visual journaling

Authencity 

| Sheree

I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted trying to be all things to everybody. I’m exhausted trying so hard to be liked and popular. But I’m not in my new job, in the position to be liked. I’ve got a job to do. But I could be doing a better job if I wasn’t trying so hard to be funny, agreeable,and gracious.

This isn’t something new. I’ve always had an extreme desire to be liked and loved. But it is only recently that I am more aware of this flaw and have attempted to change direction. And that is exactly what I plan to do this next week. I’m giving up on being liked and popular. I’m going to spend my time and energy on getting the job done to the best of my ability. If that pisses people off, if that means I am not liked, so be it. As at least I will be true to myself. I will be my authentic self. And that may at times be ugly, but it is way less exhausting.

Artist on Hiatus : Update 

| Sheree

So things have started with my self-imposed residency of being an artist on hiatus. The aim is not to engage in anything creative. To try and not feed my artistic tendencies but to focus all my attentions on my paid work and not my creative work.I am finding this residency difficult as I realise I need colour in my life daily in order to live. In order to get out of bed and feel alive, I need colour within my life. It is my buzz. So deciding to wear a different coloured nail varnish each week to work is I think exercising my creative gene ever so slightly.

This colour fix is also evident within my work planner. So that every day is not a dull day, I pre-prepared each page within my planner with paint, with colour and inspirating images. I did this so that even if I am locked into the system, working 9 til 5, I can still dream, I can still scratch my creative itch.

All this sounds as if I’m not trying in this hiatus residency. But really I am. But at the same time, I am finding out more and more about what makes me tick, what makes me happy, what makes me, me. And I’m okay with that, with this residency. I am taking each day as it comes, and I know I am happy in what I am doing each day. So I am going to continue as I am doing.

I have even inspired others to re-engage with their creativity, with their dreams, through just showing up to meeting using my self-created planner. This colour focus is catching.

Dreaming of Iceland

| Sheree

I’ve started a portfolio for Iceland. It seems an age since I was last there, but I am making plans to return. Bubbling under the surface of everything else that is happening in my life, is the body memory of how I felt while I was there. How I felt I opened up like blossom  to who I really was inside. That I thrived on the silence and solitude and the beauty of the landscape. Some how the serenity and honesty of the landscape, reflected something inside me. I recognised myself there, and I want to capture that feeling again as well as replicate it here, in my every day life.

How is the question?
I need to return to find out.

The Big Smoke

| Sheree

There’s no place like London. I was down there for a couple of days again last week. A flying visit you could say.

I caught up with an old friend from Uni. I love that we are still close friends and that we’ve been through so much together. We don’t live in each others pockets, and sometimes we have gone years without seeing each other. But when the chips are down, we know we can count on each other. We have always been there for each other. I am so very grateful for this friendship and unconditional love.

While in London, I took in a few exhibitions. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the National Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square, so I popped in there for a few hours. I didn’t pay for any of the visiting shows, as there’s far too much to see in the permanent exhibitions.

I was so inspired by what I saw. I was taken through British history through the portraits of Kings and Queens, writers, artist, movers and shakers of each time. There is more to come out of this visit. I am allowing the ideas to percolate in their own time. But I felt my ignorance of British history while in there. And I think this stems from a feeling of not belonging in Britain. Feeling unwelcome here as well as rejecting my British heritage also.

I found walking around, looking at these faces a newfound pride and interest in what made this country the way it is today. And I know my ancestors, black and white had a hand in these developments.
I look forward to exploring this rich vein of knowledge and activities further through my reading, writing and photography. I am excited about what will unfold.

Sundays 

| Sheree

wildsoulwoman says: Some Sunday’s are made for just chillin’ with the peeps. Can’t believe the summer holidays are almost over and then back to work. Trying to stay in each moment and squeeze out every last ounce of pleasure and joy. Back in the sea with Miss Ella yesterday and she said how grateful she was for her family. She’s 6 and has so much to teach me. I’m paying attention 🙂

Breathe ( and make time for yourself)

| Sheree

I picked up this new magazine by chance. Not sure what I was looking for. Maybe I was looking to ‘breathe’, to gain some space in my day, in my life.

I’ve sworn off all those glossy women’s magazines, those that carry the images of perfection; white skinny beautiful women. The money I must have spent on them, trying to fit the ideal, and knowing fine well that I’d never would. But that didn’t stop me buying into the construction.

It didn’t seem to bother me that I never saw women in there that looked like me. Or did it?
As I also went through a phase of buying Pride Magazine, Oprah, Ebony to see black women in magazines.
But they still didn’t look like me, as they were still skinny, well styled and looked like they had their lives all together, nice and sweet.

I suppose when I buy magazines now, like this one, I am still trying to find myself, to better myself, but from the inside out.

I am working on my soul, my spirit, my true self when I pick up a magazine like Breathe because I am looking to take care of myself by taking the time to slow down, to try yoga ( again), to start back up with my gratitude journal etc. Magazines like this make me think, make me assess what I am doing in terms of self-care, self-love and how am I working within this world to make it a better place?

I would highly recommend this magazine if you are looking to make time for yourself, for your true self.

