Last week, I had the honor of performing my poem, These Mean Streets, at a Juneteenth spoken word event. Juneteenth marks the delayed but triumphant arrival of freedom to the last enslaved African Americans in Texas on June 19, 1865, and serves as a powerful reminder that liberation is both a historical milestone and a process of realization.

I was commissioned to write These Mean Streets last year for an event for women of South Central Los Angeles who had lost children to gang violence. The spine of the poem is a bus ride through the streets of the inner-city. The rhythmic sway of the bus. The squeal of brakes. The worn plastic seats. Passengers packed shoulder-to-shoulder, gripping metal rails as the bus lurched around another tight corner. And the bus ride triggers a journey of remembrance.

As I stood before the audience and recited the words, I found myself transported back to my own familiar experience of the bus ride through the inner city, seeing the landmarks laced with reflections along the way.

Outside the windows, the landscape I saw told a story through vacant lots where businesses once stood, boarded storefronts pleading for a second chance, crumbling infrastructure that seemed to mirror the hopes of the people living around it, and dirt and grime from decades of neglect. There is a particular feeling that settles over communities that have been systematically denied investment and opportunity. It lives not only in the streets and buildings but in the bodies and minds of the people who call those places home.

The ghetto is not just a place; it is also a state of mind.

These are the tangible and intangible vestiges of people being owned, colonized, and controlled, despite back-breaking work, not able to build wealth and pass assets down to their descendants.

For many people living in poverty, the journey begins long before we are aware of it. We inherit stories of struggle, sacrifice, survival, and resilience. We learn to navigate systems that were never designed with our flourishing in mind. And maybe worst of all, we absorb messages about our worth, our beauty, our intelligence, our value, and our place in the world.

Over time, those messages become their own kind of neighborhood; a place in our hearts and minds where opportunities seem limited and where survival consumes so much energy that thriving feels impossible.

In my poem, each landmark represents a wound, but it was never meant to end there. There comes a moment when we recognize that we have been riding a route that was chosen for us; a route shaped by history, systems, and inherited beliefs.

And there comes a moment when we decide to get off that bus.

There's a resurrection of hope through self-determination. When we stop rehearsing stories of limitation and start speaking words of life over ourselves. When we honor our own thoughts, listen to our own voice, nurture and respond to our emotions.

And sometimes we need guidance and support to move through the treacherous terrain of the world around us, to find our way on the journey home to authentic agency. This is what is inspiring me as I am meticulously creating restorative retreats for women.

When we have carried too much for too long, stress, exhaustion, and contraction become a way of life. We begin to think that's a part of who we are and how it feels to live. But I'm here to declare that, that maybe what we've lived, but that is not who we are.

The retreats I am creating are sacred spaces where we can finally loosen our grip on what is, exhale, rest mind and body, reset to peace, and deepen roots into a community that will support remembrance of silent simplicity in a busy world. When we do, we return to groundedness, creativity, compassion, and expansion. We return to power. And from there, we live in a space of possibility from which we transform our lives, heal our families, uplift communities, and change the world.

The journey from the ghetto to greatness is not simply about moving to a different zip code.

It is about moving into a different consciousness.

A consciousness that assumes every kind of abundance instead of fear-based scarcity. Let's begin our story of resurrection and rise together. Not simply to escape the mean streets. But to revolutionize them.

You can download and read the full poem on at sonyakayblakegallery.com. And stay tuned for updates about the retreats currently under development.

Please feel free to contribute to the conversation and leave a comment. What do your "mean streets" look like and how are you revolutionizing them?