Fulfillment Beyond the Plate

Today I want to talk about fulfillment beyond the plate. Why??? Well…
 

The older I get, the more I learn that when I make room for pleasure in life, the more I feel fulfilled. 

For many years I privileged suffering and pain in life. Hell, suffering was something I knew well. 

All I needed to do was to look to my left and right. It was clear as day! I could see other women in my life carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. These women had accomplished a lot. Most of all, they were praised for their ability to grit and bear pain with valiant strength.

Suffering just seemed so alluring! And I was like a wide-eyed child drawn into its vortex.

I even I got several degrees to learn more about the depth and breadth of suffering. 

In graduate school, I studied social oppression at the intersection of systemic race, class, gender, and sexual inequality. I am trained to see, speak, and write about these oppressions. I can even tell you how they shaped the life chances of Black people in my sleep! 

But there was a part of me that wanted to see and experience more pleasure in life.  

Interestingly enough, pleasure felt wrong. 

Pleasure felt forbidden. 

Dare I say the “s” word. Pleasure felt sinful. 

Shut your mouth!!! 

Yes I said it! Pleasure of any and all kinds felt like a sin. 

Yet!
 

I felt like a few of my pleasure-loving ancestors were saying, “Girl, lean into pleasure and joy. You’ll find power and freedom there.” 

Ancestors like the great poet Audre Lorde and my maternal great aunt, Aunty Tatty, were very clear. In their written and spoken words, these women taught me that feeling good can be liberating. 

So, when I claim pleasure, it is my way of resisting a legacy of oppression that taught me to distrust joy and to overlook the beauty of life.

Doing simple things like making a beautiful bouquet of flowers feels revolutionary to me. It feels revolutionary because, well, it simply feels good! 

Pleasure practice: Arranging flowers from my garden.

Arranging the flowers from my summer garden is my personal pleasure practice. It is a practice of fulfillment beyond the plate.

But I haven’t always had an intentional pleasure practice.

Even though I love plants, for years I was only interested in planting food. I can even remember saying to my mother, “Why do you plant flowers? We can’t eat them!”

Everything had to fulfill a survival or material need for me. Did planting food keep my body alive? Did it save me money? How could the food from plants make me healthier? How could they offer me energy to live another day? These are not bad questions but, rarely did I ask myself, how can I experience guilt-free pleasure with food? How could this guilt-free pleasure be experienced in all areas of life?

Here is the sad truth. My socialization as a Black immigrant woman in a capitalist, white-dominated, patriarchal, and heteronormative world often disconnects me from simple pleasures. Though these systems of oppression are interconnected, they each shaped my relationship to self and stopped me from really appreciating the beauty of life.

For example, prior to growing flowers, I made very little space for beauty in my life. If flowers were added to my garden, I put them there to bring pollinators.

Now, I can’t lie, sometimes I would allow myself to relish in the beauty and sounds of butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. But this was only for a moment. Often I related to the pollinators and plants as workers and their job was to serve me. If they didn’t accomplish their “designated” roles, then I didn’t really see or value them.

How interesting...

It was often through my labor that I felt seen as an immigrant Black woman in the world. Accomplishing the duties of a particular role gave me a sense of value. Well let’s put it this way, I was taught to see myself as valuable when I served a specific role and fulfill the needs and desires of others.

As an accomplished immigrant Black woman with advanced degrees in suffering, leaning into pleasure sometimes feels uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable and guilty because pleasure requires that I occupy my body. It means that I get in touch with my senses and my feelings. Trust me, I would much rather be in my head!

But what if?

What if being fully alive means that I trust my body to feel pleasure? What if it means that I co-create safe spaces to experience joy in my body?

This can feel scary especially if you’ve experienced body trauma or any form of trauma. It has felt scary and forbidden for me because so many times since birth, I learned that my body was not really my own.

Since I’m so accustomed to suffering, plants serve as a gentle partner to reconnect to myself. Slowly I can safely enter the body when I touch a leaf, admire the colors and delicacy of a bloom, or smell the aroma of a flower.

In this way, plants have served as a co-creator and partner in reclaiming body sovereignty. My body is my own and I get to reclaim my power.

Recently, I have been adding culinary herbs like basil, sage, mint, and parsley as fillers to my floral arrangements. This small touch offers a bit of aromatherapy to each bouquet and added fulfillment beyond the plate.