Anytime someone was doing too much or being overzealous, she would say, “She likes to make a big project out of things!” And, of course, much emphasis on the project, with a lot of attitude and her lip turned up, sounding annoyed.

Basically, “You are doing too much.”

I can hear her voice in my head saying this phrase often because I am reminded daily that she was right. I DO like to make a big project out of things, out of almost everything, and I have for much of my life. You called it, Grandma!

Currently, my house is full of boxes. Boxes of books are at the door. Boxes of snacks and beverages from around the world for my launch event are sitting in my living room in front of my fireplace. Boxes of Japanese chocolate candy are in my fridge so they don’t melt.

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I have made a BIG project out of my book launch event, for sure. I’ve got a playlist, a photo wall, a rotating photo screen, global snacks and drinks, and trip mementos. I’ll be showing pictures, sharing stories and poetry, and playing a few video clips.

An interviewer asked me recently why my launch event had to be “an experience.”

I said jokingly, “Because I am a whole-ass experience.”

I crack myself up, btw!

But seriously, I want people to feel like they have gone around the world with me. The book is one journey, but I want them to be immersed as I was immersed, to taste, see, and feel the impact of the journey.

One question I’ve gotten a lot lately is whether I knew I was going to write a book when I took the journey. Yes and no, really. I blogged almost daily, kept journals, and wrote a biweekly newsletter while I was traveling. I took 7,000 pictures and dozens of videos, so clearly I was capturing it for something. But, I didn’t really know the end product. I just knew I wanted to have a rich experience, capture it, and share it while it was happening and afterward. I had a multi-media exhibit in 2012 and laid the whole thing down for a bit after that.

The other day, I went into my guest room and pulled open the bottom dresser drawer. In it was a series of fat, colorful folders and manila envelopes where I keep my papers from my around-the-world trip. I probably haven’t looked through them in nearly a decade.

I was blown away by what was there. I have plane and bus tickets, ticket stubs, and brochures from places like:

Machu Picchu
The Taj Mahal
The Great Wall of China
The Apartheid Museum in South Africa
The British Museum in England

I have my blog printed out, poetry I wrote while traveling, and my three journals with all of my doodles: how much I spent daily and on what, “Where I’m From” poems scribbled on ripped-out notebook paper, and my own poems, barely legible.

There are even posters and postcards from the poetry events I hosted before I left and newspaper clippings advertising the Around the World in 80 Photos art exhibit I put on when I got back. I have those photos printed out: an older Thai woman handing me a lily early in the morning, three kids from the school where I volunteered outside Nairobi, and an Indian woman making cow-dung patties.

I even have my book outline, a spreadsheet of each country, how long I stayed there, and the pivotal people, places, and scenes. I have feedback on my first chapter from my WriterHouse instructor, full of markings and encouragement.

Maybe I should revise my answer. Maybe I did know that I had to diligently capture this journey, step by step, ticket by ticket, experience by experience, because if you know me, you know my memory is bad. Perhaps the Creator wanted me to remember.

I touched my heart when I found the flower that the kids gave me when I left the school in Guatemala, dried and preserved. I teared up. This is what it means to capture a life. To document experiences across time and mediums. This is my trip archive.

I realized at that moment that I was a documentarian before I ever made films. I annoy my friends and family because I say taking pictures, but I am simply trying to capture the moments, so we can look back and remember ourselves, one another and the places our feet touched.

On my computer are my trip pictures and videos. I went and looked at a few videos and heard the voices of the people I did poems with. They are WAY more than characters in my memoir. They are the human beings who helped shape my journey.

This fall, I will find myself on stages, on panels, and in conversations, sharing all that I gathered, all of the lessons, the laughs, and most of all, the love. It is all evidence of how one experience can give birth to a body of work that keeps on giving.

So yes, Grandma, I DO like to make a big project out of things, but this is the one time where that has absolutely paid off.

–

P.S.

Please join me at my 9/8 45-minute virtual publication day presentation at noon or the Richmond launch event. Those will be the most comprehensive talks on my around the world experience from my book tour. Registration required for both.

I’ll also be giving a free talk on Medium on 9/18 at 8 am on How to Turn One Story into A Creative Ecosystem.

And of course, BUY THE BOOK!

A month or so ago, I was sitting on a couch tucked into the corner of my coworking space, working on book stuff, I’m sure, because what else have I been working on lately? A friend who has known me for about six years, and who is also a writer, walked over and said, “You always have on yellow. I’d love for you to write about what yellow means to you.” I said okay and took it as an invitation to write a poem, which I’ll share in a moment.

Last week, during a podcast interview with Memoir Nation, hosts Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner asked about a scene near the beginning of Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents (It comes out in two weeks YAY, pre-order your copy). It, too, was bathed in yellow. Before I left to travel around the world, my family gathered for a fundraiser, and my mother told everyone to wear yellow.

Brooke asked whether my yellow glasses were connected to that day. I said no, but maybe they were prophetic. Sixteen years later, yellow has become my signature color. People comment on my glasses in airports, during presentations, and while I’m simply walking down the street. They are a definite hit! But my mother was the one who prompted us to wear yellow that day, and I think she was also the first person to buy me a yellow dress. Sometimes people see things in us before we can see them in ourselves. Now I have WAY too many yellow things, but I truly love it.

Both my memoir and the color yellow are testaments to the idea that sometimes we have to go back and gather the threads that were spoken to us and over us long ago. We have to retrieve them, claim them, and embody them. My word for this year is “embodied,” and yellow, in many ways, embodies my past, present, and future. It connects the young woman preparing to travel the world with the woman I am now and the bright, colorful future I still hope to create. So thank you, Mom, for calling those things that were not as though they were.

I am naturally a rather moody person who also has a resting bitch face, as they say, and when I am deep in thought, I forget to smile. I can be serious, although if you know me well, you know I think I am hilarious and am always trying to get a laugh. All that is to say, wearing yellow not only ensures I am unforgettable, but also gets me out of my own way sometimes and reminds me to shine when I don’t feel like it.

Prompts for you:

• What thread from your past is asking you to return, retrieve it, and embody it in your life today?

• Where in your life are you trying too hard to fit in? What color, object, or other physical reminder could you adopt to help you embody the person you are becoming?

Here’s to wearing bright colors, embracing the sunshine, and refusing to be afraid of standing out. Join me on my book tour, I’m likely to be bathed in yellow!

The Commonwealth of Color

By Ebony Walden

There was a time
when my clothes
were only
blue, black, and gray.
I wore them like
a banner.
My personal flag.

They represented
the nation
I was living in:
The Commonwealth of Playing It Safe.
Founded on the principles of:
Stay muted.
Stay in the background.
Cover up.
Dress baggy and boyish.
Try not to stand out
or be seen.

I got a B+
instead of an A
one semester in Black Women Writers
because I didn’t talk in class.
That’s when I learned
staying muted
would not make me successful.

Even still,
I stayed in that country
throughout my professional life,
stuck under the banner of
blue, black, and gray blazers,
but amended my creed:
Look sharp.
Be articulate.
Be twice as good.
Professional.
Always prepared.

I adopted
“To Be Young, Gifted and Black”
as the national anthem.
I sang it during city council presentations,
in boardrooms,
at conferences,
and community meetings.

I was smart,
and put together.
I had succeeded,
but the real me
wasn’t truly visible.

Then came the pandemic.
Confined to my house,
I decided to be free.
To be me.

So I declared a new nation:
The Commonwealth of Color.

I changed my flag
to mostly yellow,
with a touch of red,
pink, and green,
anything that felt alive.

Then I rewrote the constitution.
And added a Bill of Rights.

Article I

Yellow is freedom.
Freedom
to be seen.
To be remembered.
To be inviting.

Article II

Yellow is the sun.
Warm.
Sometimes too hot.
Sometimes hidden behind clouds.
But always returning.
She rises and falls,
but never sets for too long.

Article III

Yellow is my outlandish,
creative self.

Yellow glasses
that brighten my face,
complement my smile,
and glow
against my deep brown skin.

Yellow dresses
that bathe me in sunlight
and celebrate my curves.

A yellow scarf
a man once told me
was too bright.
That’s exactly why I bought it.

I no longer pledge allegiance
to blending in.

Every morning,
I raise my flag.
Put on my yellow glasses
and step out.

No longer muted.
No longer gray.

The thing that you should know about me is that I’m an overachieving Type A personality. I stay doing too much, too fast, but most things I do, I do pretty damn well. So, naturally, I built myself a bomb-ass book tour.

Recently, I was telling a colleague about the tour.

“Wait,” he said. “Do you have somebody putting all this together?”

Nope.

Of course, I have never planned a book tour before. But everything I’ve ever done successfully was once something I had never done before, so I fundamentally know I can learn.

Here’s how I built a twelve-city, twenty-event book tour and how you can build yours.

1. Get your shit together, early.

I started six months before publication. Bookstores and community spaces map out their calendars months in advance, and so should you. As soon as the preorder link for my book was up, I was off and running. Before that, I created a book packet that outlined my book, who I was, and potential event formats. I also gathered my photographs and media links and got my website in order.

You have to make it easy for people to say yes to you. That means being clear about who you are, what your book is about, why you, and how you will bring in an audience. When they get my email, they may say no for any number of reasons. But they will also say, “Yeah, she means motherfucking business.”

2. Ask, but let go of the outcome.

My approach was simple: I will ask everybody, but I won’t beg anybody. If someone was genuinely excited, we moved forward. If they were lukewarm or unresponsive, I moved on. I call it the Jesus method: if they don’t receive your message, shake the dust off your feet and keep moving.

Build with people who are excited. Ask clearly, follow up, and then press on.

3. Start at home.

I began by reaching out to bookstores in the places where I’ve actually lived: Richmond, Charlottesville, DC, and New York. Those are the places where you are more likely to get booked, have an audience, and get press.

I created a whole-ass multimedia experience for my launch event in Richmond, ’cause again, I love doing too much. I’m giving you all these gifts!

4. Ask your friends.

I wanted to visit cities where I would have relationships by association, so I reached out to friends around the country and asked if they would co-host something to bring together twenty or thirty people. It could be at their house, at a local bookstore, or wherever made sense given their network and city.

Three friends across three different regions, the Northeast, South, and West, said yes. Boom! National reach! You may not know people in every city, but your people know people. Start there!

5. Go where you genuinely want to go.

I wanted this to be a genuinely Black-ass book tour, so I looked for cities and venues that fit that vision. Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans were on my list. I’m still working on ATL. I focused on Black-owned, women-owned, and independent bookstores that regularly host events because they already gather the readers I hoped to reach.

I contacted the bookstores directly and sent them my book packet and relevant links. You don’t have to go all over, but intentionally choose the places that make sense for the book and your pockets.

6. Find the right conversation partners.

In cities where I didn’t have strong connections, I found people who did. For one event, I searched for a Black women’s book club in the city. I found Black Girls Read Chicago, which has 16,000 followers on Instagram. I asked Cynthia O., the founder, if she would be my conversation partner. Ninety percent of the people I asked to be in conversation with me said yes.

Many readers and writers, especially Black women, are extraordinarily generous about opening doors, especially when the work resonates.

I contacted friends of friends, writers, journalists, and book-club leaders. I sent them the book, explained why I thought we could have an interesting conversation, and asked if they wanted to partner. Those relationships helped turn one appearance into two events in multiple cities

7. Ask, apply, pitch, and pivot. Repeat.

I applied to the Brooklyn Book Festival and wasn’t selected for the main program. But I proposed a session for its Bookend events and invited two Black women authors who had also written about travel to join me. They said yes. It’s going to be a time!

I also pitched Medium for a craft talk on building a creative ecosystem and was invited to participate in Medium Day. I pursued podcasts, webinars, virtual discussions, and Instagram Lives alongside my in-person events, all of which built on themes from my book.

I’ll have events about craft and travel, as well as conversations that explore the book through various lenses: urban planning, womanhood, Black identity, and intergenerational relationships. Build events around the fullness of your story and expertise.

8. Balance your event formats.

I’m a poet and a facilitator, and I run meetings for a living, so part of me naturally wants to build a curated experience. In full Ebony fashion, I developed several formats, because I get bored easily, and allowed each host to choose what worked best for their space and audience:

• A reading and audience Q&A

• A moderated conversation and Q&A

• A short multimedia experience

The full Where I’m From Experience will happen only in Richmond. Why? ’Cause y’all ain’t paying me, not yet anyway.

For friends out of town, there’s a virtual launch party for you on September 8th, 12-12:45.

All that to say: have diversity, give folks choices and decide where you will take on more labor intensive efforts.

9. Don’t go broke trying to look like you’re on tour.

I was not trying to break the bank on my self-produced, self-funded tour. I’ve accumulated a few hundred thousand airline and hotel points for such a time as this. Most cities are drivable, but I’ll have three major flight-intensive trips. I’m staying with friends and grouping nearby events together. Chicago and Detroit are among the few places where I’ll need hotels.

In Richmond, I rented a space and will serve wine and snacks from around the world. I’m creating the playlist and photo installation, as well as a table displaying artifacts from my trip, like my hiking shoes and ticket stubs from the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China. I’ll also put together a multimedia presentation. Doing WAY too much. Y’all pray for me!

For most authors, a simple reading or conversation is fine. People came for you. But as for me and my house, we cannot behave.

