NIKYATU.

I know every project won't give us the creative freedom we've enjoyed on this, our first feature, but my God it feels good to have my DNA on every step of NANNY's unique industry journey. It truly takes a village. Ladies and gentlemen: HER. Shout out to the @gravillisinc team for this amazing Art. 🔪🔪🔪

Happy Independence Day to the nation that gave me these two beautiful, brilliant souls. Salone, thank you for the gift of my parents and my lineage--an ancestral history I cling to more fervently as I age. One day we will truly be free from the colonial chokehold. 🇸🇱 #mandingo #sherbro #mende #soso 2. Bondo Initiates at the village of Sokurella - March 1970, by Chad Finer 3. Young boys returning from their initiation in the Poro. Panguma Villiage, Sierra Leone. 1936 4. Village of Karamasi, near Kabala. / Jean Gaumy / Date unknown

Another year in this lovely meat suit (10/21) Learning to linger in the present journey, rather than fixate on some nebulous destination. I hope you can create your own oasis in the frenzy. 🖤 “Imagination and faith are the secrets of creation.” —Neville Goddard

This leg of the journey (theatrical roll out + political posturing) has been one of the most challenging/educational facets of “the process” before we hit streaming Dec 16. Learning about a different type of stamina (how long can you hold a smile -- the figurative veneer), reinforcing the strength of my boundaries (which indignities are worth addressing right now), reminding myself I am thankful (it took this long because you needed a more formidable center to navigate an industry that will attempt to shake your foundation daily) … Carrying these lessons with me into the next chapter. Remembering the embrace of community + my talented team. Lingering in the love. Having a film you worked on so hard/so long out in the world feels like sprinting naked and barefoot in the wild.

The past is the present is the past is the future…

"You always told me it takes time...how much time do you want...for your progress?"

Comforted I’m doing something right on my journey to success. Can’t wait to not meet y’all. 😍

As I spiral into existential crisis around my role as a storyteller feeling inconsequential while the world burns around us, I look to Black Women Artists before me who portrayed truths via magic, myth, fantasy... “It’s not possible to constantly hone on the crisis....I regard my responsibilities as a Black writer as someone who must bear witness-someone who must record the way it used to be...I want to make sure that a little piece of the world that I knew...doesn't get forgotten." //Toni Morrison