I’ve lived my whole life in elgin.
I was born at St. Joe’s & my family has been here forever. My dad was the pastor of Spates Temple Church. After he passed away my half brother took over & now my nephew is the pastor there. On my mom’s side are the Wheelers - a big Elgin family as well. My grandfather, Eugene Wheeler, had a trucking company & did a lot with the city. Both the Spates & Wheelers are pretty heavy Elgin. But because my dad was a pastor, the church growing up was pretty much everything. As a kid, I grew up singing - it was the first creative outlet I had. In my head tho, I had a very rich half spiritual, half creative world of my own making.
I didn’t see myself as artistic or creative, but looking back, there were breadcrumbs - I was always making visual things. I was so focused on singing & work tho that that part of me got pushed aside. Then a lot of life stuff happened.
I managed a Fruitful Yield thru my mid 20s up till around 30. The stress of being a retail manager, for me, ended up being detrimental to my health. It seemed like it would be a healthy place to work, but it’s still mostly about money - it’s still capitalism. It was stressful, as it would be for anyone, but for me, it effected my health to the point where I could feel my spirit telling me ‘if you don’t quit this job you’re going to end up in the hospital.’ My body was shutting down.
So I quit my job at the end of 2019.
I had decided to use my savings & give myself a few months to just throw myself into creativity. My doctor had suggested that it would help my health tremendously if I start making things again. She had noticed I’d put everything creative aside & told me I would not be well until I started prioritizing creativity in my life again. To this day I really appreciate her wholistic approach & willingness to give me this advice.
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Looking back, I’m grateful I quit when I did, tho for months I had deep shame about it. There’s so many people in really rough situations that are out of their control. I quit my job & decided to follow my dreams. I’m in this situation bc I chose to be. If I hadn’t quit my job I would have been considered an essential worker & had all the additional stress that goes with just that. Piecing together work that felt safe was still a challenge during the pandemic, but looking back I’m grateful for the way I struggled.
I had wanted to get into photography for years & years but was too afraid to spend the money. I was freaked out to invest in a camera. But since I already quit my job & was living off my savings, I was like might as well fully jump off this cliff. So I bought my first camera in Feb of 2020.
I started practicing portraits. I also started making clay jewelry to relieve stress. I’d been taking classes at the Centre until they got canceled. I loved working with clay & making beautiful things with my hands. It was feeding my soul. One day I posted the jewelry I was making bc I was really excited about it. People saw it & got interested. Then @ableshoppe commissioned me to make a collection for them. Really all the things people are seeing from me right now, I just walked into within the last year in a more committed way.
I think I knew for a long time that this is my path. Working a retail job, I thought I had to grow up & leave all the deeply emotional, feeling parts of me behind. I thought growing up meant I had to make stable money, even if I didn’t enjoy it, but the trade off was I’d have benefits & wouldn’t need to rely on anyone else for anything.
Honestly, I had a lot of shame leaving that mindset behind. I had to work on believing that doing work that actually fills me up, in the end, will be more helpful to my community. I don’t have to be depressed & anxious & sick all the time. I wasn’t a great family member. I wasn’t a great friend bc I was always stressed out & depressed. The deepest part of me knew this, but it took a lot of work & reconditioning to try out the lifestyle I wanted.
Then I applied to this artist residency in Africa.
I pieced together the funding for this trip by getting grants, but also by selling my car & giving up my apartment. I saw it as a unique opportunity to learn how to combine my creative side & my spiritual/healer side. Growing up religious, my interest in healing & all the goes with that was a bit stifled. All the ways I naturally interact with the earth & spirit - I was conditioned to believe were outside the box of safety. They weren’t within the world view I grew up in which in turn left me feeling wrong & bad about it.
2012 was the start of my exodus from that world view. It was another instance where I felt like my spirit was calling me towards a more authentic path.
I started noticing the way I functioned within friendships & with people that I would meet - I was always a healer, tho I have a weird relationship with that word. For me reiki (I’m a reiki practitioner) feels very natural & normal. People have more access to themselves than they realize. My role as a healer, 1 on 1 & in the community, is really helping people see the divinity & agency already within them. It’s like lighting a candle to illuminate a spot they aren’t able to see otherwise. I think of myself more like a friend, or guide or mentor. rather than a mystical healer. I haven’t found a word that feels right just yet. The word “Healer” is just a starting place people seem to somewhat understand.
That’s a side of me that’s growing a lot - it’s why I’m in Africa - I love being a reiki practitioner, I love energy work. A huge passion of mine is digging deeper into indigenous practices & ancestral ways. Growing up they were always demonized, but now I’m on a path of demystifying those things for myself. I want to devote my life to making this accessible & understandable to every day people. All these practices are really natural & a part of our roots. I hope that we can learn to not be so afraid of them. I want to be someone who helps heal communities, specifically the Black community & this is part of learning how to do that. I would really love for everyone in our community to be able to tap into each of our own individual roots & bring our indigenous practices together into how we live our lives. To bring healing to our communities & ourselves. I’d like to be able to facilitate a physical space that fosters care of each other like this.
Ultimately, my biggest dream in life, is to be a 74 year old grandmother with gray locs down to my ankles, who sits on the porch & bakes cookies for the all neighborhood kids & all the parents in their middle ages come to talk about their lives & get love & advice. Obviously I’m still young - there’s a long way to go & a lot of learning to do, but that is where my heart is. I want to be a resource of healing & love to whatever community I’m a part of. My future ideal Atoi would be doing all those things.
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Favorite Elgin Spot: A quiet spot along the Fox River Bike Trail
Favorite Food Spot: EPH - I’m obsessed with their pickles
Favorite Place to Meet Up: Going for walks in downtown or along the riverwalk
Favorite Shop: Still Life Mediation
Atoi Spates is a photographer, reflector, healing space facilitator, jewelry maker, wanderer, wonderer & hugger. You can find her on IG at @atoi.glennette & her jewelry at Able Shoppe in Downtown Elgin.