10. Don’t leave everything to your publicist.

Publicists can be incredibly helpful. I have one, and they have gotten me featured in places I would not have been otherwise, including She Reads’ list of the Most Anticipated Non-Fiction Books and Memoirs of the fall and Ms. magazine next month.

Your job is to complement the work they’re doing. I contacted media in the cities where I’ve lived and asked if they would feature the book. Three said yes.

A publicist may secure an appearance, but I am interested in building genuine relationships that extend beyond the tour.

11. Curate the conversations you actually want to have.

For every event, I considered the specific conversation we could have.

In November, I’m hosting an event with two friends who have each written memoirs, one about coming into her sexuality and the other about her biracial identity. I named it “Black Women on Becoming.” We are partnering with the local book club Melanin and Manuscripts. Brilliant, if I do say so myself!

The best events create a conversation the audience couldn’t hear anywhere else.

12. Create accoutrements.

I wanted the tour to become part of a larger creative ecosystem. One trip around the world became a memoir. The ideas inside the book became the foundation for talks I’m now pitching for 2027.

I’ve developed several assets connected to the book: a book-club discussion guide, a framework for telling your story, a Where I’m From poem template, and a companion workbook featuring fifteen lessons I learned from my travels. Download all four.

People generally do not get rich just by selling books. Thus, I hope to build conversations, tools, experiences, and future keynotes around the book.

Let’s get PAID!!!

13. Have fun.

Twelve cities and twenty events. Conversations, readings, panels, virtual events, and opportunities to be my colorful, engaging poet-facilitator-performer self.

I want to fully enjoy what I created. I am going to be present, laugh loud and hard, hug my friends tightly, and make a few new ones on the road.

I’ve never built a book tour before, but I have spent my entire adulthood, including my around-the-world trip, doing shit I’ve never done before. You can do the same!

14. Invite, invite, invite!

I invite everyone everywhere I go.

You should join me on the tour. I guarantee you will not regret it. Visit www.ebonywalden.com/events for all event details and registration.

I hope to see you there. Bring your friends too!

And feel free to share this post. ’Cause sharing is caring. LOL.

This is how Franny The Traveler found me. Last fall, I published an article for Business Insider about my favorite U.S. city after having traveled to all 50 states. It’s New Orleans by the way. Franny read the article and invited me to her new podcast Unlock Black Journeys. After our chat, I asked her to be in conversation with me at my book tour event at Cafe con Libros in New York. She is a Brooklyn native, author and traveler, the perfect conversation partner. It’ll be a full circle moment.

Recently, Franny posted five lessons from our conversation. Reading them reminded me that travel is not just about the places I visit, but what those places have taught me about the world, about life and about myself. Here are a few lessons from traveling across the globe that continue to shape how I move through life.

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Move Through the World As Traveler

I am the first to encourage people to travel, but you don’t actually have to go outside of your hometown, to live like a traveler. Be curious, try new things, go somewhere you haven’t been before in your city. I’ve visited most of the museums, parks, and attractions in Richmond. There is always an ever evolving door of new opportunities right in front of you. Do you try new things? Are you curious about your surroundings? About the people in your life? Do you ask about who they are? What has shaped them? Where are they from?

You can traipse around your city and move through life like a tourist. You do not need a passport to be a traveler. Just awaken the spirit of exploration and curiosity wherever you go.

Stop Complaining about What is Not There

I do not expect Richmond to be like New York or anywhere else. Each place is distinct. My job is to find the beauty that is there, not despise it for not being someplace else.

The final loop of my all 50 states journey was to the states some might consider boring, but I had a ball.

I went to Omaha, Nebraska, where I ate a Reuben sandwich (it apparently originated there). I stood in the middle of the pedestrian suspension bridge connecting Nebraska and Iowa. My feet were in two states at once. How cool is that? Downtown Des Moines was filled with murals, walkable public spaces, and trails near the water. It felt alive in ways I had not expected.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota had transformed its waterfalls and old industrial buildings into beautiful public gathering spaces filled with walking trails. The final stop was Fargo, North Dakota, where I tasted local beers while listening to live music downtown before heading home. It was a quaint and dynamic trip.

Each place has a gem, it is up to me to find them.

Wherever I Am, I Belong

The notion that I do not belong someplace doesn’t occur to me. I feel like the world is my oyster, especially as a visitor. I do not have to love, live or even stay at any one place long, but if I am there, I am supposed to be. Oprah says, I come as one and stand at ten thousand. I’ve been one of the only Black people frequently. I don’t love it all the time, but it’s okay if I want to enter certain places. I am comfortable being uncomfortable in service of growth, connection, good food and just being curious. I’ve literally connected with people all over the world, young and old, those with money and without. When you are able to deeply tap into your own humanity, you can tap into others. Every conversation is an invitation to be human.

They Tried to Bury Us and Didn’t Know We Were Seeds

This is a Mexican proverb. It reminds me of the millions of enslaved Africans that crossed the Atlantic and sprouted despite centuries of oppression. We made gumbo, Garifuna soup, jazz, hip-hop and reggae, we wrote and danced and loved and invented things while our labor was the hands and feet that helped usher in the modern world. That level of ingenuity is unfathomable given their circumstances. And, we are still here, we grow, even when planted on the scorched earth of injustice.

I’ve walked through South Carolina, New Orleans, Cartagena, Livingston and Senegal, encountering beauty and creativity at every turn. I’ve witnessed the beauty of Blackness in full bloom and it makes me glad I am connected to cultures across continents, across centuries.

Love is Always Present

This is not a lesson shared during my conversation with Franny, but perhaps it’s the most important lesson of all. Recently, someone asked what I have learned about love from my travels. I said love is never far from me. I just have to be present, open up and let it in. I am not talking about romantic love per se, but kindness, a lovely conversation, a good meal with a friend or stranger, someone stopping to help me or sitting down and writing a poem with me. That is love too. I

also believe we do not have to have every experience to have a wonderful life. I do not have to be married with children and you do not have to be a world traveler, to have a beautiful life. Embrace love where it shows up in front of you, not in what is not there.

And lastly, I fell in love often, with children I taught in school and orphanages, volunteers who became fast friends, and hosts that were kind and helpful. But, I had to leave everyone I met. It was hard and by the end of my trip I was tired. During the last five days of my 2010 around the world trip, I made a new friend despite being exhausted. We laughed, and connected over our mutual love of hip-hop and hiking. When I thought I was done with opening my heart, I decided to open it once again, and it was so worth it!

What About You?

What lessons have you learned from your travels? And how are you living them out in your everyday life?

I hope you’ll continue the journey with me.

My memoir explores fifteen life lessons from traveling across five continents.

• Buy the Book: Pre-order a copy

• Join me on my 11-city book tour. On publication day 9/8, I’ll also be hosting a virtual launch event where I’ll share photographs and the lessons. Visit www.ebonywalden.com/events to check out the full event listing and to register.

Watch or listen to my interview with Dr. Franny on the Unlock Black Journeys Podcast.

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This book is sixteen years in the making. Sixteen years since I boarded a plane for my around the world trip. Fourteen years since I put together a presentation, exhibit and poetry performance after I returned. Twelve years since I took my first six-week memoir writing class. Nine years since I finished my second memoir-in-a-year class with a completed manuscript. Two years since I decided to pursue publishing in the summer of 2024. And now here we are.

As I sat down and flipped through my book, I pondered what I learned about writing and about life in those years.

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Believe Your Story Matters

A few months ago, I was on a panel for WriterHouse in Charlottesville. One of the audience members asked “How do you get past thinking no one will want to hear about your life?” I replied, “I don’t have that problem sir. I fundamentally believe people will want to hear what I have to say.” The crowd erupted in laughter, but truly that is the first step, believing you have something to say.

Find a Community

The second step was learning to become a better writer, one step and one story at a time. Taking classes was key, because that provided community and accountability, mirroring, and people helping me find my story, which I think is harder to do by yourself.

Be a Student of Craft

Reading other people’s work, both in class and in my free time was invaluable. Over the past sixteen years, I’ve read at least 50 memoirs. I started out with Eat, Pray, Love, Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and Go Girl. It was important for me to pay attention to not only what I enjoyed, but how they actually told their story and what made it compelling.

Reading books on writing was also helpful. Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoir, The Art of Memoir, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Non-fiction and Save the Cat (on story structure) have been critical to learning craft.

Create a Book Map (My Most Helpful Tool)

One of the first things we did for our memoir class was to create a book map. It’s an outline of your book’s chapters, central ideas, scenes, characters and topics. Mine was easy because the container was my eight-month trip around the world. I knew I wanted to start the story before the journey, when I was planning it, and then each country naturally became a chapter. Within every country I asked: Who were the key people? What were the key scenes? What was the dialogue? My writing process was essentially following my book map.

Editing is Hard (The Hardest Part)

The hardest thing to do was deciding what to take out. There were incredible adventures, amazing stories from growing up, and really meaningful moments from my trip that are not in the book. Within every memoir, is the book that you didn’t write. There was a grief of releasing some of my favorite parts. If they didn’t serve the core theme, they had to come out.

I also had to remove the actual Where I’m From poems because I couldn’t get permission from everyone to reproduce theirs. That was sad, but it challenged me from a craft perspective. How do I embed the poems in the story so readers experience what I did, without actually seeing the poems?

Then, I probably edited the manuscript seven times over the past several years. There was revision before beta readers, revision after beta readers, updating language so it was sensitive, rewriting all the sections the included the poems, copy editing and proofreading. Then I had to re-read the physical copies. It was truly annoying. Writing a book is not glamorous, but editing is terrible. You can get through it!

Curate the Conversation You Want to Have (What I’m Most Excited About)

I’m most excited about engaging with audiences. I really want to be in conversation with people about the questions the book raises and topics it explores:

• How do you embrace your own identity, healing, and find peace and home within yourself and your story?

• How do you become present enough to engage with people around the world and learn from their ways of doing and being in ways that change your perspective?

• What does it mean to travel the world as a woman, as a Black woman?

• What beauty and hardships did I encounter? How did they change me?

The most exciting moment so far happened when my 128 author copies arrived. There they were, stacked on my porch.

That evening, I toasted to myself for doing the damn thing.

Now, it’s only a matter of time before I start the first leg of my book tour. It’s grown to 11 cities and nearly 20 events. It will be a sprint, but I hope to take everything this journey has taught me, enjoy every minute of it, and remember to get some rest in between. The writing is over, and now the journey of a published author is about to begin!

My advice…

I have two departing thoughts for anyone wanting to write a book:

You have a story to tell. Find the people, community, and writing resources to help you tell it well.

Believe in the fullness of time. Only you know when it’s the right time. The day I took my book off the shelf, I was writing the book proposal for what would become my documentary series Black Beyond Borders and the Spirit said, you already have a book. It’s time to take it off the shelf. I did. Nearly two years later, it will be in stores near you.

My final lesson is: stop if you need to, listen to your inner voice, and by God’s grace, keep going!

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It’s the summer of 2010, and I am walking down the road in Livingston, Guatemala with 20 other volunteers heading to lunch. Reggae music is bumping, and even though it’s about 95 degrees outside, I sit down and order a coconut curry fish soup called Garifuna Soup, or Hudut. A fish head stared back at me unwaveringly, but it is, by far, one of the best dishes I’ve ever had while traveling.

Hudut is named after the Garífuna people, descendants of Africans who were shipwrecked on St. Vincent and now populate much of the Caribbean coast of Central America. I actually wrote about them in my Black History Across America series. I’d have the soup years later in Honduras, and it would be equally scrumptious.

That was one of the best meals I had on my 2010 around-the-world trip, and below are five more of my most memorable food experiences from my 2010 eight-month journey to 17 countries that inspired my upcoming memoir. Go ahead and pre-order it today!

Chicha Morada and Ceviche in Peru

In Peru, my favorite drink was chicha morada. It’s made from purple corn, fruit, spices, and to me, it tastes like grape juice meets Kool-Aid. I could not get enough of it while I was there.

I had a rough time physically and emotionally in Peru. My volunteer experience was marred by being a spectacle at a school where the sight of a Black person was rare, and I had a tooth infection and altitude sickness. But whenever I sat down with a glass of chicha morada, everything felt just a little bit better.

Bonus: Lima is a gastronomic capital and the ceviche variety of fish, mixed, shrimp etc., is astounding and delicious. The corn and potatoes there come in such a variety. Both come in blue and purple, which is dynamic.

The strangest food I had there was guinea pig. Sorry to be cliché, but it tastes like chicken with less meat and is a bit gamey. Not bad, but I don’t need to have it again!

Chianti Wine in Florence, Italy

In Italy, I went on a wine tour outside Florence and fell in love with Chianti wine.

I was backpacking, which meant skimping every day, wearing trekking shoes, carrying a 50-pound backpack, and rotating through the same T-shirts. But for this tour, I wore the one fancy shirt I had packed. It was red and flowy, and for one afternoon I felt beautiful. We were overlooking the hills of Tuscany, sitting at a vineyard and drinking Chianti. It was one of those perfect travel moments.

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Ugali, Kale, and Chapati in Kenya

In Kenya, I ate ugali and kale very often.

Ugali is similar to grits but stiffer and served in a block. We made it for the children every day while I was volunteering and paired it with steamed, well-seasoned kale. It was simple, comforting food.

But what I really loved was chapati.

Because of Kenya’s Indian population, chapati has become part of Kenyan cuisine. I learned how to make it with my host family. It’s similar to naan, but I absolutely loved the Kenyan version.

