I realized recently that I kind of just jumped in medias res on here (so theatre kid coded even though I wasn’t one). I started writing these essays and let y’all meet me in the middle of whatever spiral, revelation, flirtation, grief, or spiritual inconvenience was happening that week, but I don’t know if I have actually said: hi, my name is Delanyo Mensah and I’m a lot of things that were never supposed to fit comfortably in one body.

I grew up in a rural college town in southeast Ohio as the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, which meant I was always translating, watching, trying to figure out what the room wanted from me before I even knew what I wanted from myself. At school, I was a nameless Black face in a sea of white ones. In my parents’ house, I was Delanyo the scholar, Delanyo the future doctor, Delanyo the pinnacle of the perfect African child. A trophy with good grades.

At the beginning of my queer self-actualization journey, I wrote an essay called “Dream as Protest.” Reading it back now feels like opening a time capsule from a version of myself who was trying so hard to tell the truth with the language she had. I wrote about growing up in that small Appalachian college town, walking through the atrium of my high school and the mismatched red bricks uptown, surrounded by white faces. I wrote that I had become merely a fragment of myself.

Baby Delanyo was going THROUGH it! But she was right.

The way I grew up created a person who did not know herself well enough to dream. Every single action I took was to please others. Like a car on autopilot, I did what smart kids do. Challenging classes. Cello. Top 20 schools. Resume-building. Respectability. All of it calculated toward some unknown dream I felt preprogrammed to want.

Then, slowly, painfully, beautifully, I started dreaming for myself.

The first dream that really scared me was not about a job or a school or some impressive title. It was during a nap on my well-loved black living room couch on a lazy quarantine afternoon. I saw a version of myself who was not a doctor, an engineer, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, not anything that would satisfy the clout-chasing desires of anybody’s immigrant parent. I saw myself as a queer African immigrant woman, living in her full authenticity.

I’ve been trying to get back to her ever since…I have been becoming her.

I exist in a lot of gray areas, which used to feel like a curse, but I’m starting to understand it as my gift. Hummingbird. Cross-pollinating. Carrying observations from one world into another. Ghanaian and American. Black and queer. Spiritual and skeptical. Institutional and artistic. Rural Ohio and whatever the Delanyoverse is becoming.

Oh, so now y’all like the thing that had me fighting for my life in middle school? Interesting.

it took a Nigerian nigga in mint green making an album about it for y'all to hop on the bandwagon. noted.

Anyways. I started writing this while moving into my first house.

Big windows where the sun seeps in all day. A yard with purple flowers and a little cobblestone path I did not know I needed until I saw it. A room big enough that I can do cartwheels. A soaking tub. A place that feels like evidence.

My mother came to help me move. She was here almost a week. She cleaned my old apartment and then cleaned the new one. She brought food from Ohio and we ate together from the same plate. We went to a Ghana Association kenkey party and brunch with strangers. I took her to acupuncture for the first time. She anointed every room with oil and asked God to cast out any unwanted spirits, including those of the dogs that had lived here before.

For almost a week it felt like maybe we were going to be okay.

Then before I dropped her at the airport, she got on her knees crying and begged me to stop the lesbianism.

I want you to understand the scene.

The thing is, I don’t fully remember what happened next. My brain did what it has learned to do. Once she said “stop the lesbianism” I left. Not physically. I was still on the couch saying “I know, Mummy.” But something in me went somewhere else entirely and watched the rest of the scene from a safe distance.

We were sitting there after she had just prayed over the house. This house that felt like God answering me in square footage. She had been helping me move into a life that looked, to me, like fruit.

Then those big doe eyes I know so well filled up and she looked at me like she had been holding something behind her teeth all day.

“Delanyo, please. You know I love you.”

“Yes, I know you love me, Mummy.”

“Please, I am begging you. Please stop the lesbianism. It breaks my heart. It is so hard for me. It breaks my heart.”

And I just looked at her.

Like where the fuck are the cameras?

I didn’t say anything. I froze. My heart sank into my stomach, but not in the way it used to. I didn’t feel conviction. This time the shame didn’t rise up and swallow me whole. I mostly felt sad that she could be proud of me and still want me to evict myself from my own body.

“Delanyo, I love you.”

“I know.”

Then she wiped her tears, put on her shoes, and started another conversation like nothing had happened.

That was the scariest part. The turn. The way she could just fold it back into ordinary conversation. The way I could put my own grief aside, drive her to the airport, hug her goodbye, and then go to work.

Performance.

I talk a lot about performance, and that moment shook me because I saw it in her, and then I saw it in myself. The ability to fragment, tucking the unbearable thing somewhere behind our ribs and keep moving.

This is not the first time something like this has happened.

I came out to my mother the day before my 19th birthday. She told me I ruined her life. I thought I was the reason she was losing weight. That was the semester I had to medically underload, I got on depression medication and slept through the three classes I had left. Very inspirational girlboss behavior…I was so detached from myself I could barely tell where guilt ended and grief began.

And in the middle of that, I wrote “Dream as Protest.”

I wrote because something in me was trying to survive the story I was being handed. That my freedom was someone else’s destruction. In the days after my mom got on her knees in my new house, I kept thinking about Matthew 7.

Beware of false prophets. They come in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Every good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit.

By their fruit you will recognize them.

I know scripture has been used to wound people like me. I lived it. But that passage has been sitting with me differently.

Because if my queerness is so bad, why does my life keep bearing good fruit the more I embrace it?

This year alone: paid to frolic and create (or not) on 300 acres at a queer arts residency. A house with a tub. Rooms I used to pray to see. Art that made people feel less alone. More peace, more softness, more myself than I ever felt when I was trying to become the version of me other people could tolerate.

So again. If my queerness is so bad, why is the fruit so good?

And it’s not about the just the tangible material things (though they matter and I am ever so grateful for them). It is the peace. The way my body knows when I am telling the truth. The way God keeps sending me people who feel like home.

My mother has this parable she likes. When you are walking crooked, she says, someone else has to tell you your line is not straight. She has said this to me specifically, about my queerness, with a straight face.

I get what she means but I also don’t fully agree.

People have biases and inherited beliefs they pass off as “discernment”. They may not know what terrain I’m walking on, what obstacles I’m avoiding, what history lives in my body, what God and I have already discussed. Also life is not even linear. Who decided straight was the point?

To prefer me straight is to prefer my spiritual death.

For my parents, legislators, well-meaning internet commenters talking about love the sinner hate the sin, whoever — to prefer me straight means they prefer the version of me who was anxious all the time, detached from reality, starving herself emotionally (and physically too), performing goodness, collapsing under the weight of being acceptable. They prefer the fragment because the whole woman makes them uncomfortable.

But I cannot keep confusing their comfort with God’s will.

After I dropped my mom off I called Jerry from the car before I even got on the highway.

His voice came through the speaker the way it always does…warm and unhurried, like a cup of warm tomato soup on a storming afternoon. I drove and he talked and somewhere on the highway my shoulders came down from around my ears.

I went to work.

I answered emails. I was functional. At some point the grief in my body started screaming and I left.

I turned the water up as hot as it would go. While the tub filled I made tea: rose, hibiscus, cinnamon. Candles first, then the incense, the smoke going rose and palo santo and something almost edible through the whole bathroom before I even undressed. Rose petals dancing on the surface of the water. Magnesium flakes dissolving underneath. If Beale Street Could Talk soundtrack coming through the speaker soft enough that I could still hear the water running. I dipped my toe in, then my foot, then the rest of me slow, the heat rising up through my chest as I sank down until the water was at my chin and the petals were drifting and the candles were the only light.

I stayed until it got cold.

This weekend I went to a Black women’s spiritual circle for the first time.

When I walked in I was immediately drawn to an elder across the room. I kept looking over at her. Before the ceremony started we went around the circle and she said: if you have grief, come to her. I noted it. I didn’t go.

After the ceremony I threw up. Then I felt lighter. Like whatever I had been carrying got flushed out of my body entirely and down the drain.

She came to me.

Her hands were soft. Her eyes were beautiful and searching in a way that made me feel like she was reading something written on the inside of me. She hugged me and talked about my resilience and said to remember the sassy girl inside.

She came to me.

That is fruit too, and I have run out of ways to call it anything else.

So no, I will not stop the lesbianism.

Respectfully.

By their fruit you will know them.

I am learning to know myself by mine.

with love from the good tree,

Delanyo

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At that moment it didn’t matter that nothing about my balcony was free. It faces directly into a courtyard where everybody can see everybody, all of us stacked in our little units pretending not to watch each other live. I was out there with my eyes closed, trying to steal a little aliveness from a place that does not fully feel like mine.

Lately I keep finding myself inside things that are fine on paper. Fine job. Fine apartment. Fine romantic situation. Fine enough life. Nothing is actively on fire, which in this economy and this world can make you feel greedy for wanting more.

But fine is not the same as mine.

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I haven’t written a Substack in over a month, which feels like a lot to me because in my head I’m being spiritually chased by deadlines no one assigned me. My last essay was called mad about a lot, and honestly, maybe that’s why I disappeared. I let the anger out and then had to live with the fact that anger is a door not a conclusion. And after the door there is still life. Every time I sat down to write, I felt like I was circling the same shit again. Embodiment. Desire. Not hovering at the edge of my own life. Girl, are we still here...Apparently yes.

Today is the halfway point of the year. Six months left of 2026. At the beginning of the year, I said my words were embodiment and audacity. For my birthday, I said 24 was about eroticism. And today it hit me that embodiment and eroticism are all slow practices. Slowness is audacious in a society that rewards urgency. And I think I have been subconsciously trying to front-load my life. Capitalism, chronic pain, already having lived so much in a short period of time, the world being on fire every other day, all of it has made it hard for me to even imagine 50 more years of this shit.

That feels harsh to say, but it’s true. Some part of me is always trying to get there faster because I don’t fully trust that there will be time. So of course I start treating my life like Mount Everest, staring at a peak that’s literally sitting in the clouds. I don’t need the whole path right now. I need the next few steps and enough honesty to stop calling fear a strategy.

I know this. I really do.

And yet I am at about seven crossroads right now, looking for a guarantee before I move. I keep standing at the edge of these different nets wanting them to fully appear before I jump, but the net does not appear until you jump.

The thread through all of it is that a lot of things in my life are technically fine….and that’s the problem.

My job is fine. It has benefits. It looks good on LinkedIn. That checks clears biweekly regardless of how much I spiral, and in this economy that’s truly a blessing. But my spirit keeps tapping on the glass.

Actually, let me be more precise. My spirit keeps shattering glass because I have literally broken multiple glass containers over the past few months. A two bowls, a carafe, an incense holder, an expensive perfume that was supposed to represent my highest self (that one hurt BAD). At a certain point, the universe stops whispering.

I feel like I have expanded past the container I’m in. And that is a terrifying thing to admit when the container is not horrible. Horrible would be easier, at least there’s a villain. Fine makes you negotiate with yourself and sound ungrateful when you speak your truth.

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For months I’ve asked to be recognized in certain ways and didn’t receive that. I got what felt like a consolation prize of a bonus instead of a raise. And yes, the bonus was nice don’t get me wrong. But that’s not what I asked for. I’m slightly pissed off but there’s the internal voice of “reason” reminding me of the practical: benefits, stability. The job is fine.

Exactly.

Fine is not the same as mine.

I be circling the same shit, version 2.0 of calling crumbs nuance…calling something enough because asking for what you actually want would require you to move.

Things aren’t horrible but are they alive enough to stay?

If you’re a resident of the Delanyoverse you’ll know that these questions usually expand to all areas of my life at once.

Gemini III was great. She was kind, embodied, emotionally available in ways I had literally begged for. The puzzle pieces looked right, but they didn’t click together. That’s the best way I can explain it. And because there was nothing “wrong” enough to point to, I had to trust the quieter knowing, which is so inconvenient for a person who likes evidence. I voiced it. I know it hurt her, and I felt really shitty about that. I still do. Choosing alignment over complacency does not come with a guarantee that no one gets hurt. Sometimes it just means you stop volunteering yourself as the casualty.

Fine is not the same as mine.

And now my actual home is doing the same thing. My lease is up in like two weeks and I haven’t signed a new one. I haven’t packed fr. I have a realtor. I’ve toured places. I’m on Zillow and all the other sites. I’ve told my friends what I actually want out loud, which for me is its own act of exposure. I’m praying about it too. I keep trying to be realistic, but I want what I want. A bathtub. A tree. Real grass, not a panopticon with turf. Somewhere my body can exhale. I just haven’t found it yet. I believe it exists though.

I have a framework for this. Remembering. Naming. Seeing. Strategy. Integration. I built the whole thing myself. It is not a side quest, it is how I understand my life.

Except right now, in this exact moment, I can’t feel it working.

I know it works. I’ve watched it work in my own life and in other people’s. But knowing something works and feeling it work are different addresses. Zoomed out, I can see the growth clear as day. Zoomed in, standing in the actual moment, all I can ask is whether I’m giving it enough time to cook, or whether I’m just impatient and calling my impatience doubt.

