freedom

Rest is a Revolution

| Sheree

How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?

When I start avoiding people. Start avoiding those conversations, connections with other people. Not being able to muster the energy to just look someone in the eye, I know it is time to unplug, unwind and retreat.

When my mind becomes a jumbled mess of to-dos, guilt-tripping myself galore with feelings of not being good enough. Then I know it is time to unplug, unwind and retreat.

When I no longer receive pleasure from the things I love to do, like writing, creating, eating. {BEING}. I know then, time to step away from the tasks, the commitments, the noise, the violence and the ruin and hide.

Stop. Breathe. Lick wounds. Apply water inside and out. And come back to centre. My centre. Me, being just me.

No actions or words in attempt to prove myself. No singing and dancing routine to grab your attention. Nothing wise or in service here.

Just someone unplugging from the system unsure whether or not she wants to plug back in on someone else’s terms.

There are no ‘lazy days’

| Sheree

Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?

This morning’s gratitude

It’s been a bit hit and miss here over the last few weeks as I’ve been busy, walking and resting.

There are no lazy days. Saying a person is having a lazy day is such a imperialist, capitalist, white supremacy patriarchy judgement.

Our value does not come from how busy we are, how productive we are or how hard we hustle.

I’m done with that mentality and practice and conditioning.

I’m been resting up after my 96 miles hike for the lowlands to the highlands of Scotland and have felt no guilt or made any excuses for it. I’m luxuriated in the inactivity.

Rest is a weapon as I’ve said before. Rest is pushing back against a system which was set up not for my survival but destruction.

Rest is a Revolution. So while I write my morning pages from bed, cradling a hot coffee and a sugared ring donut, I creatively plot my next move in chipping away for the dismantling of the system.

This includes another coffee and another page of dreaming. I’m not lazing, I’m not having a lazy day, I’m creating friction, rebellion, freedom.

Appreciation

| Sheree

While waiting for the shower to run from cold to hot, I think of three things I’m grateful for today:

I’m grateful for CoCo ( mini convertible borrowing from a dear friend) because it got me places I didn’t to get to today. All in one piece.

I’m grateful for the warm oat milk poured over Weetabix, with chilled blueberries and chocolate sauce. Comfort food.

I’m grateful for the chance to see my daughter today as I dropped off a book with her after school before she went on to her dad’s.

PAD/005 – Protest

| Sheree

Cinnamon sky rumbles
as electric clouds jag
over glass shop fronts.
Scarlet waves fire street

corners, claiming them forever.
Coppers and politicians
worry the faultlines
left behind.

PAD/001 – A Month of Poetry

| Sheree

Happy April. Time for showers, blossom and light. Oh and poetry.

Forsythia

As I mentioned last week, I’m honouring National Poetry Month with the challenge of writing a poem a day.

I’ve set myself this task many times over the years, and I’ve always been amazed at the creations along the way. Poems have emerged onto the page that I didn’t even know were in me and needed expressing.

So today I come to the page with an open heart and a rough idea of the themes or issues I want to explore. But who knows with the creative process. Anything could happen.

Anyway day 1 – PAD/ 001

Trying to understand “the difference between poetry and rhetoric”

After Audre Lorde

The contested site of black settlement in England

is shrouded a heavy fog of amnesia. The wrong colour,

the wrong body, the wrong sound.

Read the history books, you’d think we just landed

the day before last. 400 years of being here, lost

in the mire, weighted down with size 10, Dr. Martens.

Like transplanted birds of paradise, West Indians

struggled to put down roots. Alien soil. On corners,

skylarking and limin’, jobs, homes and a little bit of peace

denied; harsh whispers on the bitterly cold wind.

The contested site of black settlement in England

is captured in stills. Images speak for themselves.

Black faces filling the frame; black blooms pressed

against hothouse glass. But still an absent presence in failed memories.

I don’t remember when I lost my most important treasure

| Sheree
The Goddess Series, 2023

I don’t remember when I started to hurt.

I don’t remember when I gave up on myself being enough, being worthy.

I don’t remember when I gave myself away to others at the expense of not keeping any goodness for me.

I don’t remember when I started to hate on myself and wishing myself away, wishing myself into something or someone else. Anything else but this. Anything other than who I really am.

I don’t remember when I started to hide myself away became secretive and dishonest as a means of protection and advancement.

I don’t remember when I stopped being my own best friend and started to seek this relationship, this love and attention elsewhere.

I don’t remember when I betrayed myself by thinking that I was someone who didn’t deserve to be here, as someone worthy of love and happiness and joy.

I don’t remember when I started to listen to others, the outside world and stopped listening to my heart, to my own wisdom.

I don’t remember when I stopped just {being} instead of doing. When {being} was enough.

I don’t remember when I stoped paying attention to what lights me up, my wants and needs, what makes me smile.

I don’t remember when I stopped being a child and took the burdens of the world on to my little shoulders like they belonged there.

I don’t remember when I stopped being in love with myself and gave this love to others who were not deserving of my love, who could not see me as me.

I don’t remember when I began to think I needed other people to love me instead of me just loving on me.

I don’t remember when or how or why all this happened, I just feel it. And now, here I am trying to get back to me, to me loving on me, the most important treasure, lost.

My Mother was the Moon, the Earth, the Song

| Sheree

As I pull into the roadside drenched in memory, I practice breathing. Cycle through the minutes trying to gain ground.

She was silence behind her smiles. Behind her ample flesh. I burnt down our bonds because she dropped before her time.

I’ve too much fire to ever accept her truth. Too much sense to feel the moon held her fullness.

Late into the night standing by the window, she waited for my return. Without fail. I took her love and joy without a backward glance.

I am dark. Too dark. But meaning comes with the light. My own light, learning to shine from the inside out.

I wish she had her chance. I take her picture sitting in the grass amongst the trees and seal it into memory.

The earth she could not give me. She didn’t know how as she laughed her soul into existence.

I am red. All of it. And not at all. But with eyes wide open, body claiming space daily, I listen to her song and bathe in the moonlight.

Light is the Source of Life

| Sheree
The Earthcraft Oracle

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.