Hello,
I hope this newsletter finds you in good health and that you will look at yourself today and see the miracle you are. Whether we believe it or not we are in March already. I don’t know about you but for as difficult as 2020 was, January and February 2021 have taught me more life lessons. The themes of life, death & mourning have been very apparent. In the last eight weeks of newsletters, I’ve shared this journey. It hasn’t been an easy one. The feedback I’ve gotten from you about how you’ve enjoyed reading this series of newsletters has been very encouraging amidst these harder times.
If this is your first newsletter that you are reading, welcome and thank you. It is my joy and honor to share this journey of life alongside you. I’ve made all the newsletters up to this point public and for all to read.
At this point if you’ve been a steady reader, I’m letting you know that this free model will likely be shifting and I’ll be adding a much more vibrant subscription level. I’d love your feedback to know what you’d like to hear more of (or less of) and how you feel I can add value to your life through my creative pursuits. Would you be interested in a form of this as a book? A podcast? A weekly devotional with scripture and poetry?
Please comment below with your thoughts. Thanks in advance for your feedback, it helps me understand how to better serve you.
This week my thoughts are more on the life theme. Specifically on what and whom we let into our lives, and what and whom we don’t (consciously or unconsciously).
SPACE AND TIME - RECAP of Part I
All incredible projects require a team to make them happen. This is quite apparent in last week’s newsletter which was Part I of the “Space and Time” theme. If you didn’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to check it out. Its a concept I’ve thought on regarding our lives being Mosaics made up of small, fractured, seemingly standalone events that when connected create a beautiful picture of our life story. I shared of the journey of a friend that lost his battle to cancer recently. I also shared about the unfair comparison’s we regard when looking at the life of celebrities. These moments in our lives are our time confetti, they are the billion and one tiny little moments we live. If we do not have the help we need to connect those pieces together it is easy to allow shame to enter in and keep up from finishing our Mosaic as beautifully. The challenge I have is to not allow that shame to take over, to believe I can create a beautiful picture with my life no matter how many broken pieces I see behind me.
There are no second chances
There are no lucky tries
There’s a billion and one
Tiny little moments in our lives
So if we think that lucky
Is much better than good
We live our life on chance
And don’t do the work we should.
Did Kobe think that luck would get him
Points before the clock
I think that it was daily work
That made his body rock.
I think that it was focus
In ways others don’t know
Some truth behind the curtain
There’s no wizard, there’s no show.
There’s only what we know to be
Theres focus, sweat and tears
There’s favor and there’s privilege
Combined with many years
Of practice practice practice
Of love and digging deep
To find what’s worth the sacrifice
To know what’s gold to keep.
Each of us is living
with a body and a mind
Each of us has spirit
that is noble, just and kind.
Each of us has something
That is worthy of this life
Each of us will make mistakes
And lose our will to try.
But life’s not for the lucky
Or the privileged few
Life was made for living
By the likes of me and you.
So if you feel you’re fledgling
For your purpose, know this now
You’ve got everything you need to go
If you wanna go right now
Go and be the change you want
Despite all the unknowns
Disregard your ego
And the years it’s built it’s throne.
Disregard what critics say
Who don’t walk in your shoes
Comparison is toxic
It will leave you with the blues.
You’re not blue you’re gospel
And the good news that you tell
Is every minute of your life
Let every minute yell.
I am a human being
I am worthy of this time
I will not focus on what’s missing
Or what is yours and mine
There’s plenty here to go around
It’s time to play my cards
The dealer doesn’t win or lose
They dealt another round.
The round looks like another day
That’s set before my eyes
Will it be a full house
Or a hand that makes me cry?
Will I be a pawn of my emotions
From the day
Cause I was dealt a hand
that didn’t seem to go my way?
Or will I see the game as one
Where I will learn the course
Instead of quitting early
To live a life of sad remorse.
Learn from the hand that’s been dealt
Trust that your worth’s not there
Your purpose isn’t one thing
That shows you why you care.
