Jakina Ado

I planned to post a paragraph about mom guilt today. For some reason I really wanted to update the blog today, January 31, 2019. All day I was thinking the pressure to post was because tomorrow is the first, a day that for the past 10 years I’ve used to update  my list of goals but when I got home from a day of temping I was confronted with an instagram memory. My post from last year documenting that it had been one year since I moved to LA. I wrote that popular instagram post from my apartment in LA. Today, I’m home in Chicago thinking how quickly LA is becoming a thing of the past. My almost 7 month old baby is not here with me on this personally significant day for me and that kind of sucks. On thing that hasn’t really changed is that I’m at yet another crossroad. How do I work full-time and not feel weird about leaving my baby for so much time? This wasn’t the mom guilt topic of a couple days ago but its the one of today as I’m on the verge of a new job. I just keep telling myself that he wont remember this and this won’t last long.  What a difference a year makes.

The more I think about it the faster time speeds up and I know without a doubt by the end of this week things will be moving at warp speed. I go back to work the day after tomorrow, marking at least the third era I’ve entered this year alone. From moving halfway across the country back home, to giving birth and now this, going back to work. Just when I got comfortable in our little cocoon, the reality that we can’t stay there forever cracked it open. The possibility of missing any of my child’s firsts, and the next stage of co-parenting loom like winter the day Chicago enters fall. 

I have no choice but to be ready and a part of me really is ready to get out the house, move around without worrying the baby is going to wake up before I take a bite to eat or get out the shower or finish typing this. I shake my head at my own self when I think about how I used to joke with my mom and sister about waiting to have a baby until they’re ready because they would have to take care of it while I continued to travel, work “real jobs” on and off while freelancing and trying to grow or build my own business. Just over a week ago I took my son to spend his first night at his fathers house and it damn near broke me to leave without him. I realized then the joke was on me. It might have been the first time my heart felt truly broken and he was coming back the very next day. I was able to chalk all that crying up to lingering hormones by the time I left the sewing lab that night but it didn’t make that odd feeling go away.

There is so much I didn’t know, couldn’t possibly have read and wasn’t told by anyone or any family member before me about being a mother, giving birth or anything in between. To a degree it makes sense, it’s impossible to fully prepare any woman for motherhood. Sure shared experiences and telling some stories can help as far as giving a heads up or offer relatability but when you’re in it, only you can feel what you’re feeling. Neither my mother nor sister dealt with a baby as gassy and bothered by it as mine, neither one of them had a difficult time producing breast milk or had a baby with an umbilical hernia so how could they warn me or help me.

Its just part-time retail work for now but it also means getting back to dusting off my sewing and sketching skills, getting back to photography work, purchasing income property, moving again and so many other major things in the year(s) to come. It’s an odd crossroad to have come to, leaving my son to provide for him, for us. I guess it’s a case of ready or not as I step back into the world but I’m coming back with the supernatural strength one can only gain from enduring the cycles of becoming a mother and on top of that I now have an accountability partner for life.

I met Tavia they way I’ve met everyone over the past 10 months, networking. It was yet another Here Now Us event, I don’t recall which one exactly but after a few DMs she invited me to fashion show at the Alexandria Hotel in downtown L.A. we both thought it orchestrated kind of  poorly but lke the gratis and decided to end the charades and grab burgers, vegitarian for her. It was the hour long convo that had just a slight bit more of a catching up feel than getting to know each other vibe that surely locked us in with each other as someone to collaborate with. It took about a month or so but last Sunday we finally came together and the results with up and coming model Iyana Noell were a home run. Studio style for Tavia, but if you know me you know next up this trio will be taking it to the streets of Los Angeles, North Hollywood to to be a bit more exact.  

Spoiler: check my Instagram @jakinaado for more color ways and to link to their favorites from the shoot!

In my last year of college I had to ask for help from my mom and granny to pay my rent. This would be the first time I had to ask for anything since freshman year and this was way bigger than a cell phone bill or pair of gymshoes. I knew I would need the help early on and so I asked early, maybe as early as the week before school started back, maybe even before that. I had to prep them for that kind of money. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for them and I knew that it would be impossible for them to help without giving them time to figure out how they were going to do it.

