Happy Birthday to me! 52 years on this planet. Having a Birthday towards the end of the Calendar year has often lent itself for space for reflection. This year has been fairly intense. Traveled to Guinea, West Africa for the third time with a life long friend and SFU students for a life changing, heart […]
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Welcome to episode #0002 of the 814 Grounded Pod. Today we offer a guided writing practice to explore intentions to prepare for this new year. We want to focus to go “Out with the old and in with the new.” During this episode we ask for you to write freely based on the following prompts: […]
2017 for me, began in Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, West Africa with a festive soirée that began with a shared meal and had lots of dancing and merry making! 2017 comes to a close celebrating the birth of our first grandchild, Anthony Michael Bayush born on December 14 to Johnny (my son) and […]
It is so easy to forget who I am. It is my default mode when I lack awareness and presence to navigate on shifting sand and become so consumed with that practice of trying to hold my shit together. That is what everyone in our society is basically occupied with doing. Keeping it all […]
Silence is no longer the only option. I find myself in the last month, unpacking and releasing internalized shame that I didn’t realize existed and am certainly not going to hold onto. This is a painful process but I have found if I have my tools of yoga, breathing, finding neutrality first, then on the […]
Getting back into my groove with writing again. Have spent some amazing and challenging time in the past few months in immersions with communities committed to doing the work internally to build capacity to withstand the enormous discomfort of our times. We know what we know. We don’t know what we don’t know. Being curious […]
Tyrants, Fear Mongers and Bullies are showing up. They are currently occupying the White House. They are showing up with symbols of race hatred and ethnic intimidation throughout our nation. They exist in my community here under the guise of being crusaders and weeding out corruption making slanderous and false accusations, twisting language and […]
Appalachia, Allegheny, Chicago, Merrimac, Niagara, Potomac. These places as well as geographical formations of mountains, lakes, rivers and tributaries all named by First Peoples. It strikes me often as I travel throughout the USA that these places and formations are named by people who no longer inhabit these spaces. The lack of this presence speaks […]
This is no ordinary time. There is nothing mundane about the space, place or time we are in. It is for me right now, unnerving and unsettling and requires enormous effort to remain grounded and responsive rather than reactionary or turning a blind eye. It appears that rudeness, self righteousness, power plays, lies and lack […]
I was blessed to attend a community event Sunday commemorating and honoring the life and legacy of Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The inspiring delivery via the medium of theater by the NAACP youth did not white wash the constant violence, outright hatred and oppression that MLK and other pioneers such as Rep […]