There is something about Borikén that has always made my body exhale so watching what is happening there right now is breaking my heart.

More than 180,000 households are now being subjected to rotating 48-hour water shutoffs as reservoirs fall to critical levels. July was the driest the archipelago has experienced in more than 120 years. Nearly a quarter of Puerto Rico is experiencing severe drought and government drought monitoring was already documenting declining reservoirs, groundwater, streamflow and agricultural water supplies weeks before these latest restrictions began.

And yes, there is a drought. Yes, climate change and extreme heat matter. BUT I need us to resist telling this story as though Mother Earth simply failed Puerto Rico. This is also a colonial story.

Borikén isn’t simply an island experiencing an unfortunate environmental emergency. Puerto Rico is a colony experiencing a climate crisis through infrastructure and political systems shaped by more than a century of US colonial rule. That distinction matters because colonialism is not only flags and governments and history books.

Colonialism is about who gets to make decisions about land. Who controls infrastructure. Who receives investment. Whose communities absorb austerity. Whose resources are treated as commodities. And who is expected to become endlessly “resilient” when those systems fail.

Puerto Ricans have been living with unreliable water and electricity long before this drought. Residents in some communities were already reporting chronic water interruptions before reservoirs reached their current emergency levels so when we talk about water rationing, we have to talk about drought AND infrastructure, climate AND colonialism, environmental crisis AND political power. Climate disasters don’t happen on politically neutral land.

Subscribe now

Conversations about technology, AI and data centers deserve nuance too. Data centers absolutely consume resources, including water and enormous amounts of electricity and communities have every right to interrogate what infrastructure is being built on their land, who benefits from it and who bears its ecological cost but I also don’t want us reducing Borikén’s present water emergency to “AI caused this.” The immediate trigger for these rationing measures is a severe meteorological drought and depleted reservoirs.

The deeper question is much bigger: Why are communities asked to ration necessities while extractive economies are permitted to imagine endless growth? That question applies to data centers, tourism, development, privatization and every industry that approaches colonized land as something from which value can endlessly be extracted.

Water is not an infinite commodity. Land is not real estate waiting for its highest bidder. Borikén is not a playground for wealthy outsiders. And Puerto Rican people should not have to prove how “resilient” they are through another crisis created or magnified by systems they have never had full sovereign power to control.

There’s a particular cruelty in looking across an ocean that surrounds you while being told there isn’t enough water coming from your faucet. Of course seawater is not drinking water. I understand the science but there’s still something painfully symbolic about it… An island surrounded by water. A people surrounded by abundance. And colonial systems that have repeatedly demonstrated that proximity to abundance doesn’t guarantee access to it.

I keep looking at these pictures from my time there… standing beside those waters, laughing beneath that sky, feeling so unbelievably alive. And tonight my heart is with Borikén. With the families filling every container they can find. With the elders. With the farmers watching soil dry beneath them. With the communities already exhausted from blackouts and infrastructure failures who are once again being told to adapt.

May we refuse to romanticize their resilience while ignoring what keeps requiring it. May we listen to Boricuas organizing on their own land. May we understand that climate justice without decolonization will always be incomplete.

And may Borikén have what every people deserve:

clean water.

reliable power.

healthy land.

self-determination.

Subscribe now

There’s been a lot in the news lately about Shia Muslims and I’ve noticed that many people outside of the Muslim community (and honestly even some within it) don’t fully understand what that means so I decided to make this post free and available to everyone. When our communities are being talked about in headlines, it matters that people actually understand who we are.

Within Islam there are two major sects: Sunni and Shia. Both believe in the core foundations of Islam. We believe in the oneness of God. We follow the Qur’an. We believe in the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the final messenger of God. We pray, fast during Ramadan, give charity and make pilgrimage to Mecca if we are able.

The primary historical difference between Sunnis and Shias centers around leadership after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Sunni Muslims believe that the leader of the Muslim community should be chosen by consensus among the community. Shia Muslims believe that leadership should remain within the Prophet’s family, specifically through Imam Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and through his descendants. This disagreement wasn’t simply political. Over centuries it shaped distinct traditions, legal interpretations and spiritual frameworks.

Today Sunnis make up the majority of Muslims worldwide. Shia Muslims are a minority globally, though they form majorities in places like Iran and significant communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Pakistan, Yemen and beyond.

My family and I are Shia Muslims. One thing that defines Shia history is a long legacy of resistance against injustice. For us, faith has never been something passive.. it is tied to standing against oppression even when the odds are impossible. That story is rooted in one of the most defining events in Islamic history: the Battle of Karbala.

In the year 680 CE, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein, refused to pledge allegiance to the ruling caliph Yazid. Yazid represented tyranny, corruption and political power that demanded obedience even when it violated the moral teachings of Islam.

Imam Hussein wouldn’t legitimize that rule. He traveled with a small group of family members and supporters toward Kufa after being invited by its people to lead them. Instead they were intercepted by Yazid’s army and surrounded in the desert at Karbala in present-day Iraq. They were cut off from water for DAYS. Among them were Women and children. Even infants.

On the 10th day of Muharram (what we now commemorate as Ashura) Hussein and his small band of companions were massacred. One by one they were killed. His six-month-old son was killed. His family members were slaughtered. Hussein himself was beheaded. The surviving Women and children were taken captive and paraded through cities as prisoners.

It is difficult to overstate how deeply this story lives inside Shia memory. We don’t see Karbala simply as history.. we see it as a moral blueprint: Standing for justice even when you know you will lose, refusing allegiance to tyranny, protecting truth even when it costs everything.

This is why you will often see the phrase: Every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala. It means that the struggle between justice and oppression did not end in the desert in 680. It continues everywhere, everyday.

Martyrdom holds deep meaning in Shia tradition because of Karbala. Those who die while standing against injustice are considered shuhada (martyrs) and their sacrifice is honored as the highest form of devotion.

Recently, the assassination of a senior Ayatollah in Iran on February 28th has again placed Shia leadership in global headlines. For many outside observers, Ayatollahs are often described purely as political figures. But for Shia Muslims, Ayatollahs are also religious authorities, scholars whose decades of study position them as guides in matters of faith, ethics and law. When such a figure is killed, many Shia Muslims interpret that death through the framework of martyrdom that traces back to Karbala.

Calls to avenge a martyr can be misunderstood by outsiders. In Shia religious language, this idea is tied not only to political retaliation but to continuing the struggle against injustice that the martyr died resisting. The language of Karbala echoes through these moments. Justice must not be abandoned and oppression must not be normalized.

Being a Black and Indigenous Shia Muslim shapes how I move through the world. My ancestors understand what it means to live under colonization. They understand land theft, forced conversion, cultural erasure and the violence of empire. When I hear the story of Karbala, I don’t hear something distant or abstract. I hear the same question my ancestors faced: What do you do when power demands your silence?

