Herina Ayot is a forever evolving student of life. She works in academia. Her professionalism, tact, soft skills, and EQ have lent her many opportunities to learn from and grow with people. She believes wholeheartedly that telling stories through written art allows an audience to have a new experience. She learns more and more about […]
Read more "This is Who I Am"When you dig deep, you’ll find that both victim and perpetrator were fighting silent battles When I was 22, I spent a night in jail for credit card fraud. I was a mother to six-month-old twins, unwed, and an undergrad in college. My former partner and the father of my children had not paid child […]
Read more "Derek and George: What Lies Beneath"It is a cool autumn morning and I am perched on my couch, a coffee cup nearby, a few pages into Claudia Rankine’s newest book, Just Us: An American Conversation. My 14-year-old son saunters in and asks what I am reading when I look up over the brim to tell him: “It’s a book on race by […]
Read more "Just Human: Black stories are most rewarded when they center blackness — which, in a certain sense, is to center whiteness"The mysterious thing about beginnings is that they sometimes hide themselves, not revealing what they are until years or decades later when you can look back and see them for what they really are.
Read more "The Mystery of Iniquity: Lies in the Time of Corona"Jesus was 33 when he died. There is something enchanting about that. I feel old. Probably because many people I meet are younger than me and things didn’t used to be this way. But still, I feel like I have so much life left to live. Here are my reflections on my 33rd year of life and my wonders for my 34th.
Read more "Watch… You Will See"I have never really been keen on dating apps because aside from it being a cheesy way to meet someone, I’ve always thought the compatibility questions they ask are so silly. I don’t really care too much if my significant other likes Dominos pizza as much as I do. You can’t build a relationship on […]
Read more "Why Dating Apps Got It Wrong and Other Problems With the World"I fell in love across the Atlantic in a country more beautiful than God himself while four months pregnant with another man’s child. The first time I saw him, it was nighttime in late August, the moon a perfect sickle. My plane landed in Accra, Ghana, and the air smelled like curry spices, yam and […]
Read more "I Fell In Love Carrying Another Man’s Child"My 8-year-old twins have a problem. There are three sides to the story. The Black Family in America has suffered tremendous setbacks since our arrival over 400 years ago. In recent decades, some, like Bill Cosby in his infamous 2004 comments and subsequent book “Come On People,” have placed the blame on the black community, […]
Read more "The Single Parent Solution"He was 9 years old when the officer brought the news. The knock was strong and hard and his father’s footsteps were heavy on the wooden floorboards. The door swung open and the foggy night air brought with it, a dense moisture, the thick smell of dying things and the devil. […]
Read more "Hitler: Before He Met the Devil"I recently became a contributor to my church’s newsletter “The Calvary Connection”. My column titled Fruit of the Womb will focus on parenting from a biblical perspective and is taken from the reference to children in Psalms 127:3. It reads “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a […]
Read more "The Single Parent’s Secret"