Untethered: Living & Leading Liberation  (Excerpt)

By Leslie Ayorkor Edwards

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Welcome to my undoing, an untethered odyssey toward a new North Star:  Living and Leading Liberation.  This leaders memoir begins with unraveling the layers of my personal life that led to a greater self awareness and an increased alignment with my purpose, my peace, and my passion for educational leadership. This reading experience is for any one who is seeking healing and harmony as they navigate life, bridging leadership theory and personal manifestation in a manner that has never been done before. Let’s not just change HOW we tell our stories, let’s shift the compass of our narrative altogether!

 

My story is raw and unpacks experiences that I have never allowed to escape my lips until now, namely confronting the fact that I ran from the reality of losing my virginity by being raped at a high school party, and subsequently processed my rape as a right of passage as finally being acknowledged as something other than being the black girl in a predominantly all-white suburban school.  Unbeknownst to me, this experience, along with many others that I touch on in this leadership memoir,  had a direct impact on how I showed up as a leader in my personal life and in my career as an educational leader.

 

If you have ever felt the realities of what you hoped a certain experience, job, or even a person would be, just to witness everything crumble around you into a million shards of broken mirrors that force you to see the countless reflections of yourself, then you are in the right place - and in good company. 

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In 2017, the phrase “Black Girl Magic” seemed to float on the wave of the poise and self-assuredness of our eternal FLOTUS, Michelle Obama. Being the first African-American First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama embodied a wonderful tapestry of ancestral strength.

 

One could not deny her sweet spirit when you watched news coverage of her at schools surrounded by children.  This spirit seemed to derive from our late Queen Nzinga, who ruled the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms. The spirit of triumph, of overcoming political obstacles, and creating a narrative of resilience that so many of us women fall victim to upholding.

 

In fact, legend has it that Queen Nzinga was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, nearly dying at birth, but a wise woman in the room quickly untethered her from the cord, saving her life. Oh, the strongholds we somehow escape just to find ourselves in “entanglements” all the same.

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The steady conflict I had been facing for the last several years was the dance between that very archetype of a woman. The graceful, sweeping leaps of a poised ballet dancer perfecting my pirouette to sacrifice self for family and career duties was beginning to hear a new melodic rhythm of steel drums that only syncopated pelvic thrusts and a swinging waist could tame.

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You see, the internal conflict that I had been experiencing for several years was, in part, driven by a new generation of women, taking up a different baton of the archetype of a woman. Women from all walks of life were starting to paint outside of the lines, re-defining womanhood. 

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A new climate of femininity had emerged with the courage of Malala Yousafzai, fighting for the education of women across the globe; CaShawn Thompson, a native Washingtonian and mother of two, who fueled a new energy of women’s empowerment with her Black Girl Magic hashtag; Glennon Doyle who helped to build community rooted in the shared experiences that disrupt the limited perceptions of womanhood; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) whose political activism let the world know that women will not be silenced.

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An existential sisterhood began to form at the center of this new universe with constellations like Issa Rae, who reminded us all that the brilliance of our shine is in our authenticity, Viola Davis whose intergalactic energy made us all shine brighter, the celestial glow of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminded us all that we have a voice and story that mattered, the bombastic and revelatory charge from Iyanla Vanzant to 'fix our lives', and the eternal radiance of everything that Oprah represents as our ancestor's wildest dreams, emblazoned a new sense of pride across the globe, especially amongst women of color.

 

The blaze was ignited across social media and in the homes of so many of us, who possibly, like me, were initially intrigued by the glow from this blaze for our daughters. Every time I found myself feeling inspired by another women of color, I would immediately think of a way to pour that revelation into my daughter, Anaya.

 

However, the blaze was suddenly beginning to take on a new life within my own journey as a woman, wife, mother, and educational leader. For the first time, I started interrogating my discontented tears and unearthing the roots of my proverbial weeping willow.

 

Why was I allowing myself to feel so confined? Why did I feel so tethered to only coloring within the lines and only making decisions that made others feel comfortable? Could two things be true at the same time - or was I overthinking everything? Why couldn’t I be both assertive about things that matter to me, pursue my passions, and still be committed to my family and my career as an educator? These were the questions that I had spent so many years suppressing. However, my newfound “Black Girl Magic” and the platform I had as a black woman leader, serving hundreds of other leaders, had me choking on the possibility of what could be. 

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Seeing traction from the He For She Movement with men like Matt Damon using his platform to advocate for access to sanitation for women, John Legend calling men to become feminists in a way that had not been done before, and Tyler Perry putting the faces of countless women who looked like me in leading roles - These all signaled to me that my evolution as a women was shifting - and the time was now.

 

The whispers of my ancestors turned into a resounding call of strength and fortitude. And so my journey to discover self and explore the process of untethering myself from the fallacies of all of the archetypal cinder blocks that weigh on women across the globe began.

