If you are a social change agent to any extent, and you feel like you are hanging on by a thread above the burnout abyss of your work, The Sankofa Series is the source of validation, affirmation, and inspiration you need to sustain and get free.

I’m Asile (rhymes with smile), and I am a writer and strategist from Atlanta, GA. I partner with organizations and teams to create sustainable impact through facilitation and strategic consulting. My expertise in racial justice, advocacy, systemic change, and wellness enables my work to develop powerful strategies that lead to meaningful transformation.

I’ve spent the last 10+ years advocating, strategizing, and power-building across systems big and small towards a vision of freedom. In my experience, I’ve noticed that there are WAY too many burnt-out social change agents. Before starting this blog, I spent the past 20+ years “ripping and running” through burnout myself. I am on a mission to embody freedom from the inside out so we can be well enough to feel freedom as we advocate for ourselves and our communities. I believe that liberation is possible, and I believe that we will win — but not if we are burnt out and exhausted!

The Sankofa Series is a monthly blog series dedicated to my journey of curiosity in understanding and embodying freedom, from the inside out.

I’ll use this space to do two things:

1) Explore burnout, specifically political burnout. What are the symptoms and causes of political burnout? What are the antidotes and remedies? How do our systems inform and augment how we feel within political systems and advocacy? What are my personal experiences navigating these phenomena? What is my community saying and feeling? What do we need to “make the revolution feel irrresistible” (Toni Cade Bambara)?
2) Center joy, creativity, and community by reflecting on the writing, art, and experiences that make me laugh, dance, and feel alive. What does freedom feel like? How does it show up in our current day and age? How can we resist these oppressive systems? Are joy and justice mututally exclusive?

The Sankofa Series is more than a newsletter — I treat is as my personal playground of curiosity and radical optimism. It’s an invitation to get curious about how we become the change we wish to see by embodying the freedom and joy that we are advocating for as often as it makes sense to.

The title of the Sankofa Series is inspired by the Twi word Sankofa from the Akan Tribe of Ghana which loosely translates to, “go back and get it”. I will be going back into my history to look forward, and inviting my readers to do the same.

I am so grateful you are here!