Emma Lee MC - How We Rewild

"Freedom is the courage to know darkness, but to maintain your humanity in that darkness."

Sometimes I can’t quite believe that Emilia and I have only connected over Zoom just one time so far, I already feel a bone-deep kinship has been formed and nurtured between us.

I’m currently reading her incandescent autobiography, Y'All (Not) Gon' Make Me Lose My Mind: Notes from a Hip-Hop Unicorn & Suicide Survivor and often find myself hanging out on her social media, just so I can keep soaking in her vibes. On there, we exchange dope messages of love, support and encouragement. She is such a beautiful, luminous and loving soul, I find myself fantasising that I can just hop on a flight to NYC so that we can grab brunch in Harlem and keep chewing the fat about all the stuff that matters to conscious Black women in 2024 and beyond.

And her music, y’all! Oh man, her music! It’s as though she’s stepped into my head, weaved her way into my soul, figured out everything that matters to me, things I treasure and love about music, love and life and then created an album, Chocolate Bars. I’m not a music reviewer but I recognise insane musical genius and lyrical mastery, when I hear it. I love to get lost in the pure poetry and creativity of her lyrics, the dreamy hooks and the dope beats.

She truly deserves to exist in that space where legends and icons reside. And it’s an honour for me to call her friend and sis.

Our zoom chat was long, beautiful, informed and just a whole vibe. If you’d like to experience Emilia in full - live and unedited - I’m leaving the audio here (as I did edit for length).

Otherwise, come dive into her magical, creative wisdom with me below, it’s a treat.

Emma Lee MC

Who and where are you in the world?

I am God in me. I am myself. I am Ugandan, an original woman of Earth. I am by first name and government name, Emilia A. Ottoo and by artist alias, Emma Lee MC. I am a multi-hyphenate. I am a creative, an artist, a builder, a producer, an investor, a destroyer and a professional wrestler.

And I'm a child of the universe.

Where am I? I am, thankfully, in multiple places internationally because of my work. I haven't been there in many years, but I'm in Germany because of my music. I'm all over the states and in Jamaica, because of my book. And I have a piece of my heart in Japan, because that's where one of my best friends lives and is from.

So I'm in multiple places on earth, but I am currently physically broadcasting from Harlem and the South Bronx in New York City, USA.

How much of a priority in your day-to-day life do you place in looking after your whole self ie. mind, body, energy, soul. Can you share what kind of practices a typical day/week might include?

Self-care is extremely primary in my life. Now, can I do a lot better at it? Yes, absolutely. Starting mentally or internally, is a priority for me in pretty much every moment of every day. And I know that might sound extreme, because how can anybody do anything every moment of every day, but that's what I strive for.

An example of this is when people ask me, ‘How are you?’, I used to say, like most people, ‘I'm fine. I'm good’, you know, whatever it takes to get them out of my face with that question. But for a few years now, I've answered the question with ‘I'm staying positive’.

I've experienced a great shift ever since that became my go-to answer. It’s not just a response though. This is what I really feel. This is what I really believe. Because staying positive is the one thing that I can and do control, no matter what.

So yes I may stumble and falter, but staying positive is my intention, it’s my direction and that's where my active inspired action is. A lot of times, I follow that up with, ‘That's my number one job.’ ,

Some days, staying positive is a real challenge, so it feels bold. It’s honest too, because sometimes you’re hit with a bunch of stuff, maybe something upsetting, triggering, frustrating or disappointing has happened. But even if I don’t feel positive, I just tell my being that I’m going to stay positive and it keeps a generator of positivity flowing through me.

I choose to call my inner work a job and so I see staying positive as my number one job. There's no clock in, clock out. It's just my job and I'm paid for it. I'm paid very well, there are benefits and there is paid time off. But I get the sense that people have no idea sometimes about the inner work I'm doing that's behind everything I do.

