I am worthy. I am worthy. I am worthy.
Very good. Now repeat it with filling in the rest of the statement below. Sit with it for a moment. Let it flow to you:
I am worthy of ___________________________.
We are worthy of having our basic needs met. We are worthy of slowing down and letting go of urgency.
We are worthy of rest.
For many of us, this may have not been our reality for most of our lives & it may still not be the reality right now. Regardless, we are still worthy of it. We are still worthy of planting the seeds and dreaming it into existence. We would not have come into our divine existence if our ancestors didn’t plant seeds for our welcoming centuries, eons ago. It is important that we do the same and nurture the soil with the new seeds we are planting, even if we may not see the abundance of crops just yet.
As multiply marginalized people, we have been fed messages of unworthiness in every facet of life. We have been born with an energetic imprint of this belief which may cause us to numb our brilliance with our addictions, dependencies, and other behaviors which may not serve us. These addictions may have served us in the past and we know deep down that it keeps us from accessing our highest potential. Let me be clear, it won’t be easy. Once we stop giving in and decreasing our vices it may get harder. We are literally destroying a legacy of toxicity passed down from the systems of white supremacy, & yet to truly heal- we need to acknowledge it all. We must find ways which resonate in cleansing our spirits from this deep-seeded lie.
Coming into our worthiness is not only a personal issue. Coming into our worthiness is not only a personal issue. However, it does require us to personally look at the ways we have unconsciously been devaluing our worth & not allowing abundance to flow in. It requires us to be mindful of the ways systems are projecting messages of unworthiness onto our beings & how we have been settling. It requires us to be willing to take risks, a trait many of us who are QTBIPOC are not unfamiliar with, into unknown territory. As we embrace worthiness, we are literally shifting the paradigm. We are recreating a new foundation for those who will continue walking after we have transitioned on to the next world. Embodying opportunities and making way for ones which have been dying to exist.
May I proclaim myself holy. May I shed layers of unwanted projections from my sphere & embrace the protection of my sacred divinity. May I choose quality over quantity and remember I am worthy of taking my time. May I speak my worth with the way I move with my time & energy. May I set this example for others as well as future generations waiting to come into existence.
]]>Deep-rooted trauma which isn’t only from this lifetime, but generations passed. As QTBIPOC, we each have our unique histories depending on our ancestries, to how this trauma chooses to manifest. It is important to acknowledge, pause, and take stock on how this connects with our addictions & dependencies. For many of us, our trauma is a main factor of why we fall into these vices.
For BIPOC, our addictions are a form of people pleasing. We please white people by making ourselves smaller & keeping ourselves from our boldest potential. In general many of our ancestors had to settle for less than they deserved. Many of our ancestors had to center the feelings & well-being of white folx over their own. Many of our ancestors may have stifled their own power through addictions and abusive behaviors themselves. And this cycle continues into our present lives until we choose to cut ties with it and step into our inherent worth.
We may feel over-responsible for the reactions or a response of white folx. We may feel like we want to be equitable and fair in a situation so we end up compromising our needs. We may feel scarcity so deep that we are too afraid to risk it all, so we end up settling for less than what we are worth, and feel resentment later on. We are so full of heart and may have a tendency to want to extend our niceness. A huge lesson for us to learn is that being nice at the expense of honoring our humanity is an abandonment of our spirits- which is essentially what we do each time we engage in harm against ourselves through this people-pleasing behavior to appease.
For us who struggle with addictive vices, learning to identify & regulate emotions is often a huge part of our journey when it comes to unpacking this unconscious & insidious people pleasing behavior. These emotions can often feel unsafe & uncomfortable in our bodies because of the intensity we may feel them.
Divine one, it is VALID to feel these emotions so strongly because often they are also the emotions left repressed from ancestors as well. These emotions come off so strongly because they are VALID responses to the injustices of systemic oppression we carry everyday.
However, people-pleasing whether that is drinking to keep the peace in a friend group, or saying yes to a compensation package which we feel hesitant about, is often as harmful to us as it is to others in our community. We may feel an amid of emotions from this-whether it is overwhelming guilt, inexplicable anger, or immense shame. We each must find our individual ways of moving it through, as well as being in community with those who can understand.
