Accountability is a relational field of practice.
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Language is a tool for seeding liberatory realities and futures. Language is a tool that can both flatten and breathe depth into the imaginal realms of possibility. We must hold it close and be clear on the language we use in service to our visions and dreams of collective liberation.
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Systems of dominance and empire thrive off of us not having a clear command of the language we use to shape our visions.
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“Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up.” -bell hooks
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Our kin in Congo, Rafa, Gaza, Sudan, and Tigray and here in the States are inviting us to practice accountability with them and ourselves. These invitations feel much different than attempting to source accountability through larger systems of dominance and empire.
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Yes, we have to put pressure on these systems of domination and empire, divest from them, and be willing to dismantle them. We are also responsible for supporting each other via mutual aid, solidarity, marching, calling for multiple cease-fires, and showing up in ways we don’t yet have language for because new praxis is emerging in real-time alongside us.
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We also have to interrogate how the fingerprints of these systems exist in many of the conveniences in our daily lives. Are we willing to practice accountability with ourselves and our kin on this level? I am deep in the grief and discomfort of these questions myself. I know the answers will impact how I source food, what foods I eat, how I engage with technology, and how I move through the world. I’m deep in it with you.
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Visit the Abolitionist Toolbox. The first tool is related to accountability.
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#ase #ancestralwisdom #palest1ne #g@za #t1gray #cong0 #change #accountability #abolition #unlearning #collectivecare #selfaccountablity #love #fieldnotes #elderwisdom #questions #oppression #truth #hope #curiosity #future #reality #langauge #liberation #ecologicalbeing #relationalbeing #human #life #vision #dreams
notes on meeting the new year
Here on Turtle Island, we are on the heels of Freedom's Eve/Watch Night, commonly known as New Year's Eve, and Heartbreak Day, also known as New Year's Day.
For the past two nights, I've hugged my children tightly in lingering embraces and held them without the looming fears of forced separation consuming me.
For the past two nights, I've soaked in hot baths, inhaling warm clouds of steam floating off the surface of waters fragranced with cedarwood, vetiver, and sandalwood notes.
In these waters, I've felt grief and hope and offered these feelings toward the co-regulation of collective ancestral nervous systems alongside my own. In these waters, I returned to the we that came before, the we that endures. In these waters, I held some of the last words my grandma Rita wrote me, turning them over in my mind like a spell, reciting them like a mantra.."slow down and take a breath."
I took a breath.
We took a breath.
I took several breaths.
We took several breaths and engaged in a chorus of breathing across generations.
This chorus of breathing felt far more generative than any resolution I could craft because, unlike my former resolutions, these breaths led me back to the self of my current reality. This breathing chorus led me back to an ecological self woven into vast ancestral ecosystems and lineages of love with a strong sense of belonging.
This friend has been my offering to greet the new year, engaging the ritual practice of remembering the histories of Freedom's Eves/Watch Nights and Heartbreak Days past. Creating space to honor the past and the partially healed version of reality, we exist and persist within. A version of reality where we can exercise greater agency over our bodies while avoiding the fates of the auction blocks we once knew, a version of reality where there is still so much more healing to do amid the deep suffering that is companioning the profound beauty of aliveness.
In lieu of setting resolutions toward a future version of me, we are doing what feels most generative in these holy days. We are pausing in the liminal space between endings and beginnings.
We are breathing, feeling, co-regulating, dreaming, and remembering that the me of the future is not made possible through resolutions I craft as an individual but through the collective and relational ecologies of my current reality, the larger we.
What feels most generative in these holy days for you? How are you meeting the liminal space between endings and beginnings?
In curiosity & hope,
Tamira
PS Many thanks to Alexis Pauline Gumbs for the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus and to Octavia Raheem for the medicine on the liminal space.
field notes on tension
field notes on the study of tension:
At its core, tension is neutral and has impulses toward articulating change and transformation.
What is not neutral is how systems of dominance and oppression weaponize tension to further the agendas of violence and separation.
The models and mechanisms of empire that warp tension cannot be our only reference points for engaging tension.
Tension is our companion and accomplice on our journeys of liberation.
It is possible to engage non-generative tension in generative ways that affirm life; our current reality is evidence of this. Our practices of openly grieving, staying engaged and aware of what is happening, sharing information, rooting in community, protesting and disrupting, engaging in acts of solidarity and mutual aid, and caring for ourselves and one another are clear evidence.
