Who do I think I am?

A worldview is a set of beliefs about elemental aspects of a person’s understanding of reality. To speak about a worldview is to delve into the ever shifting collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action, and that ground and influence all our ways of perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing (see What is a Worldview?). My worldview or overall outlook on life is largely unspoken, manifesting largely in my actions and ‘ways of being’. However, given my desire to companion those who are dying, a more conscious understanding of how I come to think and be is a must. What follows is a necessarily disjointed reflection. As always, bear with me as I pull back the layers.

Looking back, I can say that from an early age my life has been shaped by Afrocentricity, understood as the energetic re-centring of the agency, history, knowledge, and strength of African and African diasporic people in the face of hundreds of years of systemic racialised oppression and subjugation. With this has come my understanding of the constructed nature of the human world, the machinations of knowledge generation, and the need to define one’s own reality.

“Afrocentricity is a paradigm based on the idea that African people should re-assert a sense of agency in order to achieve sanity”. (M K Asante)

“That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; That until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained”. Emperor Haile Selassie

The seeds were sown early: quiet words of advice from my mother, the black theatrical performances directed by my father (which in the 1970s Bermuda led to him often being blacklisted from jobs), and my Aunt Pam’s collage of beautiful African-American soul singers (think Marvin Gaye, Issac Hayes & Millie Jackson) that hung next to her bed. This Afrocentric paradigm passed on by my family and community expressed itself in my formative years with my deep dive into Rastafari as a teen-ager. The belief of a living Black African God and the doing away of a global system of oppression (Babylon) was my singular answer to the growing awareness of the power of racialised oppression. It was during this time that the who I was as a young black woman became linked inseparably from what my role in life was and how I lived. The move to Dimona, Israel to live with the African Hebrew Israelites was perhaps a natural progression, providing me with four years of total immersion in a community rooted in these ideals.

Total immersion led to new insights. The rose-tinted glasses lost some of their colour; life had- by my early 20s - become more complicated and the singularity of vision I had as a youth shifted as I matured and experienced (and re-remembered) pain, loss, grief, and growth. Other threads and viewpoints started to emerge and cling. The primacy of race gave way to the multi-dimensionality of agency, people, and life. With this came my decade long foray into higher education, with my academic life providing me with some tools in which to understand my evolving worldview.

"Womanism is a social change perspective rooted in Black women’s and other women of color’s everyday experiences and everyday methods of problem solving in everyday spaces, extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people, restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature, and reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension.

Womanist methods of social transformation cohere around the activities of harmonizing and coordinating, balancing, and healing. These methods work in and through relationship, reject violence and aggression but not assertiveness, and readily incorporate “everyday” activities. These overlapping methods include, but are not limited to, dialogue, arbitration and mediation, spiritual activities, hospitality, mutual aid and self-help, and “mothering”. Layli Phillips, The Womanist Reader

As a budding social scientist and researcher-activist, my worldview became intersectional. What became clear was that the constructed social systems dictating human life needed a more cross-cutting transformation. My need to live my life within a specific spiritual framing at that point was dimed by these preoccupations, although the role and imprint of the existence of a higher universal force greater than myself remained strong. What took hold of me however was my academic work which was as much a professional calling as it was a personal imperative.

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose." Zora Neale Hurston

My academic life revolved around social justice, capturing the views and experiences of marginalised groups as forms of evidence and transformational knowledge systems, and seeking ways to impact on social and health care practice and policy. Joan Riley’s book Waiting in the Twilight (1987) had been required reading on my undergraduate English and Sociology course. Having settled in the Wales, it became my lens in which to understand British society, and a moral compass in which to decipher the inequalities of everyday life in what soon became my new home. My love of my work – the people and communities I met in the studies I conducted - held me close and sustained me for decades.

It was a period of burnout (personal, professional, and physical) in my mid- 40s, and a resultant anger - no rage - at the unrelenting nature of the systems I was seeking to change that finally caught up to me. Luckily enough for me this led to introspection and painful growth and transformation. As major life decisions led to new chapters in my book of life, my worldview shifted yet again. Rage gave way to forms of love that extended beyond family and lovers to more overt and mindful expressions of love to all the women and men in my life who had long supported and cared for me. I found myself needing to stretch out and expand and share my heart in new ways. Disenchantment in work gave way to opportunities to work with creatives to convey meaning through the arts (performance, visual art, and storytelling in particular), with a focus on community legacy and softer, more longer terms engagement work. At this point - as I worked on my personal life, and as my research took a more creative turn, my work, my life, and - my worldview took on a new and different vibration.

Feelings of burnout slowly gave way to an exploration of new ways of exploring my spirituality, and the shift from being ‘a human with a spirit’ to a being a ‘spiritual being in a human body’ started its slow transition. All the major threads of my worldview remain linked, with a focus both on the social construction of lived reality, and on my spiritual connection with the cosmos. Contemplative self-care practices have been crucial, as has healing relationships with my now older self and with important others. As it stands now my belief system is softer, more open and – I like to think (and so have to constantly work on it being) more receptive to others as they journey through life. I have let go of some beliefs and leaned into others. I have slowed and grown quieter.

As I reflected at the start of this entry, if I am to companion and walk alongside others as they transition from life to death, I must be present to their unique worldview. In the wisdom of the doula preparation training, I am undertaking it has been made clear that one step in this direction is to better understand myself. To do that I must know something of my worldview. I have begun this process but reading back on what I have written it remains incomplete, partial, and patchy. I can see the gaps and the jumps. So much is missing. So, what I have set forth for you here is my disjointed first attempt. My rose-tinted lens remains focussed; my work on understanding my worldview will remain – perhaps necessarily so – ongoing. Such work is essential; it is an act of faith and humility and one I have embraced.

“There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought”. Zora Neale Hurston

"Peel away the layers and you are left with your authentic self...peel further and you are left with your being". Simon Campbell

Finally, my list of words and terms that speak to my heart and soul... and my spirit.