There's so much suffering in the world. and people go through so much. You can have a conversation with anybody and find out things that they have experienced. And our resilience, our insight, our hearts are amazing. The human being is amazing the way we're able to transcend and create and produce and persevere, even though we don't see instant results. We have these amazing hearts and minds.

So when I see people doing well and doing different things, I'm inspired, and I feel like, wow, look at what this person's doing, especially if I know they've been through a little something. But I know there are people out there, who may experience jealousy or envy when they see people doing well. I always think when people see me, if they feel some type of way, I'm like, you honestly don't want to go through what I went through to have these successes.

I wouldn't wish my life on anybody else. Even though there are a lot of wonderful things there and I do see the lessons and the fruit of the seeds of why I went through certain things, there are still a bunch of experiences that I wish I didn’t have to go through to get the lessons on the other side. I wish we didn’t have certain scars.

And so, if you want the gold and the happiness of my achievements, you'd also have to have my scars. And I don't think you would want that, because I've had to do the work to be able to enjoy and have the ability to achieve those things despite the scars.

And there’s another thing about self-care - there’s a quote (I don’t remember who said it) that says we don't self-care so that we can deal with the pain, we self-care so that we can experience the happiness, so that we can actually live now. There is so much pain that can destroy your ability to have stable and healthy relationships, that can stop you giving yourself what you need. And that’s why we self-care, so that we can live our lives saying yes to the right things because otherwise we can get trapped in the pain.

I applaud you for doing this work, because, yes, self-care is not just a spa day. No, it's shadow work. It's fits of crying for no reason, releasing stored up tears. It's figuring out the tensions in your body because of mental and emotional pains that have manifested physically in your body, and you have to get them out. You have to massage them, you have to foam roll. You work on the yoga mobility, whatever you need to do to sweat it out, work it out. It's very important work, and it's not pretty all the time.

What influence, if any, does your ethnicity and/or culture have in your healing and how does it show up?

I was born in Uganda and all of my family is Ugandan. But some of them have spread out across the world, so they have started sort of genetic franchises, in different countries. My favorite uncle married a German woman and so I have German Ugandan cousins. And my father remarried a Thai woman and he's had some babies, and so now I have Thai Ugandan siblings.

My mother is Ugandan, a 100% bloodline Uganda. And my father is Ugandan, 100% bloodline Ugandan. So this has created a big imprint on my life.

There are times, usually when I am doing the work on learning about myself and human beings in general, where I'm able to disassociate from the makings of who I am physically, and just think of myself as without a race, without the identity that I seem to put on every day, without what people see me as. I just think of myself as a spirit.

But as soon as I come back from that, I become the ‘American’ of the family, the only one raised in America. So no matter what I do, they'll always see me as the American. It’s funny, in general, I feel like the term African American is actually a misnomer for most people to who that is assigned, but it's like, if anybody was going to be African American, I think it would be me.

Unfortunately the majority of my modern family, especially the ones that I'm able to be in contact with, have been so deep in what life is like as colonised Uganda and Catholicism has played a big role in that.

One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is going back to Uganda with a camera and making a documentary about my trip. I haven’t been back since I was born. I want to dig into what was going on spiritually in Uganda and in my family before Catholicism took over.

Indigenous African spirituality is huge, and it's still practiced there. When I ask my aunt and my father questions about it, even though there may be a little leery, they do start giving me answers, and they are able to tell me certain things.

I know that when I do go back, there will be certain rituals that I'm going to have to do, because I haven't been back in so long. There are certain things I'm going to have to do, certain elders I'm going to have to go and see.

Our people, used to walk the land, go on spiritual walks and things like this. And I feel it all calling me back and impacting my healing journey. I got into candle work. I got into smudging, intention setting and the moon cycles.

So yes, Uganda has a big imprint on me. And the colonised aspects have coloured my life so profoundly. It's so clearly been interrupting the natural rhythm of my people.

And I consider it such a blessing to be of a 100% bloodline. It’s becoming rare in this day and age, when races are mixing, people are dating all types of ways, even in my own family and so I've always wondered what if we wake up one day and there's like very few 100% people left on the earth.

And that's a very important thing to me, it has very real implications. What if I'm one of the few 100% left one day. I'm just cognisant how important our relationships are, our families are. My father always said that who you choose to partner with, is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make in life. And I'm seeing more and more now, how that's true.

Are there any meaningful healing rituals that you embrace that were gifted to you from your ancestors (including past or future ancestors) that you’d be happy to share?

I'm going to be very happy to adopt more, because I feel like I've still been adopting the practices of other indigenous peoples in lieu of not being able to have the information from my own family.

I think to be in relationship with my ancestors is super important to me. And I think it is a big first step for a lot of people.

First of all, I pray. I believe in prayer. But my version of praying is literally just talking. I talk to the universe, to source, to God, whatever anybody wants to name it. When I pray, I think of Him in terms of God-in-Me, so we are inseparable, we are incorruptible.

But I know that there are a lot of people whose relationship with God is still constricted or blocked and that's one of the things I don't like about the physical experience of going to church. It's wonderful to go someplace where there's organized worship and fellowship. That's a beautiful thing, but organised worship and fellowship can happen anywhere. As my friend says the church is in you. And that's what we found out when the pandemic happened - you are the church.

I remember seeing a Solange video which included this lady, Goddess Lulabelle talking about how she was cleansing her crystals with Florida Water and she spoke about how you need to do everything with intention.

So I went to tap into her YouTube channel, and one of her other videos was talking about connecting and having a relationship with your ancestry. And she was saying,

Do you know your ancestors? Well, they know you and they want to talk to you. They want you to be in relationship with them. And you need to know that.

And she goes on to list some ways to go about that. Also what’s really profound to me is that she started that video by talking about coming from a Christian family and how deep the Christian church is within her experience, and because of Christianity, she was cut off from the experience of connecting with her ancestors. But, her point was that if you’re in such a deep relationship with the entity we call Jesus, then your ancestors are definitely going to be there.

And it wasn’t just that she was cut off from all that, it was that she was actually scared of it. It seemed like something dark. You know how people were taught to see voodoo as dark. So, she grew up thinking you don't do that because you're getting into the dark arts and the occult and we don't deal with dead things. But ancestor work is actually not that; it's life, it's living, breathing, love and connection with you.

I actually really value and wanted to share this conversation with the iconic healer/scholar Mama Marimba Ani titled Let the Circle Be Unbroken which speaks on the implications of colonial religions on indigenous/African spirituality, ancestral influences and divine connections.

And so yes, now when our loved ones transition, people send condolences and say things like ‘I'm so sorry for your loss’, ‘This is horrible and tragic, I'm so sorry for you’. I don't say any of that anymore. And actually I'm sorry that people have to hear all that from multiple people.

Now I say things like:

It's eternal love. They are your eternal, newest angel and your newest ancestor. And they are with you. And actually they may even be with you more now, because they've been removed from the earthly burden of being here, so now they can be free to just love you. They can communicate with you, and you can listen back to them, and they can see things you can't see. It may be that you can be in relationship with them, even greater than you were before.

And then I say this, especially if people went through circumstances of pain where they were fighting for their life

You didn't lose them. Now you gain them in a happier and healthier place, God willing.

And I truly believe that. But I realise that for us here on Earth, changes like this are hard, and so I don't want to discount the fact that they’re also going through a process of that change. So what I also say then is,

I’m sending love and healing energy to your earthly processing and to their transition. I’m sending courage, love and protection to both of you. To them because they're in a transition to where we don't know, but we hope that they feel our love and courage and that they're protected wherever they're going now. And to you because you're going through a process of change and figuring out life without them physically and figuring out a new relationship with them. So you need love, courage and protection on you.

