Author: Rajani Gudlavalleti

I entered 2024 lost in painful sadness. I had experienced harm in major spheres of my life as last year closed out. Depression-laced desires for familiar connection blocked my ability to see and feel the tangible resources around me. It took some months, maybe the entire year, before I could really take stock of what I did have and not just what I was missing. Now I sit reflecting on my movements and processes over these past 12 months, and I am in awe of me and my beautiful life.

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The early months of 2024 found me working hard, leaning on my survival mechanisms while moving through layers of grief. My departure from Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition was set for March 27th, just beyond the Spring Equinox. It was real and I did leave, but the weeks leading up to that day felt like a movie. As if I was following a script, expecting the scene of “departing co-executive director” to inevitably end.

To ground myself in the reality of this big change, I took in the details of every last Zoom meeting, legislative hearing, organizational policy write-up, and kit-making shift. I went above (and so very beyond) to create a hefty transition packet. My dear colleagues organized a Star Trek themed farewell party that brought joy and sweetness to this transition.

Spring is my season. Chill air warming, hyacinths and daffodils in bloom, backyard fires, my birthday, slow walks in Chinquapin Park with my husband. In 2024, Spring had the special twist of a life changed. I wrote, read, learned, and traveled on my own time and dime. Pittsburgh, PA. Portland, Maine. Atlanta, Georgia. Short conferences in and around D.C. with Staples-printed business cards for my burgeoning job as a consultant. My role with the National Harm Reduction Coalition board of directors shifted as I became a board co-chair. I applied and was accepted into a week-long writing retreat to be held in the fall. Pieces of my next chapter began to fall into place.

I was really scared.

I wasn’t actually employed. I slept often, when I needed my brain to quit its doom scenarios. When gallivanting about in the world, I did not know how to respond to people’s what next inquiries. “Well, I spent the last seven years collaboratively building an organization fueled by a passion for curbing the deadly impacts of public health crises and sociopolitical failures that I might be too traumatized to know what I’m good at or could sustainably do for an income?”

I was still healing.

June ushered in structure and hope, both necessary for my mental well-being. I was in a flow of responding to harm reduction RFPs with my BIPOC femme comrades in Reframe Health and Justice, conducting outreach for national policy work with my policy consultant guides from Masa Group, and brainstorming collaboration with my dear friends of Alight Alchemy‘s circle. I was beginning to understand the types of work that exist for someone with my skill set, and how I was willing to spend my time.

On Summer Solstice 2024, I received the gift of my first contract in this new iteration of my career. It was a small Reframe Health and Justice project, secured from an RFP, that would take me back to my childhood home of the San Francisco Bay Area. By the end of July, I was also a sub-contractor with Alight Alchemy on a race and gender justice project. At the start of September, I had two additional Masa Group contracts set up with brilliant folks from my network.

I was resourceful.

August into September 2024 was a churning build-up, which at the time I read as a beginning but in retrospect was a releasing. Like a shuttle launched into space, burning off its external tank and detaching its boosters. I was busily excited for my new position within the cosmos of movement work. I was actively within value-aligned work, protected post-ED recovery, and nurturing my writing.

As the Autumnal Equinox arrived, I traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountains above Asheville, North Carolina for a week-long literary retreat with Roots. Wounds. Words. My new community of 27 other BIPOC writers found ourselves within the center of Hurricane Helene. We took care of each other. We survived together. We were rewired together.

Upon my return home, the consulting groups and clients were deeply understanding about my need for pause. My loved ones held me and ensured my basic needs were met as I processed narrowly surviving a natural disaster. I found myself floating in Space, my movements controlled only by my previously eager launch and the constant pull of gravity.

I was prioritizing balance.

By mid-autumn, I made a goal of balancing care for my self, my loved ones, and my work. I developed a routine. I protected my sanity through the election and its continued aftermath.

Our reality was clarified in November. The well-being of my community remained paramount. My family of beautifully brilliant Brown and Black trans queer gender expansive humans and unabashedly Pro-Palestine accomplices. With Alight Alchemy, we curated offerings for BIPOC leaders without compromise. With Reframe Health and Justice, I listed and uplifted the political ideas of those most vulnerable to the drug war. With Masa Group, I met with various progressive policy workers interested in developing strategy to survive (and even boldly push for justice) in the coming years.

December, as always, was a month of closing and bookmarking.  My creative writing took a pause to give way to much needed technical writing. My first contract closed, and I felt pride. Other contracts paused with confidence in our continued collaborations through 2025.

Winter Solstice 2024 was celebrated with a creative writing session to jumpstart a three-week reprieve. In winters, I prioritize revisiting and building rest skills: writing, knitting, plant caretaking, and baking. This year, I began to build a pantry and skillset for baking as a gift to myself in this time in space of rare financial comfort. I have worked hard to curate my home over the past year(s), and I began working to celebrate it and me.

