Rage Writing & Radical Reflections

“I am because we are,” or ubuntu, has always been sacred to me. I have often understood it as a reminder of our shared humanity and that we are not meant to survive alone, that our lives are bound together, that we need each other. After my trip to Ghana, ubuntu hit differently. Standing on the land where so many were taken from, I felt something shift in my spirit. I thought about how American Black people did not come from chains. We came from beautiful brilliant, rooted

There’s a bridge of sacred bricks connecting land and self to ancestry and accountability. Original Ground made this accountability unavoidable. It forced me to ask, “Who am I honoring with my life and my work? Whose sacrifices make my breath and ‘freedoms’ possible? Whose dreams am I carrying forward?” The Original Gift, knowing myself in my fullness and freeness, is attached to my inheritance. It’s the ability to see truth clearly and refuse to look away.

Being on Alkebulan/African soil did not send me searching for direction in the way I initially hoped it would. It validated that I'm already on the path I am meant to be on. A path led by my heart and shaped by my truth. One that has never promised ease and comfort but has always led me toward radical meaning and continued (r)evolution.

I was surrounded by Black people under a sun that seemed to recognize me. The warmth on my skin felt less like heat and more like a hug… familiar, welcoming, affirming. I had traveled far. I was jet-lagged. My days were packed from morning to night, trying to take in as much as I could in just a few weeks across multiple cities in Ghana, and two other countries, Togo and Benin. And yet, I was never physically fatigued. Not once. Every day was exhilarating.

Before I ever went home to Africa, I ‘d been well on my journey of coming home to myself. Not the version of me shaped by credentials, contractual agreements, deliverables, or funding cycles. Not the version trained to contort my truth into language that institutions could tolerate. I mean my truest self that existed before I was conditioned. Before I learned how to survive respectability politics and how to soften my rage or intellectualize my grief.

Not much in my life has unfolded for me in a straight line, my journey of liberation especially. It spirals, loops, and sometimes revisits places I thought I had already passed through. And with each time I feel deeper clarity and sharper truth. When I visited Ghana to end 2024 and begin 2025, it was not a culmination or completion of my liberation story. It cracked it wide open!