Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is dawn sarai, and I’m a #freedwoman. Happy Juneteenth to all my people who have been freeish since 1865, I pray you’re all healthy and safe!
Today seemed apropos to get My Mind Looks Better in Pink back into your inbox. When I first began writing this newsletter, it was because I was fighting a real battle to get free from the mental bondage that has stopped me from living the life I’m called to live.
Every. Single. Day. I woke up to a new battle for my mind as all these thoughts showed up to greet me and tell me how much I suck at just like everything life. And you know I’m a proud Bible-carrying, Bible-living woman of God. I know what the Word says about renewing your mind, but where I got stuck was trying to find the instruction with how to do that in a way that would stick for me. I was looking for a deeper understanding of how the mind worked so I could walk out consistently what I knew to be true. I began digging into all these books on mental health, trying to find the answer.
I was trying to get free, y’all.
My Mind Looks Better in Pink is my contribution to the wellness conversation that needs to continue to happen in communities of color, especially with Black women. There are so many hangups that we must address so that we can be liberated in every way. Even as we continue to struggle daily to live free as temporary citizens of this world, the only way we can do that is to start at home, in our minds. We must practice self-care in a way that heals us mentally and spiritually as well as physically. [Disclaimer: Anyone that knows me can attest that I’m not doing any running unless a bear is chasing me, so I won’t be spending much time talking about the physical piece of the puzzle.]
This publication speaks to my fellow sisters about how to care for themselves mentally, especially from a spiritual perspective. Each week, I’ll be delivering ideas on mental and spiritual wellness along with a playlist for the week, a reading list, and something to watch. Here’s how this is going to help, first off it is so essential that you are given the language to be able to express your needs. In my liberation journey, as I have not only absorbed ideas from mental health resources but Black feminist/womanist scholarship, I have been gifted with the ability to put into words things that I was trying to express but didn’t know how to say it. Also, as we keep the importance of mental and spiritual wellness on our minds, we’re continually building fortitude, so when those hard days come as they will, we will have a toolbox to go to because as Pearl Cleage reminds us, “liberation is a constant struggle.”
So, next week? We’ll be looking at how the wellness conversation intersects with the experiences of Black women in a way that is different for non-blacks.
Until then, I hope you dance, sing, create, cry, and live unapologetically while listening to this week’s playlist, #freedwoman.
One dope (freeish) chick,
dawn sarai
P.S. Do you know why this publication is named My Mind Looks Better in Pink? Besides the fact that I’m a word nerd who sometimes gets a little too clever, it’s from the idiom “in the pink.”
The Pearl Cleage quote referenced above is from her book Things I Should Have Told My Daughter. It was my inaugural pick for the Well-Read Black Girl Book Club hosted by Pages Bookshop. Most hated the book and had a hard time getting passed some of the “things she should have told her daughter,” and rightly so. But my copy is dog-eared, underlined, sticky noted and much too used ever to be sold or given away.
This book resonated with me so much because the entire work tells the story of a woman just trying to get free. She begins the book with the quote mentioned above and ends with “I got free.” And so even if her journey makes you want to give her the side-eye many times, I want that for myself, I want that for all of us so that one day we can share with another sister how we got free.
Cleage wrote in the book that “Age of Aquarius” was her “fully free music,” and it inspired and opened my playlist for this week. The song is like unbottled joy, but the video of The 5th Dimension’s live performance elevates it to a new level when they hit the “dance break” at around the 2:42 mark.
And maybe write this quote from the book out and paste it somewhere that you’ll see it first thing in the morning:
I will claim myself for myself.