As soon as the news broke the conversation immediately became about professionalism versus respectability politics, discipline versus autonomy, preparation versus policing and whether or not it’s ok for us as Black people to set a standard without folks within the community suggesting it’s to cater to the white gaze. Tuskegee says the policy is meant to prepare students for the workforce by setting professional expectations, while critics argue it disproportionately targets expressions associated with Black culture and confuses appearance with achievement. (CNN)

The quote by P.J. Rourke from Criminal Minds season 4 episode 9 titled “52 Pickup” that inspired me to write this says,

“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”

Almost instantaneously I asked myself the question whether or not that quote had anything to do with the quote I had heard in church so much it was often confused as scripture,

“Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

That quote was popularized by John Wesley in a sermon he gave in 1778 and it was about connecting physical hygiene with moral and spiritual character (Wesley Center Online). O’Rourke’s version asks a much more uncomfortable question: What happens when we start substituting outward order for inward virtue? That question reaches far beyond bonnets, durags and pajamas in the classroom.

Viewed through the lens of America today, O’Rourke’s quote feels less like satire and more like social commentary. At a time when many of us are actively deconstructing and decolonizing due to the lack of trust we have in our government, schools, corporations, churches, and even the media there seems to be an increasing emphasis once again on managing appearances. Instead of creating equitable systems we create dress codes. Hemlines become more important than character. Instead of regulating harm we instead choose to regulate hair. We praise respectability while ignoring exploitation and we celebrate and elevate polished images all while neglecting emotional and spiritual maturity. That’s what makes the Tuskegee conversation so fascinating to me.

Technically speaking, a university has every right to establish a dress code that reflects its institutional culture and the kind of professional environment it wants to cultivate. But we should still interrogate our instinct to believe clothing is a reliable proxy for character, intelligence, discipline, or future success. Because the danger isn’t in valuing presentation; it’s in allowing presentation to distract us from the harder work of cultivating ethical leadership, repairing broken systems, and building communities rooted in justice rather than optics. When appearances become the measure of virtue, we risk producing institutions that look respectable while failing to embody the very values they claim to uphold.

Additionally, history should make us cautious about that leap especially when we’re setting rules without acknowledging the systems at play that make University leadership believe the rules are necessary. Black people have spent generations being told that if we just dressed better, spoke better, straightened our hair, pulled our pants up, covered our bodies, smiled more, assimilated more... we’d finally receive dignity.

We did all of that. Our ancestors did all of that and the discrimination didn’t disappear. Respectability was supposed to keep us safe. While that sentiment is well meaning, it has never been a guarantee of justice. We’ve seen the images that are proof of that fact. So maybe the deeper conversation isn’t whether bonnets belong in the cafeteria. Maybe it’s asking why appearance so often becomes the battleground whenever we struggle to define what excellence actually looks like because excellence isn’t just looking professional.

Excellence should be keeping your word and treating people with dignity. We should be more concerned about our people being able to think critically and how we repair after harm. How are we preparing students to lead with integrity and show up with courage in these racist institutions? A suit can communicate professionalism, but it does not manufacture character. And those two things have never been the same.

Where do you stand on the bonnets, durags and pajamas conversation from the classroom to the airport and anywhere in between?

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• A journal

• A pen or pencil

• A candle (optional)

• A beverage that makes you feel grounded (optional)

• 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted time

Opening Reflection

Take a deep breath and place a hand on your chest.

Read aloud:

“Today I release the need to see people as I wish they were. I choose to see people as they are. I trust myself to recognize what is aligned, what is not, and what deserves deeper discernment. I release the belief that boundaries make me unkind. I welcome relationships that are reciprocal, honest, and safe.”

Then ask yourself:

What relationships have taught me the most about myself this year?

Sit with the answer before moving on.

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A year ago, my life changed.

Again.

The older I get, the more I realize that some of the most significant turning points in our lives don’t announce themselves as turning points. They arrive disguised as friendships, opportunities, relationships, jobs, church communities, or random conversations. At the time, they seem ordinary. Looking back, you realize they split your life into a before and an after.

This time last year, I thought I was gaining a friend. We spent the weekend sharing our life’s stories, going to a jazz concert and even enjoyed a wine festival. But instead of gaining a friend what I actually gained was a masterclass in discernment. One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that shared wounds are not the same thing as trust. For most of my life, I conducted myself in relationships as if they were.

There is something incredibly disarming about meeting someone who understands parts of your story. Someone who has experienced religious trauma. Someone who understands abuse. Someone who has felt rejected, misunderstood, othered, abandoned, or harmed. There is an immediate sense of familiarity. You feel seen, understood and feel less alone. And, yes, sometimes that’s beautiful. Other times it’s dangerous.

What I’ve come to understand is that shared wounds can create the illusion of intimacy long before trust has actually been established. Just because someone understands your pain doesn’t mean they’ve done the work to heal their own. Just because someone says they share your values doesn’t mean they share your character. And just because someone can relate to your story or vice versa doesn’t mean they deserve unrestricted access to your life. I wish I had learned that lesson earlier. Truth is I can look back at other times when my life was trying to teach me this exact lesson, but I had not gone deep enough.

At one point during the past year while unpacking the impact last summer had on me, my therapist asked me a question that genuinely caught me off guard. “When are you going to create the same boundaries with women that you’ve learned to create with men?” It hit me like a ton of bricks.

Like many women, I’ve spent most of my life being taught to watch out for men. And statistically speaking, that’s not irrational. Men are often the greatest threat women face. I’ve experienced that harm from men firsthand. But what nobody talks about enough is how much harm can occur in female friendships and communities when boundaries are absent, accountability is lacking, and projection goes unchecked. Somewhere along the way, I had unconsciously decided that shared Black womanhood made someone safer. I thought because our traumas, beliefs and values were similar that they would be safer.

