She Who Envisioned Something Lit
“When I dare to be powerful — to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether I am afraid.”
Processing your dreams in real time can feel a lot different than what you expected. We hardly prepare for the nerves and the creeper of disbelief that’s like “wait, this outpour of love and support is actually real?” or “did I bite off more than I could chew?”. That is essentially the way I’ve felt for the past few weeks as people express gratitude for the Intro to Eclecticism community. So thank you for being here in this space and helping me bring a lit vision to life!
I’ve always been drawn to community-based initiatives for as long as I can remember. Growing up there was never an extra-curricular after-school activity I didn’t beg my parents to be a part of. While in elementary school I was a member of the chess club, gardening club, environmental services, karate, band, cheerleading, and step team. In middle school, I dialed it back and was in the school band, and the slowest asset to the cross-country team (had to keep the team’s average numbers humbled lol). In high school, I joined the field hockey team out of sheer curiosity and surprisingly liked it enough to sacrifice the ligaments in my right knee (a story for another day). Undergrad was full of multiple trials and errors that led me to get my Bachelor’s in Public Health, where I went on to focus on human behaviors at the community level. All of this to say, I’ve always known I was meant to be engaged with people and find a sense of community wherever I went in some capacity.
The birth of a lit(erary) vision:
In the beginning, I wanted to simply share my love of literature openly and maybe, hopefully, find a few people who felt the same way. More specifically, Black readers. There was no way that I was the only Black reader in the world and I was determined to find more people to read leisurely with or who appreciated book-related tangents.
Eclectix the Book Club came a little over a year after creating Intro to Eclecticism. It was my way of integrating back into society, mainly the online reader community, post-baby to find some joy outside of my new role of “momma”. (New mommas know that moment post-partum where you’re like “okay, this is fun… but momma needs her solo fun, too”.) In retrospect, the singular decision of starting a book club was the best decision I could have made for myself.
The vision for the book club has always been catered to Black readers, serving as a haven for each of us to read more books, discover Black authors, and connect with other readers that we probably would have never met in our lives. This part is so important because social media has a lot of negative attributes when utilized in unproductive ways, but it has the power of connectivity when you begin to use it in the way that is most beneficial to you.
This post is mostly a thank you to everyone who believes in and contributes to the vision. Whether it’s daily, monthly, or on random occasions — you all inspire me to keep the community alive and thriving! Anyone who is straddling the fence on starting something, I hope you keep the opening Audre Lorde quote in mind when you face off the fears that accompany your visions because you possess the evergrowing strength to conquer them.
Happy New Year!