May I retreat back into my sacred energy & get to know what feels right in my own body, heart, soul, and spirit. May I stand unafraid for what I will lose when I begin to stand in my power, for it will only vmake space for what I deserve to gain. May I be generous with my wisdom, talents, energy, & time with those in actual community & solidarity with me, for it will bring a tenfold back to me.
]]>This is enough for this one moment and this moment is meant to be celebrated.
I welcomed 2021 by spending my evening alone grieving and celebrating the end to a tumultuous blessed year. I held space at my altar for all the candle requests of prayers I received for this full moon cycle. I ate 12 grapes and non alcohol cidre in honor of my maternal grandparents when the clock rang 12. I gave some to my Cuban Abuelito and Abuelita on my altar as I made my 12 wishes. Tears were shed and this was a celebration of retreating back into my source & reconnecting back to ancestors, even those I may never fully know in my mixed lineages because of deep displacement.
A huge paradox is that there can be celebration within grief; within the letting go & dying of who we once were. As QTBIPOC, this can come in many forms each time we come into a deeper understanding of our being and how it manifests in the world. Whether that be if we are trans and/or are non-binary & have chosen medical transition for ourselves, or if we are queer & coming into a polyam identity for ourselves, these are all markers of growth and evolution within ourselves. With growth and evolution, comes grief. When we allow ourselves to grieve death, whether in a physical and/or spiritual sense, we are honoring legacy, and honoring the past, where we are now, and where we are headed is a form of celebration.
Grieving & releasing tears isn’t the only way to celebrate. Oftentime with celebration, we are seeking to honor a certain event, milestone, purpose, or moment. We typically desire to experience pleasure and those possibilities are infinite. There’s as many ways of celebrating as there are to simply being. Far too often we have been fed what is “ought” to be celebrated from sources outside of ourselves. Far too often we have been told how things should be celebrated. Far too often our examples of celebration has involved alcohol, drugs, substances, a skewed sense of sex & love, and other behaviors which may not serve us.
Celebration may be a concept which does not come easy for us or it may be a concept we use to overin- dulge in to escape accountability towards our responsibilities. Most of the time we may be caught in the fluidity around celebration. Nonetheless, when we make the choice to become sober and/or embark on a recovery journey we undoubtedly need to reassess our relationship with celebration and how we wish to engage & experience it.
May I celebrate my choice to embark on a sobriety and recovery journey. May I create rituals of celebration for myself which can honor the entirety of who I am. May I focus on the courage it takes to choose this journey when there are systems trying to destroy me day in and day out. May I renew my empowerment again and again each time I choose to not harm myself. May I give myself the same compassion I give to others each time I have a set back; for I am choosing a journey of a lifetime and that is a celebration within itself.
]]>Whenever I feel disconnected from my body, spirit, soul, and heart, I visit Oshun and I ask for guid- ance. I observe her ebb and flow. Depending on the season, she may be overflowing, seamlessly passing through boulders in her way. Other times she may be more slow moving. She may almost appear stagnant, but if you look close enough you notice the shimmers on the surface of her body, slowly making their way towards the horizon. When I am with her I am completely engaged with my senses.
My definition for sensuality is our own unique and elaborate relationship with getting in touch, and embodied with our senses, usually in the pursuit of physical pleasure. Many of us who may struggle with addictions & dependency issues have either an overactive sensory system, or one which may need a lot of stimulation to feel things. Of course, there is a spectrum & this doesn’t exist in a binary- but in a lot of instances our addictions serve as a way to either numb out these very high sensations we feel or to try to get our low sensory selves to feel more deeply.
It is important to become aware of where we may be in that spectrum so we can become more in touch with our relationship to our senses and the environment around us. It can be difficult to be in touch with our senses when we may have been avoiding a lot of unresolved trauma & pain. It can be difficult to get in touch with our senses, when the environment around us is exuding contradicting energies around what it means to be well & what is fulfilling pleasure. It can be painful to connect with our senses, period!
