How about we fly toward the source again? 🕊️ In search of tenderness we found it inside surrender.
My intention inside this episode is to ground us inside the reality that we are ✨ constantly ✨ changing. Our motivations are changing. Our values might be experiencing a re-boot. And the things that kept us going in the past might no longer be a reliable fuel source. Instead of resenting or resisting our desire to slow down, prioritize our most meaningful relationships, or operate from a place of wholeness….What if we used these changes in our capacity, goals and desires as our new navigation tools and fuel to get us where we actually want to go instead of the destinations we were told to go in search of a false sense of safety? In this episode I share 5 approaches for staying motivated when ambition rooted in external validation has left your body.
💌 Link in bayou to tune into the 70th episode of the podcast For The Worldbuilders
🖼️ Cover Art: Kerry James Marshall, “When Frustration Threatens Desire” (1990), Dimensions: 81 5/16 x 73 1/16 x 2 inches, Materials: Acrylic and collage on canvas
Is it just me or is the scale of our audacity increasing with the scale of empire’s violence?
We are not laying down.
We are not standing down.
We are not shrinking.
In times like this I always say, “the only thing left to do is worldbuild” because it is simply the truth. Tell me, what else is there to do? What else is there to do but take our audacity to the farthest edges of our imagination and build from there? Turning to the god within us all and collectively calling in favor.
🌐 Join us Tuesday, August 19th at 12pm EST for @seedaschool ’s Worldbuilding Workshop where you will learn how to shape your desire, give form to your audacity and seed a world through newsletters, income generating creative offers and strategy as spell.
🔗 Registration is free. Link in bio.
🖼️ Cover Art: Photograph by @stephenlamiller
🪞I want to call in all teachers, writers, artists and business owners to take a close look at what we’re “normalizing” in our practices. What cultural examples are we using to teach that feel apolitical? What references are we pointing to in our art that feel “neutral”? What narratives are we normalizing in our writing? What topics are we avoiding on our business accounts on social media? What are the employers, organizations and institutions we’re connected to authorizing as the “professional stance”?
💌 Read today’s full newsletter where I reflect on expanding toward an international black feminist politic, alongside a few resources to read, watch and actions to take in solidarity with Palestine. 🇵🇸
🔗 seedaschool.substack.com
📷 Cover: Palestinians riding the blue sky in pink cars as part of an an amusement park ride outside Gaza City, March 26, 2006. Photo by: Anja Niedringhaus—AP
This week inside the newsletter I talk about transmuting my shame around my ChatGPT usage into self-respect through:
1️⃣ Education
2️⃣ Conversation
3️⃣ Action
Then conclude the essay with how we might engineer erotic prompts of refusal, instead of AI prompts in the face of productivity porn and techno-determinism.
💌 Read the full love letter at the link in the bayou. Let me know your thoughts! Thank y’all for all the encouraging and principled feedback so far. So much love for us.
🖼️ Cover Art: Jack Whitten, “Dead Reckoning I” (1980) “In 1980, starting with Dead Reckoning, it was the first time I stood up to do a painting in ten years. It felt good. It felt good to come up off the floor and stand straight…” — Jack Whitten
Where do we go from here? We keep dreaming, we keep writing, we keep refusing, we keep worldbuilding, we keep raining down.
🔗 There are 21 citations embedded into this love letter
💌 Read the full love letter + citations and subscribe at the link in bayou
🖼️ Cover Art: Lorna Simpson (American, born 1960). Night Fall, 2023. Ink and screenprint on gessoed fiberglass, 144 x 102 in. (365.8 x 259.1 cm). Private Collection. Photo by James Wang. Image Description: A black woman, with a powerful stare directly into the camera, collaged at the top of a waterfall flowing to the base of the landscape — the whole image a wash of various hues of blue.
This document was first shared with the Seeda School Alumni Network and is being shared here in the spirit of transparency, accountability and care for the integrity of our shared practice.
🔗 Reference Links:
• Denise Shanté Brown's "Experiments In Felt Futures" Website: niseshantebrown.com/experimentsinfeltfutures
• Denise Shanté Brown's "Felt Futures" Book Collection: niseshantebrown.com/feltfutures-bookcollection
• Mengwen Cao's Website: /
• Mengwen Cao's Substack: /
• Mengwen Cao's Instagram Post: /p/DQx-HK5DIb5
💌 A note of gratitude to Denise Shanté Brown and nènè myriam konaté for their continued feedback, for the offering of their time and references such as Paul Soulellis’s “Urgentcraft” and for their trust in the Seeda School community and I throughout this process.
Your “cosmic why” is your desire and your desire has always been powerful enough to summon whatever you want.
The evidence is plenty.
Last season the question was, “what do I want?”. Clarity has been granted. Now the question this season is “why”? This clarity becomes erotic fuel and actualization becomes inevitable.
💌 Read the full newsletter and subscribe at the address in the bayou!
