Taken from Darkling
Morchella Elata- Black Morels
Fruits from March to June in copses, woodland and mulch.
To survive under such harsh conditions, is deemed a strength.
Sometimes resilience and resistance can be tiring and dangerous.
writing
On my travels
Today is my travel day for the first trip of 2025. While knee deep in shit in 2024, with the feeling of drowning in it, I made a commitment to myself to hibernate for the first 3 months of 2025 ( as I am {being}). But I also promised to focus on the experience(s) rather than the material in 2025.
So instead of buying more stuff ( low buy year), that is just going to sit around collecting dust or do I really need another duvet set?, I made an intention to use this money I would waste on ‘goods’ on experiences instead that would make me feel something, hopefully joy but also curiosity, wonder and awe.
Today I fly out to Barcelona to begin this year of experience(s). A year of me saying ‘yes’ to my desires. Instead of talking myself out of things or worrying about costs ( all travel is on a budget and carbon off set) I’m just going to {BE}/ do it. I’m going to fill my pot again and again with goodness and ease and abundance because God(dess) knows no one is gonna.
So come along for the ride with me as I revisit Barcelona after many years of absence. At one time back there, I used to visit Barcelona every year around autumn with the family and seek out the golden light.
Not sure what the light will be like this January but I’m ready to find out.
Travelling light in so many ways, I’m walking into my next experience promising to stay in the moment.
Present for this present. Come with me!
Studies in Brown continued
This is what I’m noticing when I move my body outside. Sharing the beauty in decay, something I used to shield myself from out of fear. But now I appreciate the natural cycle of things. From death there comes rebirth. A renaissance.
For the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve created a vision board at the new year for the year ahead. It sets out my intentions and desires and dreams.
Last year, 2024 didn’t have a vision board. I wasn’t feeling the energy to create it. I didn’t have any visions. My head was down as I ploughed through some projects for others.
I missed the focus of creating a vision board as well as having some kind of loose map to move through the year. I was feeling lost last year in so many ways and I didn’t want a repeat this year.
So this is my vision board for 2025 and it lives on the wall at the bottom of my bed. So I get to see it and focus on it every morning and every night.
There’s nothing major on there in terms of big changes and tasks but it does focus on being more present as well as focusing on experiences over material things.
I want to feel all the feels and still be standing afterwards with a smile on my face. There’s a lot of gratitude grounded in this vision board as well as wisdom. As I know what makes me tick and what brings be joy but there has been times in the past when I haven’t been prioritising them.
2025 is all about my needs and wants and desires. And not in a selfish way but in the way of how can I expect other people to treat me well with love and respect if I don’t give myself this.
Or as Maya Angelou said it , much better than me …
So this is the intention for 2025. I’ll be back to explore and share how I am supporting this journey through routines and rituals and attitudes.
LUSH Life
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
As I’ve recently shared my word of the year is LUSH. I love this word. It reminds me of my childhood when everything was LUSH; a way of expressing my enthusiasm and my curiosity. When it wasn’t shunned to be in your feelings. When it was natural to full of awe and wonder.
I’m evoking LUSH this year to get back to that state. To foster these feelings more in my every day. I want to feel the LUSHness of life.
And yes I have been in my feelings this week, even if those feelings have been of pain and annoyance and regret towards my recent accident. But you have to experience all the feels in order to appreciate the joy and pleasure.
As a way of anchoring myself into this LUSH life. In order to have a reminder of where I am, what feelings I really want to wallow in, within joy and pleasure and self-love, I have this green ring I wear on my left hand. It’s a commitment from myself to myself. It’s a reminder of the love I am fostering and leaning into towards myself.
The ring has weight to it. The ring is beautiful. When I wear it I’m feeling it’s there on my ring finger and it’s reminding me I am loved and cared for. I am enough as I am, no conditions. This green ring, significant LUSH, is unconditional love for myself.
This. Right. Here.
Life Writing
During my time of hibernation, (have I mentioned that here?) I’m resting of course but I’m also writing and dreaming and catching up on the things I want to do with my time and energy.
Another one of my abstracts was accepted for a special publication by Demeter Press around mothering and life writing. I completed an essay in 2023, around my Black Matrilineage and last year I complete an essay around Black Mothering and Creativity. This is probably going to have to be redrafted this year, but in all honesty I was just happy to submit something, as I had a major block around this essay. I think it was because I allowed my creativity and energy to be sucked into other people’s creative dreams and lost sight of my own last year. So when it came to writing the essay my well was dry.
Anyway, I’ve started the reading and writing around my third essay now which is all about Black mothering and fugitivity. I love fugitivity and it is one of the supporting words for 2025. As I mentioned before, I’ve been exploring fugitivity for the last few years and what this means as a practice. So I’m mighty pleased in having the time and space to explore it further and deeper through writing this essay.
