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28 days of gratitude

| Sheree

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.

Reading Poetry (ish)

| Sheree

As I mentioned earlier in the month, reading and writing/ writing and reading go hand in hand. As I’ve tasked myself with a poem a day this month, I’ve also tasked myself with reading poetry and wider as it all feeds into the creative process.

Dal Kular, a dear friend and awesome imagineer, brought Foluke Taylor and their writings to my attention. I’ve been taken by Foluke’s writing around creativity and repetition so when Dal mentioned the book, Unruly Therapeutic, I knew I had to pick this book up and read it. And I’m so glad I have done just that ( well still reading it in fact!).

This is a hybrid, break down the structures kind of book in terms of how it’s written but also how it centres the Black woman’s experience. It’s music to my ears on so many levels. More so in being real, and allowing the thoughts and concepts presented to meander. To double back and repeat. There’s even a music playlist at the end go each chapter as an indication of what Foluke was listening to while the book was under construction.

I’ll return here with a review of length, but for now I just wanted to mark the reading of this text and a recommendation to get out and buy your own copy, as I’m not lending mine out!

The Motherhood Essay

| Sheree

I think I heard back about my abstract being accepted for Demeter Press collection The Mother Wave: Matricentric Feminism as Theory, Activism, and Practice back in November 2022. And really haven’t engaged much with it since.

I submitted it on a whim off the back of the afterglow from BALTIC exhibition A Country Journal of a Blackwoman( Northumberland). 

I wanted to continue this work as I felt as if I’d just got started mining this seam. But really I feel as if I’ve always been working with memory, family and archives throughout my whole creative journey. There’s always been a desire to fill in the gaps around my origins. Who be my people? Where did we come from? What makes us tick?

So I submitted the abstract changing Blackwoman to Black Mothers, as that’s what I’ve been exploring my matrilineage, our bodies with/in nature and healing.  I just wanted to continue this through a different medium; before ‘art’ now ‘word’. But really all hybrid.

I’ve surrendered more and more with each creation, that to fully express myself, my identity, ideas, passions and preoccupations, hybridity, multidisciplinary creations/ renditions are a truer take on things. More of a fuller picture/ form is rendered. 

My first draft of the essay has to be submitted by May 1st ( now changed to 10 June!). As it happens, I’ve been away house/ dog sitting for the first two weeks of April, alone in Buckinghamshire. Prime time I thought to dive deep and immerse myself in the writing process.

I’ve been using my Patreon supporters as accountability buddies, these past few weeks while working on this essay. I’ve been updating them on progress reports along the away. With my time coming to an end down here, I thought I’d use what time I have left to reflect on the process and progress so far. And I’m sharing the post with you here.

I’m using this reflection as a place marker for progress as well as evidence for when I go home and think I could have done more, or start to beat myself up about wasting time. At least I’ll have this reflection to fall back on.

Shifting Energies

| Sheree

Last month this was my practice.

Stone Paper Journal, Paperchase

Straight forward writing on lined paper with a sticker here and there. I felt the need to get things out of me. I felt the need to get distractions out of the way and write from the heart.

Each day I turned up and completed three pages of long hand writing. Some days more. There was an outpouring. Leaning back into Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages helped.

This morning, the first day of April, this happened.

Altered book journal spread

My energies shifted. I wasn’t feeling the lined pages, black ink journaling this morning. I was feeling the need to slow down and wait for the paint to dry kind of feeling.

Yes Spring is here. And I’m embarking on a poetry challenge as well as my travels. But my body is saying there is wisdom to be gleamed if you take the time and space, now this morning, to slow down and listen.

So I listened. I have to slow down as I cover one page/ one spread at a time with paint to conceal the text underneath. Maybe still bleeding through in parts.

Altered book journal spreading drying!

While I wait for the paint to dry, I search for inspiration in images and texts. I don’t have any agenda and I don’t feel any frenzied feelings to get this done and done quick.

I’m taking my time because I have time to slow down, breathe, enjoying the grey light, the sweet vanilla latte, the birds making nests.

Thoughts come and go. Fleeting. And I don’t worry. If I need to capture them, they’ll come back around. The hairs on my forearm feel the draught coming in through the open curtains. Or is it from the open window in the kitchen?

My forefinger twists strands of hair into locks as I flick through a magazine, looking for images, text and colour. I take another sip of coffee, now cold because time has been slipping by.

Not away. As time spent in my creative process is time needed not wasted. It’s time I’m grateful for. But I can only mark this time, this gratitude, these feelings and sensations, when I slow down and be present.

Visual journaling, altered book or not, gifts me the luxury, no the necessity, of slowing down and {BEING}. Thank you x

PAD/001 – A Month of Poetry

| Sheree

Happy April. Time for showers, blossom and light. Oh and poetry.

Forsythia

As I mentioned last week, I’m honouring National Poetry Month with the challenge of writing a poem a day.

I’ve set myself this task many times over the years, and I’ve always been amazed at the creations along the way. Poems have emerged onto the page that I didn’t even know were in me and needed expressing.

So today I come to the page with an open heart and a rough idea of the themes or issues I want to explore. But who knows with the creative process. Anything could happen.

Anyway day 1 – PAD/ 001

Trying to understand “the difference between poetry and rhetoric”

After Audre Lorde

The contested site of black settlement in England

is shrouded a heavy fog of amnesia. The wrong colour,

the wrong body, the wrong sound.