🖼️ Cover Art: Carrie Mae Weems, Kitchen Table Series (1990, printed 2003) “For this series, Carrie Mae Weems staged and photographed a fictional drama in which she plays the lead. Other cast members play lovers, friends, and daughters. From this modest setup, the artist creates an entire world.” (Source: National Gallery of Art)
🏷️ Please tag the creators of slides 17 and 19 if you know them! 🫶🏾
I am looking forward to you witnessing me take up more space on social media, stages and inside of books; I am looking forward to you holding me accountable when I don’t do it perfectly; and most of all, I am looking forward to continuing to help grow our collective capacity to abundantly resource black feminist worldbuilding projects. These are the responsibilities I’m choosing inside the new season of @seedaschool 🤝🏾
💌 Read the full love letter — address is in the bayou.
🖼️ Cover Art: Anna Julia Cooper (August 10, 1858 – February 27, 1964) was known to host Frelinghuysen University classes in her DC home. Her first book, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South, is widely acknowledged as one of the first articulations of Black feminism.
The program is the practice and the beat machine keeps looping. 🔁
It allows us to face change, uncertainty, absence of control and even habitual violence from inside the nervous system supporting stability of our daily creative ceremonies.
This steadiness expands our capacity to create, risk and build the nuts, bolts, suspension technology and support beams holding up the roof of our hope long enough to catch our breath.
💌 Read and/or listen to the full love letter on the @seedaschool ’s Substack
Confession: I wanted to spend one more week talking about ceremony with y’all so the workshop has a new date!
🕯️ Seed A Ceremony Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desire
🗓️ Tuesday, November 25th, 2025 12pm EST
🔗 Registration is free, link in bayou
🖼️ Cover Art: Simone Leigh, Liz Magic Laser, “Breakdown” (film still), 2011, single-channel digital video, color, sound; 09:00 minutes.
What is ceremony if not minor music at the end of the world?
“The work explores the critical work of the minor key: not stepping into the major or proper, but embracing the dissonant work of the minor, as in, minor music, minor figures, minor literatures. The movement score embraces opacity and incompleteness. The sound score and the choreography of the physical performances together offer plural and divergent accounts of work and world.” — Saidiya Hartman in conversation with Sarah Jilani for “The Interview: Saidiya Hartman” published by @artreview_magazine on October 8th, 2025
💌 Read and/or listen to the full love letter on the @seedaschool ’s Substack
Learn more about The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering and how to seed a ceremony rooted in the truth of your desire in our upcoming Worldbuilding Workshop.
🕯️ Seed A Ceremony Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desire
🗓️ Tuesday, November 18th, 2025 12pm EST
🔗 Registration is free, link in bayou
🖼️ Cover Art: Saidiya Hartman, “Minor Music at the End of the World”, dir. Sarah Benson, 2025 (performance view, world premiere at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam). Photo: Fabian Calis
For years it was the future that got me out of bed — the worthiness that would be unlocked at the end of each accomplishment, the love I would finally let myself experience at the end of the next goal achieved, always the next one, the felt sense of safety I would postpone until I had sufficiently earned my right to take up space. It was always until, until, until…what?
💌 Read the full newsletter on the @seedaschool Substack
Then register for the free upcoming worldbuilding workshop to think through daily ceremony as a technology for transformative presence together!
🕯️ Seed A Ceremony Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desire
🗓️ Tuesday, November 18th, 2025 12pm EST
🔗 Link In Bayou
🖼️ Cover Art: Saidiya Hartman, Minor Music at the End of the World, dir. Sarah Benson, 2025. Commissioned and presented by Hartwig Art Foundation, world premiere at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. Photo: Fabian Calis
My writing practice is taking me into uncharted territories and landscapes that I know I must, not only see, not only witness…but feel and fully experience through embodiment and collaboration with my entire sensorium. As I find my way on these unfamiliar back roads that smell like home I’ve been thinking a lot about ceremony. 🕯️
How ceremony can create footholds for return as the practice stays the same while we transform at a pace that can feel simultaneously unsafe, yet right on time? Keeping in mind we may not always feel ready, but we can prepare.
Let us rest inside the divine timing and power of ceremonies. Seed an irresistible writing practice with us inside The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering where we have monthly writing workshops on 1st Thursdays and monthly open studios on 3rd Thursdays.
👤 Join us this Thursday for “Writing Offerings From The Shadow” inspired by Sojourner Truth’s invitation to “sell the shadow to support the substance”.
🗓️ Enroll by October 1st to secure your spot in this erotic engineering workshop! Feel free to share the flyer if you want to engineer the erotic with a friend.
🔗 Link in bayou to learn more and enroll.
🖼️ Cover Art: Little me cheesing in a white dress, white stockings and white shoes. It’s Easter Sunday, a ceremony of a different kind. (1997) Age 4. Taken by Auntie or Uncle Pop.