Shia tradition answered that question with Hussein standing in the desert saying no. That story has shaped the way I raise my daughter. It shapes the work I do in my community. The way I advocate for liberation. The way I refuse systems that demand obedience at the cost of justice. Karbala teaches us that numbers don’t determine truth. Hussein stood with only seventy two companions against an army of thousands and yet history remembers who was righteous.

This is why I keep the words everywhere in my life: Every day is Ashura. Every land is Karbala. Justice is not a single moment in history.. it is a choice we make again and again.

If this piece helped you better understand something you’ve been seeing in the news, that’s exactly why I made it free. But this space is also where I write more deeply about the intersections that shape my life: being Black, Indigenous, Muslim, a mother, an organizer and someone trying to build a liberated future in the Deep South. Paid subscribers make it possible for me to keep writing honestly about faith, resistance, land, motherhood and the political realities our communities are navigating.

If you want to support that work and receive the deeper essays that live behind the paywall, you can become a paid subscriber below. Your support helps keep these conversations alive.

Subscribe now

Until recently…

Subscribe now

The older I get, the less interesting the debate becomes as a question of statistics + trophies and the more it becomes a question about the kinds of greatness we choose to admire. The Messi-Ronaldo rivalry isn’t just about two of the greatest footballers to ever play the game. It’s about two radically different ways of moving through the world.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s story is impossible not to admire. He grew up in poverty on the island of Madeira, carrying dreams that far exceeded the place where he began. Long before he became one of the greatest footballers in history, he became a testament to what relentless discipline can accomplish. No one has ever questioned whether Ronaldo worked hard enough. He transformed himself (physically, mentally, technically) again and again over the course of two decades. As the game changed and his body changed, he adapted. He chased excellence with an intensity that very few people on Earth will ever understand.

There is something profoundly inspiring about that. For anyone who has had to claw their way out of difficult circumstances, who has rebuilt themselves after heartbreak, addiction, illness, or loss, Ronaldo represents the belief that our beginnings do not dictate our endings.

His confidence is often misunderstood as ego alone. At times, it certainly has crossed into pride but I also wonder how much of it was something he had to build in order to survive. Sometimes self-belief is less about believing you’re better than everyone else and more about refusing to let the world convince you that you’re less.

I admire him because his life is a masterclass in resilience, discipline, adaptation and refusing to surrender to limitation.

Then there is Lionel Messi. His story begins differently. Diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency as a child, he almost didn’t have the opportunity to become the player he would become. Yet when you watch him play, it feels less like watching someone conquer the game and more like watching someone enter into conversation with it. He dribbles through defenders the way some people tell stories. He scores, yes, but just as often, he sees a pass no one else on the field could imagine. His genius often looks effortless even though we know it isn’t.

If Ronaldo feels like fire, Messi feels like water. One reminds me that greatness can be forged. The other reminds me that greatness can flow.

Before I go any further, let me offer a disclaimer to the soccer faithful. This is not my attempt to settle the GOAT debate. Frankly, I know better. From what I’ve observed, asking people to choose between Messi and Ronaldo is the soccer equivalent of asking someone to pick a side between the Bloods and the Crips. Once you’ve chosen, you’re expected to defend your answer until your dying breath.

I can’t do it. I refuse. And it’s not because I don’t have a preference.. I certainly do. But I just think we’d miss something beautiful if we reduced either man to simply being the foil for the other.

This isn’t an argument that one is objectively better than the other. It’s simply a reflection on what each of their stories has come to symbolize for me and why one resonates with me a little more deeply than the other.

I don’t think the greatest rivalry in soccer history is really about soccer. I think it’s about the many ways human beings become extraordinary.

As I kept thinking about these two men, I realized the question was really why people choose one over the other vs who was better. Some people are captivated by relentless discipline and others by quiet brilliance. Some admire the person who openly declares, “I want to be the greatest.” Others admire the person who seems content to let the game speak on his behalf. Neither instinct is wrong but I do think the choice reveals something about us.

I’ve spent much of my life in movement spaces where leadership is often measured by visibility… the loudest voice, the biggest platform, the person whose name everyone knows. Over time, I’ve found myself drawn elsewhere… to the organizers whose names you’ll never hear in keynote speeches, to the aunties who quietly hold entire communities together, to the doulas who usher children into the world without expecting applause, to the people whose fingerprints are everywhere but whose signatures are nowhere.

Maybe that’s why if someone absolutely forced me to choose, I would lean toward Messi. I don’t believe he is objectively better and I don’t believe Ronaldo’s accomplishments are any less extraordinary. I just recognize something deeply familiar in the way Messi moves through the game. There is a quietness to him, a trust in instinct, a willingness to create as much as he scores. He reminds me that influence doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it simply changes everything around it.

The older I get, the less interested I become in being exceptional. I’m far more interested in being useful. In helping build something that will outlive me, in becoming the kind of person whose presence allows other people to become more fully themselves.

Maybe that’s why this debate stayed with me because it isn’t really about soccer. It’s about the stories we’re told about success. Are we here to accumulate records? Or are we here to shape lives? Of course, the truth is that the world needs both. There are moments that require Ronaldo’s relentless refusal to quit. There are moments that call for Messi’s quiet creativity. One teaches us what discipline can build. The other teaches us what imagination can make possible.

I see more of myself in Messi because I recognize something familiar in the quiet joy of creating, connecting and letting the work speak for itself. At the same time, I hope I never lose my admiration for Ronaldo. There are seasons of life that demand artistry. There are seasons that demand sheer endurance. I’ve needed both… we all have.

Perhaps that’s why these two men have shared the stage for so long. One doesn’t invalidates the other… together they remind us that there isn’t only one way to become extraordinary. Maybe that’s the real lesson they’ve given the world… not a winner but a wider imagination for what greatness can look like.

I wanted this essay to be free because I think conversations about greatness, success and the lives we choose to admire belong to all of us, whether you know every Messi highlight by heart or have never watched a full soccer match. If essays like this resonate with you, I’d love to invite you to become a paid subscriber. Your support allows me to keep writing long-form reflections on culture, faith, organizing, identity, relationships and the questions that quietly shape our lives.

There are plenty more conversations waiting for us. I’d be honored to have you along for them.

At the same time, I am learning that accessibility can’t come entirely at the expense of the people doing the work.

When I launched this Substack I was still operating from a place of fear… fear that nobody would subscribe, fear that my writing wasn’t valuable enough, fear that asking for support would somehow make me selfish, fear that if I charged what felt fair then people would simply walk away. Looking back now I can see that fear reflected in my original pricing.

Over the last year I’ve been doing a lot of work to untangle myself from patterns of burnout, overextending and devaluing myself. Not just in my work but in every area of my life. Learning that I don’t have to constantly prove my worth through exhaustion has been a lesson I’m still learning every day.

Part of that lesson looks like this: Beginning next month, paid subscriptions will increase from $13/month to $21/month. For those who prefer an annual option, subscriptions will be $231/year which gives you one month free compared to paying monthly.

Subscribe now

For now the structure of this space will remain largely the same. The majority of my essays will continue to be available to free subscribers. I care deeply about keeping most of my writing outside of a paywall and accessible to the broader community.

