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June 5th, 2021, our world changed forever. In the beginning, we grasped whatever we could to survive. Words like cancer became etched in our minds forever. Escaping from the science of implementing, I found the science everywhere. The questions too, of how come, why, when, became our only way. You became the question we never knew we could ask. That women die every day from something with proven intervention. Our own Angie, died in a painful way. One week after my dad’s birthday. Another volt that grapples our mind. Why do people we love, die. Yet, if people we love die, if we can push it all aside, then living has to mean more, even if we find ourselves lodging in new places and with me faces. Those who have everything given to them, those who speak too as if they started the journey, forget how the story began. It’s at this moment, that change must come.

Words by themselves are never enough even if the microphone is in the hands of few. We created it only for cities built on hills, working with first lights to spaces, destined for greatness. See while they hide, and deny, they only end up deceiving and destroying themselves. Only thing left is to pass the microphone…The plot and the characters for this next chapter was never meant for those with narrow dreams, those exhausted, those that lack imagination, and those at the end of their own road with all their dreams achieved. According to the epic poem by Ben Okri, ‘there is no exhaustion where there is much to be hoped for, to work towards, where dreams remain unrealized.’ Ben Okri would also say, ‘when you can no longer dream, no longer see possibilities, no longer see alternatives, when you see only limitation, despair and negation, then you are in the way. You are also the problem. The exhausted obstruct, the creation of a greater future. They should therefore clear the stage for new dreamers.’ For new warriors of light too, those focused on justice and healing, storytelling and creativity, so that Angie’s death would not be in vain.

For life for me has never been castles in air. I know what it is like to rest in fields of green pastures and walk at the same time through the deepest valley. The woman we became, with feet anchored firmly to the ground, with no fear, only wanting revolution, really wanting evolution, charged by life, by death, the possible ranges of grief and living, and all the changes it propels is the infinity storytelling we have been waiting to tell. Truth it, you were never meant to tell it with others. Never meant to share it too with anyone. Few will share the vision. Few will believe it in to.

But then there is you. Defiant in your ways without excuses, the tools of the incompetent. You know how they seldom succeed. If you have brought people and things close, the next phase requires arm’s length. No need to question why they rally against your strength, no need to see how they see it too. The narrow, rough roads you must and will climb, even in silence or poetry, for Angie and for others who dare dream, requires that you remember from where your strength comes from, even when things end, even when time and things, turn on you like a violent storm. It’s deep end of the valley, keep walking through.

These days I find myself writing words that pierce the coming days with dreams. If I’m writing here often, then I am taking a break from the bigger things being manifested. While they waste their time with the same stories or indulge my space for my minds stories, know that we have moved on past the deep end of the valley, though darkness is still all we see. The next moments are only for those truly at the table. From where does our strength come from they may wonder: from Angie, from legions, from God, from a life only committed to infinity storytelling my way.

Even now with precious memories that sink forever in our soul. Even as the weight of sadness still remains our world, our torch, our life. Our forces are fully focused, pointing to choices, leading away from the familiar. When I speak of change, I don’t mean only seasons. I mean knowing my story, and they ways I’ll tell it to infinity, not in other to complain or force anyone to listen, but as a powerful and eloquent reminder to keep what matters most, and Isioma I write these words, in their fullness, powerfully, to remind you, to keep you.

The end of an era for some, the beginning of dreams for others. If it felt different, I was liberating myself…When it’s time, I will amaze. Till then, keep you!

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Imagine what may happen, if we apply the wonders of our souls, use the mind that mapped the moon, the stars and the womb, to reach beyond the wildest dreams of ourselves. We are not defined by our failures. We are not changed by our goals too. Rivers have changed their courses. We can do the same too. What we call limits for some, are only the starting place for others. Choose your course wisely. Which is why those who impact lives are a force. Those who move without fear, push through fear, sail above fear, turn towards fear, while breaking beyond fear, are like luminous sunsets. To see them shine, to hear them dream and re-dream new worlds, those within reach, clearing deadwood and stale thinking, is to see the powers of solar systems. I saw them today. Listened as they spoke in words powerful, dreamt in love brazen, as they sought to liberate women, from the tight grips of cervical cancer. That we are more or less, the solutions to all that ails us, makers of tomorrow, dreamers for today, is to see the greatest gifts of life. We can gift it to each other. I choose and will choose to do it alone now more than ever, seeing familiarity breeds contempt. I am prepared to shape this beautiful dream, that no woman will ever die from cervical cancer. This is personal to me. I will go the distance, alone, or with a few committed people to impact lives. Thank you for the gifts you all gave us today. That we are still here, and can still rise is a gift. See us now press forward. Our tomorrow is even greater than today. We owe tomorrow, abundant grace, as we work, with only the right people surrounding our table, to impact lives. Silence and poetry is the best answer for others.

