Calling in a Soft Year

This post is excerpted from my January Patreon posts ‘A Soft Year’ Vision Board and The Audacity to Dream.

I am calling in a soft year.

Despite the threats against my humanity, raging forest fires, morally bankrupt politicians, and whatever else – I will be creating the softest conditions for myself and my family – those who I love. 

Image description: A maximalist digital collage that includes pink clouds, a waterfall with purple flowers blooming around it, stacked TVs, herbs, a jar of coins, books, moss, and golden portal flares. A photo of Tashmica with her hair in braids half up, wearing a blue and white dress and smiling is at the center. A white square post it with tape reads: A Soft Year. a year of return and reciprocity. a year of uncertainty reframed as surprises. a year of learning and experimenting. a year of returning my own favor. a year of transitions and portal diving. a year of travel and couch surfing. a year of unraveling and becoming.

After a few years of enormous transitions, I’ve been reckoning with what it means to move forward. My 20+ year marriage is transitioning into a friendship and co-parenting partnership. The organization I founded and led for over a decade has come to an end. And between those monumental changes, hundreds of tiny fractures continue to reshape how I see myself, my relationships, and my life.

And that’s only what’s happened to me. It doesn’t account for the cultural, environmental, and political changes or their role in my decision-making now and into the future. It’s kinda been a lot.

As a side note – I am still transitioning my digital presence and building some infrastructure for my coaching and consulting work. Excuse the dust.

Choosing a soft year is not a practice of delusion.

I’m not avoiding reality. It’s that I’ve decided that I’m going to be hydrated, moisturized, and eating food that I’ve prepared beautifully when and if bad news comes calling. I will recall my gaze to what is closest to me. I will do my best to not waste a drop of what’s life-affirming because joy, rest, care – it is all political resistance.

I intend to resist and I acknowledge in advance that being ill-prepared to respond to an attack isn’t the reason that we are experiencing oppression and violence.

You’ll notice there isn’t anything about my vision board that screams fighting for justice because, for me, that’s a default setting for survival and solidarity. History has taught me that I know how to fight for others more adeptly than I know how to take a fucking break, why dontcha? 

I also acknowledge in advance that rest is part of what makes my resistance possible.

I am human and therefore afraid of how our vulnerabilities are going to be exploited. I know that we haven’t all survived and that not all of us will. Like many of you, I have laid out all of the ways that we can be hated and how new policies could threaten our well-being, safety, and freedom. I’ve been scenario building and I’ve got lots of hypothetical problems with hypothetical plans for solving them to match.

Q: Do you know what ability we struggle with during a crisis or after experiencing trauma?

A: Our imaginations. We get tunnel vision that can turn us back to the terror instead of towards possibilities.

Q: Do you know what we can’t do without an imagination?

A: Dream of new worlds. Create pathways towards liberation. If we can’t hold on to an imagination for what we’re creating, we cannot innovate and we are going to need visionaries to help us find loopholes, fissures, and escape hatches we’ve never needed before.

We need you to be able to dream and for that reason alone, your dreams are worth protecting. 

I have embraced being joyfully disruptive. I am going to do my best to not allow anyone to steal things from me in my mind, my body, and my home by proxy. In this home, we have power. In this home where I have raised free Black children, where queerness has space to expand, where we value community, accountability, healing, and love, we are powerful.

This vision board ritual is an invitation to daydream about how you plan to use your power to safeguard and create the world you want to live in – no matter what.

Join my Patreon + Get your vision board NOW.
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You could also use your discount to schedule a Guided Vision Board Session with me!

This fully customizable template includes 3 original audio stories written by me. Each one uses natural metaphors and personal reflections to explore themes of transition, letting go, and integration. I used this audio collection to explore poetic storytelling and the result is something that’s part mediation and part invitation to ritual. I hope you enjoy them.

Whether you choose to use this vision board as your template or not, may you find ways to be joyfully disruptive and maliciously compliant while you cultivate hope, imagination, and possibility.

With love,

Tashmica

PS – Join me and Bry Clover for the first monthly Holding Space event this Sunday, February 2nd from 3-5 pm. Created specifically for self-identified Black people, this restorative space is intended to offer rest, joy, and connection. Click here to register or offer voluntary reparations to help sustain this sacred work.

Image Description: A blue bordered light blue square with line art illustrations of leafy branches. It reads Holding Space. A Restorative Justice Circle for self-identified Black people in Lansing, Michigan. First Sundays from 3-5 pm. Register: bit.ly/LegacyRJseries