I was planning to go on leave from one of my jobs for at least two maybe three months to have the time to work on my fashion show. The fashion show was a whole class, the last class in the fashion design program, the one all of us design majors anticipated from the moment we declared the major.

As an underclassman I’d watched year after year as the seniors stressed while prepared for their shows. I’d been a model in the shows the last two graduating classes before mine. I watched closely as they fitted me into their designs, I moved out of their way, giving up the seat I was in during class, the minute class was over and it turned into open lab because it was their spot. From the beginning of that year I started preparing my mom and granny to be able to help me with my show, by allowing me my time. 

They came through. I was able to go on leave from my reporting duties at the school newspaper but maintain a staff position as long as I kept up with my weekly fashion column. Done.

Well not done, they still support me, not necessarily with outright cash or rent payments, though I did live at home with my mom rent free while starting a magazine. A magazine that never went beyond hidden corners of the internet and even though it went into a coma in 2014, I kept it on life support until finally letting go and unplugging it from my heart after moving to Los Angeles. Sorry, still of soft spot but I digress.

Since the unplugging I’ve been in a state of unrest about where to go next, how to organized my ideas and make better moves for the next projects and phase of getting ideas out, got swept back up in that all to familiar cycle of needing a job, being tired of being the “broke” friend, being better that this part-time job, being to old to keep going through this, thinking I would be in such a different phase of life by this age, wishing I was one of those people that knew by the age of nine what they wanted to be, so surely that they’ve been that damn near since then and yet here I am, still.

The positive wall I’d worked so hard to build and maintain to have something to lean on started to crack...

 under the constant negative tones of my partner, the thinking you’re getting somewhere after some back and forth only to get no response from that last email from a potential employer, to being told they’re restructuring that position only to realize that’s code for we’re not really as inclusive as we want people to think from another potential employer, the pressure of finding out I’m pregnant. 

After a rough couple of weeks I found my way back around to the foundation my positivity wall built on, and that’s gratitude.

Without it, it’s difficult to see all the support I have. All the support that’s gotten me here, that continues to allow me to chase my dreams with a peculiar freedom. I mean I live in California! Everyday I wake up with the opportunity to do my thing, everyday I have a chance to make something happen because people are in my corner, still supporting me. My main job is to make the most of this opportunity, not waste it by thinking about all the should’s, that just aren’t because that was never meant to be my story. How ungrateful of me to hide all the support I have from shame of not “having it all together” by now, for not having a “real” job, which I knew at the age of nine I never wanted.

It doesn’t look how I thought it would exactly but I know that I’m well on my way because I’m able to see how so many of the things I said I wanted have manifested in some way or another. I am only this far because of support and I’ll go even further because I don’t take it for granted.

Music Monday: DecadeZ -Get It All

Are you watching Ozark? This song probably stood out to you on episode 5 if you are. I’m going to cheat a little here and express my fond feelings toward this show. It’s layers are simultaniously unfolding and thickening. This is an example of excellent writing 101, or maybe this is a 500 level course. I’m only up to episode five, its thickness is to much to digest on a binge but it’s there on Netflix if you dare to try. To really feel the weight is to come into the story having some background knowledge of the culture of the people of the Ozark region of Missouri, which isn’t common like that of New Yorkers or Californians, but having seen the excellent independent film ‘Winters Bone’, I was introduced to at least an idea of the culture of this place and let me tell you, it appeals not to a city girl such as myself. There is mystery, dark and heavy blue coloring of even the sunny days that cloud this slow burning suspense about a family from Chicago caught up in its own private war on drugs.

Jakina | Monday October 30, 2017 

Tall, lean, brown, I wasn’t the only one looking at her. We were at a Here Now Us event, by we I mean this collective of motivated beautiful Black women. I came alone as usual but Imani and I had unknowingly both set our sites on talking to Tiffany when the panel was over. I planned to ask her if she modeled and Imani’s interest was piqued when during the introductions Tiffany mentioned owning a conscious living shop.

There was a nice size group of us around a long corner from Commissary, the upper level eatery at the Line Hotel in Koreatown, and I can’t recall if I got her contact info then but I do know that a short while later I was around her again, Imani too, it was a small Dream Circle Imani hosted for $5 at a house in Los Feliz.  But it was the third time I was around her, at yet another Here Now Us event that made it clear to me to stop waiting for what I don’t even know, and set up a shoot with Tiffany. Maybe another couple weeks went by before Monday October 16, 2017, the sweltering hot day of our shoot. It was intended to be fall looks on my end and a look that she had in mind for herself, her brand.

I hopped in her car and we found parking near the lake a few blocks away and got right into it. The heat, conversation, shooting.  She’d just been proposed too! A rather big deal because it’s something that has mattered to her and aligns with how she was raised. A Texas native, Tiffany moved to L.A. after living in Miami for some years. She’s in her last year as a PhD student and has a lot on her plate. She’s not only a great model, but the perfect subject for a Moving to Make it interview. The Tiffany Shelton interview, coming soon.

@TiffanyShelton of @consciouslifeshop

New Music Monday: Artist -Waju 

…wild women show what they’re goin’ through…

You get to a certain age and you kind of forget that life was once about trying to find yourself. It’s not like you called off the search or was ever found, but at some point adulthood reshaped that journey into questions like, “What does this all mean?” Thoughts like there has to be a way to make money, a great amount of it and still feel freedom through your work and in your days, and there has to be more than this, give you a new mission, another ambiguous journey for this phase of life. And every new discovery along the way relates to why you think to way you do, how you were raised and the habits of your people comes up a lot. Sometimes you discover something that brings you back to where you found yourself, I guess that could also be considered remembering the moment you realized your purpose or what you really wanted to do. But no you’re not finding yourself anymore, you’ve accepted certain things about yourself and now you’re just trying to work around that, or is it just me?

I ran into one of my favorite L.A. friends Friday night and in that brief encounter we unloaded, we caught up and I noticed we said some of the same things. So maybe its not just me? This keeps happening to me out here, this is the kind of thing that keeps me here, I feel like I’m on the precipice of some sort of breakthrough. And every one of these kinds of encounters leave me so full I’m bursting to share, to create, to archive, to feel that feeling again.  To connect, I’m addicted to that feeling of connecting to myself through someone else.

Funny, I think that could be considered “misery loving company” but misery is such the wrong word. Misery is selfish and not even searching for joy or freedom, and connecting feels like both. I honestly have no idea what shape that breakthrough will take but I feel it in my chest even as I write this and I know that that feeling is pushing me further out of my comfort zone, strongly compelling me to stop playing it safe and embody that wild woman character even though that’s the scary part. I only secretly play a wild woman in the fantastical stories in my head or when I’m having a Lion Babe/ Beyoncé sing along concert in the privacy of the nook that leads to my bathroom. Real life Jakina plays it safe. But also in real life when I discover that a woman I know is going through something I went through or that I play it safe because my childhood felt reckless I’m forced to face the bigger picture and as cliché as it is, and as much as I don’t want to say or admit it, as you guessed it, that big picture is wrapped in fear.  I moved halfway across the country and found a way to still play it safe. Insert all the shaking head in disappointment emojis and memes that come to mind here.

I’m just going to have to play the part. That’s all there is to it. Hello, you’re in fucking L.A. girl, the land of fake it till you make it, not be who you really are. Who you really are is always afraid of not having something, not being understood, not being good enough etc. etc. That shit is exhausting and sure wild women stories are peppered with anecdotes about expenses like time and money that may tire our heroines but they’re driven by the thrill of freedom and doing and getting just what they want. They found confidence early in the movie and they always get enough sleep.

Jakina | Sunday October 22, 2017

Music Monday: Ambré -2090s I’m hella late but I’m glad I decided to click anyway. More young talent, that you may have heard of or not. More potential, that I’m looking forward to watching blossom. Check out New Orleans own Ambré, that “Cadillac Interlude” is the standout that can get the repeat button. Let me know if I put you on or you been on to her.