In South Africa, I had ostrich. It wasn’t bad; it tasted like beef or veal.

Chai in India

Then, in India, I had the best chai I’ve ever tasted.

I was staying about 40 minutes outside New Delhi, and every afternoon at tea time, I’d sit in the courtyard of the children’s home where I volunteered and have fresh chai. It was made with real spices, and I don’t know if it was the milk or the way they prepared it, but it was goodness dancing on my tongue. I’ve had chai all over the world since then, and nothing has compared. I also loved naan, samosas and anything curried.

Papaya Salad in Thailand

In Thailand, I fell in love with green papaya salad.

I took a cooking class where, of course, we made pad thai, but the dish that surprised me was the papaya salad. It was fresh, crunchy, bright, and delicious. Asian markets are wonderful all by themselves, so you really can’t go wrong with fresh ingredients .

Peking Duck in China

In China, I fell for Peking duck. They double-roast the duck, bring it out to your table, slice it right in front of you, and serve it with thin pancakes. It was so tender, it simply melted in your mouth and was so flavorful.

China was interesting because there were foods I’d never seen before, including insects, spiky things, and many other foods that felt unfamiliar to my Western eye and palate. But I loved a good bun. It definitely wasn’t the Chinese food you get on the corner back home, and I loved it!

Onigiri in Japan

In Japan, I loved onigiri. For about a dollar, I could grab one at a convenience store (forgive me, I was backpacking), and there was such a huge variety. They’re kind of like a triangle sushi. Rice, stuffed with filling and wrapped in seaweed. They felt familiar and foreign.

And the award for least favorite food goes to…

And finally, my least favorite thing I ate anywhere in the world was Vegemite in Australia.

Vegemite is this dark spread made of yeast, vegetables, and spices that Australians put on just about everything. Because I was backpacking, I met Australians everywhere, and they were always talking about Vegemite. Eventually, I figured I had to try it.

It was terrible. It’s incredibly salty, dark, and just... nasty.

What about you?

I didn’t love everything I ate, but I will taste anything once, because food is culture and of course you don’t know until you try.

What about you?

What are your favorite foods from around the world? Least favorite? Dishes you want to try?

Let me know in the comments

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I don’t love social media. Most days it feels designed to support consumerism more than creativity. But every now and then, the algorithm gets something right.

Over the past six months, Instagram has sent me writing opportunities, book events, film festivals, and creative communities I would not have found otherwise. One of those was Belonging, a convening of Black writers hosted by Roxane Gay at Rutgers University.

On Juneteenth weekend, I drove to New Jersey and joined over 100 Black writers for a day of conversations about craft, publishing, and the realities of building a writing life. We learned from writers including Jacqueline Woodson, Kiese Laymon, Brittney Cooper, Morgan Jerkins, and Roxane Gay herself. Beyond the wisdom and celebrity, the gathering reminded me of something important: every writer has a story only they can tell. So, we must be about the business of telling our unique stories, and telling them well!

It also reminded me of the three things that helped me write Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents.

1. Community

When I decided to write about my 2010 trip around the world, I wasn’t thinking about publication. I was trying to understand the specific people, places and experiences that transformed me.

I joined writing classes at WriterHouse in Charlottesville and eventually enrolled in their Memoir in a Year class, twice. By then I had already moved to Richmond, so every other week for two years, I drove back to Charlottesville for a three-hour class. We read each other’s work, and the work of others. We learned craft and offered each other feedback. More importantly, we helped each other discover what our stories were actually about.

One of the central themes of Where I’m From is that travel forced me to reckon with my own memories. I remember workshopping early chapters that included flashbacks from my childhood. Again and again, people wanted to know more about the stories before the trip. More about how I became the woman willing to travel across five continents alone. Their questions helped me see the real story beneath the travel stories.

As author and scholar Brittany Cooper reminded us during the Black writers convening, writers need community. Not necessarily someone else’s community, but their own. A group of people willing to read you work, challenge you, and help you grow. Writing may be solitary, but becoming a writer rarely is.

2. Craft

Some people are naturally gifted writers. The rest of us strive and practice.

I spent years learning how stories work by reading dozens of memoirs, paying attention to introductions, chapter structures, dialogue, narrative arcs, scene construction, pacing, voice and the beauty of a turn of phrase.

One of the last pieces I wrote for Where I’m From was the introduction. I wasn’t sure whether it should be an introduction, a prologue, or something in between. So I pulled ten memoirs off my shelves and reread the openings. I outlined what each author accomplished in those first pages in great detail. Some outlined the core themes of the book, some offered reflection and others dropped readers directly into a scene or left them with a cliffhanger. Rereading those introductions helped me discover my own approach.

Craft is learning the tools well enough to build something uniquely yours. That takes time, study and practice, and a commitment to getting better. What stuck me about all of the seasoned writers at the conference was their commitment to craft, to excellence, to being their best writer selves.

3. Commitment

This may be the most important ingredient of all. You have to finish: an essay, a chapter, a full manuscript. Nothing replaces putting your butt in the chair and writing.

The Memoir in a Year program gave me structure, deadlines, and accountability. For the first six months, I wrote every morning from 5:30 to 6:00 a.m. on a legal pad because I couldn’t yet write on a computer. Page by page, chapter by chapter, the book emerged.

Writing is often romanticized as inspiration, but in reality, it is commitment and discipline. You write because it is time to write, not necessarily when you are inspired. These days, I write on Sundays: articles I am trying to get published, this Substack and poetry. Something always emerges when I make space for it.

And Then There’s the Business of Writing

The conference also reminded me that writing is both art and industry. Writers talked openly about advances, contracts, marketing, social media, negotiation, and rejection. The lesson wasn’t to chase money, but to value your work.

• Don’t undervalue yourself

• Don’t take rejection personally

• Build a solid team - agents, editors, writer friends, lawyers etc.

• Ask for more when appropriate

• Find the publications, readers, and opportunities that align with your voice.

• Be a part of the writing community, offering feedback, advice, blurbs, etc.

One of the things that struck me most was how present the established writers were. They stood in line and ate with us. They talked to folks freely between sessions. They were not stuck behind celebrity, but engaging and accessible. They understood that writing is sustained by community.

And it made me realize the kind of writer I hope to become, a writer who:

• Tells her story

• Helps others tell theirs

• Remembers that every book is written one sentence at a time

As the conference came to a close, I got the chance to ask the last question of the day: How do you decide where to put your energy? Rachel Cargle’s response was about self-awareness. Know yourself well enough to know what deserves your time, attention, and effort, enough to know what is or isn’t aligned. Later I told her I loved her response. She smiled and said something that stayed with me (I am paraphrasing): At this point, it’s not about more followers, money or even more opportunities. It’s about more freedom.

I left the conference inspired not to write like anyone else, but to write like myself. And to build a writing life that creates more freedom, one sentence and one Sunday at a time.

THE SPIRIT OF BLACK JOY

My sisters, two biological and one bonus sister, joined me for our annual sister trip to Martha’s Vineyard and it was an exquisite experience in the Black Joy lineage.

Martha’s Vineyard is Black joy personified, lounging at Inkwell Beach in the midst of leisure and luxury. Everybody from the Obamas to probably the Carters has been to Martha’s Vineyard. There is something powerful about this history and heritage.

And in good fashion, we started our three-night, four-day trip off in that same spirit, heading from the ferry straight to Sunday Brunch at Black Joy Kitchen, where the music was bumping and the DJ was playing ‘80s/’90s R&B tunes. From After 7’s “Ready or Not” to Rob Base’s “It Takes Two.” We were dancing in our booth, shoulders shaking, hands gesticulating. Inspired ladies across from us started bopping their heads to the beat. Somebody walked down the aisle and did the running man like it was the Soul Train line. We laughed out loud and encouraged each other’s foolishness.

That was our introduction to Martha’s Vineyard, to uninhibited shenanigans. And that was the spirit of the weekend.

The next morning, we went to Biscuits, where we ordered delicious biscuits, soft and buttery, and laughed out loud even more as we captured content, which was really our food. We went to Inkwell Beach, where Black people have frolicked through the water for more than one hundred years. We dipped our toes in the Massachusetts water, crisp, clear, and a boatload of intact sea shells underfoot.

And of course we made our way through the gingerbread houses, which aren’t distinctly Black, but they are colorful and bright and quirky, and you’ve got to love the character of the place. We drove from one part of the island to the other, talking over one another between jokes, loud, raucous, and being our ridiculous selves.

It all culminated in us buying Inkwell sweatshirts, from Black-owned C’est la Vie, each reflective of our personalities. I got mine in my signature yellow, a hoodie. My younger sister got a pullover with a zip. My older sister got the most expensive V-neck, which is exactly who she is. And my bonus sister got a bright red sweatshirt, her color.

We took pictures and created content as we ate lobster rolls, scallops, and shrimp. We painted and we sipped. We put our feet in the sand and grounded ourselves. We did our own little karaoke. We rapped along to “Slam” by Onyx and “I Can Love You” by Mary J. Blige, and rapped Lil’ Kim’s part like we were the Queen B herself. Classic!

One night, we went to an Italian restaurant, Jimmy’s, where their dishes are served in a large pan. I was capturing video of my Bolognese being brought out. Watching it later, the background audio was perfect. My sister was saying, “When someone asks what you all did all weekend, I’m going to say we ate” and then bonus sister chimes in with great emphasis saying, “Right…and ate good!”

All that to say, we EMBODIED the spirit of Black Joy.

THE POWER OF RITUALS

Since the pandemic, we’ve created a tradition of annual sister trips, and there is something beautiful about that. Growing up, we didn’t take many family vacations together, mostly family reunions, where we packed our fried chicken in aluminum foil, piled into my grandfather’s yellow station wagon, and headed to DC or North Carolina or Detroit to visit family.

Our first real vacation together was the Hamptons. We had grown up on Long Island and never really experienced it, even though it was only a couple of hours away. We sat outside tasting wine and lounged on the beach. My great niece, less than a year old, tried to eat sand and crawled too fast for us to catch her.

After that, there was Nashville, where we visited Uncle Nearest Distillery and the National Museum of African American Music, both Black excellence personified. Last year was Fort Lauderdale, where we swam in the pool, walked on the beach, and watched the sunrise and sunset.

We’ve enjoyed creating family rituals of joy. It’s not really about the place, but about being together, annoying and enjoying one another while we are ourselves.

I am the type-A person in the family, time-aware, always planning and chop, chop, chop. Always “let’s go” or “come on” or “we only have 15 minutes.” Always stopping at every point to take a picture.

My older sister buys the most expensive things. Never let her order for you, you will be getting the most expensive thing on the menu every time, probably Lobster or something organic, and she will have you with your shoes off grounding and touching a tree.

My younger sister gets annoyed by us and stay’s relatively quiet until she’s not. When we sing and rap songs from our youth, her being eight years younger than me and ten years younger than our older sister, she says, “Is that something from the ‘90s?” We break out laughing every time. “Enough with the age jokes,” we say.

Each year a bonus person joins our trip: my six-year-old great niece, smart and precocious and always telling somebody about themselves. Bonus sister is CRAZY and funny and has unmatched foolishness. And my adult niece is Ms. Black Power, we don’t want to talk about the injustices of the world on vacation, ma’am, but she’s good company.

This is our ritual. We are guided by love and joy, creating photo ops and memories that we will be talking about into old age. Remember when…

These are the types of moments I suspect the early Black vacationers on the Vineyard were trying to create, Adam Clayton Powell and his family finding respite from discrimination and the weight of fighting injustice, the Shearers and The Landladies of Oak Bluffs providing lodging, hospitality, and refuge for Black families during perilous times.

These are the traditions of Black joy I hope to continue. Where we laugh, play, frolic and lounge and be ourselves, together.

And if you want to steal my itinerary, here you go:

In four days, we managed to EAT AT: Black Joy Kitchen, Biscuits, Nancy's, Lookout Tavern, Winston's Kitchen, and Bad Martha's Brewery, with a stop at Mad Martha's for ice cream.

We SHOPPED AT Jubilee and C'est La Vie on Circuit Avenue.

We explored HISTORY on the African American Heritage Trail to the homes of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the Shearers, and the Colemans.

We dipped our feet in the water at Inkwell and Menemsha Beaches and walked the Oak Bluff Harbor.

We EXPLORED Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, Edgartown, Menemsha, and Aquinnah, and somehow still found time to sing, dance, paint, laugh, and make memories. Not bad for four days on Martha's Vineyard!

What family rituals of joy can you create this year? This week even?

The Return

It started with a poetry reading. My colleague Robert Dortch was having a reading and talk back for his book Cool Fire. There were about twenty of us at Common House, sitting on the edge of our seats, watching, listening and ingesting this combination of poetry and photography. It wasn’t just voyeuristic, thought. We were asked to respond, to select poems we liked from his collection, to read aloud and reflect back the impact, our interpretation. It was a dynamic, soulful evening. It made me remember that I too had a book of poetry. It was sitting on a shelf in my office.

I went home that evening and found the book of poetry I had written between 2009 and 2012. A fifty-poem compilation entitled Soul of a Woman, Soul of the World that spanned before, during, and immediately after my around-the-world trip. I laughed and cried, as I stayed up through the night. I felt empowerment and deep sorrow, and saw and touched the tender places as if they were fresh wounds.