There are no second chances
There are no lucky tries
Just a billion and one
Tiny little moments in our lives.
-Adjoa Skinner Webb
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SPACE AND TIME - PART II
When we look our life Mosaic’s we can see how we were affected by who has a hand in our life story. On February 18th, 2021 NASA’s Rover “Perseverance” arrived on Mars. A massive team of experts worked to make it happen. The NASA crew came together all for one purpose, to put something from earth onto Mars and let it observe the planet. Before they put this rover on Mars they had to master the entry, descent, and landing. It was their only way to be successful. Upon landing it was through observing and listening that NASA’s teams believed it could better learn what it was now, What Mars was in years past, and whose it was (finding signs of previous life forms). NASA took the time to put this rover into space for a significant amount of time because they wanted the unknown to become known.
Part of the reason it was important to know this land, was to understand how life had survived here before. The data collected will help the NASA team to deduce whether or not Mars could be a planet that human life could be sustained on. Basically, Elon Musk wants to start putting us in space ships and flying us earthlings to Mars to see if it will serve us as a second earth.
When I was 18 years old I left behind my predominantly white hometown. Just to give you some perspective regarding my ignorance, out of 1500 kids in my high school, maybe 4 were black, 2 were Indian and 3 were Asian. I don’t remember ever going to their houses, or having them over to mine. I knew very little about cultures outside of my own. Yet as completely green as I was, I was enthralled with Africa, because two of my mentors had moved there was I was eleven. They would come back with visitors and stories from afar. I felt a strong pull to go to Africa. After high school I started a program that would prepare me before heading to Africa, much like the Mars Rover had been prepared. My entry, descent and landing came through an organization called YWAM (Youth With A Mission). I went through a series of schooling, understanding what it was to come into a foreign land, cross cultural communication etc. The most important lesson that this training taught me was the importance of immersion and listening. Listening to unspoken and spoken stories to better understand the whole. When I was in East Africa I was with a team of caucasians from the Western world, so it was harder for me to hear the heartbeat of the nation being surrounded by westerners. When I moved to South Africa I went alone. I went to stay at the YWAM Mission in Muizenberg where I would be living and working and learning from people all around the world. It was quite a melting pot so most mornings I would share breakfast with people from around ten different nations.
When I first arrived however, I stayed with a South African and American couple. I was greeted by Mel, a mixed race South African woman (mixed raced africans are known as “Coloured” in South Africa). She was married to a white American man. Which was rare in itself since interracial marriage was illegal in South Africa up until apartheid ended in 1994. Mel and I had only met once before in the states when she was visiting with a team of musicians and dancers from Capetown. She greeted me at my airport gate by walking up to me with a huge smile on her face. Just as I was about to lean in for a side hug she kissed me on the lips, full on. Stunned and quite jet lagged I have no idea if how I responded was appropriate or not, I just knew I was in for quite an adventure.
Space and time. What’s yours and mine
We often won’t reach to the other side
When we don’t sit with each other for lunch.
Because of things heard, that’ve broken our trust
We don’t think to break bread with them
Offering our hands and skin
Opening our homes and kitchens
To mourn losses, or celebrate wins.
Choosing not to be vulnerable
We never see what we don’t know
And all that ignorance will show
With deeper blessings left unknown
Yet we are a part of one another
Fathers, sisters, brothers, mothers
We are made by who we love.
If we learn to love enough
Outside of our own skin and hair
Outside of what’s deemed dark or fair
Outside within the great unknown
We’ll sow new seeds that must be sown
For us to know a world at large
Where fear and hate are not in charge
We must reach out and touch the hand
of those we don’t yet understand.
And find that touch can bring us to
A world beyond the world we knew.
Touch can heal the bonds we broke
Not giving back or being “woke”.
Touch will open hearts to see
beyond surface identity
Every soul is colorful
And people are truly wonderful.
Lets close the space, and not let time
determine what it yours and mine.
