5 Things I Learned About Myself in 2022
What is one thing you learned about yourself in 2022? What’s one aspect in your life that has evolved? What energy are you holding for yourself as you walk forward?
The more we share our stories with each other we cultivate our desires for connection, belonging, community and love.
I’m the sort of type that stays home alone on a western new year and just kinda hang out with myself. As I got older and moved in the direction of wanting to make more trusting choices, I spent more time alone. This is a major play in my life, as I’m still learning about myself, my needs and my boundaries.
In my early twenties I put myself on an exploration path where I would explore things that caught my attention; no pressure, just checking things out. This new system had me doing a lot of things solo dolo. I found business spaces locally to go to and met people around things I was curious about. I was volunteering in the city, meeting people, learning new things and I was making bolder choices.
I learned I had to get comfortable with being alone and being with myself if I wanted to feel any form of satisfaction. I tried out a lot of stuff. I would make plans to be alone and just hang out with myself. I did courses, watched live streams, journal, slept early. I built a habit of spending time with myself consciously and sober, more on that another time.
Over the years, the things I do with myself has evolved. I don’t make resolutions. I don’t have a full work day, in fact, I’m rigidly against them. But I do spend a lot of time in self reflection. As the western calendar churns it’s wheel, here’s five things I learned about myself in 2022.
Telling Stories and Deeply Listening to Stories Connects Me to My Knowing
Stories had its way with me this year and I’m really ecstatic about it. My curiosity for stories reared it’s head a few years ago and I was looking for more guidance. I wanted to tell stories, but I wanted indigenous teachers. I’m picky. I met Elder Ma-nee a few years ago and her wisdom has become a lighthouse on my journey with stories. I wanted to learn stories from a nature-base system, I was clear about this. I wasn’t actively seeking, but I knew I wanted a teacher and so events and opportunities came my way to be engaged by stories.
I met an Indigenous Grandfather, Randy Lays Bad, Oglala Sioux Nation, Turtle Island from of The Mother Earth Delegation of United Original Nations with the Center for Sacred Studies. The stories he told took me on an inner journey and I learned how to condense a story with its essence intact. My teachers were circling me. Jo-ann Archibald, Qium Qium Xiiem’s book, Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit found its way to me and I love a good book to get in the margins.
But really, it was getting my hands dirty. Gardening is sensory; we smell and feel, we hear and notice. I needed to start story work. My creative partner Jasmin and I got in on the podcast game with our own production, Fresh Waters The Podcast by Fresh Water Society. I had worked out the logistics and been doing my own case study into audio when I pitched Jasmin the idea. She was all about it and we created an agile workflow to complete the project together. I’ll write on my experience collaborating in time zones in another post.
We used the council framework to put together our first ceremonial production, “Coming to the Circle: 7 Seeds of Consciousness”. As our first creative work together, we spent time upfront talking and discussing what I call the “energetic skeleton”. This is where stories really opened me up. The 7 Seeds of Consciousness is what Jasmin calls “spirit talk” and we share stories we hope inspires story-making and story-sharing.
Making stories and sharing them with Jasmin weaved an experience of enrichment and truth around me. I was cultivating myself because I was telling stories. When I deeply listened to the stories Jasmin shared I connected deeper with resonance to her story and myself. I like to say, I’m cultivating a feeling path as I’m feeling my way to satisfaction and fulfillment. Telling our stories together was enriching and fulfilling me, satisfaction guaranteed.
Bringing Communities Around Me As Part of My Plan of Care
Shout out to my friend Lynie for rekindling an old reflection. She recently reached out to me to reflect on an old answer I gave for her for her 2015 award winning paper on BIPOC women and self care.
As I reflected on my previous answer and what my self-love and self-care looks like now, I recognized the way I’ve evolved how I care for myself. Specifically, I was around more cultural and spiritual diasporic communities for enjoyment, pleasure, healing and justice.
Immersing myself in community as a form of care isn’t new for me, I have deep roots in community, but this time around, the bonds I was forming in community were feeding me spiritually and consciously. We are evolving beings and multi-dimensional and never static and fixed. My spiritual journey was evolving and I had to learn new ways to feed my Spirit.
I found I needed communities to meet many of my needs; from wanting to grow food and having land access to being immersed creatively telling our stories and in ceremony together. Communities of people helped me fulfill these emerging needs to be together and in wellness. The care I was looking for was the guiding post that led me to finding community spaces for satisfaction and enjoyment in the presences of each other.
My Needs Are Evolving and I Am Evolving As I Learn About Myself
I have a rigid mind that wants to control everything. I like things organized and scheduled and put back in its place. I like straight lines and clean open spaces, yea it’s like that. I had to gracefully learn to let go of the rigid ways I was with myself.