I prioritized myself.

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In 2025, I am eager to internalize a greater confidence in myself and my impacts in the world. Sociopolitical and personal events in recent year(s) have weighed heavily on my shoulders, leading me to believe I was responsible to fix… well, anything. An impossible obligation I took in to my bones and muscles. In 2024, I began to release those notions. Now I am excited to just let myself enjoy, period.

I am excited to be a resource from a comfortably seated position in this and future years. In April I will turn 40, often a marker for middle age. As a good friend recently reflected: I am getting to that point in the relay race where I can pass back the baton to those with the passionate energy for movement making. People who remind me of the catalyzing energy of my past. That role sounds deeply generative creatively and professionally.

My work and passion will continue to move towards abolition of the drug war, and investment in systems of race and gender justice. If you catch me on social media or at a local coffee shop, I will likely be working on some iteration of the following projects:

• Researching BIPOC and poor peoples’ resistance to State violence locally, nationally, and globally.
• Brainstorming investment models for public health and harm reduction services.
• Continuing to learn and act on my Pro Black, Palestine, Trans, Dalit and anti-oppression values
• Writing and ranting on Substack about politics, social justice, and anything else that fires me up.

If you have read to this place, wow, thanks that is pretty cool of you. I mostly wrote this for me, which I suppose is why I write anything. As someone who relies on contract work, it would be wise for me to say: I am in the market for developing consulting projects with value-aligned organizations, so please share my updated consulting services page with your networks.

Take care in 2025 and beyond ❤

On September 23–in two months exactly–I will arrive in Little Switzerland, North Carolina to join fellow storytellers of color selected by Roots. Wounds. Words. (RWW) for their semi-annual writing retreat. For one week, I will receive space to breath in the joys and challenges of writing, including instruction and fellowship with other writers of color. That is, if I can raise enough money to cover expenses.

Fulfilling a dream of curating my writing to share with the public unfortunately comes at many costs in this capitalistic system. Amidst a world on fire and many in need beyond measure, my ask for financial donations feels… selfish. I am reckoning with the challenges of pursing art in partnership with values-aligned resources, such as RWW. So I ask, if you have the means to do so, please consider joining my fundraiser: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/roots-wounds-words-inc/roots-wounds-words-2024-autumn-writers-retreat-for-storytellers-of-color/rajani-gudlavalleti-1

For years I have dreamt of having the space, energy, time, and honestly the confidence to apply to this fellowship — and here we are, so surreal. Attending the retreat will be deeply meaningful at this point in my life.

Earlier this year I left an organization that was often my everything – Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition. For the past seven years, it was the forum through which I worked towards liberation. When I was sitting in that dream, I was grateful but unfulfilled–and very tired.

Much of the work involved building a confident bravado to appeal to funders and politicians. It became inauthentic. As is the story for social justice leadership, the demands of the work burned me until it no longer felt liberatory.

At this juncture in my life, I want my role in movements to be artistic and more detached from a reliance on capitalist labor. I want to be part of a process towards liberation that is not fueled by anxious urgency but joyful resistance.

This retreat would offer an opportunity to build long-lasting connections with other Brown and Black people who create political literary art. Fellow storytellers who are able and willing to name and hold the vulnerable parts of themselves, particularly with a sense of humility and humor. I hope you can support me in attaining this dream. Thank you.

I won’t lie, I was inspired to do this from a commercial. At the movie theater. Before “Dungeons and Dragons” played. Like, where the least attention is paid to commercials because most people are busy spending extraordinary amounts of money on popcorn and sugar drinks.

There we were, KN95-ed-up, ready to get nerdy while trying to be as safe as possible in a continuous epidemic, as some AAPI actors come on screen. Mind you, my attention is also perked at the sight of fellow Asians because #representation. These actors talk about how nice and cool Asian people. It’s cringey. I take this as an obvious Hollywood attempt to, I don’t know, end anti-Asian violence?

This cheesy commerical was “for” Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. That is when it happened. I realized I had forgotten about heritage month. After it has played a role throughout my life: childhood multicultural weeks in the 1990s Bay Area, and over a decade of community organizing to highlight AAPI people as part of racial justice movements. I just, forgot.

The question is, why do I care that I forgot? This is where the writing prompt idea came to light. I need to stop and think. I want to understand how AAPIHM serves me. I want to know how it serves the AAPIHM people in my spheres.

I offer this writing prompt practice to fellow AAPI folks to explore our heritage and hopefully, ourselves. While I offer 31 prompts for the 31 days of the month, there is no pressure to keep up everyday. Reflect on what speaks to you and leave the rest. Please share with the AAPI people in your life and tag me as able. Let’s use this month for some introspection.