Christine Ng’ang’a
My name is Christine Ng’ang’a, a 26-year-old, versatile multidisciplinary artist based in Nairobi, Kenya, with a background in creative writing and poetry and a self-published author of my first poetry and prose book, Looking for Home.
I am also a self-taught visual artist, working across media from watercolor, gouache, and acrylic to digital.
My work revolves around different themes: self-love, self-worth, healing activism, and reflections on navigating through everyday life and how vital it is we invest in our own growth, and how we all have room at the table we are not in competition with anyone but ourselves. Writing for me has allowed me to step into my magic and build a global community of people who continue to do the inner work and not run from it; for this, I am grateful.
POETRY
To the sixteen cardinal points of grief , where are we going
There is no blueprint on how to navigate the grief,
No map that can detail how the body can be both the water that sinks the boat
And the water it floats upon
How it causes aches in the parts of you
that have not yet learned to speak ,
There is not enough language in the human body
That prepares you to say good bye
To the one who loved you in the way the spine loves the ribs in the moment before turning
There is no room large enough to fit all this water
Filling .fill.ing your chest,
Not enough dialysis that can cleanse the love out of your blood
There is no blue print to handle this grief
that consumes you from the inside
The thing that fills you till you lose appetite
But still has the power to drain you leaving you empty, standing still. st.ill.
The body suffers from amnesia in reverse
Trying to practice,
Remembering how to forget , but the body is only a bottle of memories like scents,
the forgetting becomes an act of opening
So it all becomes a remembering
And the body is once more transformed into a vessel an instrument a set of binoculars God watches the world through ,
What I mean to say is
To be in the world , before you transition
is to travel as close to God as you would dare to,
To almost touch your finger to the light then withdraw ,
Because your act of observance is not yet through
There is no blue print on how to navigate or swim through the grief
Neither is there a map that can detail how the body can be both the water that sinks the boat
And the water it floats upon
After The prophet. speak to us about teaching
I cannot teach you how to love
Or say here is the love I carry within me
Here. baptize it. Have it as your own.
If you want to teach a person how to fish
. You do not give them the fish.
You show them how to cast their nets.
So even if you are not there.
They can still fish on their own .and they will not starve.
In learning love. As the action it is.
Practicing interdependence in place of co-dependence.
I can only share this love with you.
and show you these are the seeds
to grow your garden from.
I could help you water them. But the major work is yours.
I cannot build the home within you. For you.
I can only pass you the tools.
Yours is the faith that will pray them out of the ground.
Faith so strong it could split open mountains into highways. Could stitch up all the exit wounds in the night sky.
I cannot teach you how to love.
Neither can I transplant the love I carry within me.
I can only lead you to lift the veil to see yours.
and pray you find your way back to yourself.
For your garden to grow in the universes time too
ART
You can find Christine on Instagram or check out a copy of her book!
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