Children
Reverence
Autonomy
Agency
Unschooling
Our Family Unschools.
And that term is a broad stroke…
What it reflects for me in its unfolding through the lens of my Black queer life , is a celebration, a collaboration, an artful way of living in its beautifully imperfect, perfect emergence. My family, we are each very different people, with different ideas and ever burgeoning journeys, growing our relationships with ourSelves and each other. Our individuality as Wholeness our relations as the WE of us are works of art ever in the making. We walk an intentional, conSensual culturing to learn to listen deep and reverently to the compasses of what we are as Whole individuals in relationship with each other and the world, not hierarchically, but horizontally..
The arting of our way of life includes a deep reverence for our emoceanal compasses, it includes, the sculpting and carving as deschooling, and decolonizing, the cutting away, the purging or alchemizing of what does not feel indigenous or true to what we are or allowing of each other’s Wholeness in our relationships. like any ecosystem, this harmony is a slow and deep growing.
Again and again, we discover, upon experimentation and reflection that we do not find any serving use for judgements, guilt or shame, we instead evolve to invite reflection, accountability and grace, both in the ways we want to be Seen and treated and in the ways we See and treat ourSelves. we notice that this feels more true, more nourishing in our bodies and with each other.
The arting of our way of life also includes the strokes and splashes of wet paint as creation or an uncovering of what we choose to live as Whole people in relationship with each other, in different stages of life. We absorb wisdom from each other and side by side in the adventure of this living,
and we protect what we create, in a world that moves as authoritarian over children, we rise protections that emerge over time contextually, and these are real challenges.
The choices that live in the co cultivating of a reverent and conSensual familial culture in relationship with and not over my children is continuously made, moment by moment in the commitment to my own practice to be reverent and conSensual with mySelves. As a Black queer parent that chooses Self awareness and accountability with mySelves, in relationship to my children and the world as a being that experiences it as liberatory, nestled within the warmth of grace, this means that eye live a life of Self Reflection relentlessly and the intentional cultivating of mySelves artistically, often not easy, but all ways a grace. eye learn again and again through the grace of practice, through the grace of my stumblings, through the grace of my emoceanal compass, through the grace of my children and all of our relations, through the grace of earth and skies,
as the arting continues as the living of it…
it is a deep resonance for me to engage explorations, communions and conversations around arting a life with children that honors their autonomy, their agency, the vastness of their poetry as Whole Beings in relationship with and as this world. with a particular eye within BIPOC and BIPOC/Queer families and communities, eye discover again and again how this living bends of me a thing eye choose. a thing eye honor. a life eye celebrate.
Wonder
sometimes the wonder eye feel floods me
as eye watch them move about
their days months and years
the seasons of them
eye gaze
absorbing
moment by moment
my mind wants to place
each one in its pocket of forever
my everything Knows
what moves is timeless
every one of these moments
timeless…
eye gaze at her
Knowing eye am looking into universe
eye am traveling into our past
as my eyes grace their skin
draw me into the grace of our Ancestors
their rage for freedom
that lives in her veins
their reverence that lives
as we travel the scars we can reach
hieroglyphics on Sacred Walls
we trace them together
with reverent finger
mother and child
carry forward the healing
Ancestral voices alive
in the wilderness of her will
in the Siren of her
they take breath…
their inhale envelops me
a portal to future
story untold
awaits its awakening
a melody eye can almost hear
a journey unfolding
and eye remind her
that the love of the mother
lives always all around them
within them
that they only need
to trust in the abundance
to always Seek it as a Knowing
and it will remain
that she will never be alone
even when it is time
that eye am gone….
sometimes my tears will swell
give rise to the wonder of
the wilderness of their thoughts
the deep waters of their feeling
and the drops of her infinity
that bubble to surface
to dance and play
and grieve and commune
and inspire
they are an emergent work of art
eye gaze at them
through a lens of Selves
as Ceremony
as lineage of liberation
an ache
an ecstasy
an everything
eye gaze
a little brown body
growing every day
little deaths
little births
protect and nourish their integration
their Sacred Becoming
she is Self Love in motion
beyond her very mind
are the movements as reverence
for a Holy Journey
sometimes eye erupt…
“can you fathom how much eye cherish you
the utter wonder of the Ocean of you?”
(seriously, eye do that…)
and they without even an upward glance
reply in a giggling and Knowing tone…
“of course mom, you tell me all the time…”
eye feel the currents of my emocean
as eye watch this Being
sit in the Knowing
unflinchingly
in the Sacred Assumption
that they are cherished
cherished.
and eye reach into mySelves
kiss the aches
for all the places eye know
eye cannot protect her
for all the moments
and mis~takes
when eye needed and will need
to claim and move my accountability
eye kiss…
and take my time
while holding the Knowing
that my child feels cherished
the humbling grace
being Sacred Keeper to Holy Child
🖤
indeed, sometimes the wonder eye feel floods me…
