Literacy Beyond Whiteness: Reading as Resistance, Storytelling as Power
Release Date: 03/28/2025
While I Rest: A YAIT Comforting Moment
You Ain’t Imagining This!
This final episode of the Black Summer Healing Session is a sacred invitation to pause. Across seven weeks, we’ve released burdens, reclaimed joy, and restored balance. Now, Ama-Robin presents this episode, While I Rest. This meditative episode offers a soft place to breathe and remember. ✨ You’ll receive seven remembrances—one from each session—to guide your reflection. ✨ You’ll hear a closing folktale that reminds us why rest is holy. ✨ You’ll be invited into a gentle ritual of gratitude and self-affirmation. Rest is not weakness. Rest is healing. Rest is liberation. Asante...
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You Ain’t Imagining the Hustle—And It’s Hurting our Health!
You Ain’t Imagining This!
In this Espresso Talk, storyteller Ama-Robin names “the Hustle” for what it is—a survival pattern of overwork and over-achievement born from our history. It is stealing our rest, our joy, and even our health. From the based-in-truth story of Miss Josie Mae to the groundbreaking research of Dr. Sherman James, we explore how constant high-effort coping wears us down and how we can choose freedom instead. You’ll walk away with tools to slow down, reclaim your breath, and live in alignment with your body, spirit, and community. You’ll get in this episode: Real-life examples of...
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Laying Down the Armor: A YAIT Comforting Moment
You Ain’t Imagining This!
We’ve worn emotional armor to survive—from slavery to segregation to being “the first” in white spaces. But healing means knowing when (and how) to set that armor down. In this Comforting Moment, we honor what protected us and gently choose rest. Through breath, reflection, and a powerful gratitude meditation, we invite the safety of community, culture, and ancestral strength. 💛 In this episode, you’ll receive: A grounding visualization for emotional release A cultural reminder that you are never alone in your healing A soft but powerful meditation to thank your armor—and...
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Letting Go Ain't Weakness: A YAIT Story on Black Self-Love
You Ain’t Imagining This!
Letting go is never simple—especially for Black people living in predominantly white spaces-- where we’ve been expected to carry more than our share and to do it quietly. But what if letting go is not abandonment, but liberation? What if it’s an act of love? In this warm, reflective episode, Ama-Robin invites you into three immersive stories —slow-paced, story-driven, and deeply rooted in Black cultural truth. ✨ Story 1: Dreams Left at the Door A woman returns to the porch where she first dreamed big, and grieves the pieces of herself she left behind. ✨ Story 2: Auntie’s...
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The Circle that We Couldn't Save - A YAIT Story of Unity
You Ain’t Imagining This!
Alafia, fam! “Some circles can’t be saved. But new ones can be born.” In this third episode of the Black Healing Summer session, Ama-Robin invites you to slow down and breathe as she takes you on a journey through an insightful folk tale. You'll hear about an African village's sacred circle disrupted by an outsider’s influence, leading to important lessons about the strength--and fragility--of our own sacred spaces. Ama-Robin draws a powerful connection to our present realities, shedding light on the importance of protecting our circles and knowing when it’s time to...
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The Black Healing Room: A YAIT Story on Rejuvenation
You Ain’t Imagining This!
What if you had a space where you could breathe, release, and remember who you are—no explanations, no performance, just presence? In this episode, we step into The Black Healing Room—a sanctuary we can carry with us, anywhere. This is Part 2 of The Black Healing Summer Session—a season-long journey into rest, release, and renewal. You’ll experience a special Comforting Moment guided visualization to help you imagine your own healing space. And in the Beyond the Story segment, Ama-Robin explores the importance of both individual and collective Black healing—and the radical,...
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The Day I Let My Burdens Fall: A YAIT Story
You Ain’t Imagining This!
In this first episode of The Black Healing Summer Session, host and storyteller Ama-Robin invites you into a powerful reflection on what happens when we stop carrying everything alone. Through an immersive story, she shares the experience of a Black woman professional who finally decides to lay down the invisible burdens she’s been holding: perfectionism, hypervigilance, and the relentless pressure to prove herself. In the Beyond the Story segment, Ama-Robin reads Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask,” and explores how generational expectations to stay “strong” have...
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Juneteenth Is Not Just a Holiday: Believe Black People Episode
You Ain’t Imagining This!
Juneteenth has passed—but we’re not moving on. Because we still don’t have full freedom. And we damn sure don’t have true liberation. This Believe Black People episode of You Ain’t Imagining This! was generously loaned by the Espresso Talk Today team—and we thank them deeply for this offering. In this powerful audio celebration, you’ll hear: 📖 An original, fact-based Juneteenth story read by Marlene Slaughter 📜 A historical reflection from Elder Mel, reading a rare first-person account from her great-grandaunt Miss Rosina Hoard—who had been enslaved in Texas 💬 A deep,...
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The Porch Light is Always On - An Immersive Story of Belonging
You Ain’t Imagining This!
This is more than memory. It’s a reminder: you were never alone. In this special Juneteenth bonus episode of You Ain’t Imagining This!, storyteller Ama-Robin guides you through a quiet, powerful tale about coming home, being expected, and the radical love embedded in one simple ritual: the porchlight. This immersive story takes you on a long drive home through California’s dust belt—toward a light left on without fail. It’s about more than safety. It’s about belonging. The kind passed down through generations. The kind that says: we’re still here, and we’re waiting for you....
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Sounds of the Cookout - A YAIT Comforting Moment Episode
You Ain’t Imagining This!
Sometimes peace sounds like laughter, a sizzling grill, and an uplifting playlist. In this Comforting Moment episode of You Ain’t Imagining This!, storyteller and empowerment coach Ama-Robin invites you into a sensory sanctuary—where the familiar sounds of a Black cookout become a place of rest, memory, and gentle joy. Comforting Moments are short, grounding episodes designed to offer you space to breathe, reconnect, and feel held amid the chaos. This one brings you to the heart of the cookout—not just as a party, but as a cultural ritual. A space where our joy, presence, and survival...
info_outlineBlack people have always valued knowledge—through books, through songs, through music, and even through memory. In this fireside reflection, Ama-Robin explores why reading has always been a form of resistance and an expression of joy, why storytelling matters, the importance of music, drumming, dance, and other forms of communication and repositories of knowledge. Most importantly, she discusses how we can reclaim literacy without centering whiteness.
In this powerful fireside chat, Ama-Robin reflects on the deep connection between Black identity and literacy—from surviving enslavement to resisting erasure in today’s classrooms.
✨ Featuring reflections on:
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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
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The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton
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The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
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“Grandma’s Hands” by Bill Withers
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Ancient African knowledge systems, oral traditions, and storytelling
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The continued power of Black bookstores and community wisdom
🎧 Topics include:
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Why Black literacy is liberation
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Why storytelling has always been a valid, powerful form of knowledge
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How we preserve memory in books, music, rhythm, and ritual
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How we can reclaim literacy without centering whiteness
📍 Recorded in honor of our beloved ancestors—and Doug Lofton, whose spirit lives in every story shared.
🖤 Stay curious. Stay rooted. Stay free.