Gazing from the future

the number 8 and all that my younger selves need to see

Welcome to Life Is In Love With Me if you’re new. If you’re a regular recipient of Life’s honied love, welcome back!

A few offerings before we begin. As a Lover Girl, I’m obligated to wish you a happy Love Day preliminarily. I hope you find space to evaluate where love shows up in your life and greet it with thanks and continued invitation. If you are in the midst of loving someone else, I hope it is a healthy and healing balm. I recently wrote an article for The Good Trade all about anticipating toxic traits in healthy love. I share it here for healing, self-love, and analysis.

More love, I appreciate the care and support for my previous letters. It’s been so sweet seeing the comments rolling in from my ‘Musings on Black nomadism’ (pt one and two) as well as the retellings of my three different tales of Paris (because Paris for me is like the same chica with three wigs).

As you receive this letter, I will have celebrated my birthday yesterday. Older, softer, and browner after a weekend spent between seawater and sun. I always feel like the day before and especially after my birthday feels like a gift to me. I treat it as ‘my first/last day being a __ year old’ and I put my best effort into making it feel beautiful. The actual birthday feels like a transit, a little hard to truly get comfortable in. Let’s see how it will feel. Maybe there is more glory in the day now that I live the way that I do (seeking love every morning, every morning). This year is very different for me anyways. The sweetness of being present and far away feels like mine, like something I own. Here’s to that and everything that is to be a teacher for me.

Enjoy x

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gazing into the 8

When I was younger, maybe 8, I decided that 28 was the age when I would be a real adult. Anything before that was pure practice. My 8-year-old self determined that those years, lovely as they were to be, were not the real deal.

Yesterday I turned 28 and according to my childhood logic, have officially arrived at adulthood.

It’s funny how the power of the spoken word works because for whatever reason, I sit back, grasping elbows, nodding along with my 8-year-old self. I do feel like I’m fully here, creating a life that feels like mine more than it ever has in my adult life. Maybe it’s the four complete cycles of seven years, where seven is the number of perfection, completion. I think about the number 8, how it has always seemed full like a number of surplus. If seven is of completion, then eight goes further into abundance, toppling over the edges and never running out. I feel in the clear in eight. I also think about how Saturn Returns usually begin at age 27 (mine did) and how that is said to initiate some of the necessary shifts into adulthood, the second year being the one where you get into the swing of it, it feels. Even this year that we are fresh to, 2024, speaks to this where 2+2+4 = 8. All of this is true and yet my 8-year-old self, knowing nothing of it, landed on the number 28 and prepared this age for me.

For some years now, I’ve practiced this exercise of gifting my inner child, or inner teenager who I feel needs this most, a chance to see through my eyes today. I close my eyes, take a few breaths to welcome my younger self, and open my eyes again, looking through the gaze of a younger Amara. I try to imagine how she may feel and respond if I told her this is where you are at [insert age], look around. Do you see? This is your life now.

This meditation lets gratitude in. I do it for the past lives I have lived that didn’t always feel aligned with the ease that I have always dreamed of. I stay in constant conversation with my selves because we all contributed to this and we all deserve to come see the beauty, small and large, that makes up my existence.

This past week, I went to bring my inner 8-year-old to Belize, to see if this is what she meant when she spoke of 28. I closed my eyes, softened my body enough with breath, and then reopened them, letting her see the late afternoon sun glistening onto the ocean that I live opposite to. I want her to hear the way the wind whips through the banana leaves and how the neighbourhood that I live in is scarcely without soca music or old Mexican ballads. What do you think of this? I turn so she can bear witness to my bulging bag of fruits and vegetables from the market; pineapple, burro banana, green banana, plantain, red cabbage, okra, cucumber, pumpkin, guinip (yes, nanny used to talk about this in Jamaica), and calabacita (you haven’t had this yet, you’ll love it). We walked slowly, looking left to see the cars going by, I point her attention to the license plates of the cars, how they have ‘Belize’ and not ‘GB’ printed on them. I point also to the shop windows - sales and discounts all written in Spanish, I want her to be curious that she can translate it all. I look down, showing my red-painted toenails and coconut-oiled shins, I look up at my fringe of locs, dyed reddish by sun, sea, and limewater. I run my hand through, see if she can guess how many and for how long they have replaced the slick afro puff or braids of our childhood. As a parting gift, I walk her home. The waft of incense smoke familiar because I still burn it as my mother did. The suggestion of ease is loud, I hope. Despite the vagabond life, I create a sanctuary everywhere I land. I let her go knowing this.

I will not silently celebrate the life that I have, I don’t need to. I will meet with my younger selves so we can gather together in excitement because who will celebrate these quiet, giant wins better than us?

Recently I sat with a quote that

love & liberation daily

shared by Fatimah Asghar, one of the most talented poets I’ve read. The quote reads: “Our stories are our legacy. We must write, paint, and sing them into existence.” And how perfect. How on time. I am my own legacy and I am constantly emerging new. It is my work to not forget myself, then. The metamorphosis is one of love and liberation. I am so grateful for love & liberation daily for always offering these quotes and this eponymous reminder because we must love and free who we are and have been. I leave parts of me behind and when I am intentional, I welcome the past to live the stories that I now dwell in.

Asé.

Thank you, so much, for being here.

Below I share some past writings that I hope you will enjoy.

The Friday unwind 006: A Final Pep Talk Before My Year Of Audacity

A story about quitting my job to write

Musings on Black nomadism (pt 1)

The Friday unwind 004: When there is nothing to become

Love,

Amara Amaryah