Lunar Wisdom

| Sheree

Hypnotised by the moon … I found the more I dwelt with her, the more I became conscious of her tides, and all my life began to move with them. – Dion Fortune

It was a full moon last night. A beautiful sight in a clear dark sky.
I’ve taken to paying more attention to the moon’s rhythms recently. Starting to believe in Her wisdom as well as becoming connected to her as a woman.

For example, the phrases of the moon are matched each month by a woman’s bodily functions. Just as the moon is full, my womb waxes full and then wanes, empties with each menstrual bleed, just as the moon wanes to nothing, to the dark moon, when She is no longer visible.

Before, I never really knew anything about a woman’s natural connection to the moon. There’s energy and power to be enjoyed if we as woman chose to use Her light as a indicator of when to be in action and when to be still. When to gather and when to release. Once we align ourselves with Her natural energy and movements, things could start to flow much more easily within our individual lives.

So I’m finding out through my recent readings, and I look forward to learning more about lunar wisdom, lunar phases as well as lunar rituals and becoming more in touch with my own natural rhythms.

Love Yourself Friday 

| Sheree

love youseslf

Yes I know today isn’t Friday. But I want to share with you something that happened to me a few months ago which I am proud of.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Phoenix Rising Collective, for their Love Yourself First Friday.
The aim of this special feature is to shed light on various ways we as women are practicing self-care, making it a priority in our lives.

After a couple of years of being in the doldrums and not being able to look myself in the eyes in the mirror, I feel I’ve come a long way to the point of actively practicing self-love. Maybe going through situations and experiences that others might recognise and gain insight from by sharing this way.

The question that struck home the most was; Is there an obstacle or challenge that you’ve overcome that lead you to a deeper love for who you are? In answer to this question, for the first time, I revealed my dirty secret. And it felt good to finally speak out about it.

Here is my answer and read the rest of the interview here.

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would spin open.” -Muriel Rukeyer

There comes a time in everybody’s life when the unspeakable happens. To say it hasn’t happened or won’t happen to you is a lie. You’re kidding yourself. Believe me.

In May 2015, the unspeakable happened to me. There was a public shaming. My whole world fell apart the day I was accused of being a plagiarist on Facebook by a ‘so-called’ friend and fellow poet. He wrote that he’d found whole scale “borrowings” from other writers’ words, phrases, and structures within my latest collection of poetry. He said that he was just doing his duty for the poetry community by bringing it to everyone’s attention. What followed was what I chose to call a public lynching of me as a writer, poet and person. This was the unspeakable that happened to me. But funny enough, I am speaking about it here, as well as writing a creative non-fiction book about this whole experience. Everything I knew, all I was, how I thought myself to be was taken from me in that public posting. I issued an apology regarding my unintentional mistakes and withdrew from the public realm. At one point, death looked a very promising course of action, but I had my family and some supportive friends who helped me.

Within the Chakra system there is a heart center called Anahata Chakra. In Sanskrit, Anahata means “Unstruck.” For me this speaks to the resilient nature of the human heart. I believe, wholeheartedly, that there is a place within my heart that is absolutely unbreakable. Thank you Chris Maddox for this wisdom.

This experience did break my heart, stopped me from loving, and shut me down and out. However, there was a minute part that kept pulsing, kept the light on for me. Maybe it was my belief in self, my self-love that got me through each day.

Each day has not been wasted. I have taken this experience as a wake-up call, a wake-up to explore and claim my authenticity. Afterwards, I had nothing. I couldn’t even look myself in the face at one point. But writing my book and starting to take photographs of myself have supported me in my climb up. I can’t say climb ‘back’, because who or what I am becoming, I do not know. I have never met this woman. I do know that love and self-love, first and foremost, are at the center of this journey.

The Dark Goddess Collection

| Sheree

IMG_2757

I’ve been on a journey. Some days it feels like to hell and back. Other days, it seems like I went dark. I ventured into the underworld to the Dark Goddess. I’m not sure what or who the Dark Goddess is but I do know she is within me. She has always been within me, but I have failed to acknowledge her, or feared to spend time with her.
Over the past year or so, I haven’t had a choice but spend time with the dark Goddess. Associated with death and avoided, She also holds the power for life, and transformation. Before this can occur there has to be death. The natural cycle of every thing is life, death, life cycle.
Anyway, I’m working through things at the moment, working to become more empowered from within and part of this journey does include embrace the Dark Goddess, my Dark Goddess. I chose to document this process and share my practices through poetry. The Dark Goddess is the focus of my next full collection of poetry. What shape this will take is left up in the air. I jut know in my core that this is the path I must take.
Here’s a poem that I think will fit well within this collection.

Forecast

I had a friend once, Fresh, who could talk to the weather.
She tuned into their energies or something.

She could persuade a seafret to stray away from the Scottish coast,
turn back a storm before its even thought about which Caribbean isle to hit next.

She had a certain way when she looked at you,
numbed you to the core,

yet when she smiled it was like the sun glistened
through her pores.

When it rained, she’d be out there for hours arguing
about which was the best colour of the rainbow.

And when a wind blew she came into her element.
She grew in size, raised her arms in welcome

blustered through the cracks of light and disappeared.