If you were to ask me to stop cleaning the bathroom and come and sit by you, I would.
I would gladly throw down this cloth, take off these rubber gloves and come cuddle up on the couch with you.
The sink can wait to be rinsed. The toilet can wait to smell piney. The bath can wait to gleam clean.
I’d forego to all, even the tiled floor, to come be by your side and let you whisper into my ear, caress my neck, stroke my forearm.
Tell me how lovely I am, and how you can’t get enough of me. That the stars have no contest when I smile. That your life was barren until I came along.
He’ll, I’d even leave the smudges in the mirror, to have you put your arm around my waist and pull me into a sweet slow kiss.
‘This year is gonna be about me. Never will I ever have a reason to doubt me.’ – Emily King
This year is gonna be about me, I’m gonna turn the tables, feeling all the feelings. Or maybe numb it out?
Car horns honking through the open window, sirens cutting through the heat haze, YouTube chatting while they play Mario Party, with the aim to lose. The only time when coming last makes you a winner.
I don’t wanna leave but this year is gonna be my year. I’m gonna love the music I love and I’m gonna love the words I love, words that open up worlds, one word at a time, each word moving further away from you and your crippling crap.
This year is gonna be all about me. Never am I gonna waste my time again trying to get your attention. I’m giving me all the attention. Chicken salad and all that stuff. Mayo too. Because nothing is off the agenda, for me, this year.
This year is gonna be me travelling and enjoying the experiences, alone and whoever comes along for the ride. You better have a ticket to ride as we’ll be crossing hostile borders and encountering enemies within. So you better be down for some deep shit, some deep emotional shit.
This year is gonna be all about me and no never again am I gonna doubt me and what I’m capable of. I’m allowing the cool breeze to caress the hairs on my arms and just breathe into the moment, budding into bloom.
This year you’re not gonna be able to handle this honesty, this raw heart of love and pain, again and again.
Weathering to shine through.
This year is gonna be all about me. And never again am I gonna double me. I’ll have no reason to, as I’m gonna shine through.
For those of us who live at the shoreline… Audre Lorde
It will be 10 years this August that I started my visual journaling practice.
Then it was called Dreaming on Paper, as I completed the course of the same name by Lisa Sonora.
I needed a safe space to explore the tumult of my feelings and thoughts. I was going through a traumatic experience of escape really. Escape from the life I’d spent the past 12 years building up, that was took away in the flick of a Facebook post.
I ran away from the public, the writing community, my home as I travelled into the Scottish Highlands and Islands. To heal.
Visual journaling helped me heal. Helps me continue to heal.
Overtime, I’ve come to understand my visual journal practice as a fugitive practice. Within these paints, images and words, dreams of freedom are planned out and eventually come to fruition. Projects, happenings, events – all on my own terms.
I mean, the whole point about escape is that it’s an activity. It’s not an achievement. You don’t ever get escaped. – Fred Moten
Within these visual journal spreads, I work out how to escape, how to get outside white supremacy culture while still having to be living on the inside. Coming to terms with the thought of that the outside can only occur from the inside. Being here.
Visual journaling is me trying to create an opening, a break in the fabric in which to slip on through into the otherside/ outside, into the woods running between the trees with the dogs barking at my feet. Creating beauty, creating a beautiful space in which to linger in while the terror rages around me.
Visual journaling is a safe space, is a nurturing space, is a free space.
I’m practicing how to show up in spaces, alone and with others, in fullness.
I’ve used wholeness before. Striving to get back to that sense of being whole, as we enter as already into this world. And then for the rest of our lives society and culture pull us away from our wholeness. When we realise, usually when much older and not giving a fuck, we spend our time and energy attempting to get back to that wholeness. This is a practice too, but to be whole sounds final and also out of reach.
Fullness. While fullness seems something that can be embraced now. In the present, moment to moment. Fullness for me gives the middle finger to those who have criticised me by saying I’m too much. Too Black. Too fat. Too loud. Too enthusiastic. Too Alive. Too much.
Fullness is me embracing my too-muchness and giving off that ‘don’t care less’ energy.
This piece was written back in 2020 and published on Medium. I’ve brought it over here to be part of my writing archive. I also feel that the case needed restating frequently. Did I say daily?
We queue with our shopping basket. This is the norm now. But we don’t complain. It keeps everyone safe. We’re at the front of the queue, for a change. My daughter and I. We’ve only come to the one shop. I let her ride her bike into town. She needs the exercise as she’d be happy in front of her screen all day. I probably would too, as at least she’s inside safe, connecting with her friends, and I get a moment to myself.
