Go To The Rock

This week, I laid my amazing aunt, Andrea Denise Ramsey to rest after a brief battle with cancer. Initially, I was not inclined to share this story on LinkedIn because this is a professional social networking site. But, the truth is, organizations hire people, they don't hire professionals.

Over the last year, I've been working on a book about my leadership and life journey. And, I'm learning more and more that the two are deeply intertwined. It is the example of the courageous Black women on whose shoulders I stand that I have managed to accomplish anything in my professional life. It is because of their strength and resilience that I've learned to handle the disappointments and triumphs that I've faced as a Black woman in leadership roles. Andrea was a retired art therapist, a Bronx Zoo docent, a former marathon runner, a painter, an Afro-Caribbean genealogist, a Woodlawn Cemetery volunteer historian, and a participant in The Bronx African American History Project at Fordham University (one of her alma maters). She showed Afghan hounds and red footed tortoises competitively. She loved jazz and Lauryn Hill. She had lifelong friendships that spanned over 70 years. She had close girlfriends who are younger than me. I don't know where she found the time or energy. She faced heartbreak and disappointments along the way, and regrouped and refashioned her life every single time. She amazed me. She fortified me. She helped raise me. An extraordinary light has been extinguished. Where do I go from here?

There are a lot of coaches, writers, and speakers out here trying to tell you how to manage your career and life. Sometimes that is just what we need - an objective, sane ear to help us make sense of a crazy world. But, sometimes I like to go to the rock. Talk to the old ones. Read their blueprints - they are prone to leave us roadmaps via their storytelling, letters, and photos. This is why the "founder" title is often overrated - it sometimes requires that we start from scratch, that we proceed with our ideas as though they are new, without context, that we be ahistorical in service to our egos. Look what I invented! Don't be Columbus! Someone has been here before you. I promise.

Right now, I'm re-reading works by Audre Lorde and Dorothy Height. Remarkable Black women who knew how to lead, who forged a way against invisibility and oppression for the sake of so many. How did they do it? They tell you. They are real about the low points, the lessons learned, the failures, the bounce backs, the come ups, the glow ups. My grief is deep and palpable these days. To be Black and woman, and to be seen and to be loved in this crazy mixed up world is a gift. To have lost one of my heartbeats is devastating. And, yet, somehow I'm more determined to finish the race. Somehow I know that I'm not alone. She left volumes of family history, letters, and archives. I am so glad that I can go to the rock, and reinvent myself as often as I need to. Talk to the old ones. They know magic.