Wombfulness Gatherings One Year Anniversary, Sat., March 19, 2022

 

One year anniversay of Wombfulness Gatherings this weekend, Sat., March 19, 2022, 10-12 noon PT at the SF Main Library, African American Center. It's virtual. Register in advance. See you there.

https://sfpl.org/.../03/19/dialogue-wombfulness-gathering

Wombfulness Gathering No. 6

This will be our last intimate gathering, the final gathering Sat., March 19, 10-12 noon PT, will be in collaboration with SF Library, African American Center. It will be a conversation with Iya Arisika Razak, Opal Palmer Adisa, Marje and Maïs Lingani.

This month, Sat., Jan. 29, 10-12 noon PT,  we are having presenters: Kelli Dillon, Back to Basics; CA Reparations Bill for incarcerated survivors of forced sterilizations; "Belly of the Beast," film.

Vynetta A. Morrow, Visionary Strategist, Educator & Curriculum Designer & Poet. 

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvcOuorD4vG93axcURrIO1j5KnZADv3Xe1

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. 

Wanda Sabir, facilitator, is a journalist (Wanda's Picks), college professor, visual artist, Depth Psychologist, and poet who believes in the power of art to change and shape social movements as well as assist in trauma healing and memory reclamation work. Co-founder of Maafa San Francisco Bay Area, she launched in March 2021 “Wombfulness Gatherings.”   













To do:

Please add to our virtual altar before our meeting, if possible. Hit the + (plus) sign for a new pad to add photos, audio or video of yourm ancestor:  
https://padlet.com/maafasfbayarea/Bookmarks


To prepare:

Bring a small object for the altar, a lit candle (it can be lithium), a plant or some earth, water and/or a warm drink, something that makes a sound like a bell, shaker. Dress to move. Bring a chair, paper and pen.

Wombfulness Gathering #5 Program

IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio

nialla rose

        Wanda Sabir

Here is the program for Wombfulness Gathering #5. It was a wonderful conclusion to our first year. We look forward to continuing January and March 2022 this first year cycle. 

Introductions --

Wanda Sabir, host, and presenters: nialla rose & IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio 

Libation-- IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio 

Theme this final Gathering for 2021 -- Being Free

Soundtrack:

"I'm Coming Out" - Diana Ross (Ase)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbYcte4ZEgQ&t=1s

Lizzo's "Good As Hell"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmbmeOgWsqE&t=6s

"No Scrubs" -- TLC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM&t=14s

"Brown Skin Girl"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXrhqhW2kiU

"Blk Girl Soldier" - Jamila Woods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asVhafDASjo&t=3s

"Just Fine" -- Mary J. Blidge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6ZjBPXSmnE

Resources:

the first free women: poems of the early Buddhist Nuns, trans., Matty Weigast. The idea was to choose a poem and respond in writing or a drawing or even a movement. 

Poems:
Another Uttama (39)

Uttama -- Great Woman (37-38)

Jenta-- Conqueror (24-25)

Dhira--Self-Reliant (9)

Vira-- Hero (10)

Other translations of the Therigatha, the earliest known collection of women's religious poetry, by Charles Hallisey (2015)

Susan Murcott (1991): The First Buddhist Women

Other work:

Life, I Swear: Intimate Stories from Black Women on Identity, Healing and Self-Trust (2021) by Chloe Dulce Louvouwzo. There are great essays and writing prompts in the collection -- 25 Black women. 

Wanda's Picks Radio Interview with Chloe Dulce Louvouwzo on Wed., Nov. 17, 2021

Lastly, we were going to use this poem by Derek Walcott, "Love after Love," as a prompt; however, we ran out of time: https://allpoetry.com/love-after-love

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Wombfulness Gathering #5 Sat., Nov. 20, 2021

This months presenters are:

IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio 

IMAHKÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio is the CEO and owner of the beautiful Health Resort, Restaurant and Wellness Centre, which also operates a Tour Service, located in the Central Region of Ghana in the historic village of Iture, in Elmina. She has been in Ghana for 30 years after having repatriated with her husband, Nana Okofo, a retired New York City Firefighter from New York City.  Unfortunately, he was killed by a hit and run driver in July 2007.  One Africa has been recognized by the Ghana Tourist Board as one of Ghana’s leading Guest Houses and Tour services.

