How I got free and hope you do too
My journey towards personal sovereignty and a life that made more sense to me
I believe our freedom is aligned with the questions we have the courage to ask when things don’t make sense, the truths we are willing to seek despite their potential disappointment, and the bravery to deconstruct senseless realities—even when doing so threatens our sense of safety and belonging. Freedom, I believe, isn’t merely a battle fought in the external world, but an inward journey waged in the mind, spirit, and body. I also believe that for many, true freedom is a burning desire, while for others, it’s an appreciated pursuit that falls lower on the list of other core life values. I have sincerely learned to accept that both approaches have meaningful and purposeful roles to play in life.
My journey towards personal sovereignty began with trying to understand the dynamics and hierarchy of oppression, as a young African woman raised in Europe, trying to make sense of a world that simply did not make sense.
To be honest, though, it probably started in my earliest memories - as a child in Africa, who asked more questions than the adults around me knew how to answer in ways that felt satisfying or livable. Answers like "You can ask God when you die and go to heaven” left me feeling dismissed. I was expected to just get on with life on Earth, to live comfortably and perform expected rituals of living without understanding why. And there were many expectations placed on me as a young Ugandan girl, many of which felt confusing and even worse, senseless at times.
During my master’s thesis, however, I chose a subject that helped me dive deeper into the works of brilliant Black minds like Marimba Ani, Steve Biko, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, John Henrik Clarke and so many more! Their words changed the course of my life forever. Suddenly, the world made a little more sense, and I no longer felt gaslit by the Eurocentric worldview that had occupied my young African mind. I now also fully understood what Bob Marley meant when he sang “emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our own minds”.
Questioning what a truly free African mind could feel like
That was when I found my first direction towards freedom, through a passion I developed for personal decolonization. The more I learned, the more curious I became about the roots of it all: How did we get here? And why do we keep ending up here - entangled in power dynamics, fighting for rights, losing them, fighting again? The whole dance felt exhausting and frustrating. I gravitated more towards radical thinkers who dared to go beyond temporary fixes. Those who acknowledged the importance of alleviating immediate suffering, but also recognized that offering the oppressed just a seat at the table of oppression wasn’t true liberation. That the promised land of true freedom existed elsewhere, though not far. That much of what was called liberation work was more about optics and disruption than genuine, sustainable freedom.
But thankfully (staying true to my younger self) I wanted more answers, answers that were just more meaningful to me. I didn’t have the words yet, just a feeling, guiding me toward a deeper, more grounded vision of freedom and personal authority. Then I found anarchism, and I realized I had once again been misled in school about what it truly was. And it made sense. The only forms of liberation that are widely tolerated are those that don't fundamentally challenge systems of oppression and control, let alone question their very legitimacy. I was getting the wrong answers because I was intentionally “educated” to not be able to ask the right questions around true liberty.
Naming oppressive intersectionalities as the first step of cleansing
As I decentered the Eurocentric and patriarchal worldview, I began to see the so-called “neutral reality” for what it truly was: a dominant narrative that came at the cost of countless other realities, perspectives, and worldviews. Along the way, I also decentered male-dominated religion, recognizing it not as a neutral form of spirituality, but as a system soaked in patriarchal values, obsessed with hierarchy, punishment, control, and submission.
I wanted to wash it off, strip every trace of it away, like in that one Erykah Badu music video, where she undresses layer by layer in a crowded city, shedding societal expectations in pursuit of liberty. She ends with nothing but a back tattoo that reads ‘Evolve’ before being shot down by police, the enforcers of oppressive authority. She poetically ends the video by saying: “They who play it safe are quick to assassinate what they do not understand.”
I would also add that anything truly liberating, anything that returns power fully to the people, not just in 'safe, controllable doses', is often marked for assassination. Her being killed in public is deeply symbolic. It serves as a warning to anyone watching: this is what happens when you dare to evolve beyond the boundaries society celebrates but never intends to let you cross
Going back to my journey though, I came to see that the first crime we committed against each other was placing one being above another; one sex, one race, one class, one spirit over another. In believing that any being has the right to rule or control another, especially through violence, we normalized oppression and built a world governed by fear. Excusing it with beliefs in such things as “survival of the fittest”, translation, those who are capable and comfortable asserting the most violence. But in truth, no being has a legitimate right to rule over another. We are born as free souls, and slowly, we are taught to kneel to structures of authority upheld by coercion, manipulation, or threats. Whether in community, in relationship, in countries and even spiritual institutes, the same patterns are found between those who get a say and those who must follow in life.
