I finished my therapy session this week feeling seen. Seen by my therapist and most importantly seen by myself. In my journey to be an amazing therapist and healing assistant, I’ve been on a voyage to heal a sister. I’m the sister! I don’t identify as a healer, I feel that in order for one to heal, they have to put some work in; people heal themselves with the help and guidance of others.
Read MoreAs my hands begin the process of crafting and carving these lino blocks, I'm thinking of these faces. I am thinking about the features: eyes, lips and hair. Faces that I love, Black and Indigenous People of Color. A reflection of who we are. I think about the role of this block print and how it resembles a fossil. Fossils are the preserved remains, or traces of remains, of ancient organisms. I think about the layers in our history, our features, our ancestry. Our people.
What am I willing to do? I am willing to be the vessel that I am. This is only the beginning, now is the moment when we ascend. There is no going back to bondage or blindness. No more silence. I renounce this posture of obedience. I renounce this posture submission.
That is why I am answering this Call To Create.
Read MoreI am in the call to create as the streets are on fire
What are you willing to do?
To answer that question: I will change the things I can not accept
Considering the 3 points above, it is incredibly heavy for me right now with the deaths of Ahmaud, Breanna, George and Oluwatoyin
I was born 6 months before the assassination of Martin Luther King and 1 year before Fred Hampton was murdered in his home
I was raised with love and generational scars. Wrapped in collective PTSD, secrets and forced silence. Exposing those generational scars because despite all the love, hurt people hurt people
Resiliency was never an option
No periods ending these words because the revolution continues not to be televised
My community had and have to recalibrate, to find a new space to thrive and be
Another space, out from the chaos, found in the country or the bottle
When preparing to be a vendor at the 2019 debut of the C2C Open Studio, I was challenged (it felt like a challenge, let’s be clear I was mortified more than ANYTHING) with the question of: What’s not working? Who the fuck wants to WILLINGLY think about that? Answering that question, as it pertained to the life, I was literally breathing in at that moment was unnerving! My nervous system had taken a stray bullet. My ego, Anna, was not happy the night I received the text message containing that question. However, considering how much I loved the person it came from and knowing their love for me, which is: maternal, nurturing and thought provoking, I put Anna in timeout and I asked myself “are you not happy with the question or are not happy with what’s not working?” I answered that night and multiple things about, in and of me have died since. An internal, eternal slaughter of survival and self-betrayal. As a 2020 cohort MEMBER, (yup, I’m geeked and grateful AF! our inner child is twerking and the track she’s dancing to is Juvenile’s “Back That Ass Up”) when asked this year: what are you willing to do? Immediately, the answer was death. I, Perpetual Anastasia Adjowa Baiswa Hayfron, am willing to D.I.E (Drowning Inward to Elevate).
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