Remembering / Reorienting / Reimagining
Basking in the sweetness of permission and the truth of my innermost desires.
Something inside of me has shifted. Or rather, something inside of me has connected. The once fragmented desires, musings, and dreams are making its way back together, allowing me to see myself as a whole being. Acknowledging and understanding my innermost truths. My fragments came back home and asked me to be the glue.
Remembering
A year ago I started “The Journeying” as a space to share more of my writings and creative desires while preparing to move from Dallas to Savannah, a city I’d barely visited but felt called to settle into. I wanted a place to be myself and feel more like a writer. To be multi-dimensional and experimental. To thrive and not feel shame or fear about sharing more intimate details of my creative process. The hardest part of cultivating this was that I was in a mental space of survival, which rarely leaves an opportunity for creativity to come to life. I was caught at the crosswalk of creating for self-expression and trying to create to earn a living. Survival has a way of convincing us that there is only one way to get things done. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Life would soon come to show me this. When I moved to Savannah last July, I was excited to be in a new city, but also experiencing the reality of being unemployed with bills and little to no income. I had no idea of where to go next, and the unexpected grief of all of the things I’d tucked away just to try to keep afloat quickly came to the surface. I’d reached an impasse. I had to say goodbye to my formal state of “just getting by”. My life depended on it. The summer of 2023 marked the start of my season of surrender and rest. Something I didn’t realize I needed, but it became the catalyst for my growth.
In my time of surrender and rest, I began to lean into the things that have always felt regenerative for my mind, body, and spirit. I took a workshop days after my move that helped me become more aware of how much grief I was carrying in my life and showed me how poetry could be the vehicle to carry me through. I immersed myself in books, devouring them like no tomorrow. I spent hours in the early mornings on the porch in deep ceremony with myself writing prayers, morning pages, affirmations, and reflections on what was resting beneath the surface. I made room and time for my curiosity again. I fell down rabbit holes that seemed as if they existed to serve as confirmation of the rest I needed. Spending hours analyzing the works of Black women writers and feminists. Collecting and organizing ideas on are.na, dreaming about workshops I would teach, books I would write, and all of the people I would share my work with. Dreaming of this new world I wanted to exist in. I was unlearning everything I held onto for survival and learning more about what my spirit longed for. I started feeling more like the writer I wanted to be even when my work was not shared in public spaces. I started feeling more like a teacher even though I had no desire to teach in traditional settings. I was getting closer and closer to the work I loved even though there was no real name for it, nor any payment or financial security involved. Naturally, Summer transitioned into Fall, and then Winter. Soon, 2023 turned into 2024 and after five months of having the break I needed for the last 3 years, there was one thing I knew for certain: “The world I am dreaming of is the world I have to make a reality.”
Reorienting
With the promise of a new year, I vowed to myself I would focus on being both audacious in my life and being a steward of things I’ve been tasked with caring for; my space, my dreams, my mind, body, and spirit. I started 2024 permitting myself to imagine life outside of practicality. Finally admitting to myself that while there may not be a traditional path for me, it doesn’t mean I should give up or settle for less than what my spirit feels moved by. Because so much of my work is informed by my southern matriarchal upbringing, returning to my truth of being a Black femme from the rural South became a grounding point and place of empowerment for me. It led me to learn more about my familial lineage and imagine what kind of dreams and desires my grandmother and great-grandmother had. What made them curious? How did their life in the South impact their curiosity? Am I picking up the dreams they had to lay down to make it through life? The more I research my ancestry, the more I feel my ancestors guiding me, and the more I feel supported on this path. I find myself orbiting around Black feminism, Black Southern life / memory / heritage, and self-exploration. I find myself at Home.
I am returning to this space because this is a new iteration of “The Journeying”. I am journeying but in a different way. A year ago, I didn’t know where I was going, and had even less of an idea of where I wanted to be, but now things are different. There is no definitive map, but there is a compass system informed by the guidance of my familial and creative lineages, and the works of Black women writers, thinkers, feminists, and worldbuilders. My journey now is centered around my love for research, writing, and connecting with others. Right now journeying feels like allowing myself to be seen in practice. To be vulnerable, truthful, and a continuous student of life. Journeying now feels like honoring the power of my erotic1 and letting it carry me beyond conventionality or practicality. Right now journeying feels like the defiance of everything I was taught to follow, to reach for, to desire in order to preserve myself for the dismissal of one world, as I play a part in the building of a new one. My research practice is regenerative to my spirit and curiosity. It serves as a balm on hard days, a grounding practice when I feel overwhelmed, and a reference point as I construct the world I long to thrive inside of.
Reimagining
Zora Neale Hurston once wrote “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and that they dwell therein.” 2 I desire to reimagine what it means to be a researcher and have a research practice informed by familial and creative lineages. To document my research practice in real time. I desire to model what it means to have a research practice outside of a formal academic setting. A practice informed by not only curiosity, but the guidance and connection that comes from being connected to something beyond the physical realm.
I invite you to join me on my journey. With every book, article, or PDF, I invite you to into my practice alongside me to ask questions, share reflections, and teach and learn with me. I truly believe this is work that cannot be done alone, and even if it could be, I still would rather do it in the care and support of community.
More to come,
Ty 🫂
Reference to Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power*” from the book Sister Outsider
Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (New York: HarperPerennial,1996), 143