Channeling is a semi-regular dispatch from Jenna Wortham about creativity, life, choosing sanity, everyday mysticism, coping mechanisms and the work of wellness beyond the trendiness of it.
Feel free to share excerpts of Channeling on social media or send it to someone who you think might enjoy it. As always, thank you for your time, your energy and your presence.
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Over the last few weeks, I’ve started making meditations for friends who are recovering from the virus or struggling in other ways. I’m interested in new ways of showing up, even from afar, and trying to be mindful of concern and care-taking that can double as labor for people who already feel overextended and exhausted.
On the first day of this year, I started working on one oriented around the energy of a six year (2+0+2+2). The number six is powerful, balanced, kind and healing. It invokes families — connecting with them or building our own. The number six looks like a helicopter seed, ripe with possibility, swelling with intention. Love is at the center, a center that craves recalibration. Peace, security and creativity are being called in, and we are being asked to center ourselves in that practice in order to radiate it all back out. Taking care of ourselves, setting boundaries and prioritizing the self in order to have access to these transformative elements is key. May we never forget sister bell’s most incandescent lesson and legacy: Love is the practice of freedom and self-love is the ultimate practice of liberation. I named this meditation after an idea she references in her gestational text, Sisters of the Yam, about the power of cultivating our inner wisdom. This year is asking us, as best we can, to re-invest in ourselves.
You can listen to the recording at the top of this newsletter. Perhaps it will help you start a practice, or support the ones you already have. You may want to stay in bed or listen while doing some gentle stretches in a soft patch of light. You may also decide to completely ignore it, or give it a try a month from now. Whatever you choose to do is entirely up to you. As I get deeper into my own book research, I’m learning that certain relaxing techniques can actually exacerbate dissociation, so as always, please pay attention to your own body and trust your intuition about what is best for your own needs and emotional state.
pleasures & treasures:
made a soundtrack for your inward spiral
peppa’ cidah from the boo candace at conscious homestead
winter citrus deliveries from natoora
lucille clifton x tracy k smith oracle deck
juice of the sun: lana’s virtual restorative winter yoga series
little homeworld, an upstate getaway, hosted by dear friends
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This newsletter will always be free. To support the work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. This month, a portion of paid subscriptions will go to Sober Black Girls Club, a not-for-profit online community devoted to helping Black women and femme folks through addiction.
