#12: This sparks joy 💥💫

Hello loves,

Another week on earth! Sending you love and gratitude for your existence. Mine is more fulfilling because of yours, look at that. Each time I write to you I’m almost confused and pleasantly surprised by the fact that this is me doing this. It’s so fascinating how technology affects and shapes our behavior and our identities. TikTok (and now IG, and others!) brought amazing people to my door step. Then I thought, well it’s lovely to have you here, and now I must have you in for tea. And then I had to learn — I am learning — how to brew the tea leaves just right, and how to serve the tea cups just so. In other words, I’m not naturally a writer but here I am, word by word, doing my best to connect through this medium, with you, with myself, and with ideas I feel are worth sharing.

As in the above image, this week has been all about re-finding my voice by returning to my podcast after 6 months (The next episode will drop very soon! In it I read you the Audre Lorde essay that I always share here. I’m also “behind” on several episodes I have yet to release). I’m releasing myself from the shame and guilt of letting that project go for so long. It’s back and I’m excited and scared to tend to the plot of the podcast and see what grows through it.

Facing your own voice is WEIRD and I literally cringe the entire time. But I remind myself that I am worthy. Even when I’m terrified, if I feel called to something, I’m going to do it. I think that’s a promise I’ve made to myself in the past year or so, but I hesitate to fully claim it because its implications are too daunting for me to accept at this moment. Perhaps that’s why Lorde’s essay means so much to me and why I’ve decided to read it to you: “And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action always seems fraught with danger…”. I’ll send a note when the episode is out.

In the meantime, here’s this week’s list. A tray full of tea, just for you!

1. This art

Heavy breathing, 2022

I was so moved when I found the work of Colombian artist Cristina Camacho. Follow her on IG here and see more of her art on her website here.

Blooming Cave, 2019

Cuerpo hambriento, (Hungry Body) 2022.

Abismo hacia la nada, (Abyss to nothing), 2023

Wow! I hope you are as moved as I am. Humans are something else.

The artist, Cristina Camacho

2. This poem

This is literally how I feel trying to collect beautiful things for you all. I feel like I am going to the market and I only want to pick out the sunflower that has opened itself up fully to the light of day and the roses that are romantic enough and the tulips that are fragrant enough and the hydrangeas even though they never last long enough! And then there is the arrangement, it has to be just so. Just so for you. This is romance 🥰🌺🌻💐

3. This tweet

For this precise reason, I started a new weekly thread on what to watch! It’s aptly called The Content Corner, and you can find it here if you missed it! I am so loving all the recs so far!!! THANK YOU ALL and so excited to get started on these.

4. This idea

Source of individual artworks: Heron Arts

On Thursday I sat for 10 hours in a cafe, from 7am to 5pm and created the Paradigm Shifts list that I sent out, and by the end, my eyes were dry, my back and sit bones were sore, and I felt depleted. Mostly I felt mad at myself — why had I not listened to my body during the day? Why hadn’t I drank water? Why hadn’t I remembered to blink, to stand up, to take breaks? So laser-focused was I on producing something that I forgot I am a person with/in/of a body before I am a creator of anything. This was self-objectification incarnate — no one asked me to do any of this!

Since then, my goal has been to infuse my days with body scans, taking the time to breathe every couple of hours, stand up, walk around, take breaks, and know when my body wants me to stop. And then I listened to this podcast episode (below!) and I was called upon by adrienne marree brown to have more ambitious goals: to aim to infuse pleasure into my daily life and daily work.

My goal is to try and find moments of joy and pleasure through this work and outside of it. Ironically, I am in much the same position right now: the same cafe, with similar back aches and dry eyes from forgetting to blink, hunched over as I write about embodying pleasure. Time to put this in practice!

5. This podcast episode

As I’ve shared here before, I LOVE the book Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, and this podcast made me want to reread it. It’s hosted by Dr. Emily Nagoski, the author of Come as You Are. I’m enjoying it! In it amb asks how we can make our work pleasurable, based on Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic (read by her below).

6. This essay

This essay, the Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, is another fav of mine, and you can listen to Audre Lorde herself read it here!!

7. This playlist

Sultry sensual vibes. Perfect background music for an intimate conversation between friends or with yourself.

7. This book

I just read the novel Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo and I really wanted to love it but sadly did not enjoy it at all. Now I am reading Purple Hibiscus — it was a strong and impassioned rec from a friend, my love language (one of many), so the decision was made for me. Thank goodness! I’ll let you know how it goes!

8. This practice

Mutual aid is love! How unsurprising that in the West there is a practice for self-care but not for community care. There are South Asian-appropriated yoga practices and meditation practices, there are skin care routines, but there is no expectation that you should have a community care practice. There is no broader call for people who have the resources — financial, emotional, psychological, artistic — to consistently engage in activities that are of service to others. The burden then overly falls to people who already feel called to this work because community is all they have — Black people, Indigenous people, queer people, and many others.

First of all, we need to reimagine and reconstruct society so that some people no longer have the power to save other people’s lives; a community of collective thriving rather than the unequal society we have today. And also simultaneously — there are people who need help now, and people who can give it. I think mutual aid can be a way to recognize the implicit responsibility to care for each other we all have, and to acknowledge our interconnectedness and interdependence as human beings with each other and with the earth.

I do think that if you have the means, this is a way to move from despair to action, from hopelessness to hopefulness,

Ismatu Gwendolyn

has amazing TikToks about this here. I love “MUTUAL AID MAY!” Yesss. We love you; I love you!!! We build the world with the help we are willing to give and ask for; the help we feel worthy of, and the help we let others feel worthy of giving and receiving.

If YOU need help and feel — especially in that deep an quiet place within you — that I can help you, please let me know. Send me an email! Let’s scheme together <3

Here are 3 mutual aid projects (in the sense that the $$ goes directly to the people rather than to non-profits/NGOs) we can support:

• Uganda LGBTQ Emergency Fund GoFundMe for Ugandans facing anti-LGBTQIA+ violence

TW in below image: homophobia, state violence

Money goes directly to Ugandans for: Bail for LGBTQ imprisoned people, relocating to safer areas, emergency accommodations, legal and medical feels, visa and transportation costs for those leaving Uganda

• OpenYourWallett GoFundMe (Twitter here) for Black Queer and Trans Americans [shared previously]

• CareForGaza’s PayPal (Twitter here) for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation [shared previously]

Thank you for being here! Sending love your way.

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