Paid subscribers will generally receive 1-2 additional essays each month, along with occasional behind-the-scenes reflections, personal writing and other offerings that may not be shared publicly.

My prayer is that this approach continues to honor both values that matter to me: accessibility and sustainability. I never want this space to become something that only exists for people who can pay. At the same time I have to acknowledge that writing takes time, labor, emotional energy and care. If I want to continue showing up here consistently then I need to build a model that actually supports that.

So if my writing has encouraged you, challenged you, made you laugh, helped you feel less alone, taught you something new or simply become a regular part of your week then I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. Not because everything will suddenly be hidden behind a paywall. Not because you’ll miss out on most of what I write. But because your support is what allows me to keep writing at all.

Subscribe now

Yakoke for reading. Yakoke for being here. Yakoke for growing alongside me as I continue learning what it means to build a life rooted not in fear but in abundance, reciprocity and trust.

With an abundance of love, Assata 💛

Subscribe now

If you’d like to support my writing and help make this work sustainable for the long haul, consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Your support helps keep this space alive while allowing most of my work to remain accessible to everyone. And would you share it with a friend?

Share Assata Blooms

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from having to prove your age before you can be heard… not just stating it but performing it over and over again.

For so much of my adult life, I have existed in white spaces where I am read as small, young and often the only Woman of color in the room. Before I even open my mouth, there is already a quiet calculation happening about me. How much do I know, how seriously should I be taken, whether I am someone to listen to or someone to manage. And in those spaces, I learned very quickly that my age became a tool I had to wield just to access a baseline level of respect…

“I’ve been doing this for X years.”

“I started this work when I was…”

“I’m not as young as I look.”

It never felt like sharing. It felt like defense. It felt like trying to translate myself into a language that was never meant to hold me and what I didn’t realize at the time was how much that was costing me.

If this resonates with you, the full reflection continues below and goes deeper into the cultural and spiritual roots of why age was never meant to define us, how whiteness conditions us to perform legitimacy and what it looks like to reclaim privacy and move in ancestral alignment. I keep my writing accessible because voices like ours deserve to be heard and I also believe in being supported in the work of sustaining our lives and families. You can support this work and access full pieces by becoming a paid subscriber for $13 a month.

Subscribe now

Read more

This piece sits at the intersection of music, memory and power. It begins with a single song, “Independence Day” by Martina McBride and follows the thread outward into something much larger: how 9/11 reshaped not just policy but culture, storytelling and what felt safe to say out loud in the Deep South. This is about the quiet narrowing that happens when fear becomes infrastructure, about the stories that get amplified and the ones that get pushed to the margins and about what it means to reclaim them now. The full essay moves through country music, the War on Terror, surveillance, nationalism and survival especially for those of us living at the intersections of Muslim, Black, Indigenous and Southern identity.

To read the full piece and support this work, subscribe for $13/month. Your support allows me to keep writing at this depth and continue exploring culture, memory, faith and liberation through a grounded abolitionist lens.

Subscribe now

I came across a reel recently naming Independence Day by Martina McBride as a song about a Woman’s will to survive not the a patriotic anthem which it has all too often become because duh, that’s what the song has always been… a child witnessing violence, a mother making an impossible choice, fire not as destruction but as escape, freedom not as a flag but as breath. But somewhere along the way, songs like this got flattened, repackaged and pulled into a broader narrative that made everything about america even when it never was.

That reel opened a door but it was the comments that made me pause longer. Someone said that country music used to feel more progressive before 9/11 and that after the attacks everything shifted into “I love Jesus, my country and my truck.” It’s easy to roll your eyes at a comment like that because it sounds overly neat, like nostalgia trying to rewrite history but there’s something underneath it that I think is worth sitting with because crisis has a way of reorganizing culture. And 9/11 didn’t just change policy, it changed what felt safe to say out loud.

Read more

The full reflection is available for paid subscribers because this kind of writing asks me to go there fully, to name things in a way that isn’t softened for comfort. If my words have ever made you feel seen or held, becoming a paid subscriber is how you make sure I can keep doing this work while supporting my family.

Subscribe now

There is a role I have watched Black Women be handed over and over again so consistently it almost feels scripted. Not just on television but in real life… in our friendships, our romantic relationships, in the quiet spaces where things are never named but always felt. We are the best friend that people lean on. The one who sees everything clearly, who tells the truth even when it’s uncomfortable, who holds everyone down. The one who listens, who nurtures, who steadies the room. But rarely the one who is chosen, rarely the one centered.

Watching Summer House right now and eeing what’s unfolding with Ciara Miller doesn’t feel like entertainment. It feels like recognition because Ciara is everything people claim they want: she’s grounded, emotionally intelligent, clear in her communication, soft without being naive, strong without being hardened. She shows up fully. She offers presence, not performance. And still, somehow, she is positioned just outside of being chosen. Close enough to be desired, close enough to be emotionally leaned on but not close enough to be claimed out loud.

Read more

It’s wild how one line can carry a whole narrative. Not just where you went but what people decided it meant about you. “Look at you go crossing state lines with your shadow…” doesn’t just describe movement, it becomes interpretation. Like leaving automatically translated into you think you’re better now, you forgot where you came from, you chose distance on purpose when really it was survival or growth or both.

And when that place is California, it carries even more weight. It stops being a location and becomes a symbol. Like California becomes shorthand for: you chose something else, you outgrew us, you’re not ours in the same way anymore Even if what you were really doing was trying to survive, trying to become, trying to find something that made sense.

“Look at you go tryna run away, change your zip code, turns out that you’re still an asshole…” It doesn’t just sound like distance. It sounds like being misunderstood across that distance. Like the version of you they held onto froze the moment you walked away. Meanwhile you just kept changing, breaking, rebuilding, softening, hardening, earning things you couldn’t have learned if you stayed.

From the outside, the story can feel simple… you left, you changed your surroundings but you’re still you. From the inside, it never felt that clean… you did the work, you built a life, you tried to become someone more honest, more grounded, more whole. And still though parts of you didn’t disappear. Not because the growth wasn’t real but because healing doesn’t erase you, it reveals you. Coming back doesn’t resolve it because you return carrying both versions.. the one they remember and the one you had to build without them and sometimes those two don’t fit neatly together. You come back with new language in your body, with grief for the years you missed, with gratitude for the people who stayed, with an awareness that home isn’t a fixed place anymore but something you carry and renegotiate.

I think Dashboard sits so heavy because the divide isn’t just miles but perception vs reality, memory vs growth, who you were when you left vs who you are when you come back and learning how to hold all of that without losing yourself in either version.

Share

This essay is part of ongoing weekly reflections exploring music, memory, faith and what it means to become someone across distance and time. Subscribe for $13/month to support making it possible for me to keep writing like this, to keep putting language to the things we feel but don’t always know how to say and very tangibly, to keep a roof over my daughter and I’s head.

Subscribe now

If you’re already a paid subscriber, yakoke. So much gratitude for you. If you’re able, consider gifting a subscription to someone who would find themselves in these words. It helps sustain this work and keeps the lights, water and everything in between flowing.

