challenge

Circulating My Preoccupations

| Sheree
Visual Journal 21/05

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been granted a scholarship to participate in Susannah Conway’s Journal Love Club for a whole year.

It’s a gift that just keeps on giving. I get a prompt everyday, a growing community on Mighty Networks, people sharing practice and a live zoom call once a month.

Usually, I start my day with my visual journal practice as above and then by the time I’ve done that the prompt from Journal Love Club has come through so I can continue and respond to that.

Journal Love Club Prompt 21/05

In the past, I’d be on my case for using so many different journals. I would also get confused by what went where and then lose stuff, not knowing where to find the gems. Now, I’m much more of a mind that if I’m showing up to the page, at all or once or twice or more, it’s all a win.

The common denominator between all these different journals is me. And this practice helps me along on this journey of getting back to me. The core me. The authentic me.

After today’s prompt which asked me to look over my recent journal entries to pull out themes; what’s been grabbing my attention, this entry came out:

“Nothing is a surprise when I look back and see what issues and ideas keep circulating the journal pages.


Identity, fear, never being good enough.

But then I started to switch things up in response to this prompt.
I’ll never to good enough in a system which is stacked against me.
In a system wired for us to aim for perfection even when we know it doesn’t exist.
But more so, if it did exist it wouldn’t be available to me anyway.

So knowing this I surrender. I let go. Not give up, but surrender means not allowing time and energy to strive for this, to even fight it.
But to use this energy and channel it into the things that are important to me. Not even taking into account the system, the white gaze but making my audience that little Black girl inside and the one in my house now.

And maybe through this I can heal as well as be a better mother to myself and my daughter.

That feels good, that feels better.”

Acting as if it were possible*

| Sheree
Visual journaling 20/05

I’m feeling a shift in how I’m showing up in the world. How I use language. How I communicate and connect with self and others.

It isn’t just happening now, this isn’t the beginning. There can be no true beginnings because we always come to things, projects, conversations, issues in the middle of our experience of it.

We’ve already been thinking about it, feeling it, ruminating about it. So when we say we’re starting on something or embarking on something, it’s not the beginning but the next step on that journey we began many many moons ago.

So when I say I’m feeling a shift, the foundations of such were laid down and built upon from time. Maybe it’s just a case of seeing and feeling the repercussions or effects of it now. Things are become tangible now.

But yes, I’m believing and acting as if it were possible. That anything is possible. Always.

After a quote by Angela Davis.

Words

| Sheree
Visual journal 18/05

Sometimes lined paper and a pen are enough for the words to flow.

FoldOut

| Sheree
Visual Journaling 17/05

I’m quite partial to a foldout page. An add on. There’s a sense of mystery, secrecy and magic from a foldout or two!

One Tired Goddess

| Sheree
Visual journal 16/05

This past week has been way too busy for my liking. But it was to my liking in a way as I found it stimulating and so much food for thought.

What I need now is rest though in order to process it all and at some point it did get to stimulation overload.

My creative pot over flows and I need to channel this into something. Something I produce in order to process this last week somehow. as well as how it sits with my overall practice and how I show up in the world.

Showing up at the page each day has helped; mining my thoughts and feeling and reactions onto these pages has been a support.

I just need some more space and rest now to integrate it all. Yes that’s what I’m seeking integration.

And again this is where my visual journal steps up/ in/ through me to support this journey of becoming.

A Hot (PINK) Mess

| Sheree
Visual journal 15/05

To you it might look a mess.

To you it might look like someone’s puked on the page.

To you it might feel out of whack.

To you it might make no sense.

To me it feels like progress.

Eyes Wide Open

| Sheree

Sometimes I use my journal space for a rant. For a deep and meaning conversation with myself. It’s the space I can go to and be totally me and know I won’t be judged.

My visual journaling space is a time and place I can come to make sense of things that are bothering me. Which have me thinking and sometimes hurting. But it means getting it out on the page, gets it out of circulating around my body, mind and soul and pulling me down and holding me back.

Within these pages which are a mix of paints and images and words, I make sense of the world on my own terms. There might be other people’s voices that invade this space, but for the majority of time my voice reigns supreme. There is no where else in this world where my voice holds such sway as it does within this visual journal practice.

I get to try out different voices, registers, ideas and know it’s safe to show up here in all my fucked up glory.

This has been so appreciated and welcomed in these last few weeks when I’ve been stepping out more into the physical world as well as into new, expansive virtual adventures.

Knowing that I can come home to the page, after each encounter, good and bad, gives me permission and confidence to show up out there more and more as my whole self.

Improvisations

| Sheree
Visual Journaling 13/05

I forgot to add some paint to the page. Things got busy, I didn’t get to return to the page until the next day. Flicking through this altered book , I find I have no pages covered with paint. What to do?

I improvise. I still want to feed my soul with colour, this bright and breezy morning, so I cover a few pages with coloured papers and sticky notes. I cover the text of the original book and there you have it a blank canvas ready for images and texts and stickers and washi tape.

Whatever it takes to get out what’s inside myself onto the page daily, I will do.