That time period birthed an open mic and began my journey writing poetry. The first few poems were pure performance, spoken word. They were sure, confident, packed with power. Embodied self-assurance only a person in their twenties can have, strong and misguided.

Soul of a Woman, Soul of the World

The poems from ATW were observational. I was reading books like Half the Sky, Desert Flower, and Little Bee, books that unveiled the challenges and injustices women face globally.

At the same time, I was walking the earth across five continents seeing beauty in churches of Europe and vineyards of Tuscany, the magnificence of a pride of lions on safari, the majesty of Cape Town sites like Table Mountain, Stellenbosch wine regions, the Cape of Good Hope, and world wonders like the Taj Mahal and the beauty of children laughing everywhere. But I was also witnessing poverty in Kenyan slums, South African townships, and Indian exurbs. I was an observer, seeker, and a sponge.

When I returned, the wind of the world had blown through my protective layer. I was tender, hollowed out, and broken open. Those poems made me cringe and cry. It felt like I was bleeding out, but I was actually coming alive.

Not all of these poems were good, but it was a rich portrait of a woman discovering herself and the world around her.

Recovering Myself

In a Q&A for my book, one of the questions was: Why now?

I said as I prepared for the Black Beyond Borders remote working journey, I realized my travel origin story began in 2010, and before I moved forward I had to go back. And I did. In 2024, grabbed the manuscript that had sat on a shelf for seven years and moved toward publication. But as I’ve looked back through pictures, old spoken word videos and my poetry manuscript recently, I have been wondering where the poet in me has gone.

I know I can write. I never stopped writing. I have written blogs, essays, op-eds, and curated an essay anthology between then and now. But I haven’t written poetry seriously in over a decade.

This month in particular, I’ve been wondering if I still had it in me. That poetry manuscript is a prelude to now and speaks about the woman I was, the one who decided to go around the world. I had to remember and return to her so I could tell the full story. The poet, observer, mystic, tender woman. I had to go back and get her.

Last week, as I began writing poetry again, something unexpected happened. Memory returned in images instead of analysis.

• The 1980s came back as stoops in Jamaica, Queens.

• The 1990s sounded like Mary J. Blige pouring through speakers.

• The 2000s were backyard barbecues, folding chairs, and birthday parties on blacktop driveways.

• The 2010s were fundraisers for an around-the-world trip and the woman who was bold enough to leave.

• The 2020s have become a shifting body, a pandemic, porch sits, traversing fifteen countries and trying to balance giving care to myself and others.

Poetry brought back texture and specificity. It helped me recover myself.

Why now? The truth is: I have built the business. I have traveled the world. I have accomplished things. I was no longer trying to prove anything. Now, I just want to be myself.

And in order to do that and tell my full story on my book tour, I had to go back and recover the woman I was becoming in 2010 before strategy, productivity, achievement, and adulthood crowded her out again.

The Parts We Abandon

I don’t think I’m the only one who had to lose herself in doing, so let me ask you: What are the parts of yourself that have died in service of career, ambition, success, family, or just the responsibility of adulthood?

Have you abandoned your poet, artist, ability to create and to play in service of productivity, position, power and profit?

Somewhere along the way, my artist was suffocated and the consultant, the strategist, the high achiever took over. The poet had no place to just be, no place to breathe.

Sacred Silence

I have been recovering from surgery. I am fine, nothing critical, but enough to put me in bed, on my couch, and relegate me to porch sits with friends for 3+ weeks.

In the last week of contemplation, rereading my poems and my favorite poets, Langston, Lucille, Nikki, and watching old episodes of Def Poetry Jam on YouTube, I picked up a pen and wrote a poem a day about five decades of living, plus a bonus.

And it came back.

I was impressed and deeply impacted. This is what happens when your soul has rest and space and sacred silence. The true, tender, and creative you can emerge and surprise the hell out of you.

At some point I will share those poems, but they are still too fresh for eyes at the moment. But I will share the poem that came to mind for this post and really sparked my movement back toward poetry. It kept whispering to me.

It made me realize that I needed to go back to the old me and breathe life into the parts of myself in order to tell the story of myself honestly on my book tour. I need to get to know her again. I need her voice to deepen my own so that when I am speaking, it is not just about who I became, but also who I was and who I am still becoming.

Because the movement from death to life, and life to death, is a practice. It’s not something we do once, but something we do over and over again.

Practicing Resurrection

I think it would be well, and courageous and incredibly risky,
to open your heart to the world and not let it grow callous from being battered;
to strip off your guardedness like a layer of thick rough skin
to reveal a tender and bare naked frame
sensitive to touch but passionate with compassion.

Then, even death will be so familiar to you in life,
making your final steps into death and new life full of grace and peace.

Surrender to death, and loss and pain
and receive life, and hope and truth,
till your hands lie open long enough to hold abundance;
let your hardened flesh fall off in shreds,
let your wounds beneath,
those festering sores, be revealed
to light and air and balm and care, and be healed.

Let your scattered dry bones chatter with loneliness
and travel over the barren field of your emptiness to take on fresh flesh,
and live and walk and breathe and coalesce
until your body and soul are spacious enough
to hold the wholeness of humanity,
the fullness of divinity.

Final Questions

And this would not be a Beyond Borders Ebony Substack if I didn’t leave you with some reflection questions. You know how I roll…

• What lost, dormant, or buried part of you needs to be resurrected?

• What needs to die for that to happen?

• And when and where can you find space, stillness, and silence to practice resurrection?

And of course, I’ve decided to edit my poetry manuscript and release it in 2027.

Stay tuned…

Where It All Began

My around-the-world journey did not begin with a plane ticket. It began in a crowded restaurant at a poetry open mic in Charlottesville on March 27, 2009.

A local nonprofit located in my neighborhood hosted a yearly community celebration and chose to honor a poet that year. As part of that, they planned a poetry event.

The executive director knocked on my door and asked if I would help promote it. I said yes, but only if I could host it. I would be good at it.

A Room Full of Stories

Weeks later, the room was packed. I remember looking out and seeing so many different types of people. There were people from my neighborhood who lived in low-income housing, people I knew from my work at the City of Charlottesville, poets from UVA, spoken word artists, singers, and people who simply came to listen.

There were Black people, white people, old and young. People who were hurting, people who were healing, and people who had already healed. The dynamism of that hat night stayed with me and I vowed to continue the vibe, and I did.

Learning to Hold Space

Hosting that open mic did more than introduce me to poetry. It taught me how to listen and how to see people. It showed me that many of us need space to share our stories creatively, and that it is sometimes easier to do that in a room full of people we do not know.

It also pushed me to stand in front of a room in my full voice. I learned how to create and hold space for others while navigating awkward transitions, reading and shifting the energy in the room, and knowing when to move things forward or let a moment breathe.

Before I was a facilitator, I was a host, a mistress of ceremony. These are the same skills I use now as a storyteller. You have to know your entry point, how to transition, and how to carry an idea through a story so people can follow it and feel it.

From Open Mic to the World

All of that began in March 2009 at the Bel Rio Poetry Jam. That space eventually became The WordSmith Poetry Jam monthly open mic, which later grew into the Poetic Justice World Tour, an around the world trip with a foundation of creating poetry and capturing stories from around the world.

After about three months of watching others share their work, I started writing poetry myself, and it was transformative. Words poured out and I barely recognized myself. It was on that stage that I learned the power of sharing my story, owning my voice, and the way art can create community and shape our souls.

A few months later, I had the idea to travel around the world. I wanted to write along the way, not just for myself, but with other people. I wanted to sit with people, listen to their stories, and create something together.

That journey became my new memoir, Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents.

The Practice of Listening

The “Where I’m From” poem, a poetry template, became a way for me to listen more deeply. It allowed me to take in the beauty of people’s lives, the mess of their lives, and everything in between. I co-wrote this poem with people across five continents and fifteen countries, from Guatemala to Peru, England to India, Kenya to South Africa, Japan to Australia. Listening to peoples’ stories across the globe will change you for sure. It will teach you how to be fully human.

The journey from there to here started with one woman (that would be me), one open mic, a poem and a sense of adventure and curiosity that I took with me around the world. It begin with a yes!

Reintroducing Myself

Most people on this mailing list know me as Ebony the facilitator or Ebony the racial equity consultant. Some of you know me as Ebony the world traveler, but you do not know Ebony the poet or Ebony the open mic host.

So allow me to introduce myself through an “I am” poem I wrote seventeen years ago. It is full of bravado, but I love it. Look how young I look. 👶🏾

A First Look at the Book

Why am I telling you all of this? As I prepare for my book tour, I am reminded where it all started. It is kind of an brand, the book is called Where I am From, so…

Also, this week, my book was featured in She Reads Magazine as part of their First Look series, and through the Q & A, I realized that I had to go back to go forward, to tell the full story of how the book came into being.

The book has multiple layers. It is about the people I met all over the world during my 2010 trip, the places I traveled, and the poems I wrote with others. It is also about me. It traces my life from around age eight through thirty and reflects on the experiences that shaped who I became and am becoming.

What Comes Next

Over the next few months, you will hear from me through the lens of the Ebony who began to take shape seventeen years ago. You will hear the stories she wanted to tell and the lessons she was beginning to learn. I will share some of the poems and stories as a sneak peak, but of course, you should pre-order the book to get the full story.

In the meantime, you can read the She Reads feature here:
https://shereads.com/first-look-where-im-from-a-poetic-journey-across-five-continents-by-ebony-walden/

A Question for You

Before you go, I will leave you with a few questions.

• What part of your story is asking to be told?

• What medium will you choose to tell it, and how will you begin?

You know that you only need to know 10% more than someone else on a particular subject to teach them something. You, my dears, invariably have something to say and something to teach. Either way, you are the expert on your own experience. Don’t hold back!

If you feel called, I invite you to write your own “Where I’m From” poem and share it with someone you love and trust. That can be your first move toward writing your own story. If you are shy, I will have several spaces to facilitate this as part of my book launch. Stay tuned…

I stepped out of a white van into thick heat and the smell of fish frying over an open fire and later I grooved to the rhythm of drums in the middle of the street.

I am in San Basilio de Palenque, the first free Black town in the Americas. This is where my “why” for Season Two of Black Beyond Borders begins.

As many of you know, I have been enthusiastically fundraising for Season Two and Three of Black Beyond Borders. But as I step into this week, I wanted to take a moment to share my deeper why. Why this project? Why Colombia and Ghana for Seasons Two and Three?

And of course, I want to start with stories…

Why Colombia?

I stepped out of a white van in San Basilio de Palenque into thick heat and the smell of fish frying over an open fire. Plates were layered with whole fried fish, coconut rice, and plantains. It felt familiar in a way I could not explain.

We moved through the town and were welcomed by an elder, her skin wrinkled like brown leather shaped by sun and time. She spoke a spiritual blessing over us. I did not understand every word, but I felt it.

Then the drums started. We followed the sound and found young men drumming in the street. Maracas shaking, bodies moving, laughter lingering. Their skin was dark like mine. Their hair kinky like mine. They could have been my cousins, brothers, or, given our age difference, even my sons.

Palenque was founded in 1603 by Africans who escaped slavery and built a town of their own. This place is not just about survival, but a culture of resistance.

Murals of Black faces line the walls, vibrant and unapologetic. “Black Lives Matter” is everywhere. Women in colorful dresses of blue, yellow, and red remind me of Bahian women in Brazil. They feel like my aunties or older versions of myself. Sturdy, regal, and proud.

Colombia brought over half a million enslaved Africans to its shores. Palenque is a symbol of self-emancipation, of the legacy of resistance and liberation.

That was my first trip.

My second trip was rooted in the Festival of the Diaspora in Medellín, a gathering that felt like the embodiment of this work. Black and Latinx people from across the Americas coming together through entrepreneurship, art, conversation, and culture. I experienced Black women in community and the power of art and transformation in Medellín neighborhoods, but I also spent time in Cali, where Afro-Colombian roots live through rhythm, dance, and community. I took a side trip to Quito, Ecuador, where I began to learn about Afro-Ecuadorian communities whose stories are often overlooked.

Why Ghana?

Then there is Ghana.

The floor beneath my feet at Elmina Castle was uneven, packed down by centuries of human blood, sweat, tears, and waste. We stood there, about twenty of us, mostly Black, mostly quiet, trying to take it in. We couldn’t hold it together alone, but we were held by the quiet presence of community.

Earlier that day, we walked through a forest to the river, to a place where captive Africans would have had their last bath before they were taken to the dungeons on the coast.

Spirituals rose from our souls as we stepped into the river together. Some people cried, others stood still. But we held hands through it all.

When we came back up, there was a sign waiting: Welcome Back Home.

What does it mean to return to a place you have never been? What does it mean to hold the truths of what we lost before, what we built after in the Americas, and what is or isn’t possible to reclaim hundreds of years later?

That is why Colombia and Ghana. One is the offspring, the other is the root.

My why is rooted in curiosity about the ways Blackness shows up around the world—the colors, flavors, textures, and through lines that connect our beauty and creativity.

But ultimately, my why is rooted in racial equity, in narrative change.

We have seen ourselves for 500 years through a white supremacist, colonial lens. And now, we have the tools to see ourselves beyond deficit, beyond disparities, beyond distortion. I want to highlight and share fuller, richer, more expansive images of Black life across the diaspora.

