A Year in review

A whole year without Dad in it. Endless words on paper trying to capture new beginnings. Collective trauma and healing, teachings swirling through my head and heart onto pages. Continuous commitment to anti-black, racism, oppression work. Calling ins and outs through poetry, stories, emails and community platforms.

Hearing of an illness in China, little attention paid. Gathered with Caribbean educators and social workers at a Peter Levine workshop when I hear the churn of small wheels on pavement, American students with their belongings rolling towards taxis heading for flights back to the US to shelter a virus in a country seeped in institutionalized viruses.

Trudeau telling Canadians to come home. Two homes calling. Grenada we stay. Airports close. Lock down. Theo busting through childhood paths in the bush to get to his gardens. Maya and I content to settle into our already quiet ways. Online becomes another home. Circles online become another home. Recommitting over and over to center, pay attention, be intentional. More and more access to revolutionaries and social movements showing up, standing up, speaking out from around the world.

Finally white people paying attention to the pandemic of racism. Gathering white bodied folks to circle and learn/unlearn. Awakening to our whiteness/ Embodying radical responsibility. Working with predominantly white folks for the first time, seeing my own judgements rising. A righteousness. Shadow work calling. Churning out privilege not as guilt but as opportunity for deep reflective action (ivism) How? Figuring it out.

Theo and I intentionally letting one another be. An expectation-free year with the exception of Wednesday nights, a commitment to body to body meditation. Sex, out of our heads and into our bodies (the heart a given). Luminous easy love.

Grenada Listening Project goes online. Sobaz joins as we co facilitate conflict transformation/compassionate listening trainings and host/hold Listening Circles. I

Invited into various beloved communities. Making choices. How not to gorge on communal transformative opportunities but to build on the few that feel the most aligned to the work evolving.

Deepening spiritual teachings. Aligning more deeply with what has felt real to me for many years radical love, revolutionary love, love synonymous with justice; how deeply woven personal and collective change is. reverend angel kyodo william’s quote shared over and over throughout the year “without inner change, there can be no outer change, without collective change, no change matters.”

Embodiment work. Becoming more and more intimate with my triggers and nervous system. How and where emotions show up in body and where my shadows show up in others. Shifting shame, anger, judgement, fear through dance, dance, dance!

Deep yearnings for my mom back in Canada. Every second night, phone calls. I am eased by her ease through lock down; beautiful neighbors, my brother and niece surrounding her.

Building more and more capacity to be in conflict, discomfort, rupture and repair. Knowing more clearly this is the time to embrace the whole of being human, the wreckage and the brilliance. This is the practice.

Holding space for Maya as she moves through a kaleidoscope of emotions. Learning how to hold, just hold without trying to fix, advice, rescue… letting Maya feel the whole of being human, the full catastrophe and the full brilliance.

Grief work, meeting my own and other’s wild edges of sorrow with the powerful works of Francis Weller, with the courage and renewal community, with new and old friends/family who are not afraid to go to the depths of our sorrow, to rest there for awhile, to cry and wail; to quietly look one another in the eyes through a screen, share our stories while we witness and hold one another. I hear that grief lives in the lungs and I begin to accept the tightness in my chest while feeling a loosening.

Giving thanks to so many teachers 2020
Resmaa Menakem, Arudhanti Roy, reverend angel kyodo Williams, Jon kabit zinn, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ruth King, Joan Halifax, Francis Weller, Dan Siegal, john a powell, Sharon Salzberg, Jack kornfield, Judy Goodman, Karine Bell, Gibran Rivera, Tuesday Ryan-Hart, Amber McZeal, Bayo Akomolafe, Sage Hayes, Gabor Mate, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Padraig O’Tuama, Krista Tippet, Rosa Zubizarreta, adrianne maree brown and so many more!

Deep bow of gratitude for a year of heartache and change. And deep bow to the year ahead already seeped in radical imagination, collaboration, healing, and co creating embedded within beloved community!