Telling Tales Edition: We The Ascended, by Heather Watkins

In this month's Ujima Press WIRE, writer and disability advocate Heather Watkins muses on Black cosmology, changing phases of life, and future generations.

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This is for the menopausal folks, who've hit their middle stride, imbibed on elder wisdom, witnessed love ones gain their wings gone too soon, used all their might and tested mettle fanning hot flashes and themfolks hands in bad policy, past and present day in direct and subtle ways. Building blueprints and frameworks for uninformed and uninitiated ones yet to take up space and reins and march forward strategically in shifts, sifting through sidelined bits of self, operating with organizer math and leadership calculus of equal parts resistance, initiative, movement, rest, and joy. Divinely-ordained to have the destiny we will and manifest. And as the arbiters, and our own advisory board with autonomy, we won't be denied. Ascended in our own personal and collective pantheons, illuminated alters, candescence bright against the night sky, a galaxy of intergalactic gems. Crowns baby, bejeweled crowns. Hormonal changes and the heat that rises, biothermal indicators of our ascension and new season…blazes, sparkles, flickers of a cosmic journey.✦

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Heather Watkins (she/hers) is a Boston-based disability rights advocate, author, peer researcher, mother, speaker, consultant, and graduate of Emerson College with a B.S. in

Mass Communications. Heather is also a founding member of Harriet Tubman Collective, composed of Black Deaf & Black Disabled activists, artists, and organizers. Her publishing experience includes work in MDA’s Quest magazine, African Voices, Mass Poetry, Grubstreet, Rooted In Rights, Women’s Media Center, Femme Frugality, and Thank God I.