Category: stories
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Keep this collective “we” if black, female and in academia!
These days I am seeing, not myself, not work, not my family, not my children and lord knows I love all four of them. I am seeing instead a collective we. With insights that help to re-vision a future we. When eyes finally see, it doesn’t float free pretending that “I” am alone in struggle.…
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Keep seeing the world as children and cicadas do!
We have held giant lizards, held tiny alligators, touched snakes as yellow as the sun and hummed to the sounds of cicadas. Summer is only just beginning And this summer in Saint Louis, is the season of children, of sitting in the shadows of children, sitting in their joyful lane, in a season where joy…
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Keep this self-portrait!
A dreamer, a believer, star gazer and breeder, and a lover of full moons. Steady like black ants, marching, unwavering, persistent. Chatty, tenacious, stubborn, bold, full of hope, for no certain outcome and for certain outcomes. Impediments and struggle, Together with legacy and tomorrow Are like the sun and it flowers, A duality that matter,…
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Keep the lessons of cicadas!
We saw the limits of everything, for cicadas, saw them delicate like old skin, shedding their innermost being. They would give anything, it seems, as they suckle on the trunk of trees, to live. Now I see why rest, even if for 13 years, is the beginning of everything. I pray nothing, not even the…
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Keep the beginning of Nnem&Nnem at Korede house (or why motherhood matters)!
The second paper I authored as I began my academic journey highlighted the need to focus on the role of mothers with health. It’s the first paper that centers the primacy of mothers for health and life. It’s also began my journey into understanding the full spectrum of mothers, how we are not only birth…
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Keep listening and learning from young people!
Young people do not need adult-centric rules. They need you to see them in all their diversity. To listen and learn from them to. Not as afterthought. Not with limited voices. But with wisdom and grace for the lives they lead. I have always known young people to be creative, resourceful, with informed ideas that…
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Keep all ways you close a door!
Do not lose sight of those who dream, those who begin, next to coconut trees they drink at their will. Pain they already know, joy they know too, yet still they begin even if with their dreams again. Some mornings they will begin with a dance, those full of pride for the day, those in…
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Keep this joy!
The joy of so many days by the ocean, have burrowed deeply within my soul. And my heart is so full of grace and gratitude, so full of blaze, so full of grace and gratitude, for dreams, so deeply fought, so dazzling in display, are like these days by the ocean. I have been staring…
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Keep smiling!
Tonight I smiled. Maybe it’s the life. Maybe it’s the joy thing. Maybe it’s you. Everything thing with life is better with you. That’s why we celebrate you. Happy Birthday Ronke! We wish many many more.
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Keep this simple word for single dose HPV vaccines, It works!
I plucked these words in a room full of powerful women and men this week. It works. A single dose. Like a tree with a million roots. A simple word, is the shortest distance between minds. It works. A single dose. The truth of today. Ripe for tomorrow. For an eternity of dreams. Like seeds…
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Keep the voices of communities!
A friend once said, eyes are how we begin conversations, begin to deeply speak, a friend whose deepest wish was to connect, whose highest dream was community, their voices vividly clear, yet many ignore the thing passing in the sky, thick clouds gathering in sky, eyes blind see nothing, people who claim to fight for…
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Keep treading softly in a place where the skies are grey and look out for places where the skies are blue!
My heart lingers in a place where the skies are grey. My head lingers in a space where the skies are grey. The days are grey. The people I meet are grey. I live through days with people who wear masks and the skies are grey. Come, come see my heart. Some may wonder, is…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 