writing

Walking and Writing Workshop

| Sheree
Presence 05/07/2022

I’m stepping back into The Sill: National Discovery Centre as past Writer in Residence for Northumberland National Park as well as current position as Creatrix in Residence for Hadrian’s Wall to facilitate a walking and writing workshop.

Taking inspiration from The Lost Spells: Listening to a Landscape of Voices exhibition, and book by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, this writing workshop will explore the power, glory and joy of nature.

Starting with the exhibition, we will use Jackie’s images as a field guide as we journey outside (in all weathers) to walk the landscape around The Sill and Hadrian’s Wall. With our sense of wonder stimulated and our creative pots full, we’ll return to The Sill to put pen to paper.

All genres of writing, journaling, imagining and creating are welcome in this workshop which is led by Hadrian’s Wall Creatrix and The Sill’s first writer in Residence, Dr Sheree Mack. The aim is to leave with a renewed sense of awe at nature and ourselves, as are we not all connected with nature as one?

More information and sign up for ticket here.

The First of July

| Sheree

This week has been a bit hit and miss around being here. I was tired after my return from Cornwall.

If you want to find out more about how that residency went please consider jumping over to my Patreon page and checking out my posts there. I shared my reflections daily while I was away. It was a good practice to keep up as I went through the experience.

Okay so today I’m going to spend time planning out the month so I can move forward with the Mixmoir. As I mentioned this week, I’m continue with this challenge of showing up daily for the Mixmoir but going to focus on the joy of nature connection.

I’ll pop back here later today with the updated plan. This is me making myself/ keeping myself accountable as God know’s I could let things slide just from tiredness. But I will rest this month but this is going to be radical joyful rest.

What this space!

July is just around the corner

| Sheree
A393, Cornwall

June is coming to an end. My challenge for this month, through posting each day, was to share content from my mixmoir as well as sharing about the process. I know I haven’t posted here everyday, or touched my mixmoir everyday either. But I know I’ve been much more engaged in the project this month than any other month this year because of this challenge.

To give myself a fair chance in getting to grips with the mixmoir, and because we are easing into Summer, with the school holidays imminent, I intend to continue to turn up for this practice in July.

I’m factoring in energy levels, commitments and time in the forthcoming month, and rather than change track now when I feel as I’m just getting into the swing of things, I’d like to go deeper into the mixmoir, especially around my current thinking about healing.
I’m satisfied with my decision. And this has only inspired me to continue. #onwards

Rest and Repair and Rejuvenate

| Sheree

Nature has so much to teach us if we only allow ourselves to {BE} and listen. Within nature, energies come and go in cycles; with the seasons.

There’s a time for bursting as well as for waiting. There’s a time for gathering as well as for resting.

Darkness and solitude, within society, are portrayed as somethings to be afraid of and to be avoided. I see both darkness and solitude as vital and necessary protective qualities for my energies. Allowing them to wrap around me and hold me during times of low, depleted energies and passions means, I can retreat. Rest and repair and rejuvenate safely. And come back bursting with energies and ideas and love when I’m ready.

Within white supremacy culture, the aim of the game is to be always switched on, always available to go go go and produce produce produce. The more you produce the better and the quality of such is not so much of an issue.

We are taught to always be striving for perfection. Perfection does not exist as we are flawed human beings. We know this yet this doesn’t stop us from striving for it. It’s a vicious cycle of striving, missing the mark and burning out. And striving, missing the mark, burning out.

Today I rest. I allow the feelings of guilt to slip away. I replace the chastising, criticising voices which shout about being useless and a failure and a disgrace with words of compassion and grace and love.

I deserve to rest. I deserve to take care of myself. I deserve to seek solitude and darkness.

The rest of the world can wait until I have nourished my energies and rested enough to feel ready to be its warrior again.

Light is the Source of Life

| Sheree
The Earthcraft Oracle

I needed to see /feel/hear this card today. I’m stepping into the arena and I need a reminder of who I am, at the core.

This card is a reminder that the sun is light and light is the source of life. My sun, my light radiates from my heart.

My heart is my source and sometimes I forget this or when remembered feel this is a disadvantage rather than a power.

My light is my strength and my source and when I’m living my life from my source from my heart then I’m following my passions, speaking my truth and being my authentic self.

Of course I want to be this all ways and all days. But we do not live in an ideal world and there has to be a practice to maintain this status.

If I compare myself to others, or allow others to diminish me and steal my light, then there is a cloud over my heart and things are not right.

Today this card reminds me of who I am as I step into the arena and take up space on my own terms. I receive this message today with thanks and brandish it like a shield, like a force field around my light today.

I’ll let you know in a later post what is happening today to need this reminder.

It is in place that we locate ourselves

| Sheree

It is in place that we locate ourselves, mark ourselves in relation with others; it is  in place that we survive. – Meena Alexander  

Within my body, I carry the stories 

of my mother, grandmothers, 

sisters and aunts. My body carries 

their stories of love and loss;

wounds passed on through

bone and blood. Leaving scars, 

leaving diminished spirits.

But just as those stars are burning

bright right now, leaving their trails

of light, my body, my beautiful body

will survive, heal and fire. 

Fear to Fury

| Sheree

James Baldwin when interviewed after the SNCC Freedom Day demonstration in Selma, Alabama, October 1963 described what he saw there.

When was asked if he was afraid in the moment when the police were moving in on the African Americans waiting patiently to vote with guns and clubs and cattle prodders, Baldwin replied,

“ The thing is you get – you’re so scared – I was scared in the morning. Before it all began. And I was scared the first time I walked around there. But, later on, I wasn’t scared at all … Your fear is swallowed up by, you know … fury. What you really want to do is kill all those people.”*

* Quoted in Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America And It’s Urgent Lessons For Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

“The helmets were, you know, like a garden. So many colours.” James Baldwin *