Reading

Stretching Into The Light, Into The Blossom

| Sheree

From about mid November 2024, I took myself off on a self-directed hibernation.
I might have had to do some work in a school in December but mostly from then until today, the end of March, I’ve been resting. I withdrew from the world of responsibilities and work to take some much needed alone time. I went within, into the darkness and stillness. And now as I attempt to resurface and re-engage with the world, with great difficulty I may add, I’m taking this time to reflect on this practice and process of disappearing from the world for months on end.

Firstly, I think everyone should do it. And I don’t like using ‘should’ but here I’m going to make an exception. I know it’s a privilege to take time out of work and from seeking money for a certain period of time, and I recognise that, but wouldn’t it be a better world for everyone and even living thing, if we all could hit that stop button and rest?

For me through this retreat practice, everything is put into perspective. I give myself the time and space to reflect and process all the shit thats happening in this world. And I may not come back with the solutions but I do come back with an expanded capacity for joy and grace instead of just the feelings of overwhelm and defeat.

My time away has been good for the soul because I’ve been able to remember and reclaim my body-soul-spirit connection. I’ve been able to reclaim my connection to self, nature and other people. I’m been able to come home to myself and work out, gently, what is important to myself. What are my values and morals and am I living my life by them. If not then let’s recalibrate and get back on track. And I don’t mean the capitalist make as much money and the least connection and impact kind of track. I mean the track of being the best version of myself so I can show up for others in my family and community as the best version of myself for them.

I’ve taken this time away for me but at the same time, I hope as a role model. As an example to follow. Yes money is always going to be an issue. There is always not going to be enough to go around and to do the things I want to do or live the life I want to live. But at the same time, I can live more frugal. I can spend my money on experiences rather than on material stuff. And I can take the risk and say I’m not going to work or actively seek work for a few months while I rest, while I work on myself, while I {BE}.

Of course, my bank balance is screaming at the lack of money therein. Credit owed might be rising. And I could slip into panic mode and think I’ve got to get work, quick and fill the pot back up. But if I slipped right back into this panic mode and ran around like a chicken with no head, what would have been the point of the rest and withdrawal? All that calm and serenity and centred-ness that I’ve created over the last few months would have been for nothing. Gone in the blink of an eye, just like this time away seems to have passed.

This practice of rest and slowness, is part of my practice forever! There’s no switch that I switch back on to go back into work mode. I’m not a machine or a robot. I’m a living, breathing, feeling human being, even though there are some who have made me believe otherwise. I want and need to make sure that my life reflects my priorities and values and not just plays into the system which has never got my back.

As I’ve mentioned before, I writing about fugitivity. And for me part of using fugitivity as a method or practice, is me to take my body out of the systems of production and run. Run away from the rat race, run away from extraction and exploration and stop. Or linger in the time and space of rest and nothingness. Breathe deep and allow my body to come back to life. Allow my joyathon-o-meter to rise by feeding my soul with beauty which is there to see in the every day if only we allow ourselves that time and space to {BE}.

I haven’t just been sitting on my arse and doing nothing during this hibernation, even though a lot of the time was spent on doing nothing, allowing myself to get bored and seeing how it feels and what comes up and seeing what are my go tos to stop feeling all the feels. This has been a period of getting to know myself again, which is difficult if you’re bouncing from one job to another, one project to another, where the aims and intentions are not in my control or even anything I’ve agreed to.

So yes day dreaming did enter the hibernation period. What also featured was reading and writing and walking. And sea swims and travel and alone time with nature. Home cooking, time with family and friends. Music and dancing and artwork and journalling. A lot of visual journalling. Nothing earth shattering but enough. Enough to make me realise that I’ve been running on empty, exhausted really and how harm was caused towards me and how I needed to heal.

Yes if anything, this time has been a time of healing. And this is an on-going process but I feel better equipped now to continue the healing journey.

So April is around the corner and I’ve really not got a lot of work on still. As I made the decision not to actively seek work while in hibernation also. Why take the time away from work commitments and then spend that time searching for work, applying here there and everywhere and getting stressed about finding work for my return?
What nonsense is that.

So yes I might officially end my hibernation today, but I know I still have time for me as the work commitments are few and far between. But not stressing about the things I can’t control but will focus on the things I can control. I might start to gear up to putting our feelers for work but not full throttle. Not nice, don’t like. Again, I’m not going to waste this time away on moving out of zero effort into the max.

