Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

We started this year in an inescapable cycle of suffering. We were also exhausted. Until we decided to claim some power over everything. We started to asked ourselves questions like what periods of growth have we wasted? What moments of gradual growth? Those that came unexpected and wild. Those unnamed and mild. Or what moments of gratitude have we buried away, tucked deeply beneath piles of days, as unmeasurable as sand? What experience of grace have we lived through unknown? What endless moments of grace did we keep to ourselves in endless covert ways even when the truth was unavoidable to ourselves.

These questions, on growth, gratitude and grace are how we choose to meet ourselves eye to eye these days as we recall how we hurled ourselves full force through 2023.

We lived through some crazy growth periods, did so with grace as we learned to be grateful to ourselves and all the experiences that came our way. We did so our way. Establishing authority too over our own story, giving our experience all the attentive concern we deserved knowing it can only be grace.

We also affirmed our own worth this year. If last year was our most ambitious year, this year, our most worthy year, one where we did as Audre Lorde once suggested and committed to our own survival for ourselves and those we call our own.

It meant we learnt what it means to know our worth and genuine possibilities. We learnt why we could never settle for anything less that a rigorous pursuit of the possible in ourselves. It meant we recognized our success. All of them that remained unknown but came to the front and spoke eloquently for themselves. We also learnt to be tender with ourselves, remembering that failure is only dreams deferred for a woman built and led by dreams.

We saw our selves this year. Saw ourselves boldly too. Without fear or condemnation, without prejudice or dismissal. We were patient with the days that made sense. Kind and full of understanding for those that didn’t make any sense. We recognized when life made sense on its own, appreciating every single way it told a story of its own. We learned to love all we have birthed, learned to be kind but demanding to things that were not of us.

The year taught us that people will change. Those you once called your own and those who pretended to come along. The emptiness of their ways couldn’t be covered anymore hence the need to grow beyond their ways. We feared change more and slowly less this year. At first it was debilitating. The idea of starting afresh. But time had other ideas that only it could nurture on it own.

So in time, we laid to rest aspects of our story that was weak. They part on higher glory the weakest. 2023 meant we lived through the roughest and toughest part of our time in academia and somehow survived it all. The protection and support of this survival is sacred these days. The power of our hand in all this is profound. The ability to make something, out of nothing, in celebration to with another for whom we are also prepared to make something out of nothing is the reason why power is always female. I learned that squarely in 2023 with the women now surrounding me. If we were uncertain, without voice, agreeable, timid, and invisible before, know that when a woman knows her worth, light will keep on breaking…

So for those on the journey to the new year, welcome to our most powerful year where only the things that make our hearts sing are allowed.