For the past two days, I have been leading the Thriving Mindfully Circles and holding safe space for people just like to inhale, exhale, and practice mindful self-care to release stress from living life and experiencing the current elections.
On November 1st, we explored and practiced loving kindness, the act of befriending yourself with gentleness and nonjudgment in all you feel, think, say, and do. Our meditation focused on loving kindness for self.
We discussed and practiced compassion, the act of never giving up on yourself as you recognize and accept that anger, jealousy, arrogance, judgment, and other emotions you prefer to keep hidden exist within you, on November 2nd. I also introduced my de-stress tool and how you can use it to practice compassion. Our meditation focused on self-compassion.
We’ll talk about:
-Nonjudgment on November 3rd -Patience on November 4th -Forgiveness on November 5th -All five self-care vitamins on November 6th, 7th, and 8th (will introduce bonus self-care practices and resources) ‘
CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW to sign up for these sessions. Invite your family, friends, and colleagues to join you.
WATCH REPLAY VIDEO FROM Thriving Mindfully Circle on Loving Kindness.
WATCH REPLAY VIDEO FROM Thriving Mindfully Circle on Compassion.
Invite your family, friends, and colleagues to join you for the FREE Thriving Mindfully Circle to help you inhale, exhale, and de-stress during the election season on November 3-8 at 12-12:30 PM ET via Zoom.
If you answered YES or MAYBE, you and I share something in common with 69% of adults.
Interesting Data on Election Stress
In August, the American Psychological Association published its annual Stress in America 2024: A Nation in Political Turmoil poll that reported:
-America’s future was a significant source of stress for adults (77%). It also represented the most common source of significant stress in this year’s survey.
-America’s economy was the second most common source of stress for adults (73%).
-America’s presidential election was the third most common source of stress for adults (69%).
Practicing your birthright of self-care is one of the best ways to navigate election stress. I have included several election self-care tips below.
1) Watch the video to learn how to use my de-stress tool.
2) Embrace November as Loving Kindness Month
3) Honor your loving + wise + well ancestors on All Souls’ Day and the Day of the Dead
4) Join me for a FREE week of Thriving Mindfully Circles on November 1-8 at 12 noon ET via Zoom. Invite your family, friends, and colleagues to join you.
Death, loss, and grief happen to each of us throughout our lifetime.
There’s no way to escape them. They CHANGE us and our lives without any notice. They are filled with MESSY, and HARD moments that leave us feeling overwhelmed, sad, afraid, angry, depressed, out of control, and so much more.
In the past 59 years of living on Mother Earth, I have learned that death, loss, and grief are a master class in SURRENDER.
They humble and teach us that we do not have any control over when they show up and show out in our lives. If we resist them, we create more suffering and struggles. If we surrender to them, we open ourselves up to receive their sacred medicine of healing, growth, and transformation.
Surrendering to death, loss, and grief begins when we choose to befriend ourselves.
Befriending ourselves starts with being S.O.F.T.
That means we SLOW down and OFFER ourselves FREEDOM TODAY.
The FREEDOM is grace, space, and time to get grounded, feel our emotions, practice self-care, and seek safe and trusted support.
The TODAY is the present moment — giving ourselves what we need to care for ourselves right where we are and with what we have.
Thriving Mindfully with death, loss, and grief is a heart-centered journey we choose to take when we are willing to be vulnerable with ourselves.
The Thriving Mindfully journey invites us to:
-Become aware of and define what death, loss, and grief currently mean to us,
-Explore our beliefs and previous experiences with death, loss, and grief,
-Set intentions on how we want to relate to them, and
–Create and use a self-nurturing toolkit that honors our unique needs.
This year, I am sharing the lessons I have learned while navigating my mom Theresa’s transition in the monthly Grief + You Retreat.
The Grief + You Retreat is designed to encourage and support you in learning how to embrace Thriving Mindfully with death + loss + grief.
The Grief + You Retreat is a two-day nurturing experience (90 minutes for the first day and two hours for the second day) that will be held on September 28-29, October 26-27, November 16-17, and December 7-8 at 2-3:30 PM ET (second day is 2-4 PM ET) via Zoom.
Participating in a retreat is a great way to make yourself a priority. A retreat helps you carve out time and space and take responsibility for yourself. When you take responsibility for yourself, you begin to see your full self. A retreat gives you an opportunity to take responsibility for identifying your vulnerabilities, challenges, wins, and losses. A retreat can also help you set intentions and create shifts in how you choose to show up in your life, relationships, career, and business.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE RETREAT
“The Retreat provided a safe container to be in community with others around my grief story, our grieving process. It allowed me to be vulnerable with myself and others. It reminded me of how to show up for myself and be in close company with my process all at the same time. I’ve been keeping grief at arms distance since November, and I signed up knowing that you would be a trusted guide. I really appreciated the inquiry-based approach to understanding my relationship with grief. I’ve been working my way through the answers over the past week. Some are easier than others to respond but the heightened awareness has been helpful. The gentle yoga and movement breaks, reminders to breathe, were very helpful during the retreat. Thank you for making space to allow so many emotions and feelings and experiences to show up, be witnessed without judgement. I really appreciated all the safeguards you implemented for personal choice to engage in the retreat space in a way that brought the most comfort and sense of security.” Karla T., a television professional
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS AT THE RETREAT
During the Grief + You Retreat, I will hold space for you to:
-Be present, vulnerable, and share in a sacred and safe community
-Participate in a mindful moment and meditation that will help you get grounded in your body and breath and teach you how to nurture yourself when you experience emotions caused by death, loss, and grief
-Define what death, loss, and/or grief mean to you.
