You don’t need more affirmations. But perhaps, like many of us, you are desiring tools, skills and strategies for navigating the seasons where your faith starts to feel foolish and the results you wished for are taking longer than the ego can bear. In this episode we explore navigating suspicion around our creative commitments and the temptation to give up inside the messy middle. We remember the potency of our creative power activates when we’re lost, not when we know the way. How do we remain steadfast inside our commitments while facing the grief, fear and uncertainty of our time? How do we trade the misleading allure of instant gratification with the sturdy sense of alignment that arises when we choose the practice of closing the gap between our values and our actions everyday, as Mariame Kaba invites us to do? How do we release all our “shoulds” and stay in the game long enough to learn what comes next? These are the questions we explore inside today’s episode.

Resources

• Register for the Free 2-Part Worldbuilding Workshop Series and Download the Spring 2025 Syllabus: https://www.seedaschool.com/program
• Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: ⁠https://seedaschool.substack.com/⁠
• Follow Ayana on Instagram: ⁠⁠@ayzaco⁠⁠
• Follow Ayana on Threads: ⁠⁠@ayzaco⁠⁠
• Follow Seeda School on Instagram: ⁠⁠@seedaschool⁠

Citations

• “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” is a 1976 work by Ntozake Shange. It consists of a series of poetic monologues to be accompanied by dance movements and music, a form which Shange coined the word choreopoem to describe. It tells the stories of seven women who have suffered oppression in a racist and sexist society.
• “What Does It Take to Sustain the Lives of Black Feminists While We Are Alive?: Defining Affirmation Banking & Overcoming the Expected Humility of Accepting It” by Kay Brown of Assemblage: Baby’s Breath
• Faculty Spotlight: Graphic Designer and Musician Wesley Taylor, Emphasizes Design Justice, Community Building
• “It Is Working—You Just Can’t See It Yet” (Substack) and “225: Stop Quitting Too Soon” (Podcast) by Myleik Teele
• Victoria Monét on taking the streets instead of the highway and one of my favorite songs of hers, Hollywood feat. Earth, Wind and Fire
• Cover Art: Betelhem Makonnen, "conjugated keyboard" (2020) Materials: Keyboard, tumbled rocks, Dimensions: 12.6" x 14.8" x 1 “