Lets get real close and find our way
As humans loved and seen the same.
Not by what history has claimed
By triggered words and forsaken names
Not by signs with boundaries
Where one is captive, one is free.
Woman, man, light, dark or brown
We’ve turned this whole thing upside down
Our differences are meant to be
celebrated as beauty
That comes in many creative forms
Instead we’ve taken them and scorned
Each other for what reason… see
I don’t know why you should treat me
As any different, …. don’t you?
Believe this ... isn’t it true?
This space between us is from fear
Where unknowns came between us here.
But unknowns can be brought to light
And wrongdoings must be turned to right
If only we work hand in hand
To love and choose to understand.
Understanding comes with time
And time is truly on our side
If only we get close to touch
and see, there’s room to grow so much.
-Adjoa Skinner Webb
After living in South Africa for eleven months, I went to live in Ghana, West Africa for eight months. In that time I wasn’t surrounded by a team from western developed nations. I lived with Africans. Our school was made up of mostly male Africans from Ghana, and a few from Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria. I remember only three women outside of the kitchen staff, that were students. In the first three months while I lived on a Mission campus there was one other white girl from Canada and one caucasian Professor from the West. The professor stayed in our school to help us record an album of indigenous music. He was a great support to me when I grew homesick and very much encouraged me in the work I was doing in setting up the music school. Other than those two western friendships I was immersed in the West African culture, eating Ghanian food and learning their styles of music and dance.
There were definitely moments when I lived in Ghana where it didn’t matter what I did, the caucasians who had gone before me had left a legacy that didn’t allow me an easy entrance into the lives of some of the Ghanians. One student said to my face that he hated me. He said it while smiling. The hurt was so deep with this one. He didn’t know me well enough. He never sat next me when we ate as a school, he wouldn’t ask me about my life. He didn’t want to get close. He just knew my kind and what he felt being around me. My orbit got under his skin, so he didn’t want me in his space. I remember talking to the one other woman in my school, she was in her fifties and I was twenty one. I ignorantly shared my disappointment that a woman in the market wouldn’t allow me to take a picture of her. I saw her in her beauty standing in her vibrant outfit in front of her colorful display of rice bags. Yet, upon sharing this my older colleague snapped at me. “You Americans think you’re always right… you take your pictures and then you go home and point at us saying, black monkey, black money”. I was horrified when I heard her say this. “I would never” I stammered… but the damage was done. I had no idea what they had gone through before I came into the picture and the wounds were so deep there was no way I was going to explain my way of thinking. It wasn’t for me to explain my way of thinking, I was in their country. I was meant to be listening to them, especially when there was a divide between us, whether I put it there or not.
“Check yourself before you check somebody else.”
- Ellen Pompeo (actress, Greys Anatomy)
I didn’t expect to be brought here
A topic that started with skin
But this is the time to talk about it
In this world we are living in.
Skin is a powerful word in itself
The largest organ in the body
It’s impurities birth insecurities
Whether they show up silent or rowdy.
For if we truly gain confidence
As we learn to live in our skin
No matter what we may compare it to
We set ourselves up for a win.
While judgements are made cross the table
We have a choice in where we take sides
Our first choice is loving our own skin
While knowing it’s just our hide.
Our hide whether beaten or spotless
Our hide whether laughed at and scorned
Our whether we’ve been identified
Purely by the skin we’ve worn.
Where it becomes more than wrapping paper
This cover on our book of life.
Because others judge by our cover
And claim that they know they are right.
How silly and strange we can’t see this
That every soul’s well has its depth
So how can we look at the outside
And say one is purer or best?
How can we deem water purer
Without ever drawing its source?
Stating a false claim and putting on labels
That just lead us down the wrong course.
We cannot read the script when
We interpret just pictures in view
What if the story narrator was blind
And couldn’t see me or see you?
What if they only could feel us?
They got their story from the source.
They drew from the well, til the story they’d tell
wasn’t coerced or forced.
