The Platform I’m Building

Backstroke & Breakthroughs – Post #9

Let me be clear: I’m not just writing to be heard.
I’m writing to build something.

Something real. Something bold. Something rooted in everything I’ve survived, studied, and still believe is possible—even in a world that keeps trying to make people like me disappear in the margins.

I don’t want just a seat at the table. I want to design the room.
And here’s what it looks like:

A media space that is deeply human.
Where Black, Native, queer, and culturally layered voices are not “diversity wins” but the foundation.

Where storytelling is not sanitized for donors or scrubbed of pain for comfort.
Where joy, grief, faith, complexity, and contradiction can live in the same sentence.

I want to create a platform where people like us—those who’ve been underestimated, misnamed, or ignored—can write, speak, create, and rest without needing to explain themselves.

A platform that fuses the best of public media’s mission with the kind of honesty and equity it too often fails to live up to.
A platform that teaches, heals, and mobilizes.
A platform that isn’t afraid to say the quiet part out loud—because we’ve lived it.

I imagine:

• A podcast series born from Backstroke & Breakthroughs—with guests who carry stories, not just titles.
• A digital sanctuary for BIPOC creators, with mental health support, financial guidance, and spiritual nourishment woven into the process.
• Workshops, DEI training, and healing circles that aren’t performative—but sacred.
• A new kind of newsroom that centers lived experience before press releases.

And I want it to feel like what my grandmother gave me:
safety, purpose, and truth.

This week’s takeaway:
When the spaces we serve refuse to evolve, it’s okay to build our own. Not out of ego. But out of love. Out of clarity. Out of the belief that the next generation deserves better.

I don’t want a platform where I have to dilute myself to be marketable.
I want a space where people can show up full-bodied, full-voiced, and fully alive.

And the truth is, I’m not dreaming alone.
I’m dreaming with every reader, every listener, every survivor who’s been told to “wait your turn.”

This is our turn.
And I’m building the space for it—one post, one breath, one breakthrough at a time.

If you’re with me, stay close.
We’ve got a lot more to make.

Still dreaming,
– J.R.