tired

To start living how I want the world to be

| Sheree

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.

A May Day’s Musing

| Sheree

April was the reset month.

After making plans for the year, 2026, April was a time to reflect and reset after the first quarter of the year.

April didn’t go to plan.

April is always a funny, awkward, weird month for me, what with it being cut up with Easter holidays. And both my babies being born in April. This year was also another April birthday as we welcomed Nath’s partner into the fold.

April is something and nothing.

April, I thought it would be a good time to review the situation. It happened I suppose but not to the depth and width that I would have like. That I probably needed.

April has come and gone.

Come the end of the month and I don’t feel any further forward. And it feels like last year, when I couldn’t get traction after an elongated winter hibernation. Every month that came along was like a reset, a restart as I had no momentum.

I’m not sure if I’m that bad this year but there’s that lingering feeling of what am I doing? Where am I going?

April, Who am I?

I could blame the menopause as I feel as if I’m in that stage of life now. Everything is slowing down or giving up working ‘properly’ bodily, emotionally and psychologically.

Some days I’m missing the plot , dropping the ball, checking all the way out.

In these moments of losing myself, or any kind of sense of self and direction, I fall back into trusted routines and rituals.

I go back to the start, back to ‘go’ and don’t collect my £200. But restart anyway.

I invest in my morning rituals. Those habits that ground me and set me up for the rest of the day.

Waking up early, getting some fresh air into the house and my lungs. Making fresh ground coffee and grabbing my visual journal and letting everything spill onto the page. Get ready and walk out. Walk where? Anywhere. Just be outside and give thanks to be able to {BE}.

May. This is my plan for May.

To stick close to my morning routine and everything else can follow. The sea and Mother Nature are in there too, no doubt.

Hopefully, putting down this trusted track will help support getting me back to myself.

i’m tired …

| Sheree

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Fanny Lou Hamer

what’s happenin’ is wisdom

| Sheree

It’s a week since I’ve been here nearly. I’m not going to try and backtrack and fill in the gaps. Let them lie, because I’ve been healing. And today I’m beginning to feel more like myself again. This is my first image in a week. I ventured out not far from my front door into the sunshine, into my local park. It was glorious to get out as well as to feel a load or two dropping from my shoulders. I didn’t realise what stress and worries I’ve been carrying for the part month or so until they were let go.

More recent was an emergency extraction of a cracked wisdom tooth. Tooth hardly there at the back of my gum, but cracked on some food, cracked all the way down. I was advised to get it extracted. A simple procedure. Done in half an hour or so. Let’s just numb up the area. Little did the dentist know that my teeth are strong or that this little fucker was fused to the bone. An hour later or more and I stumble out of the chair into the growing dusk and I’ve got a gaping hole in my gum, held together by 4 stitches.

Fast forward to today, and me out walking in the sunshine and not allowing my self-pity to get the better of me. I look like a chipmunk and talk as if I’m drunk. But it could have been worse right. I daren’t think what would have happened if I’d left the cracked tooth and gotten an infection, not just teeth, gums but down to the bone. The dentist said I’m lucky. I said no I’m not. I’m intentional I said. Health is wealth, and I’m not going to mess around with mine, I said. The dentist said, he respects that. He said he liked my energy and made his evening, going in with my emergency. Made the time fly by.

Glad to be of service. Aren’t I always glad to be of service? Doesn’t a lot of people feed off my energy. Don’t I just bring my ‘A’ game for a lot of people. This Summer, I’m turning up for me. I’m giving myself the time and space to heal and breathe. My energy is low for other people, as I want it to be high for me.

I’m a shining light that creates space for other people’s lights to shine. I make people feel at ease and comfortable at the same time as inspired and tuned into themselves. I create space for people to air their cares and worries. For them to find a way back to themselves. And I don’t even get paid for this. This is just who I be. And I’m not complaining. I’m not having a ‘woe is me’ moment either. I’m just stating facts.

Fact is, this wisdom tooth brings wisdom. This wisdom tooth gone but left a wound, a wound I need to heal. A wound that needs time and care and space to heal. And I’m here to give it to myself as no one else will. Don’t worry I’ll still be turning up here as this is my space. I’ve not been bought by any corporation. I’m sharing my art not a commercial. I’m not selling you anything or getting paid. I’m free. I’m just sharing this little light of mine and my heart.

