To Make a Life, Full StopBlack Feminist Womanist Wisdom for a World in Rupture

Black Feminist Womanist Wisdom for a World in Rupture

Today, the world is not simply recovering from crisis—it is being reshaped by an ever-expanding landscape of rupture: war, ecological collapse, racial violence, political upheaval, and spiritual dislocation. At a time when crises emerge before wounds have time to heal and calamities seem inevitable, we must reconsider how we respond to these challenges. We cannot return to "normal," and maybe we shouldn’t.

People from the global majority know something about enduring crises. We know it through epigenetic transmission. We know it from living through conditions that press down. We have not forgotten. We know of shape-shifting and transmutation.

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Curiously, those long sheltered by the protections of dominance now find themselves shaken by the ongoing experience of risk and not knowing. And so, they turn to those they dismissed, those they were taught not to see, those strangers existing in the periphery of their knowing.

The impulse to recover a sense of normalcy is not surprising—especially for those who normalcy has advantaged. But this rupture calls for new ways of thinking and doing--ways rooted in our willingness to respond to the emergent challenges with inquiry, imagination, and a commitment to liberation. To live into the interdependent awareness revealed in the crises of now, we must meet urgency with nurture, depth, and wakefulness. Instead of nostalgia, we need new ways of being.

I am motivated by the insights and analyses of the combined wisdom of womanist and Black/endarkened feminist thought and praxis. This tradition offers invaluable guidance for navigating times of upheaval, disconnection, and what Minna Salami has discussed as the polycrisis. Emerging as both a response to and a refusal of systemic oppression, this wisdom tradition illuminates how to make a meaningful life amidst ongoing disturbances.

Womanism and Black feminism show us how to grow our capacity for courage, creativity, imagination, and intentional world-building. These traditions not only inspire vision—they also challenge the limits of dominant paradigms, such as the fixation on individual transcendence or rigid, exclusionary beliefs. The offering here is frameworks rooted in connection, care, and the transformative force of collective action.

Black feminist womanist wisdom teaches us how to show up, and my business here is to show up—adding my voice to the expanding field of transpersonal thought and the healing-centered paradigm.

At this stage in my public scholarship, a spacious approach means melding philosophies from womanism and Black feminism. This integration supports an exploration of the intersections between spirituality, philosophy, heritage, lineage, and discourses that generate synergy and guidance—what I refer to as Black Feminist Womanist Psychospiritual Wisdom.

This wisdom lineage is a resource of cultural knowledge and a technology for living: a way of making a life, full stop-- of pleasure, amidst disturbances, in the now, and with emergences.