This Black (Girl’s) Magic: Yoga, meditation, food, herbs and oils.
Be a yogi
Journal
YOU ARE A VEGAN
Clean your space: smudging | oils
In a rainbow of colors, this is written on a large piece of chart paper and hangs right next to my bed. A reminder as soon as I wake up of what my spiritual practice is. You could call it my bible. I’m on team do too much: 3 jobs, a doctoral student, and a mother. I also have anxiety and depression which has its waves of ups and downs. But my situation isn’t special, ALL the Black women I know are on this team with me. Doing too much, working, raising babies, supporting family, being a sister, being BLACK, dealing with trama, dealing with health and mental illness, all while trying to save the damn world. How do we do it? How do we stay so strong?
We don’t. We break down. We cry, we throw things, we eat piles of junk food. We call our sisters, our mothers, and friends. Sometimes we even say no. No! I can’t help you. Because we may be magic, but we aren’t super human. We need the space to be imperfect, to make mistakes, to not be able to handle it all. The is no such thing as a woman who has it together all the time. No woman should be reaching for that goal. And it is literally killing us to keep up the falsity of the strong Black woman stereotype.
I have learned to say; “I’m not okay” “I need help” and “I can’t do this right now.” These phrases have helped me a great deal. What is my foundation, however, is my spiritual practice. I acknowledge that we all may have different spiritualities or religions. I support folx practicing whatever works well for them. The list that sits by my bed works well for me.
Yoga brings a calm to my spirit. I am a sun sign so I frequently perform sun salutations. This slows and deepens my breathing, relaxes my body, and calms my mind. It brings me to focus while also melting away from my mind the things that are worrying me. Journally helps me to process through my thoughts. It’s also helpful to go back and see how I have been processing over time.
Being vegan isn’t easy, but through experimentation I know that I am healthier when I don’t eat animals. Not only physically healthier but emotionally and spiritually healthier. I’m not saying everyone needs to be vegan, but I do. Besides eating clean, I also use essential oils to clean my space. Typically I use sweet orange oil and lavender oil in some vinegar. I also smudge with sage often.
What is not on my list is my altar and meditation. My alter holds pictures of ancestors, candles, sage, trinkets from my travels and relationships, an offering for the ancestors, and representations of earth, air, fire and water. I usually meditate at my altar, which I aim to do at least once a day. We get so busy it’s necessary to sit still for a minute and not think about the 10 things we have to get done that day. I hear from people everyday how hard it is to meditate. It took me 5 years to learn how, keep trying.
This list is the magic that heals me, the magic that keeps me going, the magic that covers me in my journey to being my best self. A self that is imperfect but certainly worthy. This is the magic that saves me from trying to live up to the strong Black woman stereotype. This magic saves my life.
Find your magic,
Cami