Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.
Sunday morning, I’m up at 6am to catch the sunrise in the sea.
The bay is quiet only a few people jumping waves and using the sauna tents.
I keep to my side of the bay where the waves are coming in smaller. I get in and feel good. The water is balmy compared to Loch Morlich last week.
I’m swimming just keep swimming. And before I know it I’m further out as well as further across into the centre left bay.
Before I release it, a big wave is coming in and I know it’s coming over my head. I stop swimming and try to make haste back to the shore knowing I’m wasting my energy.
The wave hits me hard, over my head, drenching my woollie bobbled hat and penetrates all breathing holes.
The main task is to keep standing and not to get pulled under. And to breathe of course.
I’m still trying to wade out of the sea and get to safety. But before I can make even a few more steps another wave slams me.
This time I’m down on my knees in the sea, gasping for breath. I pull off my hat, stand and I’m spluttering and stumbling to the shore.
Of course I have to turn back to the sea with a smile and say, okay you got me! I hear you. I feel you. I got a bit complacent there. Lesson learnt.
And this is a good reminder for me to always respect the sea and to not get too big for my boots. Taking it all leisurely basking in the temperature rise in comparison and forgetting where I am now.
Now in the present moment, I’m in the North Sea which is notorious for taking lives.
Don’t take you own life so lightly Sheree and pay attention.
Morning routine done. Still completing my rituals before I greet the world.
Decided to add 2 more to the list so I can complete some stuff I want and don’t want to do this month.
One is to continue to add to my wall for my fugitivity essay. Two, tackle one task per day for completion of my counselling skills course.
Guess which task is the one I don’t want to do?
Completed reading the ebook, In the Cut by Susanna Moore. And I’m not going to spoil it for you but I just didn’t see the ending coming. I was reading this after reading an article with Susanna Moore speaking with Allison P. Davis and it was exploring writing about sex and murder. Somethings I’m considering writing about. So I thought I better read the novel. Let’s just say it’s an interesting read and I think I was expecting more sex! Call me greedy!
Went out for a walk and was remembering my drive home yesterday in the sunshine. Reminded of how being with Kiwi, and our on adventures is my happy place. More!
Returned home and forgot to post some stuff so had to go back out. And Tynemouth is heaving today because the sun is out and it’s the weekend and it’s station market day. I tend to avoid the crowds at the coast and head in the opposite direction but today I did not mind the people as I felt like I belonged.
It’s been a while since I’ve taken you on a photowalk. With the nights getting lighter, and being away in Kiwi, I felt the urge to watch the sun go down over Loch Morlich.
When Kiwi and I were coming back from Glencoe in the New Year, we planned to stop off at Loch Morlich on route but it had snowed and more forecast. I’d never been to the loch before so I erred on the side of caution promising myself that we would return some other time.
That’s a practice of mine. To not run around like a blue arsed fly trying to fit everything in/ see/do everything but to leave something to come back for. A reason to return.
We were due to return to Loch Morlich in January but after my fall, I postponed it till this week.
So here we are parked up at Glenmore Campsite nestled in Glenmore Forest and kissing Loch Morlich.
Of course I’ve already been in the loch and it was fucking cold. I was tingling with renewed life afterwards though.
Enough energy therefore to take you on a photowalk as the evening draws in.
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!
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.
My mind and body are hurting with the constant stream of information and images of this and that atrocity, and there is very little space to breathe, rest and take stock. I’ll be honest, I’ve been checking out. Checking out into Netflix boxsets, mindlessly watching episode after episode, numbing the pain and feelings of being inadequate , or not doing enough, being enough. Enough.
I don’t know about you, but it’s an overload at times of these times, which feel cruel and oppressive, evil and violent and unbelievable and yet we accept. There are no quick fix solutions but my heart and soul wants to feel that all will be well.
Society and culture ( the whole world) at the moment feels toxic and dangerous and I’m all for just slowing down and connecting in more deeper, honest and nourishing ways. I’m still leaning into my joys. Still bending towards the light as I don’t want to lose myself in this crippling spiral.
I’m slowing down alone and I’m slowing down in groups that I’m supporting and who are supporting me. I’m not by-passing the pain, the harsh realities, the genocides ( as there are multiple happening at the same time just now or have always been going on), but I’m also acknowledging how much I can endure and not beating myself up if I choose silence instead of performance. I know this is a privilege which I recognise, voice and keep checking.
Below I share the images from my Paris trip of Our Lady of Good Deliverance, often referred to as the Black Madonna of Paris. Over a 6 miles walk to see her, I covered more miles within my mind with my thoughts and feelings wondering and wandering, which were silenced or put to one side when I met this Black Madonna. I had the small chapel , in the suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, all to myself when I visited. I walked around, I sat and looked and I lit a candle and remembered my ancestors and give thanks for this deliverance.