I’m an observer, which is really just me scoping the situation, taking an energy check of the room and the people around me, the people I’m being introduced to, the people I want to introduce myself too, or correction, the people I want to meet, the introducing myself is the part that freaks me out. I’m probably more confident now than ever before in my life but to walk up to a stranger who interests me will never not come with balmy pits and anxiety that makes me hesitate first, always and either miss the opportunity or fumble through a simple hello. It’s stupid really, like, just tell the chick she seems dope and you want to know more. I’ve been pushing through this a lot more since moving to Los Angeles. In the past 9 months I’ve met countless incredible women. In all this networking I’ve noticed a few things most recently though was my loss of potential.

I don’t know yet if that’s a good or bad thing but I do miss being told I had it, I miss people being verbal about seeing it in me. It could be that I’m actually living up to it or at least look like I am, or it’s just something you don’t say to people over the age of 25. Either way I never missed my potential more than a couple weeks ago when I was at an event full of beautiful, amazing, talented, smart and ambitious, women, who were all praising a photographer in the room, that wasn’t me. Let me stop you right there, jealousy isn’t a thing that comes naturally to me, I don’t even jokingly say I’m jealous because I don’t want any parts of it. However if what I was feeling was in part jealously then that’s fine because it wasn’t the hating kind, it was more a nostalgic/aspiration, missing home type where I starting both wishing for and missing the people who rally around me and my talent.

I used to be told all the time in high school how much potential I had, by peers and teachers alike, or whoever took the time to engage with me further than small talk. It was always said with more than a hint of surprise too.  They never saw my thoughtful opinions, plans for the future, emotional maturity, my knowledge of their personal business (and ability to keep it secret) or my love for Bone Thugs and Harmony coming. I guess because I was or am kind of a quiet person and even though they may have seen me around, once I start talking its like where did you come from? When my Chicago Public School teachers found out I liked to read, for fun and comprehended it all, I was just automatically smart, automatically full of potential, never mind my struggles with arithmetic. I felt special after these exchanges. I’d exposed a little of myself and not only was I well received, they saw a little more in me. It was how I learned that personality is really something, and personality and looks is really everything, but that’s another story, I’m just hanging on to my personality and potential over here.

The praises for this photographer came right from the beginning. The host of the panel we were attending asked us in the audience to around the room introducing ourselves -name, where we’re from, what we do. I was second to speak, when we got to the other side of the room this photographer introduced herself I got excited, I’d emailed her maybe only the week before to see if she’d be interested in collaborating on a YouTube series idea but I hadn’t had the chance to talk to her in person, as I’m thinking this, the host protests her modest self introduction as a photographer. She exclaims for her and to the room that she’s not just a photographer she’s THEE photographer. Simultaneously the woman sitting next to me slightly gasps in recognition of this photographer. It didn’t end there, after the panel there was more praise from various others and I didn’t know exactly how I was supposed to feel, because as much as I do like her work, I like mine too, we’re both fashion photographers but our styles are different, I don’t see either one of us as better than the other, she’s my equal, which is why I reached out to collaborate with her. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a situation like this and as the photographer no one knows in the room, I couldn’t help but wish for a chance.  For someone to take a second to check me out too, and even if you prefer her style, just see or acknowledge that I have talent too. I couldn’t do anything but stand there and wait for the next part of the conversation. Everything they said about her talent is true. I’m used to being the underdog and look forward to people discovering me, nothing is better than when they to ask where did you come from, that’s the best way to find out someone see’s potential in me.