I could be fucking delusional. But I’d rather move with faith than fear. I really hope this works out for me.

Six months left.

I want mine.

with love and a refusal to settle,

Delanyo

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For the past few weeks or months, idk, time has been slipping away from me even more these days, I kept getting the sacred rage card. Anger has repeatedly come up in conversations. My body has been whispering about it, then basically screaming, and until the other day I was under the impression that I am not really angry. Which is funny because I have a lot to be mad about, cue Solange. I just don’t always metabolize the feeling as anger. I transmute it into something else: spiritualize it, intellectualize it, turn it into an essay for your consumption. But before I turn this into another well written Delanyoverse think piece, let me be angry.

I’m mad about a fucking lot…that the world is getting worser and worser. It’s giving Revelations outside and my prefrontal not even done cooking. What do you mean I have to think about World War III instead of being young, Black, and lit? What do you mean gas is almost $5 and we are on the brink of global collapse? I’m mad that I have to keep developing a political analysis while also trying to develop a wellness routine and a retirement plan...is the world even going to exist for me to retire in 40 years?? I’m mad that I can never fully look away, but looking too long makes me feel like my nervous system is being MICROWAVED ON HIGH!

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I’m mad at my body too. My 24 year old body feels like I am pushing 78. Do you know what it feels like to hurt everywhere almost all the time? Do you know what it feels like to not even remember what it feels like to not be in pain? I have been navigating pain since I came out the womb basically, and this shit is ABSOLUTELY ass. I can tell you that! I’m supposed to be a young hoe dammit! I would not wish this on anyone, but part of me wishes I could transfer it to someone for five minutes just so I could have a break. Like here, hold this right quick.

And yes, I’m mad at myself too. For accepting the pain, ignoring it, pushing through. For making it normal…this is NOT normal. But after going to countless doctors and having them either push pain meds, recommend hardcore surgeries, or basically tell me to ride it out until I can’t anymore, I’m kind of over it. I do try things. I stretch, hydrate, make tea. I begrudgingly book the appointments. I know I can be better and more consistent about certain things, but when the problem doesn’t have a clear solution, only band-aids, it gets hard. Then there’s the layer of feeling like other people will never fully understand, so I keep it to myself, which only makes things worse. I could write a whole separate series on my body and the many layers happening there, but that’s not what this is about fr. Or maybe it is, but not fully.

I’m mad about under-receiving. I be doing a lot for others and don’t receive as much, and maybe it’s because I don’t allow myself to receive (it is), which makes me mad too. Like why can’t I just be more selfish? Why is it so hard to let people help me? The other day a friend asked if she could load the dishwasher for me and I said no, I’ll just hand wash the dishes after she left. After she left I literally was like why did you do that? You know you don’t want to wash these damn dishes by yourself. But there I was, choosing suffering because hyper-independence and not wanting to burden others is my defaut setting. I am so used to overextending and making things easier for everyone else because I have been socialized to believe worth comes from usefulness. LAME! BOO! BORING!

I’m mad about love for so many reasons, chile. I feel lowkey broken. For a long time, I was chasing mind-oriented connections that starved my body and furthered my fragmentation. So much of my recent self-actualization was spawned from me waking the fuck up and realizing I had spent a whole year rationalizing crumbs as nuance (one of my best think pieces go read it!). The week before my birthday, Ms. Capricorn literally texted me after not texting since I dropped those essays, with some corporate ass message, completely bypassing any type of confrontation or repair. Having the nerve to not even hit my line with an offering. Like bro, at least send me SOME MONEY. I NEED REPARATIONS!

I’m not even mad at her fr…maybe a little. I’m more mad at myself for playing in my own face for months. For romanticizing some shit I should have been left alone. And I am proud of myself too, let me say that. I deleted our entire text thread and kept it pushing. Growth. But now that we are done with Ms. Capricorn, there is a new character. Someone who actually is creating the conditions to land and be loved. And now I have to face the deeply annoying truth that receiving care can feel just as confronting as not getting it. Why can’t I just receive the love without questioning it? Like this lady is really giving me everything I say I want and my nervous system is like hmmm suspicious. Default setting: self-sabotage? Again, extremely proud of myself because I actually have not self-sabotaged. CLAP! But the impulse being there still pisses me off.

I’m mad about capitalism. Why can’t I just be hot and sexy and be paid? Why I gotta work and pay taxes to line the pockets of billionaires? Why can’t I simply be hot, make art, share my thoughts, and have money appear? I’m mad that I am exceptional and under-resourced. I literally cracked another bowl at work, this time with food in it. The writing is on the wall. Again. I am mad that I am so hard on myself. I am actually doing very well, but it still feels like I am never doing enough. I’m mad that rest makes me uncomfortable. I’m mad that I compare myself to people who are not even remotely in the same lane as me. I’m mad that I have monetizable gifts and still overthink how to build the container for them. I’m mad that faith gets watered down by overthinking. I’m mad that “paid to exist” still needs infrastructure, which is very rude because why can’t the infrastructure simply appear fully formed?

I’m mad about my socialization. Every day it seems like I find another way my upbringing fractured something in me. I’m mad that Christianity made me distrust my body and now I have to spend so much energy regaining trust and safety in it. I’m mad that desire was framed as deception. That pleasure, anger, queerness, eroticism, ambition, and the body all got braided with suspicion. I’m mad that something as arbitrary as my skin color could cost me my life if I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m mad that I learned early to police my own behavior and put on a character for other people’s comfort. I’m mad that I was taught I can’t be mad.

I’m mad that I don’t have rich parents so I don’t have to worry about getting it out the mud. I’m mad I don’t have a tight-knit biological family that fully understands me. And now that I have written all of this, I’m mad as fuck about the hyper-self-awareness too. The way I am so aware gets tiring. I wish I could shut the brain off and take a break. I mean, I guess I could, and honestly I have been far more embodied lately, but I’m still mad this is my default setting sometimes. I’m mad that even in my anger I can hear the essay forming. Like girl can we just be pissed for a second?

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I am mad about A LOT. And I think this brings me to my shadow.

Naming is not the same as feeling. Sometimes the analysis becomes a clean hallway around the mess. My shadow is not dramatic evil. It is quieter than that. Control, envy, hunger, judgment, vanity, resentment, superiority, fear, desire, avoidance. The part that wants to be above needing things and is mad every time she realizes she is human. That’s the part I keep trying to spiritualize away.

Because shadow feels dangerous when you were taught to distrust the flesh. Landing in my body feels like opening a locked room, and honestly I might be scared of what I’m going to find in there. I hover to avoid discovering something I dislike in myself. If I never fully land, I never have to see what I might become if I stopped managing myself into palatability.

And anger is a doorway into all of that. I am mad about so much. But underneath all of it is some disowned part asking to be acknowledged. The ambition I pretend is more modest than it is. The hurt I keep turning into insight. The woman who wants to be held without making a philosophical case for why she deserves it.

And I don’t know what to do with all of that yet.

So I’m trying not to rush. I have actually been doing a lot. I went to the doctor. I booked the follow-up. I deleted the thread. I’m letting love in. I’m building infrastructure. I’m trying to receive. I’m proud of myself!

Still angry,
Delanyo

Two weeks ago, I concluded my first paid creative residency, and I can already tell I’ll be unpacking it for months. It didn’t give me some neat answer. It gave me evidence. The kind that is harder to argue with.

When I trust myself, the room responds.

We left off two Thursdays ago, expansion day, which I have referenced at least once a day since because it was genuinely a turning point in my life. Shoutout to Granny Chinkapin for her wisdom.

Saturday was my last full day there, and that evening I led The Art of Becoming, a tea and collage workshop based on my Changemaker framework. And when I tell you the High Priestess card was manifesting so clearly…

I started by cleansing the space, perfuming it with incense made by Black Myth (I’m not sponsored, but I should be at this point). I had my emotional support notebook with the outline, the flow, all the things I thought I needed to remember so the workshop could be “good.”

I gave everyone a piece of rosemary and talked about remembrance. Asked them to crush it in their hands, smell it, let the body arrive before the mind tried to make meaning. I made a tea for everyone with wild blueberries, pineapple, hibiscus, cinnamon, ginger, chamomile, and fresh mint, and called it The Becoming Blend. I wanted people to drink something that helped them land in the room.

I asked everyone to share one word for how they were arriving.

The room had all kinds of people in it (and I didn’t invite a single one). Different ages, genders, sexualities, races, life experiences. One pair really stayed with me: neighbors, an Asian retired arts educator and her retired white farmer neighbor. They were sitting there among eccentric queer people, Black, white, young, old, all of us smelling rosemary and making collages together. The man, Mike, said he was arriving curious.

That did something to me because this is how we change the world. I know that sounds big, but I mean it. Sharing space. Making things with our hands. Learning from people unlike us. Being curious instead of closed. Sitting in a room where nobody has to be the same for everybody to belong.

After the rosemary, we moved into collage. I explained that the black paper represented depth and possibility, the white paper represented openness and clarity. Half sheets were for experimentation. Full sheets were for taking up space.

And then very early into the workshop, I put the notebook down.

I realized I didn’t need it.

Everything was within me.

This is literally my being. I don’t need the notebook as a crutch. I am a channel for divine wisdom, and I cannot keep stifling God because I’m trying to remember bullet points.

So I trusted myself.

And there was this moment where I kind of saw myself doing it. Like I was in my body and outside of it at the same time like… damn. This is me. This is what I’m supposed to be doing.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that clearly in my purpose before.

I talked about remembering the versions of ourselves that existed before the world told us who to be. I talked about the social change ecosystem and how we all have different roles. I talked about radical imagination and our power to change the world from where we are, with what we have, through who we already are.

And then people created.

Beautifully. Wildly. Some people followed directions. Some absolutely did not, which honestly, yes! Radical imagination. Some combined the black and white paper. Some added the rosemary sprigs. Some made pieces that were abstract, others literal…every piece was so unique. I walked around asking questions because I was genuinely curious, not performing facilitator voice, just wanting to know how people were receiving it.

The workshop became less about me delivering something and more about witnessing people meet themselves.

Then we moved into tea blending. I had set out herbs and listed their meanings. I invited people to make a blend that reflected what they wanted to embody moving forward. Now that you’ve remembered, named, seen, imagined… what do you want to take with you? What do you want infused into your being when you go home and make this tea?

People selected herbs with intention. They talked about what they were choosing and why. It was so beautiful.

Afterward, I pulled cards for the group.

People came up to me after. Several told me it was impactful. Some texted and messaged me later. Someone asked for my Venmo because they wanted to tip me. I was like oh? That had not even occurred to me. Then they wrote my Venmo on a paper and told other participants, and I got some money. Yay!

But also, confirmation.

My voice creates value. My work creates value. The workshop flowed because I trusted what was already in me. I didn’t even explicitly talk about the workbook. I didn’t need to. The work was in the room.

After the workshop, I was handed my residency check, and I wrote on the envelope:

“I’m paid to exist.”

Because that’s what happened.

Creativity, attention, space-making, my voice, my way of seeing, all of that is valuable. Literally. Financially. Like actual checks and Venmo tips. People paid me to be there. People responded to what moved through me.

That was the threshold in a “oh… I can stop proving this” kind of way.

I came home and turned 24 a few days later, which feels important. The residency was a closing of one year and the beginning of another.

23 was the year I learned how to name the pattern. 24 feels like the year I have to live differently because of what I know.

My last essay was published one week before my birthday. Then last Thursday, expansion day again, I turned 24, my Jupiter return, the planet of expansion. Twenty-four has no choice but to be expansive, and honestly, it already has been.

My birthday felt peaceful. I did a soak, sauna, and massage. My father took me to lunch, which, if you know me in real life, that’s big. And we had an actually lovely time. My friends took me to dinner at a very yummy, very Delanyocore restaurant. So many people texted and DM’d me, reflecting my own impact back to me in ways I couldn’t really dodge.

And I had to sit with that.

I have already changed lives and communities.

I say that not from ego from evidence. I have receipts. I have poems that moved people, workshops that shifted people, gatherings that gave people language, essays that made people feel less alone.

And still, I rarely stop to integrate.

I keep moving.

23 was so much. So much happened. So much got built. But I spent a lot of it watching myself live. Naming the pattern. Turning the pattern over in my hands like if I understood it deeply enough, maybe that would count as changing.

And sometimes it did.

But not always.

I think I have been an anthropologist of belonging. Studying the rooms, my own longing, intimacy, community. Studying what it would mean to be held, to be seen, to be chosen, to be paid, to be embodied, to be free.

For months I thought the lesson was that I needed to stop circling and land.

But I think I have landed.

The workshop was landing. Putting the notebook down was landing. Trusting my voice in a room full of strangers was landing. Letting people pay me was landing. My birthday was landing. Sitting across from my father at lunch and letting it be lovely without bracing for disappointment was landing. Being loved by my friends, being celebrated, being seen, that was landing too.

I think I keep writing about landing like it’s still hypothetical because I don’t always give myself credit for what I’ve already done. I’m so used to studying my own becoming that sometimes I miss the part where the becoming becomes real.

