Tag: academia
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Keep knowing your scars!
And what will you do today. My soul wondered out loud ever since we signed up to speak. And how will you celebrate the connections? Art and headwraps, you, motherhood, health and life. This is trivial, simple, we are all these things, and the connections are simple. No doubt today is here. There will be…
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Keep knowing their defeat is eminent.
When your existence is an accomplished fact, and your way of seeing things is the norm, then even if terminated, you are powerful and should still go forth staking your rightful claim as leaders of tomorrow even if today seems bleak. No need being a shadow of who you are. No falling into their trap of…
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Keep standing with science!
Eliminating health-related grants like, some in the middle of clinical trials like the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network is not only unethical, but one of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. A nation, free, confident and proud in all of stands for, doesn’t reject science on the basis of ideology, doesn’t eject…
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Keep writing!
Some days will keep you numb, break your heart, make you to wish this trauma would end, all while still hoping for the best. The last two days, I have felt like a ship drowning. The water is rising and rising and we see it and see ourselves drowning. Trying to be hopeful is hard.…
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Keep all the ways you flare, fail, then flare again!
I choose to flare, choose sunrise, and anything else the sky brings. I choose rain failing out of the hands of God, choose still the skies afterwards, the trees and all it shuffles, the beetles burrowing deep into the earth, and little boys who voice sound like the cadence of mockingbirds. I choose all these…
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Keep these days!
Days have minds of their own. Some days I’ll sit and listen as children sing, play, fight, then sing again. Other days, I’ll watch as they live peacefully, teaching the power of love, with blankets draped around their bodies. These days even as we wear this shadow called life, I hope to always to watch,…
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Keep your name!
If you ask, I’ll say freedom, dreams, failure, perseverance, love, community, are the reasons why I do it, give names to the vision, my papa and Onyelo, plus mama, saw when they first named me, framed me, for things good.
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Keep eyes open!
We are taking the best dreams, and the best ideas, and a girl whose mama’s name is Onyelo to open eyes and her grandma who knew Onyelo to tender carefully this little light of hers and here she comes, isioma, an Onicha-ugbo treasure, Celestine’s Obi and may the art in the love that framed you,…
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Keep these STARS who know there are no rules!
These days we see all rules can be broken. Institutions broken. Though we wondered how they would apply the rules, we watched as they applied the rules. Our STARS came brilliant, bright, knowing these are different times, uncertain ones, but their time. We left fully bright, in awe of their brilliance. These may be uncertain…
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Keep being STARS!
And so we begin. Welcome to STAR cohort 3 where to be a star, is to do work that Toni Morrison would say is beautiful, powerful, but should also work. It should have something in it that enlightens, something in it that opens doors and points the ways. Let’s Go STARS.
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Keep the art of a headwrap for mental wellness!
On Sunday February 2nd, as part of our commitment to building loving communities in Saint Louis for Saint Louis, our team held our first installation on the art of headwrap for mental wellness. Headwraps have always held a special place in my soul. My mother’s head is forever wrapped. Her mother’s head too. I remember…
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Keep communities!
In loving communities, my Nnem would say, you enter always to learn, but depart serving others. Keep this!