It’s a wrap. What a wonderful designathon. Ben Okri inspired the words above.
Kudos to our first place winners!

True story, when team Camgo came to the contest, I asked them to describe their ideas. One of the daugthers, started describing going to the market place to reach out to women selling fish. She would asked them to use their hard end money to buy some token that can then be used to promote HPV vaccination and HPV screening. I said, why don’t you go to the women directly. You don’t need the money from their fish. What if they sold other things. Don’t all women need this. They listened and today they are winners. I am proud. It’s this few that make all this totally worth it. I can’t wait to dream out this future of how we impact lives together.

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We stood at the edge of decision recently, one crucial and alone. We refused to indulge another moment of failed dreams. We have seen seasons come and go. We have looked inward and outward to make sense of the day. Now, we want to breed futures full of dreams. Now we are like bread on a birds mouth. We are dreaming where others thought dreaming was an excuse. Anger was a faint line on my forehead. There are many uses of it, we are learning. For those never meant to survive. These days, as the sunrises, we will dream. As it sets, we will still dream. Our hearts are still full. Days like today will never come again. Not for those unafraid to dream. We will still dream. Though change is coming. Though we wish it was today. We see what lack of dreams breed. The contempt and hatred too. Yet, we will wait to still dream and dream again, knowing the next time, for those who dare dream, would be divine. Welcome to the end of dreamless existence.

We are thinking outside the box as we dream dreams bigger than life. Thank you to those still prepared to dream. All others, please, well…We are grateful. But, well…Words above inspired by Ms. Lorde.

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I used to wonder about seasons and change. About spring and change. About sudden nearness of days, that seem only to lead to weariness and pain. Today I stood in front of strangers, stood in front of friends and colleagues too. Spoke of pain, spoke of the day, I knew when the rain began to beat me. We still carry a heavy burden. Of guilt, of silence, of what it’s like to wish, for time, to wish for life. This week has been full of lessons. A friend lost his wife, just as their new triplets arrived in the world. I launched a cervical cancer program that started only because my sister in-law died. The end is hard. Beginnings too. I felt both this week. If I was silent, I was processing change. If I was absent, I was liberating change. Both are happening simultaneously that all I can say is grace. So many tried to bring me down this month of March. So many thought I would fall, but they forgot my name is Isioma, my mother is Onyelo, and I am the granddaughter of a woman who persevered. Legions are always behind me. They birthed me and made me their wildest dreams. Our resilience is weird. Our future bristles with possibilities. What they tried to destroy, is only stronger. When it’s time, I will amaze.

Welcome to our 4 girls and women designathon. In memory of Angie.

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What public health does not need, is people unwilling to exact the truth. Those unable to look beyond the mirror, to illuminate life for those we serve. So these words are not written to impress. Not even written to note all the ways we let the public down. Rather we will put people back into the center. Lines will speak of the ways the public participated. Moments when voices pierced the silence around. Those that led gently to light. Those that exposed the wounds of injustice. We have tried to communicate. The public would rather conquer. We pounded consultation to a pulp. The public mocked the lumps of sugar in our throats. Sweet words never led to basic needs. Not yesterday or tomorrow. So we ask now that the public participate. However they see fit. Moments of despair. Those of hope. Whatever the public wants we will try though broken or whole. We only ask that you watch us closely. There is hope still preserved in things full of light.

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I have always loved the name Nkiruka. The idea that what’s in the future is greater keeps me grounded. There are of course those who don’t believe in the possibilities of tomorrow. Those too who prefer the trappings of today. Certain aspects of life demand that we wait. Not for greater glory or for its heroic aspects. Yet I don’t want to dwell on this. The raw experience that tomorrow brings, the feelings and reality too it exposes, the flicker, the hope, even the mere vital hint of the will to persist, the confrontation, the commitment, the confusion, connections that unfold in the silence of lingering doubts and uncertainties, the waxing too and waning of moons, this restless truth that tomorrow is certain but today is soon enough is why names like Nkiruka matters to keep. Keep, keep the future. It matters for today. And for a friend named Nkiru who gets to finally begins her match towards tomorrow. We are grateful God.

