So, on today, the last day before the book is released, I wanted a semi-“normal” day for me–some early morning reading, mid-morning leisure time, post-lunch writing at a cozy, local independent coffee shop, and evening Zumba followed by dinner and chatting with friends and loved ones. Today was only semi-normal because it was interspersed with social media engagement and publicity demands, but I was thankful to be in my own personal spaces preparing for taking what has been largely a personal journey with When Trees Testify to the public engagement stage.
I can’t wait to engage in conversation with readers about the trees that have impacted me and to hear about the trees that have impacted you. Let’s get ready for testimony service, IYKYK!
Four weeks from now on January 20, 2026, my next book When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy (print/audiobook) will debut.
Like my first book Lessons from Plants, the new book explores my love for plants and my expertise in plant science. Both books exemplify my goal to always ask how knowledge I gain—be it social, cultural or scientific—can be used for me to be better. I am a prolific “self-reflector” seeking to gain insights and perspectives from the past to bring into an intentional present and, hopefully, a better future. Because for me self is dual—self as individual as well as self as community—the insights are individual and communal.
Unlike my first book, When Trees Testify, sits at a unique intersection of the personal, scientific, and Black history. My own thoughts about my life, my work, and my world shifted when I encountered a centuries old live oak tree and realized it had shared space with me and many generations before me. That was the “germinated seedling” that led me to research and write When Trees Testify, which turned out to be a deeply personal journey.
Soon many readers will have the opportunity to join me on the journey and I can barely wait.
If you haven’t already, consider ordering here, or if I’m fortunate, maybe I’ll see you at a When Trees Testifyevent.
Most days my discontent is centered in the second of the two Merriam Webster definitions above – i.e., I feel a deep sense of “restless aspiration for improvement.”
This restless yearning that I feel for improvement is not just about personal improvement – although I’ll always strive for improving myself. I need – desperately long for – collective and structural improvement for the communities and spaces in which I am imbedded. And as a person who aspires to reciprocity and generosity, I want that same improvement for communities and spaces at large – whether I reside therein or not.
I think I struggled to name my state of discontent because in some ways it’s been a state of productive discontent, whereas generally discontent is disruptive for me.
I’ve been experiencing productive discontent in that – perhaps largely unknowingly – I’ve spent a lot of time in self-reflection to get out of this state because I’m unsettled, unmoored, maybe even agitated.
There is a lot to be agitated about in the world at large, as well as in my professional world of higher education. There are so many tragedies and deaths of Black women in higher education to name – recently Dr. JoAnne A. Epps, Dr. Orinthia T. Montague, Dr. Claudine Gay, Dr. Antoinette “Bonnie” Candia-Bailey, and many more deserving of being named and remembered (For recent commentaries see – Asare, Branch, George; Mitchell, Njoku and Marshall, et al.). And yet, agitation or discontent without appropriate understanding of its origin or cause, as well as its productive purpose or means of dissipation, is problematic for me.
So how am I coming to understand the origin of my discontent and how am/will I dissipate it? Through deep and intentional self-reflection and intentional action.
Self-reflection is often a productive state for me because I grapple with needing to understand, name, and settle in on my feelings, my motivations, my actions. Frequently, I process and understand myself and the world through writing. So, I’ve written profusely in this period – perhaps hoping to write myself out of discontentment. Again, I am centering getting out of the state of discontent understood as “restless aspiration for improvement” and moving away from aspiration and towards a means of intentionally and actively calling into being and contributing to the desired improvement.
While I haven’t fully achieved that, I have written myself into the knowledge and naming of my state and have also written myself into naming and laying out a path towards reclamation of a state NOT centered in discontent.
I’ve been laser-focused during this period of self-reflection because I’m a steady person. One of the people who knows me best describes me as “solid, settled, spirited.” Sometimes the spirited portion seems at odds with the solid and settled to others – but not at all to me.
So, I’m deeply reorienting myself, my direction, and path to reestablish my steady state of solid, settled, and spirited. This necessarily means unseating myself from some spaces and places, as well as leaving some paths to follow the one that returns me to my settled self.
The current reseating and redirecting of paths are leading me where I need to be even as my shifts and moves will perhaps have less than desired reverberations on those with whom I was seated and with whom I was traversing a common path.
Yet, as always, I’ve given myself the freedom to treasure and say farewell to the time and space that led to growth, even as discontent is signaling that “a change is coming.”
I am genuinely excited about the present and coming change…I am authentically motivated to reestablish my preferred state of “solid, settled, spirited.”