This is the story I am trying to tell. Not just where I go, but what shifts in me when I get there. And hopefully something shifts in those who journey with me through words and visuals.

Over the past few weeks, more than 70 of you have supported this project. Most gave about $150, but some gave as little as $15, and others as much as $2,500.

Together, we have raised $13,300.

That support is already at work. It is covering Season Two editing, videography, visuals, festivals, and screenings. It is also allowing me to begin Season Three interviews.

I am $11,700 away from my $25,000 phase one goal, and I am inviting you to help me close the gap this week.

Give via Paypal, Stripe or Venmo, Cash App or Zelle (my number is 434-962-9446)

Regardless, I hope you journey with me by reading, sharing, and supporting Season Two and Season Three of Black Beyond Borders.

This is bigger than travel. It is about how we see ourselves and how we tell our stories.

Reflection Questions:

• In this season of your life, what is your “why”?

• What vision is calling you forward or gently pushing you toward it?

• What is one step you can take today, and who might you need to ask for support?

Either way, do not do it alone!

The other night, I had a dream that I was pregnant. I was “as big as a house,” as the old folks say. I could feel the baby pressing, like it was ready to come at any moment.

I was sweating, my heart racing, in full-on panic mode. I was not ready for the baby to come. I was not home.

I was in another state, likely in New York, and all I could think about was the fact that my insurance would not cover an out-of-state birth. I needed to get back to Virginia immediately. I kept trying to figure out how I was going to drive myself home, knowing I could go into labor at any moment.

I woke up before the baby came, but I still felt like I was in the dream. Panicked.

The reality is that I am pregnant. Not physically, but spiritually, creatively, and emotionally. There is something inside of me that is ready to be born, and it is asking me to be still. Even when my instinct is to move, I know that I cannot. Because what last year taught me is that I cannot be in transit and in transition at the same time. I can try, but it will undo me. This kind of becoming requires stillness. It requires sitting long enough to bring something into the world that has been forming within me for years.

A Provocative Truth

And so, after visiting 50 countries, all 50 U.S. states, and over 200 cities, I find myself saying: I am not traveling anymore. That is not entirely true (I am being dramatic of course). What is true is that I am no longer traveling internationally in the same way, with the same urgency, or for the same reasons.

The Season of Movement

Over the past three years, my life has been defined by movement. I have traveled to about 15 countries and spent nearly five months in the last year working remotely across the diaspora. I gave myself fully to those experiences. I opened myself up to the history, the culture, the beauty, and the contradictions of those places. I shared space with friends, artists, and strangers who became friends. I allowed myself to be impacted.

While that level of openness stretches you in good ways, over time, it can wear you down.

When Expansion Requires Integration

I have been here before. After my 2010 around-the-world trip, where I spent eight months traveling across 17 countries, I did not take another international trip for three and a half years. I never stopped loving travel. I was just tired in a way that rest alone could not fix. I needed time to process, to integrate, and to come back to myself. So much had been unearthed; I needed time to settle.

I believe in seasons. And what I am recognizing now is that my recent years of travel were a season of expansion. That season has come to a close, and I am now in a season of integration in preparation for my next expansion.

The Wisdom Within Me

Right now, I need to take everything I have experienced across 50 countries and 50 states and make meaning of it. I want to turn those experiences into insights, stories, and offerings that might change lives and hearts.

The other day, I realized that if I created one video or essay a week about the places I have been, I would have two full years of content. TWO YEARS!!! There is a depth of lived experience within me that I have not yet fully expressed. It is waiting to be born.

Slowing Down to Become Ready

This next phase is not about collecting more experiences or adding more places to my bucket list. It is about creating the space and the conditions necessary to bring the offspring of my experiences into the world with care.

It requires me to slow down, be still, and ask for help in ways that do not come naturally to me.

I will still travel, but the purpose is shifting. I am traveling for relationship, for connection, and for my book tour. I will return to places like Senegal and Colombia, which feel like home. And just as importantly, I am traveling inward.

Remembering My Story

More than two decades ago, I had a spiritual experience that I did not fully understand at the time. I was living in Seattle and attended a church retreat called “Coming to the Water,” where we wrote down what we needed to release and placed it into a fire by the sea. I do not remember what I wrote, but I remember what I heard. It was a quiet but undeniable knowing that I was meant to remember my story because it would one day be the foundation for how God wanted to use me. My story would be my purpose and my platform.

That knowledge has stayed with me, and now I feel myself stepping into it more intentionally. My book, Where I’m From is the jumping off point…

A Vulnerable Ask

My life will be about writing, creating, speaking, and building offerings that can hold space for the transformation of others. As I get older and navigate health challenges, I am becoming more aware of the limits of my capacity. So I must focus. I must say no. I must be stingy with my time and energy if I am to stay aligned with my purpose. One friend says she is collecting all the creative ways I have turned down her invitations lately. Hilarious! We all need friends that can laugh with us through our seasons.

A few weeks ago, another friend told me that my presence can sometimes feel intimidating and disruptive in a good way. I laughed. There is a fire in me, and part of my work now is learning how to tend to that fire so that it sustains me rather than consumes me.

In that same conversation, she asked how she could support me. I said “just check on me.” There are so many people who read my work and may be inspired, but often silently. While I am grateful, it can sometimes feel like I am speaking into a void. Like I am on a journey with people watching, but not engaging.

Walk With Me

If something I share resonates with you, let me know. Verbal and written encouragement matter more than we often realize. She said she never thought about the encourager needing encouragement. Indeed. Check on your strong friends!

If You Want to Support This Journey

• Buy the book and share it with someone (5–10 people would be even better!)

• Watch and support the series as it unfolds (I am up to $11K in donations towards my $30K goal!). I am actively fundraising until April 15th, there is time left to give!

• Invite me to your city, church, conference or organization to share my story and the lessons on life, spirituality, creativity, and leadership I’ve learned from my travels.

• Host a book club, salon, coffee shop or living room conversation discussing my book or documentary series.

• Send me a note, reflection, or words of encouragement.

This chapter of my life is not about going to more places. It is about going deeper into the places I have already been, into the story I am still uncovering, and into the work and wisdom I feel called to share.

I hope you will walk with me as I do.

Reflection Questions

And as always, I am reading. This week it’s The Artist’s Rule and I will leave you with the reflection questions I am pondering. They feel right on time!

• What are the limits you need to place on your energy/time so that you can live more fully into your gifts?

• How might embracing your imperfections be an act of grace and freedom?

• Which of your small selves, those tender and vulnerable places, need attention, encouragement or blessing?

Create space for your unfolding, your gifts want to make room for you!

Strengthening the Soul of Leadership

I stood in front of a group of 15 housing leaders. On a whim, a few days before our closing weekend, I decided that instead of an hour of free space, we’d have an open mic.

I gave them two poem templates I had taken all over the world: Where I Am From (the namesake for my book) and I Am. They had 10 minutes to write. Each person would perform.

Robert Dortch, my co-facilitator, opened with his I Am poem from his book Cool Fire, and then, one by one, people got up. They spoke about where they were from—sayings, food, family names, traditions, joys and tradegies. They claimed who they are: bold and beautiful, soft and vulnerable. Brothers, mothers, sisters, friends.

We laughed, cried, and clapped enthusiastically.

I closed with my own I Am poem. I hadn’t performed it in years. I wrote that poem 17 years ago, before before traveling the world, before moving to Richmond, before the business, the book, and more travel. Poetry was how I first learned to claim my voice, to speak boldly, and to tell my story.

Standing there, it felt like a full-circle moment. I was able to bring all of me—facilitator, writer, poet, and performer—into one room, and in doing so, help others step into a deeper level of leadership rooted in who they are and where they are from.

That moment captured what this program is really about.

The Housing Leadership Institute (HLI) is a 10-month program I lead with the Virginia Housing Alliance. We wanted to close the racial equity gap in housing leadership in Virginia by investing in leaders of color. That was the charge, but what unfolded was deeper than leadership development. It is transformation, the most transformative cohort experience, I have been blessed to lead.

A Person, Role, Systems Approach

At the core of the program is the person, role, systems approach to their career vision and leadership. We start with the person. We asked people to own their stories, to examine their strengths and weaknesses, and to see their past as a foundation for their vision and purpose.

We help participants apply all of who they are to their work, their organization, and their relationships. We explore equitable leadership, feedback, and alignment with values. Then we ask: what long-term impact do they want to have, not just in their organization but in the field and beyond? For many, it becomes clear that housing is only one part of who they are, and that realization was both grounding and liberating.

Lesson: We need a multi-layered approach to our personal, spiritual, and leadership development.

Coaching, Discernment, and Being Seen

Every participant had an executive coach, and that alone was powerful. To be seen, to be heard, and to have someone listen without jumping to advice creates space for real clarity. We paired that with group coaching grounded in a Quaker discernment model, teaching participants to listen without judgment or fixing, and to ask questions that help people reach their own answers. That shifted how they showed up in the program and in their lives.

Lesson: We need spaces where we are seen, heard and our inner wisdom affirmed.

Holding the Whole Person

We also create space for what it means to be entrepreneurial within your role and beyond. Robert and I brought our nonprofit experience, coaching, writing, poetry, and spiritual grounding. This allowed us to hold space for the whole person.

Over ten months, people brought grief, mental and physical health concerns, and career uncertainty into the room. In every session, someone cried, and we always laughed. Some came close to quitting, and we were able to hold them through it. What made it possible is that people didn’t have to leave parts of themselves at the door.

Lesson: We need work spaces where people can bring their whole selves.

A Space Beyond the White Gaze

This was also a space for people of color to step outside of the white gaze. There was no need to code-switch, filter language, hold back emotion or perform strength. People could speak in their own vernacular, be fully themselves, and be accepted. That kind of space is not just nice to have—it is necessary. Navigating systems not built for us has a cost, and that cost shows up in the body and the spirit.

Lesson: People of color need spaces where they can be free of code-switching, wearing the mask, and having to leave a portion of themselves behind.

Leadership as Transformation

At graduation, I shared that while this program is called leadership, it is fundamentally about transformation. Your career is just one part of your life journey, and everything you’ve been through is not random, it is direction.

By the end, people left with more clarity, confidence, and purpose, and a commitment to make space for their gifts beyond their job titles, because your glory cannot be contained in a 9 to 5.

Lesson: Leadership development is about presence, self-awareness, action, and change. We need spaces for this deep work so we can show up for ourselves, our organizations, families, and communities.

What My Work Really Is

This experience reaffirmed why I do this work. It’s not just about training or facilitation; it’s about holding space for people to become. If I had to name what we were doing, I would say we were strengthening the soul of their leadership from the inside out.

Lesson: I am a person who holds space for change. A midwife to the new version of leadership that is waiting to be born.

Questions to Carry Forward

• How are your gifts, your story, and even your blind spots shaping the leader you are becoming—and who are you being called to become next?

• Where in your life do you need to be more fully seen, heard, and expressed—and what would it look like to create or step into spaces where you don’t have to shrink, code-switch, or perform?

• What would it look like to lead and live as your whole self—and how are you creating space for reflection, presence, and self-awareness so your leadership can continue to evolve?

And finally, if your glory cannot be contained in a 9 to 5, where will you let it live, breathe, and be seen?

It is golden hour on a catamaran off the coast of St. Lucia.

The sun is slowly sinking in front of me, hovering over a bed of royal-blue water rocking gently beneath the boat. Behind me, the Pitons rise dramatically from the sea. Those towering emerald-green mountains feel almost mythical as they pierce the sky.

The air is warm and filled with laughter—raucous, uninhibited laughter, the kind that only happens when people feel completely at ease. A playlist of R&B and trap music pulses around us, and without even thinking, my shoulders move to the rhythm.

I am surrounded by the beauty of St. Lucia. And even more importantly, surrounded by women who know how to love well.

—

I was invited by a friend who is celebrating her 50th birthday. Instead of throwing a party, she decided to treat her closest friends to something different—a luxurious, almost all-expenses-paid trip (we had to get there and pay for incidentals) to St. Lucia. We stayed at Mango Verte Escape, a six-bedroom house perched high on a hill overlooking the ocean and the mountains, with a pool that seemed to spill into the horizon. Everyone had their own bedroom and bathroom.

When asked, of course I said yes. Say less. I am there!

But as the weekend unfolded, I realized that the real luxury of the trip wasn’t the house, the view, or even the island itself. It was the abundance of friendship that made it possible. Still, the details of the trip were unforgettable.

The food alone felt like a celebration. My favorites were coconut curry lambi (conch), callaloo soup, salt fish fritters and coconut bread that locals call a “turnover,” and fried mahi-mahi from Tilly’s that might have been one of the best meals of the trip.

But my favorite part of each morning was waking up knowing that breakfast would arrive at 9 a.m. sharp from Countryside Eats. A spread of fresh fruit, local pastries, eggs, and sausages would appear in front of us as we gathered around the table wrapped in the ease of vacation. Alongside the food were conversation that sparked deeper reflections. Questions like: What is enough?

It felt almost surreal to sit there discussing abundance while literally luxuriating in it—surrounded by friends, in a beautiful home, lingering between the pool, long conversations, and slow island time. And then there was the catamaran tour on the second evening. Chartered and all ours. The ocean, the view, the music and the sunset, felt like they belonged to us.

And of course, no good adventure is complete without a getting-lost story. After eating fried mahi-mahi at Tilly’s in Laborie, one of my friends and I decided we would walk back instead of taking the cab with everyone else. Big mistake.

