who i am,
It took me years to find myself and I am still finding me in all the meās inside of me.
I did it with my eyes closed. Stumbling, falling, misstepping, mispronouncing myself over and over again. You do not become without unraveling. The biggest act of resistance you can have is to stop trying to be digestible and perfect. Fall over yourself again and again until you find balance. Gravity is permanent as far as I know and if you donāt catch you ā it will. At 20, I found the stabilizing force of gravity in embracing all of my complexities and have put forward my heart in service to creating a home for myself and others that honors the nuance, liminality, and complexity. and while i simultaneously stand on an ethic of love, integrity, and critical assessment, i am always reminded that before everything else ā i am human. fallible and flawed.
I am not the most desirable part of my identity, but I am the entirety of my humanity. Multitudinous. Soulful. I exist at the edge and in the chasm, I fold, shapeshift, alchemize, and contradict. Do not define me in boundaries, define me in my spaciousness and roundness. I am everything and nothing all at once. There is a me inside of me inside of me inside of me inside of me. I am all of the phases and fragments that come with personhood, and I actively work to make a soft place for all of them to land. That has been a part of my work and my practice. Learning and unlearning. Defining and deconstructing. Creating, collecting, and conjuring. Part of my work has been to love myself (even though i have quarrels with self-love), to become a radical subject and define myself, to resist the urge to be small, to find joy where I create it, to laugh, to dance, to expand, to think and challenge, to prove myself wrong, to find myself, to empower others, to be interdependent on my community and nature, to be in union with change, challenge and transformation, and to be educated.
Part of my praxis has been to create a person who embodies what I want to give to other people. To love people despite their humanity and flaws, to be non-judgemental and curious, to know when my compassion and empathy are effective and when my rage is productive. To not be stagnant and compliant, but to know that even if I canāt do it all ā I can do enough.
i am, a shapeshifter, a storyteller, an artist, and a lover in all its multitudes and forms
i am lots of things to lots of people. a friend, a daughter, a niece, an enemy, the villain, a monsterā¦.etc. etc. and yet all of those things do not fully capture who i define myself as.
i like to see myself as the culmination of the journey iāve been on. a journey to heal, to become someone who knows better. someone who has put in careful cultivation and consideration into the person that they want to be and the relationships that they want to have. i am someone that has constantly strived and completed reinventing and redefining themselves over and over again. i have witnessed a thousand tiny deaths of myself, and now i get the honor of doing the same for others ā being both an active participant and witness to their lives and their growth. i define myself as a gardener because i have the deep drive and desire to plant seeds, water them, and watch them grow into the people that i hope to empower. i donāt seek to change the way to flowers grow, how long they take or what they look like before, during, and after they bloom. i seek to write them in the history of the soil, to document and experience the seasons that they move through, and to love and care for them all the same.
I have had to come to terms with standing in what I know to be true about myself. Part of being a confessional womanist is to define and grapple with the complexities of our identities and how our silence and our conditioning to conform stomp the authenticity of our narratives. Iāve questioned myself. Rearranged entire universes inside of me to try and shape a story about my life that conformed to what people think they know about me. At times, Iāve found myself at the precipice of a scream and cry because I never had the language to make it good enough. As I have curated the praxis and space I want to embody I have found myself looking back for guidance, reverence, and confirmation. My stillness and my movement have built a person strong enough to wade storms. Like rain, I fall; like streams I flow; like waves I crash, and by the moon, I recede and rise; wax and wane.
threads
pieces
intersections
multitudes
threads pieces intersections multitudes
foundations,
art begins at the point of resistance, where resistance is overcome. to guide my creative and critical processes, i have devised a collection of foundational texts that set in motion my progression and expansion. these are dynamic, living documents ā they are meant to reflect the ever-changing nature of my values, ethics, and understandings of my praxis as i also grow and change. they are the physical manifestation of what it means to be a human finding ways to navigate through the horrors, pain, joy, and persistence of our experience.
guidelines and ideas for the audience of how to think through and engage with my content. this document is not a straightline or an absolute, but rather an exploration in what it means to see and engage with work from the perspective of the person creating, and their intentions
view these documents in an alternative format,
an ode to my values and guidelines for personal engagement and evaluation, a living breathing document meant to grow, change, and shapeshift with time and experience. the foundation for my praxis and other works, and a glimpse into how my brain works and creates
a praxis book dedicated to exploring the themes and ethics that Iām aligned with and how they guide my understanding and engagement with the world. centered around solidifying and consolidating all the information and lessons i learned
ACADEMIA
Psychoneuroendocrinology / Behavioral Neuroendocrinology / Psychological Science
Reproduction and Development
specifically the intersections and development of uterine anomalies, endometriosis, stress and presentations of gyno-pathology in Black women.
Neurodiversity
varieties in presentation, diagnosis, and historical/scientific/medical bias as it pertains to communities of colors.
the improvement of accessibility and education for communities and the reformation/adaption/analysis of treatments dedicated to affirming and validating the experience of communities of color
alternative applications of ABA outside of ASD treatment (including improving behaviors of people around neurodiverse and other vulnerable populations)
You can read my praxis and stance on Applied Behavioral Analysis here
Creativity, Imagination
Somatics, Integrative/Naturopathy
SOCIAL
Community Building/Interdependence
Land Stewardship, Spiritual and Ecological Knowledge
Decolonial and Liberation Theory and Philosophy
Intersectionality in Science and the Humanities