I’ve been a self proclaimed love-activist for almost 10 years. It wasn’t until the dumpster fire that was 2020 that I was actually initiated as a love-activist. After Covid, loss of income, the un-dealt with racial trauma home schooling brought up, Black Lives Matter, the rise in gender- based violence inflaming my un-dealt with sexual trauma, AND losing three people to Covid in one week, I had a mental break.

I threw in the towel unwilling to take another painful step. I asked, “What the F@%! do I do now?” I heard a small voice say; “Self-Sooth.” “Okay, how do I do that?” I asked annoyed. “By doing for yourself what you do for others, by loving yourself.” As a filmmaker, a creative entrepreneur and a chronic people pleaser I had given my all to building other people’s dreams. It was time to use that same zeal to heal myself, and so Conversations with a love activist was born.

Conversations with a love activist is a web-series where I, Chule the Love Activist document my heroine’s journey towards healing and radical self love. I had always felt discouraged when I heard successful people tell their stories of triumph. I wished I had seen their muddy escape from the trenches we are all stuck in. So I decided to share my story while it was still unfolding, unpretty and sensitive to the touch.

Any heroine on a journey towards slaying their inner dragons needs a sage. I needed three. I call them my counsel of wise wombs. My first wise womb was my mother, Nonkululeko Gobodo, South Africa’s first black, female charted accountant. We talked about healing from mother wounds and sex for African women. Second, my couples coach Shannon Pam, who solved a seven year fight between my husband and I in our first session. And lastly, Gogo Sophia, a Sangoma, integrated healer and womb priestess.

The womb is our second brain. It stores memory, emotion and trauma. It is also the seat of our libido, our drive to create, manifest and build our lives as we see fit. We live in a society that encourages body disassociation and so our disconnection with our wombs is the norm for many people. From a botched abortion, date rape, and a miscarriage; my womb was a minefield, I needed serious intervention.

In our first womb mapping session Gogo Sophia said four words that will echo forever in my mind “We are birthing ourselves”. I knew then that I was in trouble. Our four womb mapping sessions dealt with the four quadrants of the womb. I knew we would go deep, but I didn’t expect a Dutch, transgender woman from the 1800’s to force her way into one of our meditations. Watch the episode below to see how it transpired:

I am forever grateful to my Dutch transgender ancestor for showing up for me. I felt the trauma she endured by having to hide who she truly is. She demanded that I live my life as colourfully, loudly and as audaciously as she could not. And I hope I have become the dream she prayed for. I re-did the meditation recently when I was editing the episode and she appeared again, but she was different. Instead of the scratchy, grey pants and dull beige shirt they wore the first time now she adorned a bright orange, raw silk dress, a head scarf and a gentle smile to boot. That smile said, when we choose to radically love ourselves, that healing has a ripple effect into multiple planes of reality.

Sonya Renee Tailor, author of The body is not an apology says that radical self-love is our guarantee at fighting all manner of oppression. By disinvesting in the systems the promote self-hatred we inevitably change the world. Conversations with a love activist is my way of saying to myself and to us; I see you and know your story, your life and your love matters.

Watch “FYI” a visual poem by Chule the Love Activist below: