OCTOBER - self care

dear friends, dear community,

how are you doing? how is life treating you? how is self care? saying that there is much suffering going on in the world feels like an understatement to me. it seems to never stop as one violent event follows the next. it can be overwhelming especially if we do not have the time needed to process and digest before the next event happens. the recent Israeli-Palestine conflict escalation adds to the growing pool of suffering. 

much of these violent events can render us helpless or trigger a freeze, flight or fight response. what can i do? how to stop the suffering? i think change is within reach. if we focus much of our energy too far on things that we cannot change, it can result in an energy leakage. we instead can focus our energy on things within reach.  closing our sense doors, going home to mind and body to take care of our suffering. in doing so, each of us can be an instrument of peace as my root teacher reminds us…

“if we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.” —Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

beauty in fall 🍂decay

i know for myself, life keeps inviting me to expand my capacity. i am doing my best to lean in and lean out of this invitation. i am writing to you from the traditional Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory also known as Peterborough Canada where i am a part of a caring team supporting my spiritual mama, Ghan Chee, who transitioned this tuesday. it has been a journey of gently expanding my capacity overtime to be able to offer this care that i promised her years ago. over the years, Ghan reminded me that i cannot give what i do not have. if i don’t have the capacity to be with suffering, if i don't have joy, understanding, compassion or peace, i cannot offer this to someone else. before she died, she was in hospice care and one day one of the nurses asked her if she needed anything and she said in a gentle voice "world peace". we all laughed to see her humour shining through on her deathbed. after hearing our laughter she gentle said "i am not joking." her life was her message.  much of her life's energy was spent on sangha (community) building and helping mentees like myself end the war within ourselves. the sangha she created in Toronto is called True Peace sangha.

Ghan Chee (1953-2023)

cultivation of how we want to show up in the world is possible. Thich Nhat Hanh invited his students to learn how to stop running - that could be a first step.

“the times are urgent; let us slow down. slowing down is losing our way — not a human capacity or human capability." - Bayo Akomolafe

slowing down can be a gift to ourselves to begin to tend to suffering and cultivate joy within ourselves. from a place of joy (and expansion), right action naturally arises. i have heard it said before that love is a verb and i find that is true for me. when i am filled with love, when my cup runneth over, that love takes a life of its own, in the way it manifests in the world.  love is fearless and wise.

it’s falling 🍁🍂

self care can look like…

i generally don't promote tools and techniques as an approach to self care. in my experience when you practice things naturally and organically emerge. it's like gardening. you plant seeds and when conditions are ready, it sprouts. i am aware that these days there are a lot of manipulation of nature to force nature to do what we want. we may also do this with our interior world as we try to empty our minds so we can be peaceful. this is another topic that i won't get into here. we all have our insides that try to get our attention in many ways. sometimes it's a very simple nudge to drink some water, sometimes it's a request for sweets or sometimes it’s a desire for connection. listening and honouring these calls can be an act of self care, self respect and self love. discernment is important as sometimes the insides are off balance and the request for bags and bags of potato chip is not so wise.

sometimes we find ourselves in very toxic situations that may shutdown our insides and later it wakes up to tell us how awful the experience was. this is true for me last month as i stepped inside an office to get help to setup the non-profit, UMOJA foundation (see image below) . i was caught in a bubble of toxic masculinity where this not-so gentleman assumed his desires were mine and defiled me with his eyes and gestures without laying a hand on me. i clearly shared my lack of interest and unavailability, yet that was not enough. i was focused on getting the non-profit setup even though something started to feel off inside. i was loosing a bit of myself.  the interesting thing is that the option to leave was not available to me in those moments. there was a freeze response. i had to forgive myself of this. after i left, i knew something had gone wrong that i needed to look at. later, in safety, my inside shared the horror of being caught in the situation, i acknowledged and apologized to my insides as well as took time to offer myself the care that they needed in that moment. i imagined myself doing just what i needed in that moment (healing the past in the present)…walking out. i also invited this person outside of my energetic body and decided not to go back even though i had planned to during the meeting.

