May 2 – Malcolm: Truth

Action: Spend 10 intentional minutes with Malcolm X — read a speech, watch an interview, or listen to his voice. Don’t rush it. Let one sentence confront you.

Reflection: Malcolm teaches that truth is not always soft. Sometimes truth arrives as interruption, as discipline, as exposure, as fire. Today is about asking where I have been too polite with my own knowing.

Journal Prompt:What truth am I avoiding because naming it would require me to change?

Affirmation:I am not afraid of the truth that frees me. I can face what is real and still become whole.

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The truth I am avoiding is that I already know who I am. I keep looking for confirmation, language, proof, signs, titles, acceptance letters, opportunities, and recognition to tell me something my spirit already knows. I am not confused. I am not empty. I am not waiting to become brilliant. I am already carrying a body of work, a lineage, a voice, a testimony, a method, a ministry, and a movement. The truth is, I am afraid of what it will require from me to fully honor what I know. I am avoiding the discipline of my own calling.

Not because I do not care, but because I am tired. I am mothering, teaching, studying, loving, grieving, building, dreaming, surviving, and still trying to look like I have it all together. Some days I am so exhausted that I confuse depletion with failure. But my tiredness cannot become the truth of my life. My fatigue is real, but it cannot be my master. I deserve rest, but I also deserve structure. I deserve softness, but I also need devotion.

The truth I am avoiding is that I cannot keep waiting for the academy to authorize what my ancestors have already placed inside of me. I cannot keep asking if I am a philosopher when my whole life has been a school of thought. My home is theory. My grief is theory. My daughter is theory. My grandmother is theory. South Jamaica is theory. My body is theory. My beauty work is theory. My mourning is theory. My survival is theory. My joy is theory. I am not trying to find my intellectual project. I am already living inside of it. But now I have to build it. That is the part I avoid.

It is easier to dream than to schedule. Easier to theorize than to submit. Easier to say “one day” than to sit down and write the page. Easier to explain why I am overwhelmed than to make one clear move toward the woman I say I want to become. The truth is, my next level does not need more emotional explanation. It needs rhythm. It needs boundaries. It needs sleep. It needs money discipline, and more money. It needs movement. It needs prayer. It needs writing time. It really really needs more writing time. It needs me to stop abandoning myself in small ways while claiming I am preparing for something big.

I am also avoiding the truth that love, family, work, and responsibility cannot keep taking up so much space that my calling has to beg for air. I love deeply, but I cannot let love turn me away from myself. I cannot let anybody’s inconsistency, need, silence, confusion, or lack of readiness become the weather system of my life. If I am going to be loved, I need a love where my calling can breathe, where my daughter can see me honored, where my nervous system can rest, and where my becoming is not treated like a threat.

The truth is, I am powerful.And sometimes I avoid that because power requires accountability. It means I cannot keep pretending I do not know. It means I cannot keep shrinking to make my life more manageable for other people. It means I cannot keep hiding behind exhaustion, grief, or fear of being seen. It means I have to move like the woman I keep writing about. I am not behind.I am not lost.I am not waiting to be chosen.I am being called into authorship.

So today, under Malcolm’s fire, I tell myself the truth:

I already know who I am.Now I have to live like it.I have to stop asking for permission.I have to build with what I have.I have to honor my grief without letting it bury me.I have to protect my energy without disappearing.I have to love without abandoning myself.I have to rest without quitting.I have to write without waiting.I have to become without apology.

The truth I am avoiding is not that I am unworthy. The truth is that I am already worthy, already called, already carrying something sacred, and now my life has to be organized around that truth.

What truth are you avoiding right now?

Share this with someone who is being called to stop shrinking, stop waiting, and start living like they already know who they are.