The truth is women are capable of extraordinary kindness. Some of the most healing relationships in my life are with women. Women have loved me, challenged me, supported me, protected me, and helped me become who I am. Women are also human, which means we’re capable of jealousy, exclusion, projection, manipulation, and harm too. Recognizing that hasn’t made me cynical; it’s made me more discerning. And honestly, I think that’s one of the biggest gifts this past year gave me.

I’ve also learned that many people are more comfortable with certainty than curiosity.

It’s easier to decide who the hero is and who the villain is. I am a convenient villain for some people because I do not conform to respectability or perform my humanity for people’s approval in ways others do.

It’s easier to create a story than to sit with ambiguity especially when the story plays on others emotions and traumas.

It’s easier to believe we know someone’s intentions than to admit we might not.

I’ve watched people create versions of me in their minds that bear very little resemblance to who I actually am. They filled in the blanks with assumptions, fears, insecurities, disappointments, and projections. Then they responded to the version of me they created. For a long time that bothered me.

I am reminded of something that took me a really long time to grasp: my job is not to manage other people’s perceptions of me. My job is to know who I am.

That sounds simple, but it’s actually one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn. Because knowing who you are also means being honest about where you’ve gotten it wrong. It means acknowledging the unwise decisions and the missed red flags. It means owning when you abandoned yourself and ignored your intuition especially when you know better. It means accepting that you gave access before trust had been earned. It means taking accountability without taking responsibility for things that don’t belong to you.

A year later, I don’t feel angry. I have no interest in revenge nor do I feel the need to convince anyone of my innocence or my goodness. Mostly I feel grateful for the people who stayed, for the people who left, for the lessons I’m learning and that I finally truly understand that boundaries are not walls. Boundaries are filters and filters make it possible for the right people to stay.

What lessons has life been trying to teach you lately?

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We’ll explore:

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Because sometimes the most important question isn’t “Who hurt me?” It’s “What did this experience teach me about who gets access to me now?”

Like many of you, I watched Hulu’s four-part docuseries, The Cult of NatureBoy. Cult documentaries have become somewhat of a special interest of mine since beginning my deconstruction journey, largely because of the striking similarities between cults and the high-control religious environments that exist within fundamentalist Christianity. Both rely heavily on isolation, fear, shame, dependency, groupthink, and the gradual erosion of individual identity in service of a larger ideology or charismatic leader.

After finishing the series, I discovered there was also a 46-part YouTube series by Hood Horrors titled The Rise and Fall of NatureBoy and Carbon Nation. Suddenly, what Hulu presented felt almost sanitized. What appeared on screen as chaotic and disturbing became, through deeper examination, something much darker, more manipulative, and more psychologically and spiritually devastating.

While some of Eligio Bishop’s followers still defend him, many eventually left throughout the years. What struck me most, however, was not Bishop himself, but the victim statement given by his legal wife during sentencing. As she described the evolution of both the cult and the man she once believed in, I found myself unexpectedly emotional. Not because I have ever been in a cult, but because I understood the grief embedded within her realization.

The grief of slowly waking up to the fact that the thing you devoted yourself to… harmed you. Not all at once, of course. Self-abandonment rarely arrives dramatically. It is usually taught slowly, woven quietly into the architecture of everyday life until it becomes indistinguishable from virtue. You learn to ignore the tightening in your chest when something feels wrong. You learn to smile through discomfort. You learn that obedience is rewarded while honesty is dangerous. Eventually, you become so practiced at disconnecting from yourself that you no longer recognize the distance.

I grew up believing that the narrow way, the path Jesus spoke of in scripture, was primarily about denial. About resisting temptation and suppressing desire. Wide is the gate that leads to destruction, we were told, and many enter through it. Narrow is the way that leads to life, and only a few find it. For most of my life, I interpreted that passage the same way many religious communities do: as a warning against indulgence, pleasure, sensuality, and the body itself.

But as I’ve gotten older, as I’ve healed, and as I’ve begun reclaiming parts of myself I was taught to distrust, I have started to wonder if we misunderstood the passage entirely. Because what if the wide path is not pleasure, but performance? What if the wide path is the life so many people live disconnected from themselves? The path of conformity and of self-betrayal. The path of remaining palatable at the expense of being authentic.

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As I begin to awaken to this new way of being I noticed that many of the people we think are disciplined are really just deeply disconnected. They appear morally upright while they privately live in resentment, shame, numbness, or quiet desperation. They have perfected the art of maintaining appearances, but have never truly learned how to inhabit themselves. I was one of those people before.

I know what it is to perform goodness while being detached from my own body. I know what it is to say yes while something inside me is screaming no. I know what it is to remain loyal to relationships, systems, and identities long after they stopped feeling safe simply because leaving felt more terrifying than suffering. And that is why healing can feel so lonely at first. Because telling the truth often isolates you from people who benefited from your silence.

The older I get, the more I believe the narrow way is not about becoming smaller. It is about becoming honest. Honest about what hurts. Honest about what we desire. Honest about the relationships we have outgrown. Honest about the ways shame has distorted our understanding of love, intimacy, holiness, and even ourselves. Truth, I have learned, is rarely the crowded path.

It is much easier to repeat inherited beliefs than interrogate them. Easier to perform healing than embody it. Easier to remain fragmented than confront the grief of realizing how long you’ve been disconnected from yourself. And yet, despite how difficult this path can be, it has also been the most life-giving.

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Healing has required me to reconnect with a body I was taught to mistrust. To examine the ways religion, patriarchy, and survival shaped my relationships. To stop interpreting my sensitivity as weakness. To understand pleasure not as something frivolous or sinful, but as information and as aliveness. Pleasure is a signal that I am present enough to feel. It has also required me to release the idea that suffering automatically makes something sacred. Some things are simply just harmful. Some relationships survive not because they are healthy, but because someone has been conditioned to endure. And many people, especially women raised in religious environments, have been praised for their capacity to tolerate what should have broken trust. This space was born from those realizations.

