Not Just A Woman

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I don't have the luxury of being just a woman

LuxuryI went to see Kung Panda 3 this weekend. It is not like I go to see movies regularly. The whole movie thing was an accident of an ill-timed desire to bowl and being met with a 3 hour waiting time. Instead of going back home, my friend and I decided to go watch a movie. It just happened that the next starting movie was Kung Fu Panda 3.

The big theme of this movie was identity. It was simple enough for kids and complex enough for adults who chose to pay attention. What do you do when your identity is not as simple as white bread? What is Po to do as the adopted son of a goose and the biological son of a Panda? Where does he draw his strength? What makes him him?

These are complicated questions for an animated movie. These questions though are the ones I have to wrestle with as a voter. Who am I? What are my priorities? What will tip  my vote?

My identity is layered in both the physical and the psychological. I am woman. Born and raised as a Muslim in  Nigeria. Moved to America at 16. Became an American in 2009. Highly educated but struggling to achieve a solidly middle class status. Struggling to figure out the student loan game. Gaining a consciousness of my own blackness in American society. Worried about the lives of my future children in a society that does not value black lives.

All of these things and more influence the way I see the world. The layers of identity and world view color the ideal world I see. This ideal world inevitably colors the way I see myself casting my vote.

Any suggestions that my vote should be as simple as being a woman or being black or being Muslim is a shortcut to diminishing my experience as human being. One of the struggles I initially had before deciding of Bernie Sanders was the idea of the first female president. Am I traitor to womanhood if I choose a man over Hilary Clinton? Is this another case of betrayal of sisterhood and feminism of I feel that a man better represents my ideals that Hilary?

When Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem start “scolding” young women for not voting for Hilary Clinton because she is a woman, they do so from the position of white feminism. The much stated quote about going to hell for not supporting other women is one that is based on the assumption that other women are accepting of all women. No if, but or maybe. That assumption is a privilege. White Feminist have the privilege of being able to see challenges to their life from the position of their gender. The glass ceiling for them is one layer thick. As long as they can overcome the barrier of having a vagina instead of penis, then they are good to go.

The fact is I don’t have the luxury of being just a woman. The inability to understand that gender is not the only barrier that young women are dealing is perhaps why feminism and Hilary Clinton’s campaign don’t appeal to a lot of young women. I’m not saying that I don’t connect to any part of Hilary Clinton’s platform. I’m saying I connect more to Bernie Sanders’ platform. I have too many questions and concerns about the future of the country under Hilary’s leadership.

 And just in case there is a temptation to drag out Barack Obama’s implicit or explicit endorsement to boost Hilary’s campaign, I shall still be voting for Bernie.

January Loves

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There is nothing like empowering people to do something new

There is nothing like empowering people to do something new

I can’t believe January is over! I mean wasn’t it yesterday we made promises to each other and to ourselves. To live better lives this year. To do more. To be more. To be present. Now January is here and gone. The newness of 2016 is slightly faded; there is a luster but it is not so bright.

Despite the departure of January, I am still excited for the year ahead. In January, I enjoyed myself a lot. Sure there were moments of anxiety and deep thoughts. But there were also moments of levity. Read more

What is Success?

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Success.jpgI am having a tough weekend. I am having one of those moments when I look at my life and all I see are my shortcomings. I know I am not being rational. That said the despair I feel is real because I feel like I am not where I want to be at this point in my life. No, I don’t feel like I am at rock bottom. At the same time, I don’t feel like I am on a successful path. There is so much more that I want out of my life.

Sometimes the things I desire out of life lead to competing interests. On one hand I feel like in order for me to progress professionally I should be open to moving out of the Greater Boston area. On the flip side, I have moved so much in the last thirteen years that the thought of packing my bags moving has me crying on the phone with my friend.

I don’t have much in Boston. I have a job. I have a few friends. Some clothes, some pots and pans and my growing sense of stability. For some looking at my life, that is not enough to stake a lifetime on. For me though, the bit I have now seems like more than I have had in a long time. The sense that I have people to call, places I know and some hope of a career seems like more than a enough to build a future upon.

