Shortly after the chaotic and near-death event that was the birth of my daughter Esmé, I just couldn’t settle my mind. Days and, most annoyingly, nights were spent overthinking, with the noise of the world – literally and figuratively – only getting louder and louder.
Post-partum depression and prolonged grief disorder, piled on top of the day-to-day drudgery of just getting by, left me feeling as though I was all at once fit to burst and unable to breathe. I cannot now recall whether it was a video, book or podcast that informed this decision, but one day, I decided to just try and meditate.
With no guidance, I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, closed my eyes and just decided to breathe. Once my vision was limited, my hearing immediately grew sharper, and the noise of the busy main road close to our tiny flat proceeded to grow like an orchestra made up of bus engines, honking horns and yelling teenagers.
I tried to take more deep breaths. Was that something crawling on me? I let one eyelid fly open. No, nothing. Sighing, I closed my eyes again. More deep breaths. Now the shrill stabbing sound of our flat buzzer went. ‘For f*ck’s sake!’ I yelled, lurching into a yoga pose similar to Cat-Cow before rolling off the bed.
I yanked the receiver off the wall. ‘Hi, package for number 11,’ spat a gruff voice.
‘Wrong num–’ ‘Yeah I know that, love but can I jus–’ I pressed the entry key before heading back to the bed. Looking at the time, I clocked I only had ten minutes before I had to collect Esmé. Nothing about this process felt calm or relaxing.
It didn’t matter anyway, because I had already decided meditation wasn’t for someone like me. Working-class Black women didn’t have time for all that ‘self-care’ malarkey. That was for those rich enough to live in India for a year – you know, the ones who wear the massive harem pants and decide being vegan is personality trait. Yeah, mediation was for them and monks. I was neither, I reminded myself.
I shoved down the desire to get to grips with this practice that a higher me knew I so desperately needed.
Credit Amanda Akokhia
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Credit Amanda Akokhia
‘You have to return to this,’ a whisper said to me. ‘Later,’ I said aloud.
A few months passed before I felt the pull again.
‘You need to learn how to meditate,’ the whisper urged.
Looking back, what that whisper knew was that to try to manifest without understanding the importance of meditation is like learning to drive without understanding the importance of your Highway Code. As my taste for manifestation grew, I needed to get to grips with developing the habit of listening to myself.
By now, I had done a little more research, and I understood that guided meditation was perhaps the best approach for a novice like me. I searched up the best apps for this sort of thing and I stumbled across one called Headspace.