in living memory

cheers (?) to a new calendar year, dear reader. come hell AND high water, we still made it to 2026. the juiciest libations for those who didn’t, except for the wicked. as always, they deserve piss.

a month ago to this day, i turned 30 years old! with red roses in hand, i say, “i’m still here, YEAH!” it was my last 24 hours in the Bay post-celebrating my celestial twin Izara’s birthday, so i treated myself to an adventurous morning: a trip to the Black Panther Party Museum (unexpectedly but needfully closed to honor the recent passing of BPP Veteran Katherine Campbell), then a bus ride up to Ebiko for some grab-and-go sushi before stopping by Alameda Beach to spend some time with the sparkling brackish waters.

to round out my special day, i did something a bit unconventional for my official celebration: i hosted a living funeral for myself! (many thanks and kisses to my lover ángel for lending me access to their Zoom account)

as a steadily-growing death doula, i’ve held a lot of curiosity around the more ritualistic/ceremonial aspects of the work, and a living funeral is one of many ways to create intentional space for a dying person to be celebrated by & bid farewell to their chosen loved ones while they’re still earthside. when i originally had the idea to have one for myself, i immediately started to doubt whether it was “worthy” or “appropriate” for me to do so, but i’m so glad i forged past the hesitation because it went more beautifully than i could have ever anticipated.

it truly blessed me to have so many people from so many different points in my life show up in the virtual space to help me lay my twenties to rest. once most everyone i invited was in the room, i set the tone by invoking the spirit of my benevolent Dead through playing most of Mahalia Jackson’s and Louis Armstrong’s live rendition of “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.”

as much as i wanted my living funeral to deviate from Christian norms, that song is a divine link between me and my ancestors, many of whom were practicing Christians or initiates into Afrodiasporic spiritual traditions syncretized with Christianity. this specific performance symbolizes a rousing call to keep ordering my steps in alignment with my destiny and remaining open to the possibilities of ecstatic communion with my kindred.

as the celebrant for the evening, Izara held it down with fiercely heartfelt opening remarks, for which i am still so grateful, by which i am still so moved.

given that death is a transition and not just an ending, we gather tonight to celebrate Dkéama’s transition into a new decade. 30! alhamdulillah…

i think about Dkéama’s ever-youthful roots in inquiry and exploration in our beloved New York City, to the sharpening of your intellectual capacities over time, and to the woundings that stretched across your youth and into your present adulthood. woundings that you have so courageously named and spoken to…

to the kinship you shared in your early life in Black girl hood, and to the love and union you have built among Black queer and trans people: building spaces for us to commune, love, grieve, and fight, much like what you’ve done again tonight.

to your relentless quest for freedom, your steadfastness down the barrel against the State which oppresses us all, and the sharpening of every single one of your skills against tyranny: from your voice, to your pen, to your actions, to your own spiritual practices.

to your joy, your silliness, your pleasure, your divination and intuition.

we’re gathered here to cherish each part of you. the parts of you which have made mistakes, the parts of you which have triumphed, the parts we have known and not known, the parts that have yet to be formed. i am so thankful to witness all of your becoming and to witness all of the becoming that will be…

you are so beloved in fact, that should anyone or anything come for you in the morning, they will leave more empty-handed than they arrived. you are too protected for any threat fashioned against you to thrive.

— excerpt from Izara’s opening remarks

whew, there couldn’t have been a better word to set the night off! the rest of the program — as it were — alternated between “hymns” from Black women musicians (Simone, Makeba) and cultural workers (Giovanni) who i admire and visual odes to my life, like the life-so-far collage i compiled or the slideshow of pictures submitted by my loved ones.

next came the tribute section where folks were invited to speak love and blessings onto me for 2-3 minutes each, and my face still hurts from how much i smiled hearing everyone’s kind words. it was delightful and honestly somewhat surreal to be taken on a trip down memory lane by many of the people who have learned to love me over the years, extending all the way back to a couple homies i’ve known since middle school. to have it demonstrated that i am held in such high regard by the people i have chosen to be in my life was the greatest gift i could have received as i “[ran] into a new year.”

the event culminated with my self-eulogy and prayer for the incoming decade, which i have shared with you in both video and written format below, dear reader. enjoy, and put one in the air for me, whether it’s burning or bubbly. just don’t pour sumn out for me cuz i ain’t dead, not yet, not for a long time!

