Wednesday? What a week already and it’s only Wednesday.

Walking down the street, shooting the breeze and sun with June . I ask her, how come her words are so profound?

She nods and smiles.

It’s the living who keep the dead alive. It’s the living who keep the dead alive. They come alive when their words come through our mouths.

And on the other side Black girls are free – wherever/whatever that may be.

I wish I was on that Other side as this side sure is a lot to carry. A lot for one to carry. I moan. I whinge okay, girl’s got to let it out somehow.

Burdens, trauma, mournings and death are not supposed to be carried alone.

Sharing the pain, easing the pain. In community. I want me some of that.

Is it only Wednesday? My life, this week has been hard already and too much to bear alone.

i’m tired …

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Fanny Lou Hamer

a sea of skulls each one different from the next

after Ron Mueck


“Mass” by Ron Mueck at NGV Triennial

Here is a mass

of white upon white

skulls, tumbling

everywhere upon the galleries’ floor

a turning sea, resting

biting into another

black holes

shadowed sockets

promising questions without answers

a warning? a threat?

what remains long after our bodies have decayed

an impressive 100 skulls,

dwarfing visitors as they loom

here and here, cool, corridors

as catacombs above ground

forcing us to face our mortality, yes,

but also a certain care is needed in life for each other. Yes?