This is my mission for 2023
On the night before my 39th birthday, I shared 8 personal commitments I am renewing for this new year of my life:
Freedom, Integrity, Responsibility, Leadership, Courage, Grace, Community, and Self-Care.
I’ve thought long and hard about these values over the years since I began my work as a writer, educator, and speaker. In fact, my work has demanded it of me. Because the more we show up as changemaking leaders to others, the more responsibility we have to lead ourselves. From the inside out.
We cannot ask others to change themselves and our shared world if we are not also changing our own selves and our own inner worlds too.
I’ve had to learn a lot of hard lessons on this journey. I’ve made mistakes and missteps. Cycled through periods of burnout. Lost relationships that didn’t serve. Learned how to build relationships that do. Overcome imposter syndrome. Continue to heal my internalised oppression. And so much more.
And I could not have done any of it without the wisdom and guidance of Black and Brown writers.
Writers like Toni Morrison who wrote of Freedom, “Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you... Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.”
And Maya Angelou who wrote of Courage, “I am convinced that courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently.”
And Audre Lorde who wrote of Self-Care, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
But also writers of our modern times who continue to write from the place where the personal and the political co-exist.
Writers like the ones I have had the privilege of hosting in our book club since 2021, who have talked to us about love, motherhood, spirituality, friendship, immigration, hair, music, our bodies, race, gender, patriarchy, joy, and rest.
These incredible writers have helped me and countless others find our way through the tangled contradictions of what it means to be humans. They’ve taught us what it means to create healing and liberation in a world that has caused so much harm and oppression.
With each book and accompanying podcast episode, we’ve learned things that have helped us have more empathy for each other and more compassion for ourselves. In hearing stories that are similar or different to our own, learning hidden histories that fill in the missing gaps of mainstream teachings, and gaining new ways of thinking about generations-long issues, we have benefited from the thought-leadership of Black and Brown writers of our modern age.
What a gift!
As Team Good Ancestor and I get ready to rest this month, I’m thankful that I have had the gift of learning about the liberating power of rest from our final book club author, Tricia Hersey. Tricia’s work at The Nap Ministry and her bestselling manifesto book guides so much of how I approach rest and self-care.
Like so many of our book club selections, Rest Is Resistance helps us to:
Name the harmful systems (white supremacy, capitalism, grind culture)
Claim our personal and collective healing (learning how to rest, take naps, daydream, meditate, grind less, be more), and
Sustain our commitment to changemaking (by completing reframing our relationship with rest and making it a nonnegotiable practice of our liberation, making us prioritise rest as our right and our resistance).
In fact, Rest Is Resistance played a key role in helping me to decide to close down our book club from 2023 onwards. It made me take more responsibility for my time and my rest. I realised as both ‘Layla the CEO’ and ‘Layla the woman, wife, and mother’, that it was time to let some things go this year, so that I can focus on what matters most in the coming years.
So that I can work well, rest well, and be well.
Making this decision was not easy of course. I absolutely love our book club. And reading books by authors of colour helps us to reclaim our humanity, I’m convinced of this. Each author has made my life just that little bit better each month. And they are the reason why I will always continue to read BIPOC books, and elevate and celebrate their authors in any way I can, forever and ever more.
And, I cannot wait for what comes next!
Because when we say No (or no more) to something, we are also saying Yes to what comes next. And my team and I have been working on exactly what comes next - how we can grow together as good ancestors in 2023. Watch this space, I can’t wait to share!
To our healing + liberation,
Layla