And it has.

Not all the way. But enough.

Enough to stop pretending I’m still waiting at the edge.

So maybe 24 is less about finally landing and more about staying with what I’ve already entered.

Participation is different. It’s less sexy. It’s going to the doctor. It’s receiving the money. It’s letting the workshop be enough without immediately asking how to scale it. It’s letting people love me without turning it into evidence for some future argument against my own loneliness. It’s making a life and then actually living inside it.

I don’t think I’m done observing. I will never stop noticing, that’s literally the brand.

But observation is no longer enough.

The work now is to participate in what I know. To stop treating every arrival like it only counts once I’ve mastered it. I have landed.

I think.

Now I’m learning how to stay.

And honestly?

It’s about time.

with love and a willingness to stay,

Delanyo

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The word expansive circulated through my day at least ten times, which feels correct because it really is the best word to describe what be happening in my life. My theme for this year has been growth and abundance, and as I’m writing this I’m realizing yesterday marked exactly one week until my birthday. A beautiful little portal. May the remaining six days before my new trip around the sun continue to be deeply expansive.

Yesterday began with a multi hour phone free bramble around the land. I decided to go on a solo hike to visit the 400-year-old grandmother Chinkapin tree that the land is named after. On my way up the hill, I kept telling myself how proud of myself I am for being here, for going on the hike alone, for venturing into nature without needing someone to guide me or validate that I was doing it right.

Halfway up the hill, I stopped and looked at the horizon and broke down into tears.

It’s okay to stop.

I don’t have to push myself to keep going.

I have come so far and the journey has been so beautiful.

Instead of forcing myself to keep walking up the hill, I put my blanket down and was present. I looked at the trees. Listened to the birds and bugs. Took deep breaths. Cried, sobbed actually. Let the moment be a moment before it became a message.

And of course, because I am me, even as I was having the epiphany about being present and pausing, part of my brain started thinking about how to translate it for other people. How do I write this? How do I share this? What does this mean? And I had to remind myself, girl, I am not here to be consumed. I am here to live.

Yes, my insights are valuable. Yes, my life is material. Yes, my writing matters. But first and foremost, I need to experience my life for myself. I need to metabolize it in my body before I immediately turn it into language.

So yesterday I didn’t journal or take pictures for most of the day. Intentionally. As an act of getting out of my head and into my body.

After spending time at my pause, I continued my journey and eventually saw this big tree. I felt in my spirit that it was not THEE tree, but it was still deeply impactful to the ecosystem of the forest. So I thanked it for its contributions. I affirmed its importance. I reflected on how much it has seen.

Not THEE tree, but still holding something together.

A word.

I thanked the land and all the people who inhabited it before me. I thought about how I don’t need to be afraid of nature. This was my first time on this land and I didn’t have a guide, but there was a path made by the steps of people who had walked before me. There were signs. It wasn’t completely clear, but it was enough to move forward.

There were moments where the ground was really muddy and I was wearing Crocs, because of course I was. I stood there for a couple seconds, maybe minutes, trying to figure out which way to go. Eventually I just had to choose. Make a step. Commit. Then make another step.

That’s a metaphor in and of itself.

In the first field note, I wrote about the three cards I pulled: The Hermit, The Lovers, The High Priestess. They have been SOO loud. Yesterday I kept thinking about The Hermit, about how the lamp only illuminates a few steps directly in front of you, and that’s all you actually need.

Which is humbling because even on this walk, while trying to be present, my mind still wandered to the state of the world. I haven’t been completely unplugged. I’ve checked my email a few times. Scrolled on Instagram. I know Tennessee passed redistricting to make it an entirely Republican-controlled congressional map. I know there is another virus outbreak. I know Meta ended end-to-end encryption on Instagram DMs. I don’t know everything bad going on in the world, but I know enough, and it’s not good.

As a society, we are regressing at an alarmingly rapid rate.

And still, I was not going to solve global geopolitics on this singular walk.

I could only control myself and the three steps in front of me.

After my walk, I went to talk to the people working on the new cabin. I learned more about them, how they found themselves here in this community of Radical Faeries. I did more listening than speaking, which felt good. People are windows and mirrors. I learned about so many experiences I never would have encountered otherwise.

We talked about community a lot. I brought up the Social Change Ecosystem Map and my interest in helping people figure out who they are and how they fit. I kept thinking about how this place is already doing so much of what people theorize about. Interdependence. Mutuality. Chosen family. Shared labor. Ritual. Play. Care.

I also love how people here have chosen their own names and how those names feel like reflections of their true selves. Supernova. Joysong. Garbage. Tinkerfly. Just to name a few.

I love the radical imagination and expansiveness of queerness.

This place and the surrounding areas are part of the Radical Faerie movement, loosely connected to Short Mountain Sanctuary and that whole 1970s commune lineage. I’m not going to pretend I know the full history yet, but talking with people here and witnessing the way this community functions has made me feel really at peace.

Like yes, the world is burning.

But here people are doing things that change the world.

The world is burning, but we are water.

Loving ourselves and each other. Taking time to be in community with people different from us. Making food. Building cabins. Singing around fires. Choosing names. Practicing a world where everyone gets to be more of who they actually are.

And honestly, the values of the faeries really eat down.

I keep thinking about how people are legislating queerness, but the deeper issue is that queerness, in its purest foundational form, helps people develop radical imagination. Not just sexuality, but possibility. Everyone should be queer, not necessarily in a sexuality sense, but in the sense of being your most authentic self and creating space for others to do the same.

Even the way they were building the house felt like a lesson.

Later, I went to Short Mountain Cultures and met Simmer and JP, who were so kind. I literally yapped for almost two hours and got a whole haul. The store is immaculate. I am a sucker for presentation and energy. And not to be an astrology heaux, but learning it’s run by Virgo and Capricorn placements made so much sense. Organized. Impeccable. Flavors layered and intentional.

I tried this hibiscus ginger water kefir that transported me. It reminded me of sobolo/sorrel/zobo, all the diasporic red drinks that feel like memory in a cup. They gave me a copy of Sandor Katz’s Fermentation as Metaphor, which feels so aligned it is almost annoying.

Because of course fermentation is the metaphor.

Transformation that takes time. Culture as a living thing. Microbial collaboration. Becoming through contact. Something changing because it is allowed to sit, interact, and become.

Being here keeps showing me that a new world is possible, but it requires communication, empathy, vulnerability, cooperation, and seeing outside yourself. It requires figuring out your role in the ecosystem. It requires not trying to be every part of the forest at once.

The evening ended with a bonfire.

I met more people. There was song and ritual. I pulled ten cards for the group from my Flowers of the Night deck, which felt deeply fitting. Then I read my poem, for those who tend to the fire. At this point, I think that poem is magic. It has traveled with me into so many rooms, and yesterday it made so much sense. The state of the world. The fact that we were literally tending a fire. The people gathered around it. The ache and beauty of it all.

They thanked me for my place.

High Priestess card. Loud again.

Yesterday I listened and asked questions. Interpreted patterns. Walked through mud. Stopped halfway up a hill. Cried. Thanked a tree that was not THEE tree. Thought about Tennessee, Ghana, voting rights, viruses, surveillance, chosen names, fermentation, queerness, community, and the three steps in front of me.

I didn’t journal at all until bed.

I really lived yesterday.

With love from the land,

Delanyo

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I am blessed and highly favored, and I’m really proud of myself for moving toward embodiment. Not just thinking about my life actually experiencing it.

I recorded less today. I only have one picture of my meal. Which means I actually lived.

I slept in. I received breakfast from the other artists on the land, and we ate together conversed a little bit. I started a collage. Finally. I soaked my feet and took a shower in the rain while listening to music. There’s a mirror next to the shower, and I danced naked in the rain and talked to myself.

“We are so free. This is just the beginning. I am so proud of you. I love you.”

I like the person I am allowing myself to be here.

Where are you being invited to stop observing your life and actually enter it?

With love from the land,
Delanyo

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This is the first time in a long time that I have slowed down enough to really enjoy God’s creation. I feel so blessed to be here.

And yet… my mind is moving 100 miles an hour.

Maybe you’re just not that into you?

That was the rude little question that came up today. Because I say I want solitude. Then I get here and immediately start doing everything except the thing. Walking, eating, praying, scrolling, talking to my parents, replying to texts, thinking about my relationships, thinking about the world, thinking about my place in it, thinking about how I should be making art, thinking so much about making art that I exhaust myself before I even pick up the glue stick.

Very on brand.

I did do embodied things though. Let the record show. I made a really delicious breakfast with eggs, spinach, feta, tomato, and red peppers. I ate other good food. I went for a walk. I laid in the grass. I talked to God. I listened to the birds. I said no to some calls. But I also scrolled on Instagram. I distracted myself. I could feel myself reaching for everything except myself.

And maybe that’s part of the work too, annoying as that is.

Despite my attempts to fully enjoy my escape from the “real world”, I cannot actually stop thinking about the world outside of me. Right now in Nashville, members of my community are at the State Capitol protesting the special session to redistrict our congressional map following the SCOTUS decision to weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It does not escape me that in my motherland, Ghana, the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill seeks to criminalize queerness and the support of it. I am acutely aware of all the ways the world wants to police my existence and take away my ability to express myself.

protect the south

That is why I write.

I write because even when I don’t explicitly say it, I am constantly thinking about my place in the world. I write about my interior world as a person impacted by all of these systems because I believe my personal story holds the power to change the world. Or at least shift something.

When I came up with the name Delanyo the Changemaker, I don’t think I realized all that I was naming. Senior year of college, I kept writing in my journals: queer African changemaker. I am a queer African changemaker. Over and over again like I was calling myself into being. I have a letter from my eighth grade teacher that she wrote me before school ended for the summer. She said I was an old soul. She said one day my writing might change the world.

Which is wild to tell a child, honestly. Like okay girl, no pressure.

But I think I believed her.

And maybe that is why I’m running away from making art. Because I know it matters to me. It is one thing to write on the back porch and another thing to actually sit down and make the collage. To move the thought from my head into my hands…to stop circling the thing and enter it.

What if the thing you keep avoiding is the thing that would make you more honest?

This evening I got confirmation of everything I had been working through. The other artists arrived and asked me to pull cards from their bag.

I pulled The Hermit. The Lovers. The High Priestess.

LOUD AS FUCK.

My lesson for this place is retreating so I can choose my own internal union in order to be my embodied self. The Hermit said go inward. The Lovers said choose. The High Priestess said you already know.

And I don’t know yet what that means for tomorrow.

Maybe I make the collage. Maybe I avoid it again. Maybe I sit with the avoidance until it tells on itself again.

I was 1% better today and thats what matters.

With love from the land,

Delanyo

Like I need you to understand the context. I am being paid more than my monthly salary to spend a week doing whatever the fuck I want. There is no pressure to produce anything while I’m here. No one is asking me for a deliverable. I just get to be here. Resting, writing, exploring, seeing what comes up. At the end of my time, I’ll lead The Art of Becoming, a tea and collage workshop based on my Changemaker framework, which feels very full circle and also very funny because apparently I really did build a whole philosophy out of my life and now people are paying me to share it in the woods.

The word of the year is audacity, and this feels like one of the most audacious things I have ever done. Not audacious in a loud way, but in the sense of allowing myself to receive something I did not have to wrestle from the world. I keep thinking about how this might be the most free anyone in my lineage has ever been. That might sound dramatic, but deadass. I am a queer Black Ghanaian-American woman being paid to sit on land and make art and listen to myself. Like… hello? Do you ever stop and realize you are living inside something your ancestors didn’t even have language for?

A couple weeks before coming here, I went to visit Jasmine at Black Myth to stock up on incense and ended up sitting with her for a bit. I’ve been following her for years after we both attended this deeply impactful collage workshop at Fisk led by Helena Metaferia. That workshop and the Frist Art Museum’s Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage show were both deeply influential for my own artistic practice. It was one of those pivotal periods where I didn’t fully know what was shifting yet, but something was. Without sounding super parasocial, watching Jasmine’s expansion has been so inspiring to me. Watching her build a soul-led business that blends wellness, spirituality, fashion, and space curation has been one of those reminders that the life I want is not imaginary. It exists in people around me. It’s not theoretical.

At some point, either during that conversation or one day when I swiped up on her story, she brought up Abraham Hicks and the path of least resistance. I’ve been thinking about that ever since. The path of least resistance. Not the path of no effort, because that’s not real, but the path where things open because you are aligned enough to walk through them without fighting every step. And being here feels like proof of that. This residency feels like proof…I didn’t have to contort myself for it. I applied with the truth. I wrote from where I was. And now I’m here.

Yesterday was my first full day on the land and it was beautiful. I frolicked around, talked to the trees and the birds and bugs, walked around naked and felt the sun and wind on my body. I felt like I was charging. Like my body was some little solar-powered ancestral device that had finally been placed in the right conditions. I know that sounds hotepy but that’s what it felt like. It felt like my body was remembering something my mind has been trying to theorize for months.

