“It was opportunity that lead me to leave St. Louis, and it was opportunity that brought me back.”
After more than 10 years away from the city, I found my self in an unfamiliar setting, my hometown. When I left as a recent high school graduate, I all but promised myself I’d never live in St. Louis again. Maybe it was the fact that my childhood home was recently destroyed and I felt the restlessness of displacement, or maybe i was the fact the fact that I was still grieving the death of my mother, or maybe it was the fact that as a Black woman, my worth, beauty, and talent all felt minimized in this city, but I was ready to leave.
Yet on October 9th, 2021, I was back and strangely feeling more inspired by my city than ever before. When my partner, André Fuqua, and I received the Futures Fund cycle 2021, we knew something special and unexpected had been gifted to us; it was something we asked for, but on some level, never expected. We both grew up in St. Louis and we both were very familiar with its challenges. Writing that first grant that redirected our gaze back on our shared home felt like answering the call. It was a call to service and a call to action within a context we felt connected to and understood, art. At the time of us receiving the good news about our grant proposal, we were both living in Austin TX, he was beginning his doctoral research at UT- Austin, and I was taking in the nature and space in an attempt to recover from the confinement of COVID. However, once we got the grant, we knew we couldn’t develop the work remotely in a way that would honor the idea. In order for the project to succeed, we had to be closer to the ground, able to pivot in real time as well as cultivate relationships and reestablish our presence in the community. I knew, I had to move back. I wasn’t easy, but I realized that in order to move forward, sometimes you have to address old wounds. Occupy Vacancy needed me to be willing to seek reconciliation in my own story and before doing so for the project.
I was scary to move back home and so much had changed, but I took comfort in the fact that I had changed a lot too. In my mind, my city had yet to meet me and I needed to reciprocate that mutual greeting with the same openness I was seeking to receive, because after all, “God is change” and timing is everything.
