KYLE PETERS- REPORTER EDITOR
Six words that started the title of a book, a poem, and a movement. All rising from an event where a friend with cerebral palsy felt ashamed of her disability. Performance poet Sonya Renee Taylor has made the six words her slogan.
In that conversation with her friend, Taylor saw the self-doubt that lingers in everyone. In a Facebook post shared with 100, 000 followers, she remarked on a time when she, herself was afraid. “I had a selfie in my phone of me getting dressed for a performance,” Taylor told website TheGlowUp, “I felt really powerful and sexy in this photo. But I was still listening to the voice that was telling me, “Don’t share it. People will judge you; you’re too ugly, you’re too fat, you’re too black”—all of those negative voices that I call “the outside voice inside of us.” nd it kept me from posting that photo for about six months.”
She mentions how seeing a plus-sized black model brought her to publish the photo, telling the story in the caption. Numerous people would re-share the photo, all with their own stories to tell. “I decided,” she concludes, “that we should start a Facebook page where people could celebrate themselves and celebrate living in their bodies without apology.”
Michelle Pettis, Community Care Centre Coordinator believes that Sonya is able to interrupt shame, deepens the conversation on wellness and all of these are in alignment with what the CCC already does in approach and serve.
Michelle added “I want to break-open how we understand ‘wellness.’ Institutions talk self-care and body positivity – because that is what they are selling. Too often, school and work push ‘wellness’ because it’s inconvenient for these institutions when we’re struggling. Overall, it all gets addressed very surface level. And we can critique self-care and body positivity, but remember that self-care and body positivity emerged from pain. Because we are hurt. Because there is body negativity. How do we heal? Sonya is great to cut through the wellness noise, and transforms why and how we access radical self love as something powerful.”
“Sonya’s vision and the Community Care Centre vision are aligned. How do we create spaces where we don’t have to apologize for our bodies? How do we use joy to power and deepen our relationships? How do we get to live the expansive full versions or ourselves? Let’s be fragile and powerful at the same time. Sonya asserts that it’s a tiny radical act to see each other’s humanity, and it’s those such tiny radical acts that make the CCC the space it is.”
Taylor’s keynote will take place at 209 Adelaide, at Room 406 at 7:30 on March 3rd. Presented by the Community Care Centre, more info can be found on the CCC website.