That's what I say and what I believe now from being in relationship with my ancestors and my angels. I believe they’re all around us, not up in the sky or down below. They’re all around us. They can be sitting on your bed while you’re crying.

One of the things I do, as a practice, is have an altar with water and a candle and different things. Water is the medium between the worlds and helps connect us to our ancestors.

But yes being in relationship with them is very important to me now. And it's not one size fits all. It's different for everyone. But, for me, sometimes I can literally sit there and ask questions and get answers. Or just sit and see things, or have a dream and write things down, things will just come. And I know for a fact that it's not crazy. It’s coming from somewhere, and I believe it's coming from somewhere significant.

(*Emilia couldn’t find Goddess Lulabelle’s video referenced above, but found a great selection of Youtube videos that come up when searching ‘talking to your ancestors’, that you may find helpful, in case you want to do your own research into this).

Who or what has had a major impact on your personal healing journey and why?

So one of my mentors is Jamal Joseph.

I'm a firm believer that everything and everyone can be a teacher and a mentor. I believe you can self appoint a mentor in your life, and they don't even have to know it. You can be learning from them, revere them and just carry them with you for life.

So, Jamal Joseph is someone who I’ve spent time with but it’s been very inconsistent. However, there are several points where we have come together in conversation, exchange, knowledge, wisdom and understanding, and where I have studied him and and watched him do things that have left indelible marks on my life.

He is the founder of the youth program that I joined aged 12. I was there for 13 years, so more than half my life at a certain point. This was a performing arts and leadership training programme that also included self-development, global awareness and community service.

And we had long rehearsal days, often seven hour days on Saturdays, sometimes during the week. And we had lots of creative laughs, because the material that we performed was all original material, with few exceptions.We were also a traveling show, and we’d have to perform at least 50 shows a year across different types of places to all different types of audiences.

So we would do all these things, but we’d always have these workshops where we came back to leadership, back to youth activism and back to community awareness. We’d discuss what's going on in the world and also what's going on with other young people elsewhere in the world.

Jamal, himself, is one of the original Black Panthers of the New York chapters and so he has such a rich history. He was actually one of the people in a case called the Panther 21 which was they rounded up a group of them and charged them with conspiracy among other things.

This case was an attempt to destroy the Black Panther Party at the time where the Black Power movement was at its peak. Different government entities were seeking to destroy it, as people didn't like to see armed and knowledgeable black people and youth making impacts in the world.

So I was in this youth program that was started by this person who had this rich history with the Black Panthers, which included Afeni Shakur (Tupac’s mother) and, in fact, he was Tupac’s Godfather. So there was this hip hop connection in there too. And Afeni Shakur and Tupac were involved in community and youth work and were involved in building out our program.

One of the things I loved about Jamal was his public speaking ability. He was always very vocal, making speeches and introducing the show. And he was just so engaging and spoke with such conviction. He was loose and humorous, but so emotional and driven. Everything he said was just dripping with this engagement; I was enthralled.

And I did get to understand a little bit more about where that came from, because when he was a youth, he saw the elder Black Panther generation coming up before him. He was witness to a generation of black liberation freedom fighters like Martin Luther King, Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets and he was soaking in all this knowledge.

But when I met him, I was not used to seeing black men being so articulate, vocal, poetic and positive, not just about themselves and who they are in the world, but about me, and including me. That's the thing about hip hop. It's a lot of men talking and not about you, and if they are talking about you, it's usually not in a good way.

So this was like, wow, this person is so wise and intelligent and so convinced about purpose and community empowerment and why we're all important. And they're telling me about why I'm important and why I should be loved, and why I need to be empowered in myself. That was amazing. Whatever he said, I was listening. So he was a mentor in my mind already, but then it just so happened that through being in the program, I became one of the youth leaders, and so we would have these conversations. Then he started taking me to get lunch and it would just be us two. And I thoroughly appreciated him, he didn't do that with everybody.

