We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kenieha Boren. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kenieha below.
Kenieha, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I felt off inside. I was studying Civil Engineering at the University of Tennessee, and I changed my major so many times. In the end changed from Civil Engineering to actuarial science to creative writing to mathematics. I spent five years in college with constant waves of depression. I sought out a relationship with God join a church near campus because I was in so much pain I couldn’t imagine a life stuck inside the box I had put myself in. Then the door to the spirit opened I started receiving poems that at first felt like instructions, a way out of my entanglement. Then I realized how much healing I needed. I was denying myself of my true identity because for so long so wrapped up in what other people thought of me. I was living to please my family, society, and string of relationship partners. I started writing about escaping the darkness, confronting my shadows, there was a deep desire to love myself again. I found freedom through writing and delusion, thanking the butterflies and sunshine. I found my way out of place of self hatred, neglect, and constant frustration, and I knew I wanted to share that with anyone I got the opportunity to meet. I wanted to share my discovery of peace. I found my voice and my purpose in sharing my story. I want to help other women believe that their story can be beautiful too. Heartbreak, confusion, pain, trauma, history can be eloquently written and be liberating, but my art doesn’t just end with poetry. I am a walking masterpiece. I dance, I act, I sing. I love to create using multiple mediums of art to share what’s in the inside of me.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I started trusting myself. I first hosted a tea and journaling workshop for my friends and family to share with them some of the self love practices that I helped me. I then did another with more women and incorporated dance and movement. I love creating a space that allows for freedom of authentic expression and to explore our energetic power. I have manifested some amazing opportunities over the past year ( found movement group dance scholarship, creative future mentorship with SoHo House, Metro Arts Thrive Grant, Hola Yoga Teacher Training Scholarship), and I got to perform my poetry monologue in a women’s storytelling show called Clit Tips. I love empowering black women to let go of societal expectations and live a life that is alignment with their hearts desire. I love art so I center my life around creating. I make time to explore my body through dance, I am in the process of getting my yoga certification, and I am in a comedy improv program with Third Coast Comedy. I have a poetry workshop, Self Discovery Through Spoken Word, teaching BIPOC students how to create self empowering stories and speak their most vulnerable truths. I am excited to release my first spoken word album, The Love That Came Before, a poetic reflection of love, sexuality, and relationship trauma. I am human and it is my responsibility to expose the beauty in that.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being a creative for me is that it feels like an undoing, a return to my source. I attend many art workshops throughout the year and I love feeling exposed in a new way. I get to learn more about my internal being the more I create. Living a black women’s body there is learned silence and passive aggressiveness, and my art is my how I speak. I recently got the privilege to do a dance workshop with new dialect, and talk about unraveling. We engaged in movement where we had to talk and make facial expression as we movement. The stories that came out we so revealing. I am fragile, yet strong, shy yet I have a great desire to be seen and understood. The more I create the more I come to understand myself. The more free I feel. The body, mind, and soul work in tandem, all encompassing and understanding. My Hips carry stories and my body speaks a language, my poetry is a memory box. I love when my art flows into the now and in the moment there is an deep understanding of something once dismissed or made to be forgotten. I love when someone sees my art and they tell me I felt that, and not only does someone feel my pain but my transformation.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The Feeling of Freedom, removing blockages in my mind, feeling whole in my body. My entire being screaming YES. It’s a resonance. My mission is liberate my body and mind, and to provide a roadmap for others to access that feeling. My mission is to be a student and a teacher. I think everyone deserves to feel comfortable in their skin, and to live a life that makes them wake up smiling. A lot of people that look like me don’t believe in the possibilities of their dreams, and accept pain as a permanent part of their body, and it is my mission to unearth possibility and restore hope in my community.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkennyrae_/
Image Credits
@sprattpix @thephotojojo @denisewellscreative