We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Confidence Omenai. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Confidence below.

Alright, Confidence thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

You must define success for yourself before you can accurately measure it. Many accomplished scholars, artists, scientists, women and men of industry have died penniless or without notoriety, believing themselves to be failures. Why? Many were convinced by capitalism that what they created was only as worthy as what it earned, and if they earned nothing they had failed.

Many of us were taught from an early age to pursue a predestined plan of action assigned by gender roles, race, and socioeconomic class. We often find out after the degrees, the wedding, the babies are born or the practice opens, that none of what we have accomplished had anything to do with what gives us joy or honors our purpose.

I once believed success was measured by external factors. Most importantly how much money I earned, how hard I worked, and being a better mother than the one I was given. After 25 years of motherhood, 5 children, 1 grandchild and 17 years of writing, performing and teaching, the lens through which I view success is vastly different.

I am worth more than what I can produce or for whom. I am not defined by the work of my womb or my hands. Success for me is measured in bravery. and rebellion. When one recognizes what they have built is eating them alive, having the courage to clear the board and rebuild a life that isn’t consuming their spirit, is the price of admission to the place where success resides.

Maya Angelou says, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

At the ripe old age of 44, I love myself, what I do, who I do it with, and how we get it done. I would say I am riotously successful.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I journey alongside those who are processing terminal diagnoses and circumstances that kill the spirit but do not take the body such as indeterminate life sentences, life without mercy,divorce and natural cycles of death providing guidance and support.

I have been developing curriculum, writing, teaching and performing poetry around the country for 17 years. In January of 2021, Haley Sanner and I co created Collective Healing Through Art(CHTA), an intergenerational art program that uses multiple art forms to help young and older adults build resilience, mitigate stress and process their experiences during the pandemic. CHTA is work that I am proud of for a community that I love.

In examining the catalog of my work I found the running theme has always been death and rebirth. I have been guiding my readers through spiritual deaths for the last 10 years. In 2022, after experiencing a series of deaths that came for my spirit and then my body, I began to study death intricately. I wanted to understand how spiritual death can dismantle the spirit in order to put mine back together.

In this liminal space I found INELDA and Thoughtful Transitions and received extensive and expert training as an End of Life Doula. I also created my first multi-media art exhibit “Did You Die Though?” It opened at Leon Gallery in January of 2023.

“Did You Die Though?” is an exhortation to raise the dead. An invitation to grave robbery. An indaba embracing the ceremony of radical self-compassion and resurrection. This installation is a container for the forensic examination of ritual death as self-actualization. A crime scene as chrysalis. A graveyard or cocoon. A garden of a girl planted in a gruesome place, who answered death’s call, stole the keys to hell and bloomed into a field of free. Here is a road map through the wilds of divine alchemy. Here lie the slain selves of one Black woman, exhumed for the edification of all who fear dying. Did You Die Though is the stone rolled away to reveal She has risen.” – Confidence Omenai

I am currently creating medicine and merchandise that represents the rebellious and courageous spirit my brand is notorious for.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met Haley Sanner in a breakout room on Zoom during a workshop facilitated by Creative Strategies for Change. She suggested we meet for coffee and talk about working together. I suggested Gypsy Coffee House on Broadway in Denver. We spent hours pouring out our vision and our dreams over Turkish coffee and tea. Collective Healing Through Art became our joined vision and expertise from that moment forward.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In April of 2023 I realized that I had spread myself too thin. I was working, building and training for positions that demanded heavy emotional labor, had the potential to create secondary trauma and wrestling with the administrative nightmare that ensues when you submit an invoice to many nonprofit organizations. I was suffering from fresh and severe trauma while working around the clock to run my business.

I made a bold choice at a time when I needed financial stability the most, I chose my health over everyone and everything. I canceled events, contracts, postponed all new programming, turned down invites, rearranged my schedule to allow myself space to heal. I went on a total hiatus with no regard for what it costs me in order to save my life. That season allowed me to restructure my organization and the work that I do in ways that prioritize my health and well-being. Anything that is for you will be there when you are well.

I went on hiatus at a moment when my business was booming but my body and spirit were breaking. This was a necessary pivot away from capitalist grind culture and toward “rest as resistance”, in the words of Tricia Hersey. On that rock I will rebuild a sustainable work and rest practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://transformingtransition.life/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onlyconfi/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/confidence-o-61675915/
• Other: https://leongallery.org/did-you-die-though-confidence-omenai/

Image Credits
Dakari Martin @spade_archer_photography