My understanding of my leadership has definitely changed since starting Bush. I think I have developed a much more strategic mindset around how to create and execute the kinds of systems change I seek that is sustainable to my mind, body, and spirit. Embracing and acknowledging my strengths and developing new partnership and delegating to those that can help elevate and support the work so that I can live in my expertise, while also getting the time to do more mentorship and cultivation of more young leaders. Honestly, focusing on my own leadership has allowed me to become more honest about my health and what I needed to ensure that this work was sustainable for me and the communities that I love so much. I really needed a series of critical wake up calls that came through coaching, new partnership development, traveling, and refining my skills to become honest with myself about how I could be a more effective leader without losing my joy through burnout. Self care is key. I am much happier, more confident in my yes's and my no's, I am taking calculated risks, I am building bridges that I once did not believe were possible., and my impact has reached national and global recognition in the process. In a former reflection I talked a great deal about losing joy. I also committed to ensuring that the next year of the Bush would focus on me regaining that joy. I am so happy to say that I stuck to that goal and the Bush allowed me no excuses not to feed into myself. As I write this reflection I sit in Accra, Ghana. I returned back to the motherland something I did not think I would ever actually do in my lifetime.

While in Ghana I traveled to Accra, Kumasi, and the Cape Coast. I went to the following places: W.E.B DuBois Museum, the Kwame Nkrumah Museum, got a drum lesson, visited Independence Square, learned how to make Kente, became an official part of the Asante Kingdom through a naming ceremony, learned about adinkra symbols and got to make my own design, I visited Boti waterfall, visited the place where captured slaves had their last bath before heading to the slave castles on the coast, went to the cape coast slave castles to the place where all slave brought to the Unites States and Caribbean were held before going through the door of no return, I relaxed on Bojo Beach, and I visited an Asante Shrine and learned about the fearless queen Asantewaa who was exiled in Seychelles.

This among many other experiences that the Bush has supported has been a spiritual reawakening that has helped me both solidify my own purpose and goals, but reconnect me to the ancestors.