I’m slowly easing out of my bear cave. I’m stretching slowly, reaching for the sky. Scratching my back against a tree trunk, and then I seat back down and admire the cherry blossom coming into bloom. I’m taking the time to thank Mother Earth for being with me and allowing me to rest and to resurface when I’m good and ready. I’m grateful for this time away. And I’m grateful to be able to return in my full glory as me.

My bedtime lover(s)

| Sheree

A book is much more faithful than a lover I think.

A book can open you up to so many different experiences at the same time as reaffirming everything you’ve been feeling and thinking and struggling with.

I’m not sure a lover can do all that for me. But many more than one lover could?

Hence spending copious amounts of time in bed with books.

Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within by Alisha McCullough is one of my current reads.

I used to be of the persuasion to read one book at a time. Devote all my time, focus and attention to one book in order to reap the glory/ knowledge/ whatever!

But these past few years, as I’ve become thirsty for stimulation and attempting to find like-minded people/ theories/ lovers, I’m moved into reading multiple books simultaneously, also known as “syntopical reading”.

And these books are not on the same topic either. They range from poetry around grief, non-fiction on gardening, personal essays around deep time, romantic and crime novels and short stories about myths and history. The list goes on!

I’m so enjoying this eclectic and multiple reading practice as it’s keeping me engaged, creating unique and original connections and it’s keeping me feeling loved.

By me.

So one of my current squeezes is Reclaiming the Black Body and I’m devouring it in small digestible bites because it is speaking to my soul.

This book is calling to attention the deep-seated, long-time, disproportionate amount of trauma, violence, marginalisation, discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences of Black women and femmes, and confounded by misognoir and racism, how we have learned to cope with it all through increased imbalanced eating behaviours.

Usually called “eating disorders” but even using that language implies that the individual is to blame and implying that some of us are just not equipped to nourish our bodies and do not know how to look after ourselves.

‘Disorder’ implies stigma and comes from the Western health ‘care’ system which from time has excluded and harmed Black people.

So this book is a balm for the wounds of silent struggles Black women and femmes have been going through around eating imbalances including myself. And is a vindication that we’re not fucked up and broken and just beasts, being less than human but that we are doing our best with the tools that we have to strive and thrive within a system that is hell-bent, historically and now, to demonise the Black body.

I will continue to cosy up with this book and others in bed, night and day, as reading is hitting the spot!

Poetry is not a Luxury

| Sheree

As they become known and accepted to ourselves, our feelings, and the honest exploration of them, become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas, the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have once found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but the true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of
our lives. It lays the foundations for a future if change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

Audre Lorde, ‘Poetry is not a Luxury’, on Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984), 37.

Comfort Reading

| Sheree

This piece was published over in Binderful’s Medium page back in 2020. I’m republishing them here as I revisiting the writing, the wisdom as well as create my archives.

What are you reading that is bringing you comfort during this pandemic?

When Amy (Mama Scout) asked me about what I’m reading during these troubling times of the pandemic, my first thought was, what am I NOT reading? As the spaciousness within my life has opened up, I’m grateful to be able to slow down and lose myself in practices that feed my soul.

I read the news, maybe once every two days, to keep abreast of developments around the world. I’ve always read world news, as I might live in the UK, an island, but I believe we’re all connected, humans and non-humans. What’s happening to you, is happening to me also. We are one. I love lingering over longer articles and reports in The Guardian, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Also Orion Magazine is releasing daily previously unreleased articles from it’s archives to read for free. These are a welcomed gift.

My guilty pleasure is crime fiction. After a lifetime of reading about crimes happening around the world, I love Nordic Noir, I’ve recently gotten into the mystery series with DCI Ryan set on my doorstep in the Northeast of England by L J Ross. Taking iconic buildings and monuments within the region, such as Cragside House, the Sycamore Gap tree, the bridges over the River Tyne, as the settings, a series of murders are carried out and a team of detectives, who the reader grows to love, try to solve them while trying to have normal loving relationships themselves. I love recognising places and streets and people even within the pages of these novels.

My weak spot is personal essays. Probably because I’m in the process of creating a mixed-genre memoir which includes personal essays, poetry, images, collage, quotes and photography, I gravitate to those writers I wish I could write like such as Roxane Gay, Audre Lorde and Terry Tempest Williams.

So at the moment, I’m reading Alexandra Chee, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel which is so illuminating about his time growing up, in the 80s, through identity politics and navigating his way while unbelonging. I’ve just started, Thick, a collection of essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom, which have the black woman’s body at the centre of the debate for a change. A mixture between the personal and the academic, I find myself reading sections and nodding my head or even shouting out loud, ‘Yes.’

