Reclaiming The Past 

I was looking through pictures on my phone. It was like I was seeing my past self with new eyes. I spent so much of my youth consumed with my body image, I was forcibly smaller bodied for a good portion of my teens because of disordered eating. I worked so hard in my teen to amass power for myself where I felt it was lacking. I don’t know if I was as aware of the other things taking place in my life. I had good friends, and a supportive mother, and siblings that cared about me. My childhood, while being poor, had nourishment in it. When we got out of foster-care, I was well taken care of by my mother. Encouraged, pushed to go after the things I was inspired to do. My mother wanted the best for me. Certainly circumstances arrived into our lives that caused stress and my mother’s boundedness to working at a toxic job showed up in our lives as her unavailable at times. But after the years of homelessness, I had an adolescence that was good to me. 

That’s my reclamation today. That I can say I my childhood was loving. I was loved. Poor and hurting but loved. It’s the hurt and healing that I’ve spent all my twenties focused on in addition to trying to get a degree so to not be poor. But, it seems poverty is trickier than a bunny on easter. All past versions of me are now tuned into the understanding that I am attentive to the needs they didn’t have met and the questions that didn’t have answers. If feel myself soothed these days knowing that I’ve tended to all parts of me that were not cared for with intention. I can give and pour into any part of myself now. I have given myself the gift of a healthy self relationship. I love me so much and am grateful that I went back to reclaim what was hurting inside of me. 

Now I feel like I’m getting a second chance at a career I thought I’d never make it in. Because of ADHD, my autoimmune illness, my hatred of capitalism and mistrust of people in the workplace. I’m finding myself back at the place I was long before I choose my spiritual path. There may be room for me to pursue both. I can create a financially stable life for myself. That feels relieving to say. I can be committed to my life path with spirit and cultivate a satisfying career too. I can have them both. The magic and the mundane. 

Writing As Conjure 

I am a writer. And I think often about what story I am trying to tell with my words. If you notice my word are leading to someplace, moving me along in the plot and storyline. I talk about my life as if I’m going somewhere. Where is that place? What journey do I want to take others on? The journey is conjure. The spirit in me gathers the material needed to produce the right conditions for exchange between the spirits of other realms so that my earthly reality is shifted. From the beginning to the end of a written piece, I am changed, and moved toward a direction of clarity, purpose and bettering knowing. I am conjuring my life in the direction of my destiny and I write to get there. I write to know where I was, where I am and where I am going. 

Before I met my ancestors and spirits, I didn’t know my writing was root work. And I didn’t know that they had a meeting place in me through my words. When I step back and look at my past, everything I wrote was in preparation for their arrival into my awareness. From a hurting and sleeping child to a questioning and misguided young adult, I was writing and speaking myself into mother god’s hands up until the moment my life was falling apart and my heart was captured by her mid fall. I was then introduced to writing as a conversation with those beyond seeing eyes. 

The story that I am telling is the one of the person who found their way. And it’s a very important one to tell. Reason being that some people don’t think there is a guiding force beyond our cognition. That we live life as disjointed figures not connected to an orchestra of spirits that advise on our behalf. And I want to explain to others why that belief is a fabrication of delusion meant to limit the possibilities within our humanity. I want to tell this story because years and generations of trauma and anti-blackness robbed me of time with my beloved spirits. And I now the reintroduction to my spirits is taking me back into time to gather what was lost, forgotten and unhealed. We spend so much of time trying to figure out who we are going to be. I think it’s essential that we know some of us have our lives spoken for. And I didn’t know until I met my spirits that I was spoken for. Called into living with distinct purpose. How disingenuous for us to be born and never told there was more to life than learning how to produce wealth for others. 

Of the many great thefts of the western world, one of the greatest was the dissolving of the very important involvement that spirits have in navigating of souls though their lifetimes. The time I spend before I knew my sprits were years of searching while feeling lost. Now I am moved into the places that are meant for me to explore and am given choice in how to learn, grow and evolve. It is not capitalism that I am to abide my life choices by, it is a much grander family that gives me directive. I write to remind all of us enslaved by a soulless social order that there is a spiritual presence that exists beyond our current conditions that can extend us past the limits of our imagining into a new world. It is once we get into that world that we become protected, sheltered and renewed with self knowing. 

Like the ancients before me, I having figure out how to transport myself from from one time space to another and to be in multiple time spaces at the same time. It’s is my work to remember how rich in humanity and how full of magic my life truly is. Time-bending and shapeshifting is a revolutionary tool that we learn how to master in the company of our spirits. I am telling the story of how I remembered my place within the stars and how I brought back an everlasting light that shines past the horrors of human error and ego and seeing into our collective restoration. I write to speak to all the conjurers like myself who see through the eyes of mother god and speak her wisdom. This is the lifetime I reclaimed my power back from any force trying to ensure I didn’t recognize it. 

