If it’s not about me and my peace of mind, it can wait — My morning routine is the same almost every day. I typically wake every morning between 6 and 7 a.m. I don’t use an alarm clock, preferring to let myself rise naturally with the sun. I stretch. Sit up. Take a sip of water. Say a little prayer of gratitude. Get…

Losing something important to me gave me the strength to move past my trauma — So I think I have a ghost in my apartment. I started noticing it almost immediately upon moving in. I would hear noises coming from the ceiling as though someone was walking around up there. (I live on the top floor. No one is above me.) Doors in my apartment…

I come from a rich lineage of Black excellence — “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave/I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” — Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise” In 2017 BC (before Covid-19), I had the opportunity to visit the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. …

I spent my journalism career trying to be perfect. Now I’m just trying to be myself. — Even at the risk of burning, the mouth always seeks the light. —Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X I just finished Elizabeth Acevedo’s YA novel The Poet X, and that line really stood out to me. The main character, a burgeoning slam poet named Xiomara, writes a poem for her class…