From Leslie to Akanke
When people hear my name today, they know me as Akanke Rasheed.
But before there was Akanke, there was Leslie Ann.
Not a different person. The same soul. Being lovingly fashioned by Allah through every season of life.
Looking back now, I no longer see my life as a series of disconnected experiences. I see a story of Divine cultivation.
This is not simply the story of how my name changed. It is the story of how my awareness awakened—and how that awakening became the door through which Allah led me to every other door He had prepared for me.
Leslie
Before the awakening, there was simply a little girl—quiet, observant, tender-hearted—whose life Allah had already begun fashioning long before she had words for Him.
The Door of Awareness
It began with a simple invitation. A friend named Louis asked if I would come with him to a Sondra Ray seminar. I said yes without knowing I was saying yes to my whole life.
Somewhere inside that room, something quiet in me opened. Not loud. Not theatrical. Just a soft interior knowing that the life I had been living was not the life I had been created for—and that there was something greater already calling my name.
That was the door of awareness. Once it opened, it never closed again.
This is where conscious living began.
Learning to See
Once awareness awakened, everything I had accepted about myself became a question worth asking again.
I began to notice my thoughts. The stories I had inherited. The beliefs I had been repeating without remembering when I first learned them. The personal lie I had been living underneath the surface of a life that, from the outside, looked complete.
I read voraciously. I sat with teachers. I studied African consciousness and searched for the fuller identity that had been quietly waiting inside me. I was not gathering information—I was learning to see.
And the more I saw, the more I understood that seeing itself was a mercy.
Doors Opening
Awareness widened into wonder. Wonder pulled me across oceans. I stood in Greece, in Spain, in cities whose stones had watched centuries of seekers come through.
Each journey asked a deeper question. Who am I? Who fashioned me? What is this life truly for? African consciousness. Sacred texts. Whispered prayers I did not yet know were prayers.
Awareness became the door through which Allah opened many other doors. And every door, though I could not see it then, was leading me home.
Coming Home
When I met Islam, it did not feel like arriving somewhere new. It felt like recognition. Like being met at a door I had been walking toward my whole life without knowing it was there.
And in that recognition, I began to see something even more tender: Allah had been guiding me, protecting me, teaching me, and fashioning me long before I knew His Names. Every seminar. Every book. Every wandering. Every quiet ache. He had been with me the entire time.
Coming home was not the beginning of His care for me. It was the moment I finally recognized it.
Walking Together
Today, I have the privilege of creating spaces where we can pause, reflect, and recognize Allah more deeply through the unfolding story of our life with Him.
Through my books, courses, reflections, and The Sacred Ascension™, my prayer is that you won't simply learn more about my journey—you'll begin recognizing the beautiful way Allah has been fashioning yours.
