for the people I love.
for the beauty around me.
for the pleasurable experiences in my life.
for the challenges that force me to grow.
for the more I focus on the good in my life the more generous my life becomes.
I’m grateful …
life
I only saw his shine once it was too late to feel it
In the dream, he comes back to me, whole and young.
He was always young in my eyes. When I used to ask him at each birthday how old he was, Daddy would answer, 45.
He was always 45 in all the years I knew him. All the years I was living, he was dying.
In the replaying of images, I play it differently.
I keep my distance until he asks for me to bring his slippers or newspaper. I offer them with bowed head. I don’t throw them at him as I used to. Escaping his rage, escaping the beats.
I keep my distance, but I want to be close to him. To hold him. To feel his love for me. Then and now, still needed after so many years gone.
To serve, he brought me up, to serve. Instead of getting the vacuum clearer out, he had us on the floor picking up the bits of fluff and crumbs. To hear his pride at a job well done was enough.
When I enter the chapel of rest, it’s like I’m floating on air, light as the flowing curtains concealing a prize. I see him now, as then …
he‘a surrounded by gold satin, his mahogany black skin shines, relaxed and unlined, sea-black lips wave-curled and still.
He looks younger than 45. Even though the plaque on the coffin lid reads 1920 -1981 – he was 61. And the time he was dying. I was living.
End of week gratitude
When life throws you curve balls to knock you off your feet and forces you to reassess everything in your life, this is when you lean into the practices which have seen you right.
Those practices which keep you buoyed when it appears you’re drowning or about to go down.
Those practice which you practice everyday but really come into their own when the chips our down.
One of those practices is keeping a gratitude journal. And it doesn’t have to be something major or time consuming.
Thinking on one simple thing is enough to switch my thinking, to get me to count my blessings and step up again. Renewed, restored and ready.
This week has been a week of happenings and announcements and shit hit the fan moments. But I’m alive and here to live another day. So all is not bad.
I’m a firm believer that things happen for a reason. Maybe to test us. Maybe to move us into a better situation. To gain clarity and perspective. To live a better life on my own terms.
This card ‘thunderstorm’ signifies tremendous upheaval and change, happening or about to. And it is out of my control. But I must keep the faith, trust in Mother Nature that these things are happening for the best.
Things are out of my control. But how I respond to this period of upheaval is within my control.
I’m choosing to count my blessings, lean into my practices and give thanks. Give thanks for all that is going right or is good in my life right now. Here and now.
I’m grateful for the light. I’m grateful for rest. I’m grateful for a warm comfortable bed. I’m grateful for morning coffee. I’m grateful for time spent with the people I love. I’m grateful for my health. I’m grateful for my creativity. I’m grateful for all the opportunities which have and are coming my way. I’m grateful for food in the cupboards. I’m grateful for the roof above my head. I’m grateful for the air I breathe. I’m grateful for the earth between my toes. And I’m grateful for the water that holds me.
28 days of gratitude
I’ve been leaning into my gratitude practice, but sometimes I’ve forgotten and let the simple task of listing one thing per day for which I am grateful for, slide.
What can I say, habits are made to be broken as well as upheld. And the bad habits always seem to be the ones we hold onto. While those habits that can actually benefit us and bring some joy, peace and happiness into our lives, we fuck up!
Gratitude is one of them. Gratitude helps people feel more positive about their lives. It fosters positive emotions as people reflect and savour and relish good experiences and events and relationships.
Gratitude improves people’s health and makes them more satisfied with what they have rather than focusing time and energy and regret on what they do not have.
It’s been proven that being more grateful makes you happier.
Well I could always do with being happier. Everyone could. And that is not to say that I’m not grateful for the life I have, the life I’m living and the people in it. But I could do with a reminder and become more consistent in my appreciation and gratitude.
Hence the next 28 days of gratitude. Holding myself to account in order to re-engage with this positive habit and hold on to happiness.