In the evening, I had the most lovely interaction. I was sitting and journaling when someone opened the door. It was a queer carpenter who was on the land for a cabin-building workshop. I was making dinner and offered them some, so we sat outside and ate together. They told me they really wished they could attend my workshop, so I started talking more about it, how it’s based on my personal framework, remember, name, see, strategy, integrate. They were like, wow, that’s amazing, I’d love to support.

My first instinct was, of course, let me get my laptop and show you. Because subconsciously I still think I need to prove the thing that is already clear.

They said, no, what’s your Venmo?

Paid me immediately.

I wasn’t selling. I was simply talking about myself and my life. That is my path of least resistance. Using my voice. Letting the thing be what it is without dragging it into a performance of legitimacy. What if your voice is already the product? What if the thing you keep trying to package is already moving through the way you speak, the way you notice, the way you make meaning out of a random conversation over dinner?

dm me on ig for a copy of the reset

Now I’m finna get into astrology for a second because yesterday I learned about my Vesta placement and it kinda dragged me. Vesta is an asteroid that helps you understand what you devote yourself to, what you protect, where your sacred focus is. Mine is in Gemini in the 5th house, which basically means I am wired to devote myself to expressing my ideas creatively and being witnessed doing it. To truly succeed in life, I need to commit to my own expression the way I commit to thinking about it.

And honestly? Very accurate.

It described my edging pattern so clearly. I get an idea, expand on it mentally, maybe partially create it, don’t fully release it, then move on to the next idea. I stay in potential instead of circulation. I’m not afraid of being seen. I think I’m afraid of being seen consistently. My system is used to intensity, retreat, reemerge. I’ll have a burst of visibility and then disappear into the woods metaphorically, and now literally, apparently. But I’m breaking that cycle by writing this, by committing to releasing something every day while I’m here. Not because it has to be perfect, not because every recap needs to be profound, but because my voice needs practice being in circulation without me making it a dramatic event.

When I applied to this residency back in October, while I was building C*NTINUUM, I wrote that this would be an essential turning point in my creative life. For the past few years, my practice had been outward-facing, centered on building community, curating spaces, and leading projects that support other people. I said I needed to step away from my many roles and return to the root, the artist within. I wanted to create without performance, to write and collage without agenda, to reconnect with the instinctual joy that first drew me to art.

Reading that now is kinda emotional because I did that. I’m doing that. I’m here. How often do we forget that we are living inside answered prayers because they don’t arrive with a spotlight and a soundtrack? How often do we write down a dream, receive it, and immediately start asking what’s next?

This morning I saw a picture of me from six years ago. It was from my high school graduation shoot. 17 old Delanyo. And I just sat there thinking about how proud she would be of me. I don’t know if she could have seen this coming. I don’t know if she could have imagined the way her life would stretch far beyond what she had been taught to want. But I know she would be proud. I know she would look at me on this land, paid to make art, leading a workshop about becoming, and think, oh, we made it somewhere.

Also, because everything is a metaphor to me and apparently no thought can just be a thought…so my body does this thing where I literally cannot poop when I go to a new environment. Like I couldn’t poop the entire first week of college. I couldn’t poop my first few days here because it’s a composting toilet in an outhouse and my sphincter is used to my bathroom at home with my bamboo toilet paper, which I did bring because I am still me. I have been the most hydrated I have ever been and still my body was like, absolutely not, we do not know this place.

And honestly… metaphor.

My body needs to become comfortable with new environments. I need to let the new life become familiar enough that my body stops clenching against it. Because how many of us say we want expansion but our bodies are still bracing like we are in danger? How many of us are trying to receive a new life with an old nervous system? Everything is a metaphor to me. I’m sorry…not really.

Last week, I watched Euphoria Season 3 Episode 3 on the plane from Philly, which I need to write a whole separate essay about. SPOILER ALERT, if you haven’t watched, scroll. If you’re still reading, you’re here of your own volition! Anyway, Maddy is working for this big talent agency and gets the idea to manage this hot girl. Her boss tells her no, she doesn’t listen to her instinct, the girl makes hella money, and Maddy is still an assistant.

That sat with me.

Because sometimes I feel that with my job. They keep giving me signs that they are not serious about expanding me in the way I know I can expand. It’s very much giving We Got Y’all over there, not prioritizing expansion, praising talent while keeping the structure the same. I know what I do is working. I have so much proof and evidence. But instead of going 10 toes down on that, I keep trying to manage myself inside a container that might not fit anymore.

That’s why the carafe and the glass bowl cracking hit me so hard. The bowl literally cracked as I was signing myself out of the office. It just clicked. I have to expand my container. Maybe that doesn’t mean quitting dramatically and running off into the sunset. I actually do think my job still fits into the ecosystem of my life…at least for now. But it does mean adding new containers. Expanding the ones I have. Letting my life hold more than one stream, one source, one version of legitimacy.

Where are you still trying to make yourself fit a container you already outgrew? Where are you waiting for someone else to expand it for you?

Because being here is expanding my container. This land is expanding my container. Writing daily is expanding my container. Getting paid for my voice while I’m making dinner and talking to a queer carpenter is expanding my container. Being alone on 300 acres and not collapsing into fear is expanding my container. Walking around naked in the sun is expanding my container. Letting myself be seen consistently, even in rough draft form, is expanding my container.

This is not me having it all figured out. Please. I am still adjusting to the composting toilet. But I can feel something shifting. I can feel myself becoming more available to the life that is already here, not the one I keep trying to prove I deserve.

In October I predicted that was the real work of this residency. Not forcing myself to produce some grand body of work, but becoming the kind of person who can receive space without immediately filling it with pressure. Becoming the kind of artist who trusts that rest and creation are not opposites. Becoming the kind of person who can say, I am here, I am safe, I am free, and actually let her body believe it.

I am proud of myself. Like deeply, deeply proud. This feels audacious and ordinary at the same time. A woman alone on land, writing, eating, talking to trees, learning her own rhythms, getting paid, being witnessed, trying to poop in peace. Little house on the prairie type shit but make it Black, queer, erotic, slightly unserious, and very spiritually aligned.

If this is the path of least resistance, I think I want to stop arguing with it.

With love and a wider container,

Delanyo

Have you ever noticed how something can be working and your first instinct is still to tighten your grip?

“Quantum leap” has been coming up for me a lot. Like something is shifting quickly and quietly at the same time. Things are opening, conversations are aligning, opportunities feel less random and more… placed.

And I’m excited, I really am.

But underneath that there’s also this quieter question… am I actually able to hold all of this?

Yesterday was Earth Day and I decided, very intentionally, that it was going to be my quantum leap day.

And it was.

I started the morning with breakfast with a friend who I quite literally manifested into my life a couple years ago. I had made a collage, cut out her picture, placed it there without overthinking it, and then met her a couple months later. Very Delanyocore. My life has a habit of unfolding like a slightly surreal, well-written show where things connect in ways that feel too aligned to be accidental.

She is who I become when I stop edging myself. She runs a successful business as an ecosystems architect, leads a global think tank and media firm at the intersections of sustainability, tech, and creativity. We hadn’t seen each other in months and sitting across from her felt like looking at a version of my life that is not hypothetical. It’s real. It exists. It’s possible.

What would your life look like if you actually stopped hovering and committed?

Later that evening I went to an event called the Lightholders Gathering, invited by my friend Coco. I met her a couple months ago at an awards ceremony, and I remember sitting there journaling, literally writing that regardless of whether I won or not, I would meet someone there that was going to change my life… and then she walked up to me mid sentence.

The event was for healers, guides, people doing deeply intentional work, coming together to connect and learn about a new platform called Soul. It was one of those spaces where you can feel alignment immediately. Not forced, not curated to death, just people who are clearly operating in their purpose.

And then I ended the night at a meeting for the gallery I’m vice president of, where we voted on the curatorial theme for 2027.

Mine won.

By the end of the day it was almost undeniable. I am exactly where I need to be. Opportunities are not scarce in my life. They are specific. They are aligned. They reflect who I actually am.

So then why does part of me still move like thats not true?

About 2 weeks before that, I shattered two things in one day. A bowl I ate from in the afternoon and later that night a glass carafe I drink from. Both gone within hours. At first I tried to make it mean something deeper, like let me decode the symbolism, what is the universe trying to say…

But sitting with it, it felt simpler.

They were vessels.

Things meant to hold nourishment.

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot… what I can actually hold right now.

Not in a dramatic way. I’m actually doing better than I have been..this not HBO. Eating more consistently, drinking water, being in my body in ways that don’t feel performative. But even with that, I can feel the gaps. The moments where I drift back into old habits. The lag between how much my life is expanding and how consistently I’m supporting myself inside of it.

The carafe especially stayed with me. It started as something simple, just water, but over time I used it for everything. Tea, herbs, little rituals, care. It became a container for more than what it was originally built for.

And that’s where it clicked.

I’ve been doing the same thing.

Asking the same version of myself to hold more and more, more responsibility, more visibility, more creation, without actually changing the container.

And it works…until it doesn’t.

How much are you holding right now that your current systems can’t actually sustain?

Because my life is expanding. That part is not theoretical. I’m building things, sharing more, stepping into new levels of responsibility. I launched the Changemaker Reset, it’s out in the world, people are engaging with it.

dm me on instagram for a copy

And of course I stayed up until 4am working on it.

Quantum leap… same nervous system.

I can build the thing, name what’s happening, articulate alignment and embodiment, and still leave my own body behind in the process.

There’s always that moment where I override myself to get it done.

And then I look up and think… okay, but why is this the method?

I don’t think anything is wrong. I think I’m just at the edge of capacity.

Not collapse, not failure, just a clear awareness that something in me has to expand to match what I’m calling in.

Which makes conversations about “potential” land differently now. I’ve been told my whole life that I have it, and I understand that’s a compliment. But I’m starting to notice how often potential comes with projection.

A direction. A path. A version of your life that makes sense to somebody else.

I had a conversation recently where someone, very genuinely, was trying to guide me. And on paper… it made sense. But something in me tightened..Just a quiet… no.

Have you ever felt that? When something is objectively “good” but your body is like… absolutely tf not.

Because I could feel the shift from being seen to being positioned.

And I’ve spent enough of my life being legible, being the version of myself that fits neatly into systems, that I can’t unfeel that now. I know what it takes to be that version of myself. I know what it costs. I don’t want to be molded. I want to be supported in a way that allows me to remain intact. There’s a difference. And I’m learning to feel that difference more precisely.

I have been thinking a lot about eroticism lately. Doing things like making my own body butter. Paying attention to what I eat. Letting myself exist without constantly needing to justify it through productivity (still working on that one). Embodying eroticism is much harder than it sounds. Because I’m so used to being on. Even now, writing this, there’s a part of me that wants to turn this into a takeaway which isn’t the point. I think the point is that my life is asking me to be here for it. Not just build it. Actually be in it.

A lot of what I planted in the winter is blooming. Relationships, opportunities, creative work, visibility… it’s here.

And I can feel how easy it would be to miss it. To stay in motion, keep planting, keep building…immediately reach for what’s next instead of letting myself experience what’s already growing.

What would it look like to actually enjoy your life while it’s happening?

Just… experience it.

I’m not fully there yet.

I can still feel the impulse to move, to extract, to stay ahead of my own life instead of inside of it.

But I’m noticing it.

Because I think what I’m actually learning is not how to build more.

It’s how to stay with what I’ve already built.

With love and a body I’m learning to listen to,

Delanyo

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Cue Kevin Gates.

But for real… I don’t want to get it out the mud. I’m tired. But by the way I’ve been moving, you would think I do.

Even typing this out, I can feel how deep this shit goes. Like something in me is bracing… waiting to be corrected. Like no, you actually do need to struggle more. You’re not tired enough yet. You haven’t earned it.

Girl… shut up.

I know that voice is not telling the truth. But she is loud. Loud enough that I will watch myself burn slowly and still think I’m not doing enough.

Because when I look around, most of the women I know who are building beautiful, expansive lives didn’t just decide one day to slow down. Something interrupted them. A health scare. A breakup that cracked something open. Burnout that made continuing impossible.

My friend Kim quit her big law job after high blood pressure and panic attacks and wrote, “$300k on the shelf, I quit my job for my health, but tell me is it really gambling when I’m betting on myself.” Same friend only got serious about her body after a messy divorce. My former business coach burned out in tech and went full eat, pray, love to rebuild her life from scratch.

I could name at least five more stories like that without even thinking too hard.

It’s like something had to stop them in a way they couldn’t argue with.

So I keep circling the same question.

Is that what it takes?

Because I’ve been saying the same things for months. I’m tired. I’m not sleeping well. My body has been trying to get my attention in ways that are not subtle.

And still… I continue.

Even when I first wrote this, it was the middle of the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t really gotten dressed. I was sitting there thinking I need to finish this first. I know I could close the laptop, eat something, step outside, come back.

I didn’t.

Well… I did eventually.

Which almost made it worse, because now I can’t pretend I don’t see it. I caught it mid-pattern. I got up, I ate, I came back.