#ase #ancestralwisdom #tension #generative #fieldnotes #ancestralassignment #community #agency #mutualaid #care #collectivecare #selfcare #solidarity #disruption #giragira #heartbreak #hope #liberation #grief #love #change #transformation #remember #practice #fieldnotes #human #learning #growing #elderwisdom #wisdom
field notes on hope remix
thank you to my friend marcus fung for this remix.
notes on generative tension
I'm in the study of discerning the difference between tension that flattens our fields of practice, distracts us, isolates us, and narrows access to ecosystems of care versus tension that is generative and inspires ecological responses to its presence and all that it stirs within us collectively and individually.
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As a recovering people pleaser who previously vowed to diffuse tension at any cost in my youth, it never occurred to me that tension could be generative and might require a response or holding greater than my own as an individual. It never occurred to me that I could resource myself via webs of ecology to meet tension and all it stirred.
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Much of this study has required me to sloooooow down and work on lovingly interrupting my conditioned reactions to tension in general so that I can discern what flavor of tension is arising and respond accordingly.
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There is more to be shared, and I hope to do that soon.
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In the meantime, what tension is stirring in your life?
Where and how do you experience it?
Do you have a practice of discerning between different kinds of tension?
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Onward towards love & liberation.
[Quote on tan background with a warm neutral and pink watercolor curve in opposite corners reads Reminder- keep saying "yes" to generative tension. generative tension enables change and stirs the field of possibility. generative tension evokes ecological responses to change and communal visioning into new possibilities.]
#ase #learning #tension #ecology #ecologicalbeing #discernment #ancestralwisdom #ancestralconnection #community #visions #dreaming #kin #inspire #ecologicalresponse #resources #stirringthepot #growing #change #love #possibility
a reminder
we are not at the beginning or the end of the collapse; we are in the thick of it— co-creating it in real-time.
let go of the timelines- linear time is irrelevant amid the grief and death that intersects with the impulse to live.
time here is measured in thickness
it demands a thickness of presence
a thickness of being.
we are engaging collapse with every fiber of our being.
it is being archived in our tissues and cells, stretching across our bones.
there is no possibility inaction, we are tethered to one another by intra-actions because, beloved, we are ecological beings.
doing nothing is doing something; it is still an act of participation.
every action, thought, prayer, ritual, way of being, and breath is participation.
may love and collective liberation be the center of our beings and all we strive to build.
may love and liberation accompany us as we mid-wife these systems through their collapse in bodies and our worlds.
may we remember that when love and liberation rest at the center of our beings, all generations will be fed by our lives, and all beings move closer to embodying love and liberation.
field notes on protecting love
love does not need my protection...
love does not need my protection...
love does not need my protection...
love is inviting me to embody it...
love is inviting me to embody it...
love is inviting me to embody it...
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as a black woman living in the states, i have been socialized into upholding models of protection that systems of harm and oppression actively shape
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when i’ve felt into my embodied experiences of protection, i’ve often noticed myself assuming postures of hyper-vigilance, defense, hyper-surveillance of myself and others, gatekeeping, fatigue, and being ready to go to war
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in many ways, the residues of these systems live in the models of protection they inform, and thus, as i’ve practiced these models of protection, i’ve found myself further enabling cycles of harm and oppression
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as i deepen into love, this path is not asking me to assume postures of protection but to redirect that energy into embodying love and responding from that space in times of great challenge/unrest and grief.
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i’m asking myself how i can embody love in my solidarity and mutual aid practices with the people of Palestine and all beings impacted globally by genocide and oppression.
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I am asking myself if I am meeting my grief and our collective grief from a space of love.
#ase #ancestors #ancestralwisdom #ancestralconnections #fieldnotes #life #love #learning #growing #embodylove #grief #human #solidarity #protection #decolonizing #curiosity #ancestralecosystems #ecology #peace #mutualaid #kin #relationshipgoals #selfcare #selflove #collectivecare #takecareofyourself
field notes on knowing your role
field notes on role and destiny.
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I’m chewing on a few questions:
❓If I know my role(s) how might the socialized aspects of my being try to talk me out of accepting them? How might those parts of me tell me that i’m not qualified or that the work is impossible?
