My time of hibernation is coming to an end and there is a whole heap of resistance. It’s not as if I’ve got loads of work lined up. It’s the thought that my time will not be mine alone, to do with what I want come April and beyond.
I took a major risk taking/ making the time away to rest and dream. But for me there was no other choice. I think I was a bit burnt out around the edges and I needed to pull back and heal. And I have done that but there is no end point for healing. No rubber stamping a certificate.
I continue with my morning routine and hope to continue beyond the hibernation period. And this will be where the true test lies. To continue to love on myself daily before I have to meet the world will make the difference between continuing on the healing journey or coming to a full stop. As there can be no healing and growth and self-love if I don’t protect the time to {BE}.
I’ve been up today since about 8am. It’s just after 10am now and I’ve had this track, Love Dimension by Beautiful Chorus on Insight Timer on repeat. It’s only 2 minutes long so I’m not going to work out the math for how many times it’s been on repeat. But let’s just say a lot.
I’ve got it running on and on in the background as I go about my morning routine. I’m feeling the need to have this reminder coming at me on repeat entering my bones, my blood, my heart and soul subliminally.
Oooooooooooooooooooo
Welcome, welcome, to the love dimension. To the love dimension. Ooooooooo
Welcome, welcome, to the love dimension. To the love dimension.
It’s Monday y’all and that can only mean Level 3 Counselling Skills today. Yeah Love Dimension is on repeat. Like a mantra. Like an incantation. Like a protective shield of steel.
End / beginning of another week. Depending on if you see Sunday as the end of the week or the beginning of the next.
For me it’s and/both. Sundays are usually change over day at our house as Ella goes between my home and her dad’s. Sometimes we do things on a Sunday or sometimes we don’t.
We just take it easy.
But usually on a Sunday I reflect on the week gone and plan for the week ahead. It’s a ritual of getting my head in the game. Not the outside societal, capitalist game. No, my own game. The Sheree Mack Game, which runs counter to the White Supremacy Culture game of go go go produce produce produce and strive for perfection at the same time as avoiding conflict and being grateful for the crumbs from their table. Yeah counter to that game as I refuse to be part of this system, where my labour is being bought and sold to support the actors, that are white people.
I’ve been hibernating for months now and I’m still tired. Go figure. Maybe my exhaustion is more than a year in a dumb ass job but runs much deeper. A generational exhaustion that I just can’t shift which has to be recognised but will take a lifetime to ease.
Ease. Yes that would be welcome.
There are moments when I grasp these ease and feel it spread across my back, untightening bunched up muscles. Making my spine fluid rather than ridged. These times I can feel my heart and soul float and I’m relaxed into whatever I’m being. But these are just moments. The aim is to extend these moments into longer moments, into days and months.
I’m working on being so but it is a practice. So when I say Sundays are reflecting/ planning days. I don’t mean around a to-do-list of jobs that need to be completed in order to bring in the tainted coin. I mean, where did I experience ease this week and where can I factor in/ plan for more ease next week. Where did I experience joy and pleasure and how can that be replicated moving forward.
Yeah in the Sheree Mack Game, all the rules and tasks are different to the societal external game. At more ease and I know I’m winning x
The water is ice cold. It’s like being bitten. The natural instinct is to retreat. Drawback. Curl in on self – reducing the amount of surface skin touching the ice cold water.
I do not.
I keep inching forward so more and more skin is exposed to the cold. Now. My toes, the first part of my body to touch the water, are numb. They’ve taken on that false warm feeling as it they’ve warmed up and comfortable. But they are not.
Now. I’ve lost all sensation in them which is good. As if the pain had continued from toes all the way up to my thighs where the ice cold water has now reached, the bites, the incessant biting sensation of short sharp teeth would have taken over my system along with the piercing screams erupting from my lips.
Now. Instead, I continue to wade into the ice cold water. To my core. Now. I breath deeply, and bend at the waist, outstretched my arms, fingers hitting the water first to push back the ice cold water as I take my first breast stroke.
Now. My body is totally submerged and she is screaming out in protest. She is in pain but I do not listen to her. Instead I push further out, making wide sweeping stroke with arms whose elbows are howling in pain. Now. I keep my breathing steady and continue to glide through the water as if my body is not asking for mercy, asking to retreat, asking to exit ice cold water.
Now. It happens. The cold is no longer felt as acutely. No lingering ice cold. Just cold. And numb. Numb and cold. I continue to swim across the bay. And give thanks. Now.
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 