People, friends who come through for you in your hour of need. Who offer their help when you don’t even ask.
Friends who are genuine in their offers of helps and support.
Mutual Aid.
Like the friends who came to my rescue when I needed to move house on very short notice members little money in the bank.
These friends helped me move. And you know who you are. We became a 3 car convoy, back and forth from the old flat to the new flat, all in a few hours.
It was such a god(dess) sen. It was Black Madonna providing in my time of need. She moved with us, carrying each box or suitcase or plant.
Our Lady of Montserrat La Moreneta (Catalan: the Dear Dark One)
I remember a time, after I’d said I was leaving, I’d taken my daughter on a break. We hired a campervan and travelled around the north -east coast. Still covid, still a pandemic. Summer relaxing of restrictions. Eat Out For Summer, something like that. The van kept breaking down for one reason or another.
We booked into a hotel for one night, and I got a phone call from a potential funder. Offering support to apply for emergency funding to help the organisation I was working for as project coordinator to be able to pivot. Still over the nature connection we’d been offering but through nature immersion online.
This person, who called out of the blue, helped me secure the bag. Helped me secure the funding, so I could continue to run nature connection events for others, during these difficult times, but also continue to be paid.
One of the reasons I thought I couldn’t leave my marriage before was because of finances. We lived pay cheque to pay cheque. I didn’t have the resources to move out and find a place of my own.
To me this was a miracle. This was a lifeline. This made this dream of leaving come through.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Roche (Our Lady of the Rock), Our Lady of the Side-Eye, Black Madonna of Mayres
I think the big one here is Black Madonna showing me it was time to leave my marriage of over 20 years.
This is wisdom and insight .
I turned to my ex-husband and asked him for help. It was during the pandemic. I was struggling with how our world had been turned upside down with Covid, home schooling, pivoting with work and the brutal murder of George Floyd. I was struggling and was vulnerable and scared and in need of support.
I laid it all on the line. I was going down and needed a life-raft. My pleas fell on deaf ears. He could not help me.
So I called upon my own strength. I took the sacred act of saving myself and started to make the plans to leave. Black Madonna showed me the way, by showing me that I had to love myself. Love myself enough to save myself.
I ask the question, how do I know that this was the presence of Black Madonna in my life, showing me the way? Faith and trust. I trusted in myself enough to take the leap. I had my fears but I jumped anyway, I trusted in myself to find a way. I trusted in the universe or my ancestors or someone or something having my back.
I’m choosing to feel that this is Black Madonna. I know it’s me, I made the decision and acted upon it. but I’m not taking all the credit. There is someone or something out there who has my back.
What is spirituality if not believing in the divine, in our spirits and souls. I’m choosing to believe that God is a Black Woman. Because when God is a Black Woman, there is no conditional love. It is unconditional and unlimited. Black Madonna loves me in all my fucked up glory.
Today has been all about being in my happy place(s).
You’ve guessed it. My happy place(s) is by the sea. Within the sea. Close to the sea. Close enough so she can hold me, when I need that non-judgmental, nourishing embrace.
My happy place(s) also involves being in Kiwi, my campervan, by the sea.
To be able to stretch out on the bed, with first morning coffee, visual journal and this view, I’m happy.
Yes I’m in Kiwi again, close to the sea, looking at the evening sun on the sand dunes, above the sea. And I’ve just sitting here watching the breeze caress the grass, parked up in my happy place(s) up the coast in Northumberland.
I don’t know about you but I love me a good book cover.
You must have chosen to read a book because of the cover, right?
That’s what I’ve just done.
I recognised the artist as Laylie Frazier. I knew her work from reading Christena Cleveland’s work The Black Madonna.
Researching up more of Laylie Frazer’s work, I found this book over for We Deserve Monuments.
A mixed race teenager with freckles and a lip piercing, defiantly holding the viewers gaze. Yes.
I had to start reading this book. Then to find out it’s a young adult book, and the main character from the cover is Avery and is gay. Yes. Then read on.
In my Summer Field Guide, which I have to fill you in on as there’s been developments, this week was earmarked for a YA read to fit in with how I’m summering like it’s 1985.
Everything is aligning. And the book does not disappoint.
Avery is uprooted from DC to her mum’s childhood home in rural Bardell, Georgia, because Mama Letty ( Avery’s grandma) is dying. The family hasn’t been back for years because of some family rift and secret, which no one will talk about. Avery makes new friends and starts to settle into her new life, even though there’s talk of one of her friend’s mum being murdered by her rich dad who’s linked to the past of slavery, slaves and plantations.
And still no one wants to talk about the past but everything is linked to the present and what happens moving forward.
Right, after sharing this with you, I continue to read now.
I stand with The Revolutionary Communist Group and anyone else who stands against every attempt to exclude trans people from public life, education, healthcare, housing, and the services and spaces people need to live with dignity.
These attacks will not be beaten by appealing to the British state’s institutions that are bringing them out. They have to be met with organisation, solidarity and struggle.
This meeting is about building that response in Newcastle.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for a war criminal.
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, born on 21 October 1949, Prime Minister of Israel, is a war criminal.
Arrest warrant issued on 21 November 2024, for alleged responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024 ( taken from the ICC website)
And it continues. The genocide and the crimes against humanity being committed.
Netanyahu is traveling to Washington DC to meet with his best friend, Fucking Trump. Criminal to criminal, no wonder they are best buddies.
I do not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu, but he is not welcome here at my house.
And if our paths ever cross, I would make a citizen’s arrest of Netanyahu. If he comes to the UK this is what our government should do, arrest him.
If we know that acts of genocide are being carried out in Gaza. Then we are complicit in the acts of genocide too.
If the British government knows that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people as it has been declared by the UN and is running it’s course through the International Court of Justice, then to continue to not call it out and to continue to trade with Israel, then the British government through it’s actions is complicit in the genocidal acts also.
Acts of genocide are being committed in Gaza and Britain is complicit in them.
In order to stop the genocide, from a British point of view, as other counties are also complicit in the genocide, we have to stand up and say:
NO more continuing to supply Israel with arms.
NO more overflying flights to give security information to Israel.
NO more use of RAF airbases for Israeli forces.
NO more manufacturing parts for F45 jets which are being used in the bombardment of Gaza.
No more. No more. No more complicity in the genocide of Palestinian people.
These are the demands we have to continue to put on the British government.
Living Wild Studios 