Hello. My name is kerina, typed either fully lowercase or in all caps, never half-assed, and definitely not proper.
I am a body.I reject the western colonial idea that the mind is the self. I will always be more body than mind.
kerina, body.
I love people. I love people a lot. Probably more than I should, but NEVER more than they deserve. Every person I’ve ever met deserves more love than they are getting or have gotten.
I love the messy ones, the quiet ones, and the loud ones.
I love the people I surround myself with, the ones I choose to keep close, and I love the people I chose not to. Because even within boundaries, there is love. There is care. There is respect for their life, and mine.
I love people enough to try to see them fully, even when they don’t see themselves.
I love people enough to know that love is never simple. Love is not something to measure. And love is always worth giving.
kerina, body, lover.
I am Black and African interchangeably, never in hierarchy.
kerina, body, lover, black.
I love to read and I read everything. From shitty romance novels, to political theory, to lit fic to physics (when it’s digestible). I read to imagine. I read to understand. I read to question. I read to feel. I read to escape. I read to learn new language and gather ideas and hold pieces of the world that I would not hold otherwise.
It is my passion and my fuel for my thinking, my writing, and my living.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader
On top of the twenty-one published poems, essays, and reading guides I’ve put out into the world since January, there are sixty-eight more finished ones sitting in my drafts. There are forty-five half-built, half-abandoned, half-promising ones, waiting for me to come back to them. There are eight plays, fourteen experimental pieces, and over twenty short stories in my canva docs. Two full poetry notebooks are stacked on my nightstand, and I have already filled three journals this calendar year.
I am a prolific writer. I write like it’s going out of style and like I’m running out of time.
And I don’t post all of it. Between here and other platforms I post some of it, but never all of it. Not because I am embarrassed or because it isn’t good enough, or because I’m waiting for it to be rejected from magazines or newspapers first, but because writing for me isn’t about other people. Writing is just for me. Sometimes its rehearsal, sometimes it’s archival, sometimes it’s metacognition, sometimes its rants I can’t go on in public. There are some things I need to say to myself before anyone else hears them. And there are some truths I can only live in without an audience.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader, writer.
I am an artist, born of an artist, born of an artist, born of (i’m sure) another artist. I feel possessed by the creator to create, and I do so both passively and actively. It is not always by choice. Sometimes it is a calling. It comes to be as fire in my veins, voices in my head or a hand I feel pressing on my broad shoulders, demanding I hum, speak, sing, write, mold or make. It is a compulsion, a gift, and a curse all at once.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader, writer, artist.
I come by liberation work honestly.
My dad’s family is saturated with social workers, educators, politicians, innovators, lawyers, visionaries, artists, activists and the like.
I come from a long line of people who spent their lives trying to create a world that is more just, more thoughtful, more humane.
I come from a long line of people that were successful in doing so.
Since I could speak I’ve been nicknamed “my grandmother’s daughter” and while I didn’t get to spend much time with her, may she rest in peace, in the time I had, she and my family made sure to teach me the language of liberation.
In our limited interactions, they shaped my way of seeing, understanding, and moving through the world.
Liberation is not an abstract ideal, it is my lived expectation.
I believe in a world free of oppression. This world is not impossible, it is inevitable, and I will devote as much of my life to it as I am able.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader, writer, artist, liberationist.
I am a person who sees endless potential in those around me, especially in children. I am a teacher.
I am a patient and generous teacher, always looking for another way to explain things, because no one is incapable of learning.
I am a teacher because teaching is liberation work, and guiding people towards their own voices is an act of resistance in a world that wants us silent.
Teaching is about questions not answers. Teaching is about developing the courage to ask the questions you still don’t know the answers to. I believe in asking questions without rushing to answers and ruminating on both questions and answers the same. I believe that classrooms can be libraries, living rooms, study circles, kitchen counters, street corners, car backseats or anywhere where knowledge circulates freely. I believe teaching is holding space for discussion, and knowledge does not flow from teacher to student but grows in both. I believe in education as a multiplying force.
I teach because I love people. I love how brilliant people are, even when they are unaware of it, or unconfident in their intelligence. I love when people push past the bounds of their present mind. I love watching children grow. I love watching kids build vocabularies to better express the things they mean. I love watching vision expand.
Teaching is not about molding people into my world view. Teaching is helping others shape theirs. It is not being the smartest in the room. It is being the most open.
A lot of teaching is presence. It’s saying “I am here and determined for us to find the answer to whatever questions we may have, together, for as long as that may take.”
I am not perfect at this, but I am patient. I do not always get it right, but I am always trying. Teaching is not about perfection, rather presence. I am present as a teacher.
I am a teacher. I am a learner. And I am both, always, equally.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader, writer, artist, liberationist, teacher, learner.
I am a healer.
I believe that healing is not about fixing but tending. It is not about erasing blemishes, or sedating pain.
I understand the power of herbs, roots, leaves and seeds. I have seen the power in what grows from the earth as medicine. I know that healing is not only facilitated in sterile rooms with prescriptions.
Healing also comes from what grows wild and what has always been here.
Healing is holistic. It is body, mind, spirit, and community. You cannot separate any from the others.
A wound on the spirit shows up in the body.
A pain in the body weighs on the mind.
A trauma on the mind affects the community.
Healing is not about cures. We are whole beings in need of whole care.
I do not claim to heal everything. I cannot. But I offer what I can. Plant medicine, words, presence, touch, care.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader, writer, artist, liberationist, teacher, learner, healer.
This is not all I am nor is it all I will be. As I am not finished becoming.
kerina, body, lover, black, reader, writer, artist, liberationist, teacher, learner, healer—
KERINA