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January 31 - February 6, 2022
I’ve taken risks, led a spontaneous life, explored artistry, and ebbed and flowed through loss and glory.
I’ve found it necessary to balance the desire of wanting my becoming to end with an arrival that is solid, stationary, and concrete with the reality that it is more malleable than this. If we are taught that our becoming must be like the traditional story with a beginning, arc, and singular ending, becoming can feel limiting. We want our stories to end with a final understanding, but sometimes there is no clear-cut ending. Instead, it might be “to be continued” or “and so . . .” or “but yet and still.” Because even in our becoming, and in our arrival, we are still learning.
Our ancestors’ bread crumbs offer information about what patterns we’re meant to heal. And just as we inherit trauma, I believe we also inherit healing.
Instead of insisting on inclusion in spaces that were never meant for us, we need to invest in creating stronger Black-owned ecosystems.
holistic investment in Black institution building. It’s an investment in our continuity and autonomy.
“There are three things to leave behind: your photographs, your library, and your personal journals.
No human being goes through this life unscathed or untouched by an experience that forcefully demands that we pause, that we reflect, that we change. It’s honest, unabbreviated stories that have the power to build a bridge.
When you share your story, even if it’s with one person, you’re guiding them over the sacred bridge of understanding.
Coming home to myself is about accepting all of my former selves, accepting my emotions, and accepting my feelings, because they can either serve or master—they can either control you or you can control them. It’s realizing that I have a place anywhere I choose because I myself am home.
what are you willing to do to get what you want from life? It’s one thing to be a dreamer, but to be a dreamer and an executor, that takes a drizzle of madness and a ton of determination.
The more I understand myself, the more I relate the idea of home not to a place but to a feeling of being understood—beyond
I search for my father in men and in places where he has never been.
went through the motions with a muddled understanding of what I was losing by being too flexible and too submissive to the hope of being loved back. My relationships were not reciprocal. They distracted me from trusting myself and thus from loving wisely.
unpacking my patterns of choosing grace for others over grace for myself,
if we’re not decisive about boundaries
that preserve our peace, we continue to be susceptible to unnecessary pain.
Through relationships, I’ve learned so much about myself, as they have been a mirror reflection of the areas of life that I value and where I need to improve. Love requires you to show up in ways that are unraveling and raw.
love for me feels like peace and joy. When my peace has been distracted, it’s hard to get back on track. I value my peace and my joy and want to extend those things to the people I love. Our intuition is strong enough to tell us when either is feeling off-kilter. It feels like unrest and like there’s a war happening internally in our spirit when peace and joy are missing.
I honor my isolation and make room to hear myself, but I also make room for companionship and fellowship.
For so long I believed I was loved because of the way I showed up and took care of others rather than loved simply because of who I am and just being present in the world.
I didn’t trust love as a constant in life and unconsciously developed a belief that one has to work hard and achieve a lot in order to create emotional safety and have love that lasts.
we can’t condemn the areas of ourselves that still need work—we need to come to terms with them to get to a place of having more compassion for ourselves.
We can use relationships as a place to cultivate a skill. Self-compassion and vulnerability are skills we have to practice.
What I’ve learned most in my journey of entrepreneurship, and especially in this season as both the context of the world and my personal desires are changing, is that it’s okay to let things go. It’s okay to pivot.
“If it doesn’t fit, then work on trying to find something that does and don’t persist in bullshit.”
don’t have to project the future. I don’t have to be consumed with knowing what’s ahead. I can just be and be comforted and confident that how I show up in the world is all She needs to carry me through.
Being intentional for me means nothing can get past me without my conscious approval of its purpose in my life. It means getting our vertical alignment right, from God to our hearts to the direction of our feet before looking out to the world for answers.
