Retreating & Returning
At the time of this writing, I am having a Sheila moment, perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum. I am in the Blue Mountains, situated near a river, in Kingston, Jamaica. Fortunately, I didn’t have to get myself up this mountain out of desperation to save my marriage. I’m here to get back to my writing practice. To birth something new, because if you’ve read my previous entries, you’ll know I am in my recovery era. I’ll be writing something every day. A journal entry on this here living portfolio, a little something to share with my therapist, a letter to myself, crafting the bones of my book— pen will meet paper, fingers will meet the keyboard.
To you reading this post, I am coming to you from the past. However, there is an otherworldly energy that feels like past, present and future me are all sitting at the table conspiring to learn and share. Perhaps that is the norm, and I am just leaning into paying attention and can now notice all that is happening around me, through me, and for me.
I remember taking a ten-week ceramics class at the Bronx River Arts Center a few years ago and coming out of class to a show about motherhood. The pieces were GORGEOUS, and as I walked the studio admiring the work, two women came over to me asking if I was an artist. I said, “Oh no, I’m just a student taking classes upstairs.” Without skipping a beat, they said, “If you make art, you are an artist.” And you know what, the neurons started firing and I thought back to all the moments where I downplayed what I enjoy and do because I didn’t feel qualified enough or that I was just doing something as a hobby, so “it didn’t count.”
It does count. All of this, your time, energy, creativity, intention, wins, and losses… it all counts. It’s all valid.
What pulls my recollection back to that moment is not just the validation from kind strangers that I am indeed an artist, but the exhibit about motherhood. While at the Writer House, my intention is to explore the premise of my book— the relationship between Black mothers and daughters. Specifically, what that relationship looks like when a mother lives her life vicariously through her daughter. I’ve been sitting with this idea for a story for almost fifteen years. Oscillating between doing the hard work of not only putting pen to paper but also the deep emotional work and healing of my own relationships with my mother and grandmother, but also my ever-evolving feelings around motherhood for myself.
If there is one thing I’ve always known is the vulnerability storytelling demands. If there is one thing I am learning, it is that salve writing can be if we allow it to support us in that way. What I look forward to, as it relates to this time on the island, this specific project, and in my recovery journey, is to be a bridge. A bridge between everything I thought I knew, I wanted, and believed to what is and what can be when grace, acceptance, and ease are building blocks in which my bridge is built.
My hope for you, dear reader, is that you will take the time to allow all iterations of yourself to breathe, recover, and create.