While I was crying to my friend on the phone, he asked me, “What is success to you? You have to figure out your narrative and make decisions that are right for you.” I am not sure what my vision of success is. Okay…maybe I am telling lies. For me success is not just having a good job, it is having a social bearing as well. On the whole, I don’t have any of those things at the moment. And that scares me badly. As happy and as inspired as I am to turn 30, it scares me as well.

It is scary because I see so much more that I need to be doing. As much as I am inspired to live with vigor, 8 months is not enough to build a life like the one I want. But like everyone keeps telling me when I get worked up and too emotional about the whole thing, I need to calm down and take it a step at a time.

 

 

Day Zero

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athleteAs I type this I am sitting in my bed while I mentally calculate when to leave my house so that I can get to the gym, workout, get lunch and still get to my dentist appointment on time. This is now my life.

I signed up for a half-marathon. It was a spontaneous decision. Alright, it was not spontaneous like that. It was more like I saw an ad for the AirBnB Brooklyn Half 2016 and I though to myself I should run that. I have become a bit more adventurous as I try go out of my twenties strong. I saw this ad back at the beginning of January. Registration wasn’t for a few weeks so I told myself if I could start training consistently for it, I would sign up.

I have been spending a consistent amount of time in the gym lately. Loads of running and cycling. Recently I have added yoga and strength training to the mix. Running is hard. Some people get on that treadmill and they look like they were born to run. I have had to learn to run.

I have been running for a few years now, off and on. When I was 21, I trained for the San Diego Marathon. I loved every minute of it. The early morning runs. The abdominal work. The discovering weird food like GU. The pasta and broccoli in Marinara sauce with tuna before long runs. The sweaty body. I hated the injury that stopped me from running. I remember that foot injury everyday.

I ran again consistently in Manchester. Then I stopped running until I got to Boston. In between, I did a lot of walking around. I love walking so much. In New York, I used to challenge myself by walking for blocks and blocks. In Ibadan, the teachers taught I was crazy because I would walk from Eleyele to Dugbe often. There is nothing like movement to make me happy.

The funny part about my love of moving is that I have never really considered myself an athlete even though I put in a good amount of time moving. Maybe it is because of my body time. Sometimes when I have a conversation with people about running I feel like I haven’t earned the right to talk simply because my body isn’t skinny. I have put in the miles. But I don’t have the muscles therefore I feel like I can’t be a runner.

Now that I am running consistently again, I am not so worried about titles. Although, I do think I am a runner. I know I am an athlete. I know that because I put in the work everyday. I show up. I push through the discomfort. And I am enjoying this process.

I am enjoying it so much I strategically planned my day to sign up for the Brooklyn Half.  The tickets sold out in 52 minutes and I am one of the lucky ones.

 

 

 

This is not my vote

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I have a very frustrating day trying to be politically active. Mondays tend to be a long day for me anyway. I start my day at 4.45am. Get off work. Go to the gym. Work out. Then change quickly and run/walk to train station. Pray train is on time. Get on train. Get to campaign office. The transition between end of work and campaign office is 90minutes. I have been about 10 minutes late once or twice. Then, I pray that we actually know what we are doing. This has been my Monday for the past 4 weeks or so.

I am not complaining. I am ranting. Is there a difference. I don’t know. I just know that I am home on the verge of tears and I can only write about how I feel now. I am tired. I am hungry and I am heartbroken. Okay, maybe I am a tad bit dramatic.

Monday has become a dramatic day. From crying spells on the phone with my friend because I am too exhausted to find my way home to feeling abused and ill-used. The day really started to go down the drain when I arrived at the office and realized we were understaffed. The regular coordinator was no where to be seen. Campaign staff were closed off in their office. I am sure they were doing important work.

And I sat there unsure of what to do. I actually arrived on time today so that made it doubly disappointing to sit there unoccupied while everyone sang a chorus of I don’t know. Oh well, its a small campaign office. Things are what they are.

Okay, let’s get on the system and start dialing. I seem to get a series of bad calls. From the yelling on the phone to the “I am having dinner!” Please don’t be picking up your phone while you are having dinner. If your time with your family is truly sacred, you would disconnect from your phone and focus on the meal.  My calling is not the problem. Your answering the phone is the problem.

Then there was the “Oh, I don’t understand you!” crew. The man who exclaimed, “are you speaking Spanish?” That just further annoyed me. But my day was truly done when this old woman decided to tell me to “speak softly” What the fuck does that mean? “Speak softly” That phrase/statement rubbed my soul the wrong way.