One Africa Health Resort and Restaurant is a unique and historically charming bed and breakfast (B & B), built as simple, traditional African Chalets, beautifully and colorfully decorated, overlooking the Gulf of Guinea, and situated between two major edifices, the Cape Coast and Elmina Castle Dungeons. There are twelve guest rooms to choose from, named in honor of famous Africans, i.e., Dr. John Henrik Clarke, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Queen Mother Moore, Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) and others.  Reasonable rates include Complimentary Breakfast and Taxes.

  Tai Chi Embodying the Heart Qualities with nialla rose

 nialla rose has been formally studying Tai     Chi for 3 years. She has been collaborating with her Tai Chi Chih teacher and other   movement partners to make this form of Qi Gong accessible  and available to everyone.   You don’t need shoes or special clothing,   simply an open mind. Movements can be practiced standing or seated, the qi, or life energy, in us all effortlessly flows.

Listen to nialla speak about her practice on Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Nov. 17, 2021. 

Facilitator: Sister Wanda Sabir, MAAFA SF Bay Area

Wanda Sabir is a journalist and poet moonlighting as a college professor in Alameda (wandaspicks.com). Her interests and expertise are historic & persistent trauma and trauma healing—the Maafa, specifically ancestral memories, dream tending and the use of Art & Appreciative Inquiry to stimulate those forgotten conversations, especially among Diaspora descendants free and legally enslaved. She is co-founder & CEO of MAAFA San Francisco Bay Area and recent recipient of the Distinguished 400 Award, 400 Years of African American History Commission (2019). She is a Transformative Justice (TJ) or Community Accountability facilitator who believes the true revolution starts at home.


Register in Advance:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvcOuorD4vG93axcURrIO1j5KnZADv3Xe1

“Wombfulness Gatherings’” bimonthly goal is create safety so wombs can finally speak. We are looking to invite wom(b)en whose wombs were surgically removed without permission as happened to women incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, CA and CA Institute for Women in Corona, CA. Bring wombs violated and oppressed; wombs invaded, wombs wandering and directionless—healthy wombs are of course welcome.  Black wom(b)an are invited. Register in advance. Please have a working camera on your device. Let us know in advance if this is a problem.  

 

Wombfulness Gathering #3

Our third Wombfulness Gathering is tomorrow, Sat., July 21, 10-12 noon. 

Presenters this Gathering are: Makeda Sandra Hooper Mayfield, writer, healer, and Lorraine Bonner, artist, writer, physician. Iya Makeda will be sharing poetry and stories, and talk about a 12 step program she facilitates with African Diaspora women. Dr. Bonner will share poetry and ceramic sculpture. She has work on fibroids. Her art is always personal and moving. 

Wombfulness Gathering #2

Our Gaia Healer for Wombfulness Gathering #2 is: Afia Raina, Black Sustainability Network; Facilitator: Sister Wanda Sabir, MAAFA SF Bay Area

Bring a Black Wom(b)an of a different generation to the Wombfulness Gathering, Sat., May 22. Please register in advance and come.

Here is a link to the flier: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:31d5e5ac-1c09-4873-8317-cf17c26d6641

Wombfulness Gathering #1

How does one stay connected given the elimination of illusionary landmarks? Were we rehearsing: (-1) minus one, (+1) plus 1? Empty space with masks that cover everything except the windows to a soul living temporarily in flesh and this presents a dilemma.

I am struggling with sanity, reality questionable except those things I can still touch like earth and water. What I see is not to be trusted. Images appear manipulated. We doctor our faces so that in Zoom we look our best or choose to show up silenced or on mute, camera off.  It is easy to lose oneself in such normalized environments. It is easy to lose others. We check the participants listed and can’t see everyone’s name. Who’s in the chat? Is the chat enabled? Can I save the chat? Why would I want to chat?

Reminds me of undergraduate lecture halls at UC Berkeley when I was a student there. The speaker doesn’t know who was in the room or to my knowledge care. However, in the more intimate virtual spaces we do want to know, which is why we enable everything and if possible have transcribing so no one is left out of the conversation which is as rich as it is to accessibility to all thoughts and feelings.

I have been attending a series of Our Freedom Sanctuary meetings hosted by the Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom. gina Breedlove, Medicine Women, Sacred Sound Healer has been facilitating these free (donation based), workshops for BIPOC (no one turned away), with primacy to Black women. We are sounding through the chakras, the last two weeks heart and throat. To get to the throat we breathed through the pelvis. Had to figure out where that was for a moment and then gina suggested the kegel exercise. I remembered from womb work after and before childbirth to prepare the uterus and then to tone it thereafter. Birthing a rigorous exercise. And for those who did not have a uterus, they could also participate in visioning that space.

