Tag: home

Building Home(s)

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment

If the life you are building looked like a house, what would it look like? What would it feel like?

How did you build it? From love? Necessity? Both? Neither?

Did you make it a home? Does it feel like it is your own? Does it feel strong and vibrant and changing and fulfilling? Does it feel suffocating? Airy? Expansive? Exposed shiplap? Does it feel like a place we can welcome others in? Does it feel safe? Do you?

I want to build a home out of my life that is beautiful at its core. It is warm. It is inviting. Solace and peace whisper in the paint color. It is vibrant and steady. The beams are strong and radiant. The ocean is nearby. Salt speaks to the foundation, teaches it how to cleanse; how to endure. The patio has fireflies and crystal lights. Everything, illuminated. It is my own. It is awe-inspiring.

We can’t build homes out of human beings.

Maybe we can build them out of our souls.

 

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” – Dr. Maya Angelou

An Ode to Old Wes

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment

Five years ago to date, I graduated from Wesleyan. Who the hell was I even on that day? Petrified? Mentally exhausted? Hopeful? All of the above & more. Mostly, I was completely unaware of how much my life had been altered by those four years.

The first words I ever wrote about Wes were: “Day one has come and gone and I survived. Not only survived, I thrived. I absolutely love this place. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it’s completely true.” It’s funny how telling that became.

Wes became the second place I ever called home. It was a place that sparked a fire in me. A place I found a community of activists & artists, WOCO, a tribe, and a first love. I remember picking Wesleyan for all the most ridonkulous reasons (none of which I would recommend to people making big life decisions – or who cares, do what you want). After academics, my top reasons were:

  • It had the same name as one of my favorite characters (so you know, fate!)
  • The Gilmore Girls made a quaint town in the middle of Connecticut look pretty hilarious
  • It was different from the Bahamas in EVERY way possible (jackpot!)

These were my actual reasons. Literally, in that order. Why do we even let 17 year olds make life decisions? But no one could’ve told me different. When I realized Joss Whedon had gone there, there was no better stamp of approval. I had made the best decision possible using the most ridonkulous criteria possible.

And I’ve never regretted it. For all its pitfalls (poorly-veiled racism, losing classmates to terrible acts of violence, unbridled anxiety, loneliness, tears, and sooo many all nighters) it become home. Complicated, messy and difficult to love at times. But always home. The extraordinary people we survived and thrived with made it that way. Now that I reflect, I’ve realized that it’s incredible how much a place and its people can challenge and change you in a really good way.

Although I couldn’t be at our fifth year reunion this weekend, know that my heart is there.

“It’s interesting because that is the thing that you don’t realize. That there’s something completely artificial about the way college is; the way going away to some experience like that is. You’re together inside this pressure cooker situation for this period of time and under those conditions you get very, very close in ways that you wouldn’t have otherwise. And then it comes just to an end, like you come to a cliff. And it’s just like, okay now it’s over. And when that happens, it’s very powerful.” – Felicity

Grad2011 4

Photo credits: http://wesleying.org/2015/05/24/liveblog-wesleyan-commencement-2015/ and https://www.facebook.com/wesleyan.university/photos/?tab=album&album_id=342993924994

Video Project: Junkanoo Carnival 2016

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment

Here are a few snippets of the Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival 2016. It was waaaay too much to contain in 3 seconds for the day. After 7 hours of dancing, drinking and singing, I was just happy we’d survived.

 

Photo credits: MWong Photography (https://www.facebook.com/MWongPhotography/?fref=ts) and Carnival Craze

Video Project: March 2016

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment
you will be lost and unlost.
over and over again.
relax love.
you were meant to be this glorious epic story.
 
// Nayyirah Waheed //

 

This month’s video very much felt like a love letter to home.

For so long I fought against returning home. Ask anyone. It was the last thing I ever wanted to do and the hardest. I felt like I would suffocate on this tiny island and would never live out my full potential. And when the wheels of my plane touched down, I felt nothing but bitter disappointment.

But it was the ones I hold dearest that talked me through the worst of it. They reminded me that feeling lost and disappointed isn’t an end, but a short detour. They helped me to be brave and to embrace my time at home. To them, I owe so much. They are all parts of home to me.

