I am a Human Systems Strategist: I diagnose the pattern and co-create alignment, whether that's one person or a whole culture. Justice & Joy in your inbox every Friday! 📥
What 8 years of rebuilding sounds like 🏹
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Hey Reader, I want to name something before I dive in... This space, Justice & Joy, is becoming something a little more specific. It's your weekly message from the laptop of yours truly, the behind-the-scenes of what you see me sharing publicly. The connective tissue between the polished post and the actual journey underneath it. This week that journey includes a video I just put up on YouTube about 8 months of therapy and what it taught me. If you've followed me a while, you know I don't usually lead with the hard stuff. Today, it's a dance of glimmers and grabbling. 💃🏽 Here's what showing up with authenticity actually gave me this week: a dear friend thanked me for being her friend through everything we've navigated together over the last eight years. 8 years since what I call the 2018 Fall Fire 🔥🔥🔥 When my life burned to the ground as I knew it and I had to rebuild. Even though I didn’t have a choice, I knew it was going to be required of me, and I wanted to be hella intentional with every step. Here's the proof it worked: my flourishing tween did homework over FaceTime with her friends this week in her room. Studying for a quiz. Making weekend plans. Y'all. It's happening. 🥹 There's justice and joy in that. There's also joy in the Valkyries clinching the #2 seed on a buzzer beater, which means home court advantage for rounds 1-2 of the WNBA Playoffs. Woohoo 🥳 Tomorrow's the full moon, and fall is here, which means shifts and expansion are in the air whether we asked for them or not. So I'll ask you what I'm asking myself: not in a false-positivity, lock-in-and-grind kind of way, but for real. Where do you want to create justice in your life right now?I ask that knowing how much injustice is still here. In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (gift access) is worth your time this weekend. And as a Black mama, my heart has been breaking for Christine Wonsley, whose 18 year old son Nolan Xavier Wells died this summer after a boat trip to Horn Island, Mississippi. Nolan’s family is still fighting for answers. I'm holding her and her family close as I grapple with the current reality for Black children and our families in 2026. So, I'll close with a quote from Ida B. Wells that's sat with me all week: "Those who commit the murders write the reports." Damn. Our ancestors wrote it down so we would never forget. Hold your loved one close, and I hope you find space to process it all with care and tenderness. 🫶🏽 Rooted in love. Blooming in liberation. 🌻 |
Justice & Joy from the Laptop of Mama J Love 🫶🏽
I am a Human Systems Strategist: I diagnose the pattern and co-create alignment, whether that's one person or a whole culture. Justice & Joy in your inbox every Friday! 📥
Hey Reader, Reclamation is easier to proclaim than to live. 😅 I came home from the retreat glowing, naming stillness and no longer fighting. This week's Chase Center Watch Party Joy! Then, the mamaverse tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "Are you sure?!" And honestly, that's how it goes. You get tested on whether you mean it. My test showed up this week as a big change for my kid all while getting sick: a house move, and a new person moving into the other home. Shifting dynamics. What I'm...
Hey Reader, Last week I sent you a message on Day 2 of the Rest + Reclamation Retreat that was pre-written and scheduled for you to receive at our regularly scheduled day and time. A sunflower offering to the land. I’m already dreaming of going back as it exceeded every expectation I had. I’ll be honest, I had only really thought about my own rest going in. I knew I’d be with Black women. What I didn’t anticipate was how our host, and the four facilitators would truly be one circle of 20. The...
Hey Reader, By the time you read this, I'll be at a Rest + Reclamation Retreat for 4 days with 14 fellow Black women activists, sponsored, held, resting on purpose. Here's how I got here. The same dear friend who thanked me for my authenticity a couple weeks back is the one who nominated me for this opportunity. In fact, I found out about it and the next steps while I was in bed with COVID, and my first thought was… 💭 How am I going to be sick and out of commission for ten days and then go...