The Friday unwind 013: What is the verb that describes how you do life?
Location: holding hands at the bay.
Fridays are for unwinding. Inward journeys, outward wanderings, departing flights to nowhere but good memories — all are welcome here. Take all the space you need. In this series, unwind and unravel with me into a daydream, into a place that feels like a Friday spent elsewhere.
Welcome to the Life Is In Love With Me newsletter if you’re new. If you’re a regular recipient of these reminders of love, welcome back! 🌹🥭🌹🥭🌹🥭
Right now, the ocean is still brown as a knock-on effect from the heavy rainfall over the last few weeks. I don’t feel like swimming in it so I’m observing from the bay. The cleanse I usually get from an immersion in the ocean can also reach me while simply being in nature, away from screens. I’m reminded to embrace offline living and quiet time among trees and soil as the most rejuvenating proof of life. This is why we find ourselves at the bay almost religiously. Barefoot, cupping water, silent praying, holding hands and silence as the waves roar.
‘What is the verb that describes the way you do life?’ This is a question that opened the ‘Writing from your abundance’ workshop. We began and ended the workshop with this question, noting how we may deepen or deviate from our original answer. At first, I landed on love as a verb, as offered by bell hooks. Later though, I got into the specifics of what my love looks like and I landed on a new definition: I uplift. My role is to deeply affirm you1 and remind you of love and its necessity in a world that often miscalculates its presence. Some of my most treasured friends and people in my community have shown me the many different faces of love. Love has fed me silently and love has answered my call miles away at 4am just in case, just to be there for me. I hope to offer like this too, to speak to you in such a way that you treat our imagined future as reality and create a rebellion, an unignorable archive of love. We are too powerful to forget it. What is your word?
As you think of your own, I encourage you to keep in mind that it may change as you do. You may need to sit still to receive it. You may need to redefine an existing word to create your own language, rethink, as hooks did, what could also be considered a verb. If you’d like it to be, this exercise can be a playful reintroduction to self. The word may wait to reveal itself after pages and paragraphs of meditation and journaling. Also, this is not supposed to restrict you. I hope it will help you see yourself from one of the many angles that you show up in the world as it has me.
This Friday unwind is a version of poetry, or psalm. Here is a prayer, a wish, a way of speaking to God through you and about you, to carry you gently into the weekend::
May love always find you, asé. May you give thanks in every language you know. May you remember or be reminded that we are all here to walk each other home2. May your smile deepen and your eyes water in good company. In a world where it is strange to pride feeling so deeply, may you feel anyway. May you find yourself in beautiful companionship. May it be no surprise when love returns. May you honour what you’ve learnt about yourself and the world. In case you dream vividly, may you write them down and rise unafraid of the lessons. May you care enough and write too much. I hope you increase your capacity for love, daily. I hope hope is a salve, always. May you find medicine and safe space where you are and create it where you go. May you pour. May you reason. May you listen. When you go, deposit love in the space you leave behind and when you journey, may you send it into the spaces you hope to arrive. May it be so.
Asé. Amen.
Journal Prompts
What is the verb that describes how you choose to do life?
Do you speak any other languages? Is there a different verb you would choose when thinking in that language?
Can you reintegrate anything into the way you choose to do life from today onwards?
Further encouragement
Posts I’ve enjoyed reading this week and want to offer your way:
A beautiful reminder of service and servitude from
.
“If I am coming up against friction in a system I don’t believe in, I must be doing something right.”-
telling her truth, bravely, beautifully shares a dream of his and it deeply resonates. “This world is someone’s dream whether we like it or not. How frightening.”
I love this retelling and reflection and the way
reclaims self as others try to project their visions. writes so beautifully, this I know. I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of her prize-winning poem ‘A song for Anna Mae’ published in Philadelphia Stories.
Many thanks to my most recent paid subscriber Jym, your support means so much. I am so thankful. These love letters and travel memories remain free, always. This is an attempt to keep this space as an offering and resource for all. For a while, I’ve reduced annual paid subscriptions to $48.88 (from $88). I am preparing to show up with my paid readers in a new way and in the meantime, I’d love to grow and increase the paid support for this space. Paid readers receive 111 daily affirmations and a travel backstory upon subscription.
Thank you, so much, for being here. Below I share some more writings that I hope you will enjoy.
An Origin Story: Food Poisoning In Mexico Turned Me Nomadic
Pisces season and the overstimulated artist, a remedy
The infantilization of kind people
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
the ‘you’ that is you, that is I, that is the unified collective
As told by Ram Dass.
"May you remember or be reminded that we are all here to walk each other home" - Initial thought that jumped to mind was "as in, life and death." That journal question will make for a good post.
I love this! I want to spend more time considering my word... but I am excited to have this prompt sitting in my heart and mind over the next few days. Thank you.