Shoot Promos on Race, Class, Gender, Etc

"Lift the veil that obscures the heart and there you will find what you are looking for." - Kabir For the last several weeks I've been dealing with the grief of my vision board and everything it symbolized. For me it was grieving the loss of a life I'll never get to experience; a life that validated and rewarded all of the trials, birthing pains, and rebirths I experienced within this lifetime. It validated the decision to keep trying because there was sunshine on the other side of depression and suicide. It was the manifestation of self-love that I had constructed that identified and honored the coping mechanisms and survival tools I created as a result of a lifetime of rejection, abandonment, and feeling unworthy. When I discarded my vision board I severed the delicate bungee cord that allowed me to stare into the abyss and be roped back into the realm of the living. I spent the next week in a virtual free fall and returning to old fears and anxieties: that nothing ...

"All too often we think of community in terms of being with folks like ourselves: the same class, same race, same ethnicity, same social standing and the like... I think we need to be wary: we need to work against the danger of evoking something that we don't challenge ourselves to actually practice." - Bell Hooks Continuing from my blog last week about the fallout and trauma response from the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident at the Oscars ( and that my friends is what we in the business refer to as a callback; no I am not in the business ), I was left with the feeling that I had no place in a world that perpetuates and indirectly rewards such broken masculinity. I felt isolated. I felt disconnected. I felt defeated. Because the truth of the matter was, I was broken too. Maybe not in the same way that caused Will Smith to lose his sh*t, but I identified with that hurt even while recognizing how toxic it was. It's why I had such an intense reaction and why it elicited a ...

"You don't need someone to complete you, you only need someone to accept you completely." - Unknown During my therapy session this week, I shared how I spent my week off conducting a social experiment embracing my independence without people pleasing. What did that look like and how did I show up for myself? How did it feel to curate my own itinerary, to only do the activities that I wanted to do, and to create peak experiences? Every decision was made out of desire. Big decisions like what hotel I was going to stay at, where I was going to sit for the Silk Sonic concert, and what night I was going to visit Partage for the tasting menu experience. To the minute decisions like what times I was going to utilize the hotel gym and pool, which ended up being the earlier the better before both places got too crowded. Anxiety attack aside (read last week's blog detailing that), the result was that I felt a sense of validation once I acknowledged that I accomplished everythi...