What moves me to do *THIS*

Move with Mercii Masked Meditation

I feel moved to share stories. Writing has always been an opportunity for me to focus my thoughts. This could explain why although I love the outcome, it has been historically difficult for me to write.

Completing my yoga teacher training helped me to deepen my practice through consistent self-study, known as "Svadhyaya", and working toward truthfulness, or "Satya", in that same study of self. Reflecting honestly on my resistance to writing, I noted that the more chaotic and unpredictable my environment, the more I gravitated to action items that didn't require me to feel and express much. Those familiar with Blooms Taxonomy could say that I would limit myself to receiving and responding to my environment without exploring how I valued the experience or chose to organize the experience into a new line of thinking. Those with a more casual understanding of life would say that I was going through the motion.

Nothing like the global shifting season known as "the year 2020" to be so disruptive to those motions. Much like the rest of planet Earth, I began to reel from the mounting adverse experiences and absurdities happening. Those that impacted me directly and in-directly distracted me. The traumas I experienced firsthand and the tangential traumas of our shared experience derailed me.

As social justice movements became more vocal and viral, I felt even more stuck and stopped without the routine of the motions. I soon came across this social change map developed by Deepa Iyer of the SolidarityIs and Building Movement Project. Game-changing. This framework helped me realign myself and my line of thinking as it relates to writing. It brought me back to self-study and how I could make it a consistent practice.

Shifting our social ecosystem requires people that appreciate the art and importance of storytelling. Those that craft and share our community experiences, stories, and cultures play a vital role in the fight for equity, liberation, justice, and solidarity of present and future generations. As much as I want to pretend 2020 is some time-traveling experiment gone horribly wrong or the fever dream of a bad TV show, that would be a disservice to myself and my lived experience.

Storytellers shape and share our history. I see that value and it is time to do something about it. To paraphrase an African proverb, "until the lion shares its side of the story, history of the hunt will glorify the hunter."

Here it goes nothing.

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