As I slide into my new responsibilities and roles, I've been struggling with integrating my recent achievements. I was thinking about writing a new post about it, then I remembered this one I wrote over a year ago, pre-pandemic. What got me here, won't get me to my "Next". Here's to my new beginnings and my old dreams.
At 26, I’m learning that boundaries shouldn’t keep you barricaded behind thick walls, preventing access to and from the world around you. Boundaries should be your safety pack, assuring you that you’re in control, enveloping you in confidence and freedom as you explore your environment, your connections and your future. This year, I’m learning to integrate and flow.
Developing a better relationship with feedback means working on killing your ego, this idea that you can just birth your ideas as they appear in your mind, that good writing can be readymade. As soon as you start doing the actual work, you realize that storytelling is a complicated endeavor that shapes you as much as you shape the lines on the page. And as long as you keep doing so, the shapes will align and meld.
Being an Ayitian academic means that I get a chance to stand and fight for my freedom, to liberate my mind and illuminate others, using the measures and institutions within my reach, imperfect as they may be, to attempt to redress some of the wrongs done to my culture, some of the inaccuracies maliciously planted in my stories.
We raise children and tell them to look around the world. Everything that the light touches could be theirs. What we willfully neglect to tell them is that they’ll never access these lands by being themselves. Imagine a bedtime story from Mom: “And the princess lived the rest of her life worried whether her hair … Continue reading Code Switching: Social Survival or Cultural Suicide
What happens when you reach the next level? Of whatever you’re working on, whatever calls out to the core of your being? What happens when you’ve made it, after “faking” it for a while? What do you see? It always seems like we’re never quite prepared for it. Yes, we’ve visualized it, we’ve worked at … Continue reading New Beginnings, Old Dreams: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
In Haiti, the only seasons we know about are rain and shine. There’s no need to check the weather. If it’s going to rain, your senses alert you. You can smell the earth around you, the giant, menacing clouds chase all the blue out of the sky, and the leaves vibrate, performing a divine rain … Continue reading Find Flow: Lessons of the Seasons
I turned 25 on Sunday. It's a little surreal,to be honest. Just yesterday, I was urging my 18th birthday to come along. There's this eagerness to grow up when you're young. One simply could not wait. Adulthood, independence, respect, all beacons of the path to becoming our own person, free of the hold of the … Continue reading 25 Lessons Learned in 25 Years
The most uncomfortable moments in my life have always expanded my definition of reality and redefined my understanding of my abilities. Getting shaken to the core by my island, then cramped into a US Air Force plane to escape it, alone, at the mercy of pity and love, forward I moved. Then further North, to … Continue reading “But did you die tho?”: The Blessings of Being Uncomfortable
Ki moun ou ye? Kibò w’ soti? Pale m’ de lakay ou. Tout kote m’ pase nan lakou Lafrans, se kesyon sa tout nèg nwa ap poze m’. Lè m’ di America, yo gade m’, epi yo mande m’ anko. “Kibò OU soti wi m’ mande w’? Byenpetèt de lane anvan, si w’ te mande … Continue reading Ayiti ak Vodou: Kiyès Ki Aprann ou Pè Pwòp Tèt ou?
R.A.J. 