He ended up teaching screenwriting in Columbia University, where hewould bring me to some of his classes and then we would just sit and talk. And in some of those talks, I would tell him about challenging things that I was going through mentally and psychologically.

He would would listen so diligently, but then be able to speak to me on a level about energy and spirituality and psychology, because he actually was on track to become a medicine man. He's Afro Cuban and he grew up wanting to be a healer. And then somewhere along the line, decided that actually he could be an artist and heal multiple people at a time through film or similar. So he basically channeled all his healing talent into being an artist and and so became a screenwriter and a film director. And then obviously he was part of this program.

So staying true to his purpose, he would be able to speak to me about things I could do to soothe my spiritual body and mind. And speak to my spiritual experience that may have been the source of why certain things were happening with me that were disrupting my natural flow. He was the one who told me to practice yoga daily and ever since there's not a day when it doesn’t happen. If I don't do at least 10 minutes of yoga or mobility every day, my body's screaming at me and telling me, you need to do this.

And now it's like, I can't imagine not doing it.

I'm like, yo, whoever's reading this, you need to start stretching now. Like, now,

So he asked me lots of questions that were just eye-opening and gave me a bunch of things to do, like sleep wearing certain things, maintain an altar, keep the room a certain way, practice daily yoga and things like that. He informed me that I’m a highly spiritual entity and that, because of that, there are certain things that I need to do, that I need to be cognisant of and he gave me the lowdown on all that.

So he was a huge, huge influence. And to this day, I keep an altar, practice daily yoga, keep the room a certain way etc

I find it amazing that an afro Cuban in Harlem was able to speak to my spirituality and energy in a way that my own family weren’t able. That is so eye-opening to me. And that's why we have to give reverence to the human race and to us as people, because we can learn so much from each other. It's really important to be open-minded and open-hearted to what you have learned.

Can you share something that has inspired you and radically transformed how you thrive and that you think might help others?

One of my biggest inspirations lately is connected with the isolation I often feel being a healed person and someone who is constantly elevating and developing myself. I find that the more work I do on this, the fewer mutual friends I have to enjoy it with. With regards to this, I love this talk with Lisa Nichols & Michael B. Beckwith. I also love their brand names. His podcast is called "Take Back Your Mind" and her company is named "Motivating the Masses." Michael also opens the episode answering a fan letter about someone who's been wanting to write a book/pursue a project but feels stuck & rejected, which seems applicable to those who may tap in.

How, and how often, do you celebrate and love yourself unabashedly?

Oh I need to do so much better at this. I've gotten a lot better at celebrating myself. I think that it’s a very important thing to even just talk to yourself nicely. That's been a big turning point.

Circling back to the ‘I'm staying positive’ thing, that's part of it. I could easily be out here pissed and throwing my frustrations on people but I’m not. Instead I say ‘I’m doing my best, I’m trying’ and I give myself the credit. I'm staying positive and I think that’s great of me.

There are so many things I want to give myself a trophy for. I have different affirmations and statements posted all over my apartment. I have some here from when I quit a previous job that were draining the life out of me. Once I realised it was making me significantly depressed, I quit.

While I was looking for something new, I wrote out these three things on the wall and I can still see them from here.

The first one says ‘I choose me’. The next one says, ‘I give myself a raise’. And then the last one says, ‘I give myself a promotion’.

So while I was job searching, I had these posted right in front of me right over my laptop. So whatever went down, I knew that I choose me. I give myself the raise, I give myself a promotion, because that's what I deserve.

I know what I’m actually worth. So yes, that's one of the ways I celebrate myself - positive statements about who I know I am. I have statements about being the best version of myself. It can be really easy to lose sight of who you are, and who you are deserves to be celebrated.