Read the history books, you’d think we just landed

the day before last. 400 years of being here, lost

in the mire, weighted down with size 10, Dr. Martens.

Like transplanted birds of paradise, West Indians

struggled to put down roots. Alien soil. On corners,

skylarking and limin’, jobs, homes and a little bit of peace

denied; harsh whispers on the bitterly cold wind.

The contested site of black settlement in England

is captured in stills. Images speak for themselves.

Black faces filling the frame; black blooms pressed

against hothouse glass. But still an absent presence in failed memories.

Gratitude Journaling – Part 001

| Sheree
My little book of gratitude

From time to time, I’ve tried to keep a gratitude journal. I’ve read the research and heard the stories about expressing gratitude for your life and what is part of it, here and now. This is a great practice in order to be more present in your life as well as be happier.

I saw expressing gratitude and writing it down as just another thing to add to my to-do list mostly. I resented the time spent on it as as well as beating myself up for the times I missed a day or two. I felt like this was just another indication of me failing.

I think as part of my intentional healing journey of 2023 ( have I talked here about it?) I brought gratitude back into my day, or I’m trying to. Offering myself grace and compassion when there are times I forget to complete it some days, I allowed myself to start small.

Today, I am grateful for …

This is how I start each entry and I allow myself to just mark one thing I’m grateful for. One thing. One sentence. Most days it’s doable. Most days I remember. Some days there’s more than one think, more than one thing to be grateful for. But there are still some days I forget and the days run away from me. But I do not sweat it. I pick it back up when I remember.

I keep this little notebook with the image of Frida Kahlo on my bedside table. I love this little notebook. I love Frida Kahlo but I also love how I feel when I write in this book. I feel better. I feel present. I feel grateful for what I have, how I feel, what I experience. Fostering positive energy for the here and now rather than energy wasted on what I don’t have or want instead.

The research is right. Practicing gratitude does foster appreciation and happiness for the things and people in your life. Now. Simples.

Here are a few gratitude moments captured in this little book of gratitudes from the beginning of the year so far:

Today I am grateful for the reminder that I am loving, loved and loveable.

Today I am grateful for the time and space to create a vision board for the year ahead.

Today I am grateful for my body to be able to walk and get into the sea.

Today I am grateful for my lie in. For rest and sleep.

Today I am grateful for the opportunity to put things right .

Today I am grateful for the connections I am making, with myself and others.

Expect to see more posts about gratitude as I delve deeper into the practice and the effects it is having on my life. What contributions it is making to my healing journey?

Rest, Privilege and My Tender Heart ❤️

| Sheree

Where is this year going? It is moving fast. The time that is. I’m still knee deep in my SLOW practice and I’m loving it.

I know it’s getting to the point of going back out; of shifting my energies as I’m feeling a stirring. In my gut mostly. And an excitement fluttering in my chest. For what I do not know. But I’m happy to sit in/ with the feeling for now. Appreciating the joy it brings.

I know I’ve got certain privileges. To be able to turn my back on the world, on work commitments for the first three months of 2023 is a privilege. But I also want to make clear, that I worked my arse off at the back end of 2022 to be able to do this. I’m living frugally in order to reap the benefits of rest and self-care.

I’m so grateful for the time and space to rest and breathe deeply. As well as the capacity to dream and envision a future. I have much faith and trust in what the future will bring. I know I will have to fashion some happenings myself, work out some details and projects. But at the same time, I know that the Universe has a plan also. She’s got my back and I trust she will deliver what is best for me. It might not seem so at the time, and there may be challenges ahead. But I trust her, and I’m allowing my tender heart to mend.

I’ve mentioned before how I’m intentionally leaning into my healing journey. With social episodes each month released with The Earth Sea Love Podcast.

I’m just editing the next two instalments to drop next week and I created a quote for myself which I will share here to end.

My tender heart has been broken many times but, at the same time, I know my healing lives and breathes in the openness of my tender heart.

Sheree Mack

I don’t remember when I lost my most important treasure

| Sheree
The Goddess Series, 2023

I don’t remember when I started to hurt.

I don’t remember when I gave up on myself being enough, being worthy.

I don’t remember when I gave myself away to others at the expense of not keeping any goodness for me.

I don’t remember when I started to hate on myself and wishing myself away, wishing myself into something or someone else. Anything else but this. Anything other than who I really am.

I don’t remember when I started to hide myself away became secretive and dishonest as a means of protection and advancement.

I don’t remember when I stopped being my own best friend and started to seek this relationship, this love and attention elsewhere.

I don’t remember when I betrayed myself by thinking that I was someone who didn’t deserve to be here, as someone worthy of love and happiness and joy.

I don’t remember when I started to listen to others, the outside world and stopped listening to my heart, to my own wisdom.

I don’t remember when I stopped just {being} instead of doing. When {being} was enough.

I don’t remember when I stoped paying attention to what lights me up, my wants and needs, what makes me smile.

I don’t remember when I stopped being a child and took the burdens of the world on to my little shoulders like they belonged there.

I don’t remember when I stopped being in love with myself and gave this love to others who were not deserving of my love, who could not see me as me.

I don’t remember when I began to think I needed other people to love me instead of me just loving on me.

I don’t remember when or how or why all this happened, I just feel it. And now, here I am trying to get back to me, to me loving on me, the most important treasure, lost.