Khadija Mbowe
patreon
Thoughts inspired by Linsday Ellis and Yhara Zayed's departures
🕑 Added 2021-12-28 19:49:37 +0000 UTCInstead of asking “whyyyy” or getting upset with those that might have “caused” creators like Yhara Zayd and Lindsay Ellis to leave the platform, I’d rather sit with that loss and sadness. Allow it to inform me. How do I contribute to other humans (in the public eye or not) feeling that their humanity is being stripped with every interaction? How do my compliments and praises shove someone on a pedestal they didn’t ask to be on? How are my words of anger and my rightful frustration at the world around me being dumped on a stranger? In my 20s one of the most important things i’ve learned is that I am not responsible for how others receive me, but I still owe it to anyone I interact with to not cause further harm to them. I may not always get this right because I can’t see inside the minds of every person I meet, but I can do my best to see them with some compassion, some acceptance, and a spirit of humility as I am not a “perfect” person either. Whenever people decide the public eye isn’t for them, when they choose to take a step away or leave forever, people wonder why? They ask everyone and everything around them for answers instead of looking inward. Instead of evaluating their own relationship to “celebrity” and “status”. I’m mixing in the “abuse of fame” that Sara Marshall has talked about and Youtubers leaving because of various reasons but at the core of it is the dehumanization for me sis…
I’ve spoken open and honestly about how y’all should not look to me as an “unproblematic fave” or think that just because I say a few things that make it seem like we have the same beliefs doesn’t mean EVERYTHING I think and say is gonna be your cup of tea. I’ve spoken about how okay that is, because you don’t love people, and I mean truly love people, just because they think/feel the same way as you. If that’s how you define love, perhaps that needs to be looked at because to me that reads as validation. And I get it. If you’re like me, then you can relate when I say that I’ve felt invalidated by the world since I unwillingly entered it some 29 years ago. That it has been kicking my ass seven ways to Sunday for as long as I can remember and so when I meet someone who validates my experiences, my thoughts, my feelings, and/or my beliefs…it can feel like an exhale. It can feel like, “Finally! I KNEW I wasn’t the only person who felt/thought this way!”
A lot of you message me saying things like that, and that’s why I know that more than anything…most people want to feel accepted and understood as they are. To finally feel OKAY just existing as they are because it’s been a long hard fight. (And UBI but that’s a whole other subject).
The point is. Finding someone who gives you “permission” to be who you are can feel like coming home, in a way that words fail to describe it’s just a feeling. But too much of that, without keeping an eye on it can lead to looking at the source of your “permission to exist how you are” or “believe what you believe” as that, a source. A site for validation, a weekly checkpoint to reaffirm that you’re okay. And when that “source” (aka human person) says or does something that seems to go against that validation…it can feel like a betrayal. Like a personal attack. You thought you knew this person and now they’ve shown you that you actually don’t.
But here’s the thing…grace and space isn’t just a fun rhyming phrase to say when you’re trying to keep calm on the internet. Grace and Space is love in stillness. It is taking yourself, your projections, your perceptions of what you believe about someone and putting them to the side to allow them to show you who they are and how they’re evolving. Evolution of the human mind is…messy. It’s contradictory, it’s confusing, it’s hard, it’s just a cluster fuck.
As content creators we tend to be the “site” of discourse, community and all of that. And personally…I love it. But at the end of the day I can only do so much to keep reminding y’all that I’m human. If this is a relationship (and it is because every time you’re interacting with someone you’re in relation to them no matter how brief) it means that we both have to do our part. I have to understand that my voice has power, that what I do and say has influence, that I have to be mindful of how I “internet”. That’s the job. Some days it’s easy, some days it’s fucking hard. But if I’m going to do my best to do my part in that then your end of the bargain is allowing me love in stillness (if you “love” me). It’s allowing me room to figure out this influence and power, it’s allowing me room to make mistakes and being honest when I “mess up” but doing it from a curtesy of love in stillness.
This may all sound cheesy and my thoughts aren’t fully fleshed out but this is it. I don’t care about sounding lame or whatever. For me, love is still and it is the most natural and free thing we have to offer once all the mess falls away (which is hard because hello look at the world).
For me, love is, come as you are, I will come as I am and let us both receive each other in ways we haven’t been able to anywhere else.
Online and in comments, it looks like speaking honestly and with love. Not trying to make someone feel badly, or wrong or stupid. Because I’ve had enough of that and I’m sure you have too.
So whoever is reading this…I don’t know you as I don’t fully know myself in any given moment so I cannot claim to know you…but I love you in stillness. I love you in the space you need to figure these things out as I’m learning to love myself in that same space. In that stillness. I’m learning to love in stillness the parts of me that I don’t like, the insecure and fearful parts that cause me to react in uncharitable ways. I love you in stillness as I am learning myself in any given moment.
I don’t know you to say all of this to you but I don’t care. When all of this falls away, when the Earth pushes out its poison, when we are all nothing but dust and fading energy, when the universe is left expanding without witness…all that will be left is this stillness…💕
Comments
Christina Cano
I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this. I found your channel earlier this year, and it has certainly become a solace for me. The way you carry yourself and speak to your viewers—with an honesty that at once feels both intimate and vulnerable, yet kindly communicates your boundaries—has struck me just as much as the topics you discuss. Aliyah Mystery School put it perfectly when saying it is both integrity and humanity. I find that I relate to you most as a viewer, not in the beliefs and passions I think I may share with you, but in our humanness that is good and imperfect and still deserving of love. It’s hard for me to totally describe in words how I feel, but when I watch your videos, I feel close to you because of the distance and space between us. I don’t know if that makes any sense. I just know your videos help grant mindfulness in these strange internet parasocial relationships and offline ones, with others and with myself. Maybe it is because I am also coming to know and to love myself, and you help make that less scary for me in your openness and love. I always am grateful for your reminder that we can always change our mind and learn, especially as someone who hasn’t always been given that space. So thank you for sharing the parts of yourself that you do with us, Khadija ❤️ it is not all of you, and I will likely never know all of you, but I am happy to love what I know, and love and hold space for what I don’t know.
Khadija Mbowe
there's this Rumi quote about how words from the heart enter the heart and those words shot right through mine
Aliyah Mystery School
This is so beautifully put. You are such a strong and powerful example of what it looks like to stand in your integrity and humanity all at once. Your willingness to be seen in your process, to be representation, to be human and also wise - it's creating such a safe space for so many that have likely never HAD a true safe space before. I love what you write here about learning to validate ourselves even if we aren't being externally represented. That's a massive challenge, especially for people who have been and are still being kept out of certain spaces, made to be unsafe, simply NOT represented. Finding that balance of being seen and letting that be like water in the desert, but also learning to see one's self even without that external validation - it's a lot. What you do here matters, and at the same time, more than anything, your life matters more. What good you do here, I deeply value, and I also hope that if at any point it becomes a sacrifice for you, that you will stop for your own sake. That you will take care of you as the ultimate demonstration of self love, something we can all do that will make this world a better place. Thank you for being here and for expressing as you do. <3