And finally, to my shame, I’ve just restarted Becoming, by Michelle Obama, after watching the documentary on Netflix. When the memoir first came out a couple of years ago, I started it but I didn’t get far. They say you fall into a book when it’s the right time for you; when you’re ready. Well I’m ready now. I’m absorbing Michelle’s vulnerable words of wisdom, checking in and checking myself. Reasons for reading; to keep checking in with myself, how I’m feeling, what is what I’m reading bringing up in me. At the same time as checking myself, doing the work on myself, to make sure I’m moving through this world as the best version of me.

Octavia E. Butler

| Sheree

I’m fixing to read all 12 novels and the one short story collection of Octavia E. Butler this year. The time has come to make intimate with this pioneer of science fiction, speculative fiction and wisdom.

Watch this space!

On A Reading Tip

| Sheree

Quantity over quality is a characteristic of whet supremacy culture. Say like with social media, we are wired to focus on the numbers. The number and amount of followers, likes, comments gives us the buzz. Keeps us returning usually. Rather than the quality of interactions. The quality of connections.

But in this instant when I say I’m on a reading tip and boast that I’ve read 12 books already this year, fiction, poetry and non-fiction, I’m taking the buzz of the numbers because I know they were quality reads.

Last year saw me fall off my reading horse. Reading was only happening when I had an extended amounts of time off the clock. Summer reading mostly. I didn’t have the bandwidth or desire to read at any other times. I was too antsy and not able to settle, as too many demands were pulling on my attention.

So I’m really happy that this hibernation season has seen me dive back into books. Physical and digital books. I do not care which as long as I’m reading, expanding my thinking and formulating new pathways of understanding and connection.

So White Tears Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad was completed yesterday. And it so feeds into my experiences with white women. Even though they’ve caused offence, been racist that is, it’s me who’s consoling them and making sure their feelings are not too hurt. Or it’s me having to apologise because my reaction to their racism or them touching my hair without my consent has been deemed far too aggressive and not very collaborative by the organisation or group I was working with.

They are used as a weapon, white tears, to shut down the conversation. To get the white person out of an uncomfortable situation and out of having to look at themselves and their behaviours.

It was so validating to read this book and recognise that it doesn’t just happen to me and that this is a centuries old tactic of the damsel in distress. And that damsel is white as Black and Brown women have never been deemed woman enough to protect. And all this shit is wearing thin with Black and Brown women. Believe.

This book was an extension of an article Ruby Hamad wrote back in 2018 for The Guardian. You can read it there and just know that one Black woman, Lisa Benson, who was working as a journalist at the time got fired for simply sharing this article because it was deemed ‘an attack on white women’. White tears in action right there!

The Black Madonna of Vichy

| Sheree
Original post, Patreon, July 10, 2024

1. While visiting Paris in April, I’d made arrangements before I left to visit Vichy and visit the Black Madonna there in the Old Church, chapel Saint-Blaise.

I’m returning to my relationship with the Black Madonna here but still exploring this connection. This pull I sense towards these Black Virgins.

2. This chapel has always been a magnet in Vichy due to this Black Virgin of the 14th century. She is known for her miracles.

3. I’ve not brought with me the Christena Cleveland book, God is a Black Woman but I know I’ve written about this particular Black Madonna here before.

4. It was during the French Revolution, that she was burnt and only her head remained, thanks to a ten-year-old child who saved her from destruction.

5. There have been times that I have lost my head. Or been disconnected from my body. There have been times that it’s felt that I’ve been burnt at the stake. That my life has gone up in flames.

6. In 1802, her head was placed on a wooden base covered with the old cloth until 1931 when she was given a body again. Became a full bodied statue thanks to the sculptor Emma Thiollier.

7. No- one stitched me back together. Forged that (re)connection with head and body. I had to do that myself. Over years and over turbulent waters.

8. Vichy is known as the “queen of spa towns” with five healing thermal mineral springs.From the Roman times, people used to bathe in the waters, later to just taking to drink from the spring. It was only later after legends linking the healing qualities of the water to a white fairy that Christians connected the blessed waters with their miracle working Black Madonna of the Sick.

9. I’ve always thought of the sea as my medicine. She has healed me more than once. Healing is not a one time deal. It’s a practice and a process. But I’ve not been taking to the waters of late. I’ve not been taking my medicine.

10. I turn up here, create stories as a part of my healing journeys which are never linear. Spirals and circles instead.

Creating Sanctuary

| Sheree





*not so mush a trigger warning but saying it anyways!