So now, 7 months later, I am able to celebrate what being home has been for me. There is so much beauty here. Home has been a safe harbour to pick up all my pieces. It has given me the chance to reflect and be more intentional. Hopefully, it has made me a better friend/sister/daughter/aunt/cousin; now less in my own head. This has, without a doubt, been a path that needed to be traveled.

*On an even happier note: one of my best friends got engaged near the end of the video! She is the kindest and funniest person I know, and she’s marrying a man who loves her like no other. I am so happy for her.

❤

Taking Stock

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment

I had a great conversation with Marie-Eve a few weeks back. I am so grateful for the friendship we have cultivated. She is a best friend and family in so many ways. As we were talking she offhandedly praised me for really making the best of my time at home. For doing all the things I said I wanted to do: eating better, yoga, making a blog, my video journal, and going natural. It made my heart smile with gratitude. She said I was doing so much better and I looked happy.

That moment was unexpected but so deeply needed.

Truthfully, I’m working my way to happy, but I’m not there yet. I want to be joyful not in spite of anyone or anything, but simply because I am.

I cut my hair off because I needed to feel like I was walking towards change instead of being dragged, for once.

I started yoga because it touches a part of me that needs healing and strength.

I started a video journal because my spirit needs to remember the sweet moments and days as much as my tear ducts remember the hard ones.

I write because the writings of others have literally carried me to salvation.

I want to be a fuller version of myself. For too long I lay broken and shattered across the eastern seaboard, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from monuments to sand dollars. I left shards everywhere I went and I picked up new splinters along the way. Now I’m back in harbour, picking up the pieces, molding a new figure, and breathing life and light to that being. I want to love the person I will become. I want to love her fiercely. I want her to forgive me. And I want to forgive. I want her to set boundaries, healthy ones, and live true. I want her to feel powerful and worthy of all the sweetness this world has to offer. I want her to be imbued with strength, vulnerability, and most importantly, wholeness.

And I want the same for you, whoever you are reading this.

“Don’t let anyone take your magic away. Not even you.” – M 

Becoming

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment
Be easy.
Take your time.
You are coming
Home.
To yourself

 

– “the becoming | wing” by Nayyirah Waheed

 

Growth can feel tedious, exhausting and unfair at times. Especially when it is punctuated by loss. As I’ve talked about before, no one warns you about the amount of mourning there is in growth. And maybe no one has to…

This poem gives me hope more than anything else. The idea is that as difficult and soul-crushing as growth and change can be, try to be easy on yourself. Treat yourself as kindly as you wished the universe would sometimes. Be compassionate and soothing to yourself in ways you haven’t received from those you trusted. Just know: no amount of warning can change what needs to be experienced.

Know that taking your time is elemental to happiness. Because movement is happening. Even if you feel despairingly stuck. Even if you feel like you’ve diverged from the dream you had for yourself, for love, for your career, for communion with friends. Movement is there, always. You are coming home. And home: home is the purest form of who you need to be in this world and who the world needs you to be. Home is protective and empowering. Home is love that endures.

Home is you.

Gratitude in a Bottle

blackgirlmagicandmeditationLeave a comment

For the past week or so, I’ve been feeling not so great. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions trying to come to terms with the end of a relationship. Although I was the one to ultimately end things, finding out that my ex is definitely in a relationship with someone else made me feel both hollowed out and brimming with pain. But most insidious of all, I felt wholly insufficient. Deep seas of tears were made. Adele was sung.

In sum: things felt painfully unforgiving.

It was in this context that I went on a quick work trip to DC, my old stomping grounds. To say my heart immediately felt lighter would be an understatement. It surprised even me. To return to a place that was familiar and full of memories was exactly what I needed. Even better, I used as much of my limited free time to reconnect with friends that have come to feel like a second home. Friends that continuously inspire me with their intellect, compassion & general bad ass-ness.

I was instantly grateful that this trip landed in my lap when it did. I left home feeling truly beat down and emotionally hollow; I returned feeling like I’d caught gratitude in a bottle for the first time. I was present and appreciative. I was open and engaged. And it felt authentic.

As I walked back to my hotel on my last night there, it was chilly and the city was relatively quiet. With a moment to reflect, I realized how deeply full I felt, for the first time in a long time.

I would like to continue that walk, metaphorically and otherwise.

“I give myself a good cry if I need it, but then I concentrate on all good things still in my life.” ― Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays with Morrie