It’s a new calendar year, so it’s another opportunity to do as you please.
If you didn’t know that you could do as you please, I would like to teach you a new word: 8 letters, beginning with ‘A’. Audacity.
This is A Love Letter to the sheer audacity.
The sheer audacity, like inkani, are the key to unlocking the life you have been building… and being the person you have invested so much into becoming.
Our 20s are for the tough lessons that teach us how to say no.
Our 30s teach us why saying no is important.
Our 40s give us the sheer audacity to say yes to everything we’ve been preparing for.
On my instagram microblog, I wrote A Love Letter to inkani, so let’s treat this as Part 2
In 2026, let’s practice how to say yes, and embrace what comes with it: vulnerability, uncertainty and discomfort (sometimes, inconvenience).
Saying yes also brings courage, clarity, fun and resolution. We deserve this, and so much more. We are abantu, after all.
Saying yes, as difficult and uncomfortable as it may be, lays the foundation for richness, authenticity and delight.
Saying no keeps out the things we don’t want.
Saying yes lets in the things we do want. We need more of what enriches, grows and delights us.
Say Yes
It’s not good enough to be fluent in saying no, rejecting and repelling what we don’t want. We have to actively embrace what we do want, and need.
Saying yes is a practice in gratitude and generosity. Read the full Love Letter below
What I am saying is:
SAY YES to everything that makes you umuntu. Saying yes to what enriches us invokes our right to just be umuntu. You don’t need permission, it is your right.
Sidebar: A corrupted version of ubuntu is being used against us. It disallows us from our own rights as abantu. I believe that the primary purpose of our lives is to experience the fullness of life, in its delights, and its pains.
Saying yes isn’t easy, it’s actually often discouraged, especially for women. African women, most of all, are overtly and subtly shamed for even daring: you know the narrative…
You? receive?! You’re a giver, a doer, a server. Entitled, much?
Also, aren’t you independent and ambitious? so why would you need anything?
Thirdly, who are you, even? What makes you think you deserve anything you haven’t struggled for and earned?
Meanwhile…nothing could be further from the truth.
The audacious yes is neither directionless nor impulsive. The audacious yes requires us to have boundaries and standards.
The audacious yes is discerning and well considered. It works best with the humility and wisdom of maturity.
The audacious yes is grown folk business.
No, nope, nix, never
Welcome to the balancing act of adult life.
If we are going to make it in our lives, saying no is a muscle we have had to build and exercise often.
For our sanity, lives and humanity, we have to say no to the demands, and expectations that cost us more than they return, otherwise we will have nothing left for ourselves.
Plot twist! Saying no to what isn’t for us, doesn’t automatically translate into a yes for what is.
However, when we start by saying yes to what is true and necessary for ourselves, everything else that isn’t in alignment begins to diminish and disappear.
No means no. If you want to say yes, then say that, and move accordingly.
New year, same truth
What we do as part of our roles at home, communities and work doesn’t have to define who we are as abantu.
What we have to do is not the same as who we allow ourselves to be. We can’t let one get in the way of the other.
Ubuntu means putting yourself first
The audacious yes we need is grounded in our values.
It must resonate in every part of our lives, choices and actions.
Saying yes means learning to put ourselves first, as abantu.
“Put yourself first’ doesn’t mean: self-indulgence, unkindness, or avoidance.
You’re an adult, so you have to accept accountability, of being socially mature and emotionally competent.
Saying yes is the promise of possibility.
Encouragement and compassionate support are far more positively impactful than berating, criticising, or judging.
It’s true for children, pets, and even plants. Of course it applies to you too: you are someone’s child, a living being, umuntu.