What 2025 Couldn't Break
2025 came out swingiiinngg!! I’m talking bout had ya girl in a Full Nelson. You hear me? And I know for many this was true, but there was something very important at play collectively. Did you pick up on it? If not, I’ll elaborate, but first let me share some personal context.
My reference to the Full Nelson was figurative, but almost literal. I spent half the year on bed rest from broken bones, HALF! Imagine, friend, imagine. Out of all my years, I’ve NEVER broken anything, yet 2025 came with 3 very formative breaks that spoke loudly. 2025 felt like an attack on all fronts—mind, body, and spirit. Travel with me for a second.
My first accident resulted in my shoulder being separated from my clavicle, the second…a broken ankle, and the third a busted mouth that required oral surgery to fix. Each one of these body parts sent a message while I was in bed fighting to not be overcome by depression. Fears multiplied in my head surrounding how others struggling with muscular dystrophy, like myself, don't recover well from breaks and seldom return to mobility. What if this fall would be the last time I was on my feet? I was scared y’all. BIG SCARED. Cornered with thoughts of what life would look like defeated and confined to a bed as the world turns and burns. I have mourned my body in so many ways but this feeling of dread stomached me.
On top of this fear was a continual grief that squoze just about every tear out of me. I cried til my tears turned into deep moans and heaves of agony. The midnight hour stretched into sleepless nights that turned into days. I was front pew at the funeral every other month and not for distant relatives, but for loved ones who shaped my childhood and impressed heavily on my life. Death became an evident truth alongside the endings of the accustomed family dynamic. I was convinced 2025 was out to break me, but when I looked beyond my own suffering I realized I was FAR from the only one and here’s what the sacred messenger of my body had to say about it…
The body is fragile, but it is resilient.
The Earth, like the body, is fragile and it too is resilient.
The spirit shifts yet the soul is steadfast.
So too, the wind shifts yet the sky is steadfast.
The Shoulder
My shoulder incident asked, what are you shouldering? What are you carrying alone that actually requires community? Will you be courageous enough to ask for the support you need?
It was bringing up all the ways I’d become programmed into individualism and the bind that it puts us in. I started thinking heavily about communal care. I noticed how separated I felt from those that I loved. In a way, my clavicle being separated from my shoulder symbolized this. My mom was my primary support person during this first incident and i realized the toll it took on her supporting me alone. Fast forward to my ankle break and by then, I gathered enough courage to call in support from my family and close friends and when i tell you they came THROUGH, they came through!!
The fear of feeling like a burden carried no weight in the way they loved on me. My prayer is that everyone knows what that feels like. You are not a burden just because you need support, it’s quite literally what our species is made to do and be for one another. We are social creatures who thrive off of connection and care.
The Ankle
Where are you afraid to step out on faith? Where is there resistance in your faith walk? Are you willing to trust God with your fears and move forward anyway?
It has been made really clear that my life is a faith walk, not a cake walk. While on bed rest I struggled with my delusion of control and perfectionism. It broke my timeline and plans and forced me to reckon with this question — When your plans crumble will you trust God on a moment to moment /step by step basis? Will you be still when called to? You say you trust the process, but how you trust it if you tryna rush it? You say you dedicated, but how so if you focused on how much time it’s gone take?
This a faith walk, not a cake walk…
This time we are in requires faith. It requires hope. It requires the ability to imagine an outcome greater than what the opps try to delude us into.
The Mouth
How has life silenced you? What part of your truth have you withheld that could set somebody free? Will you allow the gift of your story to liberate others?
Ouuu wee, ou wee. I’m a very, I don’t say much but when I do kinda person. This was revealed to me as an evolved coping mechanism. A way to protect myself for fear of saying the wrong thing. Having my mouth stitched up and eating from a straw showed me that my silence won’t protect me, as the late Audre Lorde once forewarned. The voice is a force of power, not using it says more about your relationship or lack thereof with power than it says about knowing what to say. I had to sit with the responsibility of using my voice, and owning my story.
We know how manipulated and white washed our history has been. With AI and propaganda spreading like a virus, it’s essential for us to take ownership of our narrative and safeguard our history.
No Weapon Formed Against…
We all collectively witnessed the orange one and his minions actions towards its most vulnerable. We watched them snatch healthcare (Medicaid) and food (SNAP) out the mouths of the most susceptible in the country, we witnessed horrific genocide, ICE brutality and murder, DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion) get scratched off corporate contracts, AI plants exploit and poison our black and brown neighborhoods. The mask is off, the veil has fallen. Thus we know where their heads and hearts are…
The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members -anonymous
We see the heartless leadership and regime this country is under and how we choose to respond makes all the difference. Fortunately, what was meant to overwhelm and destroy us, brought about a reemergence of our survival instincts. A remembering of our power and where it comes from. It inspired people to start looking at systems to dismantle them.
When corrupt systems fail us, we start to remember what it means to be human again. We start to realize profit over people was never a win. We start to realize empathy, love, and community create a strong and sustainable foundation. We start to realize that this very land we live on is a part of us just as much as we are a part of it. Consequently, exploiting it is a practice of self exploitation.
We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it. -James Baldwin
Here's what's happening and available to us in this time:
Death of individualism fueled by capitalism
Learning how to organize as people / Mutual Aid Organizing
Restructuring of social values
Understanding power and establishing new relationships with it
Village & Family Dynamic Work
Healing our soil & relationship to Earth
Collective Care
Ideology Evolution (Political, Social, Environmental & Religious)
With this, I strongly encourage you to research and re-member your roots, discern who you've been called to be in your bloodline, honor your gifts at any capacity into its fullness, and unplug to connect.
So if you haven’t noticed what’s at play let me spell it out. Just as much as the world is breaking, a new humanity is being born. When a bone breaks, it heals stronger.
Collectively as we witness an empire crumble and humanity be reborn, let us be reminded that nothing can hold us. 2025 tried to break many things but it could not take the gift of resilience that emerges from survival. We were built to last. Our ancestors knew this, it’s in our DNA.
On July 9, 2025 the day my grandmother took her last breath I got up from my bed and took my first step out of bed rest. The ancestors at work. Stay present.