-Reflect on and journal about the emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and experiences you’ve had about death, loss, and/or grief, especially during the pandemic years
-Identify how you have or have NOT taken care of yourself when you experience death, loss, and/or grief
-Learn about the seven stages of grief and how you they may be showing up in your life
-Reflect on and set an intention about normalizing your conversations about death, grief, and loss and the type of relationship you would like to have with them
-Use your reflections and journaling to begin writing a love letter to yourself and your story (stories) about death, loss, and grief
-Learn self-nurturing practices and tap into ancestral medicine you can use to support yourself when you experience death, loss, and/or grief
-Learn how to use the Thriving Mindfully framework to create a self-nurturing toolkit you can use when you experience death, loss, and/or grief
YOUR INVESTMENT – $125
Click the button below to register for the retreat that works best for you. Tell your family and friends to join you.
Change shows up in our spirit, heart (emotions), mind, body, relationships, career, and community.
Many of us resist change because we are afraid of it and/or want to control what’s happening.
When we resist it, change often becomes more messy, overwhelming, chaotic, and/or stressful.
What would happen if you learned to befriend yourself and change when it shows up?
If you’re interested in gaining tips on how to navigate change, join me for the Thriving Mindfully Circle, a monthly 30-minute session, that will introduce you to the Thriving Mindfully approach, a heart-centered awareness and approach to being present, well, and the REAL YOU no matter what’s happening.
Click the button below to register for the dates that work best for you. Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email from Zoom.
Each Thriving Mindfully Circle offers you a pay what you can option. All you gotta do is click the pay what you can button and select your own fee. No one will be turned away!
Join me on Saturday morning for a community meditation that offers space to remember our fathers, fathering folk, male ancestors, and inner father via Zoom. Click the button below to register.
The impact we make in our life, family, community, and career/business starts with how we love and care for ourselves.
During the early days of the global pandemic in 2020, I made a commitment and set an intention to press the reset button on how I love and care for myself in deeper ways.
My commitment and intention helped me lay the foundation to release my definition of success and embrace making an impact in my community and the world in small, medium, and big ways in 2022.
I talk about my personal journey of redefining success and realizing that making an impact is more important to me with Mindful Techie founder Meico Whitlock, my soul brothalove and accountability partner, on his Dear Mindful Changemaker Podcast.
During the episode, I share how my purpose is to impact one person per day through various means, such as coaching, art, prayer, and reiki. I emphasize the importance of using my gifts, talents, skills, and intuition to make a positive difference in someone’s life.
On May 12, 2024, journalist Maria Boynton, host of Atlanta Up Close on News – Talk 1380 WAOK-FM, invited Ananda Leeke to share what it means to mother yourself when you are grieving your mother.
Durng the interview, to Ananda discussed the peaceful transition of her mother Theresa B. Gartin Leeke and how she has used her Thriving Mindfully Academy’s five self-love languages to navigate her grief journey.
It’s May 3rd. Nine days away from Mother’s Day. The first Mother’s Day without the physical presence of my mother Theresa B. Gartin Leeke. Knowing this is about to happen has got me in my feelings.
CONFESSION: I’ve been feeling waves of grief rising up in my heart and body around experiencing Mother’s Day without my mom Theresa on Mother Earth since Easter Sunday.
On Easter, I decided to give myself more grace and space when these emotional waves of grief show up. I also decided to open my heart and seek out new ways of supporting myself. One of the new ways was signing up for grief doula and sound healer gina Breedlove’s Vibration of Grace weekend workshop at Kripalu Yoga Center (her book, The Vibration of Grace is awesome).
SIDE NOTE: I love that gina spells her name in lowercase letters like ntozake shange, one of my favorite African American woman creative sheroes and poets.
gina’s powerful workshop and the community of people I spent time with at Kripalu last weekend helped me get in touch with, reflect on, and express hidden areas of grief with the power of my own voice in singing, chanting, and using affirmations along with rituals, meditation, journaling, reiki, yoga, dance, and mindful walking and movement. What a blessing!
Today, I received a divine download after moving my body with my Barre3 community that invited me to honor and embrace my mom Theresa’s ancestral spirit, love, and legacy by becoming my own mother and exploring how I can use mothering to deepen my self-love and self-care birthrights.
Resource
Listen to the latest episode of the Thriving Mindfully Podcast that discusses how grief can call us to mother ourselves.
Over the past 30 years, I have learned that death, loss, and grief are master classes in surrender.
This year, I have learned how important it is to have a safe and sacred community to share how I am feeling, practice self-care, and receive support in my death, loss, and grief journey.
I am sharing the lessons I am learning and holding space for anyone facing death, loss, and grief during the monthly GRIEF + YOU 2-DAY RETREATS this year.
IMPORTANT: I am offering a special discount for the May 4-5 and June 29-30 retreats: a sliding scale with three options – $85, $105, or $125.
Click the button to get more information and sign up.
During the podcast episode, I discuss my Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority journey that started with being the daughter of Cultured Pearl Soror Theresa Leeke, great granddaughter of Soror Florida Jones Leeke (Grand Anti-Gramateus, 1927-29), and the great grand niece of Soror Lillian Jones Brown. I give a shout out to my dad John Leeke for being an SGRho Gent. I also share how joining Beta Tau Chapter at Morgan State University in 1983 changed my life.
The episode features my insights on mindfulness, self-care, and digital wellness. A mindfulness exercise and self-care tips are included.
Click the button to listen to the 16-minute episode.
Ananda Leeke 