But the fact that I had to catch myself doing the very thing I was writing about says something.

I’ve always been like this.

As a child, I would come home from school, sit at the table, and do my homework until it was done. No breaks. No snacks. No bathroom. Just finish it. Then you can eat, move…be a person.

Same pattern now.

Work. Thinking. “Grinding.” Running on thoughts and prayers like that’s normal.

And somehow it still doesn’t feel like enough.

I don’t feel like I’m producing enough. I don’t feel like I’m where I should be. So I push more… even though I’m already tired. Even though I know, intellectually, that success does not come from self-abandonment.

I know that.

And still.

Black women report some of the highest levels of chronic stress and stress-related illness while being among the most overworked and underpaid, even as one of the most educated groups in the country.

We are praised for resilience and then left to carry it.

Getting it out the mud is inherited.

Which makes it harder to question… and more necessary.

Because if the grind is costing us our bodies, why do we still trust it so much?

Why does exhaustion read as legitimacy?

Why do I only feel like I’m doing enough when I’m depleted? (honestly still don’t even then)

What makes this hard to ignore is I have seen glimpses of the other side.

This Saturday was really beautiful.

I went to a college workshop about spirituality and space-making. Afterwards I went to the park. I added to my collage, I journaled allowing myself to draw on the lined paper, took off my shoes and froliced in the grass. I did cartwheels. I talked to a tree.

I wasn’t trying to be embodied.

I just was.

Later that evening I went to a listening session for Talibah Safiyat and it felt like a portal to the life I say I want. Hibiscus tea. Incense made specifically for the space. Intergenerational. Soft and expansive at the same time.

I felt free.

Not conceptually. Actually.

That’s what complicates this.

Because now I know what it feels like to not push. To not override. To not live in that constant low-level tension I’ve normalized.

And still… I keep circling.

Even this week, I built something I’m genuinely proud of. I wrote and recorded the Changemaker Reset, a whole framework about alignment and embodiment and actually living what you know.

i'll share more on instagram

And I stayed up until 4am working on it.

Which is honest.

And also the pattern.

I can build the thing. I can name the truth. I can create something that helps other people come back to themselves… and still leave my own body behind in the process.

I’ve done that with C*NTINUUM.

Lowkey every major undertaking since middle school.

So this isn’t a breakthrough.

It’s a pause at best.

The conditioning is not abstract. It lives in my body. Finish the thing. Push through. Be strong. Don’t stop unless you have to. Earn your rest after. Earn it again tomorrow.

So when nothing is actively, catastrophically falling apart, I just keep going.

Not because I need to…but because I don’t fully trust stopping unless something forces me to.

And I can’t keep romanticizing that.

Because if I’m waiting for a breakdown to give me permission to change, then I’m not actually choosing myself.

I’m outsourcing the decision to whatever finally takes me down.

So what am I waiting for… really?

Something obvious enough that I can’t negotiate with it? Something public enough that it justifies stopping? A level of exhaustion that finally feels like “okay, now it’s serious”?

I keep saying I don’t want to get it out the mud, but my behavior still assumes that I have to.

And I don’t know where that got so deep in me that it overrides my own evidence.

Because I have proof that things can come through ease. I have proof that clarity moves my life more than force does. A couple days ago I made $500 by saying one sentence. I didn’t grind or suffer for that. I just saw a pattern clearly and named it.

That’s how I move through the world.

And still… I hesitate.

So maybe the question isn’t whether I can choose a different way.

Maybe it’s whether I actually believe I’m allowed to.

Because those are not the same thing.

I don’t have a clean answer. But I am interrupting it more. Eating before I collapse. Stopping before I burn out. Letting things be done instead of perfect.

Small, unconvincing things.

But maybe that’s where it starts.

I don’t want to die in the pursuit of a life I’m supposedly building for myself.

And I can see, very clearly, how the way I’ve been moving could take me there.

Not because I don’t know better. Not because I don’t have the language.

But because I keep choosing the version of effort that costs me more than it gives.

I want to believe I can choose differently before something forces me to.

I really do.

I just don’t fully believe it yet.

And that’s the real discomfort.

Because if I don’t believe I’m allowed to have a life that doesn’t require suffering… then I will keep recreating the same conditions and calling it discipline.

If nothing breaks…will you stop?

Or do you need it to hurt before you take yourself seriously?

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Media Spotlight

Talibah captures the embodiment I’m working towards

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We are once again confronting a pattern that has been hiding in plain sight.

If you’ve been watching the last few episodes, you know I’ve been on a bit of a crusade. STOP CALLING CRUMBS NUANCE! Unloading the clip…righteous indignation, clarity, me realizing that nobody fumbled me, I fumbled myself.

And just when I thought I had reached some kind of resolution, the plot thickened. Because I came to a realization that made me pause mid-thought…mid-everything:

I be edging myself.

In every sense of the word.

If you’ve been here for a while or know me in real life, that probably doesn’t surprise you, maybe it does idk. I have a tendency to start and then constrict right as things are getting good. Build momentum and then… hover. Get close and then pull back just enough to stay in control. Which, now that I’m saying it out loud, sounds exactly like the original definition of edging (I do that too, deep heavy negro sigh). I will spare you the full metaphor...

The thing is, I used to think this was about indecision. Or maybe discernment. Or me being “intentional.” I had all kinds of elevated language for it but really I think it’s grief.

I have been grieving something without naming it. Grieving the life I was taught to want. The “respectable” version of myself…that makes sense to institutions and parents and people who need things to be easily explained. The version of me that performs well in rooms where approval is currency.

And at the exact same time, I am watching a completely different life emerge in front of me. One that is embodied, creative, expansive, harder to package. A life that doesn’t always translate, but feels undeniably mine.

Those two versions don’t fully coexist. And instead of choosing, I’ve been… hovering between them.

That hovering is the edging.

It lets me stay partially in the life I was programmed to want while inching toward the life that’s actually unfolding. It gives me proximity without commitment. Movement without arrival.

And if I’m honest, I learned how to do this early. Even as a child, I was split. Outwardly, I performed. I was good. Articulate. I knew how to behave. I knew how to be impressive in the ways that were rewarded. Inwardly, I was creative, curious, asking questions I wasn’t supposed to ask, feeling things that didn’t have a neat container.

I learned very quickly which version of me was safe to show. So I kept that one visible. And I tucked the other one away just enough to survive. Now she’s back. And she’s not interested in being quiet anymore.

So what I’ve been calling confusion isn’t confusion. It’s integration trying to happen. And integration, unfortunately, requires letting the performance die.

That’s where the grief is.

Because the performance worked.

It got me love, access, opportunities. It got me labeled as “exceptional,” which, being so for real, is a role I am tired of performing. I want to DENOUNCE #blackexcellence and grind culture. I want to stop living inside the performance of being what I felt preprogrammed to be.

But you don’t just walk away from something that fed you without feeling the loss of it. So instead of fully letting it go, I’ve been edging. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. It’s everywhere.

In love, for example. Enter: Gemini III. New character. New energy. If you’ve been watching, you know Ms. Capricorn was giving me lore, ambiguity, intellectual intimacy, a whole cinematic slow burn that never actually required me to be present in my body. I could live in my mind. Analyze. Project. Build a whole narrative arc.

Gemini III is… not that.

She is clear. Direct. Emotionally available. She told her parents about me. She wants to visit, and is actually fr making plans. She flirts like she means it. There is no mystery to solve, no ambiguity to decode.

And instead of feeling relief, my nervous system said, let’s take a small step back.

Nothing dramatic…I’m retiring the self blatant sabotage… subtle. A pause before I respond, slight hesitation when things feel real, a tiny pull away when I could just… lean in.

And I caught it.

I edge myself.

Because if it’s real, then I have to be real too. I have to show up, respond, to let something actually land in my body instead of keeping it safely in my mind.

And it’s not just love.

At work, I see the same pattern. I am praised. Affirmed. Invited into rooms. Asked to represent…and still underpaid. And instead of demanding more, I rationalize: freedom, flexibility, impact. I dress it up. I call crumbs nuance.

In my personal work, I have proof. I know what I do shifts people. I have language, frameworks, lived evidence plus an expensive degree to prove it. Yet, I hesitate to release things fully. I build, refine, think, polish… and stop just short of actually putting it out there in a way that would require me to hold the outcome.

I’ve been saying I want embodiment, but I’ve been choosing almost everything.

Things that feel intense enough to keep me engaged, but not stable enough to require me to fully arrive.

I like the ambiguity of things not being fully real because then I don’t have to be either.

I used to think I wanted ease. I say that all the time. I want ease, I want softness, I want to be held.

But ease is actually very exposing.

There’s nothing to analyze. Nothing to decode. No confusion to hide behind. No emotional gymnastics to prove I’m trying hard enough.

It just is: are you here or not?

And that question is louder than I expected.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about becoming someone who actually receives what they say they want. Because then you can’t perform hunger anymore. You have to hold it and let it change you.

And I think part of me has been more attached to the identity of becoming than the reality of being.

So now the questions are different.

Not why don’t people choose me.

That feels outdated now.

The question is: why do I keep choosing situations that don’t require me to fully show up?

And maybe even more uncomfortable: where else in my life am I STILL calling crumbs nuance?

Where am I keeping myself in motion so I don’t have to land?

I don’t have a clean ending for this.

Still catching myself in real time, noticing the hesitation, practicing small interruptions and letting things be simple without trying to complicate them into something more interesting.

Preparing to ask for more money.

Responding when I want to retreat.

Staying when I would usually hover.

This is an interruption.

And right now, that feels more honest.

So I’ll leave you with this, because I’ve had to ask myself the same thing more than once this week:

Where are you still edging your own life?

And what would it actually require for you to let yourself land?

With love and less almost,

Delanyo

Church Announcements + Soundtrack

In the spirit of no longer edging I am actually launching something: The Changemaker Reset

a self-guided experience designed to help you:

• reconnect with who you actually are

• name what you’re here to do

• stop performing confusion when the pattern is clear

• move from awareness into embodied action

More info coming soon!

At the time I wrote about how freedom scared me. How pleasure, when it’s embodied and unapologetic, exposed parts of me that were still shaped by purity culture and fear.

Fast forward to now, February. Lunar new year. Audacity and embodiment are my words. Same organization, different event. Free(k) Friday. The venue? The same one where I produced C*NTINUUM. That part felt symbolic whether it needed to be or not.

The invitation said: come in a fit that embodies your freedom and liberation. Keep the vibes high. Come curious.

I did.

I wore leather. I felt sexy. Not performative-sexy. Grounded-sexy. My body felt like mine.

The room was full of Black queer people across generations. Grey locs and fresh fades. Guncles, unties and twenty-somethings. Lovers, educators, performers. There was a community altar. There were conversations about power dynamics and sexual health. There was poetry, food, vendors, laughter that sounded like release.

And I felt God.

I know how that sounds. I grew up at purity conferences. I had a signed purity pledge framed in my childhood bedroom (I’m pretty sure the frame shattered, how fitting). I was explicitly taught that the flesh is deceitful and desire is dangerous. That queerness is rebellion and pleasure isn’t just a slippery slope, a direct flight to hell.

But in that room, watching Black queer people inhabit themselves without apology, I felt something sacred. Expansive. Liberatory. The kind of holy that doesn’t shrink you.

There was a Shibari performance that stayed with me. Two beautiful Black femme-presenting people, one suspended in rope, surrendering in front of a full audience. The trust, vulnerability, consent required for that, wow. Last July I would have intellectualized it to death. This time I was just curious. What would it mean to trust my body that deeply? Why does surrender still scare me? What part of me still equates pleasure with danger?

Earlier that week, I had also been at the State House learning about bills actively being written to police queerness, censor creativity, regulate women’s bodies, restrict education. It was sobering and heavy.

And then I walked into a room full of Black queer people building altars and feeding each other.

Two realities. One trying to cage us. One insisting on our expansion.

At brunch that Sunday, they talked about impact and used the rock soup analogy. Everyone contributes what they can so everyone eats. They feed people. They address sexual health and mental health. They build creative space. It felt like church in the way church was supposed to feel.

I keep thinking about visibility. Being an embodied, visible Black woman feels dangerous right now. The laws are VERY loud. Every day there is a new attempt to legislate imagination out of existence.

And yet, someone said at brunch — I think it was Jerry — now is not the time to hide. More than ever we need to be visible.

Jerry has been one of the clearest mirrors in my life. We met in October 2023 when I was a junior in college. I asked him to coffee so his organization could co-sponsor a small queer history month painting workshop I wanted to host. It was intimate. Reflective. The earliest seed of what would later become C*NTINUUM. At the end of that coffee I told him we were going to be friends. He laughed. Now he calls me his little sister.

October 2024 he hosted The Wholiness Project, an event centered on queerness and religion. That shifted something in me. October 2025 I produced C*NTINUUM in that same venue as Free(k) Friday. There’s a throughline there whether I planned it or not.