Front of the queue, but we hold back as the woman in front of us has just gone into the shop. There’s someone coming out at the same time. The store security guard is standing in the mix too. We allow a gap to form between us; the woman and the entrance and our bodies. Coming across from an adjacent shop, a man and woman stride. Stride into the front of the queue, ready to walk into the shop. I raise my voice just above my normal speaking voice to say to them, There’s a queue. We’re waiting to go into the shop too.
I think I’m smiling but how can they know? How can anyone tell if you’re smiling when you’re wearing face protection? By your eyes. I think by the eyes, you can tell if someone is smiling. It’s a warm, sunny day. I’m wearing sunglasses. Maybe they can’t see my eyes. They can only use my voice as means of communication.
Sorry, they say. We thought the queue was going the other way. They walk to join the queue behind us. I say, in a tone of voice which I think says I understand, No, the lady in front of us has just gone in and we’re waiting back here to giving everyone some space.
In the time it takes for the couple to walk and wait behind us, at the recommended 2 metres, the woman of the couple has already started saying in a loud enough voice for us to hear, Some people are just getting angry about the situation now, and there’s s no need for it. We walk into the shop.
Note: The angry Black woman stereotype portrays a black woman as sassy, ill-mannered, and ill-tempered by nature.
Walking back home, Ella walking with her bike, I approach what happened outside the shop, asking Ella if she heard what the woman said about people getting angry.
She was referring to me. I explained. She saw me as an angry Black woman. Do you think I was angry because you’ve seen me angry?
My daughter knows me. She knows I wasn’t angry and says so.
When you live in a society where you’re powerless, perceived as worthless and inferior, those who have power, believing themselves to be superior, spend their time telling others how they handle the situation isn’t right. They tell you that how you speak or act or response isn’t appropriate. You are wrong. They gaslight you, forcing you to doubt yourself; your actions and capabilities. You are at fault, always. You are wrong. You are silenced.
Back home, I talk to my husband, who’s a white man. I think if he’d been with us, the woman behind us, wouldn’t have uttered the angry line. He disagrees. She sounds like a woman who would have gotten annoyed if anyone had checked her behaviour, he said.
He has the right to think and say that. And maybe he’s right. Who knows? But to accept this explanation, I’d have to disallow what I feel about the situation. I’d have to make allowances once again for someone else’s behaviour, reaction and treatment of me. I’ve spent a lifetime of making allowances for other people’s treatment of me. How can I be sure that when they treat me unfairly, or discriminate against me that this isn’t how they treat everyone else? I don’t know. All I have is the way they make me feel. My lived experience as a Black woman.
All I know is that when I’m walking down the street and someone is coming towards me, it’s me who walks into the road to maintain social distancing. It’s me who walks into the gutter to keep us both safe. Would they do the same? I don’t know. I can’t take the risk to wait and find out either.
I’ve been socialised, fed the stereotype of the angry Black woman for so long, I police myself. I play my part. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t protest or question. It’s part of my make-up to check myself so I appear in society as passive and non-confrontational and unseen.
I wake up ( that is if I got any sleep) and give thanks.
Play Love Dimension by Beautiful Chorus a few times
Water out/ water in
Back to bed for Insight Timer medication or course
Read in bed
Make coffee and then journal in bed
Get up.
Strength training with free weights
Move my body – yoga/ walk/run/ swim
Greet the world with a smile.
What led you to this morning routine?*
Well I started on this find tuning of a morning routine at the beginning of January 2025, more or less. I was hibernating and I wanted to start a ritual that would anchor me into my life. Into the present moment at the same time as showing to myself that I am loved. I’ve done everything in my current morning routine at some point or other before but the putting them all together in some kind of coherent order is a first this year.
Did any ancient practices inspire you?
I’m not sure if a particular ancient practice inspired me. But maybe practices from my ancestral ancients might have subconsciously. If I remember living with my mum, back when I was in my 20s, she had a morning routine which I really didn’t notice then but can now. She’d get up early everyday, even though she wasn’t going to work, and go to the bathroom. Then make a cup of tea, open the windows and have a smoke. Maybe read at the same time but she’d claim the sitting room and the quiet. When she’d finish she’d make herself available for others.
For you, what is the importance of following a morning routine?
I hate routines usually. The predictability of them and the monotony gets on my nerves and I have to break out of them. But I think , in the past, this is because the routines and rituals have not been my own but have been imposed on me by external forces. I’ve mentioned when I was teaching before but also when I think of when I was studying creative writing. We were told if we wanted to be successful we should stick to one genre of writing and practice it in this way, using these techniques and following these rules. I found it all so restrictive. But here with this morning routine containing sacred rituals to myself, even if not carved in stone and open to change, I do not fight against the routine because I created. I feel that it is coming from a place of love for myself. This is my way of practicing self-love because I am giving myself the time and space each day so commune with myself and get my shit together ( or not!).
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.
Living Wild Studios 