One of the things I've been planning recently is to throw myself a party - a party for my inner child, inspired by the motivational speaker, Lisa Nichols. She talks a lot about how people are under celebrated and some people train others not to celebrate them. I relate to this. And so she might stop a presentation and congratulate certain students with balloons, streamers and music. I love that and so I want to throw my inner child a party.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but yes I have a big relationship with my inner child. I call her Little Em and that little girl, I keep her in my mind. Whenever I meet people, I see their inner child. Whenever I do things, I hear her, and I listen to her, and recognise that she needs to be safe, she needs to feel comfortable. If she feels something's off, I listen to that.

There are times where I'm really hard on myself. I can be my biggest critic, totally. And sometimes I will be very hard on myself about things, especially when it comes to performing and creating stuff. I'll say to myself that I should have done this or I didn't do that enough, but now, because I have such a deep relationship with Little Em, she'll be like, stop yelling at me, please. And if a child is saying that to you, you listen.

So I want to throw a party for Little Em with balloons and a vegan cake at my house with just me. I want to have ridiculous balloons and little plates of food and maybe a wrestling-themed cake and lots of beautiful fruit and my favourite food.

But in lieu of that, because I know we can't do that every day, the other thing I do is I have a checklist on the wall.

So even though I have a schedule and I have things that I need to do for work, there are certain things, on the checklist, that I want to make sure I'm doing that let me know that I'm working towards my goals all the time. And so on the checklist I have foam-roll massage my muscles, read, study, train my joints, train my voice, have regular dance breaks, have a good laugh.

And my new intention is to just dance freely and celebrate myself way more and I’m looking forward to getting really good at it.

I thank you for asking this because I do believe we are under celebrated, and we deserve it to happen a lot more.

What does freedom look like to you? How often do you make time for it?

So, I lean heavily on the Nina Simone quote, freedom to me is no fear. Well, with that, one of the biggest things of my life experience has been this idea of feel the fear and do it anyway. I've learned how to do things scared. And when someone asked me if I was scared to do something , I actually laughed. Like me scared? You could only imagine the scary things I have already faced and done anyway.

It’s not that I’m not scared, it’s that even if I’m scared, it doesn’t matter. And that, to me, is freedom. I can feel the fear and still do it. I can still live, I can still perform, I can still produce. I can still face things. It’s the knowledge that I'm going to see the other side of a challenge, regardless of that challenge.

There's freedom in a deep knowing of your birthright to succeed in life.

And success is when we realise that we’re placed here not just to survive but to thrive, to have a meaningful experience in whatever way we choose. We’re here to reflect the universe itself, in our own unique way. And the more I look around, the more I'm seeing that everything is set up for us to prosper here, when you remove the earthly and worldly terms.

Nature, after all, is such a harmonious place. Nobody comes around and waters these trees, nobody's out here taking care of the trees like that. But they always grow. And they're always producing fruit for us. Fruit is being created, fruit that has nothing to do with anybody, literally just exists for us to eat. It just keeps growing. And animals are just amazing and majestic. They just keep thriving and existing, no matter what we seem to do to this planet, things still seem to survive. And I think there's some type of poetry in that.

And navigating through darkness, I think, is a freedom. Being able to be in darkness and still see light and still navigate through, that’s a big freedom. I’ve been experiencing this since I started gathering notes to write my book. Freedom is the ability to talk about dark topics, or dark experiences, or low vibrational experiences, where your very existence was challenged, where trauma was the overarching banner, but you can still speak to it.

When you want to talk about these things, I find that there are a lot of people who cannot handle the conversation in itself. They don't want to go to that dark place with you, even just to talk about it. It's too much for them and they may discourage you from going there, as though you shouldn't even be there. You shouldn't even be talking about it.

I find freedom in my conversations with people where we have no judgment of each other or the experiences themselves. We're just there talking about what happened, how we felt, what we were seeing.

I find such enlightenment in being able to sit and have conversations with people about times when we've been in dark places in our lives and how we navigated through that.

I feel like freedom is the courage to know darkness, but to maintain your humanity in that darkness. It’s being able to maintain a human warmth and an appreciation of light, especially because of the darkness, not to shun it, avoid it or label it as wrong or bad or judge it. It’s to understand that it’s like Yin and Yang, as above so below. One can’t exist without the other.

