Kujichagulia: 2018

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.

Kujichagulia:

What I’ve learned this year:

Recovery isn’t linear

Recovery is different for everyone

There’s no one correct way walk

Each pathway is personal

Design by the heavens

Guided by our ancestors

We learned that:

Black is Beautiful

Trans people are beautiful

I do not have to be quiet because I have a vagina

Masculinity and Femininity are fluid

Degree’s mean shit

Money is not a cure for problems

Mental Illness is not a defect

There’s no correct way to be Black, Hispanic, Woman, or LGBTQ

Your life is not my life

I took the path less chosen

I walked the road less traveled

I am strong

I am sexy

I am divine

I am unique

I MATTER!

Never let your vote be taken

Never lay idle

Boys can wear dresses, and little girls can play with trucks

I am black and educated

I work to play harder

Kujichagulia means self-determination

Joyous Kwanzaa

I am never alone.

With the many faces, I see

The many voices I never hear

As long as the season change

As long as children still play and laugh

As long as babies are born

As long as trees give shade in the sunlight

Days are longer, not shorter

And the Sun rises as the Moon Sets

I am never alone

 

Kwanzaa: Imani: Faith

• Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

Let us start our New Year with faith, that this year will be better. Let us learn from the years before,  repeat and advance what has worked well. This year we are a new people. We walk with God, and the angels are our ancestors. We spread the message of faith and fight with words of prayer. Prayer and silence are our weapons. “We shall overcome”….today! We are a people of faith, spiritual beings have a humanistic experience. Let us make a footprint on the hearts of our people and encourage change from within.

Joyous Kwanzaa

Happy New Years.

Kwanzaa: Kuumba:

• Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

 

Let us procreate artwork, paint our street, plant trees, plant flowers; live creatively. Create our version of heaven, our perceptions of heaven and make it happen. Why die to experience beauty and tranquility when we can make it happen here. Let us make the heavens proud. Let us recycle, reduce our carbon footprint and save this planet. Save the animals. See the beauty in nature, beauty in seasons, beauty in calamity. Lets purposefully this year, I mean intentionally see beauty, let it grow, cultivate it, multiply it….starting off my being creatively artistically self-expressive

 

Joyous Kwanzaa