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We celebrate things we see. Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, marriages, even funerals. But the things in life we rarely see, those that leave us breathless or speechless are worthy of praises too.

I have shared previously that for every single visible thing I keep, there are many that remain invisible. Some the world may never see. The aspiration, to remain invisible. Writing in this manner started as an exercise focused on keeping something, my way, and free from any guide. The true value continues to unfold with each day. To keep something may have been the true intent. Yet, the next phase keeps me humble. My spirit had to go through this exercise of purging itself of everything that held me back. In doing so, my eyes opened.

I became the child that was not satisfied with the lagoon, when my eyes have greeted oceans. The unseen things in my life these days are my masterpiece. What you see, the ones celebrated too, are merely byproducts. It has been difficult to dream up the next phase, to summon up the courage to accept what the spirit desires without struggle, even when I would rather hold on to a higher calling. I am who I am after all. Writing freely has indeed woken my mind up, like birds without wings, who still sublimely fly. All the possibilities too, those for change, those for freedom, those focused on lasting, those full of light, and those guided by the spirit, are its many gifts. The sun has moved permanently close. The stars and moon too. I am a child of all, and now prepared to amaze.

From A way of being free by Ben Okri

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How might we create the conditions for a soulful life. I am learning this every day. In a quest to do my most audacious work, I found myself strolling down a never ending hole of what it means to live your most authentic life whether at work or at home.

For starters, and everyone will have to discover this for themselves, but it means doing work necessary for your soul. Not for profits, not even for pleasure, but for all the possibilities that exist when you know your soul.

From Breathe Magazine!

It means being open even when you would rather be closed. It means thinking and speaking in images, like how rivers change their course and so can you. It means paying attention to your dreams, it feeds your soul. It means being aware of where you are going, even when the road seems long and unwinding. It means having a litany for survival, knowing you were never meant to survive. It means knowing when the rain began to fall on you. It also means learning how to carry water and air and anything that seems free and light for only a free mind can make a free world.

It means giving your life all the beautiful things it needs, like watching two birds spread their wings and soar at the glimpse of your arrival. It’s the soaring part you keep, knowing that every time you fall, the alternative is to rise. It means stepping into your eternity, your own kind of paradise where the sun and the moon rise to greet you. It means aiming for the fullness of life, it’s emptiness at times, but it’s fullness most times, like in Spring when new flowers start to bloom. It means creating conditions that allow your soul to live, even if it means turning things upside down and stepping away from that which depletes your soul. There will come a time when you will have to leave this world. We will all die one day. Until that time comes, do what makes your soul happy. As for me this mere moment of reflection is all I never knew I needed. Welcome to my most soulful year.

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The idea of lasting is like electricity. The switch turns on, and I am fully charged. My mind becomes a tunnel threatening to force me to burrow deeply. Eyes are bright, like the sharpest blue of spring sun. Head focused as if on a edge of a cliff. As if waiting to meet another head unbowed. Mother bear turned research lion, I begin to work day and night until the ideas in my head on how to last take shape. They haunt me on days I dream of becoming. A bird and her nest, I take pieces of information, stick by stick, about which ideas to follow or not follow, for proper definition of what it means to last. I will not stop until the last stick is placed.

Sustainment is beyond wishful goals these days. It cannot be the music I heard yesterday. The type that lingers on what to do. Not the why and how to truly do it. Failure has tightened my heart with a band of doubt that only success or more failure may unravel. So I put more oil in my lamp, sip a cool glass of mango juice, and go back to work. These days I am mostly waiting, for when Spring will come and whether flowers will sprout or whither. We spent last fall planting seeds that I pray flourish this Spring. The dreams are as wild as a bed of wild flowers. This idea of lasting may seem trivial to some, seem unlikely to some, seem unbelievable to many, but then it’s me and if my dreams are not bigger than me, then I’m not yet dreaming. Spring has my heart in a knot, only time will loosen it, ideas may loosen it, or failure may keep it tangled and back to the dull hull of the previous year’s ache. Either way, I’ll wait for Spring.