What if the narrator was deaf too?
They’d only know from taste and touch
Forced to get closer to the soul at hand
And learn from it so very much.
To eat with and touch is so vulnerable
If we never draw close we won’t see
That the barrier viewing ones skin from afar
Means they will not know you or know me.
- Adjoa Skinner Webb
When I asked my husband about this, he brought up a good point. He said, its not about skin really. If the underlying problem was about skin color, then why do South Koreans and North Koreans fight? Why was Ireland in civil war for so long? Why are there generations upon generations of tribal wars amongst black Africans, when they have the same skin color, but just claim to be from a different tribe and tongue?
Maybe it’s not so much about skin, as it is about touch. As I wrote about in PART I of this series, our lives look to other’s like a Mosaic. Pieces of our lives brought together in time share a narrative that others can view. So, with that in mind, how does our life mosaic look? Who has a hand in helping us create it? Is part of the reason our Mosaic’s are not as beautiful and are left with more fractured broken pieces because we don’t trust people to get close enough to move the pieces of our life mosaics? If someone thinks differently than us, or acts differently than us, do we stay away from them? Do we only allow in those who feel comfortable to us? Do we shut people out because they are of a different culture or a different political stance? I’m a white woman with an African name, married to a Black and Korean man. Together we’ve brought a mixed race child into the world. To be honest it’s comfortable for me to write about race relations. Even though it feels uncomfortable I find it is my responsibility to speak on these issues as someone who has a blended family. I want our son to grow up in a world where it’s the norm to have a blended family where no one side is seen better than the other. I want to live in a world where having a white wife would not anger black women, or having a black husband would not anger white men. That having a Latin American, Native American, Pacific Islander, Black, White, Asian, Arab, Native Alaskan or Hawaiian, European, or whatever in our family is celebrated and expected. We have to become Rovers, called by name “perseverance” and choose to do the work to properly land on each other’s planets. Observing and understanding each other’s histories and realities. We can’t orbit each other forever. We need to land and find out how to live with one another..
How? Let us look to the great work of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee by Rev. Desmond Tutu. They faced the reality of what was, in order to come to a new era of grace, goodness, and honor. Realistic expectations only come when we work together to understand and hear each other. The reasons why riots and fights break out is that not everyone has been heard. This is unjust, especially when a wrong has been committed again and again. We have to acknowledge the damage together and then come to a place of agreement and create a pathway forward together. We have one another’s blood running through our veins, there is no us or them. We are already family. According to the PBS series “finding your roots”, John Legend is 64% African, 32% European, and 4% Native American. Oprah is 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, and 3% East Asian. The world is a melting pot. This is how it should be.
“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”
– African Proverb
If I didn’t live in Africa I would not have learned the incredible life lessons that the people of East, South and West Africa taught me. They changed my life so much, I changed my legal name. I was born with a different first name. The reason I started going by Adjoa was because that was what the Ghanian’s called me, it was a nickname they gave according to what day of the week a person was born on. Being born on a Monday, I was given the name “Adjoa”. I embraced this name because my time in West Africa made me a different person. I became stronger, more resilient, more grateful, less expectant and and a hell of a lot more aware. I clothed myself in my nickname because I didn’t want to lose what Ghana taught me. I made it my artist name.
The real work began though when I officially changed my legal name to Adjoa. It was after I faced the reality that I was a survivor of domestic violence. I went on to have really hard conversations with my abuser after space, time and therapy. This was a difficult season of hard work. I did the work because I had to look at the underlying issue when an ex fiance broke up with me just two weeks before we were set to marry. There were aspects about our relationship which were not healthy. I feared any kind of disagreement because of my history of domestic violence as a child. The morning after he broke up with me, I remember this kind of strange release. Like I knew there was better way to have relationships, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. I had to do the work. I had to own my side of things, and come to terms with my own self identity. Dare I say, I had to pull a Ted Lasso.
