Hello 🌿
When I returned to write some weeks ago, I faced a familiar resistance of starting something anew while gathering my reflections, sifting through memories and returning to what I’ve known, or perhaps not known yet. I tried to ground myself by thinking of how I wanted you the reader to feel, which only pointed me back to how I wanted to feel while writing or through writing, I took some deep slow breaths and I thought light, open, and connected—and bit by bit I’ve slowly found my way through another letter here 💌
I’ve been feeling quite tender while being with what’s been unearthed over the past year through the stillness of this season. The older I get, the more I question or notice how my body moves through time and the container of each year.
My most recent trip back to Nigeria was a clear reminder of how many of the big life questions I had only a year ago have now been lived through in ways I couldn’t have planned for, life unfolds in its mystery and beauty. Travelling home has a special way of putting things in perspective and framing the passage of time. I return to gratitude when I try to make sense of how it has all unfolded, gratitude keeps me going with an open heart.
Inspired by the ways the natural world adjusts to winter, I’ve been thinking of what feels essential, what wants to shift, and the ways I have learnt to be in my body. Winter encourages turning inwards for clarity on what these essentials might be, as we also go through this process of paring away, and the essentials are what tend to remain or what we return to. This return feels like a necessary practice for moving through the new year in a much lighter way, while making space for the versions of self we want to keep cultivating.
As I return to old practices and try on new ones that feel right for the coming seasons, I’ve also been feeling like a beginner again. It’s been humbling to notice these moments and to remind myself that this is the way and this is how to build a practice. It’s sticking with new things, continuing to show up, observing, learning, and receiving help, however imperfect my attempts may be.
Through the discomfort that may come with new growth, I know that practice and play are ways of being with the process and a loving mantra I’m carrying into this year. I’m remembering the joys of practising and gently letting myself be a beginner again.
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I had written part of this letter about feeling tender before realising that it was nearly a year since the disorienting experience of getting laid off while also being in between transitions at work. It’s easy to forget how much the body remembers distress, as well as comfort and delight. 2023 was certainly an invitation to tune inwards, and as I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with time, I see a clearer need for slowing down to allow my dreams and self to become with time—To see time as a soft container of possibility rather than something to triumph against or escape.
The recent quality of time I’ve had inspired me to reflect on the last time I felt such uncertainty, back when I was starting a new career and life in a new city, then London. I tried to find comfort in what got me through that period—the supportive relationships, and how I learned to tune inwards and surrender control to allow for what was unfolding, based on my decisions to follow what was calling to me.
When I reflect on both qualities of time, what feels clearer is that in finding ways to tune inwards, and to be devoted to whatever calls me to tune inwards, I have also come closer to a more rooted sense of agency, possibility, harmony, divinity, and wholeness. When I think of the nature of this experience of tuning inward, these states have come to mind and resonate with me:
Tuning into soul desires & choosing what I’m devoted to
Learning to release control to trust in unfolding and trust in the process
Making space for contemplation through a practice that resonates
Building intuition and self-trust
Reconnecting to a sense of ease and flow
Building a deeper sense of connection to self & interconnection with others
Remembering the body’s wisdom
Returning to acceptance & gratitude for what is here now
These states not necessarily being a linear or fixed experiences but open, fluid & connected.
Finding a resonant practice is a source of soul nourishment that tends to spill over into other ways of being, and so I’m thinking of how I’m allowing and building capacity for my practices, what is spilling over or what wants to spill over. Some of the practices I feel connected to these days are meditation, writing, yoga and exploring art-making through different mediums. In the time I’ve spent working with clay, I can see that both the medium and the process have also been shaping me in turn—to be with time, to find softness within and to be more in touch with my creative desires.
The past year allowed me to see how much I was still tuning into external measures of time regarding my dreams, curiosities, and aspirations. While the speed of achievement may be useful in some cases, I tend to resonate with a more natural unfolding and unfurling, in a way that isn’t grating and grinding. Cultivating practices outside a defined path allows me to stay connected to my creativity and agency.
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I didn’t have a plan for what I would keep writing here after this, but everything has continued to unfold in its time. I write in this way for myself, to return to myself and also the outer world.
Last summer, while in that open space, I was trying to write for a friend’s zine project when I came across a workshop with
. I had words that I didn’t quite have a cohesive plan for, and so I went with the experiment of taking my first poetry class. Part of the workshop’s description read: “Remembering is not a singular, linear act” and that part has stuck with me. I luckily reconnected with Amara here on Substack, where she now writes her love letters and shares her inspiring ways of moving through the world.I left the workshop with more trust in how I could turn my lines into something cohesive for submission. Here’s an excerpt from my piece published in Diaspora Dreams, a zine project by Alicia Moon:
“In times of great uncertainty, what endures
and what is generative is my capacity to dream.
