Every week, artists of every medium contribute their thoughts, creations, and reflections on living during the pandemic. This week's contributor is Jade Violeta Antonette whose essay reminds us that despite how the pandemic has shifted our perception of time, much can still change in our loves, lives, and relationships--and even then, there are rocks to sit among and rivers rushing to reflect our ache and beauty.
Please welcome Jade Violeta Antonette to the series.
~E.P.
😷
The Expansiveness of a Heart
by Jade Violeta Antonette
Leading up to the due date for this submission, I’d prepared a slightly different (actually very different) Pandemic Meditation contribution. It was focused on inner-child work and the things I realized I was no longer “surviving” from my past. Intuitively, I felt this submission was preparing me to make room for greater emotional capacity for whatever was to come. Little did I know, the day before I was ready to turn in this piece, my ex broke up with me.
I did not know that my advanced intuition would be so very literal and fast-coming.
I wondered what it meant about me that we couldn’t make this relationship work. I am a healing practitioner in a multitude of ways – I’m a Reiki practitioner, a therapist, and a facilitator. But then I remembered two things – there are wisdom and skill in honoring the natural intelligence of a thing, like when it’s time to part ways. And in a much less esoteric sense, I had also been on the fence and at the end of the day, we had done the best we could.
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| Mural: Girl with the D Earring by Sydney G. James photo from here |
Like many who began dating during the Pandemic, we had regular conversations around COVID testing, social distancing, and what it meant to be a part of each other’s pods. I’m grateful to have been in practice of what it looks like to date during these times where the grandeur of loss is ever-present. With the closing of this relationship, there is far more to be grateful for than to lament.
And honestly, I’m pretty happy to reorganize my priorities and get clearer on how I am looking for partners to show up for me while dating inside of so much social unrest. For example, do we emotionally cope with navigating late stage capitalism in a way that is compatible? Do we both have the skills to hold space for new lovers during uncertain times?
I walk away with new questions after this departure. And, it took a lot of generative and beautiful (though sometimes very difficult) emotional labor to romantically connect with another during a pandemic, particularly as a Black queer femme.
To celebrate the expansiveness of my heart after the breakup, I journaled a little bit on what ‘lovers’ mean to me, and then I made myself into a lover and gave myself a self-care photoshoot! I share both with you this month.
Sometimes, lovers are hosts through various portals of our lives. They introduce us to deeper versions of ourselves if we're willing. We move through these portals with lovers in a way that we may not with other dear ones - not due to disproportionately centering romantic relationships, but because romantic spaces are also sites of praxis, another window through which we can observe how we show up in the world, another window through which we can understand limitations, boundaries, and the extent to which we're open to expanding. Romantic relationships in many spaces are sometimes seen as tertiary, frivolous, or a-political but that's not true. We can learn a lot about our values or how much we are in integrity to our values through the people we share so much of our emotional, energetic, and physical bodies with. So lovers, I like to think of them as hosts (and not teachers). They are people to say thank you to when hosting duties are complete...
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| Jade Violeta Antonette, Self-care photoshoot 1 |
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| Jade Violeta Antonette, Self-care photoshoot 2 |
This pandemic meditation is an invitation for myself and anyone who reads this to give ourselves permission during these wild and uncertain times to do one small thing today to make ourselves into a lover - to acknowledge and celebrate that we’ve made it this far. It is unclear what lies ahead inside of a year with so much involuntary restructuring of our lives, personal losses, a global pandemic, state violence, and more.
But, is it still possible to affirm that we still have a life worth living by doing the things that bring us into ‘exquisite care’?
I say…
Yes 💓