There are something’s that remains true values and deeply rooted principles, but the way I was living had to change. In this journey with myself, it’s about the relationship I have with me every step of the way. I’m no lucky variant that got away from trauma, so I had to become aware of the way I was still enmeshed in trauma and how it was playing out around me and in my choices.
One thing my mental health therapist reminds me of is, I’m never stuck, I always have a choice; a reminder I need. I sought out my therapist early January 2022 because I recognized I needed help. I saw my signs and I had to be honest with myself, I needed help. Part of this healing and recovering is being more compassionate with myself first. My therapist helped me to let go of rigid thoughts, accept my reality and the needs I had in this reality. Together, I was sharing and exploring my feelings with her and letting go of the idea of getting back to a place in the past. A place where I was “well.”
I was learning to be present with my needs now, getting to know them and being okay with having them. I was learning about my new boundaries for these needs and I was trusting my choices along the way.
I Can Meet My Spiritual Needs In Many Ways
When I was first called to Islam, I had beliefs that I would be taken away from the path I was already on. I had a lot of objections I interrogated, to come to my ultimate choice. I’m really picky about the spaces I hang out in and I’m careful about how spaces reproduce harm; more on this another time.
I like to be in spaces that meets a certain feeling criteria I have for myself. I created this feeling criteria after my last experience in an academic setting. I attended a conference and learned some boundaries I had; I wanted my spaces of influence rooted in liberatory praxis.
I ended up finding a masjid in Chicago that became a steadfast beacon of support. I spent my first Ramadan with them and every one after that. We came together in the spirit of Love, Mercy & Peace. Our community led every Jummah service and together we discussed Allah’s teachings. I found peace and experienced love here and soon recognized how I was drawing closer to my True Nature through Allah’s guidance. At the same time, I was immersed in other spiritual communities.
Years ago I came across TOSA Blue Mountain in Ecuador and as they have evolved, I have evolved with them. They were a strange community when I first found them, but I like strange, so I spent a few years vetting them. It was 2020 when I really dived into participating in the community with the community and had some of my most profound spiritual experiences.
Together we pooled monies to support the local indigenous peoples and have access to scared ceremonies. I made new friends here and fell back in love with the sacred art of ceremony. I remembered my earliest ceremonies and I was grate-full for the puja’s and havans I was in.
Ceremonies and Rituals Are For My Healing and Recovery
I was lying on my new couch living out of boxes and I was fed up. My apartment needed to be fumigated and everything around me was crumbling. I felt exhausted, lost and tired. My healing journey had made a sharp turn towards facing my Ancestors and reconciling with them and I was slowly walking down that path. I was in a writers circle a few years ago and I was itching to write in community again. I found a poetry collective, Protest Through Poetry, and started using poetry to reconnect with my feelings and expressing them.
It was here where I was weaving my story with other poets and writers. I started writing about my precious early childhood memories in Guyana. I remembered the land, the tress, the people, even the air and the moon felt different in Guyana. But it was the ceremonies and rituals that stayed with me and haunted me. I wrote about the nostalgic jhandi and published a micro poem with Protest Through Poetry.
One evening, I pulled out my wooden mala my father gave me and recited Ma Kali’s name 108 times. I was seeing her around me. I remember staring out my sister’s balcony one night and Ma’s face imprinted on me; I was looking for Ma. So I called her in and surrendered to her guidance.
I was reconnecting with Devi and soon started using fire rituals for self-care. As a child, we worshipped Durga Ma in our home and I was surrendering to Ma again. I learned to use small rituals and ceremonies in my care practice to preserve my Ancestors indigenous teachings and use them to meet my needs.
Surrendering To Presence Is A Game of Trust
The top of 2022 was a difficult and unstable time for me. It forced me to look at my care plan and to reflect on how I was feeling and what I was neglecting. Learning to care for myself meant making choices that might upset other people, this was something I had to accept and learn to be okay with. Sometimes we are in situations that brings a moment of reaffirming our choices.
I wanted to be a better steward of care, this was my mission that led me to self-care and self-love in the first place. I wanted to be a good parent to my child and care for her in a dynamic way. I wanted to learn how to care and how to love. This mission took me through the valley to caring and loving myself intimately and learning to trust in the process of life. The more time I spent learning to love myself, surrendering to being with myself, I started to cultivate my discernment and became aware of my Presence. As I spent time in Presence, I could let go, surrender easily and hold compassion for myself. I was cultivating trust for how life evolves through me.
In my reflection and the telling of my experience, I preserve life. My mission is to continue living and preserving life and documenting the evolution. What is one thing you learned about yourself in 2022? What’s one aspect in your life that has evolved? What energy are you holding for yourself as you walk forward?
Reflect on these questions and share your feelings in the comments below, I love reading and connecting with your stories. The more we share our stories with each other we cultivate our desires for connection, belonging, community and love.