When I came out to my parents in October 2022 and disappointed them in that way, something ruptured. I realized I had spent the first eighteen years of my life wanting what I thought I was supposed to want. That rupture was the first time I felt free enough to actually dream. I wrote an essay called Dream as Protest because that’s what it felt like. Dreaming was rebellion.

Every October since, something has expanded.

Jerry left a respectable path with countless accolades to lead a Black queer organization in the South. It sounds biblical when you say it out loud. He is unafraid in a way I deeply admire. He sees himself in me. Says I’m further than he was at my age. When someone sees something in you, do you believe them? Or do you minimize it because it feels too big?

Sometimes I joke that I feel like Jonah. Running from destiny. But if I’m honest, I’m not afraid my destiny is conservative Christianity and Jackie Hill Perryism. I’m afraid my destiny is scale. A fully integrated Black queer woman comfortable in her body, giving language to collective lament, building spaces like C*NTINUUM beyond one city. Being free in a world that desperately wants to cage us.

That’s what feels dangerous.

Queer people haven’t made me into something new. They’ve brought me back to myself. To the girl who always knew she was imaginative and strange and sensitive and powerful. To the woman who wants to experience her body as sacred, not suspect.

I stopped accepting crumbs from other people. Now I’m trying to stop giving crumbs to myself.

A friend told me recently you have to foreplay your day. You can’t just rush into it detached and expect to feel alive. That has been my practice. Drinking warm water with apple cider vinegar and fire honey in the morning. Dancing naked in the mirror and thanking my body. Cooking meals that look like the rainbow. Winding down before bed with candles lit, lights low, Exotic Love incense burning, Jill Scott on repeat. Touching my own edges gently instead of policing them.

Where are you still self-surveilling?

What room have you been afraid to enter because it might stretch you?

Who in your life feels like a mirror instead of a mask?

What if pleasure is not indulgence but resistance?

What if God is not somewhere far away judging your body, but closer than you were ever allowed to believe?

I am still growing. Still negotiating my edges. Still occasionally unsettled. But I stayed this time.

And I felt sexy. And I felt holy. And I felt home.

With audacity and embodiment,

Delanyo

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Dedication + Rock Soup

This piece is dedicated to MashUp! and to Jerry.

At brunch it was announced that Jerry is the new CEO of MashUp!, which feels less like a career move and more like destiny alignment. Watching someone choose freedom over respectability and then build something that feeds people in every sense of the word has changed me.

MashUp! is doing life-giving, body-affirming, imagination-expanding work in Nashville and beyond. Sexual health. Mental health. Creativity. Intergenerational connection. Community that feels like church in the way church was meant to feel.

If this essay moved you, consider contributing to the pot.

You can learn more and donate below

SUPPORT MASHUP!

Soundtrack

On repeat this week:

Today I’m UNLOADING THE CLIP…buckle up

There is something deeply arrogant about not believing people when they tell you who they are. We call it optimism. Empathy. “Seeing potential.” But if I’m honest, it’s ego. It’s believing that if I love well enough, endure long enough, understand deeply enough, reality will rearrange itself around my desire. That’s not romance. That’s control dressed up as virtue.

When reality doesn’t bend, we feel betrayed. Not because they lied, but because they refused to conform to the story we were writing about them.

Maturity is realizing you are the villain in your own story. She wasn’t breadcrumbing me, I was willingly accepting them and rationalizing it. She told me she didn’t have capacity, that she wasn’t the partner I deserved. And the truth is, she was consistent, yet the saga lasted a whole year. I like to say my life feels like an HBO show…layered and cinematic. I let it go on so long because I got lost in the plot! Internalized waiting is one hell of a drug. I liked the lore and intensity of it all. The Ewe. The serendipity. The pitch decks and five-year visions. The fantasy of us being visionary strategists together. All the elements of great TV. I confused emotional unavailability with character development. I kept waiting for a plot twist. She didn’t bend and I kept trying to write one. I was playing in my own face for months.

Even now, after choosing violence, part of me wants repentance…one clean sentence. Something explicit enough to soothe my ego. She sent me a voice note on Valentine’s day. No mention of any of this. And I know she knows. She watched my story yapping about it. But the truth is, as much as I wasn’t listening to her, she wasn’t listening to me either. We were both committed to our own narratives. The difference though is she actually believed hers and I kept trying to edit mine.

I thought this realization was just about Ms. Capricorn. It was/is/isn’t. Once I stopped calling crumbs nuance in my love life, I couldn’t unsee it anywhere else.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem after the election. The first time I read it publicly was during a funder meeting. A white woman got on the call visibly distraught and asked how we were feeling about the state of the world. I said I was unsurprised and would focus on what I could control and continue doing the work. Then I read the poem.

children of margins dwellers of dust
who have been called to hold the world upright
may you know it is not yours alone to bear

for too long they have looked to us to hold the fire
to stitch the wounds to soften every fall
our strength is no well for others to empty

They were prepared to give $50,000. They gave $100k instead.

The organization doubled its funding. My salary did not move.

No bonus. No raise. Just praise.

This week I was asked to read that same poem at a partner organization’s event. Standing ovation. People asking to share it. Telling me it resonated. It does resonate. It just doesn’t pay.

My labor was profitable. I was not.

I told myself this was purpose, this was impact, this is the “We Got Y’all” moment before the big break…the talented Black girl holding everything together while being told how gifted she is. I’m not stressed. I have flexibility. I get applause. I also move money from savings to checking every month. I am the respectable one. The articulate one. The one who represents the organization beautifully. And still underpaid. Comfortable enough to stay but underpaid enough to know better.

That is crumbs too. Just wrapped in mission language.

When I told my mom I was going to ask for a raise, she told me to pray. Not strategize. Pray. That’s when it clicked. Faith, the way I inherited it, trained me to wait. Wait for provision. Wait for recognition. Wait for someone else to decide I am worthy.

I’ve been replaying that script everywhere…with Ms. Capricorn, with my salary, with my life.

But what if God already moved?

What if God looks like the audacity rising in my chest?

What if provision requires participation?

I have been performing hunger like it’s humility.

In love. In labor. In lineage.

I tell myself I’m above materialism, but I check my bank account before donating to mutual aid. I tell myself I’m patient, but I entertain hesitation. I tell myself I trust God, but sometimes I’m just avoiding confrontation. Spiritualizing everything is my drug. It makes stagnation feel sacred.

The twisted part is I think part of me kinda likes the crumbs. Being perceived as the strong, patient and understanding one who can hold complexity. Struggle makes me feel deep. Underpayment makes me feel noble. Waiting made me feel faithful. I confused suffering with substance. The worst part of all of this is realizing this is all my own doing…no one trapped me. She was clear. My job was clear. The signals were clear. I just didn’t like them.

So I negotiated against myself.

I heard “I don’t have capacity” and decided mine could stretch. I heard “we’ll see” and translated it into hope. I heard “we’ll look at the budget” and called it progress. I heard silence and renamed it “nuance”. That wasn’t oppression. That was me refusing to accept what was plainly said.

Before I pretend this is a redemption arc, let me ask you something.

Who told you exactly what they could offer?

Who underpaid you while praising you?

Who kept saying “we’ll see”?

Who showed you where you stood?

And why are you pretending that answer was incomplete?

Nobody fumbled me.

I fumbled myself.

What are you still pretending not to understand?

With audacity and no self-abandonment,
Delanyo

Video version with some extra commentary

I redownloaded Instagram today…that was the first mistake.

My timeline is bleeding heart-shaped everything.

Girlfriend proposals.

Soft launches. Hard ones too.

People flying across continents.

Proof of being chosen.

I don’t want to be a hater, but I’m a little bit of a hater.

I want an expertly curated floral arrangement. Golden orchids and calla lilies. Something dramatic and unnecessary delivered in the middle of the day. I want a three course dinner. I want someone to insist. Not ask what I prefer. Not pitch a five year vision. Insist.

I’ve been feeding people all week. Cooked a birthday dinner. Baked a cake. Delivered food to a friend working on the frontlines of the ice storm. I love my friends truly. Nurturing is my default setting. I show up without being asked.

But babyyy it’s cold outside.

And I want someone to show up for me the way I show up for everyone else.

I’m sexy. I’m smart. I’m emotionally literate.

Let me be honest for a second.

I’m wife material in 4K.

I have a degree from an expensive Ivy-adjacent school that I didn’t pay for. I sit on boards…multiple. I have a job that makes real impact. I make my own bone broth and bouillon. Fire honey and elderberry syrup. I blend loose leaf tea and pray over the herbs while I mix them.

I’m creative. I’m grounded. I’m disciplined.

And I have still been shrinking.

I learned how to fragment long before I learned how to date.

Growing up in white spaces I became the respectable Black one.
Articulate and non-threatening. Sharp, but not sharp enough to scare.

At home and in my childhood collectivist community, I became the high-achieving one who could carry expectation without cracking.

At work I box parts of myself daily. Rage in one drawer, grief in another. Desire filed somewhere discreet.

Fragmentation has been a survival tactic.

Calling crumbs “nuance”.
Calling inconsistency “complex”.
Calling tension “depth”.

Gaslighting myself into ignoring the fact that the bar kept moving.

That’s the humiliation.

Not that I am too much.

That I made myself smaller and still did not feel held.

Maybe that’s ego.
Maybe it’s delusion.
Maybe it’s capitalism selling me a fantasy in a shiny red box.

And somewhere in me there is a small humiliating voice that wants to be chosen without being impressive.

I hate that voice. Like girl shut up!

I think A LOT all the time…about fascism…the collapse of Amerikkka…AI ethics. capitalism…ancestral liberation. Brain FULL of thoughts.

I just want to be simple for a second.

Simple.

I watch people talk about wanting a “soft life”. Wanting to rest in their divine femininity. Wanting someone else to lead. I get it, truly. I wish I could turn my brain off. I wish I could stop scanning every room. I wish I could receive something without interrogating it.

But let’s be honest.

How much of this softness is softness and how much of it is fear?

How many of you are calling it patience when it is actually terror of starting over?

How many of you are negotiating your needs in installments and pretending it’s growth?

You can’t regulate your nervous system with potential.

Or build safety on “we’ll see”.

You can’t call it alignment when your body is screaming.

My left leg is literally throbbing while I write this. Cold pain from knee to hip to foot. My neck hurts. My back hurts. Everything hurts. My body does not care about my political analysis. It cares about safety.

Some of you are shrinking your hunger so you can say you are healed.

Some of you are auditioning for love and calling it vulnerability.

I’m talking about myself.

That is why this burns.

I want devotion. I want care. I want someone who doesn’t hesitate.

I don’t want to convince someone to choose me.

I want to be held without fragmenting myself to make it possible.

And if I am honest, the more ruthless question isn’t whether someone will choose me.

It’s this: how much of yourself are you willing to abandon just to avoid being alone?

With love and a backbone,

Delanyo

“Snowmageddon” kept me inside for days. Long enough for my body to feel heavy and my mind to start pacing. Long enough for thought to stretch without interruption. Long enough for stillness to force reckoning.

Outside, the world feels increasingly unstable with power outages across the city, people without heat and mutual aid networks forming in real time. Small talk has morphed into daily conversations about economic collapse, rising authoritarianism, environmental disregard, and unfettered capitalism—no longer abstract, but immediate. The language of what if has shifted to what now.

Watching people show up for one another reminds me that despair is not a strategy. Defeatism will not save us. Retreating into numbness, comfort, and complacency will not save us, either. What I keep witnessing instead is care: improvised, imperfect, relational. People organizing not because they are hopeful, but because they refuse to abandon one another.

And still, I struggled to produce.

I didn’t want to write something pretty while everything feels brittle. I didn’t want to document my inner life as if it exists apart from the conditions shaping all of us. I didn’t want to offer comfort that felt disconnected from reality, or insight that bypassed fear.

What I’m learning is that tending to the inner world is not separate from collective survival. It is one of the ways we remain capable of it.

As the storm kept me inside, my body began speaking more clearly. The pain I’ve learned to manage became louder. Fatigue settled in deeper. A sense of unsafety lived not just in my thoughts, but in my joints, my breath, my posture. The longer I stayed physically still, the harder it became to live exclusively in my head.

I’ve relied on my mind for a long time. It’s where I learned to make sense of complexity, to survive contradiction, to translate experience into language. It’s how I’ve navigated systems that were not built to hold me. It’s how I’ve built community, offered care, and stayed oriented.

But I’m also seeing how often intellect has been my escape hatch. How easily I’ve justified misalignment because it made sense. How often I’ve stayed in spaces that felt mentally nourishing while my body quietly resisted. That resistance has been asking for my attention, not my analysis.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Social Change Ecosystem Map and how not everyone responds to crisis the same way. Some people are on the front lines, meeting immediate needs. Some are builders, creating infrastructure where institutions have failed. Some are caregivers and healers, tending to grief and nervous systems stretched thin. Some are disruptors, willing to take risks that shake the status quo.

And some of us are weavers and storytellers.

We connect people, ideas, and memory. We sit with uncertainty long enough to give it language. We help others locate themselves inside the chaos, not as spectators, but as participants with agency. This work doesn’t always look urgent. It doesn’t always photograph well. But without it, movements fracture. Burnout accelerates. People forget why they are doing what they are doing. Naming this helped me soften toward my own pace.

