sunday, may 24, 2026
Sometimes it takes me a long time to get here, to the page, to write the things that have been nudging at me.
It takes me a while to decipher the nudging. It’s a process, transcribing nudging and feeling, putting it into words so that it can be expressed, and maybe understood by others outside of myself.
On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, I wrote a transcription. It reads:
“Note to self: Write deeper.
(also to self: don’t act like you don’t know what this means.)”
I thought I knew what it meant but I didn’t know until just a few minutes before I began laying these words down on the page. I began laying the words down shortly after hearing a voice in between the folds of sleep and awake.
The voice said, “You have to name the feeling”.
I thought writing deeper meant write with more teeth, but now I’m pretty sure that what writing deeper means is write more transparently, with more truth, depth, courage, and vulnerability.
It’s not always…maybe even rarely is it easy to tell the truth.
Telling the truth costs you something. Not telling the truth costs you something too.
A few weeks ago I came to my altar to meditate, and ask questions. I had questions about the fear I was feeling. It was fear that came rolling in, crashing, like a wave, often unexpected. I had desperately been trying to understand where the fear was coming from, and why the fear kept coming, rolling, crashing in.
I was trying to understand the fear’s pressure point, and I was telling myself, ‘I’m sorry’, because I have been working on my faith, my trust, not just in myself but in my reason for being here, this reason that has been blessed, and planned, and planted and orchestrated by – insert whatever name you give a higher presence or power – in this instance I’ll name it as, ‘the divine’.
I was at my altar asking: How can I be walking in faith, and be in fear?
Isn’t fear contradictory to faith?
Feeling the fear felt like some kind of betrayal, to myself, to my faithfulness, to the divine, and there was some part of me that even as I was naming the feeling as fear, I questioned it because I knew there something else here.
Discomfort? Yes…but still, no.
*inhale*
*exhale*
Moment of realization, and recognition.
Unfamiliar.
Everything right now feels unfamiliar. I feel unfamiliar. Some relationships feel unfamiliar. The structure of my days, sometimes topsy, and turvy, without structure…for my virgo ass, feels very unfamiliar.
Sleep is unfamiliar.
The worls feels fucking insane and unfamiliar.
Me being fully in my artistic self and nature, feels unfamiliar.
Unfamiliar. Unfamiliar. Unfamiliar. But unfamiliar isn’t an actual feeling.
Fast forward to this morning. Sunday, May 24, 2026. Fourth Sundays with Sydney Reece at Black Being.
What does Sydney walk in with? A print out of an ‘Accessible Emotion Chart’
*aww shit.*
Unfamiliar isn’t listed on the chart, but guess what is.
Nervous. Exposed. Betrayed. Resentful.
Fragile. Dismayed. Overwhelmed. Ashamed.
I wrote down a question. The question made me flinch. Still, in this moment, I can’t get the flinch off me.
“Am I ashamed of feeling?”
Feeling nervous, and exposed, and betrayed, and resentful, and disgusted, and infuriated, and annoyed, and fragile, and dismayed, and overwhelmed, and ashamed.
Am I ashamed of feeling ashamed?
I don’t have any answers.
I’m sitting with the feelings.
