Bearing Witness — To Lean In

I lean in — steady, deliberate, like an offering — not to catch you, not to hold steady, but to witness the exact moment your voice dares to exist.

I lean in because it is my act of saying: Take your time.

It’s time for you to resuscitate, to revitalize.

Laid bare in the bones of history, my ancestry, healing the power, the confidence, the glow.

Not because it is seen, but because it refuses to be unseen.

Not because it is heard, but because it cannot be silenced.

Not because it is allowed, but because it refuses permission.

I lean in to listen, to uphold, to clear the way, to witness, to create space.

Not to honor those who spoke before me, but to challenge the repeats of those who tried to silence you.

To defy the voices that once withheld permission.

To speak into the spaces where silence was demanded.

To write against the grain of erasure.

To exist without apology.

Going with this, on the refusal to fade.

Brought into the light by these words, in their flowing script, showcased as evidence: you are continuing to try.

Each mark, a moment lived.

Every line, a path endured.

Pressed into existence, unshaken.

A story unfolding, unafraid.

Time may press against the page, softening its edges, weathering its lines, yet still, it holds.

Not just memory, but will.

Not just words, but proof.

That even as days stretch and fray, you persist.

You remain.

A life that refuses to fade.

And I, in profound awe, get to witness that effort.

To see your presence still holding firm.

To know that in each line

You. Are. Still. Here.