The Narrow Way is not a place where I intend to offer polished answers or perform enlightenment. It is a space for exploration, honesty, embodiment, and reckoning. A space where I want to examine what it means to come home to yourself after years of fragmentation. Where we can talk openly about shame, sensuality, desire, grief, relationships, power, healing, and the complicated process of learning to trust ourselves again.

Because I no longer believe healing happens through disembodiment. I know it happens by learning how to remain present with ourselves long enough to hear the truth underneath the performance. And maybe that is the narrow way after all. Not the rejection of self, but the courageous return to it.

Inside The Narrow Way, we talk about:

• healing from purity culture and shame-based conditioning

• reclaiming sensuality and sexuality as something sacred, not sinful

• navigating relationships with honesty, boundaries, and desire

• understanding your nervous system instead of overriding it

• and learning how to trust yourself again

If you’ve been feeling the disconnect…
if you’ve outgrown the life you were taught to want…
if something in you is ready for more honesty, more embodiment, more truth…

You’re in the right place.

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But if you’re ready to go deeper to not just understand this work, but actually live it…

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You don’t need another space telling you who to be.

You need a space that helps you remember who you are and empowers you to become who you’re destined to be.

And if the path you’ve been walking doesn’t feel like yours anymore this might be your invitation to choose differently.

It’s time to come home to yourself.

And yet…

I keep seeing conversations online pushing the same fundamentalist Christian agendas like conversations about Erica Campbell’s dress at the Soar Awards.

Erica Campbell - one half of the legendary Gospel duo Mary Mary and First Lady of California Worship Center - was recently honored at the 2026 Soar Awards for her individual contributions to the genre. It should' have been a simple moment of recognition and celebration.

Instead a familiar pattern unfolded. Rather than centering her achievement, a wave of fundamentalist Christians turned their attention somewhere else entirely. Instead of talking about her music, her ministry or her decades of cultural impact they’ve decided to talk about her cleavage.

I’ll be honest, in a world with this much at stake I debated whether this was even worth addressing. I kept coming back to the same thing, though. This conversation keeps happening in a very specific type of way to a specific type of woman. Truthfully, it is not disconnected from everything else that’s going wrong. It’s all part of the same system. So, I’m going to address it.

It’s only been a few months since Dr. Karri Bryant found herself in the same situation. Erica was in the same position a few years ago about a body hugging white dress at another industry event. Each time the same scriptures surface. The same warnings about modesty appear. The same policing by people who have no personal relationship continue to take center stage.

Different women. Different occasions. Same tired script.

What keeps sticking out to me isn’t just the pattern itself. It’s how confidently people reach for biblical authority to justify it as if the text is clearly, obviously, unambiguously about this. I get it, though, because that how it’s taught in church.

The thing is. the more you actually look at the passages being cited, the more the whole framework starts to unravel.

When it comes to modesty debates 1 Timothy 2:9 is probably the most commonly cited verse. Paul does instruct women to dress modestly, “not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly garments.” On the surface it sounds like a straightforward fashion regulation. But when you place it back in its historical context the meaning shifts considerably.

In the Roman world of the first century, elite women wore elaborate hairstyles threaded with gold and pearls. These weren’t just decorative choices. They were status signals, visible markers of wealth and social rank. Early Christian gatherings were supposed to disrupt those hierarchies. Wealthy patrons, enslaved people, laborers, and merchants were gathering in the same spaces. Paul’s instruction was about preventing those gatherings from turning into social status competitions.

The concern was economic excess and class display; not necklines.

The same historical backdrop applies to 1 Peter 3:3–4, which tells women not to build their identity around “elaborate hairstyles and wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes.” The point was not “dress plainly.” The point was don’t use luxury to signal superiority within a community built on equality. Yet the people who quote this verse rarely advocate for abandoning jewelry or formal wear altogether. Somehow it keeps circling back to women’s bodies specifically.

Several other texts get pulled into modesty debates even though from my understanding clothing isn't really the focus of the original writings, though.

Romans 14, where Paul warns about not causing others to stumble, sometimes gets applied to women’s clothing. The argument being that women should dress in ways that prevent men from lusting. But the chapter is actually about navigating disputes over food laws and religious observances among early Christians with different backgrounds. Paul is addressing how a diverse community handles internal disagreements. He is not regulating anyone’s wardrobe.

1 Corinthians 6:19 the body as “a temple of the Holy Spirit” also appears regularly in conversations about modesty and sexual purity. In context, Paul is addressing exploitative sexual practices connected to temple prostitution in Corinth. His concern is about dignity and avoiding exploitation. It is not a prescription for specific clothing standards.

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You know what usually isn’t mentioned, though? Matthew 18:9, where Jesus says that if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.

Not “ask the thing you’re looking at to cover itself.” Not “make the source of your temptation responsible for your thought life.” Pluck out your own eye. The instruction is directed inward; toward the person doing the looking, not the person being looked at.

Matthew 5:28 lands the same way. Jesus says that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart. This verse gets regularly twisted into an argument that women must dress in ways that prevent men from lusting. But the text does the exact opposite. Jesus places the responsibility squarely on the person doing the looking. The discipline required is internal. It is about self-control and moral accountability, not about women managing male desire.

When you line all of these passages up together, a pattern emerges that’s hard to ignore. The scriptures most commonly used to police women’s clothing were originally addressing wealth inequality, class display, community harmony, ritual practices tied to specific ancient cultures, and the protection of human dignity. Over centuries, all of that complexity got compressed into a single target: women’s bodies.

And everything these texts were actually confronting quietly gets left out of the conversation, which tells you something about the people wielding it.

And because this is the same world where men who have sexually exploited children are walking free while their names sit in documents the public has already seen. Where nations are bombing civilians and calling it defense. Where leaders are invoking the name of Jesus while signing off on policies that starve, displace, and dehumanize entire populations. Where the church has repeatedly protected predators within its own walls and asked the people they harmed to extend grace and move on.

And in the middle of all of that, some of these same communities found the clarity and the energy to draft a theological case against a gospel singer’s neckline.

That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern.

When a system is very good at policing women’s bodies and very silent about the abuse of power happening at every level above them, that system is not doing the work of Jesus. It is doing the work of control. And it has been dressing that work in scripture for a very, very long time.

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Not because I need anyone’s validation. I don’t.

I answered because I know there’s probably at least one person reading who has been quietly questioning their beliefs and feeling conflicted about whether the label “Christian” still fits them.

So if that’s you, this might be for you too.

Here’s my answer.

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I walked away from Christianity for a few reasons.

First, Jesus wasn’t a Christian. He was a Jewish teacher living under Roman occupation. The label “Christian” came later as a religious identity tied to institutions and power structures.

Second, I don’t need to call myself a Christian to follow the teachings of Jesus. Loving your neighbor, caring for the marginalized, challenging religious hypocrisy… those principles aren’t owned by a denomination.

And third, the Christianity I was given has been deeply harmful. The more I pursued a personal relationship with God and began deconstructing and decolonizing what I had been taught, the more I realized the label “Christian” no longer aligned with my values.

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In the U.S., Christianity is used less as a model for how to live like Jesus and more as a tool to control, exclude, and oppress people.

At some point I had to be honest with myself: I still respect the teachings of Jesus, but the institution built around his name no longer reflects them.

So I stopped pretending it did.

And here’s the thing Traditional Black churches have done some beautiful things. But for me, and many like me, the biggest issue is that many traditional Black churches don’t just preach the gospel. They also perpetuate systems rooted in white supremacy through the upholding of patriarchy, capitalism, and respectability politics.

During slavery and segregation, obedience and respectability were often taught as the safest way to survive. Over time that survival strategy hardened into doctrine. Now you have generations of Black people being taught that suffering is holy, silence is submission, and questioning authority is rebellion against God.

The harm shows up in a few ways.

First, the culture of silence around abuse.
Second, the policing of women’s bodies and sexuality.
Third, the shame-based approach to sexuality and pleasure, also known as purity culture.
Fourth, anti-intellectualism and the fear of questioning.

And finally, while many preach liberation, what they actually practice is a codependent spirituality rooted in control.

We’ll talk about freedom from racism, which is necessary. But inside the church walls, people are still being told who they’re allowed to love, how they’re allowed to dress, what they’re allowed to think, and how their bodies are supposed to exist. And those who submit are often rewarded with titles and proximity to leadership.

So until the church as a system commits to deconstructing and decolonizing itself, those of us already on that journey will continue choosing spiritual safety over allegiance to an institution that has harmed us and, in many cases, continues to do so.

If you’re reading this and quietly wondering whether you’re still a Christian, I want you to know that questioning doesn’t make you rebellious, lost, or broken. It means you’re thinking.

Faith that can’t survive honest questions isn’t faith, it’s control.

You’re allowed to examine what you were taught. You’re allowed to wrestle with it. You’re allowed to decide what aligns with your conscience, your understanding of love, and your sense of truth.

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And if the label no longer fits, that doesn’t mean you’ve lost your values, your spirituality, or your connection to God.

Sometimes it just means you’ve outgrown the box people put around it.

Not because those things are bad or lacking. Not because there’s one right way to live. But because I’ve watched how church culture can quietly weaponize desire, especially for women.

The final straw for me when I left the toxic and spiritually abusive church I was a member of for 20 years was a female Elder having an altar call for single women who wanted to be married and then berating them in her prayer, blaming them for their single status and saying it was because they didn’t know how to cook, clean, and keep their mouths shut. Then having the Bishop tell me the only reason I saw abuse was because I had been abused in a previous relationship, not because she said anything wrong or harmful.

When faith spaces center marriage and motherhood as the ultimate markers of womanhood, it creates a powerful narrative. And when those desires are strong but not yet realized, sometimes the story shifts into something spiritualized: distance yourself from anything seen as worldly, prove your devotion, start fresh.

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Religion isn’t the only place this happens. Every system knows how to speak to our longing to be chosen and desire to belong. The human nervous system wants meaning and certainty, and communities often offer a clean storyline when life feels messy.

What I’m noticing isn’t a conclusion. It’s curiosity because correlation isn’t causation. People leave organizations for many reasons..growth, disappointment, new convictions, personal experience, etc.

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If denouncing really is in their best interest, I support them making the best decision for themselves. What I have issue is the demonization of it to recruit others into following in their footsteps.

Still, it’s worth asking hard questions about how institutions, especially faith institutions, sometimes frame women’s choices through the lens of desire and obedience.

For me, the deeper reflection is this:

Anytime a system suggests that giving up parts of yourself will finally make you worthy of love, partnership, or blessing… pause.

Wholeness was never supposed to be transactional.

I’m curious what others have noticed. Let’s talk about it with honesty and nuance, not judgment.

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She asked me what I was afraid of, and somewhere in the middle of the conversation, the floor dropped out from under me — in the best possible way.

I’ve been working on my relationship with singing for a while now. I know the storylines I carry. I’ve done the therapy, the journaling, the nervous system work. I’ve been no contact with my mother for almost three years. I’ve processed the wound from a hundred different angles. I do not play about doing my shadow work.

But today, a new layer surfaced. And it wasn’t subtle.

What I uncovered was that my fear isn’t just “I’m not good enough,” it’s, “If I fully become myself, I leave her behind.” That shocked me.

The Loyalty Hiding Inside the Limitation

There’s a very specific kind of mother wound that runs beneath the surface of a lot of “imposter syndrome,” especially in parentified daughters who had to emotionally outgrow their mothers early.

It doesn’t sound like fear of failure. It sounds like “I won’t rise so far that it exposes what she didn’t have.”

Even if you’re no contact. Even if you’ve consciously chosen freedom. Even if you’ve already surpassed her in many visible ways.

Because surpassing isn’t just an achievement, it’s separation, and separation from a mother hits the deepest attachment wiring in the body. The nervous system reads it as:

“If I go further than her, I abandon her in the same way she abandoned me.” And it makes complete sense that it would surface around singing because I watched her give up on her singing out of fear, too.

Why Voice? Why Now?

Because your voice is not just a skill.

Voice is presence. Voice is being heard. Voice is taking up space. Voice is joy and pleasure and visibility…all the things a limited, wounded, or emotionally constrained mother may never have let herself have. All the things my mother has not let herself have,

So when I free my voice, I’m not just working on technique. I’m symbolically saying:

“I am allowed to take up more space than you did.”

And for daughters of mothers who were unseen, unheard, relationally trapped, or emotionally small, that statement often feels like a betrayal, even if it isn’t one.

The Paradox of Surpassing

Here’s where it gets complicated and real.

I have already surpassed her. In accomplishment. In freedom. In the amount of pleasure I’ve let myself experience at my age compared to hers, in the things that truly matter to me.

But becoming a fully embodied, fully visible artist is not incremental growth; it is a generational upgrade.

During that call, I realized that some part of my body had been holding onto the belief that, “if I shine this brightly, I confirm that she couldn’t.”

That feels cruel to say, especially for someone who is still living. I don’t say it from a place of cruelty but rather from a child’s loyalty, echoing in an adult woman’s body.

There’s a particular flavor of survivor’s guilt that comes with being the first woman in your line to break a ceiling. Not just to achieve more, but to experience more. To feel more pleasure, more freedom, more fullness. It can feel like an indictment of the women before you, even when it’s not, even when it’s the opposite. It hits even harder now that both my grandmothers, Grandma Erney, whom I never got to meet, and my Abuela LuzElena, who raised me, have both transitioned.

What Individuation Actually Costs

Here’s the thing no one quite prepares you for, though. Surpassing her doesn’t mean I think I’m better than her. It means I had different opportunities, made different choices, had a different awareness, and different courage at different times.

But even with that clarity, there is something existential still living in my soul. A question I hadn’t fully let myself name until today:

“What happens to my identity if I fully detach from the role of daughter-who-stays-within-range?”

That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s the cost of individuation. And real individuation, not just geographic or no-contact distance, requires grief.

There’s grief in surpassing, along with anger and some relief. All of it can coexist.

The Permission I’ve Been Waiting to Give Myself

So now I know when my voice feels stuck, it isn’t about technique. It’s about permission.

Permission to outgrow. Permission to outshine. Permission to out-experience. Permission to have more pleasure than she did. Permission to not carry her limitations forward.

And here’s the gentlest reframe I’ve found for myself today:

I am not abandoning her by becoming more. I am ending what bound us both.

I don’t owe her smallness to prove love. I don’t owe her stagnation to prove loyalty. Surpassing her doesn’t erase her. It fulfills what she couldn’t. And that is not only ok, it’s also my destiny.

The Wild Part

The wildest part of this whole epiphany?

The fact that I can see it now means I’m already past the most unconscious layer of it.

Awareness doesn’t dissolve the pattern immediately. The body catches up slower than the mind. But naming it is already a kind of permission.

My voice isn’t just a singing instrument; it’s the most symbolic part of me. Freeing it means saying, out loud, to my lineage, “It doesn’t stop with me.”

That’s power. And sometimes power feels like betrayal when you’re the first woman in the line to embody it differently.

If this landed somewhere in your body, I'd love to know. And if you're sitting with your own version of this…the fear that isn't really about talent, the loyalty that's been mistaken for limitation, you're not alone in it.

At 23, I made a conscious decision to open that door. I’d already explored oral sex in my teens, but this felt different. I was frustrated waiting for a husband or some magical moment and told my friend I wanted to have sex. Once I did, I had a bunch of experiences that weren’t always empowering. I lacked boundaries. I was insecure and anxious. I put my sexual health in jeopardy many times. Truth be told the partners I chose, more often than not, didn’t deserve access to me.

I love to talk about sexual liberation, but it’s important to note it’s not a cure-all. And while it can be beautiful and transformative, there’s danger in confusing access with agency. If you’re not grounded in self-worth and discernment, “freedom” often becomes another trap especially for those of us socialized and indoctrinated to please, to perform, to ignore red flags.

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My turning point came in 2017, when I started therapy and began exploring sensuality and astrology. I found a quote from Rashida Webb-Miller (formerly KhanBey), a pleasure embodiment expert, and it cracked something open in me. I began to truly understand that my sexual energy wasn’t just powerful; it was sacred. I compare it to teaching a child not to touch the oven because they could get hurt; but at some point, if they’re going to learn to cook, that teaching has to evolve into showing them how to use it properly and safely.

Ironically, the more I honored that, the less sex I had. Not from fear. From reverence. I stopped handing myself over to anyone who couldn’t meet me where I was out of desperation or loneliness. Whether the connection was romantic, sexual, or both, it had to align with how I saw myself…not the wounded version, but the whole, radiant one.

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Now I can say I know what true liberation is and it’s not about how many people I do or do not sleep with or how wild my sex life looks from the outside even though the group chat knows it gets a little wild over here 😝. It’s about knowing yourself so deeply that you choose from a place of power, not pain. It’s about honoring your body, your energy, and your worth with every decision. Liberation isn’t about performance; it’s about sovereign presence.

Been burned by liberation too? You’re not alone. Hit reply or drop a comment. I’d love to hear your story.

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This is 6-year-old Ra'myl Pierre. I'm writing this in tears because I just saw the horrific news that his mother in Florida has been charged with his murder. According to reports, she told detectives she believed she was told by God to "exorcise demons out of the child's body."

We need to have a serious discussion about how closely related some commonly held beliefs are to the extreme actions taken in this case, particularly when it comes to demonizing and trying to "pray away" conditions like autism and other mental health challenges.

