✨ANNOUNCEMENTS✨
My debut speculative fiction collection drops March 13, 2024 and the Bereket Writing Community is hosting a virtual book launch for Apocalypse Still. Join us on Zoom as I read an excerpt and talk with writer Shipra Agarwal about the themes and inspirations behind the book as well as writing with the Bereket Community. The event starts at 8 PM EST. You can RSVP HERE.
🌟SERMON🌟
I left Mississippi seven years ago with a desire to choose Mississippi. According to our genealogy, my family has been in Mississippi since the 1790s. They were among the first enslaved people in the region—before Mississippi was even a state. They were forced to come here and held hostage by slavery, segregation, and then intergenerational poverty. They never chose to live in Mississippi but nevertheless made it our home.
The truth is, I never thought I'd leave. If you asked me a decade ago where I'd spend my twenties, I'd assume Mississippi. My family—if they ever were able to escape—only could for a year or two before the lack of money forced them to come back. I doubted I could be so lucky.
I first visited Florida during my senior year of college. My now-husband applied to a radiation therapy program, and we visited together to get a glimpse of our future. We sat on the hotel balcony, salt and sea hung in the air, as we watched the sun rise over the horizon. Later when we decided to walk along the shore, I watched how the water silently washed away my footprints and remembered how in Mississippi my footprints were so embedded in the soil that I could come back days later, and it'd still be there. Mississippi remembers, but Florida made me feel like every step I took or mistake I made could easily be washed away. That everything I did could be forgiven, cleansed, and made new. That in Florida, I could start over and try again. That I could be a new me.
I came to Florida young, naive, and traumatized—a horrifying mix. I thought if you worked hard, anything was possible but was quickly humbled by the job search. The “elite” school I attended in Mississippi was unknown in southwest Florida. My renowned connections I made from years of networking were no help. The racism I thought I left behind in Mississippi showed another side of itself in Florida. I was thrown into adulthood with failed resources and struggled immensely.
The panic attacks I brought to Florida worsened. Almost a year after graduating college, I visited a psychologist and unexpectedly started crying about the pressure that I grew up with to be Black and excellent. How all the work I did as a child and teenager amounted to nothing because I had nothing to show for it. How I failed everyone who believed in me and put their hopes and dreams in me. While this meeting started years of therapy, it also offered me a gift: redirection. At that point, I had spent 23 years building a life that made other people proud of me, I wanted to build a life that made me proud of myself.
I started back photographing and writing. That year had actually been the longest I had gone without writing since I started as a pre-teen. I started going to the beach that was thirty minutes away from my condo. I felt the warmth of the sun on my skin, heard the music of the waves hitting the shore, and smelt the sea waft across my nose. That felt like living to me. It felt like freedom.
I cranked up the music that my mama criticized me for listening to. I wore the comfortable clothes that would've gotten me slut-shamed growing up. I got on Bumble BFF and met people. I gave up the corporate dream and stopped applying for jobs that I thought would impress other people. I volunteered at the local animal shelter and adopted our very vocal kitty, Nell. I traveled around the state—sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. I wrote four books, published one, and started a podcast. I got married and invited family, friends and coworkers to our backyard reception.
I've survived two major hurricanes, a global pandemic, and a Trump presidency in a county with three Trump stores. (Yes, they had a life sized cut-out of Trump that people used for photo-ops.)
I've done it all.
And now I say goodbye to the eleven year old girl I've been mentoring for three years who’s taught me about being daring, having fun, and speaking up. Goodbye to the kids who have adopted me as another mom. I say goodbye to the older coworkers who reassured me that your life doesn't even start until you're thirty. That your twenties are for having fun and figuring your shit out. I say goodbye to the land and the Gulf that has held me, my sorrows, and my grief. The hardest goodbye may be to that Florida resident Disney pass. I'll miss you most of all. I say goodbye to it all as I return to the place that I can now choose as my home: Mississippi.
Until next time,
Leah