Raquel Willis lays out a roadmap to liberation in ‘The Risk It Takes To Bloom’

“I’d long felt I had to prove to my family and the world that my queerness and transness weren’t liabilities,” – Raquel Willis, The Risk It Takes To Bloom: On Life and Liberation

How did Raquel Willis go from navigating the limits of toxic masculinity as a Southern Black queer child in Augusta, Georgia, to building a writing and activism career built on passion, centering empathy, and collective liberation as an unapologetic Black trans woman?

She blossomed, Willis details in her debut memoir, The Risk It Takes To Bloom.

Inspired by a line from Elizabeth Appell’s poem RISK, the project began to sprout in 2020, on the horizon of Willis’ 30s amid the pandemic lockdown and social justice movements reinvigorated by the murder of George Floyd and other Black folks.

At this time, Willis was forced to reflect on her feelings about how the world shaped her. As she confronted systems meant to oppress her, societal standards of beauty, and perceived worthiness. The text she birthed makes readers feel as if they are peering into a big sister’s diary, the confessions serving as a roadmap to liberation.

“Blooming means regardless of the struggle, or maybe despite the complexity, we make it through to the other side, understanding that we deserve our wholeness, stories, and joy,” she tells Reckon.

Willis says anyone going through a transition in life and waiting to bloom should find a space to fully express themselves. That could be a physical space or within the pages of a journal, sketchbook or voice notes app. She is inspired by a mantra of her possibility model, writer, director, producer and transgender rights activist Janet Mock: “tell your story to yourself.”

The importance of grace was the biggest lesson Willis learned while writing The Risk It Takes To Bloom. “Of course, grace for other folks — that’s where forgiveness lies. And, for myself, that’s where healing lies. I’ve…