Notes on Living is a column of considered points of view about how we are co-creating this life. What stirs our hearts? What feeds us? How do the challenges that animate our most frequent thoughts move through us, individually and collectively? What has life shown us about itself? How are we finding belonging and making meaning/healing in all this?
Here, Janobest Isaac, a filmmaker and one of the notable entry awardees of the inaugural Abebi Award in Afro-nonfiction, reflects on the healing power of devotion, and how working on her winning essay freed her from the wound she confronted in her writing.
I’ve always maintained that the best type of healers aren’t the ones that lay their hands on you and demand that the demon inside you find another resting place. True healing is reminding you what you forgot: that you have two vials at your fingertips, one with your own medicine and the other your poison, and only you decide when and which to take.
“There are no villains in your story.”
Mofiyinfoluwa said as her colorful yellow dress and her lush, neatly packed Afro bounced with her. We, all four residents of the Abebi Award residency and Mofiyinfoluwa, were having an interactive session on mind mapping on the second day of the residency.
“If someone is the villain and you’re the victim, you need to work on your essay again…”
Wow… really? I remember thinking to myself. There were a lot of things at the residency that made me go wow… really? At first, it was Mofiyinfoluwa, the organizer/founder of the Abebi Writer’s Residency and Award. She is young but filled with point-and-kill vision, divinely led and so, knowledgeable. So casually knowledgeable. Watching her reinforced what I strongly believe: you can’t do art without devotion, otherwise you risk losing depth. To organise a writer’s award catering specifically to nonfiction stories of black women, Mofiyinfoluwa is clearly devoted. It’s not a popular niche, but my good sis has made it a worthy endeavour.
You could tell that everything was built on intention—from the hotel we stayed in, to the very intimate writing prompts we had to work on and finally the award ceremony, under the stars blessed by the gods.
Intention will always get me to wow… really? Because mindlessness has been woven into the fabric of society—a colorless straitjacket to ease the process of getting through the day, a job, making art, even relationships. So, intention, applying yourself, devoting yourself to a cause despite what it takes and despite no immediate profit… intention will always win over my heart.
For the award, Mofiyinfoluwa sent out a call to African women to send in personal stories. She said our voices and stories matter and so, I dug into my archives, looked for the biggest thorn in my flesh and wrote about it.
My entry revisited the events surrounding my abortion and at the time I had written about it, I still felt like God or whatever force out there had it out for me, wanted to punish me for exercising my sexual liberty. What I didn’t know was that my essay, I Bind & Cast, was a scientific study about my ‘thorn’—its root, history, structure and processes. It was a critical analysis of a pain that wasn’t surface level. After reading out an excerpt from my essay on the stage during the award ceremony, it felt like I had left the thorn there. Now, I could focus on healing the wound it had left behind. But I couldn’t heal without going back to my story again and again.
“You can’t hide from the pen…”
Those were Fiyin’s words to us on the first day of the residence. Even if you don’t understand your story, your pain or its source, your pen does and will write it out for you, as long as you don’t censor it.
The truth is when I settled down to write my essay, my main intent was to talk solely about my abortion. But if you go through the essay, you’ll find it’s the very last thing I mentioned, and barely. Because my pen knew that the source of my trauma wasn’t the abortion.
A month after the Abebi Award, I began recollecting the root of where the trauma that informed my essay began to take shape. With each painfully graphic recollection, I would rush to my essay to read out a particular scene and say Ohhhh, that’s where that one happened. That’s the thing that brought me shame or that stole my voice or that stole my peace or that stole my freedom. Fear had been planted inside me and had brought about the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do. And knowing the root of your trauma is so important, so you can finally pluck it out and revoke any more chances it has to steal your life from you ever again.
So this is where I am- still reeling (in all of the good ways) from the Abebi Award. And this is what art (with devotion) does: leaves an impact for life. I will never ever get over it. While I had been blaming some god or force or maybe even my parents for where life had taken me, I forgot for a moment of the two vials. I had let all the damage sit in my body longer than was necessary. I could heal and dance it away or I could continue to whine about this thorn in my flesh. The Abebi Award & Residency changed my life. I am honored to be part of its birth as one of the five writers spotlighted out of 80-something entries. I feel like such a star.
These days, I’m taking my medicine, every single last drop, and as a result, I’m singing. (I didn’t even know I could sing.) And dancing. And loving. And forgiving. And living. Again.
- Janobest Isaac, February 2024