Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

Yesterday I returned home after being away for a week. The past one month, I have been on a rollercoaster ride of my own doing, that slowly came to a halt yesterday in the middle of the Atlantic, somewhere on the journey from Amsterdam to Detroit. I took the time to reflect on what can only be described as moments in my life so divine. The last time I wrote grants in the manner I did like this year was 2022. There were 9. As of yesterday, I came close with 8 for this year. Now, I do not expect to get them all. My statistics with grant writing dictates I may get 2, maybe 3 out of 8, but 2 is a comfortable statistics. We already have one, so with the seven about to begin their review journey, my bet is one more. So why then write an additional 6, if you know you will get just 2. The answer, Dreams.

In 2022, I made a pact with myself to only purse things that allow me to live my highest potential with life. I also became very comfortable with failure. It’s always an option. I begin every grant writing retreat with a poem by my dear friend Ritamae which personifies for me why to succeed you must become comfortable with failing and seek your happiness with failure, a lived life, dreamful one and every thing your want with a dream career, a dream life will be yours. I do not write all my grants just so they succeed. Of course success matters but so do failures. For every single grant that turns out to be successful, the sheer audacity with attempting the ones unsuccessful are just as stunning in their own right. I almost always prefer them as they let me continue to dream again which to me is the essence of a well lived life, that you begin again always with your dreams.

Democracies begin again every four years. School children and college students begin again with each new year. Seasons come and seasons go yet we anticipate their beginning every year. Just as we anticipate the start of a new year, the start of a day even. We are all hardwired to begin again and for me, grants are how I begin again with the direction I want my science to embrace. My field is implementation science and in layman terms, it means we have solutions to many pressing issues, yet these solutions are not getting to the people and places that need them the most. For those solutions that do reach them, I am then obsessed with why that initial implementation never lasts or is sustained. There are many reasons why, but perhaps a key one is folks simply don’t plan to last or even begin again trying to ensure places and people get the solutions they need for as long as the health issues remain. It’s perhaps why I start this blog too with something to keep. This idea of remaining past one post, past one day matters to me. I cannot claim to sustain anything I believe, if I can’t demonstrate that with my own everyday life.

So for the past one month, I spent time trying to understand how you even begin again in some places and with some people under-represented in research. My favorite people for example being 6th-8th grade students. We wrote a grant for them, to try to begin again our summer camp that lasted 2 years at my former job. The last year’s transitions meant we skipped this year but it’s coming next year and there was a grant for it and so of course it had to be written. Our summer camp was paid and we didn’t get people who couldn’t afford. Most summer camps are paid for this students but if we are lucky to become funded, I would officially become the queen of dreams with a free summer camp for kids. Plus dreaming about how to begin against meant that my team and I wrote and submitted that grant proposal in one month. An insane record for a 25 page proposal that included numerous partners. Not to even count the ancillary or what I put people through but from the bottom of my heart, I am grateful for all of you that went on this journey to dream out loud for our 6th-8th grade students from diverse backgrounds who also deserve to enjoy science.

This maybe my longest post in awhile and if you got to this last paragraph, if you keep nothing from everything above, simply keep this idea of beginning again. It’s the reason why I write grants, the reason why I care about work that is sustained, the reason why I do my best to keep one post a day. For of what use is life, if it’s not filled with moments where we get to begin again. Keep it for you as bright as the stars you see, every night you look up again.

Ooh and do purchase Bright Star if you can, my first children’s book available on Amazon here. Leave a review too. Thanks.