Jakina | Sunday October 15, 2018

New Music Monday : RayanaJay -Morning After ep

There is some raw talent here, with a little refining I’m sure the blow up is right around the corner

(RayanaJay)

“What you only dream about wild do…”

I always wanted to be a wild woman, they seemed to have the most fun, the most freedom, the most adventures and the best stories to tell. Any character Madonna played in the 80’s or Angelina Jolie in the 90’s had a gripping impact on me, confession, I had a crush on Matthew Lilard, I know, I know, the anti to all my Blackety Black but thats how you know it was real!  Those women and all the CIA, conspiracy, action movies had me thinking I was the female Nicolas Cage, these are the characters I escaped in or through. I never wanted to be an actress but I’ve always wanted to play any kind of ass-kicking secret agent in a blockbuster for as long as I can remember, low-key playing a damsel in distress always seemed kind of fun too. Then there was Sparkle, Certain Fury, The Color Purple, Women of Brewster Place, and Set It Off, I could go on, but these women were always fighting for that wild woman freedom but held firmly under the restriction of being Black women. They were always fighting, fighting men, fighting society, fighting to live,  fighting each other…

Each other. It’s funny, just like everyone is now hip to the misnomer that is Black on Black crime I think we’re finally on to the myth about women being catty and hating on each other more than we support each other. We support each other the most, we turn to each other most, we understand each other so intrinsically that it’s almost like by making that bad decision we are hurting the random Black woman standing next to us.

So much drama we can’t even get to the action, let alone to the free

So what am I saying? Well I guess I’m just working through how I feel about me in the here and now. And a lot of things are coming up, like how I’ve wondered for years why beautiful Black woman idolize Marilyn Monroe, why I’ve seen more images of her in the Black girl beauty space than of Dorothy Dandridge. You know I Googled Dorothy Dandridge to check my spelling and Marilyn Monroe still came up, and at the top!?!

Why both men and women are conditioned to perpetuate the idea that a bunch of women around each other means there is going  to be a problem baffles me. I’ve been to so many women filled spaces, where that narrative couldn’t be further from the truth.

I saw the documentary Step last week and it moved me to tears. All the emotions of my own teen angst and how I felt watching those movies flooded back.  These are real life girls I’m rooting for, meaning I could do something in real life. In real life a couple weeks ago at an event I was reminded of all the times I used to be told I had potential. There was one particular girls story in the Step documentary that was all about her potential. The tone of the documentary was set by Blessin. She founded the step team at the all girls charter school in Baltimore that was the setting for the documentary.  Her personality and charisma was prime for the free woman storyline but this was a documentary and in real life she was another restricted Black girl who had to fight. The odds were stacked against her and the majority of the girls but she had the kind potential that people rallied around.

Jakina | Sunday October 8, 2017

I was told today (Sunday Oct 1, 2017)  that after reading my post about the ending of the Why Some Girls Podcast, that if they were Brooklyn they wouldn’t fuck with me anymore. That kind of hurt and I immediately went on the defense, but after a few minutes I started to get it.

I fucks with Brooklyn, she cool as shit and like I said in the last post, I consider her a friend so I re-read it and was brought right back to those feelings. Yes I wrote some honest thoughts and maybe I could see how me saying she wasn’t committed, my time was wasted, and it would be nice to talk about current events, I guess I could see how that could be taken offensively. If it were me, reading those things about myself it would be hard to swallow and I might just look at my so called friend different. So I’ll say this. I am grateful for Brooklyn, she has been nothing but a friend to me –period, not an ill wishing bone in her body, just straight up good people. She has made the transition to L.A. easier for me and is a supportive person. I hope I’ve been nothing but the same in return. She can always come to me for whatever because I consider her a friend, if I didn’t I wouldn’t even bother with any of this explaining of myself.

From the co-host, partnership side though it wasn’t working out. I’m a lot more straight-forward and she’s a lot more free-flowing.

From my perspective it was like that co-worker who is cool as shit but doesn’t really do any of the work. If everything is going to be on me can we at least record once a week or every other week?

If I have to keep asking what about this day, what about this time, I’ll come to you, etc and whole months go by before you find the time it starts feeling like I’m being that girl who doesn’t realize “he’s just not that into you.” Sometimes potential doesn’t blossom into anything, so to me Why Some Girls remains a yet another project that only had potential. Even more than that it pushed me out of a comfort zone and motivated me to learn how to edit audio and forced me to look at myself alone, as enough.

Jakina Ado | Sunday October 1, 2017