Beginning…again (i left substack)

February 16, 2026

There’s a 1978 ‘A Day with Toni Morrison’ Interview where Morrison she says,

“I think that freedom ideally is being able to choose your responsibilities. Not, not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.”

I choose to be responsible for myself, my choices, my actions, inactions, my words, my awareness, and my commitment to seeing the truth of the way things are, and the affect of these ways. Not just in the ways the truth, and the ways, affect me but the ways in which they affect this earth, life and lives beyond my own and immediate family, friends, community, and loved ones.

This freedom, this responsibility is a hefty weight. A heavy that words will never be able to fully express or describe, but I continue to try…try to hold the words and the weight with tenderness, grace, consideration and care.

Last week, a friend shared a 2023 interview with Substack’s CEO, Chris Best.This interview, in my opinion, was not his best but it was revealing, and maybe this is a kind of “best”. I won’t rehash the interview, and do hope that you watch it for yourself, but in essence, Best stated that, in reference to Substack notes, censorship would not be extended to hate speech. The speech that was provided as an example for Best to react to was, “All brown people are animals and shouldn’t be allowed in america”...

The interview goes deeper and illuminates my own lived experience of the status quo since this country’s founding, when hate - in action, in speech, in politics, in education, in law etc. - is unacceptable ONLY when it is directed toward those which society has indoctrinated us to believe are to forever be protected from it, but have full carte blanche to be the orchestrators and administers of it. This group of administers and orchestrators is primarily made up of those who hold the same ideologies of this country’s founding members. Ideologies of -isms rooted in white supremacy - colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism. Because these isms are so purposely and intricately woven into the fabric of this country, and society, it is nearly impossible to find any corporate entity that doesn’t, on some level, embody and perpetuate these ideological beliefs. Regardless, I believe deeply that the continued embedding of these -isms is a choice and I am trying with all my might to do one of two things with my choice:

1. Divest and untether, not just from platforms, brands, corporations, entities, environments and systems which reinforce and uphold these isms, but I am trying to untether from all the ways in which these isms exist within my own thoughts, perceptions and perspective, because another truth is that, “problematic”, and paradox, exists everywhere, including within myself.

2. Speak up, call in (or out), petition, and work from within the platforms, brands, corporations, entities, etc. in attempt to see if change is possible.

In this case, I’m choosing the responsibility of option 1.

Is choosing this responsibility, not just in this case but in life overall, hard…as fuck?

Yes.

Does choosing this responsibility require deep consideration and more sacrifice and risk than I was, and still often am, prepared for?

Yes.

Are risk and sacrifice necessary to creating pathways for futures within which we (I) can be more well and whole; futures that don’t mirror the tyranny, brutality, subjugation, repression, and the list goes on, of the present, or past?

Yes.

Does the “future” include the next moment, minute, hour, day, tomorrow, next week, next year?

Yes.

To put things plainly, I am saddened by how shitty, hateful and violent the minds of the majority of those in “power” are. But we (I) are in power too. To believe otherwise would be detrimental to faiths, trusts, hopes, consciousness, creativity, imagination, and agency.

Agency is in large part what all of this - what is happening within us, outside of us, around us, locally, domestically, and aboard - is really all about, because if we who have rights and freedoms, access and power, are not using the agency these rights, freedom, access, power, and privilege, afford us, then what is all this right and freedom for?

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the 2024 documentary film, Sudan, Remember Us. At one point in the film, one of the young Sudanese activists says,

“My rights are worth nothing if you have none.”

Thank you for investing your time and attention here.

in gratitude, eniafe

Mirrors & Windows

Writers Note (post script):

Writing, art, and creation is always a continuation. There is nothing new under the sun except the history we don’t know. This is a rendition of a quote attributed to Harry S. Truman, but I grew up hearing my Mother say it. Mirrors and Windows is language I also know and I’m not sure at what point I began using the language again, that we are mirrors to see to and windows to see through but it is a bit kismet that I met these words again while editing this piece. The title changed in the editing process but as thing always go, everything as meant.

