authenticsheshe

Visual journal share

| Sheree

I completed my gifted journal from Dal Kular within the week.

It was an honour and pleasure to hang out within the stained and constructed with love pages.

I’ll share each spread here over the coming days. Giving each spread its own space to breath and weave it’s magic.

I tried to keep my changes to a minimum. I wanted the eco-stains to still show through, appreciating the palimpsestic effects.

Enjoy x

return, remember, reset

| Sheree

I’ve not been into the sea since the beginning of July. I’ve been staying away, allowing my tooth extraction wound to heal. I didn’t want to get it infected, further or again.

I have missed her, no doubt. I woke early and didn’t give it a second thought. I had the time, the energy and means to get on down there and get in.

It was like starting all over again. The pain of the cold was something I’d forgotten but soon remembered as I inched my way in, allowing the water to seep further and further up my body.

It was worth the pain. It’s always worth the pain.

I feel at peace now as I warm up and give thanks to myself and nature for allowing me this time and space to just {BE}.

I took myself outside

| Sheree

After my wisdom tooth extraction, the energy and motivation hasn’t been there to move my body. To allow myself the time and grace to be with nature. Outside walking.

Over the last few days I’ve not set myself a challenge, but I’ve been more open to movement. What has helped me stay out there, motivated, has been opening up my senses and witnessing the changes that are happening in nature at this time of year.

We’re moving into late summer, and glimpses of autumn, my favourite season, are just around the corner. I’d like to share what I’ve been feasting my senses on as this has brought me great joy as well as the much needed kick up the arse to walk again.

It hasn’t been about the heat but more so about the light.

a much appreciated gift

| Sheree

After a really successful visual journaling retreat in Sheffield, which I’ll share about soon, I was gifted this handmade journal.

Made from wallpaper, eco-dyed papers and love, Dal Kular, a wonderful friend and fellow mischief maker gifted me this journal. Off shots from a bigger, much bigger journal she created in connection with her creative in residence in Peak District National Park, Dal wanted me to have this beauty.

I know Dal was proud of it and knew that I would put it to good use. I dived into using it start away. I needed the clarity of a new journal, while on the road with Kiwi and this journal is fulfilling that need and want, remarkably well.

I’ll be back later this week to share the completed journal spreads.

creative dispatches

| Sheree

sometimes i’m writing. my body is writing and she doesn’t know . she doesn’t know what / how/ where. the body just doesn’t know yet what to say. how to say it.

my body writes what is doesn’t know yet.

what is put down on the page, the words and language doesn’t know either. what is it trying to say?what does it know? what doesn’t it know?

i was going to say that things become clearer in the process. but that’s not true. in the process more questions are raised. not answers. but more curiosity, wonder and play.

here, i’ve cultivated a safe space. a safe container where i can be intimate and vulnerable. i can experiment and play to locate my voice, my knowledge and wisdom.

i embark on another journey with my body writing what she doesn’t know after completing an amazing commission/ gig/ assignment. i’ll share soon. i feel depleted after fullness. i’m tired but also lost.

i know i need to rest before anything else. so i rest for now. i rest in the not knowing.

A Summer of Reading – a refusal of productivity

| Sheree

With the warmer weather and the slower pace, I’m so ready to lean into the lazy, easy, light and breezy days of summer.

My six weeks off the clock summer holidays are just around the corner. I can taste the sweet sweet honey of rest. But I’m not quite there yet. Still things to complete, anniversaries to celebrate and forms to send off.

But it’s close. I can smell the cut grass and strawberries and syrup already. The long drawn out of days of doing fuck all. Hell to the yes!

Reading is top of the agenda. Summer self-study of topics and issues that are making me buzz. I’ve already started my crime fiction reading as I get back into the DCI Ryan Mysteries Series from L J Ross, all set in the north east.

And now tonight, with an hour to spare before pick up I dive into We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson. This is just what I need coming off the back of completing my black mothering and fugitivity chapter. But it also is adding fuel to my fire of refusal and divesting from racial capitalism.

I’m only a few pages in and my heart is singing and I’m thumping with energy in the recognition of finding my space, my safe place where my desires and wants for freedom on my own terms is not weird or unachievable. But is very much necessary.

#onwards