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my self-eulogy & prayer for the incoming decade

i want to open with an elemental prayer adopted from the one Empress Karen Rose shares in her book The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism.

i give thanks to:

• the gatekeeper spirit and keepers of the element of air in the East for opening the way up for newness and inspiration

• my ancestors, angels, spirit guides, and keepers of the element of fire in the South for the spark of life and joy present in my heart

• the mothers, grandmothers, and keepers of the element of water in the West for the generous, nourishing, and cleansing energy we take in every day

• the Spirit of the ancestors and keepers of the element of earth in the North for accompanying me always in Dreamtime

• the Creator God for all of the blessings that come from the sky

• Mama Leta for feeding us, giving us a home, and for all of the gifts that grow from the soil 

i thank my elevated ancestors for "paving the way for me so that the gift of life could be mine"

all honor to the martyred, the forgotten, the displaced, the exiled, the suicidal, the isolated, the bedbound, the Mad, the disabled, the incarcerated, and the disappeared.

i thank you all for being here as i embark on my 30th year.

i already know that it may have come as a surprise to some of you that i wanted to do a living funeral for my 30th birthday. some of y'all already let me know the flyer startled you! which is understandable. i already know that words have power, but this ceremony is not an invitation for death or for my life to be cut short. quite the opposite.  this ceremony is a celebration of my journey thus far and an invocation of a long life where i am loved and well-supported. 

death and (re)birth are two sides of the same coin flipped by fate, and i'm learning that more intimately as i unfold further into my role as a death Doula in the age of late stage capitalism.

here, i live. i have turned 30 despite any and all odds stacked against me. because of both the material presences and unseen forces who intervened on my behalf to bring me to this new age. there were many times when i came close to dying, times when i wanted to die, and still i draw breath. this is nothing short of miraculous.

30 years ago, i arrived wailing into a frigid Monday afternoon in New York, where i spent the first nine years of my life.

my mom tried to block off the entrances to the small kitchen in our Canarsie apartment with chairs when i first started walking. so that she wouldn't have to worry about me toddling underfoot. unfazed, i would grip my small hands around them an move them out of the way so that i could keep walking my circuit rhough the kitchen, around the living room, down the hallway to the bedrooms and back again.

from jump, i've never liked having my freedom/movement restricted. especially not without good reason. i've always been as Sagittarian as i could ever be. adventurous and irreverent of authority, not to mention sensitive, curious, and expressive.

a Black girlchild with stars in her eyes and her head in a book, i would often be treated as "difficult" as my name was.

my most inherent traits are ones that the world has tried desperately to snuff out or worse, punish me for. my tearfulness mocked, my curiosity mistaken for insubordination, my space-taking perceived as nuisance.

after navigating through those pains of being willfully misunderstood, i have come back around to cheriishing all of those parts of myself.

here lives Dkéama Alexis:

child of Jupiter and student of Saturn

a dreamtender, waymaker, and Black feminist bricoleur

a flame in the winter

a resident of the whirlwind

and a tool of evolution and revolution

here lives

the child who disappeared under her grandma's house on a mission to bathe the newborn puppies, before re-merging dusty and cobwebbed,

the child who packed their mp3 player with metalcore and 90s rap pulled from their father's CD collection and pirated from Limewire

here lives

the teen version of me who shaved my head as a surprise then grew it out to dye it turquoise,

who grew resentful of purity culture while growing into consciousness around heteropatriarchy thanks to Black feminist blogs,

who survived and survived again while at college and still managed to graduate in three years

here lives the young adult

who got the word NO tattooed on their inner lip at the age of 20 to remind themself that it's a full fucking sentence

who made a lasting and loving impact in the lives of Black queer and trans people in central Ohio through BQIC, an organization i founded soon after turning 21

whose body yielded and transformed through testosterone then later through new disability

who lost friends and comrades in unimaginable ways, whether to incompatibility, betrayal, or death

who found their way back to writing and hasn't looked back since

who built her first altar and has looked back in order to go forward, word to Sankofa

and now here i am, as the accumulation and culmination of all these selves.  i regard none of them with shame or regret. while i am technically laying my 20s to rest, i bring every single version of me along into my new year.

the last year of my twenties in particular was marked by considerable isolation, alienation, joylessness, and grief, especially around ongoing conflict with my mother and my paternal grandmother's death. Verina Simmons, i speak your name.

and as always, the edges of pain were softened by the love and pleasures available to me near and far.

to know me is to know i value Jeida K. Storey's wisdom.

per her reading, my card of the year (and my overall astrological counterpart) was that of Temperance, entry #14 in the Major Arcana. this card points to finding balance and staying aligned with one's path, especially after a period of Death. its title also speaks to the process of tempering steel, the cycle of exposure to high heat then submersion in cool water. all to increase the strength and durability of the blade.

i have been sharpened. i have been prepared. as Audre Lorde or Gamba Adisa once said, "Part of me died here / so another could go on." i feel like a butterfly and the gooey matter inside the cocoon that precedes the butterfly's debut. i am both the evidence of magnificent change and an integration still in progress. 