Born in Los Angeles but raised in Lake Elsinore, Riverside, California, I had many windows but very few mirrors. The windows allowed me to see and experience what it was like to live in environments that lacked Love and did not welcome difference. For a long time I refused to own, write or talk about growing up in Lake Elsinore because of how painful it was. Growing up there had a profound impact on who I am within myself, and within in the world. When I started journaling in 1999, it was an effort to create my own mirror. I continue to journal for the same reason. I write and share my work both as a mirror for reflection and window for insight and perspective. I’m not doing or speaking to anything new. This work is simply, and significantly, a continuation…

January 25, 2026

Collected Thoughts

This piece is a collection of thoughts. A peak behind the curtain, a revealing of how I think all peaces begin, pieces that, once delivered, out and into the world are full of color and life, breath and newness, clarity and eloquence. This piece is unfinished, and yet still whole, grown, and yet still growing. This peace is a weaving of present and past. As someone who writes and does language, I reflect, conceive and imagine new worlds through the mediums of words and language1. This is most often a process of excavation, bringing back up and forth the past, through memory and literature, in effort to make the present more clear. I recognize the past as an illuminating factor, allowing for present envisioning and future reimagining.

As I move these words from a place where the heart and mind meet, and thought forms and flows out from pen to page and then page gets transcribed into digital form, I am listening to the voices of Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez vibrate out from the television. On the television screen Sanchez and Clifton sit next to each other on stage, alongside Moderator Elsa Davis, at The New School in New York. The month is October. The year is 2001. The conversation is titled, ‘Mirrors and Windows’.2

“I borrowed something from Rudine Sims who said that all children, and I think all adults as well, need mirrors and widows. Mirrors in which they can see themselves, windows through which they can see the world. And everybody’s children are disadvantaged by not having that. There are some children in our culture who have only seen mirrors, they are disadvantaged. There are some children in our culture who have only seen windows, they are disadvantaged. And so it’s one of the things I like to think to do is to provide balance, to provide windows and mirrors if possible.” - Lucille Clifton

Window: The Televised Apocalypse

The windows through which I see show me that I have, in my perception, confused what the apocalypse means. The apocalypse I have seen in the movies are not in fact depictions of the world ending, they are depictions of the world if america and other colonialist powers are to continue to exist as we always have. These depictions where the entire planet is scorched, dry, dusty and barren, with only one or two, or small clusters of very few humans, and animals, that have survived in each corner of the world, are misleading. These depictions of a world, or an america, where there is no power, no telephones, though there is always miraculously some ancient device that one of the few humans stumbles upon, which allows them to reach another human, are too flat. These depictions where there is no food, or whatever food there is, is boxed or canned, and somehow not rotten or expired, offer us up a future ending that is filled with too much grace. These depictions where the weather is either searing and sweltering hot or numbingly cold, are too easily imagined. In essence the film makers want us to believe that the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it, is a future in which civilization is all but dead, and gone. Eviscerated. But the truth of it, the reality that we will experience if we are to continue on as we always have under governments rooted in white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy, is a reality that will give the appearance of this present life, but there will be no living in it, at least not freely, not wholly, or joyfully. It will be the present hollowed out with the most horrific elements of the past returning in fashions more brutal, more gruesome and more deadly.

Mirror: The Future Meeting Past

On the outside, things will appear as “normal”. This “normal” we are presently and so vehemently fighting to return brings me to the question, what is so desirable about the normalcy of a country built atop the blood and bodies of Indigenous people? What is so seductive about the normalcy of a country built by enslaved Africans and Indigenous Peoples, human beings who were not even considered as such until 1868, that’s just 158 years ago, and before then were only counted as three fifths of a human because to count them as such gave slave holding states more political power. What is so attractive about the norms created by this country? Is the attractiveness just that the norms are familiar? Do we know that familiarity can masquerade as comfort and comfort can be deadly?

In this future where everything is normal, normal will mean basic. Food will be bland. “Entertainment” will be censored and sanitized, television, books, movies, music and art will be one continuous body of propaganda and lies. Neighborhoods will resemble prison complexes. In the areas that have individual houses, each house will be painted some shade of white, off white, or light, almost white, grey. Our bodies will be perpetually unwell, a result of our immune systems having been subjected to decades and centuries of vaccines that were in actuality poison, poison administered to “preserve our health” which is to say administered to preserve our dependence on a system that needs us ill and unable to think, make choices, make noise, form thoughts independent of what the regime wants us to believe. And we will be governed by a regime in this future of normalcy. Democracy will be a thing of the past, as will freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition. Those “living” in this future won’t actually know what freedom is and there will be no books to tell of a time when freedom was, because they will have all been banned and burned.

