Welcome To Liminal Space

with Iyabo where we heal from the ravages of oppressive culture.

Hello New Friend,

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter, “Liminal Space.” I am excited you are here.

Why Liminal Space?”

When you were raised one way, “over here”, and you have a lifetime of believing and supporting this identity, and now you want to be a different person and go “over there,” it takes time, effort, new knowledge and a community because it is going against the grain.

It feels wobbly and all sorts of feelings and insecurities come up. We question our identity and we have to name the stories that have shaped us in order to embrace a healthy racial identity.

We ask, who am I as .....
.....a Black woman?
.....a White man?
.....an immigrant?
.....a white woman?
.....a Latina?
.....a Christian?
.....an Anti-racist?
.....a Peace Builder?

When we discard an old life, an old way of thinking and being, and before we fully enter into the emerging way of being, we discover liminal space at that threshold. It holds us. It supports us. It embraces us when we have shed a tired identity but not yet donned a fresh one. Don’t rush through it. The developmental pace is necessary. Liminality is a state of becoming. It is where we all belong.

This is the place of a peculiar crack, a threshold of change, where our stories transform to embrace a larger narrative of becoming and belonging - to ourselves and to each other.

Welcome Home!

Why do you want to hear from me?

I am a bi-racial transplant from Africa. I came to America as a teenager and I have lived in this system for quite some time. Over the past few years, I realized one major thing: I came for the American dream. It seemed like it was in my view for many years. But guess what? I finally woke up to the fact that what I had was the “Black American Reality.” And truthfully, that American dream? It was only a “white American dream.”

Of course, I came for the “white American dream.” My mother was white American. She did not know to teach me a different reality. She lived in Lagos, Nigeria for 30 plus years where I saw her navigate race, gender and culture with ease and grace. I thought every white person was just like her.

Well…

Some housekeeping…

If you can’t find the newsletter, check your spam folder. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, either, you should look in the Promotions tab.

Iyabo Onipede: Liminal Space is a reader-supported newsletter. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for reading.