I am grieving the openness with which I once moved through the world. As I navigate the first few months of my 26th year around the sun, I am reminded daily that the world at large is a harsh place to be as a young woman coming into her own.

Last April I quit what felt like a dream job at first but slowing revealed itself to be somewhat of a nightmare. I won’t go into all the reasons I walked away but ultimately I realized that there was nothing I could do to fix the toxic dynamic with a supervisor who had all sorts of blindspots about their own abilities and politics. My exhaustion with the toxic dynamic finally led me towards quitting. Initially my frustration was only with my former supervisor, but as I slowly unraveled all my feelings around leaving, I realized that there was a bit of rage towards the management of the organization who knew how multiple women of color felt working under that individual and yet did not do anything to protect me from a similar fate. 

Before the pandemic hit, I was laying in bed with my best friend in the first few days of 2020 sharing with her how I felt my life would only go from good to better. I was in a good place personally, professionally, relationally. I lived in a city I loved, was making enough money to spend New Years on a warm beach town in West Africa, was healthy, felt like my social and financial capital was rising, my family was good, my friend circle felt solid. I was almost certain my dream school in my other favorite city would accept me as their doctoral candidate in Legal anthropology – on track to have two doctorate degrees before I turned 30. Even though I was romantically unpartnered, I still had a lot of hope and very little disillusionment about finding my person.

The other shoe had not dropped all of  2019 so I felt like I could stop waiting for it to drop. 

Just a few months after I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop and settled into the goodness of my life, we were hit with a pandemic. My dream school rejected me. My good job became even more toxic and hopeless, forcing me out. Everything that was a sure thing was no longer a sure thing. I moved back to my family home temporarily hoping I could wait out the pandemic and very quickly salvage a life that was falling apart, only for more things to crumble. And the crumble culminated in the loss of my last living grandparent. 

While still grieving the loss of a grandparent, I watched my friend circle slowly shift in ways I could not have anticipated – my best friend asked for space, another close friend switched up on me in a way that felt like a painful rejection. My relationship with my father shifted from a once close and intimate relationship to one where we merely acknowledged each other, through no fault of my own. A few romantic prospects that gave me reasons to smile in the midst of a really difficult year ended up leaving my heart more bruised than it was before those encounters.

The process of trying to find a new job in the middle of a pandemic was so brutal and dehumanizing that to preserve whatever shreds of professional confidence I had left, I chose to try my hand at entrepreneurship again. Something I had not been too successful at in 2016 and promised myself not to do again any time in the short term. 

For the first time since I emigrated at 13, I had the opportunity to celebrate a birthday back on the continent. Between school and work, having a birthday in early November makes for such awkward travel time so I have always celebrated my birthday in the U.S. It felt so memorable that 13 years after I left West Africa, I would have the opportunity to celebrate my 26th birthday on the continent. I was excited to do something special while observing covid protocol. Instead I spent my entire birthday week so sick I thought I was dying. Turns out a combination of salmonella, malaria, and liver inflammation was my birthday present from the universe.

Surviving 2020 felt like a full time job! One that has left me too exhausted for much else. And now faced with a blank slate of a year, it feels very daunting to feel hopeful for something beautiful. My therapist says facing the ruins will help me rebuild again and I trust her. But rebuilding feels like such hard work when there are no guarantees. Maybe one day I’ll look back and realize that in 2021 goodness visited me and stayed.

She moves slowly
Takes her time to really enter a space.
She is not careless, but her vibe is 
CANNOT-BE-BOTHERED.

A soft gaze reserved for her lovers.
A stern gaze for all others.
Her love is not unconditional
She makes no apologies
Fueled by 2 parts love, 1 part rage
Her hair holds history
her hips hold mystery
She is not to be possessed.
She is not your mule.
She is not your mule.
She is not your mule.
She will not be your salvation
she will not be your rehabilitation
She will not be your expectation
She is not yours.

Her body is hers to own
Her intellect is hers to enjoy
She belongs to herself
Enjoy her while you can
She will not always be here.

Story behind the poem:

I’ve been trying to capture what sensuality means for me into words for the better part of a year. It feels like an ethereal quality, a presence that can sometimes be confused for barely there-ness…but the reality is you are observing and taking things in. Noticing everything. Sensuality to me feels like enjoying myself. Like self ownership. Like indulgence in love, pleasure, passion and intellect.

Writing “sensual woman” was a reminder to those who try to possess her that she was never theirs to possess – only to be enjoyed.

I struggled with writing this poem a bit because these days my sensuality shows up as more loud than muted. I’ve been allowing myself to be seen more. More cleavage. More words. More real time access into my thoughts, and yet I wanted to writed to write about a more muted sensuality. The core parts of what sensuality mean to me. So I tapped into my ancestral wisdom. Specifically to my maternal grandmother Affiong. The firs few lines pay homage to her. A sensual woman who never really was showy or the loudest voice in the room.

“she moves slowly
takes her time to really enter a space”

Anyone who knew my grandma knew this to be true about her.

After I embodied her, it became easier to talk about myself. I became conscious of the ways I move through the world embodying my own sensuality, her sensuality, and my mothers sensuality. Three generations of women. Who show up in the world in completely different ways but have the same thread of sensuality flowing through them.

Join me on Patreon for content all month long around being a sensual, self loving woman.

Someone asked me recently how I cultivate self love and self compassion, here are a few things I shared about my personal practice:

1. Seeing myself as someone deserving of tenderness and gentleness
2. Being honest with myself about how berating myself isn’t a productive way to bring about growth and change. All things need light, patience, and kindness to bloom, including us humans.
3. Going back in time and writing letters to younger versions of myself. I realized that in retrospect I was actually really proud of those versions of myself even though at those times all I could focus on were the things I didn’t like about myself. I never want to look back in 30’s and feel bad about how I treated myself in my 20’s.
4. I wanted to become a safe person for myself, someone I could trust with all the extremes of my emotional depth

Happy New Year from the Motherland, where I’ve spent the past month frolicking under the sun, in warm bodies of water, in markets, with family, friends, at home in my First World.

Ending the decade and beginning a new decade on this note has given me the space to introspect, be quiet with myself, have challenging conversations with the people I love, and process my despair.

Here are things I am choosing to focus on in 2020

Peace.

Simplification.

Leaving room to be surprised by life.

Prioritizing goals that I find joy in the process of achieving,
not just in the outcome of achieving said goal.

More clear communication of my boundaries.

I wish us all a year (and decade) where our needs are met, where hope feels stronger than despair, and we are loved in the ways we want to be loved, by the people we love.

“Just because you can handle something doesn’t mean you are ready for it.”

This is a philosophy I’ve been pondering lately.

The connection to imposter syndrome, which is best described as the feeling that you don’t belong and are one step away from being discovered as a fraud.

Does our willingness to forgo that intuitive pause which may actually be our own knowing telling us that we are not ready actually set us up to feel imposter syndrome?

People these days expect too much from 20 somethings. We are supposed to know all the things without anyone mentoring us. We allegedly have lots of energy and passion and folks feel entitled to our passion being in service of them. We care about justice and equity which somehow means it’s up to us to fix messes we didn’t create. That is a lot to hold and for our own sanity, we have to know what feels too much and walk away from it until we feel ready.