finding inspiration in depression
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How I am working through my own depression right now is by finding inspiration from our Ancestors and also listening to DEPRESSION PRAYER on repeat
Those who came before us who put their lives on the line for the freedom of the African Diaspora.
One in particular is Marcus Garvey
Once considered the most dangerous Black man in America and from my own perspective, still is.
His philosophy of the world inspired the likes of most modern leaders you know of today, such as MLK and Malcolm
He is considered the KING of Pan-Africanism
An ideology that seeks to unify and empower the African race
We must become a RACE FIRST people
This man in 1920 organized us in Madison Square Garden and collectively we voted on the Red Black Green flag you are most familiar with.
We’ve been conditioned to be so docile in white america and/or under European power structures. The common psychological impact of slavery whether in America, The Caribbean (my roots) or in London an African race we walk around with this self-hatred that consumes most of our day to day
Docile is a strong word but I also empathize why a lot of Black and African man are not standing up and speaking out more
We’ve become so feminized.
Black men are questioning their own sexual identity more than ever right now because it’s not safe to be us
Black men are the most attacked and Black women are the most vulnerable
The Alabama Tea Party has made me feel a fire again. To see those brothers have each other’s back was so moving for me to see. This is how we respond when they decide to jump one of our elders - period.
That’s the Alpha energy we need from our men more and more during these times
That energy and directed to protecting our women and children, especially from European psychology
Their shame is not our shame
That’s a little of his philosophy applied with my own trauma-informed, ancestral healing and psychology point of view
Dr. Umar Ifatunde talks a lot about him as his own inspiration.
To learn more about Marcus Garvey, here is a documentary on Amazon Prime Video and here is one talk of many from Dr.Umar on Youtube
One surprise in my creativity recently is coming back to the Liberate App, which I’m most widely known for. An idea that has given me so much - the blessings AND the pain. An idea that brought me a lot of attention and has given me plenty of my own wounds to heal and generational as well
Marcus Garvey’s birthday is approaching - August 17th, 1887 and in honor of inspiring me and a lot ofAncestors I pray onto regularly for courage and confidence I’m giving the app a little redesign. I’m creating the designs and going into the code of the app (built in Flutter) to update the designs with the app. You can see some working designs here
I built the first version of the app line by line, thousands of lines of code and I’ve brought back the first developer I worked with back in 2019/2020 who is African and based in Africa. He was a young talented engineer when I met him and I’ve had the opportunity to mentor him overtime, so it feels great to be working with him again! I am doing most of the redesign and Festus is cleaning up the code which is a big mess. More to come on when the app gets released to the App Store - my hope is that we’ll have the new version out by his birthday but for me it’s a big win just to be back coding again. On the app you’ll also find a new meditation for depression!
Fela Kuti’s documentary Finding Fela is also giving me life too!