2025 was also a 9 year, which JKS dubbed the year of regarding self as Source.  i have shed a considerable amount of skin to get to that place of self-regard, and now that i have, there is no going back to playing small or pretending away who the fuck i am. i reject pedestals, likeability, and desirability all in favor of authenticity and courage. what Gucci say?? "a nigga liking me ain't never paid my bills."

2026 is the year of the Turning Wheel, likely due to its association with the number 10, and the Wheel of Fortune is the tenth entry in the Major Arcana.

learning the contours of fortune is a Sagittarian practice, and i grow more adept with each day that passes.

there is a major turning point on the way, and i recognize my individual being intertwined with the collective's past, present, and future.

my ongoing life is a gift, in part, because to be alive in a time of precarity, genocide, mis/disinformation, and ecological destruction is to be given the opportunity to defend the planet we have while we have it.

the incoming years will demand much of me, like they will all of us. there will come a time where the sacrifices we must make for a new world will be inescapable. so my duties within the crumbling empire will grow sharper in focus. 

this is the time to be more transgressive and excessive, to rehearse ungovernability if we are to become formidable threats to eugenics and imperialism, death-dealing bedfellows and our foes

to take seriously the stakes of liberation as it is stewarded by Black, African, and Indigenous people worldwide

with who i am as a writer-warrior, i will grow more militant and courageous, more daring, with my word and deed.

i will draw on the ancient knowledge of ancient spirits:

Moko Jumbie, the towering guardian

Anansi, the web-spinning trickster

Osanyin, the disabled rootworker

and those in my lineage foremost

to order my steps

i will continue learning from all who trouble the waters Atlantic and have much to share about the power of the liminal, of transness, of the dark, and of sacred dykehood

may i grow even more devoted to my destiny

may i grow even more audacious with naming and pursuing my desires

may i grow even more attuned with my ori and its guidance

may i continue learning from the revolutionary wisdom and courage of Assata Shakur, Kuwasi Balagoon, Miss Major, Frances Thompson, Dandara dos Palmares, Queen Nanny,

may i continue readying myself for the village and community that will find and hold me consistently, wherever that may be

i end where i begin: with gratitude

i thank those who come after me. i do not plan on parenting my own children, so since they will not be my own flesh and blood, then they will be by spirit and ongoing choice. 

i thank each and everyone of you for contributing in some way -- whether significant or beyond immeasurable -- to my aliveness. it's folks here from at least five different locations and many different periods of my life! i am inspired by all of you, have felt cared for by all of you, have literally grown up with a couple of you.

and on the flipside, i must address all the enemies of my progress, all the people who revealed themselves as weapons formed against me, anyone who ever had me fucked up -- though i live on, i must invoke the words of Nikki Giovanni here: “when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out and a million maggots that had made up their brains crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person that i probably tried to love." the absence of those who hurt me makes room for the blessings i am meant to receive.

i recently saw a video where someone was throwing a party for their father, and at that party, someone asked on the mic who mat their father between birth and ten. a few hands went up. for the ages 10-20, more hands went up. decade by decade, people raised their hands, but what was most noteworthy was that most of the people raised their hands in the later decades of his life. a sweet reminder that we -- I -- have yet to meet all of the people who will love us.

i have incredible loves in my life already, and more will arrive in the decades to come. i call in that level of communion, intimacy, and support for myself. the tides of my isolation will break. my sense of belonging will be consistent. as will my access to expansive, reciprocal, and adaptive care.

finally i end by thanking myself. affirming myself. celebrating myself. my adventurous irreverent sensitive, curious, expressive self. as Zora Neale Hurston once said, “I love myself when I am laughing. . . and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.” i am so deeply grateful for who i've been, who i am, and who i will become.

ima keep poppin my shit, ain’t nun stoppin my shit

cheers to 30, and the 30 after that

asé!