As QTBIPOC we are living in a world where we are under-resourced in many ways and our desires, let alone our needs, are constantly not being taken seriously on a daily and wide-scale basis. And yet, we need to connect to our senses to be able to connect back with our source, our power, our plea- sure, and our purpose. The more we cut ourselves off from processing the flow of our emotions, the more these will keep impacting our sensory & nervous systems. Emotions left stagnant impact our physical bodies on an energetic level. We each have unique sacred energy to embody and share with our communities, which we won’t be able to fully access if we aren’t processing these emotions and distracting/numbing our way from it.
Although the example at the beginning of this text mentions the river, sensuality for us is really about engaging our physical senses with a source of pleasure which is healthy, stimulating, or sedative, and offers us a holistic sense of physical & emotional fulfillment.
May I embrace my sensual nature and affirm my need for physical pleasure & relief from a world which is constantly invalidating these from me. May I surround myself with those sources which can affirm my divine right in receiving pleasure through my physical senses in ways which are empowering. May I discover the activities and environments which support me in embodying my senses in a true fulfilled way. May I release the shame of reaching for relief and remember I am worthy of pleasure and restoration.
]]>All we have is this present moment. The actions and decisions we choose for ourselves now will inevitably affect our future, similarly to how our actions and decisions from the past affect our present circumstances. Karma which is energy we create from what we choose is always present. What do we wish to create? How do we wish to live? Who do we desire to be in our inner circle? And our wider community? What steps must we take to begin? What do we want ultimately for our life and how do we envision it?
There are so many questions and to begin we must go within ourselves to seek what this all means to us, extend ourselves to the causes we ultimately believe in, in the ways that work for us, and choose to be in our experience. The outcome, or rather how spirit chooses for it to appear for us is not in our control. This is why we must remain open, while maintaining our protection and integrity.
We do not know. We do not know. We do not know. There is great wisdom and potential in accepting our limitations. This allows spirit to step in and take the reigns where we simply are unable to. There are many times in our journey of recovery where we simply don’t know. We may know what we are striving for, but we don’t know how it will show up. It can be frustrating to have so much vision, so much hope, and still not know. As people who are pushed into the margins, we know what it is like to not know and be in fear all too well. We know what it is like to not be in control and to feel power- lessness. However, sometimes when we reach certain peaks in our recovery, we are asked by spirit to free- fall. To trust in them and the Goddexx within us. When we have done all we can do within our capacities, have become clear and specific, and yet still do not know, spirit is asking to remain in faith.
Faith can be super triggering for our QT’s and BIPOC communities because it has failed us in a system- ic, institutionalized, spiritual, and personal levels. We have been traumatized in who to believe in and quite simply that doesn’t work for us anymore. It is time for us to heal individually & collectively. It is time for us to reconnect with the faith we have inherited from our ancestors with unconditional love support for our world. It is time for us to reclaim our faith small, yet, powerful ways by beginning to choose where we invest our trust, our confidence, and our belief.
Like a small seed, this investment will grow into a foundational nurturing tree the more we tend to it in our own way. We can choose how much faith we place into any specific branches aka area of our lives- We can choose which deities we place our faith on- sometimes this means none at all as well. It is about what works for us- the secret is in surrendering once we have cultivated our intention and place our attention to that which truly honors our sacredness.
May I place my faith into the spirits & ancestors who are evolved enough to support me. May I be discerning of where I place my trust and confidence during uncertain times which trigger my anxieties of the unknown. May I acknowledge the fear which will inevitably arise, thank it for its wisdom, and then choose to focus my attention on where I have invested my faith for this is my source of power.
]]>We may get overwhelmed around a myriad of situations which are active and/or inactive in our lives. And we worry. and we may continue to worry. Many of us may have grown with lack and know what it is like to be in legit scarcity of having our basic needs met. The worry is absolutely valid and does not need to be justified when many of us may have faced home instability or homelessness, food insecurity, financial instability, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of systemic or personal violence. (This list isn’t exclusive around what we face which triggers our worry). Although I am not here to lecture on what not to worry about, I am here to offer a reminder how an overinvestment of our energy/time to worry can actually deplete the little reserves we may have left for our focus.
