A Peek Inside Her Agenda: Victory Jones

A creative powerhouse and visionary, she is both authentic and otherworldly. Victory is a woman of many layers as an artist and one of the co-founders of The Colored Girl and IMARA Retreat. The Colored Girl is a network of people and creative spaces that helps women attain holistic wellness through personal and professional development; with a mission to uplift, unite, and empower women worldwide.

Victory spoke with Her Agenda to share her wellness journey as a woman in the process of transitioning from one cocoon to the next. 

Her Agenda: How would you define 2020?

Victory Jones: 2020 has been the year of spilling and refilling as the moon mother, my friend, my dear friend Jasmine Verveille says. Releasing all the things I don’t need that don’t serve me, which takes a lot of practice because we’re not generally socialized to do that. We tend to hoard and cling to things. So I’ve been in a season of surrender and letting go in order to grow. [With this in mind,] 2020 actually was really great. For me, it was a blessing in disguise. The world finally slowed down to a pace where I felt like I can catch my breath.

Her Agenda: What have been some of your 2020 revelations?

Victory Jones: I’ve been having layers of awakening, it’s almost like an onion, like a cosmic onion that just keeps unfolding. I was a bit burned out in 2019. I was physically ill because of it. I was limping, traveling internationally, doing all this work with The Colored Girl,  and limping around my entire life. I thought, what am I doing, I was on the brink of divorce and just feeling totally insane. When everything came to a grinding halt due to the pandemic, and everything got flipped, it was like, ‘oh my god, this is the blessing that I’ve been asking for!’ I say this because at the beginning of 2019, end of 2018, I wished I could just take a year off to breathe. Even though I’m still working this year, it’s been a lot more about being and slowing down and resting.

A big part of being is resting in addition to nourishing yourself and being playful and things like that. But those are things that haven’t been necessarily valued in our masculine dominated society, the patriarchy doesn’t necessarily value that. What’s beautiful about this time is that the matriarchy is flipping the script. It’s coming back in a divine way to kind of say, hey, there’s a balance needed here, we’re not going to be silent, we’re going to show up, and we’re just going to be in our divine essence.

Her Agenda: What do wellness and alignment look like for you now?

Victory Jones: You can’t have one without the other. That means living with intention. We’re making conscious, mindful, deliberate choices about everything and for me, that is steeped in ritual, which is the foundation of my discipline, which is the springboard for my freedom. You have to make your own rules, learn them before you can break them, reshape them, rework them. I’m not here to learn anybody else’s rules. Unless it’s something I’m going to learn to then turn around and remix to put into my own bag. 

Everything I do, from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, is intentional. That doesn’t mean I have a spiritual planner or a rigid schedule. It’s more like the first thing I do in the morning when I wake up when I open my eyes before I even think or say or do anything I say a silent thank you. Thank you is a complete prayer just like no, is a complete sentence, you don’t need to follow it up with anything, just thank you. I kind of let myself hang out in that liminal space between waking and dreaming or resting. I start to meditate. Then I walk my dog and it’s very mindful, I walk my dog, I make coffee and or tea, whatever my morning hot drink is. I sit and journal, read and get ready for the day, and even my yoga practice, every single thing that I do throughout the day is very intentional. 

There’s a level of mindfulness and conscientious energy that I put behind it to refill and pour into my own cup. I can then do what it is I need to do so I can bring about the things in my life that I would like to manifest and that doesn’t mean my life is perfect. I know just by being and doing these things, I’ll be able to have anything that I want. A lot of my day now is flipped. Most of my days used to be spent doing doing, and that’s how I got burnt out and it wasn’t in alignment, being me is being who I am uniquely designed to be. Burnout is there to show you the negative consequence of something physically, spiritually, energetically, however you want to cut it, that you’re not in alignment, something is not right.

Her Agenda: What does gratitude look like for you in this season?

Victory Jones: It’s a way of life. I’m just thankful for everything, even the parts that “suck.” I’m just grateful for everything, because it’s all a fabric, it’s all part of the fabric of my journey. Gratitude looks like prayer, gratitude looks like meditation, gratitude looks like laughter and it looks like play. It looks like when I hit my yoga mat, and just let my body flow. When I create an amazing meal when I walk my dog and just have these moments where I’m touching trees, or just literally talking to God. I use my dog walks as meditation/prayer time. 

Gratitude is everything. Its energy is some of the highest vibrations that we can embody. It probably supersedes love in certain ways.

Her Agenda: How are you filling your creative bucket right now?

Victory Jones: I’m a producer of a lot of amazing and inspirational things. Songwriting happens all the time I write poetry as well. I’m working on a poetry book and meditation album that will be offered together as a bundle, I’m playing around with some cool things with my voice and my body working on ways to share experiences and information in a way that has been imparted to me through yoga dance or sacred movement. I’m using my voice in new and different ways. 

Her Agenda: What advice do you have for someone who is in the middle of their own breakthrough?

Victory Jones: First thing, give yourself grace! The same grace you ask God to give you and the same grace you give to a child, give that to yourself. Practice patience and kindness with yourself that will segue into learning how you care for yourself better. Which will then rollercoaster into ‘hey I like myself, I love myself, I honor myself, I revere myself.’ How you do one thing is how you do all things. If you can cultivate that within yourself that means that is how you will live your life within and with every other thing and person you encounter. You can’t give what you don’t have. Start with grace with yourself. Part of the surrender is the unknown. The letting go is where the magic happens and you need to be okay wherever you are in the moment and give yourself grace. Never forget “to thine own self be true” [a quote from] Shakespeare. Know that you are unique, you can’t compare gauge or judge based on anything external. Just sit and listen to yourself! Give yourself grace!