Nature has so much to teach us if we only allow ourselves to {BE} and listen. Within nature, energies come and go in cycles; with the seasons.
There’s a time for bursting as well as for waiting. There’s a time for gathering as well as for resting.
Darkness and solitude, within society, are portrayed as somethings to be afraid of and to be avoided. I see both darkness and solitude as vital and necessary protective qualities for my energies. Allowing them to wrap around me and hold me during times of low, depleted energies and passions means, I can retreat. Rest and repair and rejuvenate safely. And come back bursting with energies and ideas and love when I’m ready.
Within white supremacy culture, the aim of the game is to be always switched on, always available to go go go and produce produce produce. The more you produce the better and the quality of such is not so much of an issue.
We are taught to always be striving for perfection. Perfection does not exist as we are flawed human beings. We know this yet this doesn’t stop us from striving for it. It’s a vicious cycle of striving, missing the mark and burning out. And striving, missing the mark, burning out.
Today I rest. I allow the feelings of guilt to slip away. I replace the chastising, criticising voices which shout about being useless and a failure and a disgrace with words of compassion and grace and love.
I deserve to rest. I deserve to take care of myself. I deserve to seek solitude and darkness.
The rest of the world can wait until I have nourished my energies and rested enough to feel ready to be its warrior again.
I needed to see /feel/hear this card today. I’m stepping into the arena and I need a reminder of who I am, at the core.
This card is a reminder that the sun is light and light is the source of life. My sun, my light radiates from my heart.
My heart is my source and sometimes I forget this or when remembered feel this is a disadvantage rather than a power.
My light is my strength and my source and when I’m living my life from my source from my heart then I’m following my passions, speaking my truth and being my authentic self.
Of course I want to be this all ways and all days. But we do not live in an ideal world and there has to be a practice to maintain this status.
If I compare myself to others, or allow others to diminish me and steal my light, then there is a cloud over my heart and things are not right.
Today this card reminds me of who I am as I step into the arena and take up space on my own terms. I receive this message today with thanks and brandish it like a shield, like a force field around my light today.
I’ll let you know in a later post what is happening today to need this reminder.
The fire which burns outside is still greater, for most of us, than the one that burns within.
Burning Woman, Lucy H. Pearce
There are times when I have so much I want to say but don’t know how. Ideas come and go and those moments of connection, when something clicks and I light up. And then flounder in how to communicate it. How to express what lies within.
There are plenty of times I have something to say but doubts and fears get in the way of expressing them. I long to be more courageous and bold in my expression without fear of percussions or judgements.
I know what I think and feel goes against the grain and to express these things in public would invite the gaze, backlash and cancel culture.
For example, we’ve just had a four day bank holiday, where there were parades and street parties and celebrations for Queen Elizabeth being on the throne for 70 years. But really what is there to celebrate? For me it angers as for these 70 years, people have paid for the royal family upkeep. But more infuriating is that the Queen is a figurehead of colonialism; the subjugation and exploration of Black and brown bodies around the world for centuries. And as a Black person I’m expected to shut up, celebrate this and be grateful.
But to say these things to anyone, I’d be the one with the issue, unpatriotic with a chip on my shoulder as someone recently threw at me when I described a racist incident I’d experienced which was tried to explained away as something else.
Just how it bugs me, when the term ‘women’ is used there is a silent, hidden (white) before it. That the default setting for woman is white and anything else such as Black woman is the ‘other’. To point this out would invite the comment that I always have to play the race card, or not everything is about race? Not that when someone uses (white) woman or (white) women that they do not see me included.
A few years ago, I started reading Burning Woman by Lucy H. Pearce. I felt the rallying cry for women to take back their power. To not hide from or be scared of the fire burning within. “She who dares. She who does what they say cannot be done, must not be done. She who tries and fails. She who does it her way.”
But coming back to it today, the words jar. I identify with the burning passion and rage inside of me that I need to express and enact upon, but I don’t feel my whole being/ experience/ body is contained within this book or within the term ‘woman’. I know that if I dare and do what I want to do, succeed or fail, the repercussion as so much more dangerous, dire for me as a Black woman. Not even acknowledging this within this book, or other books I’m reading excludes my experience as well as makes me feel as if I have the problem, and not that white supremacy culture is the issue.
