Weeding the Garden
What Do I Look Like Asking For Less Than I Need?
Blessed Thursday!
Welcome back to the Chapel of Honey. We meet you as you are, where you are, no judgement. Today’s word is about continuing to confront and grow through self limiting beliefs, insecurity, and inherited ideas of what we are allowed to ask for. Gratitude to Griot Bae for a recent essay about conjuring the life you want. It has challenged me to once again examine my wants, needs, desires, and the ways I’ve limited my own conjure work.
I spent the morning and early afternoon getting dirt under my nails and across my legs, remembering the sacred work of relationship and tending. It’s not enough to sweep my porch or water the potted plants, someone has to prune the grapevines and get a handle on the creepers tearing down the fence. Sometimes the need for rest and the desire to allow growth morphs into quiet neglect, into piles of two seasons of leaves that are overwhelming to look at and easier to say “oh, we’re gonna compost them.” Except we never do, the compost pile has its own life made of eggshells and coffee grounds and cut up watermelon rinds, and the leaves become something with a wet heartbeat, a place for roots to flourish between the end of the driveway and foundation of a garage that hasn’t held a car in ten years.
Mind you, that inner narrator not even paying rent. I’m sewing its mouth shut for real.
When I was huffing and puffing under the rapidly rising sun and warm air my Dad met me in the driveway and said “Kid, I think you’re working out something mental, something on your mind.” And of course I said no, no, I’ve just been fed up with this bundle of stuff for a while and suddenly got the wind in my lungs to do the work. But the more I heard myself rattle off explanations - tending a home is relationship, letting stuff grow crazy reaches a point of neglect. I don’t want the fence to fall. I don’t want the roots to take up the concrete any more than they have. As a conjure what do I look like letting my driveway be all blocked up like this? - I realized that maybe, just maybe, he was right. Something on my mind lately, lately being the last 48 hours and some change with roots reaching to May, has been living well. Living well without excuses, without hiding, without bowing to the snarky and condescending commentary from my well-practiced inner narrator, the one who chides and chastises and says “too much, not enough, too much, not nearly qualified.” Mind you, that inner narrator not even paying rent. I’m sewing its mouth shut for real. As a conjure, what the fuck do I look like letting any part of my life be dictated by fear?
For most of my life thus far I considered my inner critic to be objective and accurate, a folly based on the assumption that the inner critics of my adults and later peers was also somehow objective and accurate, and possibly knowing better. In that same large window of my life I spent a lot of internal time thinking about my weight, my face, my hair, my weight, rinse and repeat. How boring! How useless! One of my favorite things about myself is that although I am heavier than I’ve ever been, I really love my body. I chopped all my hair off and barely think about it. The amount of time and energy once wasted on pinching and poking and calorie counting has been transmuted and changed banks. I invest in skincare I like, eating in a way that is supportive of my body and its needs, and more importantly I focus on my connection to the world through sensation and care. I focus on being creative, showing up for family, and when a health concern arises I can address it without attaching old ideas of morality and diet culture beauty standards. However, all of these inner changes in the right direction always seem to hit a wall. I’ve been meditating on it since Griot Bae published an article on conjuring the life you want. I’ve always had one pitfall, one serious limitation: what I believe I can have, am allowed to have, for my life to be good. It took years to charge well for my work, like more than a decade of being a reputable diviner and medium. I can conjure up a home, rent money, a full kitchen but there has always been a roadblock beyond what my mind and heart considered necessary. And a lot of that has to do with worth, with self value, with feeling allowed to ask for more (which sometimes feels audacious to me because as my life and lineage work go, I have made a lot of headway in the self love and audacity department). It still feels, at my big age of 32, like buying new clothes is testing the limits. It feels like taking time out of my day to do something other than housework or day jobs is breaking a rule somehow. I know it’s embedded trauma and fear. I’ve been tangling with a realization around what I feel I’m supposed to do and not supposed to do for over a year after an effective meditation with myself. I’ve journaled, cried, prayed, walked it out and talked it out and painted. I’m only realizing lately how long this vine is and how long ago it was planted. But I love myself too much to stand in my own way, and I am too committed to Ancestral work to play it small for the sake of momentarily easing anxiety. It takes more than the temporary nervous system assurance of a lease for me to have a good life. It will take more than a solid hourly job for me to feel stable and secure. As a matter of fact the enemy with many faces is the idea of temporarily stabilizing my nervous system, of catching my breath. Bitch I’m tired of having things I need to catch my breath from. I am tired of things always happening so much that it feels like the pattern of my life is the inevitability of another rug being pulled, of something that will most assuredly sabotage my safety. And though I’ve made strides on many levels, learning to expect the best and to require support, I’ve not yet learned to fully believe that the only option is my best, is my good, is my joy. That is what Griot Bae’s essay gave me some language and structure with.
The reason working for hours this morning felt so good wasn’t just because of the heat and fresh air and sense of relief that came with a job well done. It was that I had dug deep into myself and found the energy to meet a task with the tools at hand. As brave as I am, I’ve also gotten too settled into the narrative of being exhausted, of being in some kind of perpetual recovery. Am I on probation? Yep! Do I have layered chronic illnesses and debt? You bet! But am I resigned to a life of constant struggle, one that would reaffirm the worries and worldview of people who live in fear? Fuck no. I refuse to replicate the struggles of my parents, of my grandparents, of my great-grandparents. I refuse to play it small, to become so worn out from grief and overwhelm that my garden in neglected.
Love always,
Honey