Unlearning to fear my own liberty
We forget that we were born free. No, we are trained to forget that we were born to be free, and that we are deserving of lives that are wilder and freer. Instead, we spend our days fighting for scraps of safety, value, survival, dignity, and borrowed liberties, rather than living full, autonomous lives.
We’re also taught that truly free people are dangerous. Maybe you can be trusted with your own freedom, but what about your crazy neighbor or cousin, right? So, we stay in our chicken coop. Oppressive as it may be, it’s considered safer than life as a wild bird. And while wild birds might live freer lives, they also face real dangers that go with that freedom. We’re taught to distrust our own autonomy, and to see control as safety, as something more comfortable and acceptable.
But to reclaim one’s sovereignty, spiritually, bodily, intellectually, and soulfully, is a birthright. Though only worth pursuing for those who sincerely value freedom more than the safety of their well-maintained chicken coop. Even a coop with kind owners who let us out to roam every now and then. Who build fences around our free ranging pastures to keep danger out and us inside. Owners who feed us dead, factory-made wormy treats so we don’t have to get our beaks too dirty digging for them like wild savage birds. It’s a good and clean life, if that’s all one wants. But, if that life is not enough, a curious chicken, intrigued by the wild birds flying freely above its fenced coop, must be willing to accept the risks that come with a life beyond the safety of the coop. Remember it can fly, like the wild birds, flap its wings with determination to make it over the fence, even with a beating heart full of fear of the unknown.
When I realized all that, my life changed again. The pursuit of a sovereign life became a new compass. And that pursuit has fueled the past several years of my life. For the first time, it felt like the world realigned. My path became clear, like the final piece in a puzzle clicking into place. I became devoted to exploring all the ways I could live out personal sovereignty, out there, in the human wild, internally and externally.
Control demands far more effort than allowing oneself to be free
Like so many important things in life, this journey has been more about unlearning than learning, about removing, renegotiating, decluttering, and remembering. It’s been about reconnecting to what my soul has somewhat always known - long before it came here. So eager to help me remember with each question that popped into my head. To remember a time before the clear skies of our inner knowing were polluted by man-made illusions and the promise of safety and order if we just gave up our wild ways.
And once you taste that kind of holistic clarity and freedom, life is never the same. You can’t go back. Where fear arises, courage must be summoned. Where conditioned doubt creeps in, trust and faith must take root. As much as you must give up, flying beyond the safety fence, you’re also rewarded in ways that truly nourish your soul. Even when challenges arise, your efforts have purpose. You’ve tapped into an unlimited reservoir of energy to keep going, to keep flying, keep questioning and shedding layers. Until finally, you find yourself slowly living with less confusion, disconnection, frustration, fear, distrust, insecurity, and dishonesty.
Instead, you experience ease. Even in the unknown, you feel grounded and assured amongst the wilder things. Life begins to gift you with the fruits of a soul sincerely wandering the world, not to perform a life disconnected from meaning, but to live fully, wildly, dirtier sometimes, but honestly, and in alignment.
The most beautiful part, perhaps, is imagining that if a little child were to ask me someday why I chose the rituals, philosophies, and paths I did - why I lived the way I lived - I’d have an honest answer to offer. Not a perfect one, but a sincere one. Because I cared enough about the questions to keep seeking until I found meaning. And if my answer didn’t satisfy their wide, wondering eyes, still full of awe and mystery about life on Earth, I would lovingly urge them to go explore, to fly out into the wild and find their own truths.
And perhaps, as they soar above me with strong, new wings, I too would remember, again, in some soulful way, the boundlessness of freedom and how sacred it is to live a life that makes sense to you. A life shaped not by fear or trained habit but by the sincere desire to carve out a place and a reason to be here, in our shared world, that one can feel at peace with.