Summer Reading

| Sheree

After a busy week so far, my body is calling for the easy days of summer. Summer reading is usually how I get to slow down. I’ve got nothing major planned for the summer months. Usually we go down south and house and dog sit. But this year I needed a change.

I’m not sure what that is at the moment. The change I’m looking for. But I’m looking forward to putting up my email message of being off the clock for summer. I’ve started a countdown to that time in my head now.

Call it the teacher still in me but I love my six weeks( or more) summer holidays. So I’ve started the slowdown with reading short stories. A quick and easy way to get back into the reading habit. As well as introduce me to new writers. Read the first two this morning as part of my morning routine. And continue to read The Moor throughout this week.

I’ve swept my back yard, and I’m going to spend more and more time out there, reading and dreaming as I want to start growing stuff back there. But first I need to get to know the space. Spend some time there instead one just passing through.

I’m so looking forward to being off the clock and lazing. Trying to complete my chapter on black mothering and fugitivity after requesting an extension. Nearly there. I’ve got to the first of July and then I can relax and start dropping commitments outside the home, work and responsibilities and just go feral for a while. Yes!

At More Ease

| Sheree
Duck Pond, Tynemouth

End / beginning of another week. Depending on if you see Sunday as the end of the week or the beginning of the next.

For me it’s and/both. Sundays are usually change over day at our house as Ella goes between my home and her dad’s. Sometimes we do things on a Sunday or sometimes we don’t.

We just take it easy.

But usually on a Sunday I reflect on the week gone and plan for the week ahead. It’s a ritual of getting my head in the game. Not the outside societal, capitalist game. No, my own game. The Sheree Mack Game, which runs counter to the White Supremacy Culture game of go go go produce produce produce and strive for perfection at the same time as avoiding conflict and being grateful for the crumbs from their table. Yeah counter to that game as I refuse to be part of this system, where my labour is being bought and sold to support the actors, that are white people.

I’ve been hibernating for months now and I’m still tired. Go figure. Maybe my exhaustion is more than a year in a dumb ass job but runs much deeper. A generational exhaustion that I just can’t shift which has to be recognised but will take a lifetime to ease.

Ease. Yes that would be welcome.

There are moments when I grasp these ease and feel it spread across my back, untightening bunched up muscles. Making my spine fluid rather than ridged. These times I can feel my heart and soul float and I’m relaxed into whatever I’m being. But these are just moments. The aim is to extend these moments into longer moments, into days and months.

I’m working on being so but it is a practice. So when I say Sundays are reflecting/ planning days. I don’t mean around a to-do-list of jobs that need to be completed in order to bring in the tainted coin. I mean, where did I experience ease this week and where can I factor in/ plan for more ease next week. Where did I experience joy and pleasure and how can that be replicated moving forward.

Yeah in the Sheree Mack Game, all the rules and tasks are different to the societal external game. At more ease and I know I’m winning x

Wednesdays

| Sheree

I haven’t done this in a while but I’m feeling it today. The mid-week slump, nevermind hump!

After a restful weekend, I used to rush into my Mondays and do all the things. Get everything in order for the week ahead. Full blazing glory that meant come Tuesday, I’d been down and out. Knackered.

It’s been awhile since this knackered feeling has hit me on a Wednesday. After a couple of days of emotional roller coasting and focusing on traumas and past hurts, moving my body to move the energy, today I’m staying put on the couch, alternating between coffee with hot buttered toast, and YouTube and reading. Eyes drooping and head nodding.

I really don’t give a fuck as this is the point of my hiatus, hibernation for the next 3 months, to rest and retreat and dream. If I’m feeling like doing fuck all then I’m doing fuck all. Nothing.

My worth is not measured in how much I achieve in a day, how many things I can cross off that never ending to-do list. My worth just is. I’m here. I’m enough.

So excuse me while I stretch out a bit deeper into the couch of many cushions and blankets and flick through the line up for an afternoon movie, a black and white one maybe. Old school. LUSH.

Living in the /cracks/

| Sheree

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been here.

This year is flying. I’m not sure how I’m marking the time.

I seem to be flowing in and out of the /cracks/ with consciousness and then not.

The brain is foggy at the moment after a busy period. And maybe I’m not as coherent as I’d like to be.

As words fail me, I’m coming back with imagery. Evidence that I have been living and experiencing joy and pleasure but maybe not consistent enough.

I know I long for summer and I’m tending to my needs to get over that line into restland.

I’m not there quite yet. But I can see it in the distance.

Soon come.