We are meant to live our lives full. Demand excellence first for ourselves, then gift it to the world. I’m in a space where only things that make my life richer and full are allowed. I enter this space with grace and empowered to lead others to their fullness too. I do so loving what I do, even in moments when work doesn’t love me back. Yet, I move knowing the value of love, its appeal and how it has helped me live life to the fullest. I call this the uses of power. Modeled this after Audre Lorde’s uses of the erotic.

See, I started writing grants because I was told, it’s the only way to survive academia. You all know the horror stories. You know too, it’s worse from those you least expect it from. Those that dismiss or reject you. Those that would rather suffer than discuss all the ways the system makes us suffer. I choose to discuss and I offer myself always as an example of what can be if we are radically open. The process is hard. I said that yesterday. You don’t ask for millions and expect a bed full of roses. I know what it’s like to not sleep in 24 hours. When the pressure is on, it is in full rage mode. But I also know what it’s like to unwind. Sign me up for blue crystal waters or village living among tall palm trees any day.

What many never see is the balance. I live my life in balance. I also write here almost everyday to release. I may write about the same thing over and over again. It’s called expressive writing and it healing properties are immense. So I enter this space, knowing life can be different. I walk deeply through this space, assessing and reassessing the quality of my life, my work, and how I can let light move in and through it. This personification of love, one born out of the will to create, to live in harmony with the need to tell a different story, is a lifeforce, one that every single grant I have written, those that succeeded and those those that failed, empowered.

There are no two me. Try as you may, but I know my worth. It’s in my middle name, something my ancestors saw long before I was born. You don’t name someone Isioma and expect her to not live out the full potential of that name. This knowledge alone, empowers me and is a lens through which I scrutinize my time on earth. So I step into this space, this time of my life, reclaiming my worth, restoring my power, and knowing deeply, that I can do anything, through him who is the source of this power.

It’s this knowledge, that is deep within, open and fearless, strong and rich within, that I know seek to present to the world. I no longer fear the yes within myself. I no longer suppress any truth about my existence. That I have endured pain is well know these days. That it has come from people I least expected, some I admired and some I called my own, should be plain and direct. But I can’t be docile or loyal to what can or should be. Not when I graciously choose me. Boldly live within the power that is deep within me, and use it to inform and illuminate spaces that have been in darkness for so long.

These days, I am motivated and empowered from within. I share all of this here to use for my own good. Your own too. Never forget humble beginnings, they say. I don’t intend to. But I will move past them. I will not look away, even if you do the same. I will write and heal and write and heal until there is only writing, only healing too, my way. It’s this healing, this writing too, that allows me to purse change within my world, rather than settle for lip service. I step into this next phase of my life, in the fullness of the power, that I know is deep within.