Give a gift subscription

In this piece, I sit with that tension… leaving versus staying, freedom versus responsibility. What it means to be pulled in two directions at once, especially when your roots run deep in a land shaped by both violence and survival. I write about my journey back home, the ancestral ties that refuse to loosen and why, despite everything, I continue to choose to stay.

This reflection is for anyone who has ever questioned where they belong and what we owe to the places that made us.

The full piece is available as a paid post. I want to keep my writing accessible because voices like mine often don’t make it through the noise and these stories deserve to be loud. At the same time, I am a Black and Indigenous Woman building a life, raising a daughter and doing this work within systems that do not sustain us. Both things can be true and with your support, they can both exist.

If this resonates, I invite you to move to a paid subscription. Share this work. Help me continue writing in a way that is honest, grounded and accountable to our communities. Yakoke.

Subscribe now

I want to start by telling the truth. There was a moment not long ago when leaving entered my heart in a real way. Not as a passing thought, not as a fantasy but as a quiet, heavy possibility. After my trip to Australia, I shared a piece of that with you. The burnout, the fear, the exhaustion of constantly bracing against systems that feel designed to break you. And for the first time, I caught a glimpse of what life could look like beyond survival. Not just making it… but living. And once you see that, you can’t unsee it. So heck yeah, I considered leaving.

But this isn’t the first time that desire has lived in me. In my early adult years, I was a snotty kid who thought I knew everything. I believed I was too big for this “backwards” place, too aware, too ambitious, too ready to get as far away as possible from everything I had ever known. So I left. I moved to California.

And I’ve spoken before about how that move saved my life. It pulled me out of addiction. It gave me space to rebuild. It gave me breath when I thought I might suffocate. But what I understand now is this… it didn’t just save me, it brought me back home.

Read more

Because what I’ve come to understand, slowly, through years of organizing, showing up, overextending, shrinking myself and then finally pulling back, is this: I do not belong to the left. And more importantly, the left has never truly known what to do with me.

I have spent years inside those spaces. Rooms filled with big language, revolutionary language. Words like abolition, liberation, decolonization, solidarity. Words that, in my bones, I believe in. Words that come from my lineage, not from a syllabus. And yet there is a difference between speaking a language and living it. There is a difference between naming liberation and actually building something that can hold people when the ground shifts.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in a room or on a panel or in a strategy session where someone brings up Native people. Not as people but as history…. “As we know, Native people were displaced…” or “As we acknowledge the Indigenous history of this land…” or “As we remember…” And y’all, I’m sitting right there. Breathing, listening, existing.

A Native Woman on Turtle Island, in real time, watching myself be turned into a past tense. There is something deeply unsettling about being spoken about as if you are already gone. As if your only role is to be a moral reference point, a grounding paragraph. A land acknowledgment that never quite turns into land back, resource back, power back. Just acknowledgment, just history, just enough to make the room feel like it did something.

And then there are the ways Black Women move through these spaces. The labor, the emotional translation, the holding together of rooms that would collapse without us. The way our language, our frameworks, our brilliance get picked up, repackaged, circulated and credited everywhere except where they came from. The way we are expected to be both the backbone and the silence. I have watched Black Women carry movements on their backs and still be told to wait their turn. Still be talked over, still be expected to soften their truth so it lands better, still be asked to give more. Always more.

There is a particular kind of violence in spaces that name themselves as liberatory but replicate the same patterns of erasure, extraction and disposability. It confuses people. It makes you question your instincts. Because how can something that speaks the language of justice feel so misaligned? But I’ve learned to trust that feeling.

And then there’s this obsession I keep witnessing. This hunger to burn everything down, to tear it all apart. To dismantle, disrupt, destroy. And listen, I understand where that comes from. There are systems that deserve to be dismantled. There are structures that were never meant to hold us. But what I don’t see, in so many of these spaces, is a real plan for what happens next. What does safety look like for Black and Indigenous people during the burning? What does protection look like when the institutions are gone but nothing has been built to replace them? Who is held? Who is fed? Who is safe? Because historically, when things collapse, we are the first ones left unprotected. We are the ones who fall through the cracks of other people’s theories.

For a long time, I tried to exist in both worlds. I was doing the work in my community. Real work. Grounded work. Care work. And then I would step into leftist organizing spaces and try to translate that work into language that could be understood, validated, approved. I thought that was necessary. I thought that was part of building something bigger. But over time, it started to feel like splitting myself in half. One version of me rooted in land, in lineage, in community care. Another version trying to survive rooms that didn’t quite see me, didn’t quite hear me but needed what I carried.

A couple years ago, something shifted. Not loudly, not dramatically. Just a quiet, firm knowing. I don’t have to keep doing this. I don’t have to keep proving that what I come from is enough. I don’t have to keep offering myself to spaces that only know how to take. So I started pulling back. Intentionally, carefully. I stopped centering those spaces in my work. And I turned fully toward my people.

What does that look like? It looks like tending. It looks like creating spaces where Black and Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit folks can breathe without explanation. It looks like herbal medicine passed hand to hand. It looks like feeding people. It looks like sitting in grief together without needing to theorize it. It looks like birthwork. It looks like ceremony. It looks like community safety that doesn’t rely on systems that have already harmed us. It looks like slow, intentional building. Not flashy, not always visible. But real.

And I’ll be honest. That work will always matter more to me than your leftist book club. More than your reading list. More than your perfectly worded analysis that never leaves the page. Because my people do not live inside theory. We live here on this land in these bodies. Carrying histories that are not past tense, needing care that can’t wait for consensus.

So no, I don’t identify as a leftist. I identify as a Black and Indigenous Woman. Which means my politics are not something I picked up. They are something I come from. They are something I am accountable to. And that accountability will always pull me back to what is real, what is needed, what actually keeps us alive.

Share

If this resonated with you, if you’ve felt the quiet dissonance in spaces that were supposed to feel like home, if you’re trying to find your way back to something more rooted, more accountable, more real, I write deeper into these truths in my paid posts.

That’s where I share the practices, the frameworks, the behind-the-scenes of what it actually looks like to build care, sovereignty and community outside of performance.

Come sit with me there.

Subscribe now

This is the most vulnerable thing I have written yet…

I am writing this from inside it. Not after. Not once it’s all made sense. Not once I can tie it up and tell you what it taught me. I am writing this while my chest is still tight, while my thoughts are still looping, while I am trying to understand how something can feel so right and still feel like it is slipping through my hands.

Subscribe

The last couple of weeks have been emotional whiplash. Like being handed something that felt like certainty. Not infatuation, not confusion, not a maybe. But a quiet, grounded knowing that settled into my body like it had always been there. And then just as quickly, being asked to face the reality that it may not be something I get to live inside of the way I want.

I keep thinking about my first tattoo. “You be the anchor.” It’s not even the full lyric. Just that piece. Just that truth. I got it as I was exiting my teen years. I got it with him.

