September is a weekly podcast for Loveships. It explores the tools and technologies that build and sustain life-changing love relationships. Hosted by writer and facilitator Alexis Pauline Gumbs and artist and entrepreneur Sangodare Wallace, this intimate show draws on their 17-year partnership built on the premise of Loveship as a spiritual practice and Loveship as a resource in community.
From conflict and contrast, responsibility and repair, to emotional intimacy and navigating the ever-changing seasons of life, Alexis and Sangodare share insights that nurture not only couples but also families, friends, and communities.
Tune in each week for heartfelt conversations that honor relationships as sacred ground—an offering to ourselves, our people, our ancestors, and spirit.
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On this episode hosts Alexis and Sangodare discuss the literal, social and spiritual impacts of physical nourishment. They explore the idea that nourishment comes in many forms and how proper or improper physical nourishment affects how they show up in relationship. They discuss how food is a conduit to getting our needs met, and emphasize the self-care inherent to meeting this requirement.
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Because love is living with purpose, join us for our second Chrysalis Cohort this September! More info here:https://www.blackfeministfilmschool.com/offers/oKhBLdfo
Hi, I'm Alexis Pauline Gums. And I'm Shango Dari Wallace. And this is September, a podcast for love ships.
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We're two lovebirds who decided to intentionally create a love ship and share the insights we gather with the world.
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For the past 17 years, we've been relating to our love ship as a sacred space for spiritual practice.
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This podcast is our space to reflect on the insights we've found and been given with you.
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Whether romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between, okay, situationships, every bond has the potential to become an offering to a higher vibration for the world. One choice, one act of care, one repair at a time.
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So, if you're ready to think expansively about love, community, and spirit, you're in the right place. So glad you're here. Hey there, Shango Dare, you embodiment of Stomach is the way to your heart.
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Hi, Alexis, you brilliant, love-motivated chef. Even today you brought me breakfast in bed.
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And to keep it in balance, I'm also the one who sometimes won't leave the snuggle to make the meal. Just have our stomachs growling and talking to each other for many hours of a morning.
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And I'm also the one that is so particular about what I eat that very few people can find their way into my stomach to access my heart.
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So we are two cosmic, complicated, complicated people. And we are exactly as lovable as you.
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Happy birthday. Yeah, Chef Amelia, when we first had her food, it was like, oh my God. Not only did she accommodate 50-11 dietary specificities, the food was delicious. Pop pie. Now it's all vegan, gluten-free, soy-free. The best greens. Greens. Ooh, the macaroni and cheese. Yeah, and them Hoppin' John critters. Ooh.
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Mm-mm-mm-mm. It was like all that you have lost has been returned to you, vegan.
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And I was like, sister, where did you find her? I've been looking for years. I have not found this gift.
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Truly a culinary artist and just such a sweet spirit and wonderful to work with.
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Yes. Chef Amelia has trained in a number of healing modalities related to food from, you know, West Africa, Kemet, all over the world. And she is just a gift to us and our community. We're so grateful how she's so sweet and supported us and has fed so many of our loved ones. A lot of folks have gotten to be blessed by her food.
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And we're cheering you on as you build your farming practice and your nutritional skills. And we are just blessed by the healing power of how you love through food. That's right.
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And Chef Fresh, that's the homie. We met Chef Fresh on retreat, isn't that right?
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Mm-hmm. At the Blue Mountain Center. Yeah. And Chef Fresh 100% lives up to their name. That's right. Fresh to death in every sense of the word, but also an incredible farmer.
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Yes, ancestrally resonant food, you know, food from the Wayback Throwback.
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Greens and grits and really everything that you might want. And Chef Fresh is an incredible manifester, manifested their own farm, doing amazing work in Chicago with community, really, I think has transformed in our movements what people understand food justice to be. That's right.
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And then when we had our black, black magic, that's two blacks, black, black magic uh retreat here in Durham, uh, just after quarantine, wow, fresh came, held space, held us down. That's like the, I feel like the first transfestation of my multi-space retreat center vibe. And fresh blessed it once again with their genius.
