“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
Dear Fellow Warrior,
Time passes, seasons come and go…. and summer feels like it is already here… even when you are not ready for the heat.
I missed the Kite Festival in DC, this year. I missed it last year because I happened to be somewhere better. But this year, after “Tying a Camel, and placing my trust in Allah,” I decided to stay put.
I knew that the “No Kings” protest was happening that weekend too…. It was the same weekend as last year, which included a March for Palestine. I recall participating in that after returning from the Heart of the Revolution last year.
I went to the Kite Festival the year before, in 2024, with my painting in honor of Dr. Refaat Al Areer and took a video reciting the infamous poem, “If I must die.” You can watch it HERE.
At times I look at the date, and there isn’t ever a day that I realize that a global Pandemic happened a certain amount of years ago. Today, I say it began 6 years ago… I seem to measure growth and change from there. Partly because it felt like a turning point in some ways. Especially because I graduated with my doctorate during that time… It was so painful, but now it feels like the “good ole days.”
It is shocking to see how life could have become so much worse than it was at that time….
Of course, the escalated genocide, the wars that emerged soon after… You would think that this too would be a universal turning point for most, more intentionally, but the neoliberal world, in some ways, doesn’t allow it to be. And it may not be merciful to those who do allow themselves to change because of it…
As I come closer and closer to the 5-year anniversary of my dissertation defense, and degree conferral, in some ways, still healing, in some ways moving forward, in some ways almost done healing, I can’t help but wonder…
How do I ensure that 5 years from now I am not going to feel the same?
I know what I have to change, but it is very, very hard. Rejection requires redirection. You don’t have to give up on the next steps of your dream. There just needs to be strategy.
I was glad to have honored the 10 years I’ve been blogging through the Chronicles of a Warrior Queen in my previous post. But I am also realizing that there was a part of me that once knew that if I didn’t have an audience, there would be some point where I would have it. And when you don’t, some of the things you used to write about lose the meaning it once had, when it was meant for an audience.
There have been times that I would just be waiting, a short waiting period to see if something I shared would hit. I think every creator feels that way. But I have learned from experience that waiting period can be a dangerous place to be…
Even now, I didn’t intend to write this post. But I do have to write for myself at this time. I have to keep pushing through this difficult season, a season that has extended longer than it needed to be.
It’s easy to fall into that dangerous trap of waiting… waiting for others to validate your expertise, your identity capital that you have nurtured for years, even decades.
You spend 80% of your time navigating systemic biases and barriers, trying to prove yourself, not realizing you may have entered a kind of suicide mission. It’s ironic, because your purpose is what has been saving you… but at the same time, it will never be enough for a breakthrough in such spaces…
Not because someone else is better, but because an entire systemic phenomenon is blocking you from even that one small, modest opportunity that could change the game for you… it is as if people know that if you land it… you could only fly from there… and they cannot possibly allow that…
Some simply refuse to know what you know…In their eyes, you are either the “damsel in distress” or you don’t know anything, when in reality, you know far more than they do.
In you, grows a seemingly insurmountable “imposter syndrome,” born largely through external factors…the lack of external belonging perhaps… but you continue to stand in your efforts to correct them…and most critically, correct yourself…
I now write these kinds of posts (that used to be shared on Facebook and Twitter) on X, and then they just disappear. Sometimes, I copy and paste and share them on Substacks notes. I save those in bookmarks on X. I don’t ever know if they get read, even when people “like” the post.
You invite people into a discussion with every post. There are silent readers. But you wonder what would get them to consider engaging in the important, deep conversations you initiate. You wonder what would get your readers to see that it’s worth having these conversations with you.
I guess I have forgotten one too many times that I have made a home for this… a place where I can share authentic, vulnerable writing, where I can be raw, unfiltered, and real. This is that home.
I think this manifests the challenge I am confronting in spaces offline too. Perhaps there are places where I can be myself, but I still show up in the spaces where I can only share fragments of me or where I am not welcome, or do not feel welcome. Because I still believe in Dr. Maya Angelou’s words that I have been quoting frequently since I graduated with my PhD, on the quest for what’s next,… that we belong anywhere and everywhere.