We walked fifteen minutes in the wrong direction up a dark hill before realizing we were completely off course. It was pitch black, the roads were narrow and winding, and my phone had died. Eventually, we managed to get one of the other ladies—who were smart enough to taxi home—to send a location pin to my friend’s phone, which meant walking fifteen minutes back down one hill and up another. We were breathless, tired, and slightly annoyed, but still laughing.

When we finally arrived back at the house, grateful and relieved, we joined the others inside and watched the movie Relationship Goals. Cause who doesn’t like a good rom-com?

The next day was adventure day. Driving there is an adventure—they drive on the opposite side as the US, the roads are narrow and winding, and I swore we were going to crash into several people and vehicles along the way. Yikes!!!

After traversing the mountainous terrain, we immersed ourselves in the Sulphur Springs of Soufrière—something I probably would never have chosen to do on my own. But that’s one of the gifts of traveling with friends: they push you into experiences you might never try alone.

The muddy springs were almost 100 degrees—thick and mineral-rich. We covered ourselves in it, laughing the whole time, letting it dry on our skin before washing it away in the warm pools nearby. They say it makes your skin soft, but honestly, the best part was simply how much fun we had.

On the final day, we had a photo shoot and dinner delivered to the house. But what I really left St. Lucia with had nothing to do with the island itself. It was a reminder of the richness of the women in my life.

One friend allowed me to stay with them for a month in Senegal; they opened their home to me and I got the luxury of waking up daily to views from a wrap around terrace overlooking the ocean.

Another friend hosted a Galentine’s Day brunch filled with mimosas, delicious eats, laughter, and long conversations about love, relationships, and life transitions. We built our own bouquets and left with gift bags.

Another, cooks me delicious Sunday meals (I bring the cocktails) while the sunsets over our ridiculous laughter. I can go on, really…

And now, a weekend in St. Lucia felt like the pinnacle of generosity. The truth is, many of us spend our lives being the ones who give. We show up, organize, hold things together. Receiving, for us, doesn’t always come naturally.

But this season of my life has been quietly teaching me something new: how to receive abundance without immediately trying to repay it. How to allow someone to offer generosity without feeling the need to match it or earn it. I am learning to simply say yes, and thank you.

So if you are reading this, I invite you to do two things:

1. Call a friend who has loved you well. Take them out, send them a message, or simply tell them thank you for their presence in your life.

2. And then allow yourself to receive the love and generosity that already exists around you. Look for it, acknowledge it, be present with it, and just receive.

Because sometimes the greatest luxury in life is not the trip, the house, or the destination. It’s the people who remind you that you are worthy of love, joy, and abundance.

So this week, I invite you to RECEIVE or maybe lavish luxury on someone you love. Or in the spirit of abundance, do both!

AND, since this is my season of receiving, if you feel moved to support the future of my work, specifically Seasons 2-3 of Black Beyond Borders, I’ll receive that with gratitude. You can contribute HERE.

Thanks to the people who helped me raise nearly $2,000 last week. I also just learned that the series won another award. Three total. That’s abundance!

It’s International Women’s Day, and I’ve been thinking about bold moves and superpowers.

Not just from women who have already made history, but from women like you and me, and the ones in our everyday lives. Women who have the potential to (or already are) changing lives, communities, and impacting the world.

I’ve been thinking about the BOLD decisions that shift the trajectory of a life. The moment you decide to apply, to move, to ask, to leave and to begin again.

In 2022, I was on a sabbatical, traveling to Senegal, Singapore, Bali, and West Virginia. As I traversed the world, I kept asking myself one question:

Ebony, what are your superpowers?

Why? Because I wanted to work smarter, not harder. And I think my deepest desire in the world is to do all the things I was created to do, be, and give. I think a superpower is something you do exceptionally well, it comes easy and it makes the world a better place. A trifecta of sorts.

As I walked along the Atlantic each morning in Dakar, through green terraced rice paddies in Bali, hiked through the fall foliage in West Virginia, and biked below the towering skyscrapers of Singapore, I reflected on the pattern of my life—applying only to elite colleges when I came from a high school where most students were working class or under-resourced; walking into UVA and asking them to extend their deadline so I could apply to graduate school; quitting my job to travel the world; quitting again to live in a monastery and then again to start a business (okay, that is a lot of quitting); and creating a travel series when I had no experience in film. I could go on…

As I traced the through line of those decisions, something became clear. My superpower isn’t confidence, fearlessness, certainty, or strategy. My superpower is that when an idea takes hold of me, I move toward it with everything I have. I move from idea to action.

And today, I want to summarize the steps I usually take tot get there and offer them to you. Because maybe your next bold move isn’t about travel. Maybe it’s about your health, writing a book, starting a business, or taking a leap. Or maybe it is doing nothing. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is rest.

Wherever you are standing, here are the five steps that have carried me forward.

Get Clear

Before I move, I get quiet. Even if I don’t know the full vision, I ask what the next step is. Clarity rarely arrives fully formed. Sometimes it’s simply noticing what won’t leave you alone. Often you have to listen to what your life has already told you, or listen to the voice in your soul nudging you to try something new. It requires journaling, reflection, and the courage to admit what you actually want.

Write It Down

Once I sense direction, I put it on paper. Writing transforms desire into intention. It shifts something from “someday” to “I’m doing this.”

I have a personal mission statement, a life vision statement, and yearly goals written on a half sheet of paper. I write it all down and keep it in front of me. Not all of it comes to life, but probably 75% does. Stats show that you are more likely to reach a goal when you write it down.

The other day, while searching for something, I found a book proposal called Black Space Around the World. It is literally my travel series in written form—not too far from my recent Black History Month essay series. I don’t even remember writing it, but I must have simply started putting what was in my soul on paper and then moved toward it. Today, it exists as an essay series and an award-winning documentary series.

Research, Learn, and Study

I don’t romanticize what I don’t understand. If I feel pulled toward something, I learn everything I can about it. I read, research and ask ALOT of question. Curiosity builds competence, and competence strengthens courage.

When I wanted to travel around the world, I read travel guides, memoirs, articles and researched extensively so I knew what I was getting into. The same thing happened with film. Two years ago, I watched every filmmaker and storyteller on MasterClass that I could find, watched countless documentaries and travel shows, and took a few filmmaking classes.

I don’t have to be an expert right away—but damn it, I can learn.

A decade ago, I took two year-long memoir writing classes to perfect my craft and NOW you can now pre-order my book: Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents. More to come on that…

Connect with People Doing It

Proximity expands possibility. I reach out to people already living what I’m considering. I ask about their path, their mistakes, and their lessons. Being in conversation with others makes the dream feel grounded and achievable.

Since the beginning of Black Beyond Borders, I’ve spoken to filmmakers who have shows or films on PBS and Prime. Before I started my business, I interviewed and connected with at least seven to ten entrepreneurs, asking for lessons, wisdom, and insights about what I didn’t know so I could avoid mistakes.

Likewise, it is important to join a community of practice. Don’t go it alone.

Make a Plan and Move

Eventually, reflection has to turn into action. I create a plan with just enough structure to take the first step. And then I move. Step by step, trusting that movement creates clarity.

What is the next right step you can take toward your vision or dream?

The Foundation is Self-Belief

Underneath all of this is belief. A deep belief that the ideas placed on my heart are not random. That if something keeps resurfacing, there is a reason. I believe that if God plants something inside you, it is an invitation.

My responsibility is to get in position and move faithfully. The outcomes belong to something larger than me.

“Your dreams are not delusion—they are the DNA of your destiny.”

My Next Bold Vision: Black Beyond Borders Season 2-3

Black Beyond Borders began this way. Not just as a book, an essay series, or a travel series, but as an underlying idea to highlight the beauty of Blackness across the world.

Season One was born out of reflection. What comes next is born out of my excitement to continue telling stories about travel, transformation, and Black people expanding beyond the borders placed on them.

And today, on International Women’s Day, I am making another bold move.

I am inviting 100 women to give $150 to support the next chapter of Black Beyond Borders. A wise woman in philanthropy once said that sometimes we have to fund our own liberation. Sometimes we have to fund the stories we want to see. Because women supporting women is not a slogan—it is a practice.

If 100 women say yes, that’s $15,000 toward a $40,000 vision for filming, editing, travel, music licensing, and the invisible labor that makes independent storytelling possible as we complete Seasons Two and Three. It means I can move forward without waiting for permission. It means we build this together.

And I also know that within this community are women who have the capacity to give more. If you are in a season of abundance, if you feel deeply aligned with this work, if you believe in anchoring vision so it can stretch further, I am inviting you into the Bold Circle—women contributing $250, $500, or $1,000 to help steady and expand this series.

Whether you are one of the 100 at $150, part of the Bold Circle at a higher level, or one of the many people who will give what you are able, your support is not charity. It is partnership and alignment. It is belief in motion.

If today’s gift to yourself is clarity about your own next bold move, take it. Write it down. Learn about it. Connect. Make a plan. Move.

And if today’s bold move is investing in this vision, I would be honored to have you alongside me.

You can learn more about my vision for Black Beyond Borders at www.blackbeyondborders.com and support below.

Support

With gratitude and belief,

Ebony

She wore white from head to toe.

A layered lace skirt and a head wrap that felt like architecture. Gold bangles stacked high against her deep brown wrists. She was my kind of brown. Deep, grounded and unmistakably Black.

She stood on a cobblestone corner in Salvador, Bahia, selling acarajé, the city’s local delicacy/street food. As I looked at her, I saw my grandmother. Or my mother, years younger. Or even my sister, decades ahead.

She was a Baiana. A guardian of tradition, she represents the Candomblé religion and Afro-Brazilian culture. But, in that moment, she felt like me, years and continents removed.

She met my stare. Her eyes were jet black, yet steady, serene and unapologetic. She spoke to me in Portuguese. I spoke back in English. We were separated by language, centuries, and a different route across the Atlantic.

Brazil was the first country abroad where I saw my Blackness mirrored, reflected, and personified.

Here is how.

—

It was 2009. I was on a girls’ trip to Brazil. We spent five days in Salvador and five in Rio. At the time, I didn’t understand the global history I was stepping into.

Nearly five million Africans were sent to Brazil. That is close to 40 percent of all those forcibly taken across the Atlantic. More than any other country in the hemisphere.

Between the 1500s and the late 1800s, enslaved Africans were taken primarily from West and Central Africa - from present-day Nigeria, Benin, Angola, and Congo and forced into Brazil’s sugar plantations, gold mines, and coffee economies.

Today, over half the country (more than 110 million Brazilians) identify as Black or mixed race. Brazil is the largest Afro-descendant nation outside the African continent.

And yet when you think of Brazil, you rarely see women with my complexion. You see light skin, loose curls and those with more Eurocentric features. Brazil’s beauty standards, like much of the Americas, are shaped by colorism, offering privilege and prestige for phenotypical proximity to whiteness.

Salvador, however, is undeniably Black, arguably the Blackest city in Latin America.

The women dressed in white are known as Baianas de Acarajé. Many are connected to Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion rooted in Yoruba, Fon, and Bantu spiritual systems that survived enslavement by synchronizing with Catholic saints. Candomblé honors the orixás or Yoruba deities, through drum, dance, and ritual.

The acarajé she was selling traces directly back to West Africa: black-eyed peas ground into paste, fried in red palm oil and filled with shrimp, deliciousness and heat. It is edible history.

Every day in Salvador felt like an invitation into another dimension of history, into Blackness.

We watched capoeira in public squares. It’s an Afro-Brazilian martial art of resistance disguised as dance. We attended Candomblé ceremonies where drums carried a spirituality that survived the Atlantic. We went to church services where embodied praise felt familiar — rhythm rising while call and response echoed across pews.

It was the first undoing and relearning.

The first time I fully grasped the scale of the transatlantic slave trade and the influence of Black people across the Americas. In the United States, we often center ourselves in that story. But the U.S. received roughly 400,000 enslaved Africans. Brazil received nearly five million. That is a completely different scale.

Looking back, what I observed in Salvador, was reinforced in other diasporic moments years later— kneeling at an altar in Cuba, being cleansed and blessed by a Babalawo of Santeria; tasting Garífuna soup in Honduras, thick with coconut, curry and resistance; hearing the Gullah Geechee accent sing alongside the Lowcountry cuisine of South Carolina; witnessing sweetgrass basket weaving techniques that crossed oceans long before I realized by ancestral origins in South Carolina.

We are the through line. That realization fills me with pride. Not pride in enslavement, but pride in what we have been able to create on continents despite it.

Black people have helped build a whole ass hemisphere!

We forged languages, cuisines, rhythms, and spiritual systems out of constraint. We synchronized. We sauced. We struggled. We stewed. We shimmied. We survived.

This is the beauty of Blackness. It is diverse, dynamic, diasporic.

Brazil was the first place outside the U.S. where I saw that clearly. It was woven into streets, food, faith, and rhythm.

I felt part of something vast. And that mirror has stayed with me.

The Future of Black Beyond Borders

That moment standing on that corner, locking eyes with a Baiana in white — is at the heart of Black Beyond Borders, my new documentary series highlighting Black life across the diaspora.

It is why I travel, write and now film. I want to be a part of a narrative of truth. The kind that reminds us that Black people were never small in this hemisphere’s story, in the world’s story.