You may try to dismiss this and say she's lying, or that she's the one with the demon, but that's because you don't see how close many of your own beliefs are to hers. You don't realize that the ways in which some fundamentalist Christian ideologies demonize conditions like autism, depression, and other mental health challenges often attempting to "pray them away" or attributing them to spiritual attack are eerily similar in their underlying premise to what this mother tragically did to her child.

This case is a stark and heartbreaking example of the extreme dangers of spiritual bypassing and demonizing conditions that are actually complex neurological, psychological, or developmental realities. When people are indoctrinated to believe that illness, disability, or even certain behaviors are the result of demonic possession, it can lead to devastating consequences, preventing individuals from seeking actual medical or therapeutic help, and in the most extreme cases, leading to unfathomable tragedies like this one.

We need to critically examine the ways in which some religious doctrines can foster an environment where genuine human struggles are mislabeled as spiritual warfare, leading to profound harm. This isn't just about one mother; it's a wake-up call about the potential dangers lurking within many fundamentalist interpretations of faith that deny scientific understanding and replace it with dangerous spiritual explanations. We need to do better at discerning between genuine faith and harmful ideology, and advocate for compassion, understanding, and evidence-based care for all.

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This devastating incident demands that we critically examine the foundations of our beliefs and the institutions that shape them. A systematic deconstruction and decolonization of the church's approach to human experience is long overdue. While I personally found the path to change from within to be untenable, leading me to leave the church, my commitment to this work remains unwavering. I will continue to build, educate, and support movements that prioritize human dignity, mental well-being, and true spiritual freedom, believing that change, even if not from within the established institution, is still profoundly possible.

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The commenter shared that in his church experience, sex was not shamed. Sex was talked about, even celebrated, so long as it was between married couples. He mentioned “Tom Thumb weddings,” sexually suggestive comments from ministers to their spouses, and an overall openness about the topic. He ended his comment with, “I guess this was the minority.” Before I move on I must say I take issue with “Tom Thumb weddings” and feel they borderline in grooming children.

He might be the minority regarding being harmed by purity culture theology, but not necessarily for having those experiences. I too was raised in a church culture that also taught sex was a gift… but only if you were married. Sensuality was allowed, encouraged even… but only within the covenant of a heteronormative marriage. At the time, it felt like freedom. I was raised to be a wife and a mother and for a long time I desired that just as it was modeled to me.

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At 23 years old when I decided to engage in sexual intercourse for the first time all of that began to unravel.  What I’ve come to understand after years of deconstruction, study, and sitting with other survivors is that purity culture theology is rape culture with better branding. It might feel progressive because we’re talking about it openly where other churches do not even discuss within the confines of marriage, but it isn’t. It’s also is not only framed as the “right” way in order to please God, but the way to keep you safe.

Regardless of their intent purity culture, whether overtly shame-based or subtly dressed up in celebration language, is a tool of control. It ties our worth to our sexual behavior and wraps shame in a Bible verse. It punishes autonomy and calls it holiness. And yes, it is deeply rooted in the same mechanisms that feed rape culture: the denial of consent, the expectation of silence, the assumption that a person’s body is not truly their own.

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Saying “sex is good in marriage” is not a liberating message. It is conditional permission. It centers control. It makes pleasure something to be earned through obedience, not something innately sacred.

And it’s equally as important to name that this control doesn’t land equally on everyone.

Another layer to this conversation that often gets overlooked in these conversations is male privilege. In most church spaces, men are positioned very differently when it comes to sex and sensuality. They’re often celebrated for their sexuality and even encouraged to express it (within the approved boundaries, of course). Meanwhile, women, femmes, and our LGTBQIA+ family members are burdened with the responsibility of everyone else’s purity.

We’re told to cover up, shut up, wait, and pray. We are the gatekeepers of men’s urges and the moral barometers of the community. When a pastor jokes on the mic about his wife’s body, it’s “cute” or “edifying.” When a woman dares to speak openly about her own desire, she’s called a Jezebel. That’s not holiness. That’s patriarchy.

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I want to be very clear if purity culture teaching has felt freeing for you and/or empowering in your specific experience it has been oppressive, violating, and silencing for many others including myself. This isn’t about negating your story; it’s about expanding the lens to see what else has been true in the same spaces. So no, that commenters experience wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t the whole picture.

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What messages did you receive about pleasure and sex as a child? Share in the comments.

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I can close my eyes and return to that moment in his room. Abuela's body was draped over him, the family surrounding him and me as I sang "His Eye is on the Sparrow" while he took his last breath. 🥺

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More than that day, though, I choose to remember our secret bike rides to Dairy Queen for ice cream, the way he made room for my questions about God and the Bible even when we disagreed, him sharing his cafe’ with me before bed and how he used to sit me on his knee and say, “Molonga, you’re gonna save the family one day.” The meaning was lost on me then, but now I see it clearly: he knew I carried the power to break generational curses.

Te amo, Abuelo. I hope I’m making you proud.

❤️ your Molonga

This year, I’m baking my own cake. it’s a proper chocolate cake, from scratch. Dark chocolate, rich and decadent. Strawberry filling, homemade and a light, airy cream cheese frosting. Miles away from the box cake. But the smell… the smell of chocolate baking… it unlocks something. A flood of memories. Her smile, a little strained, because she hated baking. The way she’d sing “Happy Birthday,” perfectly on pitch. The slightly sticky feeling of the cheap frosting on my fingers. It makes me ache, a dull, familiar pang in my chest. I miss… the simplicity. The feeling of being cared for, even if it was expressed in a slightly lopsided, overly sweet box cake. But then…then I remember. The other things. The sharp words, the criticism, the jealousy, the absence, the way her love always came with conditions. And I look at this cake, this beautiful, my cake, and I realize… this is better. This is me. Made with my own hands, with ingredients I chose. It’s perfect, in its own way. And even though a little voice whispers, “Call her,” I won’t. I can’t.

