Joy is a Prism
Your life is light... bend your being in the care-full container of gratitude & grief.
I got a text from my younger cousin (…well, first it was from an unknown number so I didn’t think much of it (you know how Black people be w getting new numbers smh lol)) at the end of last year that read: ‘Hi cousin. Based on where you’re at in life now… what would you tell your 27-year old self?’ Once I realized who had asked it, I really set in my heart to answer it with intention. It’s taken some time — she’s gotta be 28 at this point. But it is still important to me. I’ve thought about my answer A LOT. I wrote out where I was at 27/28 — new to Silver Spring, Cory and I in the midst of deep relational growth, just realizing that I am allowed to see myself as a sexual being, burnt THE FUCK out at Georgetown, financially struggling, just starting to reconnect with writing, mentally overwhelmed, trying to get into shape in a new and real way, reconciling with my decolonial spirituality LAWD!!! And she has a kid!!! What can I even say to her? I don’t even know what I needed then anymore… Everything? What I do know is what I am learning right here and now… and I think it has to be all the same right? Because we’re here now and we were there then🤷🏿♂️.
Well, Cousin,
My birthday just passed, as you know. I am 32 years old!!! I originally was going to be celebrating my birthday in Jamaica — but tropical storms had other plans for us and my heart goes out to everyone suffering from those conditions even now surely months later. Instead… I chose joy for my birthday☺️. I went and saw some dear friends. Went and called some dear friends. Went and shook some ass in the sleepless summer heat. Went and put some love into my home. I was surprised by my (other lol) cousins with a birthday brunch(!!! that one meant a lot to me). Took a small trip to Pittsburgh for work (and got to take Cory, so we had some glorious self-celebration in the form of good eats while I was there). AND I saw SiR in concert. And I just felt soooo good and present in all of it.
Prior to the start of this series of glorious events, something hit me in exactly the right way. I was scrolling through my own instagram (admiring myself as I occasionally do 🤭), and I stumbled upon a clear distinction in how I posted/the way I expressed myself online; there was me in this late 20s era that you’ve asked about. There’s a pause. There’s a picture of Nanny right after she passed. Another pause… and then everything is different - the energy changed tangibly and visibly. I remember crying my eyes out to my therapist two days after she passed, nearly screaming about how I was going to honor her and live my life in a new way 🥹 it was so fulfilling to be able to see it and trace it. Here’s a post I made for her a year after she passed, already well into the transformation
I wanted to become someone who conquered the fear she carried by being my whole self unapologetically, and confronting the shame and fear that I knew it would activate. I chose to be an active participant in my becoming like never before. And even now I am still learning what that promise really means. If I had to boil it down to a single sentence (and I’ll surely give you a lot more but alas), it would be the title of this whole thing—
Joy is a prism, built of gratitude & grief, to refract the light that is your life into a beautiful array of colour.
The best version of you requires you to confront the deepest parts of yourself. In the process you must learn how to accept some radical truths. Pain? Hurt? Loss? These are all fundamental parts of the human experience. The best and most complete version of you doesn’t get to avoid grief… or sorrow… or desperation. That’s not the goal. If we believe that we - a forest - are meant to be a manicured lawn; we will believe that we have failed every time we grow a weed, and the magnanimity of our might may never be known to us or anyone adventurous enough to explore the thick of our glory. That is to say: if we believe that in order to be well, we cannot feel the depths of our sadness or the breadth of our rage - that has been building in us since we woke in the world; how will we ever know who we are or what we’re capable of… let alone give other people the ability to know us?
You have GOT to release the shame attached to your negative feelings (and we all have it, I promise you’re not special here) if you want to find joy. You have to make friends with your hurt. You have to stare directly into the eyes of your pain and ask it what it needs. You cannot do that if you’re judging yourself for having those feelings in the first place. Or for not having the perfect language to describe those feelings as you begin learning about them. You have to offer compassion to yourself so that you can learn to communicate to YOURSELF more effectively (and by virtue of that, others); and you have to be able to express frustration with yourself in a way that actually embraces change and facilitates new, intentionally changed behaviors.
As a therapist, and in my own personal reflection, this starts with a series of questions:
What’s my circumstance?/What’s happened?/What do I believe right now?/What do I have to do/what am I doing?