Art I saw on Twitter today (@Dr. Chandra Ford) inspired these thoughts in lasting.

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I have been speaking about sustainability for a long time. I woke up to to a phone call this morning that asked if I could speak on it to a group in less than 30 minutes. I said yes ( because I have been thinking about this topic for a long time) and proceeded to create a presentation in 30 minutes. During the presentation, I was mesmerized by the person speaking. Granted it was me, but the words that seem to come to me, came from places I tend to ignore about why this topic truly matters to me. I have written failed grants about it. Dreamt about it. Thought about writing both fiction and non fiction on it and well it is at the heart of why I keep this blog in the first place. The idea of something, anything that lasts. Not for publications or accolades, not even for funding, but because I care deeply about why things should last. I found myself speaking about people now dead who championed this issue. I spoke about papers from 1990 on this issue. I shared my dreams and new ideas soon to be birthed this year about it, but above all I realized why I care deeply about this work.

This urgency to give meaning to sustainment is the source and meaning of my work these days. It continues to help me dream, widens my ambitions with any health issue that remains a persistent source of inequities, reminds me often that I will fail because people don’t understand it, yet still I will rise. I want to believe this fever for all things sustainment will break one day, and I too may end up saying that things never last for a reason. All the things I do these days, all these writing are both my guide and hope. Every single thing I keep is reminder of the very thing I continue to seek. What am I seeing, what is seeing me too, and how I tell it’s story is the reason I know I need to reach beyond myself this year. This work is out of this world, like the very air that I breath. So I close by claiming it, naming it, as I prepare to intensify, what may seem impossible, with my biggest dreams still.

My plans for sustainability are beyond me, but I will dream, be ambitious, embrace the dip, and still rise. Amen.

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As days become week, and weeks, month, and months year, the angering for your life lingers. As days become week, and weeks, months and months year, memories of you, and echoes of Osodieme, lingers still. Days will be weeks and weeks will be months and months will be years, yet what will become of all this anger, the memories, the echoes of you that continue to draw air on their own, as if life has barely moved, as if death nourishes us still. Your cervix may have won this time, but we are up fighting as nothing else matters.

Keep resting till we meet again.

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Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well? This question has always haunted my spirit. It’s from Toni Cade Bambara’s novel, The Salteaters. It is also apt for today. That and what does being well mean for the public’s health, from a social justice lens, radical wellness too and not from experts alone, or those who have credentials, but from you the general public and with your fiction or nonfiction?

Who are your go to references for being radically well and how do you even begin to define wellness for yourself? Of course it led me down a rabbit hole, one where I am now obsessed with how people, those in fiction and non fiction, those with expertise and none, define what they mean by wellness.

I have been struck by the myriad of ways people define wellness, especially those focused on people of color. It matters to me these days that for the public, we define what wellness means, not just from what the dominant literature may tell us, but from everyday people who continue to struggle with answering the question: ‘Are you sure, sweetheart, you want to be well.’ So, from what I gathered from the Bettina Love’s profound book ‘We want to do more than survive’ wellness is:

A choice

A type of freedom that comes when you let go of your fears and move your anger into a space of healing.

Wisdom and being well is hard work.

Part of social justice work.

An inner life that refuses to be treated less than human.

Being vulnerable.

Finding the roots of your own Black Joy, Black love, and humanity.

Choosing to see ourselves beyond illness or disease.

Having an inner self that can be quiet and enjoy life.

Recognizing the pain of our ancestors knowing the beauty and resilience of that pain lives on in us.

Knowing who you are regardless of what is thrown at you.

Integenerational.

Different for different people.

Healing that is unrecognizable to White people and different from them.

Being your best self while fighting injustice.

Fighting racism with life, grace, compassion.

Having mental space and freedom to dream, give hell, and retreat to one’s community of love for support, fulfillment, and nourishment.

Being whole.

Bringing your full self.

Joining others in the fight for humanity and antiracism in love and solidarity.

Confronting internalized White supremacy, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Isamophobia, fat phobia, classism, ableism, and the rage that comes as a result of these hateful ideas.

Keep doing more than surviving with these radical wellness definitions in mind.

Keep Professor Love’s approach to wellness in mind.