For those of us who live at the shoreline… Audre Lorde
It will be 10 years this August that I started my visual journaling practice.
Then it was called Dreaming on Paper, as I completed the course of the same name by Lisa Sonora.
I needed a safe space to explore the tumult of my feelings and thoughts. I was going through a traumatic experience of escape really. Escape from the life I’d spent the past 12 years building up, that was took away in the flick of a Facebook post.
I ran away from the public, the writing community, my home as I travelled into the Scottish Highlands and Islands. To heal.
Visual journaling helped me heal. Helps me continue to heal.
Overtime, I’ve come to understand my visual journal practice as a fugitive practice. Within these paints, images and words, dreams of freedom are planned out and eventually come to fruition. Projects, happenings, events – all on my own terms.
I mean, the whole point about escape is that it’s an activity. It’s not an achievement. You don’t ever get escaped. – Fred Moten
Within these visual journal spreads, I work out how to escape, how to get outside white supremacy culture while still having to be living on the inside. Coming to terms with the thought of that the outside can only occur from the inside. Being here.
Visual journaling is me trying to create an opening, a break in the fabric in which to slip on through into the otherside/ outside, into the woods running between the trees with the dogs barking at my feet. Creating beauty, creating a beautiful space in which to linger in while the terror rages around me.
Visual journaling is a safe space, is a nurturing space, is a free space.
I’m practicing how to show up in spaces, alone and with others, in fullness.
I’ve used wholeness before. Striving to get back to that sense of being whole, as we enter as already into this world. And then for the rest of our lives society and culture pull us away from our wholeness. When we realise, usually when much older and not giving a fuck, we spend our time and energy attempting to get back to that wholeness. This is a practice too, but to be whole sounds final and also out of reach.
Fullness. While fullness seems something that can be embraced now. In the present, moment to moment. Fullness for me gives the middle finger to those who have criticised me by saying I’m too much. Too Black. Too fat. Too loud. Too enthusiastic. Too Alive. Too much.
Fullness is me embracing my too-muchness and giving off that ‘don’t care less’ energy.
This piece was written back in 2020 and published on Medium. I’ve brought it over here to be part of my writing archive. I also feel that the case needed restating frequently. Did I say daily?
We queue with our shopping basket. This is the norm now. But we don’t complain. It keeps everyone safe. We’re at the front of the queue, for a change. My daughter and I. We’ve only come to the one shop. I let her ride her bike into town. She needs the exercise as she’d be happy in front of her screen all day. I probably would too, as at least she’s inside safe, connecting with her friends, and I get a moment to myself.
Front of the queue, but we hold back as the woman in front of us has just gone into the shop. There’s someone coming out at the same time. The store security guard is standing in the mix too. We allow a gap to form between us; the woman and the entrance and our bodies. Coming across from an adjacent shop, a man and woman stride. Stride into the front of the queue, ready to walk into the shop. I raise my voice just above my normal speaking voice to say to them, There’s a queue. We’re waiting to go into the shop too.
I think I’m smiling but how can they know? How can anyone tell if you’re smiling when you’re wearing face protection? By your eyes. I think by the eyes, you can tell if someone is smiling. It’s a warm, sunny day. I’m wearing sunglasses. Maybe they can’t see my eyes. They can only use my voice as means of communication.
Sorry, they say. We thought the queue was going the other way. They walk to join the queue behind us. I say, in a tone of voice which I think says I understand, No, the lady in front of us has just gone in and we’re waiting back here to giving everyone some space.
In the time it takes for the couple to walk and wait behind us, at the recommended 2 metres, the woman of the couple has already started saying in a loud enough voice for us to hear, Some people are just getting angry about the situation now, and there’s s no need for it. We walk into the shop.
Note: The angry Black woman stereotype portrays a black woman as sassy, ill-mannered, and ill-tempered by nature.
Walking back home, Ella walking with her bike, I approach what happened outside the shop, asking Ella if she heard what the woman said about people getting angry.
She was referring to me. I explained. She saw me as an angry Black woman. Do you think I was angry because you’ve seen me angry?
My daughter knows me. She knows I wasn’t angry and says so.
When you live in a society where you’re powerless, perceived as worthless and inferior, those who have power, believing themselves to be superior, spend their time telling others how they handle the situation isn’t right. They tell you that how you speak or act or response isn’t appropriate. You are wrong. They gaslight you, forcing you to doubt yourself; your actions and capabilities. You are at fault, always. You are wrong. You are silenced.