While going over my abstract again and riffing off from it, I remember my creative non-fiction novella I created called rubedo. I think this came out in July 2016, after the 2015 shit hit the fan episode in my life. rubedo was my exploration of this time in my life and how I got through it. It was through finding myself after years of repression and not listening to my inner wisdom that I came to be who I am today.
Anyway, I revisited rubedo with this chapter/ essay in mind, realising that 2025 is 10 years since this episode in my life. It sometimes feels as if it was just yesterday. I know I felt it keenly last year when Darkling came out. Darkling is my first poetry collection since Laventille (2015) and the shitstorm episode. And to tell the truth, I’m waiting for the the shit to hit the fan again, as I’m sure there are people picking their way through Darkling as I type to try and find evidence of plagiarism again. As they say once a plagiarist always a plagiarist! It’s not a term or label I identified with then or do now. As that’s not me, that’s not who I am but that didn’t stop people then or now from looking for the evidence to prove/support it.
But I’m not here to talk about that. What struck me about rubedo is the raw honesty of it all. And how writing, writing it all out literally saved my life. I’m so grateful that Ian brae enough to pick up my pen and writing through the shit to now.
Here is what I wrote about my capacity to love no matter what:
“But something does inside die this day. And the days that follow. Something
inside of me, the capacity to have patience and make allowances for other
people’s bullshit was destroyed during this lynching. No doubt, using the term
‘lynching’ will invite criticism. I know when Andy Croft my publisher used the
term to condemn what was happening to me on social media he received a
fair amount of criticism. But I do not use this word lightly.
Ironically, in the months leading up to my death by social media, I was
researching and writing poems about lynchings in America. I was referring to
the postcard images that were collected as souvenirs by the spectators of
lynchings at the time. There were those people who got their hands dirty
during a lynching, who actually tied the knot of the noose, beat the victim,
mutilated the bodies. And there were those who came along to watch the
spectacle. Viewing the death of another human being as just another social
event, a festival, something to be enjoyed. Both killers and spectators relish
the sport.
This in my opinion is what happened to me. A public lynching and
souvenirs where taken. One person on Facebook, joined in the thread of
conversation with a comment as a means of marking it. This person was
rubbing their hands with relish, saying that they didn’t want to miss a thing as
this spectacle was just too good to let pass by.
When I died this cruel death something inside broke. I’ve recently come to
realise that is was my heart that broke that night. I’ve been visualising my
heart with a rose in the centre. This rose is closed. This I read as a symbol of
me shutting down, dying inside, shutting off the natural flow of love from my
heart for my family, friends, for the world around me. My heart was broken, so
I have been denying myself and others love. I’ve been living in fear, fear of it
being hurt again, fear of my heart being broken again, fear to love.
In a way, this had to happen to me. For one, I’ve always disliked that capacity
in me to keep forgiving others, letting them back into my life when they’d let
me down and not lived up to my expectations. I’ve taken on board the
responsibilities of others, thinking I’ve had too high standards and I’d been
unfair. That capacity has been obliterated. I can’t take anybody’s bull shit
anymore. But at the same time, this capacity to forgive is part of my large
capacity to love. And if this is who I’m really are , then I shouldn’t fight it any
longer but accept it.
My true self is my capacity to love, to love fiercely and powerfully. I accept
that now and I’m no longer blocking up my love. I can’t live in constant fear of
being hurt, of getting my heart broke again because then I would not be living
true to my capacity, true to me. I would just not be living at all.“
I’m so pleased that since then I have found others, such as bell hooks and Joy James, who write about revolutionary/ radical love and validate my ways of loving, which at times hurts me but also brings me a while heap of joy also. You can’t love without the expectation or knowledge of getting hurt.
End of week Gratitude
This week has been a blessing.
This week was back to school week but things could have been worse. A cold weather front has hit the UK. Yes it’s cold up North but it could have been worse. At least we’ve had the light. And it’s remained dry even if each morning the windscreen has been frozen.
I’m grateful because I’ve had the privilege of spending quality time with Miss Ella and supporting her on her journey to her GCSE mock examinations. She’s capable, she just needs to believe in herself more. And that’s where I can come in, for sure.
I’m grateful because I managed to get into the sea twice this week. And there’s still time for more. The sea produced some big waves which were beautiful and dangerous. There was a lot of jumping waves and giggling like the little girl I didn’t get to be when growing up.
I’m grateful to be able to control where I direct my time and energy. At the moment that is all towards myself, first thing, and then I’m ready for what the rest of the day throws at me.
I’m grateful to nature ( until I find a better way of referring to her/ me/ us) as I take my cues and guidance from her and continue to hibernate and rest and dream. LUSH.
Happy New Year
Magical wake up view.
Living Wild Studios 