July 7th 2022: Texas

Here I am, living into another year. It’s been a year since I’ve moved to Texas. What has happened this year? So much has been coming out of me. This year challenged me. I’ve been feeling so tender that being vulnerable feels repulsive at times. It’s been a slow process of letting all the grief come out of me. Ooze out of me, peel off of me, hang around me. The grief has been heavy. I know myself in ways I’ve never had the intimacy to know. I have communicated this person with others. I’ve been vocalizing her needs. I’ve been sitting with myself. With her. Just witnessing who I am. Without pretense. As the parts of me that I once felt familiar with shifted. Shaped and then lost form again. So many aspect of myself have not felt complete this year. Not cohesive anyway.

My spiritual practice could have been a buffer or even a clarifying tool during these times but I’ve depended less on my practices and more on the transformative use of time. Letting the days pass as I get acclimated to Texas. It’s felt like a whole year of getting adjusted to a new way of being. The heat, the humidity, the people, the spirits, and the outdoors. I’ve been too tired to connect at times. Taken in by the need to sleep whenever I meditate. In the spirit of therapy and not doing 110%, I’ve been doing increasingly less and seeing if that still garners spiritual resonance.

I’ve been being a regular nigga out here in the world. Adjusting to a life with new rules. Perhaps it’s dangerous of me to come out to the south as I have, just on the hunches of my spirits and love of my family. There are other things out here to be careful of, the south is known for it’s intensity of energy and Spiritual happenings. Yes, in fact I do think I am a fool for being here. Foolish enough to believe that I need to be here doing something for the lands and people living and not living on them. Something. Foolish enough to believe that I belong here. To know that these lands are my lands, my peoples lands, and if I’m gonna call a place home, these lands would be where I’d be welcomed. Respect earned but welcomed none the less.

It was foolish of me to think that there was something here for me but I did and there is.

The cost of me being here has been very high. It has taken me many deaths and many rebirths to be in right relations on these lands. I’ve had to be very clear about who I am going to be, how I am going to act and the ways I’m going to communicate and what I believe about myself. These reflections have challenged me down to my core. But I keep breathing and I keep showing up for myself. It’s not all figured out and it’s not all perfect. But I am living with intention. Nothing in my life is an unnecessary obligation. I am exhausted and yet still very proud.

My hope is to continue making improvements in my mental and physical health and overtime deepen my spiritual practice. I have allowed my spiritual practice to linger in the distance because I had spent so many years with it at the forefront of my actions and motivations. Now I look to blend the magic and the mundane as my ancestors have so easily here in the south. To immerse myself in a culture of conjure and root work, to see it wherever I go and in all aspects of who I am. To be less identifiable as a spiritual person and it’s aesthetics and more aligned with being the living blood of my lineage. A child of purpose and love.

​ Trauma Recovery Goals

Hi Friends!

I’ve got an activity for you.

 

Find a mirror at home or go to the bathroom.

Read each statement out loud while looking yourself in the eyes.

Pause and take a deep breathe in between reading each statement.

Note: The book below is a great resource as well!

 

  1. I want to develop a more consistently loving and accepting relationship with myself.
  2. I want an increasing capacity for self-acceptance.
  3. I want to become the best possible friend to myself.
  4. I want my relationships to be based on love, respect, fairness, and mutual support.
  5. I want to expand into full, uninhibited self-expression.
  6. I want to attain the best possible physical health.
  7. I want to cultivate a balance of exuberance and peace.
  8. I want to attract to myself loving friends and loving community.
  9. I want increasing freedom from toxic shame.
  10. I want increasing freedom from unnecessary fear.
  11. I want rewarding and fulfilling work.
  12. I want a healthy amount of peace of mind, spirit, soul, and body.
  13. I want to increase my capacity to play and have fun.
  14. I want to make plenty of room for beauty and nature in my life.
  15. I want sufficient physical and monetary resources.
  16. I want a fair amount of help (self, human, or divine) to get what I need.
  17. I want divine love, grace, and blessing.
  18. I want a balance of work, play, and rest.
  19. I want a balance of stability and change.
  20. I want a balance of loving interaction and healthy self-sufficiency.
  21. I want full emotional expression with a balance of laughter and tears.
  22. I want sexual satisfaction.
  23. I want to express my anger in effective and nonabusive ways.
  24. I want all this for each and every other human being as well as myself.

 

Walker, Pete (2015-11-02). The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame (p. 56).