Written by Reneice Charles

This month, the Level Ground Collective is reflecting on and sharing art related to the theme of “Joy”. Make sure you’re following us on Instagram to see more work from Collective artists.

Course one:

You need to look whatever is stealing your joy right in the eyes.   Face it. Acknowledge the bags that it’s carrying and see that they are full of your joy being stowed away to create shadows and allow darkness to dominate your emotional space. 

This task is not easy, but it is essential, and you deserve the fullness of your joy. 

So gather your strength from wherever it lies, and then, to do this work of facing your emotional thieves, find the brightest, ripest lemon you can get your hands on. 

Then slice it in thick circles that resemble the sun.

Take one, fold it in half, place it on your tongue and softly hold it there with your lips. 

Taste the bright sour acid, and as you do, let it bring up the bitter feelings and memories hiding away in the creases between your eyes, the softness of your belly, and the meeting of your hips. 

Coax them to come to you with all they have today.  Whether it be fear, anger, or he wonderings why you did or didn't say what was on your heart; the things you’ve carried that were never yours, loss, the lingering sting of injustice, abandonment; or maybe shame placed on the space between where you are and where you think you should be.

Pull their bitterness into your mouth to mix with lemon and the tears you may find are now flowing. 

Its okay. Salt and lemon are good medicine.

Remember that the cost and difficulty of acknowledging these black holes working to pull away all your joy may feel high in this moment, but is not as high, or as painful, as being taken from moment to moment, day by day when your back is turned.

Remember that what you’re able to face inside you, with time,  can no longer easily control you. What has held you can lose its grip. So acknowledge every feeling that holds you one by one.

And when you’ve tasted all the lemon and faced all the hidden feelings you can handle for the day, swish and spit it out. Preferably onto the earth. 

This is healing.

Course Two:

Warm a cup of milk on low heat with a little fresh ginger. 

When the steam just starts to lift from the surface and arch in wisps toward the sky, pour into your favorite mug, and top with a pinch of ground black pepper. 

This is for grounding. 

Take a sip, and consider

that your existence would be impossible without love. 

That somewhere in the line of the two that made you, the four that made them, the 8 that made them, and back to the very beginning is a thread of decisions, good and bad, made in many things but most importantly, in love.

Love that now runs through, and is,  you. 

Think of all the smiles and giggles that helped form the angles of your face and mark your brightest, joy filled memories. 

Try to bring those memories to the front of your mind. Whatever pieces of them you can grasp onto. The color of the room from the place, the scent of the air from the day. The feeling.

Of joy and life meeting, however fleeting. 

Pull it to your chest. Tell it you cherish it and want to know it again, then trust that you will.

Keep sipping and remember, also,  that nothing stays. 

All that you feel will pass and flow, leave and return with varying force and color and all of it deserves your full attention for what is ignored will never fade, only simmer. And what is not appreciated will take it time before coming your way again. 

This is how it’s meant to be, and so

joy will return. 

And when it does, you’ll be ready. 

Then, when you are full of warmth from milk and memory, set down your cup and play a song that makes your body want to move. 

One that you couldn’t possibly refuse when it makes the call to play with music in physical space. 

Take up as much of that space as you can. Feel your heartbeat start to match the rhythm of the song, and let go. 

Truly. 

Release, and move, and breathe, and move and release the energy you’ve held inside for too long into the air. 

Let go. 

Then play the song again, and this time check to see if there’s anything you still can feel holding onto your joy. 

If so, shake it loose with all your might. 

Even the earth shakes when she no longer desires to contain the pressure. 

Shake it down like thunder. 

Do your best to break it’s grip, then open your front door and tell it to leave. 

Sweep or kick or speak it out, whatever you need to send it on its way. 

And trust that when it comes to your door again, looking to take your light, you’ll know what to do. Acknowledge, feel, release.

Close the door, and say to yourself, with sincerity, ”well done.” 

Course Three:

You may find that you’re hungry now.

That space has been cleared for something new and what you fill it with is truly up to you, 

But let it be light. Let it be joy.

Try slicing the juiciest summer peach, fall apple, winter plum, or spring apricot available and arranging the pieces to resemble a flower, or star, or whatever shape your inner child has on their heart before drizzling it with honey.

Eat it with your fingers, piece by piece. 

Savor every bit of this fruit that the sun made just for you.

And then, to give her thanks, walk outside and stand in the sun, arms outstretched, heart to the galaxy, and absorb every bit of light you can handle. 

Bathe in a star

And revel in the knowledge that that’s exactly what you’re doing. 

Let that knowledge, that magic, widen your smile from ear to ear and think once again on all the smiles that crossed your face before it. 

Think of your joy. Remember it. Know that it is yours.

Hold it. Welcome it. Embrace it. 

And be filled. 

Reneice Charles (she/her) is a writer, recipe developer, and food photographer, as well as a life coach and the current programming and communications manager here at Level Ground. Her artistic work centers joy as resistance, and is strongly influenced by mental health given her MSW background. Follow her @reneicespieces.

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