Is any of this sounding familiar?

One last bit. Because we are so unwell, and because we are not free to assemble, there will be little to no close interactions, no intimacy, the language of love and community may still exist in words but they will have lost all meaning because those surviving in this future won’t know what it is to be cared for, or held, or loved. What those in this future will know is how to be “productive”, “high performing”, “assets” in order to limit negative “liability” and guarantee “lucrative” “performance”. The performance of course never being lucrative for those performing. The populationPopulation in this future will be controlled. To bear children will not be a choice but an obligation, an obligation only for some and forbidden for others. Force and coercion will not be exceptions, but be the rule. Warrants, rights, and due process will be a thing of the past. There will be no such thing as “process of justice” because there will be no process and there will be no “justice”. And, speaking again of normalcy, it will be normal to see bodies lying dead in the street, or hanging from trees, and not just Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies, but any body.

Is any of this sounding familiar?

The depictions of the apocalypse we have seen are misleading because if it is to depict the world as it would be if we continued on as we are, it would be a depiction of the past repeating itself. Only it will be more heinous, more evil and more sadistic. In this future there will be life but living will be a thing the majority won’t be able to remember. For the few who do, they will be haunted by the question, “How did we get here?”

Is any of this sounding familiar?

I feel it necessary to paint a picture that is closer to a reality than most of us would like to admit because being reluctant in our admittance isn’t going to change its possibility. If we read, if we listen, if we converse in community both with those whose experiences we can identify with and those whose experiences are vastly different from ours, we will gain more sight, veils will lift and, if we are willing, we will more openly accept that america’s “great”ness, and this “normal” we have been seeking is not worth pursuing or repeating.

At this juncture, and if you are still with me, thank you, I want to pull this question from the past and ask it not for you to answer to me but for you to reflect within and amongst yourselves in effort to assess where you have been and where you are in your thoughts and consciousness.

“What are you going to do today to resist domination?”

- bell hooks

This question, I recognize, only bears significance if you believe there is domination to resist, and you find your resistance to be not only vital and necessary but obligatory.

“When one day our children’s children ask, “What did you do?” When they rise like the Guatemalan poet Rene Castillo rose and asked us what we did “when our nations dried out slowly like a sweet fire small and alone.” When they ask us, “What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burnt out of them?” We, the lovers of selves, the lovers of people, the lovers of justice will turn and say, “We resisted. We resisted the ego. We resisted the gossip, the rumor in ourselves. We resisted the great, the people red orialist in a selves. We resisted the quick killings and quick retaliations of others. We resisted war, we resisted war, we resisted war. Can you do it? Can you resist? Can you say it? Can you resist? Can you remember? Can you resist? Resist, resist, resist.

Black voters in Florida, can you resist? Can you remember 41 bullets? Can you say 41 bullets? Can you remember, cccccccccccccccan you resssssist, even in this death, can you resist?????????????”

- Sonia Sanchez from a letter to writer Chinua Achebe

Resistance

Writing has been a form of resistance I have used since before I knew what resistance was. Before I understood that I had been born into resistance because Idowu Adewale is my Nigerian Father and Judy Leonard is my Indigenous American Mother, a musician and poet, and poet and writer, deeply concerned with justice, deeply rooted in the awareness of the worlds around them, free thinkers, and two people who loved each other, a love which birthed me. Me, a woman breaking into herself, a woman writing and doing language, learning how to perfect her loving, self-love, familial love, platonic love, romantic love, communal love, environmental love, spiritual love, revolutionary love. Me, a woman discovering the “razors between her teeth”3 and learning how to use them, not to cut any person but to cut through delusion so that the truth cannot be buried in it. Me, a woman learning how to balance the windows and mirrors, heart in one hand and pen the other. Me, a woman learning that I am not the heroine, the savior, the martyr or the medicine. I am peace4 and part of the weapon.

