This is my woke

Picture taken at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Cover art is a quilted portrait of Harriet Tubman by Bisa Butler.

Intro Note to Readers:

This reflection centers the voices and experiences of Black Americans, specifically those of us whose ancestors were enslaved through United States chattel slavery, and who are walking through a collective shift that is both spiritual and ancestral. If you are not part of that lineage, I invite you to read with open eyes and a soft heart. There is something here for you too, if you listen with humility...not to insert yourself, but to witness and honor.

This isn’t meant to exclude, but to tell the truth as I’ve come to know it. Healing, awakening, and freedom look different depending on the story your bones remember. And the story I’m telling here is mine.

------------

I’ve been quiet. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because I’ve been doing a lot of soul work. A lot of time listening, connecting, and remembering.

I’ve been thinking about the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

What I’ve come to understand lately is that while I could protest, speak out, join the chorus of outrage...I’ve done that. We’ve all done that. And I’ve started to feel something shifting in me.

Because honestly, what have we gotten in return?

Policies reversed with the stroke of a pen. Progress framed as inconvenience. Words scrubbed from official language like they never existed.

I’m not saying the fight doesn’t matter. I’m saying I’m tired of trying to fix systems that were never built to be repaired, especially when there’s no real intention or integrity behind the gestures to change them.

So I’ve been asking myself different questions.

What if I put my focus elsewhere?

What if I trusted what’s rising within me more than what’s collapsing around me?

That’s where I am right now. I can’t control what’s being dismantled, but I can decide what I’m going to carry. I can choose where I put my energy.

And I can keep showing up to this world while holding space for my spirit to guide me in a different way.

This is my woke.

This isn't giving up. It's something else. It's not a catchphrase or a stance. It's a return to self. To my people’s wisdom. To a deeper truth I’ve been carrying all along.

And I want to be clear. I’m not waking up in isolation or without context. If your head’s been under the sand since January 20, you may not know just how much is being dismantled.

We’re watching a calculated erasure of language, history, access, and truth. We’re watching a well resourced attempt to reassert whiteness as property, as default, as the moral compass of America.

Since the new administration took office, I’ve watched:

• Federal agencies banning words like “equity,” “inclusion,” “systemic racism,” “marginalized,” and “underserved” and more.

• The National Archives and key historical institutions defunded or reorganized.

• Books pulled from classrooms and libraries.

• DEI programs gutted across sectors, including my work.

• Civil rights protections quietly rolled back.

  
  

This isn’t just policy disagreement. It is deeper than that. It feels like intentional erasure.

And I’ll be honest. What’s been most disorienting is the shift happening in me. Choosing not to speak up. Choosing stillness over reaction. That has felt unfamiliar, even uncomfortable.

It feels strange sometimes, even wrong, to be in the meetings and not be tactfully but strategically speaking truth to power. Especially when I’m sitting across from people who, at one point, were willing to stand up but now seem more afraid of losing funding than losing the work itself. I remember sitting in one of those meetings and saying, “I know we all have mortgages to pay. I get it. But damn, you're erasing everything we’ve worked for.”

And in that moment, it hit me. It is everything we’ve worked for. But more than that, it’s my work. My labor. My voice. My name attached to initiatives now being quietly dismantled. And what hurt the most was how quickly we tucked our tails and took a posture that said, “yessa, boss,” without even realizing it.

It was in that moment that I stopped talking. It felt futile to keep speaking truth in rooms that are no longer willing to hold it. And I began to wonder what it might look like to center that truth somewhere else entirely.

I haven’t given up. I’m still showing up. I’m still doing the work. I’m not abandoning the mission. I’m just protecting the part of me that used to get frustrated trying to convince people of its merit.

I still hope for justice, fairness, and dignity for everyone. And I trust that many of my fellow citizens will continue to speak out and take action.

A revolution that will not be televised.

There’s something shifting in me. Something I didn’t plan for, and something I didn’t have language for until recently. This isn’t about protest or reform or trying to be included in systems that were never built with us in mind. It’s about something deeper. It’s about remembering, awakening, and returning to a truth that was always waiting.

For me, this isn’t disengagement. It’s redirection. It’s listening inward and realizing that I was never just meant to survive in Babylon. I was meant to rise beyond it.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with how easy it is to forget who we are under the weight of everything we’ve had to carry. And I’ve come to understand that this forgetting wasn’t accidental. It was spiritual warfare. Because when I started to remember, everything began to shift.

Just last week, I found myself standing in my dad’s old office, drawn to a book I hadn’t noticed before. It was a first edition of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. I held it in my hands and my whole body wept, loudly. I knew it wasn’t random. It felt like instruction, like confirmation that my ancestors were near, guiding me, reminding me. That moment wasn’t just emotional. It was an awakening and I could feel the truth rise in my chest. I am not bound. I am free. And I come from a long line of truth-tellers who knew that their voices and souls were keys to that freedom.

Since that moment, I’ve felt my ancestors closer. I feel them in my breath, in my bones, in the stillness where their wisdom begins to surface. What they carried was never lost and it lives in me. And as I continue to remember, I’m beginning to walk with a knowing that cannot be colonized and cannot be undone.

In the quiet, I’ve been reminded that I’m not here to beg for a seat. I’m here to build a new frequency. My DNA carries an ancient knowing that no institution can erase. The revolution we are in now is vibrational. And I’ve come to understand that silence is not absence, rest is not retreat, and tuning in is not escape. It is remembrance.

So yes, I’ve chosen to stop chasing justice in systems that commodify us. I’ve started listening more closely to the call that rises when I’m still. It’s the voice that comes from within and from the field where my ancestors wait with open arms.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about what’s being dismantled. It means I finally understand that our liberation was never going to come from those structures. And while others wring their hands over what’s collapsing, I am learning to tend to what is eternal.

I know this might sound strange to some. The idea of raising vibration or tuning into something unseen can be hard to grasp. But this awakening has shown me that when we shift our energy, we create space to call in all that is good, all that is healing, and all that is possible.

Some people reading this may not understand, and that’s okay. This isn’t about convincing anyone.

This is for those who are wrestling. For the ones who feel helpless, heartbroken, or disoriented. Or it's for those who feel something stirring inside but can’t quite name it yet.

This is not a phase. This is not a trend. This is my woke and I know more will be revealed.