I think about Michelle Browder’s “Mothers of Gynecology” project honoring the lives of enslaved women, Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey whose bodies did not belong to herselves, so their white owners leased them to J. Marion Sims to experiment on them, supposedly to cure them of fistula. Instead these Black wom(b)en endured horrific torture without anesthesia. The myth, Black wom(b)en (Black people) feel no pain despite the visible and audible evidence to the contrary present with every slice, cut, intrusive instrument. Think about these wom(b)en when you think speculum, forceps, Black maternal health. Sims’s ghost lives on in the high rates of Black wom(b)en child maternal mortality despite social economic educational level of the mother or family. Blackness still trumps race and gender equity.

Right now, Browder is working with artisan Dana Albany at her Box Shop studio in San Francisco to complete these three monumental statues. May 9 the foundation will be laid in Montgomery where Sims’s offices stood/stand. I saw his office building and in another location at City Hall his stature glorified with that of other criminals. I believe the confederate flag also flew. My visit, for Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Institute’s opening reception for the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (lynching memorial) and the Legacy Museum, from Slavery to Mass Incarceration, was just after Memorial Day where the City of Montgomery honored both outcomes of the Civil War. I wondered what the Black children visiting the capital thought when they realized this alternative celebration was about their freedom. I wonder what the white children thought when imagining what it would feel like to have that kind of power over another human being?

Browder’s “Mothers of Gynecology” centers the focus. The ideology is not lost in abstraction. Black women as breeders kept the slave system supplied with workers. More babies were born in captivity than imported from Africa once this form of capture was outlawed Jan.1,1808. This meant the manufacture of human beings specific to a particular kind of life was a particular kind of demonic enterprise, these three wom(b)en emblematic of the worse capitalism imaginable, presented a problem if the leased “womb” did not function.

In a Wanda’s Picks podcast interview (3/10) with Michelle Browder and J.C. Holman, writer, researcher who is writing a book about Anarcha, the woman whose history is more easily traced and documented than the other “Mothers,” states that what he learned that from the barbaric medical practices on Black women emerged a system of care developed in response, where these women took care of each other. This kind of caregiving continues today.

While the Mothers of Gynecology story is not as well-known until recently, the story of Henrietta Lacks, whom I call the Mother of Modern Medicine, is, her centennial birth, August 1, 2020. Her immortal HeLa cells are still curing disease.

Wombfulness Gatherings™ and MAAFA San Francisco Bay Area is curating the Libations and Prayers Ceremony for Mothers of Gynecology Easter Sunday

On Sunday, April 4, 2021, 10-11 a.m. there will be Libations and Prayers for the Mothers of Gynecology at The Box Shop, 951 Hudson Avenue, San Francisco, 94124. All are welcome, esp. BIPOC. For information Facebook @anarchalucybetsey and anarchalucybetsey.org and Facebook @maafabayarea

Michelle Browder was one of the Gaia Wom(b)an presenters at the first bi-monthly, “Wombfulness Gathering” for Black wom(b)en. The next Gathering is May 22, 10-12 noon. For more information: wombfulnest@gmail.com; FB@wombfulnest or call 510-255-5579.

“Honor the wombs that bore you,” Allah says in the Qur’an (4:1). The root of the word for womb (RHM) is the same as Ar-rahman, Ar-rahim—beneficence, mercy, grace and compassion. At this point in time, all human life comes through a womb. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, the point is, if this wom(b)an decided not to bear young, there would be no life – yours or mine.  My young mother said she had no prenatal care, that after nine months she went to the hospital and they yanked me out with forceps. Mama said if you complained the white nurses would slap the patients, so she kept her mouth shut.  Hers was such a rare case, the attending physician brought in an entire class to watch her give birth. (Charity was a teaching hospital and in the charity ward, I don’t think the patients were asked for consent probably signed away at admission.)

There was no acknowledgement of the beauty of life and giving birth and the inherently beautiful Black mother- she vessel, she chamber, she force of life.

There was no conversation, no anesthesia. After they pulled me out her young body and stitched her up, they gave me to her, “a living baby doll,” she said. I was born with a string of flesh in my mouth and the doctor took a hot iron and seared it off. Again, no medicine for pain—babies don’t feel pain either.  Could these assumptions be based on the fact that we have no voice? Audible, the absence of power mutes the sound and negates the vibration, an affirmation communication prompts between living beings. The Black wom(b)an (girl child) does not exist—she, inhuman. She, not worthy of contemplation.

To read the rest visit Wanda's Picks April 2021.