Happy New Year. I’ve been wishing friends and family joy, peace and laughter for 2026. I include myself in these wishes too!
It had to be done.
My first intention for today was to start fresh and give myself a clean slate.
Going into the sea can be seen as a baptism – a washing away of 2025 with gratitude and a welcoming of 2026 with hope and excitement.
My second intention for today was to walk. Bitter cold but walk I did. I’m been letting this practice slide. I just haven’t bee arsed. But today I kept my intentions. I walked and paid attention.
i’ve been spending the last week or so really diving deep into what my word for 2026 will be.
2025 was all about fugitivity, dreaming and conjuring. And this will continue into 2026. But i need some direction. Something that will encompass my purpose with room enough to expand and explore.
i learnt a few lessons in 2025 in adopting a persona/ a mask in order to protect myself / to create some safe space for myself so ‘ i may not see myself as others see me.’ Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
i’m fixing to create ( or is it continuing to create?) new narratives around blackness in order to expunge the past dominant narratives we’ve been fed around blackness up until NOW.
i think i’ve found my word for 2026 – AFROSURREAL.
I was gifted a voucher for a ClassBento creativity class last Christmas. And I’m just getting around to using it today as I attended a photography class with Daniel Dabrowski.
I’ve wanted to experience the dark room and developing my own photography for decades. So I was super excited to finally fulfil this dream.
I used a ME Super Pentax 35mm camera. Daniel gave me some instructions around the camera – aperture, shutter speeds, the light and composition.
And then I was let free to take images in the park. I was in The Meadows, Edinburgh. It was dry but grey. But I loved the opportunity, the freedom to roam and snap.
The light is everything.
Once I got 36 images it was back to get the film out of the camera off the spool and developed.
I learnt so many new things that I’ll probably forget but I did learn to do it all in the dark. Feeding the film into a reel to be placed a canister so is light protected. Then adding the chemical to the special quantities needed for the film. Shaking gently for certain times and letting it stand. Hanging up the film reel to dry. Yes. There are images captured on the film. No duds. We have something to work with. Relief.
So many steps in the process of developing your own film and you can get into a focused rhythm, a meditative magic. It’s such a beautiful dance. Another experience where I felt as if I’d stepped out of time.
All that mattered was what was right in front of me. Witnessing the images appear. Shadows, ghost, haunting upon the papers.
I’m remembering the summer as well as archiving the events that went down @Earth Sea Love.
In August we managed to pull off a black women’s creative retreat. A weekend of creative camping in the middle of a forest. We cooked, and created, shared stories and slept under the stars. It was a magical time as we stepped out of time, to steal our lives back on our own terms. We laughed and cried and sang and walked and reconnected with ourselves, each other and nature.
I’ve just spent some time, updating the Earth Sea Love website with some events that took place over the summer, this retreat included because it’s important to have a record, an archives of these happenings. My heart and body remembers these days, these events because they have a profound effect on my {BEING}. Events like these reinforces everything that I {BE} and do for myself and others. And it is finding those ways of getting free, more often and for longer stretches of time.
This image above is of Pauline Mayers, one of the women to come on the retreat. And as you can see from her facial expression, and the sheer glow coming off her being, we had fun out there in nature together.
I’m now fixing to create more opportunities like this one. It was a dream come true, a dream started in a visual journal spread one day a few years ago. And who says dreams don’t come true. All you have to do is believe. Believe in yourself and the community around you and all will come to fruition.
Living Wild Studios 