The Awakening of Celeste Watkins-Hayes
Read below to discover the awakening of the womxn as we embark on this adventure and build a community of womxn like us, who see the world before us and vow to shatter the glass ceiling that’s held us back. We’re super souls, realizing who we are and reimagining the space we inhabit at large. Take your leap.
Awakening of the Womxn; The Awakening of Celeste Watkins-Hayes
WOMXN (pl. noun): beings brought together by an inherent subjugation, flipping their status together in solidarity to connect with one another in brilliance and strength; spirits of soul who create life, spinning pièce de résistance.
“Woke up feeling like I just might run for president Even if there ain’t no precedent, switchin’ up the messaging I’m about to add a little estrogen”
— Lizzo
Comfortable in creation and secure in sensibility, a womxn creates a space for herself. She invites others in to experience the strength that comes from demanding to be heard. It is here that womxn learn to take control over their lives and their bodies, picking up where their mothers left off. A conglomeration of womxn and their experiences, both collective and personal, to understand one another in order to love one another and create change, their mettle characters paving the way.
A womxn of sociology, Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes studies how race, class, and gender shape experiences as womxn navigate urban poverty, social policy, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She’s a womxn making waves in the discussion of the human experience, most recently in her new book in her new book Remaking A Life: How Womxn Living With HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality.
Watkins-Hayes is opening up the discussion by genuinely recognizing womxn of color. She works to connect their experiences to the institutional shortcomings that disadvantage them in the larger context of their social and political worlds. Watkins-Hayes centers the lived experiences of womxn’s everyday lives to understand how those individuals get to where they are and discover why some struggle more than others.
“I think that it is really important to put individual life experiences within a broader narrative of social, political and economic analysis,” Watkins-Hayes said.
The importance of centering these narratives is to welcome womxn into a space they’ve never been welcomed before. Watkins-Hayes has created this space, one where womxn do not have to assimilate and fit themselves into checkboxes, but rather can live in their inherent brilliance and powerful puissance. She has validated their experiences by recognizing the history of women creating their own HIV organizations, explaining all of the factors and mechanisms that play into the disproportionate impact of HIV in communities of color.
It’s a project for herself at times, but she’s reminded why she writes when her readers respond to the words she’s written, carrying the conversation forward rather than letting it die at the edges of print.
“I think so many of our challenges would be ameliorated if more people, particularly leaders in government or organizations or family, were able to truly hear and see the people around them,” Watkins-Hayes said. “When we truly try to understand the experiences of others, what drives them and why it matters, we can ultimately understand that all of us are connected. All of us have the ability to either lift people up or tear people down. It's a concerted choice about which one we will do daily.”
“A being that possesses the ability to create a space for themselves and invite others in.”
The anger Watkins-Hayes feels toward injustice drives the work she does to understand points of contention in society and to help others come to understand their development within it. From disrespected belief systems, to people being disregarded daily, it is the mission of this black womxn to uplift the voices of the traumatized and disadvantaged through the study of their lives, calling attention to the violation of their right to exist unapologetically.
Womxn have endured marginalization, discrimination, and abuse for eons by people and institutions that forced them into silence. But we are in an awakening of womxn, sharing with one another in order to climb out of the box that we’ve been forced into. Womxn today are collectively working together to shatter glass ceilings and break down the suffocating walls of oppression in order to build a space where they can breathe freely and be treated with respect. It’s a land of womxn, one built upon by the foundation of their ancestors who endured horrors unimaginable. These new womxn maintain a core happiness that no one could rob from them.
“Happiness is something that you can control in the sense that you can define what it means to be joyful, and you can define what gives you joy and peace at a given moment,” Watkins-Hayes said. “The world often wants to define it for you, but I think that part of wisdom is understanding how to define that for yourself.”
It’s an internal peace that Watkins-Hayes possesses in her ability to find joy in moments big and small, centering herself in the chaos of the world-at-large. The moments of pain and suffering shall pass eventually, and finding happiness begins with defining it for yourself..
There’s a feather that rests on Watkins-Hayes’ desk, delicate and pure. The rachis holds the barbs lightly, allowing it to coalesce together into the vane of its existence. There is a beauty in the tender care in which each piece supports the others. Watkins-Hayes works at this desk, the feather light to the touch, falling back into place as it should after its been let go. It has the freedom to choose its path and so do womxn. For “to whom much is given, much will be required”—a (Luke 12:48) motto Watkins-Hayes lives by.
As womxn, the access to a range of emotions is exclusive, according to Watkins-Hayes. Heightened emotional capability is a power that was not socialized out of womxn as it was of men. Perhaps the black womxn might have experienced some of this suppression, the majority group reducing them to “angry black women.” However, Watkins-Hayes takes ownership over her emotions and flourishes in the fruits of its presence.
“Yes, absolutely, society critiques us for being angry or overly emotional,” Watkins-Hayes said. “But I am not one who is afraid to be angry. I'm not one who is afraid to show emotion.”
Womxn can now give herself the inherited gift of access to a full range of freedoms, not only in how they adorn their bodies with fashion and makeup, but also with how they can think about critical issues. They are leaders in their own right because of their emotional intelligence, not despite it. To be able to talk to people and connect with them about so many different things, from their families to their work lives, politics, to makeup and hair, they are champions of inclusivity. They may be versatile in their makeup, but they are similar in their respect for one another.
One must resist the essentialist notion of what it means to be womxn. Whether they choose to be mothers, whether they choose to get married, whether they choose to have a career—they have the power to choose. They are powerful, and the world will feel the choices they make every day.
WOMXN (n.): a being that possesses the ability to create a space for themselves and invite others in.