It also helped me understand why I keep going quiet instead of forcing output. Why deleting my TikTok right when it was starting to pick up didn’t feel confident, just compulsive. delete. redownload. delete again. I know the math: post every day across platforms…within months I’m legible as a spiritual guide selling 1:1 mentorship and retreats to Bali. I know my words help people because they tell me so—comments from internet strangers saying they felt seen, DMs saying they needed to hear what I shared. And still, something in me resists turning my becoming into content. I feel uneasy with the surveillance baked into these platforms, with how easily inner life becomes data, momentum, currency. I don’t know how to want visibility without wanting safety. I don’t know how to want money without worrying about what it asks of me. I want ease and slowness and a life that isn’t held together by shifting money between accounts or choosing between stability and mutual aid. Stepping back wasn’t avoidance. It was an attempt to stay in relationship with the work without disappearing inside it.

This season has been about learning to trust my body, even when it hurts. About listening without immediately trying to fix or justify. About letting fear, grief, and loneliness exist without turning them into conclusions or content. About noticing how often I self-surveil, anticipating judgment, and choosing to stay anyway. I don’t feel resolved or certain…about anything. But I feel honest.

What I know is this: I/You/We need to remain human in the midst of this collapse. To feel what is happening without becoming immobilized by it. To imagine something better while staying rooted in the present. I/You/We need to understand that reflection is not apathy, and rest is not disengagement.

For me, that work begins with embodiment. During this season I am focusing on staying in relationship with my body, even when it feels fragile. On rejecting fear that makes isolation tempting. Working on trusting that slowness is not failure, and that becoming myself more fully is not a distraction from the work, but part of it.

If you are reading this and feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or unsure where you fit, I want to offer this gently: you don’t need to have the answer. You don’t need to carry everything. You don’t need to harden to survive.

Pay attention to where your body is asking for care. Notice where you are being called to show up. Ask yourself what role you are meant to play in this season, and let it change when it needs to.

Winter is still winter. The world is asking very hard questions. And each of us is being invited, quietly, to decide how we will stay with it.

With love,

Delanyo

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I started a YouTube Channel 🌱 This essay will be uploaded there in the coming days

I discovered Nneka Julia a couple weeks ago. I love everything about what she’s doing

It is a new year, but it is still winter.

I keep seeing messages about reinvention, discipline, new habits, new bodies, new lives. As if January exists outside of the natural world. As if we are not still in the season of cold, of dormancy, of quiet preparation. Do not let global warming fool you. Winter is still winter.

This is not the time for grinding or forcing or proving. This is the time for reflection, rest, and recalibration. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Seasons exist for a reason. I’m learning to honor the seasons within myself.

The Year I Entered Slowly

The way I began this year feels like a reflection of the year I am entering.

I was asked to facilitate intention setting and a journaling practice during a plant medicine ceremony at a space rooted in intentional rest and creativity. I was surrounded by people who are also on their own journeys of remembering themselves. It was slow. It was reverent. It was deeply human.

I felt more aligned in that space than I ever have before. Not because I was performing or leading, but because I was present. I woke up the next morning with a deep sense of knowing. A day filled with yoga flow, singing outside, making music in community, eating delicious food, and having conversations that felt like exchanges of breath rather than effort. I moved through the day as a vessel, not a controller. God met me there, again and again, through other people.

I am learning that alignment does not arrive with urgency. It arrives with steadiness. With confirmation. With peace in the body.

What My Queerness is Teaching Me

Over the past weeks, I had long and honest conversations with my family. The kind where you stop editing yourself for comfort. I spoke openly about my queerness, not as rebellion or divergence, but as something divine. Something that did not happen by accident. Something that exists to expand consciousness, within my lineage and beyond it.

I am beginning to understand the function of my queerness in my life. It disrupts the quiet agreement to live the life others imagine for you. It refuses the script that says safety comes from sameness. It calls me back into my body, into choice, into truth. It has taught me how to listen inwardly instead of constantly seeking permission outwardly. It has made me a bridge, a translator, a catalyst.

This is the year I stop negotiating my existence.

Killing the Cop in My Head

This is my year of being brazen. Of going ten toes down on my dreams. Of getting out of my head and into my body. Of becoming the most embodied version of myself. I am killing the cop in my head.

For a long time, I thought my throat chakra was blocked. What I am realizing now is that it has been loyal. Loyal to other people’s comfort. Loyal to other people’s expectations. Loyal to preserving peace at the cost of my own happiness and destiny.

That loyalty ends here.

This is the year I stop trying to fit myself into anyone else’s hopes, dreams, desires, or systems that do not serve me. Every day I receive confirmation that I’m walking in alignment. I trust my body as a reliable source of information. I trust the quiet yes and the embodied no.

Staying in My Body

I am also learning how much conditioning lives in my nervous system.

Growing up in a collectivist culture where you are seen as a reflection of your parents and family, “what will people think” was not a question. It was a governing principle. Add to that a version of Christianity rooted in surveillance, shame, and fear, and you get a body that struggles to fully rest. A body that is always scanning. Always bracing. Always performing goodness.

I am undoing that slowly and with care.

The other day, I finally went to a rage room. Something I had been saying I would do for years. I needed the physical act of swinging my body. Of releasing anger without justification. Of letting sound move through me. It was freeing in a way that words could not be.

Afterward, I gave myself an entire day alone. Walking. Sitting. Wandering. Being present. Not narrating my experience for others. Not turning every moment into content or language. That was harder than I expected. I kept reaching for my phone. Kept wanting to document, to explain, to share. I am becoming hyper aware of how often I leave my body to live in interpretation.

This year is about staying.

Staying with sensation. Staying with breath. Staying with what is here instead of what might be said about it later.

What I Wrote at the Threshold

During the journaling session I guided at the start of the year, I wrote something that I keep returning to:

I am standing at the precipice of greatness.

The past year has taught me so much about myself, God, and my purpose.

Being here is proof that I am walking in alignment.

I am beyond blessed and highly favored.

May I stand tall like a magnolia tree.

May my light shine bright.

May I be protected.

I leave behind overthinking, shrinking, and dimming.

I choose faith.

If I allowed myself to relax, I would hear my own voice.

The more I rest, the more I receive.

Joy is my birthright.

Pleasure Without Apology

I have been journaling a lot about pleasure lately. Not as indulgence, but as embodiment. Pleasure as ease. Pleasure as slowness. Pleasure as dancing and feeling music settle into my bones. Pleasure as savoring food. Pleasure as experiencing the fullness of being human without shame or guilt.

Shame and guilt are not innate to us. We were not created that way.

I have been thinking a lot about Eve and the garden. About how religion can be used as a tool of control. About how pleasure is often misnamed as danger. Pleasure is sensuality, not just sexuality. It is aliveness.

Holding What Is Sacred

I am also discerning the difference between rest and avoidance. Between honoring the season and hiding from my calling. Doubt is a quiet poison for me. It makes me fold inward. It makes me small. I am learning to hold things sacred before they are ready to be touched by too many hands. I am like a butterfly. Too much handling will damage the wings.

Not everything needs to be shared immediately.

And still, being seen is part of my path.

Witness and Hope

I recently attended my friend Kenieha’s exhibition, Iris in the Shadow. It was one of the most intentionally curated shows I have experienced. What stuck with me most was not just the depth of the work, which explored queer sexuality, mental health, violence, family, and selfhood, but who was in the room. Her southern Christian family. Her mother. Her grandmother. Her great grandmother. Bearing witness.

I left feeling tender. Hopeful. Grieving and praying at the same time.

I pray that as I continue to expand, my own family will one day see my work not as threat, but as offering. My queerness is not here by accident. It is here to widen the world. It is here to heal something that could not be healed any other way.

Still Becoming

As I step into this year, I am committed to simplicity. To communicating with clarity. To letting my life speak instead of constantly defending it. I cannot control how others perceive me, and I am done contorting myself in anticipation of misunderstanding.

I am here. I am becoming. Again.

Winter is still winter. And beneath the soil, something is already growing.

With love,

Delanyo

(This one is a little longer. Settle in.)

I keep saying my life feels like an HBO show, and I genuinely don’t know what season we’re on anymore. The writers have really been doing their BIGGEST one this year! Maybe each month is a season… and if that’s the case, we’re at the halfway mark for this one.

December: The Season of Unravelling

The theme for December is unravelling.

Not in a falling-apart way.
In a loosening way.
In a truth-coming-to-the-surface way.

I said my new year started on December 1st, and today we’re on Day 21. In just three weeks, I’ve unpacked more than I sometimes do in entire years. Everything keeps boiling down to the same question:

Will I shrink for other people’s comfort,
or will I continue to take up space as the unedited version of myself?

This season has been about self-recognition, and allowing the world around me to recalibrate accordingly.

Since my last entry on December 7th, a few things have unfolded.

I did my first public speaking engagement about C*NTINUUM, an IG Live with my former coach Liz. I love journaling so much that I was literally taking notes while we were talking. We covered a lot, but the throughline was clear:

If you want to grow, you need community.
If you want to transform, you need collaboration.

I dropped a lot of gems in that conversation, book deal coming soon honestly. I’ll link it here if you want to watch it back.

I also curated another exhibition of work at a local coffee shop whose mission I deeply respect. If you’re in Nashville, go check out Crossroads Café. It feels grounding to keep creating opportunities for art to live in everyday spaces.

And the first draft of the Changemaker Guide is complete. I ran polls on Instagram to get feedback because the whole point of this project is that it’s built with people, not just for them. This is a living framework. A shared language. A tool for people who feel like they’re standing at the edge of themselves.

Unravelling the Body

Lately, the unravelling has moved into my body.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the mind–body connection… and disconnection. Something landed with real clarity:

My mind became my home because my body was never given permission to become one.

My erotic self hasn’t been blocked because of a lack of desire, but because my nervous system was never taught that pleasure was safe. I touched on this back in my July 18th piece, The Fear of Freedom, but the fact that I’m unpacking it now feels like proof that I’m ready for embodiment.

I’m stepping into my highest self on all levels, not just intellectually or spiritually, but somatically. Slowly. Gently. With compassion.

This isn’t a crisis.
It’s a return.

Softness Without Permission

A few nights ago, I had a dream involving Ms. Capricorn (if you’ve read I’m the Problem you know) We were in bed together… not doing anything sexual, just sleeping. Cuddling. Soft. Safe.

Then my mom walked in.

What followed wasn’t really about the person in the bed. It was about respect, tradition, morality, adulthood, and who gets to decide what is “acceptable.” In the dream, I argued with my mom. I stood my ground. I didn’t tell Ms. Capricorn to leave. I gave her a shirt and told her to stay.

When I woke up, it was clear.

The dream wasn’t about romance.
It was about choice.

About what happens when you stop pre-shrinking before authority enters the room. About choosing softness without asking permission.

Everything I Desire Already Exists

I’ve been thinking a lot about mitochondrial Eve, how I existed in my mother, and she existed in her mother, and her mother in her mother, and so on. Destiny works the same way. It already exists. It just needs the right conditions to sprout.

Care.
Devotion.
A village.

Everything I desire already exists in my body. The work isn’t creating it. It’s allowing it.

Mirrors, Catalysts, and Community

I’m deeply grateful for the people God is placing in my life right now. Mirrors. Catalysts. Teachers. Co-conspirators. I’m learning so much about myself through conversation and connection. Everyone entering my life in this season feels intentional. Nothing feels random.

When I check in with myself, not external voices, not fear-based narratives, not inherited expectations, my body feels safe within my queer community. It feels seen. It feels alive.

Airing It Out

In The Artist’s Way, Week 3, Julia Cameron writes:

“Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing, but before the wound can heal it must be seen.”

That’s why I’m writing this.
That’s why I share myself.

I am becoming myself out loud. The good, the ugly, the unpolished. Being mysterious helps nobody. I would rather be honest and help someone feel a little more free than shrink for perceived safety.

Yesterday, my father called me and told me a prophet said I need to stop being queer and stop associating with queer people, that it’s a demonic spirit leading me toward destruction. He said there was a vision of me being taken away in chains.

I listened. I said, “Okay, thank you. I’ve heard.”

And then I went on with my day. I attended an artist talk for LeXander Bryant’s Dirty Road Baby, which was incredible by the way.

I didn’t feel convicted.
I felt clear.

My queerness isn’t a rebellion.
It’s a remembrance.

Decentering the Parental Gaze

Three years ago, I wrote about how growing up I didn’t feel much like a child, more like a trophy. Something taken off the shelf, dusted off, and paraded around for accomplishments.

Today, I went to lunch.

It was my mom’s birthday.
The winter solstice.
Light returning.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t perform. I didn’t shrink or overexplain. I didn’t bring the conversation back into the room to prove myself real.

I wore green and blue on purpose.
Heart. Throat.
Growth, love, communication.

I journaled beforehand. I did breathing exercises. I stayed in my body.