❓what have i been socialized to believe about the importance of knowing my role(s) ?
❓How deeply invested am I in those beliefs? How do they shape how i love and know myself?
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Have you reflected on these questions before? What came up for you?
Happy digging as the journey continues.
#ase #ancestralwisdom #learning #growing #fieldnotes #destiny #role #questions #relationshipgoals #love #reflection #curiosity #ancestralecosystems #unlearning #life
field notes on choice and control
I am deep in the study of discerning choice from control and trusting my beloved kin-folk to help me course-correct.
A lens of curiosity is a supportive tool as I discern what is at the root of how I am engaging in choice.
Much of my embodied relationship with choice is connected to exercising choice in response to systems of harm and oppression. I'm sitting with a deep yearning to prioritize exercising choice in response to generative, rooted in soul, love, and community.
The managed realities of empire will not be the sole lens of how I understand and embody my relationships with choice.
How do you relate to, embody and exercise choice?
field notes on trust
the work of deepening ancestral connections, working the realms of spirit, and being alive is an invitation to explore the language trust.
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these are invitations to remember, re-memeber, and re-imagine how we engage with the language of trust.
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these are invitations to trust the signs of our kin and relations that reflect back to us that we exist and belong in ecologies of care and love.
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the language of spirit is trust
field notes on ancestral wisdom on asking for and receiving support pt.3
field notes on asking for and receiving part 3.
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the practice of asking for and receiving support is also an invitation to open ourselves to grief.
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learning to grieve the things that we want but do not receive, helps us to create space and receptivity to receive the things that we need.
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#ancestors #egungun #receive #support #ancestralwisdom #ase #ancestralecosystems #spirit #grief #portal #love #descendant #beloved #kin #descendantbelovedkin #learning #growth #presence #vulnerability #want #need #human #life #invitation
field notes on ancestral wisdom on asking for and receiving support p.2
part 2 field notes on asking for and receiving support.
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asking for and receiving support is an exercise of honoring our agency and capacities for self-determination.
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asking for and receiving support does not require us to abandon our curiosity.
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asking for and receiving support means that sometimes we may have to reckon with receiving support that moves us away from what we “want” and in the direction of what we “need”. there is an invitation for us to stay curious when this happens🫶🏽
field notes on ancestral connections rooted in agency vs expectations
the weight of our unspoken expectations impact our capacity to show up for one another and build loving relationships rooted in agency.
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we are not entitled to unfettered access to our ancestors, the wisdom and stories they hold. often times we have not developed the skills necessary to engage various aspects of their medicines.
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the gift of our aliveness is how they show up for us daily. how can your life be a call and response of gratitude for the gift of your aliveness?
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how can you approach ancestral relationship from a space of agency rather than entitlement?
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these skills apply to many facets of relationship building with all beings
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field notes on receiving support
Asking for support and receiving support are not passive activities. This is true in the realms of Ancestors/Spirit
and in the realms of material and matter. I hold both/ all of these realms to be interdependent fields of possibility capable of eliciting layered responses to our requests for support.
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Often when i ask for support, the deep lessons of receiving and integrating those layers of support unfold. These are some of the touch points I explore in my continued practices of learning how to receive and integrate support.
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1. do i have capacity in my physical, spiritual and emotional landscape to receive the support I’m calling in?
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2. Am i willing to engage with the changes that might be required to create the space/ conditions to welcome in and integrate this support?
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3. Can i slow down and recognize when support emerges in ways i don’t anticipate? Am i willing to stay open to receive support that doesn’t center my comfort?
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4. Am i willing to examine my investments in the stories, beliefs and conditions that keep me from being open to receiving support?
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5. Remember asking for and receiving support are not passive activities.
#ase #egun #egungun #learning #growth #healing #love #support #ancestralwisdom #spirit #life #relationahipgoals #change #story #belief #conditions #ancestralecosystems #ancestralecosystemsofsupport #kin #descendant #beloved #descendantbelovedkin #ancestors #prophetsofpossibility #interdependence #multidimensionalhealing #chickens #learning #curiosity
field notes on connecting with ancestral ecosystems
Let’s slow down and build connection with our ancestral ecosystems in ways that honor ours and their agency.
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Let’s root in connection.
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For those curious about rooting in ancestral connection let’s explore together.
