Alchemy
Heart checks as well as mic checks.
Hard resets as well as all systems go.
I’ve been working on the nerve to communicate a lot of different things and I’m supposed to be a writer. Allegedly an artist. Toltec visions of the future to keep me focused on what I can control and set in most for those to come after me.
The aspect has struck the deepest nerve to-date has to be offering a writing workshop. More specificly - The Alchemist’s Cypher. Why alchemy? I’ve read and fallen in love with Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and gain a new perspective on the story every time I read it. That in and of itself is a thing of beauty, and is a mark of a gifted storyteller. I also have a newfound appreciation for the word alchemy as I dig deeper and explore alternative or so-Old-it’s-New-Age-again healing methods such as herbal medicine and spellwork.
"Grandmother, the alchemist, you spun gold out of this hard life, conjured beauty from the things left behind. Found healing where it did not live. Discovered the antidote in your own kit. Broke the curse with your own two hands. You passed these instructions down to your daughter who then passed it down to her daughter."
- Warsan Shire
I hear whispers of St. Germain but am immediately and deeply grateful for the grandmothers and the unknown alchemists in my family that did what they needed to do to ensure that I would have the freedom to offer these words.
But it didn’t click for me how much work I had done to heal myself, for myself, until the last moment of Jupiter in Libra. I received a congratulatory text on working the courage to share a space with others and facilitate a guided healing through writing session. I was moved, but immediately reminded that I was also nervous but I hadn’t been able to articulate the exact space it was coming from.
A couple of texts and reflection later - I had it. I was, and still am, nervous about the event because I feel exposed. Bare to the world, standing on my own hosting my own event, not as a part of a collective. My own vision, my own design, my own execution. Not because I didn’t have support or a feedback loop from others, but because a part of me knew that it was time to make that leap just like I knew it was time to leave Harlem.
I write about a lot of things. Spirituality, trauma, love, pain, healing, family ties, politics, astrology - anything and everything that moves me and teaches me a lesson. But in designing a workshop on how to take a journey into self-healing, I realized I would be putting so many of my own techniques on display. 0 to 100. Laid out and presented to the world.
The scariest part for me in this journey is not only how to ensure that I am walking and holding a space of integrity for the folks that show up - but also how to hold that space for myself. To name my anxieties and that I am moving through them the best that I can so that I can hopefully support someone else as they take steps towards doing the same thing.
“I am living a life I don’t regret
A life that will resonate with my ancestors,
And with as many generations forward as I can imagine.
I am attending to to the crises of my time with my best self,
I am of communities that are doing our collective best
to honor our ancestors and all humans to come.”
- adrienne maree brown
These methods have saved me from myself when I’m at worst. Writing has allowed me to square countless sides of myself that felt contradictory, ugly or unlovable. It’s allowed me to name my trauma and my survivor story. It’s helped me navigate heartbreak. And the spaces that have driven me to my edge of comprehension, that left me senseless, are the spaces that I am now drawing from to transform and download the methods. The recipes and litanies of thriving. When the hell did I get here and why is this so scary? Is this what folks meant when radical vulnerability came up?
I am always learning and getting to know myself and I wouldn’t trade the places and moments of pain for anything because it has molded me into the woman that I am. A giant that stands on the knowledge that they are never alone, and that they are a product of a love that had faith in a future that those that walked before would not be able to witness. But the second that I rest and say “I’m done, I don’t have to dig anymore, I don’t have to heal anymore” is the second that I have lost my integrity.
There goes my ego.
There goes my Kintsugi heart.
Here goes everything.
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