And I had a genuinely lovely time.

I laughed. I listened. I showed up as myself, even in rooms where I am not fully seen or accepted. I kept the sacred parts of me close without letting them drive.

This is adulting.
This is regulation.
This is the true test of growth.

Being able to remain rooted in myself without needing permission… or conflict… or collapse.

Faith Without Fear

I want a relationship with God rooted in faith, not fear. Not submission through terror, but a liberatory, expansive spirituality that brings joy, alignment, and light.

I went to church today. The choir was beautiful. I felt close to God, the same way I feel close to God when I’m laughing with friends, or dancing alone under strobe lights to a house beat.

The sermon was about how light shines brightest in darkness. How even when darkness comes, you don’t lose your expectation, because the darkest nights reveal the greatest light.

It struck me that in my father’s vision, he noticed my light too. He just misnamed the source.

He said the queer community is trying to steal my light.

In my lived experience, the opposite is true.

My community helped me find my light, and taught me how to shine.

The word sin means to miss the mark. If you miss the mark, you correct. You don’t condemn yourself. I pray daily for clarity, not fear.

Living Out Loud

I am evolving out loud for my younger self, and for anyone who needs to see themselves reflected.

I would rather live boldly, fail, learn, and correct, than live small in the name of safety.

This is evidence of my changemaker identity. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I’m willing to be seen figuring it out.

Art opens the closets.
Truth airs out the rooms.
Light recalibrates the space.

Today, on the solstice, I choose to stand in that light.

A solstice journaling prompt for you:

• Where in your life are you learning to stay rooted in yourself, even when others don’t fully understand you?

• What practices help you return to your body when fear or authority enters the room?

• And what kind of light are you being asked to protect, not by hiding it, but by living it?

Sit with that.
Let the light stretch a little further.

With Love,

Delanyo the Changemaker

Media Spotlight 💫

I saw This Face Behind This Mask at the Frist earlier this week. Phenomenal!

Church girl is hitting extra hard after the week I’ve had…whew!

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I’ve been giving myself permission to unravel and learn the truth of my mind. Too often we talk about manifesting and leveling up without talking about the deep knowing that comes before the elevation. If you don’t know yourself you can’t know your purpose. I have been letting myself sit with my thoughts, letting myself pull at the thread slowly, letting myself meet new parts of me without judgment. It feels like I am finally willing to be intimate with the truth of who I am.

Part of that has come from (re)starting The Artist’s Way. I scheduled emails to myself for all twelve weeks congratulating me in advance. Presence, not perfection, has been my focus. If I wrote one page instead of three I still celebrated it. When I had my artist date at home instead of going out I still honored the moment. My morning pages have become the most powerful part, the slow unraveling, the getting to the bottom of the spool. Every day I learn something new about who I’m becoming and I am excited to keep going.

I also made a TikTok on day two and started posting a couple videos each day. The engagement feels different there. Softer and more genuine. People seem more open and supportive. I am not doing any of this to be an influencer. I have no desire for that life. Social media is simply a tool to help me meet the people who are meant to hear my voice. A tool for helping others connect to themselves, each other, and the divinity within. As much as it scares me and I am still unpacking a lot around it…being seen feels good.

This week I also remembered something about my purpose that I have always known. I am a magnet for people who need extra support. I always have been. When I was in elementary school I used to sit on the red bench on the playground and talk to my classmates about their feelings and the politics of our neighborhood school. I’ve always been a catalyst. Even now my work looks like catalyzing others through youth summits, social justice events, coaching, community building, exhibitions. I seem to naturally create spaces where people feel safe enough to think, feel, and imagine.

People have been asking me lately how I got here and how they can start their own journey. Someone on LinkedIn even approached me about writing a book earlier this week. There have been so many signs pointing me forward. A stranger sending me free resources to help me grow in the wellness space. Being asked to lead a New Year’s journaling workshop. Beautiful conversations with friends. Gentle reminders that my story is someone’s medicine. Maybe even many peoples.

I used to think I needed to wait until everything was polished before sharing, but I am realizing the messy middle is the part that helps people the most. So instead of a book right now, I am building the Changemaker Guide. Five parts are taking shape: the remembering, who you are at your core; language as a tool for change, how you think and speak about yourself; your story as medicine, learning to express and share it; sacred strategy, habits and rituals to embody the truth; and integration, community building and aligned action. All of this is still forming, but it feels alive. Like I am building it in real time with the people who are meant to walk this path with me.

I am also facing the fear of charging for things that come naturally to me. The desire to be understood without the vulnerability of being seen. The fear of judgment. The fear of visibility. Yet I keep returning to the truth that being mysterious helps nobody. People are windows and mirrors. Both are needed. If we refuse to be seen, someone who needs us may never find the reflection that could change their life.

I keep thinking about Simone Seol and Dr. Joey Liu and their teachings around purpose and money. They remind me that it is my responsibility to live my purpose and that receiving money for doing so is part of the responsibility too. I have been thinking a lot about money this week. I’m grateful that all my needs and wants are provided for, but I want to get to a point where I can make real change, not just put bandaids on bullet holes. I want to live in a state of overflow so the overflow blesses others. I know I would be a good steward of more because of how I steward what I have now. I circulate money with intention. With values. With vision.

This week reminded me that my purpose is not just about being a catalyst, it is about becoming a vessel for community abundance. I want to build a life where the overflow becomes a blessing to my ancestors, my community, and the future. A life where my growth is documented in real time so someone searching can see themselves in my story. A life where fear does not limit my devotion. A life where curiosity leads the way.

The new year started on December first. Every day since has confirmed that I am already becoming the version of myself I once prayed to meet.

A Journaling Prompt for You:

When you strip away fear, expectation, and performance, who is the self that remains and what are they asking you to choose next?

With Love,

Delanyo the Changemaker

Media Spotlight 💫

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As I walked, I looked around and let Buchanan speak to me. This street carries layered stories. Black history, displacement, resilience, creation and erasure all pressed into the concrete. There is a heaviness, but there is also a hum of possibility. And in that rain I suddenly felt the weight and the blessing of what I’m doing. I felt how important my work truly is. Me, a Black woman curating an exhibition of 7 Black women, at a Black owned coffee shop named after a little Black girl, on this historic Black street in a time when Black and female stories face global erasure. I am not making things just to make them. I am building spaces that hold memory, healing, identity, autonomy and imagination for people who have been denied all of that. I am offering myself as a vessel for stories that deserve to be seen and heard. This is not small work. It’s sacred work.

So locking my keys in the car became more than an inconvenience. It became a reflection. A moment that showed me how often I block myself right when something profound is opening. Not because I am unprepared, but because some old part of me is afraid of the magnitude of what I am stepping into. The keys behind the glass felt like a metaphor for the version of me I keep trying to access, the one I sometimes shut out when things get too real or too good. And the rain felt like a washing, a clearing, almost like God saying pause, look around, understand the gravity of who you are becoming.

This all intertwines with why I began calling myself a queer African changemaker earlier this year. At first it only lived in my journal…then I started saying it out loud, letting it take root in my body. I changed my Instagram handle around my birthday when I launched C*NTINUUM. I started speaking more openly about my growth. On July 17th I wrote, “I may be entirely delusional and that is absolutely okay! Calling myself Delanyo the Changemaker is my way of honoring the potential within me. I owe it to myself, to my ancestors and to God to be my fullest most authentic self. I want to be fearlessly me. I love the woman I am now and who I am becoming every day. I am making little Delanyo proud.”

I also keep thinking about a workshop completed a couple weeks ago Building Post Capitalist Wealth: How to Fund the Revolution. Being serendipitously invited to complete it was a divine interruption. The authors Simone Seol and Dr. Joey Liu named things I have been wrestling with but too afraid to articulate. They helped me see how deeply I still associate success with exhaustion and how much I have internalized scarcity even while praying for abundance. Their workbooks laid out the real cost of liberation. $60-100k to pay someone a living wage. $30-50k to retire an elder. Thousands more to buy land or redistribute resources. Over the past few weeks I have felt this clarity rush over me. I cannot think small if my purpose is big. I cannot be afraid of money if I want to circulate abundance in my community. I cannot retreat when opportunities come, especially when I have prayed for them.

All of this is connected. The locked keys, the walk down Buchanan, the workshop, Ms Capricorn reflecting my patterns, the evolution of calling myself a queer African changemaker, the fear of success, the shedding of scarcity, the reconciliation of ambition and surrender. It’s all teaching me how to step into my calling with more intention and less fear. I am becoming someone who cannot hide from herself anymore.

My calling is to create spaces where truth, healing, identity and community meet and I am meant to be a vessel for collective liberation. This year has been a long initiation into that truth. I’ve been shedding the things that do not serve me and building systems that support who I am becoming. I’ve gotten help from coaches, healers, friends, podcasts and astrology deep dives. I have tended to my body in ways I used to ignore. I have been peeling away the layers of urgency, shame, perfectionism and control that kept me small. Growth is not linear, but it is consistent, and this year has held so much of it.

Now as the last forty days of 2025 approach, I feel a prayer rising in me. May I release whatever remnants still linger. Fear, guilt, control, the instinct to shrink in spaces that shaped my younger self. Thanksgiving is coming and I’ll be in my childhood home again. I want to show up as the woman I am now, not the version others may expect. I hope I don’t retreat. I hope I let myself take up space with grace and truth.

These Substacks have become a digital record of my becoming, a trail of tenderness and courage. They are planting seeds for future offerings, future work, future community. They are my way of saying here I am, imperfect and expanding, trying again and again to choose evolution over fear.

I’m learning to trust my voice and my potential. I’m learning that embracing abundance is a part of my liberation. I’m learning that the work I do matters deeply and that it is only the beginning.

A journaling prompt for you:

What moment from this year felt small at first but revealed something profound about who I am becoming?

With love,

Delanyo the Changemaker

You cannot tell me astrology is not real! I learned about the Vertex today and how it marks the people and experiences that feel fated. I am writing because of someone who feels like that for me right now. She is magnetic in a way I cannot explain. My Vertex is in Virgo in the eighth house, which is about discernment, transformation, shadow work, and Ms Capricorn fits right into that story. Our interactions have pushed me to confront control, trust, and the way I show up in connection. It all feels too aligned not to name.

And then there is this truth I have been circling for months. I might actually be the problem. My mind fascinates me, confuses me, terrifies me, inspires me. I think constantly. I pick up on everything. It makes me good at what I do and it makes me exhausting to myself. Overthinking is its own ecosystem.

When I read No Death No Fear last year, one lesson stayed with me… the only thing you can control is the present moment. Yet I spend so much time replaying the past and trying to pre-plan the future. Trying to bend life to my expectations. It never works and still I try.

My early Substack posts were all whispers of this lesson. The kayaking trip that showed me drifting is part of the plan. Confronting my shadows of guilt and shame after a queer erotic event. My disappearance from the internet after C*NTINUUM even though it was a full success. I saw my own power there, saw that everything I touch turns to gold, and instead of celebrating I shut down. Failure feels easier than success because success requires surrender. Evolution. Trust. My nervous system does not always like that.

My African Goddess Rising deck constantly gives me the sabotage card. It is almost a joke at this point. My need for perceived control keeps me from blessings that want to reach me.

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Writing this is my attempt to stop terrorizing myself with my thoughts. And I give myself credit too. I am learning slowly and steadily. One percent better every day. When I look through the polaroid album I started five years ago, I see how free I have become. High school me was repressed. Today me is softer, more open, more alive. I deserve grace. I’m growing. Even when it is messy.

And then there is Ms Capricorn again. She is like a living reminder that growth is not linear. She triggers my patterns in the exact places that still need attention. Truly, I’m stubborn (typical Taurus). I want things my way on my timeline, and when I cannot have that, my nervous system jumps into fight or flight. I almost always choose flight. I run when I feel out of control, even though I know the control is an illusion. There is so much I cannot manage and still I wrestle with it, fighting my desires, my shadow, my need for vulnerability.

Ms Capricorn brings all that into focus. She does not create the pattern, she just reflects it. When she moves at her pace instead of mine, when the connection deepens in ways I cannot predict or manage, I feel myself wanting to shut down. Wanting to pull away before anything real can root. It is the same instinct that shows up in my work when my dreams get too close. I avoid my own success because success demands expansion and expansion feels unsafe.

But something about this moment is different. I feel myself reaching the edge of an old cycle. I am tired of being in fight or flight. I keep joking that the mantra for this season is “JUST VIBE TWIN!”, and it is true. I am being asked to soften at every level. Even sharing this publicly is a sign of growth. I am choosing to be real on Jill Scott’s internet (clap for me!). I am a person growing in real time who wants to help others grow too because being mysterious helps nobody!

So here I am, surrendering a little more each day. Allowing the mirrors and catalysts in my life to show me who I am becoming. And believing that every version of me, even the messy one writing this right now, deserves gentleness.

A journaling prompt for you + bonus playlist from my teen angst era

Where am I still gripping tightly to something that wants to move, and what would happen if I softened my hold, even just a little?

With love,

Delanyo the Changemaker