not the phoenix, the fire | Tasha Fierce

TASHA FIERCE

TASHA FIERCE is a queer Black disabled nonbinary femme writer, artist, crisis doula, facilitator, and mystic residing in the occupied Tongva territory known as Los Angeles.

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about a month ago i attended a very well-executed

about a month ago i attended a very well-executed seminar created by @rootsofresistance & sponsored by Reclaim UGLY ( @the.ugly.black.woman ) on African plants in skincare. it inspired me to think about making my own stuff again, but in a more accessible way. i used to make a lot of balms and emulsions and creams, but i don’t have the space or the equipment for those preparations anymore. clay masks are easy, require only a utensil to mix, and the ingredients don’t take up too much room. i’m also following the instructions from the seminar to make some herb-infused oils and i’m excited to start using those when they’re ready.

this mask i did is rhassoul clay, white clay (kaolin), rose hip powder, and yogurt powder, with some essential oils (ylang ylang, sandalwood) for luxurious scent. i think i wanna dial back on the essential oils next time, though, because it was a little strong and burn-y and i dunno if the fragrance is why. my skin is sensitive to random shit.

it worked pretty well! the lighting in my house is fucked up per usual, so you probably can’t tell, but my skin was super soft and glowy afterwards.

uhh, you probably CAN tell that i cut my hair. it was about 3 weeks ago, but that’s a story for another day. the conclusion is: that head of hair was dissatisfied and dissatisfying. i’m more disabled than i was when i started that set of dreads/locs and i don’t have the energy to cultivate my hair anymore. i both need and desire to let it do what it do. so i’m washing it and not combing it and whatever it decides to shape itself into is what it will be. much like my self.

hope y’all had an appropriately reflective national day of mourning. happy full moon in gemini! ♊️🤍

The phoenix. A brilliantly colored bird that burns

The phoenix. A brilliantly colored bird that burns to ash only to rise again & fly away home in an ever-repeating cycle. A resurrectionist, practiced in the craft of making themselves whole after tearing themselves apart. A kindred spirit to those of us with brains that like to upend things.

Many cultures have a myth about a bird that rises from the ashes, but the origin of all of them is thought to be Egyptian. The bird-god Bennu is described as living 500 years before dying in a blaze and rising again to carry the ashes of its ancestral self to Heliopolis, home of the sun god Ra. This cycle of death-birth-rebirth repeats until the end of time.

Where the phoenix myth appears, it is used as evidence of the cyclical nature of existence, of our resilience as humans who can die little deaths and still continue on. For me, I see the phoenix myth as instructive of a way of being, a practice: fall apart, come back together, repeat.

Swipe to read more about falling apart as a practice.

(Image descriptions are in alt text, or check my linktree for a reader-friendly transcript of this post.)

#MagicalDepressiveRealism #LiberatoryMadness #Madness #MadPride #MadLiberation #Mad #Crazy #CrazyPride #Depression #AnxietyRecovery #Anxiety #PTSD #Dissociation #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #Psychosis

there are alive things & dead things & things that

there are alive things & dead things & things that look dead that might look alive again if you give them a little extra care and attention. i’m feeling pretty dead these days, but the garden always reminds me it’s never over until your roots are gone.

at forty, my roots are strong. strong enough that despite my numbness i don’t need to scratch myself to reveal what life teems under the surface. dormancy, decay: these are also states of being. i carry the potential for growth, i remain a vital part of the ecosystem, no matter how dead i feel inside.

my roots are breath, communion, love, art, & working towards a just future. as long as i can engage in those things in one form or another, i’ll be okay.

#MagicalDepressiveRealism #GardenWisdom #Depression #Anxiety #Dissociation #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #PTSD

This moment in time feels like The End for a lot o

cw: MENTAL ILLNESS, MED WITHDRAWAL (full image de

cw: MENTAL ILLNESS, MED WITHDRAWAL
(full image descriptions in alt text.)

choose your reality.

consensus reality is a postmodern concept, based in the idea that reality is inherently subjective. what we all “agree” is real, is real.

that means “reality” is highly influenced by systems of oppression.

we are currently living within multiple consensus realities. the dominant, liberal/neoliberal consensus reality is the WSSCAIP (White Supremacist Settler Colonialist Ableist Imperialist cisheteroPatriarchy), which has us grinding ceaselessly yet somehow still at each other’s necks for scraps, and which is responsible for: the destruction of the planet, the colonization and genocide of the Indigenous peoples of turtle island and around the world, the enslavement, colonization, and genocide of African peoples, etc.

there are fascist/alt-right/neoconservative realities which derive from the main consensus reality but are invented fantasies, branches in the timeline. qanon, for example, believes instead of cishetpatriarchs and capitalists, the world is run by a pedophile cult. fox news taught us climate change is a hoax, and that covid isn’t real/was engineered by china. etc.

i clearly don’t agree with the realness of any of that shit. i agree that the WSSCAIP exists, yes. but is it part of what i
consider my reality? not exactly.

swipe to find out more about my reality, and maybe yours too.

(also continued in comments)

#magicaldepressiverealism #liberatorymadness #madness #madpride #madliberation #mad #crazy #crazypride #depression #dissociativeidentitydisorder #dissociation #anxietyrecovery #anxiety #psychosis #adhd #ptsd

i made this witch ladder for some full/new moon...

i made this witch ladder for some full/new moon... maybe in aquarius? leo? icr, time is an illusion anyway, but i am happy with how it turned out.

couldn’t do it justice w a pic so, we also have video ✨

#witchesofinstagram #witchesofinstagram🔮🌙

i had this as a potential essay title in my notes,

i had this as a potential essay title in my notes, then i fell in love with the statement as an art piece...
lol, here we go. full img description in alt text
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algorithms are sets of rules and instructions for AI/computer program behavior. social media apps like this one use algorithms to serve up your timeline and make recommendations on accounts you might like, among other things. increasingly algorithms are being used in law enforcement, the justus system, philanthropy, the financial industry, education, just about everywhere.

algorithms make decisions based on reality. they look at our preferences, our actions, and encourage us to continue moving along the same path.

on the social media tip, we see this in action when we're wanting to put the phone down and rest but these apps keep serving up more enraging content, or they suddenly show you a random like on your post, or a new interesting account, that's the algorithm. it enables our habits.

on the societal tip, we see an example of this in predictive policing—law enforcement algorithms designed to predict criminality. the algorithm will predict that a Black person is more likely to commit crime because our societies disproportionately convict and incarcerate Black people. algorithms perpetuate the existing anti-Black white supremacist consensus reality.

(there is no social data that is not biased by the interlocking systems of oppression we exist within. until we are liberated, these algorithms will merely perpetuate our subjugation.)

we see how algorithms are exacerbating existing inequalities in the content of social media apps themselves, in the outright prejudice against Black, queer, disabled, and other marginalized creators shown by tiktok and youtube, in how our fundraisers for basic needs are deprioritized. dating apps are another example of this. we might want to be accomplices, we say we are anti-racist and anti-ableist, that deep in our hearts we know trans women are women, rah rah, but our recommendations, our swipes, our likes, reveal otherwise.

the algorithm does not prioritize our survival because our societies do not prioritize our survival.
(continued in comments)

#abolition

folks, i still need to raise $1289 so i can 1) pa

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