Keep Going

The greatest lesson I have learned from my background is simple, but it has shaped every part of who I am: keep going. Keep going when nothing makes sense. Keep going when you feel like “other” in every space you enter. Keep going when your search for your people feels endless. For most of my life, I didn’t have language for how I experienced the world—I only knew that I was different. The world kept reminding me of that difference, but I kept going.

For as long as I can remember, I have lived with a deep sense of being other. Woman. Person of color. Afro-Indigenous lineage. Artist. Seer. I carried this feeling into every room, every classroom, every rehearsal space, searching for belonging yet unsure of what I was seeking. That search—years of feeling isolated, misunderstood, and unseen—became my greatest teacher. It taught me perseverance and faith in the unseen. It taught me how to trust myself when nothing external affirmed my experience. It taught me that the very things that make me different are also the source of my power.

Everything changed when one word arrived like a key turning in a locked door: Autistic.
In an instant, my life came into focus. All the fragments of my experience—the sensory intensity, the pattern recognition, the hyperfixation, the deep empathy, the need for order and ritual—finally had a name, a community, and a meaning. What I once perceived as obstacles revealed themselves as gifts. My “otherness” became my map home.

I now understand that the resilience that sustained me through years of uncertainty was not accidental; it was rooted in where I come from. I was raised in Detroit, Michigan—a city that knows what it means to be counted out and still rise. Detroit taught me how to rebuild, reinvent, and reimagine. It’s a place of rhythm and resistance, of artistry born from scarcity, of people who keep creating beauty against all odds. That spirit lives in me. Growing up in an underserved city where access to opportunity was limited, I learned early to work with what I had, to create possibility where others saw none. Detroit gave me my first lessons in alchemy: turning what looks broken into something sacred.

Those lessons became the foundation for my artistry and scholarship. My ability to keep going evolved into a skill set: the capacity to transmute challenge into creation. When faced with obstacles, I’ve learned not to retreat but to transform. Where others see limitation, I see potential for reconfiguration. This is what I call alchemical resilience—a practice of turning the raw materials of life, even pain and misunderstanding, into light.

My autism gave me tools to do that work in ways I now celebrate. My pattern recognition allows me to perceive meaning in chaos and connect ideas across seemingly distant fields. My hyperfocus enables me to dive deeply into subjects, synthesizing information until I uncover the underlying architecture of thought. My sensory sensitivity attunes me to the frequencies of spaces, people, and energy, a sensitivity that informs both my creative process and my understanding of embodiment in performance. These are not deficits—they are superpowers. They allow me to feel and translate the world in ways that bridge art, spirituality, and scholarship.

Because of these lived experiences, I approach performance and research as intertwined acts of healing and discovery. The lessons from my life—resilience, alchemy, and self-trust—inform the skills I bring into every project and collaboration. I’ve learned how to hold complexity, how to listen beyond words, and how to create spaces that honor difference as divine design. My background has given me a profound empathy for those navigating invisibility, marginalization, or misunderstanding. It has also given me the determination to ensure that others don’t have to walk that path alone.

I’ve learned to see every experience, even the most difficult ones, as data—a form of lived research. My life has been my first field study, teaching me how to integrate multiple modes of knowing: intellectual, sensory, emotional, and spiritual. I’ve discovered that I process the world through a tapestry of perception. I don’t separate thought from feeling, body from mind, or art from life. That integrated way of knowing is not only how I survive—it’s how I thrive. It’s also how I teach, create, and research.

From my background, I have gained more than perseverance; I have gained vision. The ability to envision possibility where others see none. The ability to transform challenge into creation. The ability to find patterns and meaning in the invisible spaces between things. These are the skills that guide my practice as an artist-scholar and the values I bring to community. They allow me to bridge disciplines, cultures, and forms of knowledge. They allow me to move between the worlds of performance, spirituality, and disability studies with authenticity and rigor.

Above all, I have learned that being “other” is not a deficit but a direction. It points me toward new ways of seeing, new languages for being, and new methods for understanding the human experience. It is from this place that I approach my doctoral studies—not as someone seeking to fit into existing frameworks, but as someone committed to expanding them. My life has taught me that knowledge is not only found in books but in bodies, breath, and lived experience. That lesson continues to shape how I approach both performance and research.

I keep going—not just for myself, but for others who feel unseen, misunderstood, or out of place. I keep going because my journey has shown me that difference is divine, that resilience is artistry, and that understanding oneself is the foundation of all great scholarship. My life’s greatest lesson remains the simplest: keep going, keep transforming, keep becoming.