People, friends who come through for you in your hour of need. Who offer their help when you don’t even ask.
Friends who are genuine in their offers of helps and support.
Mutual Aid.
Like the friends who came to my rescue when I needed to move house on very short notice members little money in the bank.
These friends helped me move. And you know who you are. We became a 3 car convoy, back and forth from the old flat to the new flat, all in a few hours.
It was such a god(dess) sen. It was Black Madonna providing in my time of need. She moved with us, carrying each box or suitcase or plant.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Roche (Our Lady of the Rock), Our Lady of the Side-Eye, Black Madonna of Mayres
I think the big one here is Black Madonna showing me it was time to leave my marriage of over 20 years.
This is wisdom and insight .
I turned to my ex-husband and asked him for help. It was during the pandemic. I was struggling with how our world had been turned upside down with Covid, home schooling, pivoting with work and the brutal murder of George Floyd. I was struggling and was vulnerable and scared and in need of support.
I laid it all on the line. I was going down and needed a life-raft. My pleas fell on deaf ears. He could not help me.
So I called upon my own strength. I took the sacred act of saving myself and started to make the plans to leave. Black Madonna showed me the way, by showing me that I had to love myself. Love myself enough to save myself.
I ask the question, how do I know that this was the presence of Black Madonna in my life, showing me the way? Faith and trust. I trusted in myself enough to take the leap. I had my fears but I jumped anyway, I trusted in myself to find a way. I trusted in the universe or my ancestors or someone or something having my back.
I’m choosing to feel that this is Black Madonna. I know it’s me, I made the decision and acted upon it. but I’m not taking all the credit. There is someone or something out there who has my back.
What is spirituality if not believing in the divine, in our spirits and souls. I’m choosing to believe that God is a Black Woman. Because when God is a Black Woman, there is no conditional love. It is unconditional and unlimited. Black Madonna loves me in all my fucked up glory.
On the early morning of 13 May, a call went out that someone was in difficulty in the sea off Brighton Beach. When the rescue team got to the beach, the bodies of three women were found.
I’ll be honest. At first, I thought this was a tragedy involving (white) women with the use of the word ‘women’ and with the media coverage this disaster was receiving reinforced this assumption.
Later these women were identified as three sisters. Three black women, Jane Adetoro, and Christina Walter and Rebecca Walter.
What a heartbreaking tragedy to happen within one family. My heart and deepest sympathy goes out to their family and friends.
In a heartbreaking tribute, their father Joseph said: “No words can truly describe the pain of losing three daughters in the prime of their lives. Jane, Christina, and Becky were more than daughters to me; they were my joy, my strength, and the beautiful light that filled our family with happiness and love.”
Sussex Police are investigating this tragedy and believe at this stage that there are no suspicious circumstances or criminal intent in connection to these deaths.
I don’t know how they can come to such findings so early in their investigations. And should keep an open mind. The only consolation is that the police and media are actively investigating and reporting the death of these three black women as far too often, as I’ve shared recently, the disappearance, murder and deaths of black women in suspicious circumstances is ignored, neglected and dismissed.
I hope the mysterious and tragic deaths of these women is soon to be investigated and explained for the sake of their families as this is such a sad sad case of affairs.
I started reading this book, hardback, a few years ago from the university library. It got recalled before I could finish it.
I was reading it after reading about how for decades the remains of two MOVE children had been kept at Penn Museum and later Princeton University illegally.
How they were using these children’s remains ( bones) in an online course for demonstration purposes as if they were nothing. Just fine specimens to illustrate a scientific point and not actually once being human and that their family was still alive and none the wiser. They thought they’d buried their children after they were bombs but piece of them were missing. And this wasn’t a mistake or oversight, the family had been lead to believe that all remains had been released to them to lay their children to rest.
I took an interest in this case along with the fascination of bone collecting/ salvaging/ pillaging to study and use as evidence of race hierarchies.
I even started a creative hybrid piece around it all as a means of trying to understand it as well as shed light in the continued extraction and exploitation of black bodies even beyond death.
This piece was originally published on Medium with Binderful back in 2020. I’m sharing this piece here because I was reminded that it existed over there when I made some crackers and jam this morning. It was good to revisit it. I share it with you now.
During these quarantined times with Covid-19, I’m trying to find way to support my well-being. I’m making sure I take the time and space to tune into my needs and wants, beside those of my family. I’m finding joy and memories in my day when I make solitude. This happens, usually in the morning, when I make my breakfast. It’s nothing fancy either. Its crackers and jam and black decaf coffee. The plain taste of the hard crackers against the sweet soft stickiness of raspberry jam (no seeds) is divine. This is a little sweet treat and takes me back to two moments in time.