Light is so powerful because of darkness. Darkness is so powerful because of light. Freedom is in not shying away from that otherwise you’re allowing fear to control you. If you know that nothing could really threaten you in a certain way, that removes a lot of layers.

It’s like when marketeers make us out to be ugly, so that they can sell us more stuff. But if you knew you were beautiful and you really valued yourself, there'd be a whole bunch of products that you just wouldn’t be interested in. A lot of people make a lot of money out of people's insecurities and fears and so they would rather us not feel free.

So yeah, I think there's a lot about freedom and a deep knowing.

Please share your Mini Manifesto for Self-Care – ie. your 3 rules you live by in order to root and rise.

I love that - root and rise.

1. My number one is this; Ascent is precious. When you wake up, don’t jump on your phone, don’t roll over and tap into Instagram right away. Don't roll over and jump into work right away. Don't roll over and start Googling right away. Don't go into social media, otherwise you’ll start working, scrolling or whatever. Next thing, you’ll look up and X amount of time has gone by and you haven't even washed your face. So that's one of my biggest things. I'm still mastering it myself. Ascent is precious. Instead, when you first wake and come out of sleep, take a moment. If you believe in prayer, have your moment of prayer. If you practice visualisation, have a moment of visualization. Take time to set a daily intention. One of the yoga teachers that I follow recommends selecting one word or a phrase as an intention by asking ‘how do you want to feel today?’. And I kind of adopted that practice every day. Ascent is precious. Don’t give your power away by giving your ascent away. It’s yours. Create your wake up routine, whatever it may be and the day belongs to you. Valuing and owning my ascent is a huge thing for me. It’s dramatically changed my life and my mental and emotional health.

2. Create your own intentional programming. I’m a big believer that if you're not programming yourself, you're being programmed. You can literally map out a program for yourself and just follow it and change it once a month based on your goals or, if you want to go into a different career, for example. The majority of my days are spent in accordance with me being on my own program. I'm consuming the content I decide I want to consume and I avoid low vibrational things. Not only will they distract you, they'll derail you from actually being in your best mode of operation. Jamal Joseph, who I refer to above, told me, how gossip, for example, was a tool used to break up the Black Panther Party and destroy our cultural unity. It’s so important to monitor everything you consume, physically, mentally and spiritually. The entertainment you’re engaged in, the books you're reading, the accounts you follow, the conversations you're having.

3. Nurture your creativity. It’s such a huge part of my life. I would not be who I am without the arts and crafts and creative intelligence.

4. I need a fourth because I want to bring this back to the relationship with the divine. Having some type of prayer-talk relationship where you can just go inside at any moment of every day. That's really important. Sometimes you need to appeal to something that's bigger than you, because there's a lot on us you know. We are flesh and blood. We are just humans. And sometimes the Ascent, the program and the creativity is not enough.

---

This week I can’t stop thinking about….

+ This initiative, Untold Stories, from Black Minds Matter UK. Inspired by this year’s Black History Month theme of ‘Reclaiming Narratives’, they are holding space for our older community by sharing their stories around the complexities of mental health, which are so often overlooked and unheard. They are actively looking for participants, so please share and encourage an older family member or friend who is over the age of 60 to share their story with us. I’m going to ask my 93 year old pops.

+ This exhibition, Making a Rukus! at Somerset House, London, until 19 January 2025. It explores the joy, friendship, resistance and art of Black LGBTQIA+ people in Britain. And, even better, you pay what you can afford. I’ll definitely be heading down there when I’m back in London.

+ this list of organisations which are dedicated to telling Black Muslim stories across the UK.

+ Amber Dee’s US platform, Black Female Therapists, a hub for Black people to find mental health professionals. Though the name of the site centers on women, Dee stresses the database is made for all. Dee’s intent is to help connect people with a practitioner in their area.