Deliverance: being rescued or being set free. How apt she comes back to me today. How I must have unconsciously known I needed her guidance today, needed her love and reassurances that liberty, salvation, change is possible. I’m not religious or spouting anything remotely religious or pious. I’m not preaching or looking to convert.
I’m spiritual and believe in love. I believe in the good in people and try to connect there on that common ground rather than separation and hatred.
What I do know is this isn’t a neat, tie-it-all-up-ending, with ‘this is what I want to say and you to take away’ as that would be another construct and false prophet.
I just know starting to look/ believe that ‘God is a Black Woman’, that the Black Madonnas are here to support and love us through difficult times ( as well as good times, our pleasures and joys) feels like a blessing to me that I will continue to lean into during these slowing down, turning away from exploitative and extractive society and culture times and continue to nurture others ways of {BEING} in this world.
I’m onto the second reading of this book. I think I heard Christena Cleveland on a podcast talking about her journey and I knew I just had to get her book. I’ve used the saying myself, “God is a Blackwoman.” But I didn’t know there was a book all about it.
The book explores Cleveland’s spiritual/ religious journey as she falls out of love with Christianity as its essentially fathetskygod/white make good and is used to uphold white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. Basically just looking out for white cis males.
The book also follows Cleveland’s four-hundred-mile walking pilgrimage across the Auvergne to visit eighteen Black Madonnas. The book manifests Cleveland’s transformation through the Sacred Black Feminine, healing her Black female embodied soul.
Each chapter takes the reader on a journey in the present as Cleveland walks and also into the past as she reflects on her upbringing within her family, the church and society. How she grew up feeling unloved by God, unseen and not looked after. Each chapter also introduces the reader to a Black Madonna, each one Cleveland encounters along her pilgrimage.
It was when I read Chapter 5 and Cleveland introduced us to ‘She who cherishes our hot mess’, the Black Madonna Our Lady of the Sick in Vichy, that I got it into my head I needed to go see this one for myself.
Now I’ve seen the Black Madonna in Le Seu, Barcelona. Even climbed a mountain to see the Black Madonna of Montserrat, just outside Barcelona. But this time, this need felt different. A lot has changed for me since I’ve last seen these Black Madonnas and a lot more life experiences to heal from/ through/ round/over/in.
The Black Madonna of Vichy was decapitated during the French Revolution but the people who were oppressed loved her. They tracked down her head and built her new body out of walnut and put her back together again.
I love this story and it spoke deeply to my soul because I know what it feels like to be separated from my body in an act to fit in. To be disconnected from my body, living in just my mental space and not listening to my physical pains and discomforts but soldiering on. Denying my needs and wants as these are seen as weaknesses, produce feelings of shame and are not welcome here. Squeezing myself into smaller and smaller spaces so as not to take up any room and apologising for the space I do take up.
Been there, done that. Now I intentionally practice being with/in my body. I enjoy an embodied presence in the present. My head has been reattached to my body and I’m allowing my body to lead the way with practice. I’m no lover afraid to express my needs and wants or to walk away if these are not being met.
So once I realised I was definitely coming to Paris this year, I made the arrangements to go that extra mile or two ( well 450 round trip) to see ‘She who cherishes our hot mess’ in the flesh.
It would involve a 3 hour train journey each way. An over night stay and a little hope skip and a jump up to the Notre Dame des Malades, the new church where she stands.
And for a minute there I thought the church was locked …
I’ll leave it here for now because trying to see this Black Madonna turned into a bit of a crusade to see her again and again during my time in Paris. More to follow!
This is my final day in Barcelona. Well Spain, as I took a trip yesterday southwest along the coast to Sitges and stayed.
This is the Mediterranean Sea and I got in it this morning. It wasn’t planned as I didn’t bring a swimming costume on my travel. Travelling light I was. . So it was a very fetching set of underwear that saw me right. Who knew!
Not as cold as the North Sea but still fresh. But oh so clear. Glass clear. It was just what my body needed . Now I’m chilled in a good way. Bones, and sinew relaxed, grateful for this time away with myself.
I thought I would have written more here on the blog while away but I haven’t. Saving my reflections for after rather than during. Really being present while here has been my focus. And it’s felt LUSH.
I’m proud of my consistency as I’ve still kept up with my morning routine while here as well as completing a whole month of posting on my blog for January.
Another consistent habit/ practice for January and hopefully beyond, has been honouring my body. Listening to her and giving her what she needs and desires. This is new as before it’s been denial and depriving and depreciating.
Tiger Chai and Cinnamon Roll, yummy!!!
2025 had seen, no felt, a change with my relationship will my body. I’m looking forward to exploring this even more during February. The month of love!
Living Wild Studios 