Liberated Love Notes

✨I love the beautiful work of facilitating Black affirming & [un]learning spaces. Part of that work involves asking ourselves some real questions like, "How does anti-Blackness show up in me?"

Far too often, our understanding of these dynamics and behaviors are limited to the most overt caricatures-- think Uncle Ruckus from Boondocks.

We know better, though!!...

Last week, I invited learners and members of my subscriber community to ask themselves some questions--questions that need answers-- on their journey to "return to love."

bell hooks' invitation to "return to love" is the inspiration behind one of my current offerings, "A Return to Love & Liberation," a community centered, liberation focused learning experience for Black Leaders and Change makers. Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to test the offering with Black leaders and ERGs, and am finally considering a public offering!

In the meantime, swipe... tap in and stay connected for more: https://lnkd.in/g-VtZBAv

What said 🖤✨🙏🏽

“It’s okay to do less, when you are coping with more.”

I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and rested. Before I even got out of bed, these words, affirmations… somethin’ like a Liberated Love Note came to me:

✨I will not allow the ways of this world to stifle my imagination. I am not distracted by excessive cynicism that drowns out hope and limits my ability to reimagine different.

✨I feel free to imagine and to create beyond the limitations of whiteness, these systems, the norm…and projected limitations others.

✨I am divinely gifted. Brilliance is within me.

✨I am intentional about finding places, spaces and people who are fertile ground for the seeds I strive to plant. My ideas will flourish. My brilliance will bloom.

I felt like I needed the reminder…perhaps you do too 🖤✨ … Which one speaks to you the most?

I wrote this Liberated Love Note a little over a year ago. It feels prophetic, a timely, loving reminder in this season.

✨In a world where “status” and proximity to whiteness and institutions are used to qualify our worthiness, this level of clarity around our identity and inherent worth feels like…. resistance. More of this 🖤✨

“I am not my work, and my work is not my worth. My worthiness is inherent. My worth is not contingent on my salary, what tasks I accomplished today, or white people’s perception of who I am.”

“God and our beloved ancestors … Grant us with the clarity, consciousness and commitment to loving accountability to engage in the work that allows us to fully reimagine how we BE in community with each other.

We know these systems of oppression run deep, and trauma is real … Still, we deserve to unlearn, heal, remember…and as bell hooks call for us to, “return to love.”

Grant us the fortitude and “resilience,” that we’re often forced to activate in harmful white spaces, to work through THIS work. A beautiful work that invites us to retire the “master’s tools” for our own divine toys so we can truly reimagine different.”