This is not the “OMG! I am volunteering, you should not talk to me that way.” This is the “I am a young black woman trying to use my voice and be politically active” rage. This is the “I feel diminished because no one else got told to speak softly!” This is the “I feel embarrassed I got told to speak softly.” This is the “are you telling me that I am too much” rage. This the “I feel embarrassed to be told that I am loud or too harsh” rage. This is the ” you just took a happy place and turned it into a place of anxiety” moment. This is the part where I don’t want to return. Can I quit? Does it look bad on me if I quit now because I can’t handle this.

Maybe I am over-reacting.  My first instinct is to quit. Walk away. Who cares? But my sister said to me at the beginning of my shift, “Do Your Part.” I will do my part even though I know I will probably be anxious for my next shift.

 

 

 

The Joys of Doing Nothing

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relax, take a deep breathe and just be

relax, take a deep breathe and just be

I am a big Marie Forleo fan. I discovered her when I was living in Ibadan, Nigeria and I was wondering what the next step in my life should be. I have kept up with watching her videos every now and then. For some reason, I saw her Facebook post on her interview with David Bach and it stuck with me. I was really interested in watching the interview because of financial curiosity. This interview was really enlightening about finances but the biggest take away for me was at the end. The final segment of the interview covers Mr. Bach’s sabbatical from his job for 18 months. This got me thinking about my own life. Read more

To Resurrect

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becoming blackMy sister pestered me all of the first week in January for a word of the year. I love my sister. My sister and I talk about feelings and everything else. And picking a word of the year fell under that umbrella that most people don’t touch because they are being cool. But my sister and I, we talked it over and we picked a word for me. The word is ‘Resurrect’.

To Resurrect. To bring back to life. To add new vigor. I feel like I need new vigor in my life. I have missed myself. I have missed my bravery. I have missed not thinking of failure as an option. I have missed not being black, being Muslim and being a woman.

I did not become black until I moved to Boston. I become a Muslim every time I come the US. Being a woman I learned about in my teenage years getting propositioned by men driving in luxury cars in Festac.  The intersection of all three finally arrived in this past year with an awakening that jolted me and stole away my confidence.

I remember talking to my father about how much I was trying to be more but I felt I could not be more because of these obstacles in front of me. I never saw those obstacles before. Most people who know  me can attest to the fact that I am a tad bit naive and a lot sheltered. Some of it comes from my upbringing and some of it is the choice I make not to overexpose myself.

Let me tell you that becoming black and truly beginning to understand what it means to be the ‘other’ knocked the wind out of me. It seems crazy that I say becoming black. After all, I was born with my skin. But I was raised in a community that looks like me. Class has always been more of a divisive issue than race. For me, I was never the ‘other’. I was the privileged.

To suddenly lose my privilege and find myself struggling to be seen the way I have always been seen has been a battle. I felt like the battle took my luster. I went from feeling golden to feeling inadequate. I developed social anxieties because suddenly it was hard to get anyone to have a normal intelligent conversation with me. No one ever explicitly tells you to your face that they feel you are inferior but they are many ways of speaking that don’t involve the mouth.

The hard part of being put down repeatedly was that I felt I was crazy. Certainly, I am getting the cues wrong. Maybe I don’t understand what is being said. Maybe I am overthinking things. Maybe it is me.

Maybe it is not me. And suddenly understanding that the battle is not just mine has made me begin to regain some of my luster. This is why I chose ‘resurrect’ as my word of the year. This year I want to be who I always thought I was; an intelligent young woman who would run the world. I have had enough of being timid and scared.

 

 

The Truth.

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I speak my truth because it mine to speak and no other person's.
I speak my truth because it mine to speak and no other person's.
I speak my truth because it mine to speak and no other person’s.

I feel like I have been having a coming out party. I moved to the United States in the post 9/11 as a young black Muslim woman. My parents in their love for their child advised me to pray privately and keep my religion to myself. For much of my college years, until I move to England for graduate school, almost no one knew that I was Muslim.

