Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

Failure, don’t talk to me about failure or what I am capable of. When I wanted jewels for health, I wanted jewels for health. I trained girls, one school at a time, and took jewels to them to end the HIV epidemic and we failed without warning, without wining and without any wind blowing our way. We smiled any way, teaching one girl at a time still how to make jewelry, how to test for HIV, how to live AIDS-free. Looking back, those were my failure years, the success I never achieved, that only part of my brain remembers, since time has choosen for me not to forget the joy we felt, teaching jewelry making and ending HIV. I didn’t look back. There was no moment worth continuing. We failed and that was that. Now I watch myself whenever knew ideas come up, wondering whether we would look back one day and see how failure still wins.

The person with the most fails wins. Just repeat that again. The person with the most fails wins. I found myself reflecting on a failure resume I wrote awhile back and honestly it was the best reflection I have had in a while. It reminded me that for every success, there are so may unsuccessful attempts that propelled every single success. Over a decade ago, the goals were on marketplaces, enterprises, all with the ideas of making them sustainable for health. They all failed. I was also approach these ideas the wrong way. Well, this year we are trying again and will we fail, yes. This is the hardest realization that even this latest attempt will fail and I will own the failure because I have no choice but to choose failures knowing they pave the way to success one day. So here is to more fails, here is to marketplaces and here is to nursing dreams even when they fail.