Nala Simone

Seven days later and I’m still floating.

Atlanta gave me more than a graduation. It gave me language for the kind of leadership, faith, community, and becoming I’ve been wrestling with over the past two years.

La Mesa stretched me deeply through intimate conversations, theological reflection, community accountability, and transformative relationships. Over these two years, I found myself engaging the work and theological frameworks of authors and scholars such as James Cone, Delores Williams, Emilie Townes, Marcella Althaus-Reid, Renita J. Weems, and Marlon M. Bailey — wrestling with liberation, embodiment, kinship, ritual, survival, and sacred community.

This Mother’s Day weekend, those lessons felt embodied.

I was surrounded by a matriarchal circle of care — aunties, sistahs, spiritual mothers, organizers, and loved ones across generations, traditions, and practices. Caribbean memory sat beside African-centered ritual, Indigenous-centered practice, and Christian prayer without demanding sameness from one another.

During this same journey, I also underwent initiation within my matriarchal circle and received an additional sacred name rooted in stewardship, dignity, lineage, communal care, and spiritual responsibility.

And honestly?

I’m still becoming. ✨

I graduate today 🙏🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾

https://candler.emory.edu/about-candler/events/commencement/ #:~:text=Commencement%202026&text=The%20Candler%20School%20of%20Theology,United%20Methodist%20Church%2C%201660%20N.

Commencement Candler 2024 Commencement information

i was still tender…
but i wasn’t hiding.

my body was feeling everything.
and i still showed up.

to serve.
to study.
to stay in my practice.

some days i was grounded.
some days i was just getting through.
both were real.

i’ve been walking my spiritual work a little slower, a little more honest.
letting what i’m learning actually touch how i live.

the care around me shifted too.
quieter. more consistent.
no guessing.

i’m still in it.
just not where i was before.

part two of photodump Feb - March

There’s something about learning how to laugh in the middle of it all…
not because life has been gentle,
but because I’ve become fluent in holding both.

Sweetness didn’t come to me as softness alone…
it came as survival, as choice, as practice.
A kind of care that says: I will not abandon myself, even here.

I’ve learned from the waters that carry love,
and from the forest that carries memory.
From the quiet intelligence of things that grow anyway.
From the unseen that still finds a way to speak.

And somewhere along the way,
I remembered to celebrate myself
not for perfection,
but for making it here with my spirit intact.

Guided by reflection, by word, by witness. I’m still becoming something that chose to live.

And that… is worth honoring.

📸