Reading Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter to reconnect with the place, I’m having to turn part of myself off because there are certain things he says that I could find offensive. Throw away comments about African-America jazz musicians, artist or writers who made their home in Paris are not given their proper respect/ admiration/ regard as fellow human beings. Some points I feel their talent or success is not theirs alone but down to the white people they were befriended by or associated with.
I think what these reading experiences are illustrating for me, except for stoking my internal fires, is how much my lens/ gaze/ perception has been readjusted, changed and re-educated. How I’m no longer duped by white supremacy culture and how I now see behind the veil, the workings and manipulations. I no longer accept them or toil under them in silence.
Yes I feel that fire in my belly, and I’m using it to fuel what I’m doing outside of me. I may still have some fear of being burnt by it, my passion, my voice, my expressions but my greatest fear is remaining silent about the fires burning outside of me which are denied, overlooked or dismissed. And I’m ready to challenge whoever is lighting them and keeping them burning.
Writing my mixmoir on my terms is my way of allowing free rein for all the things I need to express and share in order to not be consumed from within by my fire and rage. The writing process is taking the flames and creating something beautiful and scorching.
Collaborative anti-racism broadsides collaborative project with Theresa Easton
I started my Patreon Page in April 2018 with the focus on Slow Writing.
I stated:
The Art of Slow Writing
“When our lives change, when the world changes, we must reinvent ourselves as writers.” – Louise DeSalvo.
Taking inspiration from Louise DeSalvo’s book, The Art of Slow Writing, I’m choosing to create fine writing; writing of quality and writing of worth. I believe in order for this to happen, I need to find my way back to slow writing.
Slow writing is a meditative practice, creating time and space for understanding my relationship to my writing, the writing process and working towards my best work.
I envisioned it as the space where I wrote the memoir ( memoir then, Mixmoir now).
I’ve been writing a creative non-fiction memoir which includes personal essays, poetry, quotes, paintings, photography etc and this continues as this piece of creation centres the black woman’s body with/in nature. What I envision now is this piece taking on a more critical and political perspective with climate / environmental justice taking up space as this is my reality, our reality, even if there are systems in place which would lead us to believe otherwise.
Using my art is my resistance, is my activism and I just see it as time to start owning it. Blatantly so.
All that I’ve been wanting to achieve and working towards has morphed into one – this idea of black / brown bodies with/in nature. This is my full-time obsession and I’ve been making big changes in my personal life to reflect and accommodate this. This includes Patreon.
It was within this space that I created the term Mixmoir to describe what I’m trying to create. There, here, everywhere.
When you take on a project, a writing project that is arduous and long and messy, there’s a tendency to get lost along the way. Get tangled up in the details, get into your own head and manipulate your own weaknesses and doubts to the point of stop writing and just spending your time and energy just wishing.
I’ve got to the point of feeling sick and tired about feeling/acting/behaving this way. This inactivity within a writing project I feel so deeply about. Which is so vital to my being.
So this is me attempting to change the story and get the damn book complete on my own terms by any means necessary by glueing my arse down to the seat and just writing.
I was brought up to treat books as sacred. They were a source of knowledge. You get your education and you’d have choices in life. You’d move on in the world. Have a better life than your parents before you.
Books were the gateway into this Paradise.
Each week, we would walk into town from our maisonette, along the busy dual carriageway. Once in town, we’d go to the market, to the one book stall and pick out a book. They were the tradition fairy tales with pictures and text.
If not them, then Enid Blyton books. For some reason, I felt the importance of books and the connection of them to my dad. He’d read us bedtime stories and I’d just love to be in his presence then. As he was softer and loving. Different from the angry man he was at all other times.
For some reason, who knows what goes through a child’s mind, I took to doodling in one of these fairy tale books. I want to say it was Snow White, but I could wrong.
A whole heap of scribbles and doodles took over the pages of this book. Why use the book when I had plenty of blank white paper? As I said who knows what goes through a child’s mind.
I just know that my father found the book and shouted at me with rage. And beat me. I’d done something wrong. I’d ruined the book. I’d ruined my chances of getting on in the world. I’d gone against the unwritten rule( or was a spoken one?) around how to respect books.
Older now, I hunt for books. I buy my own books. I read then. Some I don’t. Some I keep or give away. And some I purposefully, consciously make the decision to repurpose. Reclaim them.
I tear out pages and I cut these up. I smear paint on the pages left in the book. I stick images in them, tape, stickers. And yes I write in them. I write out my hopes and fears. My desires and dreams. My memories and traumas.