In 1975Maya Angelou sat down with James Baldwin, for a “Conversation With A Native Son”.5Towards the end of the interview, Angelou asks, “Is there any time in life where you start a project that you’re not afraid?” Baldwin begins reflecting on the completion of “No Name In The Street” and a conversation with his brother, David who Baldwin says pointed out to him that to be a writer, which essentially is to keep trying, meant that he, “had to keep the faith.”

Imagining

I am imagining a future that is beyond comprehension because it looks nothing like anything I have ever seen, experienced or known, at least not in this present body or lifetime, but I believe, and have faith in its possibility. In the future we exist differently. In the future we flourish, frolic and thrive. Not just some of us, but all of us. In the future there is an eternal and infinite, acknowledged and bound tethering between “we” and “I”, in the same way there is an eternal and infinite tethering between Mother and Nature, this Earth and all of its inhabitants. In this future people truly know, experience and practice Love. Not just Love of themselves and their things, because again the tethering, but Love for everything and everyone that creates the world the future dwells within.

In the future, history is not hidden and to know and speak of it honestly is not forbidden. In the future the truth rests in plain sight, is taught proudly because in the future this country, whether it is still known as america or goes by another name, knows itself and owns its knowing. History, in this future, will include all the happenings that led to its rebirth and evolution where in we the people chose not to make another america, and not to make america great again, because we the people know, america is not great and never has been.

Thank you for investing your time and attention. You could have invested anywhere else in the world and yet, you chose to be here.

in gratitude, eniafe

Empty Page

February 1, 2026

How I am moving through this world, in these times, changes every moment of everyday. But also every moment of everyday I am moving as slowly as I can.

There is a kind of vacancy1 that replaces occupancy in the emotional body when there is so much loss. Even more so when loss - whether it is death, whether it is unwanted change,transition or transformation - is not expressed, not shared, not acknowledged; whenwe do not handle life with sacred care.

Now you may ask, want to know, how one fills this vacancy. And I cannot tell you. And I do not even know that you fill it, but I do know, you do feel it.

As I have been feeling and moving through and within my own vacancies, I have been meeting and re-meeting words. When I am struggling I seek out language because if I can name a thing I can see it with more clarity. I can process it, digest it, and express it so that the weight of it doesn’t just sit, it alchemizes.

So I have been meeting words. Meeting them like I meet people. Bumping up against them. Words and people. But words are different than people.

Words are like an empty page. Evenas they bare themselves, openly, ready, willing for you to savor them, words ask for nothing from you but welcome all of you, all that you are willing and able to give, all that you are willing to allow and all that you are willing to take in.

This week I kept bumping into language of revelation of revolution and I had this thought about the letter “r” and how each of these words can stand alone with out it but take on different meaning with it.

Revelation | Elevation (a rearrangement of letters, evelation = elevation)

Revolution | Evolution

What if the “r” stands for Rebirth?

What if we are birthed once by our mothers and then rebirthed again through life’s vacancies?

In an instagram post earlier this week, artistic intellectual and longtime friend, Amanda Seales wrote, “Each of us is a revolution.”

and then from Joél Leon I read, “Revolution is a love language.”

The thought I will end with is this:

I believe many of us have revolutionary hearts. It’s our minds that lag behind, still needing to learn how to speak the language. The televised revolution is what happens after our minds meet our hearts and the fluency in its language evolves, not just into actions but into new ways of being. New ways of occupying vacancies.

Interviewer: The revolution wasn’t televised in the 60’s. Is it going to be televised in the 90’s?

Gil Scott-Heron: Well you know, the catch phrase, what that was all about, that was all about the first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you’re living and the way you move. So when we said, ‘The revolution will not be televised’, we were saying the thing that’s going to change people is something that no-one will ever be able to capture on film, it will just be something that you see and all of a sudden you realize, I’m on the wrong page, or, I’m on the right page but I’m on the wrong note and I’ve got to get in sync with everyone else to understand what’s happening in this country.

1989 was 37 years ago and a revolution…evolution is still needed, is still necessary.

Thank you for investing your time here. It isn’t taken for granted, and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

in gratitude, eniafe