This focus is the seed to potential and the sacredness within ourselves. It comes from a similar source of worry which causes us to maintain attention-however this energy is focused on building solutions and possibilities for ourselves. Some of these solutions won’t fix the entirety of our issues, since many may be systemic, and the point isn’t always to fix, but to alleviate ourselves of the constant worry without using our addictions. Worrying stems from the same energy as focusing. One of the main differences lies within the overfixation aspect that worrying produces. We may become so entangled or enmeshed that we can lose sight of the broader perspective.
Focusing has the same ability to hold onto something just as strongly, but it has the wisdom to know when to let go. When we focus we give ourselves time to pause and take breaks. It isn’t about com- pletely abandoning our worry, but remembering that offering ourselves stillness and detachment from that outside of our immediate control is necessary for long-term healing. Maybe we schedule time for feeling our worry deeply & talk it out with someone who consents to hold space, maybe we express our worry by extending care in a way that is healthy for ourselves. We do what is in our capacity & honor our limitations by giving ourselves time to focus on other things. What we focus on is what we give our power to, and it can be beneficial to invest the excess energy which arises in empowering ourselves even if in the smallest ways.
The truth is as folx who are QTBIPOC, we know all too well the constant and neverending crises and needs which exist in our communities. These situations may cause a feeling of powerlessness which can trigger our desire to numb out rather than to focus on the little & small things we are able to do to support. Sometimes, that means no support and that is okay too. Complete rest and preservation is also necessary as we transfer to a more focused mindset rather than worry. The point is to offer com- passion to ourselves and be radically honest with ourselves in the present moment.
May I extend compassion to myself around the worries I experience. May I remember that it is natural to feel concerned around the state of the world & other beings around me, including myself. May I offer myself the nourishment I need to feel brave enough to transmute my worry into focus once it is hindering my ability to grow. May I focus on the ways I can show up for myself & community authentically & in service.
]]>Many of us may have grown with a limited perception of pleasure due to the constructs of White Supremacy, Capitalism, and the erasure of our ancestral ways of being. We may have been taught super- ficial modes of pleasure because it was all which seemed accessible at a certain period of time. We may have adapted a relationship to pleasure which equates to instantaneous escape from our pain, which in turn may have led some of us towards our addictions, dependencies, and vices.
We, as People of Color, Queer, Trans, Non-Binary, and the multitudes of intersecting identities we hold, carry a legacy of pain. This pain is one which can be overbearing & manifest into our lives in a multitude of ways. It makes sense that we would want to escape our pain, and we must remember that one of our most powerful strengths is our ability to transmute our pain into pleasure. This is the spirit of pleasure. Our pleasure is our power and we come to know our pleasure deeply through knowing the origins of our pain. In a world where grief and pain can feel never-ending in our communities, and the long-term sustainable solutions we seek may not happen overnight, we must remember to make a ritual of our pleasure. This does not mean we avoid the grief and pain. It means we make peace that they will always be present to some degree and make space for the joy and pleasure our ancestors may have not had the privilege to cultivate for themselves.
Pleasure gives us a safe container to rest, restore, and refuel ourselves. For many of us, our compulsions & addictions serve as a way of us trying to connect back to this restoration in a disconnected way. We may feel that we are being fulfilled only to find the void we were trying to escape is still there. Honing into the power of the spirit of pleasure means we accept and make peace with having to be patient with the necessary times in our lives which we need that void to simply exist. It is not meant for us to try to fill, but rather allow the space to exist. This space is oftentimes an invitation from spirit to delve deeper in the depth of pain, which in turn brings us into a deeper relationship with our pleasure.
It is important that we are mindful that as we commit to our true pleasures many emotions may be triggered, shame being a prominent one. Shame has been a weapon used against our communities. It is one of those emotions which can keep us stuck in unworthiness and have us question if we truly are deserving of pleasure when so many have been devoid of it. We are being called to collectively heal from this spiritual wound inflicted onto our communities and remember that through pleasure we can embody more of our sacred aliveness.
May I forgive myself for the many ways I have avoided my pain and in turn cast away my true source of pleasure. May I offer myself peace and acceptance that although pain exists, I am allowed to take breaks from it in ways which do not harm me or others. May I embrace that I am still worthy of experiencing the vastness and richness my pleasure offers and that this can exist within an ocean of pain. May I remember that I was brought to this physical plane for a holistic experience, one which allows me to play & explore the elements of who I am.
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