Back home, I talk to my husband, who’s a white man. I think if he’d been with us, the woman behind us, wouldn’t have uttered the angry line. He disagrees. She sounds like a woman who would have gotten annoyed if anyone had checked her behaviour, he said.
He has the right to think and say that. And maybe he’s right. Who knows? But to accept this explanation, I’d have to disallow what I feel about the situation. I’d have to make allowances once again for someone else’s behaviour, reaction and treatment of me. I’ve spent a lifetime of making allowances for other people’s treatment of me. How can I be sure that when they treat me unfairly, or discriminate against me that this isn’t how they treat everyone else? I don’t know. All I have is the way they make me feel. My lived experience as a Black woman.
All I know is that when I’m walking down the street and someone is coming towards me, it’s me who walks into the road to maintain social distancing. It’s me who walks into the gutter to keep us both safe. Would they do the same? I don’t know. I can’t take the risk to wait and find out either.
I’ve been socialised, fed the stereotype of the angry Black woman for so long, I police myself. I play my part. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t protest or question. It’s part of my make-up to check myself so I appear in society as passive and non-confrontational and unseen.
I wake up ( that is if I got any sleep) and give thanks.
Play Love Dimension by Beautiful Chorus a few times
Water out/ water in
Back to bed for Insight Timer medication or course
Read in bed
Make coffee and then journal in bed
Get up.
Strength training with free weights
Move my body – yoga/ walk/run/ swim
Greet the world with a smile.
What led you to this morning routine?*
Well I started on this find tuning of a morning routine at the beginning of January 2025, more or less. I was hibernating and I wanted to start a ritual that would anchor me into my life. Into the present moment at the same time as showing to myself that I am loved. I’ve done everything in my current morning routine at some point or other before but the putting them all together in some kind of coherent order is a first this year.
Did any ancient practices inspire you?
I’m not sure if a particular ancient practice inspired me. But maybe practices from my ancestral ancients might have subconsciously. If I remember living with my mum, back when I was in my 20s, she had a morning routine which I really didn’t notice then but can now. She’d get up early everyday, even though she wasn’t going to work, and go to the bathroom. Then make a cup of tea, open the windows and have a smoke. Maybe read at the same time but she’d claim the sitting room and the quiet. When she’d finish she’d make herself available for others.
For you, what is the importance of following a morning routine?
I hate routines usually. The predictability of them and the monotony gets on my nerves and I have to break out of them. But I think , in the past, this is because the routines and rituals have not been my own but have been imposed on me by external forces. I’ve mentioned when I was teaching before but also when I think of when I was studying creative writing. We were told if we wanted to be successful we should stick to one genre of writing and practice it in this way, using these techniques and following these rules. I found it all so restrictive. But here with this morning routine containing sacred rituals to myself, even if not carved in stone and open to change, I do not fight against the routine because I created. I feel that it is coming from a place of love for myself. This is my way of practicing self-love because I am giving myself the time and space each day so commune with myself and get my shit together ( or not!).
Quantity over quality is a characteristic of whet supremacy culture. Say like with social media, we are wired to focus on the numbers. The number and amount of followers, likes, comments gives us the buzz. Keeps us returning usually. Rather than the quality of interactions. The quality of connections.
But in this instant when I say I’m on a reading tip and boast that I’ve read 12 books already this year, fiction, poetry and non-fiction, I’m taking the buzz of the numbers because I know they were quality reads.
Last year saw me fall off my reading horse. Reading was only happening when I had an extended amounts of time off the clock. Summer reading mostly. I didn’t have the bandwidth or desire to read at any other times. I was too antsy and not able to settle, as too many demands were pulling on my attention.
So I’m really happy that this hibernation season has seen me dive back into books. Physical and digital books. I do not care which as long as I’m reading, expanding my thinking and formulating new pathways of understanding and connection.
So White Tears Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad was completed yesterday. And it so feeds into my experiences with white women. Even though they’ve caused offence, been racist that is, it’s me who’s consoling them and making sure their feelings are not too hurt. Or it’s me having to apologise because my reaction to their racism or them touching my hair without my consent has been deemed far too aggressive and not very collaborative by the organisation or group I was working with.
They are used as a weapon, white tears, to shut down the conversation. To get the white person out of an uncomfortable situation and out of having to look at themselves and their behaviours.
