Instagram story viewer> @therealreginalouise> Posts

Regina Louise

@therealreginalouise

17.2K

followers

3066

following

Saying What Wants to be Said
Available for Bookings / Collaborations 🌹
S U B S C R I B E — Now
⬇️

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Today, while resting my speaking voice, I read a few reflections from poet @davidjwhyte.

He began with a contemplation on resentment. While I appreciated his approach, I decided to listen to my own heart’s reflection on the matter.

I teach about resentment, and yet it still burdens me from time to time. These days, however, I’m more likely to speak up—which can sometimes stir resentment in the person who would rather I remained silent…

#worldmentalhealthday

Place a 💛 iykyk what I mean

#ohwell #forgiveness is #poetry too by @therealreginalouise

3

5

5 days ago

To everyone who joined today’s workshop: thank you. We held space, opened our hearts, and trusted the experience as best we could.

We stepped into the myth of us—to explore what we believe, what we might reclaim, and which old stories keep making us smaller.

A little curiosity. A little courage. Room to imagine ourselves anew. 🤍

#myth #poetic #women #transformation #sunday by @therealreginalouise

3

9

11 days ago

Today I’m feeling some emotional backdraft. As a super empath I sometimes forget about myself and that I, too, need tenderness.

Even with the boundaries I’ve learned to honor, there is room for a healthy fragility. The kind that reminds me where my edges are. That I am human. That I, too, need somewhere soft to land.

And then this—My friend asked her mother to make this blanket just for me—to give my book another form. And I keep thinking about the time. The gathering of the pieces of pink. The choosing, arranging, stitching. Someone holding something I made in her attention long enough to make something I could hold.

An archive I can wrap around myself.

It feels as though the gift saw me before it arrived. As though it knew today would be today, and that I would need this different kind of belonging.

Today, I’m letting myself feel what I feel. And beneath it all, wrapped in this beautiful offering, I can almost hear the ancestors reaching through the backdraft:

“We got you. You are doing your best. We see you. You are right where you’re meant to be: here loving and being loved and growing. Keep believing in you, and God.”

Thank you @dominique_samari and @diannewilliams1502 😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️🌹🌹🌹

#god #goddess #poet #poetry #tender by @therealreginalouise

3

9

10 days ago

To be On

Purpose is to begin with belonging: I am here.

My life has meaning.

I have something to give.

Then we give that meaning form through our choices—generosity, benevolent witnessing, creating, protecting dignity.

I had a full week, this week.

Several times, many moments I asked myself what I was doing; I wanted to make sure there was “juice still left in the squeeze”; I noticed how light shone from above a gathering of redwoods, casting its magnificence on a winding set of stairs and witnessed nature’s beauty, bashfully, beckoning me towards her; I held space, more space and even more space when I was beyond depleted yet, more was required; I also awakened to the reality that I don’t play as much as I once did, three years ago…

I’m planning to play, on purpose, PERIODT!

How ‘bout you?!

#play #purpose #teacher #unladylike #tired by @therealreginalouise

3

12

13 days ago

Maybe I wasn’t loud enough
Maybe it wasn’t bad enough
Maybe I didn’t say it the right way, scream it the right way
Maybe nobody came because
I never happened

External absence
Becomes internal
Doubt

#maybe #poetry #or #poet #doubt by @therealreginalouise

3

3

20 days ago

Mythopoetic Writing Workshop

WHAT: 📖✍🏽
WHEN: October 4th
WHERE: ZOOM
DEETS: DM for 🔗 by @therealreginalouise

3

4

21 days ago

This workshop invites participants to approach one manageable life experience through image rather than explanation.

#mythopoetic #writing #exam #poetry #poet

Thank you for the inspiration @rhondaiscreative by @therealreginalouise

3

11

23 days ago

🌸UNLADYLIKE
✒️Poet: Regina Louise
💫Rating: 5/5

🌸Some poetry asks you to admire it. Unladylike asks you to sit down with it—and, occasionally, squirm a little. Regina Louise’s collection is raw, intimate, angry, funny, sensual, spiritual and deeply personal, but what stayed with me most was how deliberately she uses language. Nothing feels overly polished for the sake of being “poetic.” The poems often sound like someone thinking, remembering, confronting and finally saying the thing she was never allowed to say.

🌸The recurring theme of reclaiming the self is what makes the collection so resonant. Louise keeps returning to women who have been silenced, abandoned, labelled, desired, controlled or taught to make themselves smaller. In “Hope Is a Rope,” she writes, “I am / the grip, / the reach, / the spine—” and that almost childlike simplicity makes the idea hit harder. There is no elaborate metaphor needed; the woman becomes the thing holding herself up.

