Before we get into this letter, an exciting announcement! Me and my partner Jonathan Mead are teaching a workshop to help you and your partner(s) experience more love and deeper intimacy through somatic practices. I’m really excited about this one. We’ve been wanting to do it for ages and it’s finally here! Join us for Embodied Intimacy! I’d love to see you + your partnes there!
June has been a very strange month. For one thing, I’ve been sick for most of it1—first with a nasty week-long flu, then (and recently) with a stomach bug that came out of the woodwork with a vengeance. (I write this as I’m sipping a very potent cup of ginger tea to heal my belly.) The weather in Los Angeles has been terrible; grey, dreary, oppressive clouds. “June gloom” is what they’ve been calling it, six+ weeks of very rarely seeing a blue sky, and it’s every bit of depressing as it sounds. My mental health has been challenged this month, exacerbated by what I’ve already mentioned but originating from some pesky and unresolved questions I’ve been having about my work that is keeping me unsettled and scared.
-And/but/also- This month has offered glimmers of joy, pleasure, and satisfaction that have kept me afloat in my hopes, dreams, and desires. It really started with this piece that I published with a lot of jubilation and the support and affirmation that came from it felt like a good way to set the tone for what I wanted this June to feel like. I came into this month wanting to feel free and proud and bold and vibrant. I wanted to find new ways to be out and accentuate my brightness and Blackness. I wanted to deeply enjoy myself in situations and spaces that I would typically shy away from. And there have been moments where that happened, they’ve just been nestled amongst some weird body stuff that disrupted that rhythm.
Now that I’m feeling better after my second brush with illness this month, I’m working to get back into step with it, knowing that getting out of step is not a matter of “if” but “when”. That’s actually something I’m really proud of, that I’ve been able to cultivate an awareness that missteps will happen, that discomfort and annoyances will arise, and to not fear it or try to micromanage life to prevent it. Resting in the knowing that shit will happen and I can always come back to center—that place of enjoyment, contentment, embodiment, excitement for life—because I know how to do it has somehow been more soothing for my system than fretting over when the next shoe is going to drop. (Imagine that.)
It’s been interesting to track how different those more enjoyable experiences/feelings have resonated in my body in the midst of the unpleasant sensations that come with being sick and having low-grade depression. They truly feel like glimmers, like flickers of light and levity in the darkness that offer a quick reprieve from some of the yuck, that remind me that the yuck is not all there is, that I can and will feel good, that I can and will feel safe.
I made this month’s playlist with some songs that say Black joy (for Juneteenth) and big love (for Pride month) while peppering in the reality of what's also been here for me: grey skies, sadness, the temptation to dissociate. There is Solange, Hether, Yazmin Lacey, Aretha Franklin, Grouper, and eevee on this one.
If you’re a paid subscriber (love love love you!) you’ll find the playlist below. If you’ve joined Big Time Sensuality at the free tier and want to enjoy June’s playlist and other sharings soon to come, become a paid subscriber to support the labor of love I do here.
Sending you lots of love wherever you + your body find itself in this moment. And if you cannot find yourself, I wish you an intentional breath to help you come back to your center.