To start living how I want the world to be

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

I’ve been noticing how my work/ being has been reactive. There’s been a sense of scarcity and time urgency that’s been guiding my thoughts and actions. There’s been a hopelessness. Because some incidents are out of my control but which have impacted me. There’s been feelings of not being appreciated, feeling a lack of trust and working without purpose, moving away from my core values and moral compass.

I might have been using food or drink to numb my way through the shit. Through the ‘work’, not allowing myself to feel and be present. Really present to all the feels.

Do you feel me?

I know I need to take a step back and really look at the life I’ve been living. This is the only life I have and cannot be relived. I have a deep desire to change the system. To abolish the system and live otherwise.

And yet in order to change the system, I have to change my life, how I live my life. The way / how I live has to reflect the way/ how I want the world to be.

What does this mean in reality?

How I am just as much as what I do within the system will have an effect on system change. I have to be living my life with intention and purpose. Making sure I’m living my values, that I’m not compromising my integrity. That each decision I make is coming from that place of love and trust and hope.

That I’m not shutting down but open to togetherness but also trusting my gut that when I say ‘no’ it’s not from a place of malice but from a place of capacity and boundaries.

I’m learning, I’m sharing and I’m growing. Alone and in collaboration.

And I’m feeling and shifting into the practice and recognition that this is coming from a place of love and care rather than exhaustion and pain.

Small steps. Small acts. Small makes up the large. Small scales up to large.

I’ve got to be practicing the world I want to see now in my own life. Daily. Practice.

Love not hate.

Cooperation not competition.

Conversation rather than condemnation.

More care less harm.

More listening less violence.

The turn towards Mother Nature rather than against her.

A recognition in the value and worth of every human being regardless of race, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, age, sexuality, body type and body and mind abilities.

Staying Safe

I have a love/ hate relationship with my body.

Usually I’m in the hate spectrum. I’ve internalised beliefs about the Black woman’s body that are oppressive and ugly that have been passed down through generation and generation.

I can’t remember a time that I haven’t felt that my body didn’t fit. That my body was too big, too fat, too Black. I’ve learned how to keep myself small, keep myself invisible( even while being hypervisible), keep myself safe.

Those moments when I’ve felt glory being within my body have been few and far between. And when I’ve got to that point of accepting my body, accepting myself, I can’t remember how I got there to get back there now.

My mum was thin once. But most of my life I remember her as being overweight. I saw pictures of her slim and I asked her what happened. Even that question is loaded and judgmental and wrong.

She said when she had lost all the weight she wasn’t well and she wasn’t happy. She said she was happier being fat. I didn’t ask any further questions probably because I didn’t like her answer.

I’m pondering this now, here. Wondering and wandering around my body.