What if starting a blog could become the seed of a national movement? How can starting a blog rooted in authenticity and personal experience transform not just your story, but your entire community? Could starting a blog be the first courageous step toward finding your purpose and leading with heart?
This blog explores how a personal passion for nature, culture, and community evolved into the national movement known as Outdoor Afro. The post traces the journey from early outdoor experiences and family traditions to the moment when starting a blog became a powerful act of storytelling and connection. What began as a simple reflection on belonging in nature grew into a platform that celebrated representation, heritage, and the shared joy of being outdoors.
This story highlights the transformative power of starting a blog as more than a creative outlet—it can be a catalyst for leadership and change. By turning lived experiences into words that resonate, the act of blogging becomes a bridge between personal truth and collective empowerment. The narrative shows how authenticity, purpose, and community can come together through digital storytelling to inspire a broader movement rooted in heart and inclusion.
When I tell people the story of Outdoor Afro, I often say that it started before my first blog post. It began with my own experiences—family, community, and my love of the outdoors. The blog was a vessel, but the roots of this movement were planted before I typed a single word.
Launching Outdoor Afro allowed me to have a space to share my reflections with others. At the time, I didn’t know that it would grow into the national movement that it is today. Deep down, I knew that Black people and other communities needed to see themselves represented in nature. We needed our stories told, traditions recognized, and celebrated. Our presence in nature needed to be seen as natural.
That’s the power of starting a blog with a focus on nature heritage and connection—it gave me the chance to claim a space to invite others into.
Table of Contents:
Early Adventures and Leadership Foundations
A Turning Point in Adulthood and The Defining Question
Embracing My Story and Building a Movement
From Blog to National Presence
Words of Encouragement for Aspiring Changemakers
Roots and Early Influences
I have southern and city roots. My family comes from a rural southern culture where land and food were essential to life. But I also grew up in Oakland, a city full of music, culture, and plenty of movement.
Sometimes it was awkward to go from working on a ranch and hobby farm, watching my dad hunting wild game, to going back to the city with my friends who couldn’t quite relate.
Have you ever felt like you lived between two worlds? That’s what it was like for me. I felt like I lived in the in between. But in that space, I began to find my truth. From the starlit skies of the ranch, the sound of crickets buzzing, the meals of fresh caught or cured wild game and domestic animals, I shared with my family, and the stories told across the table planted seeds of belonging in me. It reminded me that my experiences were intertwined.
Early Adventures and Leadership Foundations
As a young girl, the outdoors called me right into leadership. I was a Girl Scout. Not only was I roasting s’mores, pitching tents, and earning patches, but I was learning how to work with others. Nature-based programs opened doors to new worlds for me. I’d say I was endlessly curious. I dove deeply into seed catalogues and took composting classes at the local urban ecology center. My curiosity about how things grow and how we belong to the earth never seemed to end, and I delighted in writing about what I observed and learned in my earliest diaries. And even to this day, I’m still fascinated by gardening and agriculture, keeping a small garden of my own with four laying hens, harvesting local, seasonal produce year-round, and buying whole lamb and beef from my local rancher. That wonder was just the beginning of my understanding that sharing, writing, and eventually starting a blog would become another way to tend to the community.
Then, the most pivotal moment in life happened: my Pacific Crest Outward Bound mountaineering trip. I took my backpack and walked into the wilderness with trust in my feet and curiosity in my heart. With a heavy backpack filled with my equipment and gear, I had to find the strength to keep going when it got tough walking up and downhill.
My legs burned and hands trembled as I climbed. I could hear my heart beating in my ears as I breathed in and out. Going through tough terrain in unpredictable weather conditions is when I relied heavily on my endurance. I had to think quickly, adapting to the environment around me. That trip not only challenged me physically but also mentally. Those days on the trails were far from comforting. That experience taught me resiliency and how to find joy in testing the limits. I realized that I was stronger than I thought.
In the quiet mornings and laughing through the tough moments of the trip, I saw the beauty of testing limits in a supportive group—lessons that I’ve carried on with me through the many different chapters of my life. When I think back to that experience, I always reflect on how rewarding it was—truly life-changing.
And when the time came for starting a blog, I remembered the lessons that I learned on my trip, along with the memories of growing up with the wild in my family. I wanted to show others the value of stepping outside because it offers so many possibilities.
The Digital Connection
Before blogs and social media, I was already tinkering with technology, learning to code using a Commodore VIC-20, which my parents gifted to me as a junior high graduation present.
I spent hours learning how to code. I turned on the internet’s earliest version of the World Wide Web with a 14.4 modem, aiming to connect with like-minded outdoor enthusiasts and fans of the natural land. I can still remember the thrill I felt of typing code and watching things come to life—we’ve come quite a long way since then!
Despite how old the tech may seem now, that computer opened a new world of possibilities for me. That experience showed me how my love for the outdoors and technology could be bridged together, which I hadn’t considered before. When I started a blog, I realized that experiences and ideas are all connected. It helped remind me that I wasn’t alone.
A Turning Point in Adulthood and The Defining Question
But life has an interesting way of humbling you, often when you least expect it to.
A few decades into my life, I was faced with the realities of being a divorced mother of three young children. Not only was I navigating this new area of my life, but I was also piecing together my career in diverse roles. Roles where I wore the titles of game store entrepreneur, analyst, board member, and seamstress, just to name a few. Each position, whether it was Youth Investment Program Officer or eventually Chair of the Commission for California State Parks, added skills to my toolbox in business, marketing, clothing design, and relationship-building.
Although I was earning money, gaining experience, and providing for my family, I realized that money wasn’t enough. I needed purpose—something deeper, something that tied all my skills, my story, and my community together.
And in that turning point of my life, my mentor at the time asked me a question that stopped me dead in my tracks: If time and money were not an issue, what would you do?”
Well, the question was easy to answer because it was something that I longed to do. I wanted to create a space that was geared toward reconnecting Black people with the outdoors.
My response was simple, unfiltered, and almost instantaneous, but it was the truth. In that moment, clarity and direction immediately came to me simply from voicing that vision I’d long kept inside of me. It was almost like the path I’d been searching for finally came into my perspective, like I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
That spark was the very heart of why starting a blog became my first act of courage.
Embracing My Story and Building a Movement
Between the Southern agricultural traditions and city life, I thought those experiences were “quirks.” But those experiences were actually the roots of my resilience. When I reframed those parts of my life that I once thought made me strange into my story, I realized those experiences were actually my greatest strengths.
My family practices and traditions, from hunting to preserving other sustainable foodways, weren’t just personal quirks. They were part of a broader, Black outdoor heritage. They carried history and knowledge that connected me with the generations before me—and generations to come.
I was given the language, stories, and roots to share in that realization. I was confident in starting a blog and sharing my story with an audience. I knew that it wouldn’t just speak for me but the whole community that has been left out of mainstream narratives, particularly the Black community, which so often felt like the outdoors wasn’t accessible or “made” for them, when in reality it is and always has been.
And that is how Outdoor Afro was born—not as a nonprofit or a national network but as a blog. I started writing reflections, sharing stories, and connecting things through a much larger vision. I talked about joy in nature, heritage, and belonging. I think oftentimes, we search for these grand moments to help us find our purpose or calling, but sometimes, the answer is right under our noses.
From Blog to National Presence
Social media helped amplify those words, and it grew into a national conversation. What started as me typing in my living room in between work, motherhood, and other responsibilities turned into conversations that would be discussed across the country, in rooms and on platforms I never imagined I’d be invited to. Before I knew it, I wasn’t just starting a blog; I was creating a movement.
When people began to reach out to me and connect with what I’d written, I knew Outdoor Afro was bigger than me. It wasn’t just about my story; it was about reclaiming stories, our heritage, and our presence in nature.
No matter how isolated I may have once felt, particularly in the early days of finding my footing, I was never really alone, and it was never really just about me. There’s always been an entire community who felt the same way, just waiting for someone to speak up.
Leading with Heart
My core philosophy has always been about authenticity, joy, and connection. It’s about empowering communities, honoring heritage, and creating welcoming access. It’s about telling the truth of our history, celebrating the joy of our present, and hope for the future.
That’s what starting a blog has taught me the most: presence matters more than perfection.
What started as a personal space turned out to be a community, a movement. Outdoor Afro exists today to help underrepresented groups see themselves in nature, reminding the world and each other that Black people belong in every outdoor space.
And along the way, I’ve had the privilege of learning from other leaders and movements, too. We are just one big community, after all.
Words of Encouragement for Aspiring Changemakers
If you’re reading this and you have a fire inside you, or dreams to make some kind of change in society or your community, I want you to know this: Your story matters, all of it. Each chapter—the wins and the struggles, the moments that are full of doubt and the joy you feel—has meaning. Your lived experience is what holds the seeds to plant your movement. Lean into that. Movements don’t grow from perfection; they grow from real stories.
Bring all that you are to the table: your personal story, your professional skills, your creativity, and, especially, the setbacks that helped shape you. Believe it or not, the experiences that you overlook and want to forget are the ones that connect us to others.
No need to wait until things feel big or perfect. Leadership doesn’t always start on a big stage or in the spotlight. Most times, it starts small—with one stop, one story, one conversation, one act of courage. Those small beginnings have the power to ripple out further than you can even imagine.
And yes, sometimes it starts with writing a blog. Or journaling, talking with friends and family at the annual cookout. The key is to say yes when opportunity knocks at your door, even if you’re not sure what’s on the other side.
Because you never know. That one post, that one story, that one act could spark an entire movement, or better yet, inspire someone else to enact change themselves.
Choosing to pursue my passions and elevate what was always inside of me continues to transform my life and the world around me.