I’ll be shifting from weekly essays (to bi-monthly reflections) to focus on building the next phase of Black Beyond Borders — raising the resources to bring Season Two, focused on Colombia and Three, a full-length documentary on my trip to Ghana— to life.

I’ve also garnered nearly 30,000 views on YouTube, won two awards and Black Beyond Borders Season One: Dakar Senegal is an official selection of another four film festivals.

Black Beyond Borders needs to go places. I hope you help me get there.

To build the next phase, I need to raise at least $30,000 (closer to $40,000+ to build it fully). I’ve raised $2,500 so far.

If this work resonates with you — if you believe Black stories deserve scale and visibility — I invite you to help me build it.

1. Level One: My goal is simple: 100 people giving $150.

2. Level Two: Personal outreach to individuals who have the resources to give between $250 and $1000.

3. Level Three: Pursuing sponsorships, grants, and larger partnerships ranging from $2,500 to $10,000+.

   Support Black Beyond Borders

Learn more and give below:

• Learn about Seasons Two and Three

• Support the Future of Black Beyond Borders

• Visit www.blackbeyondborders.com for more information.

This is bigger than travel. It is about history, lineage, visibility and scale.

It is about narrative change. Let’s change the story TOGETHER!

*This concludes my four-part Black History Month essay series entitled Black History Across the Americas. I hope you have enjoyed it!

Watch Black Beyond Borders

It is June 12, 2010.

I am sweating through my turquoise tank top, sitting by the water in Livingston, Guatemala. It is 95 degrees. The sun is heavy. The air is thick, and reggae tunes float around me.

In front of me is a bowl of coconut curry Garífuna soup. A whole fish head stares back at me. The broth is golden and rich and sweet and spicy at the same time. As I take a spoonful, sweat trickles down my nose like a raindrop.

Black men with long locs walk past. The music feels Caribbean. The sea breeze smells and feels the same.

How am I in Guatemala?

I knew where I was geographically. What I did not yet understand was how Black people got here. That bowl of soup was my first encounter with Garífuna culture—one I never forgot, but didn’t fully understand until years later.

The Garífuna people are descendants of enslaved Africans who survived a shipwreck near the island of Saint Vincent in the 1600s. Instead of being immediately forced into plantation life, they intermarried with the Indigenous Kalinago people. Over generations, African and Indigenous traditions blended into something entirely new and distinct.

In 1797, roughly 2,000 Garífuna were forcibly exiled by the British and shipped to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras. The British considered them rebellious and difficult to control.

From Roatán, they spread along the Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Today, there are roughly 300,000 to 400,000 Garífuna people across Central America and throughout the diaspora. They have preserved their language, drumming, spiritual practices, and cuisine.

The soup I was eating in Livingston is called tapado. Coconut milk, plantains, cassava, fresh fish, herbs, spice. It tastes Caribbean, but it is African, Indigenous, coastal and deeply Black. It is the diaspora in a bowl.

Years later, I heard about Nuguchu, an off-grid eco-wellness sanctuary in Honduras run by a Garífuna woman from Brooklyn. I interviewed the founder, Luisa Batiz, on my podcast Black Beyond Borders. She was a teacher in New York who burned out and decided to return to her country of heritage in Honduras. She returned to reconnect with her people, her culture, herself, and the land. Her story stayed with me, and so did that of the Garífuna people. After she shared their history with me, I finally understood the soup. I vowed to visit Honduras—and I did, in 2025.

I went to Roatán to visit the site in Punta Gorda where the first Garífuna people landed in 1797. I took a day trip to the eastern side of the island just to get a taste of the people, the culture, and, of course, that infamous soup.

While there, I watched traditional dancing. Bright skirts moving with the drums. The rhythm was full-body inheritance. And, I ate Garífuna soup again. It was the second-best soup experience of my life. The first was that hot June day in 2010.

After I finished, my tour guide handed me a shot glass filled with a dark brown liquid.

“This is guifiti,” he said.

Guifiti is a traditional Garífuna herbal drink made by soaking tree bark, roots, and medicinal plants in high-proof alcohol. Some use it for digestion. Other use it for strength, as an aphrodisiac or for general healing.

I took a sip. It was warm and earthy. It tasted like medicine with a hint of sweetness. Like something meant to fortify you and entice you at the same time.

The Garífuna have long relied on herbal knowledge and ancestral plant medicine. Guifiti is not just alcohol. It is history, community, healing, and ancestral memory wrapped in a bottle.

Standing by the ocean in Roatán, sipping guifiti, I understood something I had been ignorant of the first time: Black history in Central America is not a footnote.

There is a Garífuna Settlement Day celebrated across the region, most prominently on November 19 in Belize. It commemorates the arrival of the Garífuna to Central America. It is a celebration of the survival of a people. Exile did not erase them; it strengthened them.

When we talk about the African diaspora, we often talk about the United States. Maybe Brazil. Maybe Haiti or Jamaica. But Central America rarely enters the conversation. Garífuna soup helped me begin to expand the narrative.

Black history in the Americas has taken so many forms, ships, and destinations. It has been rebellion, exile, adaptation, and a mixed culture of Africans blending with Indigenous Americans and Europeans, creating something entirely new.

The Garífuna are Caribbean and Central American and distinctly Black. They speak a language and have rhythms that carry both continent and island.

The first time I tasted that soup in Guatemala, I was confused. Now I understand.

The African diaspora is alos places in Central America we do not expect. It is in a fish head bathed in spices and coconut milk simmering by the sea. It is in bark steeped in rum and passed down through generations.

It is rich, layered, and expansive.

That bowl of soup was not just lunch. It was history.

Roatán Resources

Culture, Coastline & Black Diaspora Connections

Where to Stay & Beaches

• West Bay Beach

• West End Village

• French Cay (Bray’s Cay area)

• Roatán East End

Tours & Nature

• Roatán Mangrove Tours (Oak Ridge & Jonesville)

• Roatán Custom Island Tours (Punta Gorda is in the East)

Garífuna & Black Diaspora Culture

• Garífuna Cultural Center (Punta Gorda, Roatán)

• Garífuna Settlement Day (Honduras)

• UNESCO: Garífuna Language, Dance & Music

Food & Drink

• Garífuna Living Foods (Punta Gorda)

• Roatán Rum Company

• Baleadas (Honduran staple)

• Tapado (Garifuna soup)

• Gifiti (medicinal rum drink)

I am on my knees.

The room is quiet in the way sacred spaces often are. It is still and heavy. A Babalawo stands before me, dressed in white. Shelves around us hold vessels, figurines and offerings—objects holding history and meaning older than explanation. He lifts a feather and moves it gently through the air, brushing it over my hands and my head. He is offering a cleanings, a blessing of well wishes.

I don’t fully understand the words spoken, but my body does. I am still, open and receiving.

This is exactly why I came to Cuba.

Not for the beaches. Not for the cherry-red old Chevy cars or images shot solely for the gram. I came for this moment of connection—to my African roots across countries and continents. ToAfro-descendant lineage and spirituality rooted in resistance that lives in this moment—in the air, on shelves, in the streets, and ultimately, in my body.

Why Cuba?

It was April 2023 when I made my way to Cuba. Getting there required intention. Because of tense relations between our countries, I needed an educational visa, paperwork, and planning. That was fine with me, because I don’t necessarily want easy—I want deep exchange.

I love off-the-beaten-path places—places shaped less by American tourism and more by their own internal rhythms. Places where culture, especially Black culture, hasn’t been completely denigrated for outside forces.

For much of recent history, Americans couldn’t go to Cuba. That isolation, created by power struggles and politics, also meant Cuban culture survived on its own terms, like a fly preserved in amber. That is both the beauty and the drawback of the place. Places that hold dichotomous tensions are often the richest.

Black Cuba: Survival Through Syncretism

Before I tell you more about the ceremony, it’s important to understand this: Black people are foundational to Cuba.

More than 800,000 enslaved Africans—primarily from West and Central Africa—were brought to the island starting in the 1500’s under Spanish colonization, first to mine minerals and later to fuel sugar plantations. As in so many parts of the Americas, African languages, religions, and ways of knowing were demonized, punished, and outlawed. Catholicism was imposed. African spirituality was framed as dangerous, demonic, and sinful.

But enslaved Africans practiced syncretism—aligning their Yoruba Orishas (divine spirits representing the forces of life and nature) with Catholic saints, disguising their gods in plain sight. What looked like blending was actually resistance and resilience.

These spiritual systems—what we now know as Palo Mayombe, Abakuá, Espiritismo, Santería, and Ifá—merged African traditions with Catholicism, Indigenous practices, elements of Islam, and other spiritual philosophies. They were adaptive mechanisms for survival. They honored ancestors, embodied self-determination, and kept the memory of the emancipated self alive.

That history matters, because the ceremony I found myself in was not a performance. It was living, breathing, present-day practice rooted in African-ness.

Beyond Roots: Where Culture Comes Alive

The ceremony took place during my half-day immersion with Beyond Roots, an Afro-Cuban cultural tour that became the most meaningful experience of my time in Cuba.

Beyond Roots is many things at once. When you walk into the space, the first thing you see is a storefront filled with Afro-Cuban products—art, jewelry, books, symbols of cultural pride. It feels like an archive and a marketplace, but also like a declaration: we are here.

In the back, there’s a hair studio. It mirrored spaces I’ve seen in New York and other Black diasporic cities—places where culture, care, commerce, and community overlap seamlessly—all under one roof. This is very Black. Always a hustle.

That day, we traveled to Guanabacoa, the cradle of Afro-Cuban culture in Havana. There, we met a Babalawa, the highest priest of Santería. Me and five other Black tourist sat in a small living room on a couch and two love seats. Our tour guide introduced us and interpreted. The Babalawa explained the Orishas, the altar, the role of sacred objects, and the upcoming cleansing/blessing ceremony we could take part in.

Receiving the Blessing

Being on my knees, receiving a cleansing rooted in African spirituality, felt like a quiet correction to the lie that African spirituality is demonic or something of the past. It has been protected, carried forward, and remains a blessing.

For me, the ceremony was about acknowledging my ancestors, my lineage, the survival of a people, and the shaping of a culture.

Afterward, we ate together—yellow rice, yuca, plantains, squash, fritters—grounding the experience in cuisine and community. Bowls were passed around the table, full of flavors layered with history. Then we danced. Drumming filled the room, vibrating through the floor and into our bodies. We moved instinctively, communally, in sacred celebration.

Culture surviving in bodies.

Walking While Black in Havana

That lesson stayed with me as I wandered Havana in the days that followed.

Walking through the streets, I saw Black people who looked like me in a wide range of shades that reminded me of Black America. I heard music bursting out of restaurants, the sound of instruments snaking through the streets. Rumba, shaped by formerly enslaved Africans, merges drumming, call-and-response, and dance. Afro beats sautéed with Latin rhythms echoed off old, often crumbling buildings.

In the main square, as I ate lunch on a balcony, zanqueros—Afro-Cuban stilt dancers rooted in carnival and rumba traditions—moved through the plaza as living reminders of the towering presence of Black people in Cuba.

Callejón de Hamel: Art as Ancestor

Art was everywhere. Murals of Black faces. Stories painted on walls. I stumbled into the shop of a Black artist—proud, talented, and welcoming.

And then there was Callejón de Hamel.

Walking down Callejón de Hamel felt like stepping into another world—one shaped entirely by Afro-Cuban creative imagination. Thel alleyway is lined with murals, sculptures, and mixed-media art exploding with color, Black history, Afro-Cuban identity, and the spirit of African spirituality.

The street itself felt like a declaration of independence—of creative ingenuity in a society that has often tried to downplay or deny racial difference.

Cuba Is Complicated

Cuba, like most diasporic communities in the Americas, is not perfect. It is fundamentally a mixed culture shaped by African, Indigenous, and Spanish influence and heritage. There is widespread contradiction over how many people are Black (estimates range from ten to fifty percent) but even that ambiguity is rooted in colorism and fear of discrimination.

Before the 1959 Revolution, African spirituality, music, and the use of drums were often criminalized or pushed underground, and while racial discrimination was officially outlawed afterward, its legacy continues to surface through cultural stigma, colorism, and unequal economic access.

Cuba can feel suspended in time. It is beautiful and stuck at the same time. Low wages, scarce food, and crumbling infrastructure are visible throughout Old Havana. And still, there is beauty: white sand in Varadero, riches on display along the Malecón, and the rare gift of disconnecting from the internet to create space to reconnect with African lineage. Like all of us, Cuba is constantly holding the tension between beauty and brokenness.

What Cuba Gave Me

Afro-Cubans still face systemic barriers and erasure, but what struck me most was this: Blackness here is not hidden. It is foundational. Visible. Beautiful. Complicated. Creative. Dynamic.

Cuba confirmed that my instinct to seek out Afro-Cuban culture, spirituality, art, and everyday life was right. There is continuity—a through line, a lineage—that I felt through spirit, through drumbeats, through culture and cuisine.

And that blessing, offered with a feather in a quiet room, felt like an invitation to remember that continuity within myself—an invitation to be cleansed of some of the residue of white supremacy.

It was a blessing, indeed!

If I’ve inspired you to visit Cuba, below are a few notes from my itinerary.

My Havana Itinerary

Where to Stay: Airbnbs in Old Havana

• Stay near a central square in Old Havana for music, food, night life and history.

• Confirm internet access with your host in advance; Cuba is largely off-grid.