Back then, it was tied to a song. To a feeling I couldn’t fully explain yet. Something about steadiness, about being held in place when everything else felt uncertain. Something about the kind of love that doesn’t try to control you but keeps you grounded. I didn’t understand then how literal it would become. Because when I say there was a night I thought my life was ending, I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean that literally.

It was the night of my twentieth birthday. I had been clean for over a year. And then I relapsed. I overdosed. I was on the bathroom floor. And he found me.

There are moments in life that split everything into before and after. That was one of them.

And when I think about anchors, about what it means to keep someone’s feet on the ground, to hold them in place when they are slipping away, when they are losing themselves in ways that feel irreversible… I think about that night. I think about the fact that I am still here. I think about the fact that he was there. And even outside of that night, across years, across versions of ourselves, across entire lives lived in between… he has been that.

The person who brings me back to myself. The person who steadies me when I start to drift too far into my own mind, my own spirals, my own what-ifs. The person who, without trying to contain me, keeps me grounded in something real.

So what does it mean now… to be here? To be in a moment where everything feels uncertain, where the life I want and the love I feel don’t seem to exist in the same place, where I am being asked to face the possibility that I may not get to build a life with the person who has anchored me in ways no one else ever has?

Was he the anchor? Or is he still? And if he is… what am I supposed to do with that? Because an anchor doesn’t just hold you still. It keeps you from drifting somewhere you’re not meant to go. It grounds you when the waters get rough. It keeps you connected to something steady when everything else feels like it’s shifting.

And I can’t help but wonder… Is this one of those moments? Is this a moment where I am being asked to trust that the same presence that has steadied me before is still doing that now even if it doesn’t look the way I want it to? Even if it doesn’t lead to the outcome I had started to believe was finally mine?

I have spent so much of my life believing that romantic love was not the place to put my deepest trust. That friendships were what lasted. That romance was fleeting, something you experienced but didn’t necessarily build your entire life around.

And then this. Not new. Not sudden. Not something that appeared out of nowhere. But something that has been quietly weaving itself through my life for years, showing up in moments I didn’t fully understand at the time, only to now be named in a way that makes everything feel both clearer and more complicated at once.

I asked him when things shifted for him. He couldn’t name one moment. He said it was a series of moments over time. But he named one night in particular. A night where I was about to do something that terrified me, a night where I was standing on the edge of my own truth, trying to gather the courage to step into it. Sixteen years ago. And that’s what he carries, that’s what stayed with him. That’s what he names as part of the reason he sees me the way he does now.

And I don’t think I have fully recovered from what it did to me to hear that. Because it means this isn’t imagined. It means this isn’t something I built up in my head. It means something real has been here, between us, for a long time. Which makes this part almost unbearable…

Because I want a life with him. Not just love in theory. Not just something we carry in messages, in memories, in visits across distance. I want a home. I want marriage. I want to wake up next to the person I love and build a life together in the small, ordinary ways that actually make love sustainable. I want Dahlia to see that kind of love up close. I want the possibility of more children. I want something rooted, shared, lived. And I know, in a way that feels undeniable, that I would choose that with him.

But the lives we have built are not abstract. Mine is tied to land that holds my lineage, my purpose, my sense of self in a way that can’t be recreated somewhere else. His is tied to safety, to being able to live openly and fully as himself, to access to care and community that allows him to exist without fear.

There is no easy compromise here. No simple middle ground. No version of this that doesn’t ask one of us to lose something essential. And so I am sitting here with this question I don’t know how to answer: If he has always been the anchor… am I supposed to trust that now? Even if trusting that means letting go of the version of this that I want most? Even if it means believing that being grounded, being held, being kept steady… might not look like building a life under the same roof?

I don’t know. I don’t have clarity. I don’t have an ending for this. All I have is the truth that I am in the middle of something that feels both deeply right and deeply uncertain.

Subscribe

If you are reading this, thank you for holding this with me. Writing like this, sharing like this, takes something out of me and also gives something back. It allows me to process in real time, to not feel so alone inside experiences that feel too big to carry quietly.

If my words have ever meant something to you, if you believe in the kind of storytelling that makes space for truth in its rawest form, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. Your support allows me to keep writing like this, to keep documenting these moments as they are happening and to continue building a body of work that does not look away from the hard, complicated, human parts of our lives.

And if you can’t subscribe right now, sharing this with someone who might need it means more than you know.

Share

For over 900 days, we have witnessed the most unspeakable atrocities carried out against Palestinians. We have watched an entire people be punished for existing. Children buried beneath rubble, families erased, bodies denied burial, homes turned to dust. And alongside this visible destruction, there has been a quieter machinery of violence operating in plain sight.

Incarceration. Abduction. Torture. Administrative detention without charge, without trial, without end.

Now, that machinery is escalating into something even more sinister. Israel is moving forward with what is being called the “Prisoners’ Execution Law,” expected to advance through its second and third readings on today, March 30th.

Let’s be clear about what this means. This law would legalize the death penalty for Palestinians detained by Israel, particularly those accused of resistance. People who have been abducted from their land. People who are already being held in a system that denies due process. People who have been tortured, starved, isolated. People whose only crime, in many cases, is refusing to accept occupation and genocide. This is not about justice. This is about extermination, codified.

The “Prisoners’ Execution Law” authorizes the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners accused of acts framed as “terrorism,” a label broadly and violently applied to resistance under occupation. It removes existing legal barriers that previously made executions extremely rare and targets a population already subjected to administrative detention without charge or trial. This law expands state power to carry out executions within a system documented for torture, coerced confessions and denial of legal rights. It functions as a tool of collective punishment and political repression as well as signals a shift from mass incarceration toward state sanctioned execution as policy.

This is a severe and unprecedented escalation. This is not a policy tweak. This is a new chapter in an ongoing genocide. And still, the world hesitates.

The United Nations, an institution born from the ashes of global war, has once again proven itself incapable of protecting the very people it claims to defend. Its history is not neutral. It has long operated within the boundaries of imperial power, intervening selectively, condemning rhetorically and failing materially when liberation movements challenge the global order it helps maintain. It was never designed to dismantle empire, only to manage it.

Our so called leaders? Bought. Blind. Complicit.

And the rest of the world watches. Scrolls. Debates. Moves on. But the blood of the Palestinian people will stain humanity forever. We will not be able to say we did not know. We know and knowing demands something from us.

Because Palestine, as I’ve said countless times, is not separate from our liberation. It is central to it. The technologies of surveillance, the strategies of policing, the language of criminalization, the justification of state violence all of it circulates globally. What is tested on Palestinians does not stay there. If Palestine is not free, NONE of us are.