I've been "baking my own cake" for a very long time now. So, I’m very familiar with that little voice. The truth is that responsibility has been mine since I was 15 years old. It hasn’t been easy. There's a grief that comes with it, a kind of orphanhood while your parent is still alive. It would have hurt more to remain connected, to constantly be intentionally violated than to walk away and finally take care of myself, the way I've had to my whole life. At least now, I can heal the wounds of my childhood without giving her the opportunity to create fresh ones. Now, I get to show my inner child and inner teen the love, acceptance, encouragement, and validation that I didn't get from her.

Let me be very clear, I don’t share this to villainize my mother. I know that being a mother is the hardest job in the world, especially when you're doing it alone. But I was exhausted. I'd spent so much energy giving empathy to her that I had none left for myself. Unfortunately, for her, I made a commitment to myself seven years ago: any relationship that required me to choose them over myself was not a relationship I could be a part of.

So yeah, this cake… it's a symbol of where I came from, yes, but more importantly, it's a symbol of where I am now. And where I'm going. And that… that's a much sweeter taste.

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I have a started an 8 week FREE course on Faith & Deconstruction over on my Tiktok channel. If you would like to join, but are not on Tiktok you’re in luck because I have made it available to anyone who would like to join.

Download my free e-book “Beginners Guide to Deconstruction” to join the course today by clicking here.

“Faith & Deconstruction” guides you through the process of critically examining and reshaping your spiritual and personal belief systems. Grounded in the principles of deconstruction and decolonization, this journey will help you uncover and dismantle limiting ideologies, challenge colonial influences, and create a framework that aligns with your authentic values, identity, and aspirations. Through historical context, personal reflection, education, dialogue, and reconstruction, you’ll gain tools for lifelong learning, growth, and empowerment.

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The room was dark so I did not get a good look at his face, a fact that has haunted me since that night. All I saw was that he was wearing dark colored clothes with a hoodie, seemed to be over 6 ft tall and slender. Those are all the details I have on the man who decided that my safety and security was no where near as important as whatever he was hoping to take from me. I have so many questions that will likely go unanswered such as, did he see my face? Has he been watching my comings and goings? What would have happened if I was home instead of just walking back in? What if he would have come in while I was in the shower or coming out of it? Unfortunately, I have to find a way to be ok with hopefully never getting those answers.

Be that as it may, I’m grateful it wasn’t worse. I’m grateful my firearm and crisis response training kicked in just in time to prevent it from being worse. I’m grateful for the quick response of almost everyone I reached out to. I’m grateful for my growth to not go through this alone.

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Even with gratitude I’m still very angry that he would do that to me. I’m angry at whatever circumstances he’s going through that he’d think that was his only option. I’m also scared especially in the still of the night. I’m scared to go to sleep. I’m scared to leave the door closed to my back room. I’m scared to leave it open and as much as I want to move past this stage I can’t. So, for now I'm allowing myself to feel it all—gratitude, anger, fear, and everything in between. Healing doesn't happen on a schedule, and I won't rush it. But what I do know is that I'm still here, and that means I have the chance to reclaim my peace, my safety, and my space, one moment at a time.

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For now, I'm taking it one breath, one day, and one step forward. And for that, I'm grateful.

In the sacred folds of this human existence, I have come to know pleasure as a prayer. It is not indulgence, not mere satisfaction— but a pathway, a practice, a temple I enter to meet the Divine and remember myself.

Pleasure whispers to me in unexpected ways: the softness of silk brushing my skin, the taste of fruit kissed by sunlight, the laughter that escapes my lips spontaneously. These are not distractions; they are sacraments, calling me home.

When I allow myself to feel deeply, to savor rather than rush, I open the door to something eternal. The Divine is there, not in judgment, but in delight—in the rhythm of my breath, the curve of my smile, the heat of my tears.

This practice demands presence, a surrender to the now, a willingness to unshackle joy from guilt and obligation. To know that pleasure is not earned; it is gifted.

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In these moments of reverence, I see myself more clearly— not as a vessel of flaws or striving, but as creation, beloved and whole. I meet the Divine not as an outsider, but as a reflection, a participant in the dance of abundance.

Through pleasure, I heal the wounds that tell me I must suffer to be worthy. Through pleasure, I rewrite the story that holiness is separate from humanity. I discover that to relish life fully is to honor the Divine who breathed it into me.

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So I embrace pleasure as my practice, a ritual of returning, a communion of the senses. In every taste, every touch, every sigh, I find a thread that leads me back to love, to God, to myself.

Spring 2005 was my last semester before graduating from UMBC. I should have been excited and a part of me was but that excitement was overshadowed by fear and anxiety. My mother and baby sister were secretly staying in my dorm room because they had no other place to go. I had no job prospects and given that my mother was unhoused I was preparing to be as well. To make matters worse I had also lost my church home and thus my community due to spiritual abuse at the hands of the Pastor. I was depressed and having suicidal ideations. Most of my childhood I had dreamt of getting my college degree and here I was about to obtain it and yet my life was in shambles. I did get a glimmer of hope, though, when my sorority chapter advisor heard that I was looking for a new church home and invited me to hers.

I started attending her church and immediately was drawn to the worship and the dynamic word by the Pastor. I then found a place to stay sleeping on another sorority sister’s couch for the summer and my mom and baby sister also found a place to stay. The month after graduation I got a job at a mortgage company in their Spanish department and started saving for my own apartment. Things were far from ideal and I was uninterested in anything that wasn’t work or church. All of the changed when one day during the church’s annual conference a man approached me from behind and introduced himself to me. I turned around fully prepared to dismiss him but in that split second something calmed me down. It wasn’t love or lust at first sight, though. It was a knowing. The only problem was I didn’t know what I was knowing. We exchanged pleasantries and I reluctantly agreed that I would have a hug for him the next time I saw him.

