This year is f***in' hard.
Dear black woman: you’re gonna make it, sis.
This year is f***in’ hard. And we’ve still got a ways left to go.
I swear, it seems like each week of this year has started off like an epic, emotional, unpredictable adventure that brings victory coupled with loss. Severs old ties to fertilize new ground. Makes you get rid of yet another old comfort so you can grow yet another new branch for yourself.
I can barely get my bearing from the last tidal wave of WTF, before a new one starts charging right at me.
It’s a tough time, but it is also a potent time. This swirling energy that’s upsetting so much normalcy is also charged with possibility. With manifest-making magic. You are knee-deep in it, and if you can just keep focus, engage your core, not get swept away in the current, you can make things happen that you only imagined before. And they will come fast, hard, and unexpected. And they will last.
So be very intentional about what you are creating and calling forth now. With the relationships you begin and end. About how you are entering into contracts, projects, relationships. What is created now will not be easily undone.
And if you have not been focused on creating, if you have just been being tossed about or holding your little piece of normal ground with your head tucked down, that won’t do any longer.
It’s time to make the most of the rest of this year.
Kisha Solomon is an Atlanta-based writer, knowledge worker and serial expat. She is also the founder of The Good Woman School. When she’s not writing, working or travelling, you can find her in deep conversation with herself or her four-legged familiar, Taurus the Cat. www.lifeworktravels.com
singing away your worries
The spirit-healing science of singing to yourself. Aka, how I got over a series of sh*tty events.
In the past week, I...
Had a complete stranger invite himself into my yard and almost onto my porch because he, “liked what he saw.”
Got news that I will likely have to move out of my house to have some major repair work done that I’m still in an entanglement with the insurance company about
Buried the eldest living member of the Solomon clan
Had a deep talk with my mother in which we retraced the legacy of physical and emotional abuse through our family tree.
As a result, I’ve felt for much of the week like I’ve been walking around with a gaping hole in my chest. A wound that won’t close because it keeps getting abraded, keeps getting re-injured.
I’ve been singing quite a bit lately. Not songs, but the words of shock and pain and frustration that I have when these wounding experiences happen. I improvise a ditty on the spot to express what I feel. What I see. What is happening inside. It alchemizes the pain of the moment. It makes magic out of levity. It banishes the dark spirits looming near, hoping to slip into me through my open wound, my unhealed places. I sing into my wounds, blocking their entry, coaxing the hurt out of hidden places with ‘la, la, la’ and silly lyrics that often leave me laughing at the end of the nonsense song.
And I am a terrible singer.
But here she is. Not only alive. But thriving. Last year when the single bloom she arrived with fell off, I was worried. Would it ever come back? How I could i tell if she was healthy? There were just these big leaves at the base, and some weird looking roots. I mostly just gave her the recommended amount of weekly water, a lovely spot in front of a sunny window, a few words of inspiration and encouragement here and there and... well... look at her. She’s stunning!
This week I also sang a song to the last of the 6 flowers that finally bloomed on the orchid a friend gave me as a housewarming gift last year.
“This plant is doomed,” I thought when she arrived. I have little talent for keeping houseplants alive... and an orchid? The notoriously fickle flower? Tuh.
What Science Says About the Healing Power of Singing
“There is no delete button in the
nervous system,”
By telling yourself not to think about something, says Steven Hayes, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, “you’re increasing the number of associates that remind you of it.”
Instead, it’s better to treat them just like you would a silly, meaningless song. They exist, but they have little bearing on your life.
The Atlantic, 2016
One study “found that various defusion techniques,
including singing the unwanted thought and saying it in a cartoon voice, reduced the frequency of the thought while making it less believable. The strategy worked better than both the control and another strategy called “restructuring,” in which the person tries to come up with an alternative thought.”
The Atlantic, 2016
I don’t know how any of the aforementioned travails are going to turn out for me. But I will keep singing my nonsense songs, and sitting myself in front of sunny windows and speaking words of encouragement and inspiration to myself. I am notoriously fickle. But I have a feeling that after this dark, confusing time has become a ‘was’, I will catch a glimpse of my bloomed self in a mirror or a windowpane and think... ‘stunning’!
witches heal
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read simply, ‘Witches Heal’. I blurted out, ‘I LIKE that!” The Other looked at me strangely without looking at me at all. I think I scared him.
Today, I came home frustrated and sad. I didn’t even make it to the front door before the tears came hot, rolling down my face. Luckily it was raining outside, so the neighbor didn’t think twice about my wet face as I waved hello from the yard. I rushed to my room to have a good cry and as the fat, salty tears came sliding out, a poem flowered in my mind. I rushed to my notebook and scrawled out the words as fast as I could. When I was done, I no longer felt or wanted or needed the crying.
I wish I could make the Other understand that this is what witchcraft really is.