• Expect crumbling infrastructure—beautiful but fragile buildings, etc.

Places to Wander + Pause

• Malecón – Walk at sunset to see Havana’s contradictions on full display: young people and elders, laughter beside visible wealth and decay.

What to Eat (and What’s in the Photo)

A traditional Cuban plate rooted in African and Indigenous foodways, including: Arroz amarillo (yellow rice), Viandas such as yuca or malanga Fried plantain, Calabaza (pumpkin or squash) and Croqueta.

Old Havana restaurant recommendations:

• La Guarida – Iconic, layered with history, and worth the visit.

• Doña Eutimia – Cozy, classic Cuban flavors, locally loved.

• Paladar Los Mercaderes – Thoughtful, refined takes on traditional dishes.

• El Dandy - quaint breakfast spot in Old Havana. Full top to bottom with art.

• El Floridita - a 200-year-old bar known for its daiquiris and live music.

• Mojitos - A place for mojitos and music.

• D’ánimas - a small, intimate cocktail bar

Tours Worth Doing

• Beyond Roots Tour – A must. Afro-Cuban spirituality, history, ceremony, art, and community all in one deeply intentional experience.

• Varadero Beach - A full day trip full of food, overlooks and a beautiful white sand beach.

• Callejón de Hamel – Afro-Cuban art, rumba, murals, and living culture.

• Free Walking Tour – Helps contextualize architecture, colonial history, and daily life.

• City Tour (by classic car or tax or bus tour) – Useful for covering distance and seeing Havana’s contrasts.

• Museum of the African Diaspora in Cuba – Context for African presence and survival.

• Regla – Strong Afro-Cuban spiritual roots across the bay.

A few years ago, I took a DNA test through Ancestry.com. It revealed that I have ancestry rooted in eight present-day African countries. This was not surprising. It did, however, reveal even more than I was expecting.

Ancestry estimated that my ancestors likely arrived in the Americas between the 1760s and 1780s, and more than likely through Charleston, South Carolina—the port where nearly half of all African Americans descended from the enslaved first entered what would become the United States.

Before Black Beyond Borders, before global Black histories and highlights, I spent some time between 2021 and 2023 exploring Black culture, cuisine and history in the U.S.

Charleston was one of my stops and like West Africa, it felt like a return.

Black Space Field Trips

In 2021, I began intentionally traveling across the United States, visiting places where Black people have shaped the land, the culture, and the food.

I walked the Great Dismal Swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina, where maroon communities—enslaved Africans who escaped and built free lives—created refuge outside of white dominance. I went to Suffolk, Virginia retracing the steps of Nat Turner’s Rebellion, driving past cotton fields that still line Virginia roads. I walked through Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood neighborhood and the former Black Wall Street, visiting the museum, the church, and the corridor where a thriving Black community was violently destroyed.

And then in 2023, I went to Charleston. It wasn’t my first time, but this visit was intentional.

Charleston: Where Black America Took Root

Charleston is a city full of U.S. history rooted in blackness. Along its coastline and Sea Islands developed the Gullah Geechee Corridor, stretching from North Carolina to Florida. It is one of the few regions in the U.S. where African-descended people preserved language (they speak with a distinct accent), cuisine, craftsmanship, and cultural practices. This is where Lowcountry culture comes from, anchored in food like red rice, seafood (including shrimp and grits and seafood boil), and savory seasoning.

This is where African knowledge, ingenuity and engineering created the foundation for South Carolina’s wealth. Carolina Gold rice, indigo, and later cotton became foundational to the colonial economy. Enslaved Africans cleared land, created irrigation systems, and transformed wetlands into profitable plantations using knowledge and skills they brought from Africa.

Along Charleston’s waterfront today, you will pass grand homes built with this wealth. It was one of the richest corridors in the South—built from rice and from the labor and skill of my ancestors.

But Charleston’s history, while rich and rooted—and sometimes tragic— is also living and dynamic.

St. Helena Island: History That Feels Like Family

One of the most grounding experiences of the trip was beyond the city to St. Helena Island, where we spent time at Morning Glory Farms, run by Tony and Belinda. They felt like family. Auntie and Unc welcomed us onto their land, cooked for us, and walked us through the history of St. Helena. They spoke of how their ancestors acquired land after enslavement, how they stayed rooted, and how they are fighting to keep their land amidst the pressures of new development.

Over breakfast of fish and grits, they shared stories about the origins of Memorial Day—first commemorated by newly freed Black Americans honoring Union soldiers—and later led us through their community cemetery, where generations rest together.

Being there made something clear: Black history is not just about survival or resistance. It’s about the continuity of keeping stories alive, of stewarding the land and of walking through history with presence.

Traversing History

One of the most dynamic experiences we had was a Charleston Black History, Gullah Geechee, and Sea Islands tour, led by veteran guide Al Miller.

The tour moved us through much of the city and out across James Island and Johns Island. Al came with a breadth of knowledge and covered so much territory. From plantation sites to Black neighborhoods, from waterways to churches, the tour stitched the story from slavery to freedom and beyond. We visited McLeod Plantation Historic Site, where the original slave quarters still stand and were later used as living quarters for sharecroppers. It’s an eerie, but necessary experience. We also learned how Porgy and Bess was shaped by Charleston’s Gullah Geechee culture, language, music, rhythms, and spirituals.

Culture, Craft, Cuisine, and the City

Back in Charleston, we spent time with Corey Alston, a sweetgrass basket weaver at the Charleston City Market, where one of the most enduring Gullah Geechee traditions continues. Baskets are weaved from local grasses rooted in West African technique. In South Carolina, it is a living practice, passed hand to hand and only through families. Corey’s designs take time, are often special ordered and range in size from handheld to substantial. It is amazing to see how this creativity has been passed down through centuries.

And of course, food is memory, so we also went to Revival for a more upscale experience of She Crab Soup and Low Country Perloo and had Gillies Seafood for a more downhome experience—like a fried seafood basket. Worlds apart but both delicious.

Oh and I love a good distillery, so we ended our tour at Rotten Little Bastard Distillery in Beaufort and loved the Spanish moss gin. Chef’s kiss!

Beauty With a Backstory

Charleston is undeniably beautiful. The trees are layered with Spanish moss, making the city and surrounding areas feel mythical and magical. Pastel-colored homes line streets and porches, balconies, and ironwork are architectural siblings to cities like Savannah and New Orleans. But Charleston and other southern cities hold the tension between that beauty and the heaviness of a brutal past. It is painful, beautiful and foundational. It is very American.

The International African American Museum, which opened in 2023 on Gadsden’s Wharf, a significant entry point for enslaved Africans into the United States, weaves a rich tapestry from this history.

That is why, before Black Beyond Borders, I had to explore some of the breadth and depth of Blackness in the US. And as I launched this four-week series on Black History Across the Americas, I needed to begin at home.

In the coming weeks, Black History Across the Americas will move beyond U.S. borders to Cuba, Central America, and Colombia. We will trace the routes where Black life, culture, and history have shaped the Americas. Stay tuned…

And if I have inspired you to go visit Charleston, check out some of the resources below. Visit a Sea Island, take a tour, have some low country cuisine, buy a basket and bask in the rich history of blackness.

Charleston Resources

Food

• Gillie’s Seafood

• Hannibal’s Kitchen

• Rodney Scott’s BBQ

• Nana’s Seafood & Soul (North Charleston)

• Revival

Drinks & Nightlife

• Ritual Rooftop

• The Cocktail Club

• Uptown Social

• The Dewberry Bar

Tours & Historic Sites

• International African American Museum

• Charleston Black History, Gullah Geechee & Sea Islands Tour

• Gullah Geechee Tours

• Mother Emanuel AME Church

• Old Slave Mart Museum

• Aiken-Rhett House

Arts & Culture

• Gibbes Museum of Art

• Gallery Chuma

I’ve been thinking about sunsets lately.

I took two of my favorite images (shown above) from the album covers I created for the Black Beyond Borders premiere and framed them. One is a group of children playing at Ngor Beach in Dakar at sunset—full of youthful freedom, movement, joy. The other is a group of young people hanging out along Le Corniche—lounging, lingering, relaxed.

They are small, lovely moments. And somehow, they allow me to time travel.

I love Dakar’s sunsets. But, I try to capture them whenever I can, everywhere I can. I have pictures of sunsets from all over the world. Different skies, different colors, different seasons of my life—yet the same quiet invitation.

Why do I love sunsets? Their simple beauty. They ask you to be still. To be silent. To watch and wait for the inevitable. You don’t have to do anything. You can simply be.

And lately, I’ve been leaning more deeply into being—embracing the poetry of presence, of living without rushing toward the next thing.

I began my creative life as a poet. I hosted open mics and I decided that I could do that. I started as a spoken word artist: confident, declarative, forceful. Spoken word is a little like hip hop—bold, embodied, unapologetic. I loved those poems. I still do.

But reading The Forty Rules of Love and writing last week’s post reminded me that at my core, I am a poet, a pilgrim, and a prophet. I write. I journey in search of God in places and people. I seek truth and I speak it.

Just as Shams of Tabriz’s friendship transformed Rumi from a scholar and religious leader into a poet, my around-the-world trip transformed me. I shifted from a confident, self-possessed spoken word artist into a more mystical poet—softer, more vulnerable, and probably more myself.

As I write in my upcoming memoir:

Returning from my trip, I was thrust into an even deeper period of transformation—grappling with the weight of all I had experienced and learned. I felt fragile, weak, and raw, as though the winds of the world had blown through my protective layers. I was softer, and that was a good thing—but it was painful.

After that journey, I entered three and a half years of quiet. I cocooned to regain a sense of myself. Church. Walking. Community. An easy job. Mostly local travel. Falling in love and losing it. Crying tears I hadn’t allowed myself before.

A dark night of the soul—disruptive, sweet, sometimes miserable—deeply exposing.

During that time, I wrote a poem about watching for the light. I didn’t realize it then, but I wasn’t waiting for sunrise. I was learning how to sit with dusk. A version of myself was setting, and I was watching it happen.

And so, I return to sunsets.

There is something about them that has always held me. They ask nothing of you except presence.

Suddenly, I understand why they feel so familiar—so magnetic.

Sunsets don’t demand productivity. They don’t explain themselves or hurry.
They let the day finish without apology.

Those years taught me how to embrace the soft vulnerability of the season- to sit and wait patiently for a more solid me to emerge.

And I think I am in another softening season now—moving from the masculine energy of building a consulting business into the creative energy of the artist. Less scripted. Less scheduled. More spontaneous, spacious and intuitive.

I am a planner by nature. I will always try to prepare. But I’m learning that I will arrive where I need to go not by force, but by presence—by being discerning, purposeful, and attentive to what is emerging. I think of people and feel nudged to reach out, and invariably they hold a key to my next phase—answers to questions I didn’t yet know I had.

I am contemplative by nature. I once lived in a monastery for a year—praying three times a day, cleaning, hosting retreats. Movement, stillness, reflection, meaning-making—these are my native languages. Writing comes naturally because all my creative work begins the same way: by being in the world, gathering raw material, and shaping it into something beautiful and dynamic.

Lately, I’ve been meditating more. Praying more. Reading The Artist’s Way and The Artist’s Rule as spiritual practice. Letting walking and music become pathways to embodiment.

Last week, I went to Reveler—a local venue that hosts blues jam sessions. Pure joy. People get up and sing songs they didn’t plan to sing. Musicians improvise. The audience is enlivened by the energy the musicians create. You can’t capture it—you have to inhabit it.

An 83-year-old blues singer took the stage and said, “If I’m standing up here at 83 entertaining you, you can stand up and dance with me.”

And we did. Happily. Moving however the music moved us.

Music bypasses analysis and invites us into our bodies. Poetry does the same.

So do prophetic conversations—the kind where truth arrives sideways. A friend recently told me she has cut off relationships that no longer worked. I reflected back what I heard: Last year your energy moved through relationships. This year, that same energy is moving through your writing.

She laughed. “Transmute is my word of the year.”

I smiled.

That’s what feels alive right now: transmutation. Not rejecting who I’ve been—but returning. Remembering. Re-inhabiting the artistic, mystical self that first revealed herself through poetry… then through travel… then through transition… and now, again, through creative devotion.

Sunsets don’t seize the day. They honor it.
Poetry doesn’t solve problems. It listens and speaks.
Music doesn’t analyze the body. It enlivens it.

This, I think, is what returning to oneself actually looks like. Sometimes it’s a dramatic reinvention. Other times, a gentle realignment—choosing to face the light even when it’s low, even when it feels like it has disappeared.

So I am watching the light again.

Not because it’s leaving—
but because I know how to see endings as beginnings.

I’ll leave you with this poem. I hope it meets you gently.

Watching for the Light

The eyes of my heart
are staring into the night of my soul,
watching for the light.

She glares at me,
glimmering with grace,
knowing I am addicted to evading.

Withdrawn behind winter walls
that have frozen blazing passions.

Yet she calls for me constantly—
her breath the warm and sweet summer breeze,
sweeping seductively past the door,
from underneath,
appearing mysteriously.

There she is,
the image of God in front of me,
that inner me beating with intensity,
telling me I can be free,
that the fullness of daylight
can be shed abroad
inside of me.

“Open the door,” she whispers.
“Away with the night,” she calls.

Into the light I am beckoned.
Barriers fall.
And the flame that once flickered
burns ferociously.