Read full review on aliveshadow.com.

#bookpost #bookstagram #bookreview #booksbooksbooks #trending by @therealreginalouise

43

3

22 days ago

Last night…

Three years and some change came down to two hours and some conversations that needed to be had.

Fear was afoot. In my learnings I’d heard the whispering of folks telling on poets who look down their noses at others audacious enough to call themselves…poets.

“It’s a bit of a persnickety group,” I was warned. Terrified. I wrote any damned way.

Nothing I’d read had delivered me from the curses of what it is to be first an orphan and secondly illegitimate. It’s my responsibility to legitimize myself.

And so, off I went, pen 🖊️ in hand ✍🏽 listening to the exiled ones, the forgotten about ones, the lost ones, the found ones who’d forgotten how to use her words ones, the small ones, the teenaged ones, the giving up on hope ones, the obedient ones, the ones filled with self-doubt ones, the “take all of me as long as you love me” ones, the hungry ghosts ones, the damned if do, damned if I don’t ones, and all the ones whose names I have forgotten about ones…

All of us made an appearance last night.

To @wyllisabennett I am humbled by your transparency and preciousness that was in the room. I am forever grateful to you. For the poet laureate @rhondaiscreative WOW… thank you for naming what I didn’t have the courage to say. Representation is essential no matter what anyone says and at any age. You are the gift of the night

@jaybeegle @romuraroo I am still in awe that you showed up, that you got into L.A. traffic and made it on time no less. I’m speechless. I love you both.

Marie Green
CeCi
Elaine

You drove from Riverside. I bow to you

@legacymakerllc Your generosity of spirit? Hands down unmatched.

@leadersinthespotlight I am still delighted at your arrival. It means A LOT! I LOVE seeing your beautiful smile. Thank you🌸🌸🌸

@candicekislack thank you for the inspiration for this post.

Lastly @octavias_bookshelf and Karinhe. Because I chose to be both author & publisher for this poetry collection, no other bookstore has agreed to host me— yet…you didn’t flinch. Thank you for the gift of last night’s reading and launch, Nikki. Without you, none of it would have happened.

#community #poet #poetry #poetrycommunity by @therealreginalouise

3

16

a month ago

Today—

I sat with the aftermath of the beautifully intense workshop I facilitated as an @hoffmanprocess teacher.

For myself, I recognized that the scar may remain, but it no longer has to become a shrine.

I can honor what happened without building my home around it.

I can let the story belong to me without continuing to belong to the story.

Forgiveness is not how I find my way back to you.

It is how I stop leaving myself for you.

#forgiveness #compassion #heal #unladylike #kindness by @therealreginalouise

3

18

24 days ago

My colleague @ajhorning met me with a congratulatory message this morning. I was grateful. I’d also awakened from a restless night of sleeping at a 45-degree angle so as to breathe more easily.

After my second round at @kaiserpermanente urgent care, I got what my body wanted and needed.

In the throes of it all I completely lost track that it is officially PRESALE day for my hard won first-ever poetry collection. I’m completely lost in appreciation and gratitude.

Whether or not I sell a book, the true “sell” is to my central nervous system. To break the #traumabonding that operates as the 6th love language. I fully own it.

I commit to no more harm done to myself. Join me if you like.

🔗 is in bio

#unladylike #poetry #poetrycommunity #poetryastherapy

Life as an @hoffmanprocess teacher 🫶🏼 by @therealreginalouise

3

17

3 months ago

Our voices go skidding across a love language that has no subtitles.

Then Bach enters, and suddenly I hear the grief beneath the language—the longing, the want, the unbearable “how” of it.

How want has its own trajectory.

As though it is moving toward something that is also calling it forth—something the conscious mind cannot necessarily name or understand. And so we trust the gut. We trust the microbiome, the enteric nervous system, the ancient inner spheres that interpret coordinates before language can reach them.

But sometimes the gut is intuition, and sometimes it is attachment memory.

Sometimes the body recognizes an old emotional climate and mistakes familiarity for belonging.

Sometimes what feels like a calling is the nervous system trying to complete an unfinished journey.

And sometimes it means we stay, even when we know logically that we are no longer welcome.

Not because we are foolish.

Because the longing is real.

The destination simply isn’t.

#unladylikepoetrybook #want #bach #desire #memory by @therealreginalouise

3

0

a month ago