Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

We are writing grants again. We began on Monday to prep for what maybe the start of a journey toward returning home. For the past 15 years all my grants have been global, focused on my birth country Nigeria. Lately, and because home is really Saint Louis, really the US, as I have spent most of my life here, the journey towards grants for the US is on. I expect the road to be bumpy. I have tried to write grants to continue my work in the US and they failed. But I am forever inspired by home and perhaps maybe, finally, the timing is right. So we are writing again. I am also learning I love writing with a group. It seems to nurture and nourish the process. So as any teacher would, I devised a week-long course for the next grant, brought some people along to write their own grants, and began the journey again.

This time though things are different. It’s only the start of day 3 and grants are like flowers to me. Unfolding all on their own. I found myself letting go so others lead while I opened up my process. In others words, the course I thought was designed to teach others how to write grants, is teaching me how I write grants. I am both a teacher and student, learning and listening, listening and learning to what may be my most vulnerable time when all the ideas begin.

The realization that I don’t know what is expected is clear. The careful way I read and read every single line in the RFA is evident. I am teaching and learning my own process that the past two days feels like a flower unfolding into its own. We began with dreams, talked about what we wanted to do, acknowledged that we may fail, but dreamed anyways, holding on to our dreams as Langston Hughes would want us too. These dreams began touching everything even as the course ended. We also closed with Lucile Clifton’s dreams are like smoke, hanging and touching everything. The next day, I called a friend that I knew I wanted her to come along for the journey and these dreams kept dreaming but this time in connection to her own dreams that I was speechless at first but kept dreaming out loud with her.

The call ended and I went into day 2 of teaching the course and once again, the energy was right. We dreamed out loud, made clear connections with our dreams that I felt the need to live this here. It’s been 2 days, as in 2 days of writing our dreams and they are so vivid, with unusual clarity that all I can say is be like flowers with every grant you write. The process is very slow, always hidden, totally subconscious, but with the right people, you will bloom is colors that are absolutely divine. Whether this grant gets funded or not, at least I have flowers that are simply amazing. Flowers that bloom like the stars we are or in the words of Ben Okri, are like children who know they are stars. When it’s time, we will amaze. I look forward to how this week continues to unfold.