Soon after our first meeting we exchanged numbers and began getting to know each other. It was effortless. We talked about everything; sharing things with each other we were both surprised to share. He was the first guy I dated to respect my vow of abstinence more than I did. I was falling fast and willing to give it up for him, but he refused. It was a blow to my ego, but it would be the first of many times he would protect me even from myself. About 3 months of dating and I started receiving clairvoyant messages about him that terrified me.

The first time it happened I received a message that he was in danger and in a panic I called him. He was as shocked as I was because just a few minutes before he had been playing basketball when someone did a drive by attempting to shoot at someone else on the court. Thankfully, he and everyone else was fine. This would happen many times, different scenarios but always confirming what I was sensing. Then another blow to my ego happened about 8 months after we started dating. He broke up with me telling me that he did not want to hurt me and that it would be better if we were only friends. I was heartbroken but respected him for how he handled it. The problem was the clairvoyant messages never stopped. If anything they increased. Additionally, we became like magnets constantly finding ourselves in the same location sometimes even when we were visiting different cities.

I did not know anyone that had this happen to them and felt mentally unstable. I spent many days and night screaming and crying to God asking Him to take this away from me. Why would I be so spiritually connected to someone who only wanted to be my friend? I was confused and lost. For the first time since we met I didn’t have him to share this with. He was the person that most got me in the entire world and I couldn’t talk to him about what I was experiencing. Looking for comfort, hope, or guidance I would eventually vent to my friends. Overwhelmingly I was told that what I had was a soul tie and to just forget about him and move on. I did have a couple friends who were supportive, but ultimately none of us knew what was happening to me. No matter what side they were on all of them wanted the same thing, for me to be at peace. I wanted the same thing.

So, I did the only thing that helped me to not think about him at the time, I ran. Running meant not just running from my feelings for him, but running from myself. I ran so hard I ran into abusive relationship after abusive relationship desperately wanting to be chosen by someone until I was almost unalived by one of those men. During those years what Spirit kept calling me to was to heal and to learn to trust myself. It would be through trusting myself that I would develop the most intimate relationship with the Divine that I could have imagined. Something I never learned in church. It took me 12 years but in the Spring of 2017 with my very first therapy session I finally started to do that work. 19 years after our first meeting and those messages, synchronicities, psychic ties, etc not only have not stopped but they continue to build on each other. As the both of us grow, heal and strengthen our spiritual gifts, our love and connection grows stronger.

This isn’t the happily ever after you might have been expecting, though. Prince Charming did not come save me from my tower of isolation. This is a different happily ever after where the Princess learns to save herself. I’ve learned that although there are others who have experienced a spiritual connection and love similar to ours that neither of our journeys are exactly the same. What keeps me grounded now is my relationship with myself and Spirit. Each day my trust in my what I sense and what I know increases my faith in the Divine and my increased faith in the Divine increases my trust in myself. With a relationship like that I no longer need anyone else’s validation not about this, not about my journey, not about our love.

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I’ve been thinking about starting my own substack for a while and was waiting for inspiration to strike on what direction to take. Today inspiration in stuck in a meditation. If you are new to me let me start by introducing myself to the newbies and reintroduce myself to those who have met me on some part of this journey of life. Before we start thank you for being here and I hope you stick around. By the end if you feel this is not for you there will be no hard feelings on my end.

I am LuzCelenia, eldest daughter to J. Jenkins and C. Arce, eldest sibling to Rebeca, Jahna, Nataniel, Ariana and Yecena. I am Autistic with ADHD. I am a former media professional of 11 years who now works in EdTech. I am a writer, author, singer, painter, baker…did I mention I had ADHD? Lol! I am a dog mom to LuisMiguel, a chihuahua I rescued Oct 2023. Between 2018-2020 I became certified as a meditation guide, energy healer and a spiritual life coach. January 2020 I founded “The Radiant Sessions” to create and lead healing, spiritual and transformative experiences to help people but especially Black women liberate themselves from trauma, oppressive religious systems and societal structures to guide them towards emotional maturity, healthy relationship and a pleasurable life. In January 2022 I created“Charm City Live Music” in my home city of Baltimore to connect fans of live music with artists and bands who keep Black music alive in and around the city and hosted the first “Charm City Live Music Honors.” That same year I left organized religion after embracing spirituality several years prior announcing my departure from my then church on the season premiere of my podcast “Sex and Sensuality for the Churchy.” All 3 seasons are available on Spotify for your listening pleasure. I now identify as a spiritualist, energy healer, and alchemist.

Now that we have all the pleasantries out of the way, what will I be doing here?

Writing has been a way for me to process my experiences, regulate my emotions and communicate with loved ones. One day I was trying to organize my iPhone notes and realized that more than half of them are essays or beginning of essays. I have a few books I’m in the process of writing as well and have been working through my fear of being perceived. So, I thought I could practice being seen via my writing through my blog to build my confidence while I finish writing my books. I’ve let my fear keep me from finishing those books for far too long. The only thing that is going to help me heal is by doing it. So, this blog is me doing it.

I’ll be writing about my personal experience about ,my spiritual and healing journey. I’ll also share about my practices and rituals that have helped to support my growth and transformation along with my thoughts on various topics related to spirituality, religion, healing and deconstructing.

I’m calling my substack “The Narrow Way” based on scripture from the Christian Bible found in Matthew 7 verse 14 when Jesus says, “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (ESV) Let me be clear I am not nor do I desire to be a theologian. So, if you’re looking for that here, don’t. As mentioned previously I no longer identify as a Christian, but that doesn’t mean that I hate everything that has to do with Christianity. I will often have strong critique for the Christian church, though, because that is the faith tradition I was raised in. I will also draw inspiration and lessons from scriptures and other sacred texts.

Unfortunately, for all of us the road to healing and liberation is the road less traveled. It takes a truly special person to disconnect from the matrix to do the work required for spiritual transformation. “The Narrow Way” is for the select few that have chosen this path to be seen, heard, and to learn something hopefully from each other.

I’m ready! Let’s go!

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