much of the things that come at us cannot be avoided. the way i am conditioned is to uphold injustices. yet the power is still in my hands. caring for self is revolutionary. it's not about getting it perfectly right. it's about being able to have space and time to be able to listen and tend to the insides (building inner trust overtime).  self care is allowing time for things like this situation to reveal itself, cultivating the capacity to meet it all (my part as well as the other person's part) and see what can be done to repair the harm that was done. once, i did that, i felt complete and i moved on. i have come to see that my insides is not looking for perfection it is looking for relationality (safety, respect and honouring). i do show up in the world in a open-hearted way and this means that there will be situations like this. yet, i don't have to  try to prevent it from happening and hide myself away from the world. with my ancestors behind me, i have everything that i need to take care of what has happened and i can choose to compost it for my own wisdom, happiness and freedom. at the end of the day, i felt a deeper connection to myself. this situation (although not ideal) brought that to me: deeper connection, love and respect for self.. it's the mud and lotus again! of course i have not touched on the violence and entitlement on femme bodies as well as how the system upholds it. in this context, most femme bodies in Jamaica are programmed to condone those behaviours and also see it as normal. i recognized my limited capacity in going up against such engrained behaviour alone and yet my resisting that behaviour by not going back feels enough for me inside right now. in addition, experiences like this also informs the work i do with children at the basic school and the work i hope to do with the foundation collaborating with organizations like, a call to men. there may be more internal work to be done on this. it may be unfinished business. i don't know. for now, i feel complete and more integrated. so i trust that is it for NOW and remain open in case an opportunity arises in the future to address this situation further.

to cultivate a permaculture farm & wellness centre that will be a safe restorative space for adults and children across Jamaica to heal the trauma of enslavement, colonization and patriarchy - a path to unity, justice, and the common good as well as a moral imperative for a just, harmonious and equitable society.

slowing down is an art….

slowing down is also self care and it’s an art. imagine all the stress that is placed on the body when going at a fast pace most of the time. imagine the impact on the nervous system over time. when i was younger, i had to learn the hard way through a burn out. even after the burn out, at times, i still get carried away when the collective energy is on URGENCY.

slowing down can be an art.

i set out to slow down a couple months ago and i am finding that there is a dance between speeding up and slowing down. the practice of slowing down is not linear. it's dynamic and organic. in the spirit of accepting all parts of self, how to work with what is? not because i decide to slow down, that i can just do it. it takes time. it is a process of going back and forward. like the swing of a pendulum, swinging between fast and slow. not because i find myself speeding up that i abandon the practice of slowing down. no. i integrate it as this is a part of the process and learn from it. how do i know it's apart of the process? because that is the reality. it is happening. reality rules. not ideas or concepts.

habit energies are not easy to change. habit energies are like a well used hiking trail (imagine that trail/path in your mind). sometimes the habit energy is coming down the generation line and could be hundreds of years old. knowing this is helpful to not beat myself up when i find myself doing exactly what i decided not to do. it's just a well used mental habit. in our society we give a lot of importance to the intellect. just because you think something doesn't mean that it can be easily done. it can be done. it takes gentle diligent practice over time.

i have found in my practice that the universe is kind. it gives me what i need to work with what is. i have a little prayer that goes like this. “universe, creator, please give me what i need to go through this one”.

it has been a year and a quarter since i have been in Jamaica and i continue to look with fresh eyes for the good conditions that are available amidst much chaos. i have come to appreciate the slower pace of life…

in the countryside of Jamaica where i am from, the pace is much slower than in North America. when i was much younger, i used to criticize Jamaicans for not being efficient and ambitious enough. time and experience has lead me to appreciate the ways of Jamaica. it’s quite humbling to come back to learn from the very thing that i rejected. sometimes i hear women sharing that they must go lie down and they do just that. when i hear this, it’s an invitation for me to re-learn the art of listening to my body and slowing down. my habit is to be work focused versus people focused. again the environment is inviting me to look at that. i cannot just run out to do an errand quickly as there are many people along the way that i stop to greet or exchange a few or long words with. sometimes, it feels a bit frustrating as i am programmed to be tasked focused, anonymous and to get what i want when i want it. here i am invited to revaluate what’s important. i find at my core, community and relationships are important to me and that needs time to nurture. this means allowing some of those “small” task balls that i am juggling to fall.

another practice that i have been enjoying re-learning is walking aimlessly. when a Jamaican woman walk, it's like they are doing walking meditation. there isn't urgency in their steps. this has been a good mirror to help me to see how urgency is showing up in my body. their slow beautiful steps remind me to enjoy my steps and not to run after anything even a taxi full of people waiting for me to come. these women would continue to enjoy their steps walking towards the taxi. when i first witnessed that, i was afraid and worried about “keeping others waiting” and over time i’ve come to see that this is normal here. wow! what an art! if you go to the bank, be ready to spend the whole day as there is no urgency. they take their time. this can be frustrating for me as i'm spoiled by North America culture of urgency and the customer must be always pleased. not here. no one is in a rush except maybe some drivers and ambulances.

the beauty of slowing down (even imperfectly) is that there is a chance for life to enter. i can start to notice again the beautiful sky and cloud formations, the distant mountains, the sounds of the birds and night creatures. i can begin to listen to the whispers of my soul. slowing down is also self care.

thank you for receiving my ❤️sharing