“You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.“
It appears that the prolonged transition in my life, the attempts to close the chapter, the fight to keep moving forward, turn the page, has been happening in all spaces for me in recent years (both online and offline).
There is a tendency to hang on to who you were before the Genocide, possibly even before the Pandemic, possibly even before a Democratic socialist first ran for President in your lifetime… before you realized there was possibly space for who you really were…every piece… without conformity… in academic spaces, in policy spaces, in professional spaces, in your communities, online and offline… in every domain you inhabit.
You are tempted to return to the same person you were in those spaces, even during an ongoing Genocide paid for by your tax dollars, because the world around you has not changed. In some ways, they don’t let you change… or they may just “other” you for being human and feeling anything for those who have been mercilessly slaughtered, perhaps even question your motivations or intentions.
There has been no mercy for your pain or trauma from every angle. It seems limited even from the left, perhaps because many will think you are selfish for “making it about you” when it is actually human to feel impacted by the Genocide of your people… to feel even more depressed than you already were… and guilt and shame for feeling sad for what you have lost for having a conscience… when others have lost so much more…
And there is no mercy from the world around you, the systems, institutions, and people that chose not to change in any way at all, even at the sight of thousands of children murdered, with the knowledge that people are still being diced up like they’ve been thrown in a blender, and nobody is going to do anything about it.
Then the people who say nothing, write nothing, feel at ease, advancing in their careers, because the world has accepted them. They are rewarded for conforming. While others are continuously “othered” for standing up against the bully, while fighting for their own survival and success.
Of course, you would want to hang on to a piece of what you had before the Genocide. The “good ole days” of DEI failing because neoliberal institutions realized that brown and black women, the largest minority in the American workplace, who face the brunt of the microaggressions, are actually smarter than they thought we were, and can tell the difference between performative diversity and tokenism and real, intentional inclusion.
And of course, the “good ole days” of Pandemic quarantine life…the “good ole days” before Black Lives Matter… and when IDF-trained cops could shoot and kill our black brothers and sisters, without being filmed.
Part of you wishes you never had a conscience, so your goals would not have been stalled, you could have sustained a conventional, linear trajectory, your neoliberal friends and colleagues would have accepted you in their circles, and you could enjoy going “back to brunch” with them, praising and applauding war criminals, who bomb your parents’ homelands, without the images of the brutal slaughter and bloodshed and starving children burned into your brain.
Life is easier when you choose to close your eyes or look away, cover your ears, and tape your mouth shut.
This is what you chose… You chose to be yourself. Loudly. You chose to be vulnerable and authentic.
You chose to be real. You chose to care about people and the planet.
And there can be no going back from here.
It doesn’t feel like you are on the right side of history, when you fall asleep every night and wake up every morning wondering if you will ever be blessed with the “dignity of work”…if you will ever be blessed with the luxury of healthcare,… it doesn’t feel like you are on the right side when everyone around you appears to just shrug their shoulders and go about their business.
It doesn’t feel like you are on the right side when your respected peers and colleagues have forgotten you exist… possibly because you spoke your truth, and/or you spoke truth to power… people who knew you were struggling and chose to look away. It doesn’t feel like you are on the right side when people blame and resent you for needing or asking for help, for having a conscience, or for letting the Genocide impact you… all an obvious consequence of a deeply neoliberal capitalist world resisting to the necessary changes that could make life a little less unbearable for the oppressed and for those who genuinely stand with the oppressed.
It doesn’t feel like it, because it is not supposed to feel like it. This is what some people have a hard time understanding. Being on the “right side” is supposed to be hard.
It is supposed to change you, and keep changing you…
And you don’t have to be invited into the room to keep building. You don’t have to wait…
Stay humble. Stay patient. But keep building.
Yes, you will take the blows. You will be kicked in the stomach… That is part of it. But you cannot live your entire life in that space…
You don’t wait to be chosen. You build until they have no choice but to see you…
You build until your existence, persistence, and resistance becomes unmistakable.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anaïs Nin
In Solidarity, Peace, Warmth, and Blessings,
Your sister, Dr. Elsa, Warrior KQueen
“She wasn’t looking for a Knight. She was looking for a Sword.” – Atticus
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