UROP Project

Dear Beloved SoulFlower: The Building of a Social Media Brand

Nature; Storytelling; Love Letter Writing; Healing-Centered Curriculum; Autoethnography; Social Media; Public-to-Personal Narrative

Research Mentor: Dr. Dr. Chris Omni, MPH, MLS, She/Her
Department, College, Affiliation: African American Studies, Social Sciences and Public Policy
Contact Email: comni@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor): Miss Eryn Files She/her
Research Assistant Supervisor Email: eef23a@fsu.edu
Faculty Collaborators: Gemini Williamson she/her
Faculty Collaborators Email: GOW23@fsu.edu

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: Preference: Communication, Journalism, English, Photography, Education
Open to all majors

Project Location: meeting via Zoom
Research Assistant Transportation Required: No, the project is remote
Remote or In-person: Fully Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 7, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:

• Day: Wednesday, September 3
  Start Time: 4:00
  End Time: 4:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/my/blackjoy
• Day: Thursday, September 4
  Start Time: 4:00
  End Time: 4:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/my/blackjoy

Project Description

Dear Beloved SoulFlower is a creative and healing-centered research project that explores the power of love letter writing as a gentle, reflective method of storytelling. Born from a 2017 public wellness campaign in Topeka, Kansas titled Dear Black Women, the original project placed billboards across the city that offered affirmations of visibility, worth, and joy. Seven years later, that public expression of care has quietly transformed into a deeper narrative practice—one that now lives in the form of personal letters, social media offerings, and curriculum design.

At its heart, this project asks a simple question: What happens when we write with love? Through the Dear Beloved SoulFlower series, letters are written to students, elders, ancestors, memory, and land. Each letter begins with “Dear Beloved SoulFlower” and ends with “In Love and Light, (insert name)” These are not casual messages; they are invitations. Each one offers a moment of pause, an opportunity for reflection, and a space to be seen, heard, and held. Over time, this practice has become an integral part of a broader eco-spiritual curriculum rooted in reverence, embodiment, and joy.

This research embraces autoethnography as a way of honoring lived experience as data. Drawing from The Omni Process™—a framework that centers ancestral listening, cultural memory, environmental embodiment, and joy as a source of knowledge—this study uses love letter writing as both method and message. It resists the traditional boundaries of academic research and instead embraces the sacred, the relational, and the restorative. It asks not only what we know, but how we feel what we know—and how that feeling shapes what we choose to remember, teach, and pass on. Ultimately, Dear Beloved SoulFlower is a living methodology. It is a reminder that research can be rooted in care, that curriculum can be an act of love, and that writing can heal.

Research Tasks: Assist in locating supportive scholarship on love as method, arts-based inquiry, or healing-centered pedagogy.

Summarize 10 key sources in 3CQ+Q (Compliment, Comment, Connection, Question, Quote) format

Reflect on how those sources resonate with or contrast Dear Beloved SoulFlower.

Assist in developing a digital archive or searchable database

Support the visual documentation of the project—e.g., Canva layouts, Instagram story templates, etc.

Help organize content for public presentation (slides, website updates, zine-style summaries). (*If accepted, this work will be presented at an international conference in March 2026).

Maintain a personal journal documenting their emotional and intellectual responses to the research process.

Write your own Dear Beloved SoulFlower letter series based on a pre-identified theme.


Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Required:
1. Time management
2. Ability to engage with emotionally resonant content with gentleness and respect
3. Willingness to grow, be guided, and honor the energy of the project

Recommended:
1.Clear and compassionate writing skills
2. Strong reading and summarizing skills for academic texts
3. A deep respect for story as a source of knowledge