Most days I feel like a zebra in a world of horses. *
Hi, I’m Idelette. (Pronounced: Ee-da-lette)
Life is an adventure. I am neuro-spicy, deeply spiritual, love to play and laugh. I am always learning.
I live, play and write on the unceded territories of the Kwantlen, Semiahmoo and Sto:lo peoples in Surrey, Canada. My heart is stretched across oceans and continents as I navigate what it means to be a global citizen.
I was born and raised in South Africa and it is the beat of my heart and the warmth in my soul. That story required of me to consider my place and responsibility in the story of humanity and in April 2022, I published my first book “Recovering Racists: Dismantling White Supremacy and Reclaiming Our Humanity.” (Ninety percent of the profits were given towards restitution and making the world just a little more right.)
When I was 16, I read a book that cracked open the all-white world I’d grown up in and shattered so many of my belief systems. I’ve spent my life ever since leaving the construct of whiteness, unlearning so much of what I had internalized and learning a new way of being human.
In 1995, my journey took me to Taipei, Taiwan where I worked as a reporter and learned Mandarin Then, in 1999, I moved from Taiwan to Canada and married Scott. We have three children, a dog and a restaurant.
I am also the founder of the former SheLoves Media Society and Dangerous Women community that ran for 12 years. One of my great joys was hosting the weekly “Liberation Hour” for Dangerous Women.
* We used to say this in Dangerous Women and I am grateful to Nichole Forbes who named us as “zebras.”
Life can be so juicy.
People often ask me, What is juicy living? Sign up for my newsletter and find out.
Maya Angelou said, Love liberates.
My journey started in South Africa, took me to Taiwan and now Canada. I didn’t know when I longed for liberation that it would first take me right back to where I was born.
Love has liberated me and keeps liberating me.
I have learned that my liberation has always been connected to the liberation of others.
It all starts with Love.
When I first heard the call of Love and Liberation, I was a young girl, looking up from the backseat of our Opel Monza out into the darkness of the Stellenbosch mountains. I had a sense even then that the world I was longing for, was not small, white and exclusive, but expansive, loving, and brimming with all of humanity. It was so different from the story so many people around me believed. Finding a more beautiful way, has been my quest. I have been relentless in my pursuit, crossing continents, reading for clues and keys, going to places of pain and injustice and looking for the sacred in each person I encounter.
Love is the door.