day 2 (on becoming a gardener of space)
One of my teachers, Thomas Hübl, speaks on Collective Trauma work as one becoming a gardener of space. That a person in the work is a spacious person. So, facing the wounds, the grief, the whatever other emotion is there that is normally shamed into silence, is not sadomasochism, but supports the journey towards spaciousness. Being able to hold what is in the present, while also holding fast to one’s dreams, while not attempting to revise the past is spaciousness.
Yesterday, there were 90 people over zoom as I shared poetry and conversation with the Black women on the panel: Ruby Mendenhall, Karen Simms, and Sonita Mbah. I give thanks for them holding the space with me! We spoke on poetry as medicine, creating containers for difficult truths, balancing personal and collective healing, and practices to help us maintain presence when engaging with difficult histories. As one attendee commented, the space held “tenderness and truth-telling, creativity and life.”
The gathering also began with me acknowledging the life of my friend Aiby. He was named because I did not want to be the impenetrable Black woman who judges parts of herself or her experiences as “not belonging.” How we so often protest the ways that society “others” us when our body and emotions could so easily protest how we “other” the fullness of ourselves. Grief was in the room. She brought flowers.
To become a gardener of space—as a Black woman with a history of displacement and violation—is to acknowledge how our ancestors were given no space for grieving. A human being would drop in the field and we were expected to continue our labor. Our resistance looked like celebration under the moonlight. How we gathered to dance because one of us was free from the brutalities. To cry is to also be hydrated enough for the tears. After the towers fell, Bush encouraged us to go shopping, save the economy, sacrifice the soul.
After the Pocket Project UNRULY launch, I return to the world of silence, and make myself an epsom salt bath. Before I enter into these waters I speak prayers over the elements and give thanks for this garden that washes away.
Light, peace, and progression for the spirit of Aiby Galindez.
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Profoundly moving, Antoinette. You're doing incredible work.