#8: This sparks joy 💥💫

Happy Sunday angels!!!!!

Hi my loves,

Happy Sunday! I hope you have a wonderful day today. 🥰🥰 Today I am filled with gratitude for each person reading this. Thank you for being here. There are words that I read in Ruha Benjamin’s book, Viral Justice (interviewed on the podcast here!) that I think of often: I am your other you. You are my other me.

Lately I’ve been allowing myself to acknowledge and be EXCITED by just how much love I feel I have to give to the world. I’ve felt so much fear and anxiety, and they are not banished, but I’m letting myself experience their counterpart: EXCITEMENT. I feel like I have an ocean within me. An ocean of ideas that are all rooted in the possibility of a new world. And I have the platforms to channel that love. That’s fucking incredible.

But the love is in me and it’s in the knowing that there are wonderful people like you who have your arms and hearts wide open. That’s really profound if you think about it (and I do! often!). My best friend and I often think about how wild it is that today you can have an idea and share it instantly — something that our elders did not get to have. Amidst so much despair, this access to information that many of us enjoy, is a little glimmer of hope to me. I am so grateful to be part of your information meal! May you be nourished and delighted.

Here is this week’s list!

1. This art

Support the artist — Fhatuwani Mukheli: Follow on IG here and website here

“Fhatuwani Mukheli (means be wise, be careful & be aware) is a South African, Soweto-born multi disciplined creative who found his passion for art at the age of seven. The spark for art started when he saw his father paint a portrait of him and his twin brother when they were children.”

“He is inspired by his childhood environment and experiences. The work he creates is an ode to how he was raised by his mother, hence the relationship between parent and child is one of his main focus points”

Pillars of Creation, 2022.

June 16.

“Fhatuwani is also passionate about healing people through the medium of visual arts, and believes that art is therapeutic not only for him, but for those who also experience his art. His main medium is acrylic paint, charcoal, fine liner and spray paint.”

2. This essay

This literally MADE MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE. I am good, I’ve lived my purpose on earth! I literally started cryinggggg I almost couldn't read it because I was overwhelmed. In the best way!

THANK YOU SO MUCH to this divine being,

Olga M. Segura

at

Bronx Frontlines

you are so precious and wonderful and kind. Thank you for uplifting me and my work. I will never ever forget this essay or this day! Please go check out and subscribe Olga's substack!!

Bronx Frontlines

I have subscribed ✅✅✅

3. These illustrations

via: Nelson (@madebynelson) on IG here and Twitter here

4. This playlist

Meditation suggestion: set a timer on your phone for 30 minutes and listen to this, breathing deeply. I just did this except with another one I’ve shared before. This is probably my favorite one!

5. This quote

“When I take a digital Sabbath away from social media, I come back feeling smarter, less anxious, and tapped into an expansive energy I was unable to access while scrolling every day.” ― Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto

Follow The Nap Ministry on IG here.

One time I put my phone in a cupboard for 2 days. It was the most alive I’ve ever felt. I want to do this again soon. Was it hard, yes, but did I need a physical barrier between me and mindless anxious endless scrolling?! Absolutely

6. This speech

Mia Mingus: “Because the truth is: we need each other.  We need each other.  And every time we turn away from each other, we turn away from ourselves.  We know this.  Let us not go around, but instead, courageously through.”

By my fav Mia Mingus!!! Follow her on Twitter here. I love her bio:

“In a time of destruction, create something” - Maxine Hong Kingston

and PayPal her if you can ;) I wish I had other people’s payment details, that would be so cool to like surprise them with funds as we grow here

Mia Mingus @miamingus

writing is such a beautiful process. I especially enjoy the part after seemingly endless edits where you don't care anymore and just want the piece of writing you've been working on to get as far away from you as possible so you never have to think about it again. so beautiful.

7. This poem

… and this one

via: @readalittlepoem on Twitter

8. This book

I’m sharing my notes from the first chapter of Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane.

I wrote these notes for my own consumption, so they are a bit incoherent at times, but then I thought, why not share them with you! It was so interesting because so much of what I’ve been talking about on TikTok about the myth of the individual is reflected in this book. I’m grateful to have been raised with this South African and actually as I learned from the book more broadly African philosophy of personhood, community, and relationship, Ubuntu. Some key questions for reflection:

• Fun exercise: How would your life story look like if you retold it from the perspective of the people (family, teachers, mentors, guides, artists, writers, friends) who supported and guided you along the way? Or failed to?

8. How am I doing?

This week I’ve been trying to practice Radical Acceptance. I shared a book that I’m reading on the topic last week. I’m taking bites of this book and letting myself chew them slowly. Because the idea that I can learn to accept myself will always sound nice in theory but impossible in practice. I am accepting how I feel even when I would prefer to feel otherwise. I am trusting that I can sit with big emotions. I’m asking myself: what if these things about me that I’d prefer not to be, or feel, are here to stay?

For example, instead of saying “I shouldn’t care what people think of me” I am saying, “Today I accept that I care what people think. I accept that sometimes people’s judgment (imagined or real) really hurts and affects me. I accept that I will probably never be a person who is unaffected by criticism or judgment, on- and offline. I don’t necessarily have to love this part of me. This part that yearns for approval. But I accept it’s here to stay. I choose to give my energy to the ways that this unconvenient part of me is tied to parts of me that I really love: my sensitivity, my open-heartedness, my empathy. Everything I like about myself has an attendant trait that I might not like: that is what it means to confront the wholeness of being. Every day on earth carries within it night and day. Both have so much to teach us.

What would it look like for you to accept the things you have always wanted to change about yourself?

Thank you for reading!!!

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