I think I was brought up right. To treat books as sacred. But it’s what you do with those books that count, I think. And a book has multiple uses/ purposes. I think. Multiple ways and means of instilling knowledge and opportunities and freedom.
It’s been a long journey for me to get to this point of choices. But I claim them all.
Nothing beats journaling in bed. Still half-asleep but fresh coffee bringing me around. And the day ahead. Expanding or constructing as I see fit.
I come to the page and allow my mood to guide me. What page to put pen to or image or colour.
It’s my intuition who leads the way, gently. Before my intuition was dead and gone. Repressed and forgotten. But slowly, through trust and patience my intuition is very much in the driving seat these days.
And I like it this way. She never sees me wrong but keeps me safe, creative and present.
I just posted this over on my Patreon page for supporters, but I through it was relevant to post here. These are the revelations my visual journaling practice through up!
Visual Journal Spread – 22/05
Hey hey hey
How you doin’?
Me, I’ve been hitting on myself hard. Berating myself for spending last week in a stupor of low energy and slow pace productivity.
The practice of ::SLOW:: accompanied with the practice of ::CARE:: was not being practiced last week.
I could start shouting, ‘Shame on you, Sheree.’ But then I’d just be repeating the no compassion, no grace, no patience attitude and treatment towards self of last week.
Do you ever learn, Sheree? Are you just circling the same old wounds and territory? Are you just right back in the same spot as before?
Nah man!
I’m not circling, I’m spiralling ( in a good way).
On this healing journey back to self, the pathway is a spiral. Yes there’s circling involved but with each new rotation I’m further up and further in, deeper into the exploration and becoming.
It’s like going up a mountain when you reach a vantage point. You get a better lay of the land as your vista opens up. You’ve got more data to play with moving forward/ upwards/ sideways/ and sometimes backwards. But you’re not in the same position as before because you have that experience, thoughts and feelings, events and reflections that have come to pass in the interim.
My takeaway therefore from last week is, ‘When you know you have a busy week ahead, Sheree darling, put in the diary rest and recovery for the week after that one.‘ Capeesh?!
If I schedule in the downtime, make a date with myself, then I won’t be riding my arse for not having enough energy to complete the things that might give me energy.
Instead of guilt-tripping myself, I’d be able to luxuriate in the feeling of knowing that’s all I’ve got to do in the time and space available is ::REST::
I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been granted a scholarship to participate in Susannah Conway’s Journal Love Club for a whole year.
It’s a gift that just keeps on giving. I get a prompt everyday, a growing community on Mighty Networks, people sharing practice and a live zoom call once a month.
Usually, I start my day with my visual journal practice as above and then by the time I’ve done that the prompt from Journal Love Club has come through so I can continue and respond to that.
Journal Love Club Prompt 21/05
In the past, I’d be on my case for using so many different journals. I would also get confused by what went where and then lose stuff, not knowing where to find the gems. Now, I’m much more of a mind that if I’m showing up to the page, at all or once or twice or more, it’s all a win.
The common denominator between all these different journals is me. And this practice helps me along on this journey of getting back to me. The core me. The authentic me.
After today’s prompt which asked me to look over my recent journal entries to pull out themes; what’s been grabbing my attention, this entry came out:
“Nothing is a surprise when I look back and see what issues and ideas keep circulating the journal pages.
Identity, fear, never being good enough.
But then I started to switch things up in response to this prompt. I’ll never to good enough in a system which is stacked against me. In a system wired for us to aim for perfection even when we know it doesn’t exist. But more so, if it did exist it wouldn’t be available to me anyway.
So knowing this I surrender. I let go. Not give up, but surrender means not allowing time and energy to strive for this, to even fight it. But to use this energy and channel it into the things that are important to me. Not even taking into account the system, the white gaze but making my audience that little Black girl inside and the one in my house now.
And maybe through this I can heal as well as be a better mother to myself and my daughter.
This past week has been way too busy for my liking. But it was to my liking in a way as I found it stimulating and so much food for thought.
What I need now is rest though in order to process it all and at some point it did get to stimulation overload.
My creative pot over flows and I need to channel this into something. Something I produce in order to process this last week somehow. as well as how it sits with my overall practice and how I show up in the world.
Showing up at the page each day has helped; mining my thoughts and feeling and reactions onto these pages has been a support.
I just need some more space and rest now to integrate it all. Yes that’s what I’m seeking integration.
And again this is where my visual journal steps up/ in/ through me to support this journey of becoming.
Living Wild Studios 