Aya Collective Publishing

Writing has always been a sacred practice for me. As a child, I would fill the pages of my journal with letters to God and entries addressed to “Dear Diary,” pouring out my thoughts, my prayers, my joys, and my struggles. It was how I made sense of the world. Growing up, I won awards for my writing, but I never fully owned that I was a writer. The messaging around me pointed toward paths perceived to be more stable and lucrative, and for a long time, I saw writing as something I did, not something I was. It took years before I returned to it in a way that felt like home. Once I was able to release writing from the grip of academic performance and institutional expectations, I could enjoy it again the way I did when I was little before I knew that schools ranked people based on their ability to craft words in certain ways.

It was that search for sacred creative space that led me to the Aya Collective. I had drifted away from writing, and I longed for a community where writing was not just about productivity but about connection and healing. I first heard about the collective from its founder, who is a dear sister and friend, and I was inspired by the space she wanted to create. I knew it was the right place for me because it reflected the expansiveness and diversity of Black women in our spirituality, in our cultural expression, in all the ways we move through the world. My first experience was in a beautifully decorated room, filled with warmth, laughter, and good food. We gathered, we joked, we shared our stories, and we supported one another. It was everything I had been looking for. It reminded me that writing is not just an individual act but a communal and spiritual one. The women of Aya challenge me to make space for myself in my writing, to resist the ways academic spaces try to erase that, and I am deeply grateful for them.

Spirituality is inseparable from my creative work because it is inseparable from my life. As I grow older, I find that my faith in the Lord is more and more grounded in an appreciation for what the Creator has done for my ancestors, for the ancestors of others, for our collective ancestors. To me, spirituality is interconnected with our historical consciousness and our cultures. It cannot be separated. I believe that the Divine has walked with us, protected us, nurtured us through generations. The ways in which I express my knowledge, experiences, care, and creativity through my writing, my teaching in K-12 and higher education, or simply being in community are my desire and efforts to reflect and honor that belief in our spiritual and human interconnectedness. It is a way of remembering this age old truth. It is a way of being whole together. 

Wholeness is what drives both my creative and spiritual work. I think a lot about children and how we often see them as incomplete because they have not yet learned what the world tells them they need to know. But when I look at young children, I see them as closer to wholeness than most adults are. They are not perfect, and many do not even know that perfection is a goal in the adult world, despite how unattainable it is. The youngest of children have not yet been shaped into fitting a mold that was never meant to hold them. They have not yet been made to forget who they are or to second guess their awesomeness. So much of what we do in education, in the way we are taught to measure knowledge, in the way we structure learning, works to fragment and distort. It is why my advocacy is not separate from my creativity or my spirituality. It is all the same work. It is about protecting what is whole. It is about naming what tries to diminish that wholeness. It is about working with our Creator to heal ourselves and our communities from that which has harmed and distorted. 

That is also what I wish more writers knew. That we already have the power and the right to reclaim what was designed to undermine and erase us. That writing is not about becoming something new but about returning to what has always been. That there is so much within us already, so much brilliance and possibility, so much history and creativity and love. The process of writing, the practice of it, is a way of revealing what is already there. It is a way of accessing it more freely, sharing it more fully. It is not a linear path, not a hierarchy to climb. It is a remembering. It is a way of keeping ourselves connected to the Divine and to one another.

When I feel blocked, when I struggle with doubt, it is almost always a sign that I need deep rest and grounded both physical and spiritual. When I am not tending to my basic needs and to my spiritual needs, my thoughts feel harder to access. My words feel distant. Creativity cannot thrive where physical and spiritual exhaustion is present. So I listen. I slow down. I care for myself in the ways that any living thing needs care. And then the words return. Because they were never gone. They were simply waiting for me to be well enough to hold them.

Finally, if I could offer one guiding principle, it would be this. Ask yourself, as often as you can, what is impeding your wholeness. What is working to harm it, to take from it, to distort it. And just as importantly, ask yourself what is healing it. What is nurturing and sustaining it. The answers to those two questions will guide you well. They will remind you that you forever bear the image of the Divine. That you are already enough, whole, creative, and powerful. That you are already deeply loved and deeply known.