How do you seek Joy?
Grab a cookie, let’s talk. This blog post is about grief. I want to let you know because quite frankly this world got a lot going on and many have their capacities spent. If this is you, please let this fall into the pile of things to return to later. When it's the right time, it’ll find you, if it's meant to. May you find peace out there, be gentle with yourself, be loving with yourself, may you find soft places to land and rest and do just that. We support and promote the Nap Ministry around here. Thank you Tricia Hersey for your service!
How do you seek joy?
It is a question I have had to think about on the hour, and at times on the minute this month. To be transparent with you, there were a few days where I couldn’t even begin to think about anything joyful, the world was just looking so very bleak. One thing about my mind is that it’s not linear in its thought pattern, it is an everything, everywhere, all at once sort of conglomeration of ideas. Any one thought can have an entire cloud of ideas and possibilities that surround it. So with that said, making a decision on a direction and the following chain of events: of accepting that is the direction I chose, my singular humanity existing in that direction, my ever evolving dreams in a world that is rapidly changing shifting the goalpost daily, my personal desires and responsibilities, and my individual purpose all simultaneously became juxtaposed against the reality of a literal worldwide hellscape where our collective future in the US remains unknown… I needed joy to seek me.
So, I ask again, how do you seek joy? Is it something you leave up to spontaneity, or is it something that you make deliberate? When I tell you grief, loss, heartache, sadness, and despair had me in a hole like I’ve never experienced… a culmination of several years of change pouring down on me at once, reflecting against the dystopian backdrop of the current realities that are actually in real time happening stateside and abroad, I couldn’t find her. Joy she was not anywhere. Her friends hope, light, play, excitement… All them heifers went MIA. To be alive is to experience change. That is the one constant. The more I accept and get comfortable with that truth the easier and more fluid I get with change. (still working at it, but it gets easier) Truth be told, all these changes and adjustments I have experienced which are a very natural part of life would be challenging, but to have them be met with the external noise of scarcity, homophobia, bodily autonomy restrictions, removal of civil rights protections, and several genocides going on hit me differently. This isn’t the world that I was raised for and all my years of schooling prepared me for. In that moment it all hit me, instead of doing the thing that I’ve been doing, which has been a swift acknowledgement of the cray cray, put on a you got this girl grin, and moving forward, directing the bright side to the forefront, I let it happen. I let the flood of all those things overtake me for a little while, to feel all the heavy immensely, intently, overwhelmingly. In the recesses of my mind, Here I am making another change and the world around me isn’t looking like progress, but regress to the past my ancestors fought against. In this struggle, I had the true gift of not having to go through it alone. In that I found solace in the gift of all that work I've been doing to take up space in order to have the audacity to reach out for support. and low and behold I did receive it. That was a true and dear gift. Right now in my inner circle, those that have capacity are few and far between these days. Like we ALL have something going on and seem to be carrying all these burdens alone. So when I sent out the call, I was met with love, and those who had it gave even more. That was so powerful for me. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that, to work past that idea that anything other than positivity is a burden.
One thing I’m learning in this life is that although our language and way of speaking is very time sensitive and linear in its directionality, our reality isn’t linear at all. (Been in the quantum physics section of spotify audiobooks lately, while connecting old episodes about language from NPR with these new learnings). My perception, which is mine and mine alone, is that it seems many of us are navigating surviving, and what little emotional energy we have, is towards self preservation or maintaining a little island of stabilities for our families. There is a great deal of emotional labor that goes into maintaining relationships. And this hustle culture bereft with consumerism and convenience just seems to be pushing people into these compartmentalized isolated spaces due to lack of energy. Again this is my perspective. Haven’t yet gotten to the social science journals yet. Having to hustle, to survive, wipes out a lot of ones energy. Those deep feelings of loss from those simpler times was mourned.
As I’ve spoken about it before, one of the challenges that has perplexed me deeply is how do I create a business that is multifaceted enough to allow for my fluidity to exist, where I can sustain and grow from being the most authentic version of myself, and be not only financially stable, but profitable. How do I utilize that profit to support stability and positive change in the communities that I find my business in, not in the form of gentrification but in reinforcing the strength of those communities to thrive in? I have no desire for unchecked growth model, or the one that I sell Cookies & Conversations to make a huge profit. I really do want to bake, and teach, and create, and emphasize a harmonious nature that ebbs and flows with the resources and people around it. I’m still at a loss for a model that creates that kind of ecosystem. The rigid lines of capitalism don’t feel congruent with how I exist. That is a part of my grief. A question I ask myself all the time is How do I maintain a trajectory when I no longer believe in the goal of that end destination because my vision has grown and evolved? What does a thriving food and human connection based business, that is also fluid, mobile, and flexible look like? There’s a lot of dreams I’ve had to lay to rest. A lot of dreams I had to accept were not going to come true, because they just are not aligned with who I am as a person but also nor can could they expand with my constant evolution. That has been really hard and it has felt overwhelmingly impossible. It was time for me to give into that grief I’d been holding at bay and allow it to be felt, and allow myself space to deeply rest. The best part was allowing others to show up for me within their capacities.
Grief is an aspect of this human experience that shows up in a variety of ways. As a human, as a woman, as a millennial black lesbian pastry chef craving a more equitable world (not equal, equitable), the symphony of complex emotional experiences given meaning by my beautifully creative mind all have very important notes to play in melodic harmony. As I write this now I am recognizing I still have much learning and growing to do. I’m learning that I must have better safeguards in place to rest, to feel, and to let go of things once they’ve been felt. I’m learning to better implement scheduled time to myself with necessary pauses to do nothing, even though it feels selfish and guilt ridden. I am learning to be kinder but also firm and steadfast in creating boundaries for myself to adhere to. I am learning to find better language when reaching out to those whom I am seeking support from as to not create harm to them in the process. I am alive. I am growing. I am every evolving. And it is sometimes met with great resistance.
How do you seek joy? In response I ask what is the necessity of play? Play to me is joy and in that I’m working on building in time to connect with others so we can intentionally grow and strengthen trust and our bonds through play. That to me is joy in motion. To be loved and to be held, to love and to hold. That is joy. To be fed when you haven’t eaten. That is joy. To be reminded its okay not to be okay even though I am a cookie goddess playing in sugar all day… That is joy. Reclaiming my humanity in a world that seeks to delegitimize while also profiting off of every part that recognizes and celebrates the beauty of our collective individual differences, that to me is joy. To decide to be curious and want to learn more in the face of those who live in fear and don’t want/are afraid to understand that which is different, and instead seek and control and shape how we feel about the complex different ways humans exist is how I seek out my joy. In both simplicity and chaos, I choose to seek joy.
Our human past on this planet is complicated, just like our present, and certainly the future looks to be that way too. My insatiable curiosity doesn’t give me the luxury of hoping away the realities to miraculously turn into a good time, and although things in my perspective feel very different from the so called future we were supposed to inherit, I am going to seek out joy and create a little slice of pleasure in the form of a cookie, baked with love, by two hands, connected to a human heart and mind that deeply loves and feels the pleasures and pains in this reality. Sharing Sweets. That is how I will continue to seek joy, while giving y’all a little chaos with questions to spark conversation. Could a cookie save the world? I don’t know about planet earth but it surely will save mine!
