The art of living · you rise, truer
Supremacy
Not winning. Arriving. The slow rising into your truer, wiser, more grounded self — the one you were always growing toward, even on the days you couldn’t feel it. And then, gently, the line carries you back toward the next storm. We keep becoming.
Latest Supremacy
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Keep charting a burst of light with science/public health writing.
How might we make scientific writing inclusive? How might it move beyond its style and form, beyond its static blueprint to adapt to lives that are constantly changing? How can we speak of advancing racial and ethnic equity in science, health or medicine, if we continue to court tools and language that remain colonized? How…
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Keep dancing in the mind or writing for people!
Imagine taking seven days to frame the entire world. The kind of patience it would take to ensure that the stars and the moon are in the right place. All sorts of fishes or sea monsters swim the oceans. Mountains and hills are perfectly framed with volcanoes ready to erupt as they please. Having such…
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Keep embracing failure!
Writing grants has taught me how to fail 30 times. I look forward to the 31st time. Counting failures is something I do now. Something I embrace too. The hurdles or the joy. The writing. The waiting. The bearing witness to, how things we believe in crumble, for lack of funding. And I have believed…
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Keep the public in public health in mind!
Dr. Milton Terris was an outspoken advocate for progressive Public Health Policy. See this article about him here. But briefly, ‘throughout his career, Terris was always an active and dedicated member of American Public Health Association (APHA): he served as secretary of APHA’s Medical Care Section from 1948 to 1952, a member of the section’s…
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Keep knowing ‘the past is present’ with public health!
In 1968, Dr. Morris Schaefer, a Professor and Head of Department of Public Health at UNC, Chapel Hill wrote a striking paper about the current issues in delivering better health services. He presented it at the 95th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association and many of what he shared then resonates with the…
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Keep going close to lions!
Go close to lions, even if afraid, at least you’ll be close to lions. Reach above the stars, even if you fall, at least you’ll land on stars. Run fast with wild deers. Even if you loose, at least you ran with deers. Fly high with eagles, even if you tire, at least you flew…
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Keep learning from painful experiences!
Sometimes, it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways. I firmly believe this. To see the true manifestation of this word, also means you divorce yourself from the experiences and people who created or enabled those painful experiences to emerge in the first place. I wholeheartedly believe this. All the looking into…
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Keep flying to new heights!
I remember the day we met. I was summoned to a meeting at a faculty office by the Director of Health for Student Services. He was a close friend to my family. I say summoned because I tried to excuse myself from it. My excuses too were valid as I was on maternity leave. I…
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Keep orange day lilies in mind for public health!
We have orange day lilies in our garden. My kids and I spotted them. Their beauty greets the eyes in an unexpected, but magnificent way. It is impossible to stop staring at them. Nothing about them is hidden from view. Their distinctive orange color, in a sea of green shrubs, bores down into your soul.…
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Keep the public in public health!
In a 1989 conversation with Charles Rowell, Chinua Achebe shared a story about the goddess of creativity. He described this as the earth goddess, called Ala or Ani by the Igbo people. Not only is she responsible for creativity, he mentioned that she is also responsible for morality. For her, art cannot then be in…
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Keep being a burst of light for public health!
I am in the business of light making. It is messy, very complex with turns that keep winding. When rich countries get 40-60 percent of Covid vaccines and others, especially countries in Africa, get only 3%, you will understand why I choose light. When racism, especially structural racism is at the heart of why we…