The name Adjoa gave me a new start, a new identity. It gave me a new anchor to ground myself in. A place where I could silence the shame of my past hurts, rejections, and false sense of self. This name was given to me by a people group who upon looking at my skin some rejected me, but most welcomed me as one of them and then called me by their name. I never would have found this part of my Life Mosaic if I never left the familiarity of my own race or village. Living in Africa is some of the most vibrant pieces of my Life Mosaic, and has forever changed the outcome of my life.
So what does this look like as an American? What does it look like to face the reality of our race relations? What does it look like to look at it for what it is, and not allow shame and hurt to do its good work of change in our hearts and minds?
My dear friend Jay Banzia tells the story of people in America through his camera lens. In working with him and forming a close friendship for the last nearly fifteen years he’s taught me so much. I share with you his work so you can also see the other side, and start to understand its not so different after all. We are all pieces of a Mosaic waiting for a village to come alongside and help us in our story. Lets share our lives with each other, break bread with each other, get close enough to affect each other’s narratives and together rejoice in the beauty of our stories unfolding before us.
JAY BANZIA
I’m want to acknowledge that this work of reconciliation and understanding isn’t easy. I remember texting Jay last year asking that he wouldn’t go to the Black Lives Matter Protests during the COVID pandemic. My fears were that much could go wrong in that situation, between catching COVID or riots breaking out. It was a move that could possibly cost him his life. I pleaded with him. He simply said he had to do it. He knew if he didn’t go and capture what was happening through his camera lens he would be at a loss. He felt his purpose was greater. It was worth it to him to risk his life to help shape the narrative of what was happening in this moment in time.
“Dispatched From The Movement, Part II” 6.6.2020
#blacklivesmatter #losangeles #dtlaprotests
For more you can follow Jay here: https://www.instagram.com/jaybanzia/
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I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing weekly on my substack and pivot my work so I can make a leap forwards and then get your feedback to see if it’s a direction you like. I’m doing this to share my voice and the voice of others in the best way possible. I’d like to have more of an interview style that will be less script heavy and move towards my rhyming in real time whilst listening to others speak (if you haven’t heard or seen me do this before, well then you’re in for a treat… its all LIVE, nothing scripted).
I will need these next few weeks to plan out my interviews, get my setup on par and execute the vision. I’m hoping to launch this new chapter at the start of April. In the meantime if you haven’t read all the newsletters yet you can find them here.
Also.. if you’re really feeling like you want more go check out my website: adjoaskinner.com
You can hear years of albums and EP’s and singles as well as music videos.
If you’re all caught up with those consider checking out the archives of my poetry here:
https://adjoaskinner.wordpress.com
Hey, if you’ve enjoyed this writing let me know. I could still carry on in a style similar to this but writing under the paid subscription model. To do this however, I need to know your buy in as my time is precious raising my toddler and I want to create value for my family just as deeply as I want to create content of value for you.
Reply to let me know if this is something you’d be interested in. I could write for you monthly, or weekly, get as specific as you like. For example, some Substack newsletters do a weekly letter, some bi-weekly with a podcast and a letter. Let me know what would be of value to you.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. See you in April :-)
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NOW I FOUND MY VOICE is a devotional and lifestyle poetry substack. I am a songwriter and mother of a tiny human being with a big personality. My hope is that in sharing my journey and the journey of others in poetry and rhyme that you too will find a place that encourages you to “Find YOUR voice” and know “There’s nothing wrong with you”
-Adjoa
“Now I found my voice, and they can’t silence me
Now I found my voice, I don’t need the world to see
that I found my voice, oh now I finally am free
cause I found my voice, and there’s nothing wrong with me.” - Adjoa
My dear friend, I finally had a chance to read this in full, and what a blessing it was! Your perspective is so rich in wisdom and practical lessons. You are a gift.
I’d love to see whatever you come up with, whether a podcast or a newsletter or what have you. No matter what you decide, you will be opening the lid on your treasure chest and sharing wealth with the world.
I’m so thankful for you!