writing to save my life: a podcast conversation
Today, an episode of the podcast What is Collective Healing? went live with an interview of me speaking about my work in UNRULY, the deep process of writing intimately through the poetry genre, and how I began sharing that which was once carried with shame as an offering towards collective healing. Thank you Matthew Green for the work you are doing in the world with your offering.
In listening to the podcast it was so refreshing to hear my own laughter throughout the episode, even as I was the messenger of experiences I grappled with for most of my life, and that others continue to grapple with. Collective shadows can be like that. The generational grappling. However, to relate to collective trauma as a force to be respected and acknowledged, but also as something that can be engaged with safely is medicine. I have befriended that which was once made to be the boogie man, and I give thanks for this shift in me. And yet, I also remember when I didn't think I would make it for one more breath. How everything in me needed to focus on just taking one more breath. And now another breath. How I labored to stay here in this body. How my being here, in this body, and very much alive, is a testimony, in and of itself. Exhale.
Sometimes when I found it difficult to write, I’d put on the long white skirts often reserved for Ayahuasca ceremonies. Then I’d wrap my head in a white cloth. Afterwards, I’d cleanse in the smoke of sage, then sage my computer before sitting down again to write sections of UNRULY. Sometimes it was only being in ceremony with the page that would move me out of self-censorship or "writer's block." Ceremony will always ask something of you. I already had an understanding of the level of surrender needed in an Aya ceremony, and UNRULY at times asked the same of me.
Ceremony also contains sacred reciprocity, so I continue to be in ceremony through this podcast offering. I am grateful to share this medicine with others. I am grateful to be here, in this Black body that feels everything, and breathes with depth, and writes with surrender.
Support my debut book UNRULY, Legacy Book Press, LLC 2025