The first is childhood. Crackers and jam was weekend breakfast when I was a kid. Dad would bring it to our bedroom, my sister and me, and we were allowed to eat them in bed. Crackers and jam is a poor man’s breakfast. But when I ate them as a child, I felt rich. I felt like a princess. I felt loved. Especially because my dad made it. A harsh Trinidadian man who ruled us with beats but who I idolised and always wanted to love me more. These Saturday mornings, tucked up in bed, I felt cosy and safe. As children most of our days were spent inside, with our imaginations and Enid Blyton. And this felt good. Now with my daughter, there isn’t any Enid Blyton more like David Walliams, but there‘s a generous amount of storytelling as we stay safe indoors. Learning from my childhood, when I received anger and beats for questioning why, our kids have been brought up wonder out loud and to receive a reason or answer rather than that feeling of saying or doing something wrong.
The second memory around crackers and jam takes me back to my first artist residency in Iceland. This would be my second time back to the island but the first time remaining in place, the remote Westfjords, for two weeks. Surrounded by white upon white. With the cold biting at all exposed flesh, I searched for any familiar signs, in the landscape, because I felt lost and adrift. I didn’t know why or what I was doing miles away from home, alone, in residence pretending to be an artist. I remember making crackers and jam and coffee one morning, knee deep in my unhinged being and remembering who I was. Memories came back about being a little girl craving love and safety and comfort. And how even though, I’d a harsh upbringing, in some respects, I know discipline and perseverance and self-preservation were forged then.
I suppose this mirrors how I feel and be now, in these uncertain times, and how making crackers and jam satisfies these urges and needs and fuels my desire to survive and thrive.
Amber Royal Serena Estelle Musgrove Mason Melgram, Nana Amber, circa 1955
It’s what I do right. When I’ve been absent from the blogs, websites and zines, absent from the public realm, then I take a day out of my schedule to catch -up with them all. To post something, to let my readers know that I’m still here. Still alive and kicking. When I get my bum in the seat and force myself to write, something comes along to fill in the blank spaces. And today is no exception.
I’ve been dancing around cyberspace, updating my spaces with words and reflections and memories.
So for now I’d just like to point you in the direction of Studio Notes over on Substack where I’ve just posted about my nana Amber. For some reason, she’s been on my mind this week, and there at the smell of brown bread from the kitchen she comes back fully to life. Check it out and if you feel inclined, add a comment or even become a subscriber, free or paid.
As I was saying over in the introduction to the recent episode released from The Earth Sea Love Podcast, apart from the year flying by, May was the month that kicked my butt. It’s officially going down as the worst month of 2023, so far for me. But hey I’m still here to tell the tale and I’m grateful for that.
I have to give some credit to still being here and getting through the trenches down to my walking practice of May. I completed the Mamathon as hosted by Girltrek and clocked up 53 miles. Of course I did more walking than that in May but these are the miles that were recorded with my Garmin watch. Just trying to keep everything recorded so I knew when I hit the miles, I knew I was banking them towards this challenge.
I’m so glad I took up this task. I started it with Miss Ella and finished it with Miss Ella yesterday afternoon. Even though she was full of cold she joined me to mark the occasion. I also went over on my right foot again. Same place / same injury as the one that stopped me completing the West Highland Way last year. But I’ve been icing and elevating it as well as walking on it today. A bit swollen and bruised but okay to walk on.
And I’m pleased about that as I would be most upset if I was out of action again just when I feel as if I’ve gotten into some kind of walking routine. Girltrek are running their Black History Bootcamp podcast this year again, which entails 21 days of meditations of Black stories are shared. So I’m just gonna keep on walking in June to the sounds of this podcast and clock up some more miles.
The West Highland Way is on again this year. Birthday week with dear friend, Alex, we’re walking the way together. More details to follow. Already excited about completing it. See what I did there? The power of positive energy. It usually get’s me through. Got me through May. Thank you very much.
In the dream, he comes back to me, whole and young.
He was always young in my eyes. When I used to ask him at each birthday how old he was, Daddy would answer, 45.
He was always 45 in all the years I knew him. All the years I was living, he was dying.
In the replaying of images, I play it differently.
I keep my distance until he asks for me to bring his slippers or newspaper. I offer them with bowed head. I don’t throw them at him as I used to. Escaping his rage, escaping the beats.
I keep my distance, but I want to be close to him. To hold him. To feel his love for me. Then and now, still needed after so many years gone.
To serve, he brought me up, to serve. Instead of getting the vacuum clearer out, he had us on the floor picking up the bits of fluff and crumbs. To hear his pride at a job well done was enough.
When I enter the chapel of rest, it’s like I’m floating on air, light as the flowing curtains concealing a prize. I see him now, as then …
he‘a surrounded by gold satin, his mahogany black skin shines, relaxed and unlined, sea-black lips wave-curled and still.
He looks younger than 45. Even though the plaque on the coffin lid reads 1920 -1981 – he was 61. And the time he was dying. I was living.
Living Wild Studios 