Ode: to the Gal in the Mirror
This place in the mirror has been sacred ground to fill with wonder and winding hips, wetness and weirdness in toe.
Unpacking Your Purse
The more conversations I have with Black women, women of color, and other marginalized folks in the workplace especially, the more I realize how many of us carry more than we should and how often we need a space and safety to put down our purses, or at the very least unpack them.
Little Things On the Way to Healing
Expertly rangling in the chaos into a mounted beast that carries me back to the space where this may have begun. Into the silent sanctuary, with air peppered with sorrow and grief. I sway sorting lullabies from spells, crooning softly in the waning moonlight. I collapse into 96 pieces of me and all the others I carry inside. I heal with a million little things on the path from now til then.
She/They: On the Tensions of a Black Non-Binary Femme-hood
Part of being lonely is being an outlier. Loneliness can be a fuel, a mirror; a powerful place for development and self-understanding. It can also be isolating, having no one else to talk to and affirm who you are and what you believe.
Taking Up Space
Working from home during a pandemic has allowed me to create a safe space from which to operate and engage on topics that often lead down emotional or defensive roads. I haven’t had to think about all of the pressures and perceptions and performances that go along with being a Black woman in a homogenous office.
Finding Your Place at Work
As I’ve begun to coach and support more Black and Brown people at my place of work, I hear that resounding echo of “these are not my people.” “They don’t value the same things I do.” “I’m made to feel that my way of being and doing is not welcome.” “I’m made to feel that I do not belong.” “I’m made to feel grateful that I even have a chance to stand in the room, not to mention a seat at the table.”
Meaningful Work
For a second, good news doesn’t feel so good when you can’t share it with the someone you want to share it with the most. Today would have been my dad’s 73rd birthday. And I’m feeling deeply connected to him in this time of transition and revelation.
Histories
Over the last few years, I’ve started pressing record whenever my grandmother enters the room. A small brown woman, toasted almond brown from an afternoon nap in the sun, perched amongst a cloud of decorative pillows poised for comfort or stability. There’s always a story in her eyes, an “I know more than I’m saying right now” look in swimming behind her stylized spectacles.
Black Woman, Interrupted
I’ve been trying to wade through the deep sea of interruptions, the toll I pay economically, socially, spiritually, mentally, and generationally to be a proud Black woman.
For Audre and Toni
She gave me anger, glory, goodness, resistance, and love in the tragedies she surmounted. She unfolded my girlhood so that I could be woman today.
The Return of the Lonely Black Girl
This is in part a confession: I’ve called myself lonely and I realized I haven’t been.
I Want to be Pursued Vigorously
Don’t let go, for a galaxy such as mine cannot be contained or set free.
Fear
If I can’t see what’s ahead for 2 miles, I’m definitely going into defensive granny mode. Especially at night. I’m one to slow down for every shadow and unseen curve.
This has been pretty true of the way I move throughout my life every day. I have a comparably low tolerance for uncertainty and chaos. I love spontaneity but only when it’s at a controlled pace. I want to call it to caution but it’s really just fear; fear that can sometimes cause me to forget how beautiful the chaos of life can be. And how often that chaos brings you to a person or thing that you love.
Entanglement Theory
I have this running theory that we’re all still connected. Some stronger than others. It’s really not my theory, it’s biblical, or at least partly religious. Essentially emotional, physical, mental connections with another person form unspoken bonds.
“What does it mean to defend the dead?”
Social death is the condition of not being accepted as human. It is the condition of being Black. But I am here, aren’t I?
Thoughts on Tennis
The capacity and strength to process your way through, allowing yourself to feel all the frustration, all the anger, all the fear to fuel a greater blooming. This is more than finding a silver lining. It’s about accepting the feels as they come, allowing them to wash over you, to consume you, and then finding your consciousness within the emotional climax, channeling it into something new.
Self-Celebration
May 20 was supposed to be a day that celebrated the closing of my chapter at NYU: holding commencement ceremonies with my family, friends, and peers. Instead, it’s a day that represents healing and a deeply reflective self-celebration.
What COVID Teaches Us About Diversity andInclusion
As we begin to imagine beyond the current crisis, this conversation guide offers a way to evaluate current COVID-19-related decisions and to consider how diversity, equity, and inclusion factor into recovery and transition plans and the evolution of the workplace in the post-COVID-19 world.
I’ve Been Typing Up Toxic Texts
Combing through words like a thicket of jungle vines, paws tracing her steps in the soft earth.
On Black Optimism and Other Forms of Magic
Black Optimism that offers an even brighter stain of hope on this grueling exploration of Black/Human. Blackness is “walking in another world while passing through this one.” It is a state of disorientation, of being and unbeing at once.