I will also say this with full honesty… Bearing witness to Palestine has deepened my iman in ways I did not expect. Because in the face of unimaginable devastation, we continue to see a people who refuse to break, who pray in the rubble, who speak gratitude through grief, who bury their dead with dignity and still say Alhamdulillah. So when everything feels unbearably heavy, when the grief sits in my chest and I don’t know what to do next, I follow their example. I turn to Allah…

Ya Allah, grant sabr to the prisoners who sit in darkness while the world debates their right to live. Be their comfort in isolation. Be their protection against those who harm them. Expand their chests, steady their hearts and never let them feel abandoned. Ya Allah, stop this before it is written into law. Interrupt every hand that seeks to carry out injustice. Expose every crime and every liar who justifies it. Ya Allah, free the prisoners. Free their bodies from cages and their names from criminalization. Return them to their families with dignity and honor. Ya Allah, grant liberation to all Palestinians. From occupation, from siege, from exile, from erasure. And grant us strength. Strength to not look away. Strength to keep fighting even when we are tired. Strength to organize, to speak, to act with courage. And grant us wisdom. Wisdom to know what is needed next. Wisdom to move with intention, not just emotion. Wisdom to build what will outlast empire. Ameen.

If you have been reading my work, you already know I do not take lightly what it means to speak on these issues but I have reached a point of urgency that I can’t ignore. There is too much at stake for this information to remain inaccessible. And given the community I have built here, I have a responsibility to share analysis, context and strategy in real time. So in the coming days and weeks, I will be publishing more political, organizing and justice oriented essays. Many of them will be free because people need this information now.

But that responsibility goes both ways. Consuming knowledge and labor from me while I am also trying to survive under capitalism, especially as a Black and Indigenous Woman, can’t be sustained on “thank you” alone. So I am asking for two things… Share this. And if you are able, move to a paid subscription for $13. This work deserves to live and I need community to help carry it.

Yakoke.

Subscribe now

I planned to wait. Let the rage settle. Come back with something measured, strategic, generous.

Subscribe

After three hours in a conversation that left me feeling like I was talking in circles, I told myself I would write something thoughtful about community-based organizing. Something that laid it all out clearly. Something useful for the people who are actually trying to understand.

But somewhere around hour three, I heard myself say, “no what you’re not gonna fucking do is…” And if you know, you know… That moment where your voice shifts. Where your body knows before your mind catches up. Where you realize you are no longer in dialogue, you are in defense.

As the only Black Woman in that space, I felt it. The familiar tightening. The exhaustion of having to hold a line that shouldn’t have to be explained in the first place.

I left that conversation feeling defeated. Not because I didn’t have the language. Not because I couldn’t articulate the point. But because it became clear that articulation was never the issue.

Then I opened my phone to Threads and the very first thing I saw was this:

And suddenly, I felt a little less crazy. Because that’s the truth that sits underneath all of this. It’s not confusion. It’s not lack of access to information. It’s not that the critiques aren’t clear. It’s that they DO. NOT. CARE. enough to change.

Instead, what happens is this… They will find a few people of color who are willing to shuck and jive for proximity, platform or protection and they will hold those voices up as proof that they’re doing it right. As validation. As cover.

Meanwhile, those of us who eat/sleep/breathe our communities, who are accountable to real people, real conditions, real harm, are telling them plainly: This is not working. This is causing harm. This is repeating patterns we have already survived.

And we are ignored. Or worse, we are labeled divisive. Let’s talk about that word for a second… Divisive. Because somehow, naming harm is divisive. Centering Black and Indigenous analysis is divisive. Refusing to dilute critique for the sake of comfort is divisive.

But building entire “movements” that replicate the same extractive, dismissive, top-down dynamics that we have been resisting for generations? That’s called unity.

There is a particular kind of arrogance required to do this. To enter spaces, frameworks and strategies that Black and Indigenous people have been developing, sustaining and refining for centuries then act as though you are inventing something new.

To ignore the warnings. To dismiss the critique. To continue forward anyway. And then, when we refuse to participate in that cycle, to frame us as the problem.

What we are witnessing is not just disagreement. It is erasure.

Because decolonial, community-based organizing already exists. It has always existed. It exists in the mutual aid networks that never shut down when the cameras leave. It exists in the aunties feeding entire neighborhoods without funding or recognition. It exists in the land work, the healing work, the quiet infrastructure that keeps our people alive.

It is not flashy. It is not easily branded. It does not fit neatly into a one-day call to action. And because of that, it is constantly overlooked. Or worse, co-opted.

What I wanted to write was a guide. A breakdown. A resource for people who are genuinely asking: what does real organizing look like?

And maybe I still will. But today, this is what needed to be said: Black and Indigenous Women are tired. Tired of repeating ourselves. Tired of being talked over. Tired of being brought in for optics and ignored in practice. Tired of watching the same harm be dressed up as progress.

So we are doing what we have always done. We are turning back to each other. We are building our own spaces. Our own systems. Our own networks of care and resistance. Not because we want to be separate but because we refuse to keep pouring into spaces that refuse to listen.

If you are someone who is genuinely curious, who is actually willing to learn, to shift, to be accountable then there is space for you in this work. But if your idea of movement requires our silence, our softening or our submission to strategies we know do not work, then understand this clearly:

We will not follow you into futility. We are not interested in being included in something that cannot sustain us.

We are interested in building something that can.

And we will do that with or without you.

Subscribe

I don’t write to go viral. I write to build. If you’re serious about moving beyond surface-level “movement moments” and into real, sustained organizing, my paid posts are where I break down what that actually looks like from mutual aid to decolonial practice to building infrastructure that lasts.

Subscribe for thirteen bucks a month if you’re ready to do more than just agree.

Subscribe now

Three years ago my life began. A month before that, I told my husband I wanted a divorce. What I have never said publicly is that I thought we could stay in the same house while he figured himself out. I believed in soft landings. I believed in maturity. I believed co-parenting could be negotiated over kitchen tables and shared hallways.

It lasted one month. Then there was a morning. Explosive. Loud. Final. I remember grabbing both babies. I remember my hands shaking but my voice steady. I remember texting him that he needed to be gone by the time we came back.

I didn’t know where to go so after returning my bonus son to his mama I drove to the beach. Dahlia thought it was magic. She splashed in the water. She laughed like nothing heavy existed. She told me it was the best day ever. I smiled. I played. I memorized her joy because I knew we were walking toward a different life when we drove home. I knew we would walk into an empty house. I knew nothing would ever be the same again.

Read more

Your paid subscription directly supports the slower, healthier life I’ve worked so hard to build for myself and my daughter. It allows me to keep telling these stories with care, depth and honesty without burning myself into the ground.

If these reflections have ever met you where you are, becoming a paid subscriber is one of the most tangible ways to support this work.

Subscribe now

Now, here’s today’s reflection…

Sixteen years ago, my life almost ended.

I’ve written before about the night my close friend Jace saved me. About how he saw me slipping somewhere I might not have come back from and refused to let me disappear. About how love sometimes looks like staying when things are ugly, terrifying and raw.

The next morning, I made a decision that changed everything.

I got clean. Not in a movie-montage way. In a shaking, grieving, ripping-my-life-open way. In a way that meant letting go of people, habits and environments that felt familiar even when they were killing me.