Being open to that capacity; meditating on it, remembering,
and allowing it to guide me to possibilities.
Sometimes my capacity to dream is what I’m most sure of.”
“I don’t know where this is going, but I’m trying to stay open” is what I’ve been thinking these days. In times of great uncertainty, staying close to my dreams, learning to stay open-hearted, and returning to possibility is generative and keeps me going as a trusting co-creator of the life I’m living into. Things are always in flux and change is the only constant, this is a lesson to remember and one to grow comfortable with.
As another year begins, I’m remembering the aliveness that comes with trusting in a unique path that unfolds with each act of devotion, trust, and curiosity. I’m staying with the self-inquiry prompts from my previous letter and seeing what flows from there.
I hope we can all flow through this year and meet the versions of self that feel right for each season. I hope we find nourishing places where we can unfurl at our own pace. I hope we’ll have the space to bring forth our dreams and soul desires.
🌀 Mood board for the season1 🪞
✼ Inputs & Cool things ✼
🎧 For The Wild podcast, The Edges in the Middle, II: Báyò Akómoláfé and V, on the theme “The Promise and Limits of Restitution: Returning to ‘Congo,’”—“May we call to the parts of ourselves and each other that are buried in our cells that long to be freed into what they desire to be”
🌐 Creatives for Palestine and Congo Teach-In: Design Beyond Decoration—happening this Thursday, hosted by Where are the Black Designers? 🇵🇸🇨🇩
🌐 Jewish Voice for Peace is hosting a daily virtual power-half hour for Gaza 🇵🇸
📖 Entering my Goo Era by
—“Goo takes its time. Goo believes slow time is beautiful. To enter a goo era is to choose sustainability over burnout. If I meander, I meander. I meet my body where it’s at rather than forcing it to where I want it to go. I give myself grace through my loops, spirals and rewinds.”—If you’re also feeling gooey these days 🐌📖 Murmurations: Moving from Punishment to Accountability by Kung Li Sun—“We can remember that revolution has two meanings. The contemporary meaning of revolution is of a sudden and great change. But revolution also retains its earlier, astronomical meaning, of a celestial body’s movement in a circle or ellipse. That is, as a return. In this moment, we mean revolution in both these meanings.”
🎧 On Being podcast, David Whyte—Seeking Language Large Enough—“On the conversational nature of reality”
🎶 Sampha: Tiny Desk Concert is so good & has been on repeat 🎶 The themes he explores in his latest album “Lahai” are also fun to dig into and they resonate.
🌐 Black Liturgies—“a digital project that connects spiritual practice with Black emotion, memory, and the Black body”
📖 Giving up on timelines by Toko-pa—“The mystic ethnobotanist, Terence McKenna, says that we think of history as having a momentum that pushes into the future – the culmination of which is our present. But actually, history is being pulled by the future. In other words, there is a coalescing that has already happened on the horizon, a future into which we can tune and move in accordance with when we feel its tug in our instincts, longing, flashes of intuition, and dreams of our becoming.”
📖 A special love letter with sweet reminders and affirmations from
—“May the audacity of my West African friends coat the base of my spine. Asé, Amen. I believe that audacity belongs to and originates from us all, of course. I just particularly enjoy the entertainment and unserious seriousness of it once manifested in a West African person’s mouth.”
Thank you for reading, and thanks for being here! If you enjoyed this, feel free to comment, share whatever resonates and subscribe to receive future letters from me 👋🏾
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Images: 1. yusaku_munakata, 2. garden.of.jung, 3. animamundiherbals, 4. amalfituco
I know I'm happy when I read something that's full of great nuggets I resonate with.
1. That zine you were a part of looks so beautiful!
2. I love the mood board, instantly feeling eased by it
3. Just signed up for the Creatives for Palestine and Congo Teach-In. Glad that this resource is free for folks!
4.. Entering My Goo Era by Annika is one of my favorite posts of theirs
5. I feel that last quote HEAVY
Uhh another beautiful letter, I've missed your presence on here Funmi. Thank you so deeply for your voice and for always using it to share beautiful and honest truths about where you're at and what you've noticed. Love for the love. I am so glad we're connected here on Substack after that workshop.
"Sometimes my capacity to dream is what I’m most sure of"
I am right there with you and I'm glad you've arrived here.