Changes: A Solstice Poem

Last night was one of the longest nights of the year. And over 100 of us decided to spend the night with some of Audre Lorde’s most challenging words. Lorde’s poem “Solstice” is a poem about facing failure and contradiction with deep personal transformation and rigor. Her analysis of a collective spiritual bankruptcy leads to a passionate prayer: may i never lose that terror that keeps me brave.

Last night in the dark light of “Solstice” the closing poem in Audre Lorde decolonial ancestral transubstantiation book The Black Unicorn we listened to the warning in our bodies, identified the skins we need to shed and fed our spirits with love and support. A wise teacher participated in the form of a tiny genius who lost her first tooth yesterday, our exemplar, along with Audre Lorde’s chosen monitor lizard and civets for transformation and regeneration. We were elders and babies, soil scientists and witches, heartbroken and healing and the poetic energy that Audre Lorde used to create her own eternal life held us and lifted us up. The group poem we created at the end of the session is below. I think it is best read out loud.

If you want to participate in the workshop, the replay video is here (or click on the image below)

changes

 

by the participants in “That Terror that Keeps Me Brave”: Solstice Writing Workshop in Honor of Audre Lorde

 

“I shall be forever”

            Audre Lorde in “Solstice”

 

 

i shall be vulnerable

i shall be soft and malleable

i shall be courageous

i shall be FREE

 

i shall be courageous

i shall be changed

i shall be loving

i shall be brave

 

i shall be a breathing thing

i shall not be alone

i shall be me

i shall be. that’s enough.  that’s more than enough.

 

i shall be without this skin

i shall be tender

i shall be recharged

i shall be scooping up our longings and we fulfill them and feeding them to our spirits.

 

i shall be vulnerable

i shall be a creative child and an a creative elder

i shall be cool breeze harmattan

i shall be open to being changed

 

i shall be medicine

i shall be like the hummingbird, hardworking and making sweetness

i shall be a mermaid

i shall be singing

 

i shall be present for the magic that i am

i shall be conduit

i shall be filled with wonder

i shall be revived

 

i shall be rested and loved on

i shall be momi

i shall be flow

i shall be open to possibility

 

i shall be rooted in the earth

i shall be meeting house

i shall be ritual

i shall be supported, nourished and connected

 

i shall be a channel for my ancestors

i shall be alive and well

i shall be radiating love

i shall be flying in the clouds

 

i shall be putrid like leaf litter

weak and pathetic like the new limb on a sea star

i shall be lazy ike my grandmothers wanted to be

i shall recover

 

i shall be intentional

i shall be deep as the earth

i shall be flexible,

supple

 

i shall be cooking

i shall be listening to ancestors everyday

i shall be present and in relationship across times and in all directions

i shall be awed by our power

 

i shall be healed in ways anyone who’s ever harmed me was not able to

i shall be renewed and grow a new way of being

i shall be sitting with oshun

i shall be attentive

 

i shall be who i am who i am i am

i shall be connected love

i shall be patient

i shall be iridescent

 

i shall be of service

i shall be fiercely courageous and deeply connected to our collective liberation

i shall be confident

i shall be alchemizing

 

i shall be whispering on winds

i shall be available to love

i shall be my home

i shall be in connection

 

i shall be a place to pour out of and pour into

i shall be holy

i shall be clear at the crossroads

i shall be a baby again

 

i shall be relishing our brilliance

i shall grow a new limb like a monitor lizard can

i shall be coloring the world pure

i shall be forever  

You can participate in the writing workshop whenever you want here. Or any of our offerings here.

Some of you have asked how you can gift your loved ones access to the transformational workshops and practice spaces that we have created over the past several years. Great question! It's easy and it is instant (in case you have a kwaanzachristmasbelatedsolsticechanuka deadline). Or you just get one or more of these supportive offerings for yourself.

  1. View all the offerings here and choose one: https://sangodare.podia.com/

  2. Make sure that you are not logged in as yourself

  3. Enter the email address of your loved one and make them a password (I usually use "ILOVENAME" with the person's name. They can change their password whenever they want.

  4. Enter your own payment information.

  5. THAT'S IT!

Julia Wallace