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And made us a real New Year's Day, good luck meal. That's right. You know, the black eyed peas, the collard greens, the cornbread. We still getting good luck off of that meal. And that was years ago. That's right. And just a reminder we will do anything that supports you to write your cookbook. That's right.
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We're ready for it. Yes. Chef Amelia and Chef Fresh.
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We love you. Thank you for feeding us. Okay, so listeners, it's your opportunity to dedicate your time with us in this podcast to someone who maybe nourishes you in some way, culinary or otherwise. Take a moment and send some love.
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All right. Dedication launched. Ready to get into the heart of it?
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Let's grow. And guess what? It's still September.
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And every week we have lessons for you with North Stars from our journey and our teachers to guide you on your Bankhead Bounce, Chicken and Waffles Dance of Relationship as Spiritual Practice. And today we just drop by to remind you that nourishment comes in many forms.
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So, listeners, a few episodes ago, we talked about an experience we had on a luxury vacation where we were not nourished. But we really wanted to bring it into balance by creating an episode where we share gratitude and talk about the ways that we are nourished and prompt you to have gratitude for what's nourishing in your life and your relationships and also to think about what could be nourishing.
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Yeah. Yeah. And when I think about like what's most important to resource me to be, you know, a human loving, not just being, but a human loving in the world, loving in my relationship, nourishment is a big part of it. Like if I don't have the various forms of fuel and sustenance, that's food and water and other things that I need, it's really hard for me to show up as who, you know, who I want to be, who I need to be, who I intend to be. When I'm on a retreat, like to the best retreat spaces, the best hotels, the my favorite cities to go to are the places where I have been nourished well. Even if it was just the first two times and every time I've gone back, it's just been a hope, a wish, and a prayer. Hypothetically, I still, I still am just, you know, I fall so in love with the spaces that nourish me, you know, in in food, water, and other forms of hospitality.
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Yeah. I think that as a person and as a partner, we don't necessarily want to be dealing with the hangry version of the other person. Shango Dharaga calls it my safe mode. If I'm hungry or tired, all the things that make me fun to be around just go dormant until I get some sleep, some food. And I think that that actually is not only limited to these kind of basic standards of nourishment that we're talking about. Right. Right. I think that if I wasn't having enough access to breeding, you know, my favorite thing, I would be literarily hangry. Right. And I think we all have our version of something that nourishes us, that actually is as necessary to us, at least in terms of the the way it allows us to be a nice, kind partner, as food, water, all the things Shango Dari just mentioned.
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Yeah. And I think it's really important to express those boundaries and blessings around food, around all of the things, all of the standards that we have. And, you know, it can be a lot easier to maintain those at home for ourselves and for one another. But, you know, when you're out in these streets, when you're traveling, it becomes that much harder. And, you know, Alexis, I'm just really grateful for how you're a champion for me and how we get to be a champions for one another when we are outside of our home context, the space and place that we have created to nourish us. You know, like one of us might be in a restaurant, overwhelmed by the choices, or overwhelmed because we're so hungry. And the other one steps up to like hold space and be that champion. And I really value that. I value that in you, and I value that in my in other relationships. Even today I was out with a friend, and you know, it's like the time to make the request or wave down the waitress or whatever. You know, this those little things that really make us feel held and nourished, seen.
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The point is, listeners, that nourishment is fundamental. And so our sacred text for this week comes from Vertimae Smart Grovesner, food theorist, black woman writer, actor, star in many, many independent black films, and this comes from her book Vibration Cooking. Food changes into blood, blood into cells, cells change into energy, which changes up into life. And since your lifestyle is imaginative, creative, loving, energetic, serious, food is life. You dig? Welcome back to the 1970s. But this is this is a really fundamental text. And I remember watching the 1988 Essence Black Women's Writers Retreat. I feel like I mentioned this retreat a lot. I maybe if I mentioned it enough times, I'll be teleported there. She talked about a whole food opera that she was creating. And it was beautiful, and everybody in the room started singing along. Like it, it it's something that brings us together in our cultures, in our large groups, and it also is something that's fundamental in our relationships. But we're talking about nourishment today in a sense that's very connected to the way that Verda Verta May was mentioning it. Like it's connected to everything. And what else in our lives is a fundamental form of nourishment that actually transforms into energy in our relationships? Yeah, that's powerful. Something recently that's really been nourishing me is my daily early morning reading practice. So it used to be that I would get up in the morning, immediately look at my phone, figure out like what I was supposed to be doing, and uh probably practice Duolingo. And instead, I decided I wanted to start my day with literature that I'm interested in. So for a while I was reading Ursula Kay Le Guin's short stories. Right now I'm reading poems by the Jamaican poet Olive Sr. And it has become something that it feels like it's nourishing not only to my own practice as a writer, but just to the level and vibration of ideas that I'm starting the day with. So I think of that as this form of nourishment. You know, they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And also we've been hearing more and more from folks who talk about effective habits and mindfulness that what we do at the start of the day, whatever that is, that input is really important.