I am worthy of consent.
I am safe.
I can heal from sexual trauma. –  Lyvonne Briggs

I’m writing. Or is it rambling? I’m not sure. It’s just that I’m reading at the moment. I’m in my cave (bed) hibernating and I’m reading so many different books. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry and there’s a cross over with what’s happening within my life with my reading ( Does that happen to you?). There’s an echo or a reinforcement for the things that are causing me grief at the moment, worrying the wound as I read and rest. 

So writing things out, going long is a way of making sense of it all in the moment. It’s a way of gaining some kind of clarity for now. Not thinking of the future but thinking of gathering the threads at this moment to made make a something out of this mess of yarns.

My mum died when I was 27 years old. I’d just become a mother the year before. I’ve been hearing about the ‘mother wound’ lately. I’m not sure if I understand it completely. But when I hear it, I don’t jump into definitions and theories. For me it’s simply means when my mum died and left me to cope alone. Selfish I know. But I feel as is she left a gaping, bleeding wound that festers and hurts when I worry it. When I press on it, inspect it with my touch.

This morning, following my morning routine, in bed reading (with coffee skipped ahead this morning) I’m reading Sensual Faith: The Art of Coming Home to Your Body by Lyvonne Briggs. I’m reading a section called ‘Surthrivors’ a term Briggs created to try and capture how she was feeling, living after male sexual violence. She felt ‘survivor’ was too flat to describe/ define her experience when she was living/doing what she loved studying theology and religion, in community with loving people and was an acclaimed spoken word and slam poet. “I wasn’t just surviving, I was thriving!” Briggs wrote, hence pointing the more accurate term, ‘Surthrivor’. 
I love it when we Black women bend and twist language, divest from the standard to better express/ more fully express our feelings and experiences. That’s creative fugitivity for you (thank you Dal).

Briggs goes on to talk about how she got into the ministry so she could change how the church handles sexual abuse, not very well,  as there is a silence around it. Or they blame demons instead of the actually men. I’m not here to talk about male sexual abuse. I’m not her to talk about the church. I’m not a religious person. I was brought up saying my prayers. I remember a black bible, creased leather, brought from Trinidad and Tobago with my dad when he stowed away to England. This black bible sat toad-like in the teak sideboard of my childhood living room. West Indian style living room, I may add. 
I gave up believing in a ‘God’ when my daddy died when I was 9 years old. I’ve now come around to the idea that we are Gods/ Goddesses ourselves, inside us. I’m spiritual rather than religious. So I’m not sure why I’m reading this book. 

I lie. Yes I do know why I’m reading Sensual Faith. I followed a trail to this book left by Christina Cleveland and God is a Blackwoman. But also because of the subheading of Sacred Faith: The Art of Coming Home to Your Body, is a journey I always seem to be on. 

Anyway. Back to the reading this morning which went on to discuss the worship centre in a church is called the ‘sanctuary’. When you the word ‘sanctuary’, does anyone else think of Quasimodo? ‘Sanctuary, sanctuary!’

A ‘sanctuary’ is a safe or holy place. I wrote a poem titled ‘sanctuary’ and it was about my mum. My mum’s home, body, arms. When she was alive, it was her I went to for safe harbour.  I didn’t realise until she was gone. It has come a way for me to practice mothering my own children, through sanctuary for them. Once my mum died, I lost who and where I could return to for safety. I lost my home, my sanctuary when she died and I suppose I’ve been searching for sanctuary ever since, looking outside myself, looking for it in others ( husband for one!)

I don’t how long I’ve been in battle with my being, with my body, chastising her for not being enough. But also for being too much. Too fat. Too broad, too Black. But over the last few years, eyes open, something has been changing or shifting within me and how I view, treat and talk to my body.
.
Maybe that’s where my mum did me a disservice and where I’m making amends with my kids. I’m not sure she taught me how to find sanctuary within myself, within my own body.

Monday nights I dread. 
Not always. Just the last few months as I complete my level 3 diploma in counselling skills. I’m not jesting that I hate turning up for this course. And I never use ‘hate’ as a word usually, always thinking it’s too strong a word for a feeling. Too final without any redeeming features. But this is where we’ve got to with this course. 

And it wasn’t always the case. I could blame the dark, cold nights I have to turn up for 3 hours of lecturing and talking in an empty, sterile office block. I could blame the electric fluorescent lighting that flickers and buzzes and can give me a bad head. But I would be lying. I’m here to be wide open and honest. So here goes!

This course is taking away pieces of my soul, week after week. And I’m not ashamed to say that I have contemplated dropping out week after week, researching for alternatives. I  even enrolled on a supplementary course, decolonising counselling, that would tend to all the damage this course is doing, but I had to withdraw from that due to costs and timings. 