Shortly after, I moved to California to protect my recovery and start over. New air. New rhythms. Long hikes with Bright Eyes in my ears, whispering lyrics that felt like prophecy…

“And if life seems absurd, what you need is some laughter and a season to sleep and a place to get clean. Maybe Los Angeles, somewhere no one’s expecting.”

I was broke. I had dropped out of college. I was building dreams on faith and stubborn hope. But I was alive.

Sixteen years later, I’m still alive. Alive enough to hold my daughter in my arms. Alive enough to feel peace in my body instead of chaos. Alive enough to build community, healing spaces, stories and softness.

Recovery gave me everything. And yet this anniversary is never simple because alongside gratitude is grief. Alongside pride is a weight that never fully lifts.

Read more

Today is my 37th birthday! And this year I’m entering a new season with a very intentional ask…

Last year my body made it clear that the pace I had been living at was no longer sustainable. Lupus complications kept stacking up, forcing me to confront how much stress I was holding, how deeply burnout has been normalized and how often we’re taught to push through pain instead of listening to it. I had to reckon with the truth that I can’t keep living in survival mode and expect my health to keep carrying me.

So as I step into this next year of life, I made a brave, uncomfortable and necessary decision. Not just to imagine a healthier relationship with work, rest and money but to actually build one. A life where I can provide for my family, stay rooted in community and care for my body without paying for it with my well-being.

Part of that shift has been unlearning something many of us were taught: that asking for support is weakness, that receiving is something to feel ashamed of. I’m learning instead that it’s about reciprocity, about allowing community to sustain what it values.

For a long time I’ve shared my writing freely. Now more than 1,700 of you read along and I don’t take that lightly. Substack has become the space where I explore healing, faith, ancestry, politics, motherhood, liberation and the quiet truths of everyday life. I write once or twice a week and I would love the freedom to deepen that work even more.

So for my birthday, I’m inviting you to consider becoming a paid subscriber for $13 a month. Not as charity but as community care, as an exchange that allows this work to keep growing while I also take care of myself and my daughter. If my words have ever helped you feel seen, grounded, challenged, comforted or understood, this is one of the most meaningful ways you can support me right now.

The quotes shared below come from recent paid pieces, just a glimpse of what lives behind the subscription.

Yakoke for reading. Yakoke for valuing this work. Yakoke for helping me build a life rooted in sustainability instead of burnout.

Some people watched Bad Bunny’s halftime performance and saw a cool stage.

I watched it and saw history moving in rhythm. I saw colonization named without a speech. I saw Afro Caribbean survival dressed in linen and drumbeats. I saw Puerto Rico telling its own story on one of the biggest platforms in the world.

As a Black and Indigenous Woman reconnecting deeply with my Afro Taíno roots from Jamaica and as someone who spends sacred, life giving time in Borikèn with my chosen family, this performance didn’t feel like entertainment. It felt like remembrance.

And remembrance doesn’t arrive gently. It arrives through land. Through labor. Through what the camera asks us to look at before we even understand why. What looked like grass was a sugarcane field. Not aesthetic. Not random. Sugarcane was one of the engines of slavery across Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Entire economies were built on stolen land and stolen lives. From the very first frame, Benito placed us inside the legacy of colonial extraction.

Then came the jíbaros. Once a slur for poor rural Puerto Ricans. Now reclaimed as pride.

Workers in white moving through cane with machetes in hand. White clothing tied to African spiritual traditions that survived enslavement. Purity. Protection. Continuance. The ancestors were present before the first beat dropped.

The bomba and plena drums followed. If you know Black Caribbean history, you know drums were communication, rebellion, prayer and memory all at once. This wasn’t background music. This was lineage speaking.

The casita scene brought everyday Puerto Rican life to the forefront. Dominoes, coco frío, gold jewelry, community… joy that survives empire. And yes, he gave us Cardi B like we asked. But the real flex was centering Puerto Rican culture before centering celebrity.

Then came the OG reggaeton tribute. Tego Calderón!!! Don Omar!!! Plan B!!! Daddy Yankee!!! A reminder that reggaeton was born in Black Caribbean communities, shaped in housing projects, criminalized before it was global.

And lez be honest… Gasolina is the millennial bat call. Those first beats drop and suddenly everyone who said they were tired is on the floor with sore knees and no dignity left.

That tribute wasn’t nostalgia. It was honoring the roots.

From there, Benito shifted into protest. During his Puerto Rico residency, he invited Puerto Rican artists to perform Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii, a song about US colonization and the fear of Puerto Rico becoming the next stolen paradise. Bringing Ricky Martin to sing it was intentional. A Queer Puerto Rican artist who survived an industry and culture that once made being openly gay dangerous.

And then Benito did something even sharper.

Right after that moment, he began the intro to Monaco and sang in Spanish: “Dime, dime, ¿eso es lo que tú querías?” (“Tell me, tell me, is this what you wanted?”) As he sang it, the camera cuts to Lady Gaga, a white American woman, singing in English. That wasn’t random. It was commentary. After naming colonization, he immediately asked “is this what you wanted?” while visually centering American pop culture and English language dominance. A metaphor for how empire replaces local culture, turns islands into commodities and pushes native people out of their own homelands.

The same thing happening in Puerto Rico. The same thing happening in Hawaii. The same thing happening across the Caribbean.

It’s unfolding in Jamaica too, where displacement doesn’t come with soldiers but with resorts, luxury developments and rising costs that quietly exile people from land their families have lived on for generations. Empire doesn’t always arrive with violence. Sometimes it arrives with investment.

Then came the power line scene. Jíbaros electrocuted as El Apagón played, a protest song about Puerto Rico’s constant blackouts caused by privatization and corruption of the power grid. Art naming policy violence.

The salsa band dressed like the 1970s, another era of cultural pride and political consciousness.

And then the moment that tightened my chest. After all that history. After all that resistance. He lifted the flag. Not the darker blue version altered to mirror the US flag. The original light blue Puerto Rican flag… the one that was once illegal to fly, the one people were arrested for carrying, the one labeled treason. The flag of refusal.

And I won’t lie. I was half waiting for him to pull out the black and white Puerto Rican Resistance flag too. The flag born during the 2016 debt crisis under PROMESA. The flag of mourning for colonial violence, austerity and the lives lost after Maria. The one that literally turned blue to black to say this is what empire has done to us.

But I already know somebody backstage was whispering, “Benito, cálmate… no te vayas tan duro.” 😅 Because that flag is the kind of truth that gets you quietly banned from “mainstream” stages.

Even so, the light blue flag alone was already resistance. Sometimes revolution is loud. Sometimes it’s strategic. Sometimes you give them just enough truth to let the rest echo.

Then came the final parade… flags from across North, South, Central America and the Caribbean. Shouting out Guyana. Jamaica. The Antilles. A reminder that Puerto Rico’s struggle is tied to all of ours. Our histories of colonization, enslavement, resistance and survival are braided together.

This wasn’t a halftime show. It was decolonial storytelling on a global stage. It was Afro Caribbean memory in motion. It was a refusal to let Borikèn be flattened into a tourist destination instead of a living people with political reality.