Why?/For who/what?
What does that mean/say about me?
Is that true?/Would you believe this about other people in this circumstance?
How could it not be true?/What WOULD you say about another person in this circumstance?
What kind of person do I want to be?
What actions could I engage in next that would most honor that person in response to this circumstance?
Here’s an example relevant to me:
What’s my circumstance?/What’s happened?/What do I believe right now?/What do I have to do/what am I doing?
Recently, in the last few years that I have been working to be a fuller version of myself, I’ve noticed that I’ve been losing a lot of close intimate relationships with folks I love (new and old).
Why?/For who/what?
It feels like the classic case of: because I’m too much. And because I’m too different. And because I’m not enough…. all at the same time.
What does that mean/say about me?
… if I’m being honest, it would mean that I’m unlovable. That there is something fundamentally wrong with how I am that needs to be fixed if I want to have lasting relationships.
Is that true?/Would you believe this about other people in this circumstance?
…No. Everyone is lovable and deserves to be loved and know love. And I do have relationships that have withstood the test of time and/or found resolution through conflict.
How could it not be true?/What WOULD you say about another person in this circumstance?
It couldn’t be true because I’ve not done anything worthy of unwanted isolation. Which is not to say I’m perfect or blameless. I have made plenty of mistakes and caused my own fair share of harm… but I don’t know that isolation is a fair consequence. I would say to someone else that they should remember that other peoples’ perception of them is based on those peoples’ lived experience, which don’t have to do with you and aren’t perfect reflections of you. I would tell them that they may not have been flawless, but they can always make new friends and take those growth opportunities into their new relationships while working harder to communicate healthily through conflict.
What kind of person do I want to be?
A ‘kin keeper’ like Nanny. Someone who holds space for community and ritual rooted in love and self-assurance. And at the same time I want to be free. Unmoored by responsibility but instead delighted in opportunity for the loving space, whimsy, and play I can offer to others and myself for my pleasure not my obligation. I want to be enthralled by and enjoying others’ zeal in our mutual timeless pursuit of self-discovery.
What actions could I engage in next that would most honor that person in response to this circumstance?
The energy that I no longer am using to pour into the people I have lost, I should use to pour into myself. And ask for those who I share reciprocal relationships with to pour into me in my time of need. As I rejuvenate, that will give me the space to pour back into them while continuing to pour into myself. Also, I should ask those folks (who I, surely, trust to be a better mirror) for honest feedback on how I can work to show up better for those I love while still honoring my needs for independence and self-exploration.
You see what I mean? A logic pathway to remind you of how to challenge your worst thoughts when you’re feeling low. Then you ritualize this process so that your body can hold the somatic parts of it that still suck; the way your tummy hurts when you’re uneasy, or the way your chest tightens when you’re anxious. You create a comfortable environment to breathe into those places while you work with the shame in your mind.
In therapy sessions, the question that clogs people most of all is that #6. A lot of times we don’t know who we want to be. In the same ways that we don’t know who we are. We know who we’re supposed to be. We know how others might see us. But we haven’t given it much thought for ourselves. My answer in the example was about rooting myself in that exploration of self (that might have been cheating but alas… it’s my post lol). I encourage you to explore your identity with another set of questions that I learned way back in grad school called The Autobiographical Sketch. You can use this to reflect on who you are, how you learned to identify that way, and most of all how you want to identify. You can also consider using The Wellness Wheel as a way to check in with yourself and think of actions you can take to honor the self you would like to create; ultimately, that following question, #7, is about care of self and care of others — which is about wellness. All in all, this can help you build the vision, mission, and values for your energetic compass to then guide you into intentional action that will craft and embody an authentic persona that is yours.
But therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? Embodying who you want to be requires change. And we’re a connective people. If you change, so must the people around you, or, at least, your dynamics with them. This often creates a conundrum that prevents us from moving forward with that vision of ourselves. For example, in my example, it’s hard to think that in my efforts to remedy feelings of loneliness and unworthiness caused by losing relationships… I have to run the risk of my relationships changing… which would create more loss, loneliness, and unworthiness. And the fear of that risk could easily trap me in a stagnation that would… only continue to perpetuate the loneliness and unworthiness im already experiencing 😭. It quickly feels like a lose-lose-lose, and so we choose the neutrality of inaction as a way of having to not confront the fear of consequence and call it ‘peace.’ We say, ‘it is what it is’ and do nothing. But peace is not neutrality, cousin. The goal is NOT to never experience loss, loneliness, and unworthiness again. Peace is equilibrium. It’s balance. It’s regulation. It’s embracing our choices and everything that comes with them. And so this is where joy, as a prism, puts rubber to road.