If you’ve ever studied counselling and therapy, you’ll know that everything; theories and tools and practices are all taken from dead white guys. Dead white guys acting like Gods (and I don’t mean the internal Gods I’m just mentioned). White male, usually heterosexual and middle class theorists who pontificate that they know everything about what’s happening in everybody’s mental health. They have the solutions to make us feel/ do /be better. As it’s always the individual’s fault and can be traced back to their childhood, their mother? Bullshit!

It hurts to be fed this shite every Monday. In the beginning I pushed back and attempted to decolonise the teaching, the theory, the responses. Bringing in other theorists and arguments. Being the only Black face in the class, girl has to represent. 

Until we got to week 9, we were exploring different types of power within the counsellor and client relationship. Power roles within the counselling arena. After a discussion, we were being presented with a list of ‘Further key aspects of power or perceived power’. And yes the list was not an exhaustive list and things could be added, the tutor said. This list did not include ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘culture’, and I voiced it as such. My comment was laughed at and dismissed as, ‘there’s always one’. 

Always one who has to comment on what’s missing from the list? Or always one who has to bring up race? Who knows! I just know how this comment made me feel.  Know your audience I say or was I being put into my place? This response indicated to me that this input, which a fundamentally the way white supremacy culture wields power through the hierarchy of the races. It’s the sea that we’re swimming in and to not mention is the usual state of affairs.  This interaction indicated to me that this was never going to be on this course’s agenda. Me continuing to challenge the whitewashing of counselling and therapy, me constantly remarking on the culture that we’re operating in wasn’t enlightening my fellow students or suggesting that they become more aware of their ( and my own) unconscious biases.  I realised I was just creating issues where they never saw issues. Problems where there are no problems.  As race and racism is only a problem when there’s a Black person in the room. It’s Black people who have an issue with race as whiteness isn’t a race, right? Whiteness is a given. 

After week 9, and tonight was week 15, I’ve silenced myself. I’ve disengaged from the course, no longer contributing. I turn up and get my attendance and keep my thoughts and comments and feelings to myself. I’m not giving anything of myself anymore to the group, to the course within the face to face sessions as I’ve received the message it’s not welcome, it’s not of value, it’s not relevant. I do not intend to waste my energy and heart and soul on this experience. 

This hurts me.
I’m making sanctuary for myself. I’m making this experience safe for myself. I’m keeping myself safe within myself, within my body as being in that classroom is no longer safe for me. And to explain that to them, I wouldn’t bother, as they wouldn’t get it. The can’t get it and it would also involve them listening to me, and me being heard, which ain’t happening.

I’m creating sanctuary for myself, within my body and its a practice. I’m using a self-soothing approach, self-talking, loving compassionate approach when I experience something that is harming, hurting, traumatic. I’m letting myself know, like that little girl inside me who needed to be loved and kept safe, I’m stroking my own chest over my heart and saying to her, saying to myself, ‘ You are love, Sheree. I’ve got you I understand why you are feeling unsafe. But I’ve got you. You’re dafe now.”
I’m mothering myself. I’m making myself safe. I’m making myself sanctuary.


Reading into Fall

| Sheree
Current Squeeze!

The days are growing shorter. The nights are drawing in. And I’m very grateful for a number of things. One of them is that I spent some time this summer getting back into reading.

Maybe it was the long drives or the long light nights, but I scratched an itch and came out 10 books down by the end of August.

I rested up over the summer and I also pulled out some books and dived head first into a bunch of summer reads. Physical books, kindle books and audio books.

I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions as I made my way through some class act reads and I wasn’t sticking to my usual crime.

I’ve read romance, erotica, literary and comedy. And now with September here, I’ve continued. I’m also keeping track. Keeping a record of my reads.

There are times I’m knee deep in a story and I have to stop because I’m reading that fast and I want the goodness to last.

You know that feeling right?

Other times I have to stop because I’m enjoying myself so much, loving the story and have to give thanks for finally getting back into a reading streak.

I’m not sure how it happened. I think I just kept turning up. Kept turning up to the page. I think it helped that I found a good book series too. And then I found it being read by actors so well that I was hooked.

I found BookBeat and Amy Award’s Cocky Kingmans. I’ll write more about this series and what it opened up for me but if you’re interested in getting a free trial of BookBeat for 70 days just check it out here.

No catch just the chance to get into reading/ listening at a good time of year to snuggle and get cosy with a good book.