It was so validating to read this book and recognise that it doesn’t just happen to me and that this is a centuries old tactic of the damsel in distress. And that damsel is white as Black and Brown women have never been deemed woman enough to protect. And all this shit is wearing thin with Black and Brown women. Believe.
This book was an extension of an article Ruby Hamad wrote back in 2018 for The Guardian. You can read it there and just know that one Black woman, Lisa Benson, who was working as a journalist at the time got fired for simply sharing this article because it was deemed ‘an attack on white women’. White tears in action right there!
1. While visiting Paris in April, I’d made arrangements before I left to visit Vichy and visit the Black Madonna there in the Old Church, chapel Saint-Blaise.
I’m returning to my relationship with the Black Madonna here but still exploring this connection. This pull I sense towards these Black Virgins.
2. This chapel has always been a magnet in Vichy due to this Black Virgin of the 14th century. She is known for her miracles.
3. I’ve not brought with me the Christena Cleveland book, God is a Black Woman but I know I’ve written about this particular Black Madonna here before.
4. It was during the French Revolution, that she was burnt and only her head remained, thanks to a ten-year-old child who saved her from destruction.
5. There have been times that I have lost my head. Or been disconnected from my body. There have been times that it’s felt that I’ve been burnt at the stake. That my life has gone up in flames.
6. In 1802, her head was placed on a wooden base covered with the old cloth until 1931 when she was given a body again. Became a full bodied statue thanks to the sculptor Emma Thiollier.
7. No- one stitched me back together. Forged that (re)connection with head and body. I had to do that myself. Over years and over turbulent waters.
8. Vichy is known as the “queen of spa towns” with five healing thermal mineral springs.From the Roman times, people used to bathe in the waters, later to just taking to drink from the spring. It was only later after legends linking the healing qualities of the water to a white fairy that Christians connected the blessed waters with their miracle working Black Madonna of the Sick.
9. I’ve always thought of the sea as my medicine. She has healed me more than once. Healing is not a one time deal. It’s a practice and a process. But I’ve not been taking to the waters of late. I’ve not been taking my medicine.
10. I turn up here, create stories as a part of my healing journeys which are never linear. Spirals and circles instead.
My mind and body are hurting with the constant stream of information and images of this and that atrocity, and there is very little space to breathe, rest and take stock. I’ll be honest, I’ve been checking out. Checking out into Netflix boxsets, mindlessly watching episode after episode, numbing the pain and feelings of being inadequate , or not doing enough, being enough. Enough.
I don’t know about you, but it’s an overload at times of these times, which feel cruel and oppressive, evil and violent and unbelievable and yet we accept. There are no quick fix solutions but my heart and soul wants to feel that all will be well.
Society and culture ( the whole world) at the moment feels toxic and dangerous and I’m all for just slowing down and connecting in more deeper, honest and nourishing ways. I’m still leaning into my joys. Still bending towards the light as I don’t want to lose myself in this crippling spiral.
I’m slowing down alone and I’m slowing down in groups that I’m supporting and who are supporting me. I’m not by-passing the pain, the harsh realities, the genocides ( as there are multiple happening at the same time just now or have always been going on), but I’m also acknowledging how much I can endure and not beating myself up if I choose silence instead of performance. I know this is a privilege which I recognise, voice and keep checking.
Below I share the images from my Paris trip of Our Lady of Good Deliverance, often referred to as the Black Madonna of Paris. Over a 6 miles walk to see her, I covered more miles within my mind with my thoughts and feelings wondering and wandering, which were silenced or put to one side when I met this Black Madonna. I had the small chapel , in the suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, all to myself when I visited. I walked around, I sat and looked and I lit a candle and remembered my ancestors and give thanks for this deliverance.
Deliverance: being rescued or being set free. How apt she comes back to me today. How I must have unconsciously known I needed her guidance today, needed her love and reassurances that liberty, salvation, change is possible. I’m not religious or spouting anything remotely religious or pious. I’m not preaching or looking to convert.
I’m spiritual and believe in love. I believe in the good in people and try to connect there on that common ground rather than separation and hatred.
What I do know is this isn’t a neat, tie-it-all-up-ending, with ‘this is what I want to say and you to take away’ as that would be another construct and false prophet.
I just know starting to look/ believe that ‘God is a Black Woman’, that the Black Madonnas are here to support and love us through difficult times ( as well as good times, our pleasures and joys) feels like a blessing to me that I will continue to lean into during these slowing down, turning away from exploitative and extractive society and culture times and continue to nurture others ways of {BEING} in this world.
Living Wild Studios 