As someone whose Black and Indigenous roots stretch across islands and continents, watching this felt like watching my ancestors speak through fabric, rhythm, silence and sound. It reminded me that culture is memory, that joy is political, that art is resistance.

And that we are still here… still singing, still dancing, still surviving empire.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I write to remember what empire works hard to erase. If you value storytelling that names power, honors lineage and goes deeper than surface-level commentary, becoming a paid subscriber directly supports this work and keeps it accessible to our communities. Culture is memory and writing is resistance. Yakoke for tending this space with me.

This is one of those pieces I don’t write from theory or aspiration. I write it from the middle of my real, everyday life, still a little jet-lagged, still unpacking both suitcases and truths.

I never imagined I’d be the kind of mama who gets to learn alongside her child every day. But here I am, a single mama (three years as of yesterday!!) homeschooling my daughter, Dahlia, building a life that looks nothing like what I was taught to want.

We just returned from Australia, our first trip that wasn’t tied to work, obligations or survival. No conferences. No grants. No sponsored reason to be there. Just time. Just presence. Just learning a place by walking it, listening to it, letting it change us. Watching my child experience the world not as a classroom lesson but as something alive and relational reminded me why I choose this path, even when it’s hard.

Homeschooling isn’t easy. It requires patience, flexibility and a willingness to unlearn a lot of what we were told education is supposed to look like. But it is sacred work. I get to watch her eyes light up when something clicks. We move at the pace of curiosity instead of bells and deadlines. We learn through land, language, history and lived experience, not just memorized facts.

It’s the education I wish I had. One rooted in understanding life, liberation and our relationship to the world around us, not in systems designed to break our spirits or measure our worth by productivity.

That is why I write. Because real learning, the kind that changes us, doesn’t happen inside systems built on extraction. It happens in relationship, in storytelling and in the slow, honest work of paying attention.

But here’s the truth: everything costs more right now. Food. Housing. Basic living. Even the work that nourishes our spirits doesn’t always pay the bills that keep us housed and fed.

I have always wanted my writing to remain accessible. I want these words to reach whoever needs them, especially those moving through grief, exhaustion or survival. That part will not change. I don’t believe healing or truth should sit behind a wall.

At the same time, I am the sole provider for my family. And sustaining this work, the writing, the care, the time it takes to tell the truth with integrity, requires support.

So I’m asking gently…

If my words have ever helped you name something you couldn’t before, if they’ve made you feel less alone, or given you a moment of breath, would you consider supporting this work with a $13 monthly subscription?

Subscribe now

Paid subscriptions don’t just unlock posts. They help make it possible for me to keep writing honestly, to keep raising my daughter with intention and to keep choosing a life rooted in care rather than constant burnout. They help me continue offering this space as one built on truth, softness and resistance.

In a addition to more deep, unfiltered essays where I write about everything that shapes me (faith, grief, culture, politics, love, music, resistance, joy, etc.) paid subscribers also receive…

Beneath the Petals: A peek behind the blooms: life updates, travels, songs and small treasures gathered along the way. A softer, more personal corner of Assata Blooms where I share what’s unfolding in real time.

First Blooms & Gatherings: Early access to new poems and podcast episodes, plus invitations to live readings and intimate community conversations.

But most importantly, your support lets me keep doing what I was meant to do: write freely, mother fiercely and tend this living archive of words, culture and care. Because in a world this loud, I still believe our words can be medicine. And I hope you do, too.

Yakoke (thank you) for being here, for reading and for helping me keep the garden growing in whatever way you’re able.

With love and solidarity,
Assata 🌷

🌸 May we keep blooming in all the places we’re called to grow.

Read more

If this piece resonates with you, if you want writing that tells the truth without romanticizing survival, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Supporting this work allows me to keep naming what we’ve been taught to normalize and imagining something gentler for the next generation.

Subscribe

I’m realizing something I’ve never fully let myself say out loud.

I am who I am because of trauma.

Not in the vague, inspirational way people like to say it. Not in the “everything happens for a reason” way that smooths the edges. I mean it plainly. I am shaped by violence I survived, grief I metabolized, loss I learned to live beside, and systems that required me to grow sharp just to stay alive.

This weekend cracked something open.

I went to the Order of Osiris Mardi Gras ball on Friday night. I saw friends I hadn’t seen in years. There were hugs that lingered too long and tears that didn’t need explaining. We raised a glass to Jerry. A song came on that always undoes me, and before I could even name what was happening, a friend barreled through the crowd just to hold me. She knew. That kind of knowing only exists when people have survived things together.

It reminded me why I once loved living in the same small town my whole life. Not because it was easy, but because we knew each other. Deeply. Especially in the Queer community here, we kept each other alive.

When I was fifteen, one of our friends was beaten to death and set on fire because people found out he was gay. The Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest his funeral. At the time, I didn’t have language for what we did next. We organized a blockade so his parents could enter the church without seeing the signs. I didn’t know that was organizing. I just knew it was necessary.

That was my first lesson in protection as a form of love.

Wild, lifetime-movie-level trauma just lived here. Lived in us. And we stayed. We survived. We carried each other forward. Now this same town holds Osiris, once shrouded in secrecy and shame, now voted the number one Mardi Gras ball. When that happened last year, I cried. It felt small and huge at the same time. Proof that something shifted.

Two nights ago, standing in that room, I felt the weight of it all. And then the very next day, ICE killed a legal observer. That’s the work I do now. I opened my email. Responded to Minneapolis. Slipped back into the posture I know too well.

And I started wondering.

Maybe I am who I am because of all of this. Because of surviving alongside people who didn’t get to grow up soft. Because my version of love learned how to stand in front of danger. Because my sense of justice was forged early, violently and without consent.

And maybe my daughter doesn’t need that.

I’ve always called it character building. That’s the language we use to make it survivable. But if I’m honest, it’s trauma I’ve become desensitized to. A hostile environment I learned to navigate so well that I stopped questioning whether it should be normal.

Watching Dahlia move through the world lately, I felt something unfamiliar. A longing for her to have friendships built on weekly park dates. On shared snacks. On avocado on sourdough. On safety that doesn’t require vigilance.

What would it mean for her to grow up without needing to be strong in the way I had to be strong?

What if strength didn’t have to come from exposure to cruelty?

This isn’t me rejecting who I am. I love how I’ve channeled my pain into the greater good. I love that I know how to protect, organize, show up and stand my ground. I honor the version of me that survived.

But I’m allowing myself, for the first time, to imagine a different inheritance for my child.

Not one built on endurance alone, but on ease.

Not a life that makes her resilient by harming her first.

Just a life.

And maybe that’s the bravest thing I can do now.

Subscribe

If this reflection stayed with you, if it named something you’ve been carrying quietly, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid support makes it possible for me to keep writing honestly about survival, parenting, liberation and the stories we inherit and interrupt. It allows me to write without rushing, without censoring and without flattening hard truths into something more palatable. Your subscription is not just support for this work, it’s an investment in imagining softer futures for the next generation.