Prompt: Set an intention for your mind, body, and heart, your memory, your thought, and your imagination for the full and magnificent year to come.
Response: Love has been guiding me this entire way. I've been writing and thinking so much about the upcoming changes and journeys in my life that I can't even write or reflect outwardly anymore. I'll just say: Mind elevated. Body healed & elevated. Heart repaired. My memory repaired. Thought elevated. Imagination elevated.
2.19.2012
Week 3 Writing: WCC Writer's Workshop
Prompt & Response: What are your strengths, what are their sources? loving. writing. standing up for people. picking out jewelry. caring & respecting.
Where do you encounter fear? What holds you powerless or helps you overcome? I encounter fear through healing. Through trying to be myself everyday in country where my being is despised. I feel powerless when I'm experiencing sadness, hurt, confusion, loneliness, etc. What helps me to overcome is practicing self care.
I know... that I can heal.
I think... about this journey everyday.
I am... beautiful.
I don’t know... when this process will end.
I can’t explain... so many things about my experiences and my life.
I believe... in myself.
What are your weaknesses? Communication.
Where do you find power? I find power in possibility. I find power in the resistance of women of color.Where do you encounter fear? What holds you powerless or helps you overcome? I encounter fear through healing. Through trying to be myself everyday in country where my being is despised. I feel powerless when I'm experiencing sadness, hurt, confusion, loneliness, etc. What helps me to overcome is practicing self care.
I know... that I can heal.
I think... about this journey everyday.
I am... beautiful.
I don’t know... when this process will end.
I can’t explain... so many things about my experiences and my life.
I believe... in myself.
2.15.2012
Week 2 Writing: WCC Writer's Workshop
For some reason I'm just now seeing the week 2 prompt. So my entry is as follows:
Prompt: What do you do in your life just for yourself, to heal, to grow, to learn? What do you do for your family and community? What do you create, manifest, or imagine? What recipes do you use in all aspects of your life? What mixtures of friends, brews of ideas, and practices combine to create your life?
Response: I am just starting the process of learning and practicing self care. As a black woman, from a young age I've been taught that other people's wants and needs have priority over mine. I've been taught that the one possession that I was born with is not my own, my body; that it belongs to my parents, my boyfriend, my uncles, the men who I pass on the street, the women who seek to tear me down, the corporations, and capitalism. It was until just a few weeks ago that I realized self-care wasn't indulgent, that it didn't make me a selfish failure. That it is ok to put yourself first and even necessary.
Also, self-care is incredibly difficult when you live with your parents. Its also difficult for me because for the last four-ish years, social activism has been my life, its been my passion and one of the mechanism that I used to reduce stress. However, now I realize that this work can be very triggering and that I was using it partially to ignore my own issues. I've since been taking a break from social activism, focusing on myself with regard to self-love and trusting myself. Some things that I do use for self-care are drinking hot tea, treating myself to some sweets, reading while lying by the heater, spending time with friends, drinking wine, going to the movies, exercising, meditating, taking a hot shower, napping, writing, watering the grass, [practicing tantric] masturbation, breathing deeply, and thinking positive thoughts.
Prompt: What do you do in your life just for yourself, to heal, to grow, to learn? What do you do for your family and community? What do you create, manifest, or imagine? What recipes do you use in all aspects of your life? What mixtures of friends, brews of ideas, and practices combine to create your life?
Response: I am just starting the process of learning and practicing self care. As a black woman, from a young age I've been taught that other people's wants and needs have priority over mine. I've been taught that the one possession that I was born with is not my own, my body; that it belongs to my parents, my boyfriend, my uncles, the men who I pass on the street, the women who seek to tear me down, the corporations, and capitalism. It was until just a few weeks ago that I realized self-care wasn't indulgent, that it didn't make me a selfish failure. That it is ok to put yourself first and even necessary.
Also, self-care is incredibly difficult when you live with your parents. Its also difficult for me because for the last four-ish years, social activism has been my life, its been my passion and one of the mechanism that I used to reduce stress. However, now I realize that this work can be very triggering and that I was using it partially to ignore my own issues. I've since been taking a break from social activism, focusing on myself with regard to self-love and trusting myself. Some things that I do use for self-care are drinking hot tea, treating myself to some sweets, reading while lying by the heater, spending time with friends, drinking wine, going to the movies, exercising, meditating, taking a hot shower, napping, writing, watering the grass, [practicing tantric] masturbation, breathing deeply, and thinking positive thoughts.
2.01.2012
Week 1 Writing: WCC Writer's Workshop
Prompts for Week One
"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa
What is your voice? What are your voices? Where do you hear your voice? When do you raise your voice? What are its frequencies, its resonance? How do you find your voice?
What narratives do you draw on from your history, your culture, your life, to tell your stories? What codes do you speak in and around?
What silences do you observe, which do you break? How do you overcome silence?
Response
My voice is one of a woman of color who has experienced multiple forms of sexual violence and oppression and colonialism. I speak mostly about the injustices that we face. How sex and our bodies are used against us when we are the creators of this world. How hate is used against when the source of love can be found in our vaginas and in our wombs. I write because its one of the fundamental ways that I relate to people and the world around me. I write to make this world more tolerable. Its an art to me, but I rarely write poems. I hear my voice and my inspiration in my people and the people who've experienced the same shit as I have.
I observe silence surrounding sexual violence. The only thing that gives me solace is to talk to the people I know. To end the silence and isolation. To mend relationships.
"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa
What is your voice? What are your voices? Where do you hear your voice? When do you raise your voice? What are its frequencies, its resonance? How do you find your voice?
What narratives do you draw on from your history, your culture, your life, to tell your stories? What codes do you speak in and around?
What silences do you observe, which do you break? How do you overcome silence?
Response
My voice is one of a woman of color who has experienced multiple forms of sexual violence and oppression and colonialism. I speak mostly about the injustices that we face. How sex and our bodies are used against us when we are the creators of this world. How hate is used against when the source of love can be found in our vaginas and in our wombs. I write because its one of the fundamental ways that I relate to people and the world around me. I write to make this world more tolerable. Its an art to me, but I rarely write poems. I hear my voice and my inspiration in my people and the people who've experienced the same shit as I have.
I observe silence surrounding sexual violence. The only thing that gives me solace is to talk to the people I know. To end the silence and isolation. To mend relationships.
February Writing
Their description: The February Writers’ Workshop is meant to create space for us to write everyday for a month. What we do with that space is up to each writer. Starting Feb. 1, post weekly, post daily, or post somewhere in between. You could write as little or as much as you want in any format – poetry, journal entry, short story, article. We also have weekly prompts available to get you started, but responding to them is not required. Writing in this workshop is an act of community- we encourage you to join us in visiting your fellow writers’ blogs, commenting, supporting, and nurturing our collective creativity. So if you want to get back into your writing groove and join up with a community of bad ass writers from across the globe, it’s simple!
And you can find more about WCC and the workshop here.
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