🌿Ferns of 2023

Which is to say, delights of which I’m proud

I have an unabashed love affair with ferns. They’re ancient, wondrous, non-flowering fractals that to me serve as little lighthouses of possibility. Their repeating patterns whisper, “This is how big change can happen. It can be tiny and beautiful”

Last week I penned some reflections on the year that was and they emerged in these quirky little categories:

🌿Ferns delights of which I’m proud

🍄Fungi challenges

🥀Failures things that didn’t take root (or that I’m not proud about)

So today, here are some of 2023’s memorable delights:

🏃🏻‍♀️Running home to myself (& supporting others to do the same). I began running as somewhat of a spiritual practice and solo endeavor in March 2023. This year, I continued to cultivate joy and resilience through weekly runs and (mis)adventures—this time with friends! Shoutout to Bryan for being my partner-in-crime throughout forest runs and track workouts as well as the Mount Kilimanjaro Marathon in Tanzania, Two Oceans Ultra in Cape Town, Comrades 90km Ultra in Durban, and several other 50 km runs around Kenya we did “just for fun”. Additional shout out to the Mighty Sunheads, (a hodge podge group of friends, most of whom previously self-identified as non-runners) who gathered weekly at 7:30 am to gallivant across the arboretum. I learned a lot about myself through trail runs in the mountains of South Africa and Thailand, and especially celebrate the culmination of this year’s learning journey at Doi Inthanon, a 100km course with 6,000 meters of elevation gain that took me 20 hours to complete.

🧩 Transitioning my role at Metis. Co-founding and leading Metis since 2017 has been the privilege of my lifetime. Passing the baton of leadership with the right team, systems, strategies, and support to flourish in this next season was the most significant challenge and accomplishment of the year. The process was the most beautiful and brutal. It made my heart skip a beat and took my breathe away (more here). I’m so proud of how intentionally I showed up through it all, and even more in awe of how my teammates, our alum community, fellows, funders, board, and advisors gave generously of their wisdom.

⭕️ Celebrating, strengthening, and exploring family relationships and history. Last January, a global community of strangers, friends, and family folded over 1,000 cranes to honor the life of my beloved 99 year-old Bop. (Photos & recap here). In the process, we shared not only stories of our elders, but also the weight of collective grief and loss, and lessons and levity from our ancestors. I tried to bring this intentionality into other opportunities to know and celebrate family throughout the year. Highlights include my mama and brother visiting Kenya for a week in November, spending time with biological and chosen family in Watamu, making a pilgrimage to Minidoka, Idaho, where Bop and 15 of my other family members were imprisoned in the 1940s with mama, Benji, and Andrew, celebrating my mom’s 65th birthday, and forging new ways of being with my dad.

Co-creating spaces for authenticity, vulnerability, and connection. Caribbean Thursdays (monthly-ish intimate open-mic potlucks for storytelling/music/poetry), ReimaginED (a 2-day education summit for 400+ education leaders), the Metis Fellowship, Boundless (my first retreat for femme entrepreneurs co-led with a dear friend), Brazen (a dinner for women exploring what the word means to us in LA), Gathering on Purpose (workshops I designed and facilitated 3x this year), and weekly Morning Pages with Kiran were a highlight of the year!

📚Supporting education leaders and entrepreneurs to ensure 5 million Kenyan learners access an excellent education through my work at Metis—has been a repeatedly delightful fern 🌿 the last 7 years!

🫂Cultivating and relying on community care. Ross Gay writes about joy as entanglement and I absolutely adore that notion. How my people make it their business to entangle themselves in the flourishing of others makes me more tender and generous and able to breathe in a world accustomed to suffocation. Showing up (with 50 others!) to Chelsea’s PhD dissertation defense, being housed by friends in Nairobi for the last 6 months, receiving a video call, poem, cup of cacao, ritual, or hug at a moment of need (which is to say to stave of a daily dive into despair), participating in a community of friends marrying off our beloved A and moving her across the world, being held throughout Doi Inthanon by whatsapp group…the glimmers and my gratitude goes on but this interdependence, this entanglement feels like a good reason to be a human being in this lifetime.

📸 Photographing as a practice of witness and love. If love is as Baldwin said, “the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light,” then making photos for me this year was practicing love. I witnessed hundreds of leaders, learners, and innovations in East Africa, island paradise and city hustle in Thailand, survivors and descendants of Japanese American incarceration in Idaho, and many other mundane and miraculous people and places through the lens of my camera.

🦁Leaning into my vulnerability and bravery. Every highlight of the year I mentioned above also humbled me. The day before the 100km run, I was a puddle of tears on my hotel’s twin bed. I get nervous before every Metis event, every gathering I convene. I’ve come to love leaning in when I’m afraid, relying on my inner courage and on my community to hold me in the mush until I quickly remember this silly truth about being me: I actually ✨adore ✨ doing hard things.