I feel like in the few years I have grown to learn that is not important to be accepted by others if they don’t accept me fully. The things that make up my identity are not some dirty little secret. I have moved closer to my Nigerian accent, reclaimed my stories and spoken the truth about my food.  Sometimes that means having uncomfortable conversations that highlight something that may considered a deal breaker by others. It usually comes about in the discussion of food. Since I don’t eat pork or drink alcohol for religious reasons, I often out myself at communal dinning tables.

As I watch the political climate of fear-mongering, I realize that unless I keep outing myself, I am a part of the problem. There are bits of me that wants to hide again because I don’t want the experience of dealing with people’s prejudicial self. But the thing is a larger part of me realizes that it is important to fight back. I speak my truth now because it is mine to speak and no other person’s.

For the longest time, I wasn’t sure that my truth mattered. In my insecurities about the usefulness of my own voice, I chose to be quiet. But no more. No more biting my tongue because I am afraid to hurt feelings. No more letting people put me down, personally or as part of a larger discourse. My truth matters, therefore I will be part of the discussion.

My dad asked me why I was volunteering for Bernie Sanders’ Campaign. I hadn’t really thought much about it because I just wanted to do something different at first.Then I realized that I am doing it to be part of the discussion. I firmly believe that in order for voters to make the best decision there has to be a healthy discourse. A healthy discourse only happens why there are more than one viable candidates at the table. I am making calls to ensure that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton can have a healthy discourse with occasional input from Martin O’Malley.

I guess the Democractic primaries are also low stake for me because of the craziness on the Republican side of the aisle. At the end of the primaries, either Clinton or Sanders will have the ticket. Then the real battle begins. And I intend to use my voice until the end.

Tell me in the comments in what ways you are making your experiences count.

 

 

Democracy is a Drag

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Turning thirty is doing something to me that I can't describe. Maybe it is that I need something to motivate me to fill my life up or maybe there is some life crisis playing itself out like a slow tune. Whatever it is, I find myself doing things that are making me become this person that I maybe always wanted to be. I always wanted to be an activist; to be political active.

Christmas 2015. The duck must have been cooked. The potatoes mashed. I am not sure if I was between cooking and eating or if I had eaten. All I know is I signed up to attend a phone bank event for a political candidate. The most surprising part might not be that I signed up. It is that I showed up on the designated day to make the phone calls.

Turning thirty is doing something to me that I can’t describe. Maybe it is that I need something to motivate me to fill my life up or maybe there is some life crisis playing itself out like a slow tune. Whatever it is, I find myself doing things that are making me become this person that I maybe always wanted to be. I always wanted to be an activist; to be political active.

I am not quite clear now what I thought a phone bank was. Okay, I won’t lie. I had some thoughts that I might meet some like minded people there. In the back of my mind were thoughts of having life affirming conversation with voters on the phone. I really have a need to expand my social life beyond this screen.

At least, I don’t think I had any thoughts of being in a fast moving scene like a movie. You know how movies always make campaign seem like the sexiest things ever. The offices are dimly lit to show how much of a long shot the candidate is. The carpet is grimly. The walls are covered in logos. It should be clear to the viewer that this is a long shot candidacy. But you still get pizza, copious amount of coffee and people yelling unintelligibly into the phone.

The truth is I showed up at a door on a nondescript building tucked into the shadows up a bigger nondescript building in the middle of the city. The room looked like a movie scene, except emptier and quieter in the beginning. The long I stayed there, the louder it got. I did meet new people who are nothing like me and don’t live within a screen. And the first hour was a drag.

Oh Lord! That first hour was a trial of my commitment. It was a series of unanswered phone calls. The second and third hour was a series of answered calls. Here is the thing I learned from my few conversations; most voters assume their money and their support is all they need to give to their chosen candidates.

“Hi, my name is Sinmi and I am calling on behalf of  ….”

“Already gave money online and I am voting for …!”

click . To be fair to the many polite people I spoke to, only maybe 2 people did this out of the almost hundred I called in three hours. The rest were polite in declining the invitation to volunteer. A few decided to thank me for my service. A few said they would look into volunteering online. Heck, I even got one person to make a concrete commitment to come in for a shift next week.

Somewhere between that first ring and 3 hours later, I had fun. It was in the snippet of conversation with people who just wanted to say ‘hi’ to me. It was in the atmosphere in the room. It was in the pride that I took in doing something. It was fun. It was so much fun I signed up to work again next week.