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Yeah. Yeah. I've been walk running with my friend Matisse. Shout out Coach Matisse. Uh longtime listener, even question asker in this podcast. That's right. Uh, and that's really been nourishing, you know, because it's so hot, we've been running early in the morning. And so we, you know, we walk, run for, you know, different intervals, and you know, we talk about, you know, whatever's there for us and what's up in that day, that week. And then we go and we uh do a timed journaling practice. You know, so we we each journal there together on our own, and then we chat a little bit, set the timer, journal again, and then uh we we keep doing that and move from journaling to work and you know, whatever collaborative projects we have, we might check in on those. And that has been really nourishing to have a consistent physical practice that, truth be told, I would not be doing if there was not someone um to show up and meet me there, you know. It's like I'm showing up for Matisse, although Matisse has been had they run in practice. So, you know. But yeah, it's like one of the highlights of my week. It's very, it's very nourishing. And to pull it into this sort of nautical metaphor that we we love, you know, the part of the ship where you get your nourishment is what's it called? The galley. The galley. And so this is an emergent pillar in our love ship paradigm, you know, the galley, the place that we go, be it a physical place or an energetic place, the systems, the ceremonies that really nourish us. And how do we support our partners, our loved ones, to get clear on what those are, to circle back when something needs to shift, you know, maybe I was, maybe I was uh lifting heavy weights in my 20s and 30s, and maybe now in my 40s, I'm walk running, like whatever, whatever it is. Um Yeah, I think that that galley technology is really important that we be and stay nourished.
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Yeah, when I think about what's in the galley for us and our love ship, I think that our daily practice of sharing our testimony and gratitude for what's going on in our lives is one of those things. I think our living room dance parties are really nourishment for our connection. I think that things like the Sunday revival services and community that we get to do together, and our public acknowledgments of each other. You know, those are all things that feed our relationship. And those are just a few.
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Yeah. I mean, I even think our tithing, our tithing is a nourishing process. So like we're we're sowing into the places where we receive our spiritual food, often elders, artists, you know, healers, spiritual teachers, um, and our quarterly mantra making practice, you know, and then chanting that or saying that to each other uh on a daily basis. I think that's those are also very nourishing.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And so folks listening who are in partnerships, maybe that could be an exercise to think about what's in your galley? What are the practices that feed your relationship, feed your connection to each other?
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All right. The first North Star is food is fundamental. What nourishes your body, mind, spirit, and how can you get clear on that and communicate those boundaries and blessings to your loved ones?
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Yeah, listeners. How can you infuse love into the actual food that you share with the people you're in relationship with? Our second North Star is pay attention to and protect those things that nourish you. What nourishes you to be your best self, and what nourishes your relationship.
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Our third North Star is you deserve to have your needs met. Make it a self-love practice to unapologetically acknowledge your needs, boundaries, and blessings, and those of your partners.
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All right, listeners. We hope you have a profoundly nourishing week. We're coming up on the last few episodes of this season of our podcast, and we're really excited about the ways that you have applied all of these technologies so far. That's right. Well, until next time, farewell. Thank you so much for listening to the September podcast. If this conversation spoke to you, we'd love for you to share it with someone who might need it. And don't forget to leave us a question to cover on an episode and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps more people find the show. Until next week, stay in the ship as an offering for yourself, your community, and our collective spirit.
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