Tag: storytelling
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Keep your struggles.
I am always mesmerized by an interview Chinua Achebe gave on NPR back in 1988. In it he told a story about a tortoise and a leopard. The leopard meets the tortoise on a lonely stretch of road. He had been trying to catch the tortoise for a long time. Tortoise, being a trickster, always…
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Keep the public in public health or LIGHT!
Why do what we do? Why get in the game even if you don’t know how to play? My answer is simple. If your know your vision, nothing will ever get in your way. And my vision is bigger than me. What you think you see or know about what I do is only 30%.…
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Keep grants as stories with lessons from Lorraine Hansberry!
Of what use are grants? If you think about this deeply, you will discover that it’s use are infinite. Of course some use it for their research. Some to propel their careers. I have always believed they can be used to tell stories. I remember the very first grant I wrote over 14 years ago.…
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Keep knowing that failure is an option!
Failure is always an option. That’s my mantra these days. I have failed in so many aspects of my life. The one that I keep doing these past days is motherhood. No, mothering is not easy. It has never been. It takes effort and patience and moving in some direction even if it seems like…
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Keep growing fully and beautifully!
There is a kind of peace that flows when you grow fully and beautifully. I am finding that peace for myself with each passing day. It’s in the morning sun, the one that peaks through my window right before 6 am to let me know a new day has begun. It’s in the steps I…
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Keep joy, like garden eggs!
I remember. I have been saying this word lately. As if all memories are fading fast. They seem to be, considering how time seems to run along these days fast. So I remember, once when I took a class in college. It was a sociology class and the focus was on slow food movement or…
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Keep knowing that life na je je!
Pour me juice mom, please pour some juice in my cup. This was the sentence that jolted me back to writing. I was in the middle of sorting groceries that I just bought. Exhausted and still trying to figure what to eat for dinner. My five year old son had other things on his mind.…
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Keep LIGHT festival and your creation story!
Our ancestors are our first audience. Christell Roach reminded me of this yesterday. They have stories long forgotten and must be told by us their legacy that remain. So here is my attempt with that. I have tried to understand my creation story. Tried to know on whose shoulders I stand. My father’s side has…
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Keep being full
Pregnant, to be full of meaning, revealing, loaded, heavy, charged, abundant, hopeful, fruitful, productive, all of this and more defined the day I had today. From my dearest Ritamae to Bastille, Black Pharaoh at the Lourve to UNESCO, Onyinye to #27 rue Claude Tiller, the experience I had with Belle, took me to the core…
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Keep nothing for youth without youth!
I have taken plenty short trips in life. But few are as unforgettable as the past 4 days in Lagos. Imagine arriving to blue skies. No soon after we arrived, even after all the chaos we encountered at the airport, I arrived to skies perfect and blue. I entered Lagos too with clarity. Day after…
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Keep knowing that we are all storytellers!
I see things differently with each passing day. I know things differently too. Where one thing stands, another thing will stand right beside it. That was Achebe’s thing. I get that. Also that the storyteller is the eagle’s feather. It’s all he spoke about. I am also seeing that our focus on certain things like…
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Keep undoing
I imagine undoing, ending, the woman killing memories of girlhood, in me, unafraid, believing, in nothing, just loosening, trouble, rustling pain, embracing, love, all buried within, like snow, falling rain, liberating my mind Loving this day, I begin, opening, to you, only you, see only you can begin this I imagine, undoing. The bits and…
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Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor 