How Watching My Mother Made Me Humble (and Wise?)

Today’s Poem

Humility ✨

by Kellion Knibb — Click above to listen 🎧

In the words of a wise woman I call my mother:
"Yo need to seek God!" 
My mother, my north star,
In a language I once refused.

I spent my twenties
Chasing freedom
With strangers armed with my triggers,
In the cracks of my self-reprogramming,
Riding waves of recklessness
Meant to test me,
Maybe even break me.

The miseducation of a young woman
Began when she rejected
A mother’s wisdom.
A mother who dared with big dreams,
Living on her own terms.

She found pain there,
Hidden behind promises,
Waiting on the steps of closed doors
Disguised as opportunity
Sharpened into darts of disappointment,
Darts at the heart, reminders
Of dreams unrealized.

Still, she’d say:
"Yo need to seek God!" 
Her knees knew the floor.
Her prayers befriended the divine silence
Pleas of a woman who
Sought solace in scripture,
Burned by the dangers of her choices.

Now, standing on the edge of my youth,
The brink of my becoming,
I find myself circling back
To my mother,
To the truths buried in her faith,
To the quiet compass of her life.

Everywhere I’ve gone,
Everything I’ve been,
Are fragments of a puzzle
Held together by her parables,
Offered when she had nothing left to give.

Christianity,
As harmful as it has been to me,
Is still the language of my mother.
Through them, I have learned humility.

We speak it differently now.
I’ve found new tools,
New meanings, new ways to understand.
But even with the distance,
It’s still the bridge we meet on—
A shared dialect
Of love and survival.

Everything is beautiful when adored.

Happy Mother’s Day, friends! 💌

This post reflects on how life shaped my mother in ways that are difficult to name, but impossible to ignore.

For some, life is about pleasure. For others, it’s about purpose. But for people like my mother, life has often felt like a battle of attrition—a phrase I borrow from my friend and thinker Michael Faisal Green, and one that fits all too well.

If we’re lucky, we look back and recognize the moments that changed us for the better. If we’re wise, we learn from the lives of others.

I watched my mother navigate the 2008 recession as a small business owner in Jamaica. She had built a cosmetology business with her own two hands, one that reflected both her talent and her passion. But the crash came, and like so many, she lost more than just income. She lost ground, momentum, a dream. Cosmetology is not an easy industry to reenter once you’ve been knocked out, but she tried. She kept trying.

Over the years, she explored other entrepreneurial paths—always searching, always reaching. I feel for her. Deep down, I want for her. I ache for the version of her life that dream might have become. And I am humbled by the quiet knowledge that she may never reach that dream after all the time passed.

I am humbled by how the biggest person I know—my mother—was changed. How she became something else entirely. Not lesser. Just different. Wiser. Weathered. Still standing.

I often think about people like my mother, the ones who pour everything into their goals but are met with doors that just won’t open [or re-open]. And I wonder:

1. What determines who breaks through, and who just breaks?

2. Is it timing, luck, or grit? I don’t know.

3. How do some keep going when the world gives them nothing back?

I don’t have clear answers. But every time I ask these questions, I’m reminded to stay grounded. I look at what my mother endured. I see what she overcame. I see how unfair and unforgiving life can be—and how dignified she remained through it all.

My college coach always asked, “Why are you always so humble, Knibb?”

Here’s my honest answer: Because I’ve been humbled by the life of the strongest woman I know.

I learned so much watching her build something out of nothing. And I learned even more watching her navigate the wreckage—grieving, adapting, creating joy in new ways. Through her garden. Through herbalism. Through juicing. Through making us laugh, whether we want to or not.

This isn’t a story of defeat. It’s a story of a woman who kept going with the little she had and in the best way she knew how.

To my mother—Happy Mother’s Day!