The goal is to be able show up to yourself and your feelings and your experience (desired or not) with love… and to be who you want to be (for yourself)… and that becomes the joy - in action. Your circumstances are simply story to be told in the pages of joy’s book. What will always happen is story. What will always happen is… life. Life will have changing relationship dynamics. Life will have loneliness. Life will have loss. Life will have big hurts, yes. And, all the while, life will also have beautiful connections that span a lifetime (and still end, sure, but they began… and they were… and they will again (and weren’t they beautiful?! (Don’t you remember?!?!))! Life will have innovation and creativity that maybe began as loneliness before becoming a reminder you that you are here, and alive. And life will have the quasi-psychic-quasi-mystic-quasi-surreal forever that is the echo of all who has ever loved even the thought of you… and will ever love the memory of you— wrapped around you like a warm blanket bringing the good to the byes. Life will huuuuuurrrrtttttt, yes. AND, believe you meeeee, life will heal too (it already has… remember?!?!), in so many amazing ways. And your ability to hold both of those truths — to bury them deep into the soils, where you root your earth body, and drink deep from the waters it catches and holds for you — is what cultivates the joy. Endless wild grasses of joy in the vast forest of your becoming. That duality will allow you to craft your life’s narrative, honestly, but with the pen of gratitude— reading it will always feel good no matter where the story takes you. There are relationships that I’ve lost, yes, and they make me feel lonely when I think about them, yes, AND we still created incredible stories together that have shaped me in ways that I love so deeply I could never regret them. The gratitude, in earnest, transforms the hurt.
Now what I am not interested in by encouraging you to find a more expansive perspective, is invalidating your trauma and strife. I’m not suggesting you are doing something wrong because you feel the magnitude of the wrongs that have befallen your story. I’m suggesting you build a strong loving relationship with both gratitude AND grief. Grief is how we acknowledge the first half of that truth. Gratitude, helps us transmute it to the second. Grief is how we say we have known a depth of sorrow and we still know love (within ourselves if nowhere else (but surely elsewhere (if we choose to remember!!!! (are you getting it yet lol?)))). Grief is what we do in the space we’ve safely created for the totality of our feelings. It is love’s private dance studio. Her ritual room. For your loss, my dear cousin, you must build a practice. You must integrate the external and the internal at the intersection of your body. A tradition that welcomes and validates your experiences without forcing you to define yourself by them.
In my example earlier, one of the close relationships I’ve lost recently I deeply associate with nature. A practice I have taken up in my grief (as a reminder of what they offer(ed) me), is saying ‘thank you’ out loud to trees when I lean on them for support (which I do often, I love me a walk in the woods) and generally speaking to nature more. Sometimes, that ritual connects me to the other people in my life who I associate with nature and it feels very warm. Sometimes, that ritual makes me cry. Every time, that ritual makes me feel good. I miss them. I see them everywhere. I would never find peace if I were to pretend they weren’t within me and a major part of how I have become. Instead, I welcome their memory in my actions everyday… But maybe your grief and loss isn’t about something so fond. I would challenge you to see your resilience beyond that cruel memory, and see who you cho(o)se to be in spite of it as the focal point of your honored practice of grief. You may not welcome the memory the same way I mourn this person… but instead you can welcome the righteous and justified feelings that accompany it as you recover from that memory everytime they come.
Grief and gratitude. Gratitude and grief. Together they weave the basket of joy. And in it you can carry it all — the goods of being (bad as they might be) — and with it make feast (or manage our waste). Life is going to life, cousin. You can’t escape it. And Joy is ALWAYS available to you. If you can believe that in your core? All your battles (hard as they may be) will be winning battles.
Know that wherever you experience worry or fear, I have endless faith in you. It is a privilege to witness your becoming.
Love you 😘♥️