Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

I am angry. As a proud NIH F-31 predoctoral scholar here is why we all need to FOCUS!

There are many uses of anger. Many as Audre Lorde once eloquently shared. This is an attempt to share tools on how to use your anger, even if bruised or battered. Use it to move on. Use it to be creative. Use it to be well prepared for the way days go by and never return. Use it to speak things unspoken. Use it to ultimately focus.

My response to the assault for this marathon we face is anger. I am angry that the next generation of diverse trainees who simply followed advice and submitted their grants this last cycle will not be reviewed because of this administration dismantling of efforts to promote diversity within the biomedical sciences. To all those trainees, please don’t despair. Rather Focus.

So I am angry and Audre Lorde would want us to know that there are many uses of anger, many reasons to develop tools for facing anger constructively too. Anger’s objective she noted is change and there is a symphony writing a chorus that will not be silenced or unknown, not when your survival, our survival, demands that we all FOCUS.

So here is how I hope your use your anger, how I will use my own. First find the time to flourish. Not just live, but bloom like a flower. Spring is coming and so start planting seeds that will teach you the art of flourishing. My team and I just did so with the art of a headwrap for mental wellness installation at our local art museum. They will say your diversity, our diversity doesn’t matter and though hearts and minds may seem small and hard and full of meanness, choose to flourish. We will need your flourishing flow for strength, for survival, for our freedom. Next open up your eyes and heart to discover things you have always wanted to try. Open your mind to something new, something different even if outside work. Everything we will need, ideas for healing, change, a conscience that never blinks is within you, so open your mind.

As you do so, kindly build, find, connect or reconnect with a loving community. We will need bell hook’s all about love and community now more than ever. Choose to use your anger to love your community deeply. Then remember you are unique. Your anger is an appropriate reaction to their intolerance of your diverse ways. Yet greater is he that is in you. Everything about you is great including the plans you have for diversity so hold on to that. Finally, as we continue to run this race, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year and beyond, do us a favor, tell your story.

It’s not your anger that will destroy us, but your refusal to focus, to find ways to flourish, to be open, to love community, to know you are unique, all while telling your story. So tap into your anger, use it for good, use it for information, for energy and all the ways diversifying biomedical sciences matters. Use your anger to Focus (flourish, be open, love community, stay unique and tell your story).