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Before you begin cheering for the genesis of my untethered journey, let me position myself with humility and vulnerability.  Black Girl Magic was the antithesis of my austere persona growing up as a child. When I was younger, I felt like my skin betrayed me and hung like a dilapidated curtain over the stained-glass windows of my soul.  

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And it was not until I started teaching and leading in urban school districts that I finally made a truce with my lost wars of complexion.  However, instead of waving a flag of surrender, my flag resoundingly waved for liberation.

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You see, it took a while for me to embrace the sacrifice and strength of my history and the fact that I come from a lineage of women who endured being ripped from their families and native homes, incessantly raped by their oppressors, and awakened before the rising of the sun to work in the field, impregnated with lost dreams and decimated traditions.

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I come from “Wade, in the water…Wade, in the water children…Wade, in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water!”  Mmmmm…I come from babies wrapped like the most anticipated Christmas gifts with kente cloth on the backs of women with sun-kissed African skin.  I come from majestic pyramids tall enough to slap the heavens and make the clouds jealous.  I come from mines buttressed with gold and diamonds - The true jewels of the Nile.

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As an African woman, wealth, willpower, and wisdom are my birthright.  However, at that very crossroad in my life, all I could muster was a sense of weariness.  I had begun to lose my sense of resolve and, in fact, had grown to resent the use of the word resilience.  I was struggling to manage my role as a mother of two, wife, school leader, not to mention, an owner of a single-family style home that no longer maintained the air of cleanliness that I once coveted. Most people would call these accomplishments blessings, and in fact, I too, had dreamt of this life as a child, only to be drowning in it all.

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At that point in my life, I was not connected to my ancestral strength, or any archetype of a woman for that matter. I felt emotionally barren and angry about the fixed path that I felt lay before me.  I loved my children immensely, but I felt that they stole the dreamer in me.  Living up to the expectations that I felt my husband had for me, left me with a daily reminder of my shortcomings.

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The students, staff, and parents at the school that I led required so much of me that I had to abandon any remaining self-deprecating personal desires. Every emotion that I experienced connected to the service to others. I no longer gave myself permission to enjoy something that only benefited me.

My ambitions to balance a leadership career in education as a wife and mother were replaced with never completed To-Do Lists, never ending commutes to keep up with the kids' activities, and never actuated promises to slow down and make time for self-care. 

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Whether the voice is a whisper from the cavity of lack in your throat, a cry of lies that your gut has fed you to believe, or a heightened scream from the denials you have trained your heart to make excuses for, these voices make you begin to doubt everything you know to be true about your personal fortitude as a person, and as a leader.

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Your resolute “I can do this!” gets replaced with “Can I do this?” and “At what cost am I pushing through this?” In these moments, I sometimes wondered how ancestors like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman squelched the persistent voices of defeat in the midst of the screaming wars within. 

Did they make deals with the devil, secretly abandoning overwhelmed precipices for self-deprecating lofts that satisfied short-lived personal hopes and dreams?  Did they ever straighten their backs to cause a cascading topple of all of the boulders of possibilities and assurances that so many looked to them to fulfill - Removing their Superwoman capes for even more preferred attire?

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At that very crossroad in my life, my role as a leader was the heaviest boulder that had me gasping for air as my body volleyed between trying to stay afloat and sinking into an abyss of misdirected leadership intentions.  The reality was, that even on my worst day, any shortcoming in my role as a wife or mother was met with disappointment, but an enduring love in which my children and husband saw me trying to do my best.

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However, what I realized about leadership is that, for the most part, the boulder that we do not realize that we are holding is the intention for our leadership to be the cataclysmic change agent to transform a school/organization. I realized that while I never wanted to disappoint my children or husband, it was never my intention to be perfect in those roles, but rather I wanted them to know that they were loved and supported at all times.

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Yet, as an early leader, I clasped to perfection like the finest of tennis bracelets - Full of brilliance, clarity, and carats to grab the attention of any Tiffany & Company’s customer.  As an early leader, my intentions for the people that I was leading was for them to see me as perfect, as having solutions to the challenges that we faced, and most importantly, to view me as being a credible leader.

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Now, after years of coaching and supporting hundreds of leaders, I have realized that the same shared intentions of mistaking leadership PERFECTION with leadership EXCELLENCE are the boulders that handicap even the best of leaders. Having now liberated myself from the imposter syndrome that formed so many of the boulders and plagued the pathology behind my intentions, I am committed to helping others do the same.

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Together, let us chisel away the coarse conglomerate of fallacy sediments that have formed some of your boulders that weigh you down.  Let's replace them with liberated scaffolds that lift you up and fuel your leadership intentions.  Those intentions will drive your purpose as a leader, and subsequently, contribute to your leadership potential and impact.

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Continue the journey with Leslie by ordering your copy of 4Liberation Book I: Untethered today!