I want to wring out as much gratitude for each experience and happening and being in my life as I can. As life is a gift but sometimes I forget. So today we begin again.
It’s day one of my gratitude practice.
Today I am grateful for the lie in I managed to have before being woke up.
But I’m not complaining as I was woke up by Miss Ella for a cuddle. I’m grateful for my morning cuddle in bed with my daughter.
I’m grateful today for the hot black fresh brewed coffee that helped me wake up fully and engage with the day.
I’m grateful to have completed a big application and submitted it today and it helped to have company while completing this work.
I’m grateful for the time I got to be alone and focus on the tasks I had to complete today and not be distracted or interrupted.
I’m grateful today for the chocolate I managed to stuff into my face after said application was complete and I could rest
I’m grateful to be able to lie in bed now, warm and sleepy and write this gratitude list without having to think too hard about what or who I am grateful for today because I have ample choices to draw upon to share.
PAD/ 027 – Taking a risk
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
oh it’s so sad/ she said/ when reading about slavery
oh it’s so wrong/ she said/ to anyone who’d listen
I listened/ to her going through the motions/ performing
they say peonies are showy flowers/ blousy bursting blooms/ for the show
at least peonies sense when it’s their time/ chance/nature to keep shut and wilt
PAD/023 – empty
The last thing I emptied was my heart
I emptied my heart of lies and shame.
Took out the crammed spaces and rot/
carried them all out to the trash.
It was decluttering to the max of my heart/ of my love – for others/ for myself
I tell, you I haven’t felt better. Heart beating full-blood-red.
Like a new lamb to the slaughter, I’m showing up in my day to day/ jumping/
Springing/ heart open and bleeding.
PAD/022- You have a choice
You have a choice.
Like the dandelion
flowering within the edge
of a verge or between pavement slabs,
you have a choice.
Arousal. Finding joy
in life, is not something
someone else can give to you.
You must take it.
Like breathing.
Like the tulips coming
up for air, right here. Right now.
You have a choice.
An electric current swirling
always, through you.
Between you and the cherry blossom
bursting into pink glory.
To live from this bounty,
you have a choice.
PAD/019 – i am becoming my mother
Commentary: years ago I wrote a poem titled ‘ i am becoming my mother’. I think it’s in my first full collection Family Album, Flambard Press 2011.
A few weeks ago while attending one of my late night across the Atlantic poetry group workshops, I had an inkling to revisit this poem with the intention of bringing it up to date. To try and incorporate all the ‘Sherees’ that have developed, spored since the first poem, since my mum’s death and teachings have passed into decades gone by.
So I created this piece. Same title but definitely more expansive.
i am becoming my mother
Dehumanising the Black woman. Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, Bitch.
The black woman is seen as one dimensional; the mule of the world, carrying the heavy burden of mothering all others except her own.
Her own children are lost; lost to the auction block, the ocean, the noose.
A Black woman is a source of strength and love. Passing on power as well as pain.
Her body carries stories, carries histories, carries an archive.
as a black woman,
resting deep within the meadow,
held in softness,
grass tickling shins,
dress billowing about
like blossom,
is a political act.
PAD/ 017 – for god’s sake, we must stop this coloured invasion
a white banner shifts against Nelson’s Column, ‘KEEP BRITAIN WHITE.’
a bright white suspension of unwelcome and hate
ladies and gentlemen with heads turned up as if taking direction from God himself, listen to the message
from a man, on the platform, with Union Jack legs
as if whiteness and rightness runs through him like quickening sap/
the threat is real murmurs through the crowd/ a gathering searching for answers to stop the invasion
let me enter the scene/ from the extreme right/
let me mingle at the back/ near the man in a flat cap
let me feel the heat of the air/
let me sense the crackle of fear in their white, wholesome bodies
my body would be one of those coloured they want to stop
my body would be one of those aliens they want to exterminate
but what they don’t care to know is that this body belongs to a love evangelist
who’s at pains to show them how love can save us all
if only they’d part their ways and let me through
Living Wild Studios 