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I keep reckoning, over and over again with myself, that I have not protected myself. 

That this time I want to learn the lesson.

Not from hurt, harm or danger in the physical-emotional sense. 

But from the unguarded use of myself at and to the will of others. How I have relinquished my own power and shrunk in such duality to prop up other people, to make other people feel comfortable and to meet the needs of somebody else. 

What happens to a person whose chasing purpose, community and love at cost to themselves? 

What do you compromise, when you compromise yourself?

Notes on self-love, capacity, community building, investment, and decision making

What I have learned too many times to count and repeat back to myself and others as often as it comes to me is: Compromise, but never compromise your mf self. 

But now I add a caveat to that, sometimes you don’t know what that self is. Cause one thing wisdom cannot outrun is time and experience. 

Last night I was listening to Alicia Keys on The Breakfast Club and she said something that really resonated with me, “I probably would have demanded more for myself if I loved myself.”

Life as my ultimate teacher, I know now there have been numerous times I have tested out my own capacity for self love, by the ways in which I will let myself be loved in return and what I will accept as love. The truth of it is, I’ve been measuring love wrong this whole time. I was always worried about what I was doing or not doing, instead of what I was allowing and accommodating. (And when I say love I hope you know I use the words love and community interchangeably). 

I have tested myself beyond my capacity and harmed myself in the process. And for that I tell myself ‘sorry’. 

Sorry for the times, I was in spaces I knew I didn’t want to be in. Sorry for the tables I knew I didn’t want to sit at. Not because I didn’t believe I was unworthy. Sorry, because I put myself in position for “purpose” and love of community, knowing I would have to lose a piece of myself. 

There are places I should have denied access a long time ago, I gave way to that I know now–as to not be perceived as a threat. Cause you are almost always a threat to others when you choose yourself. When you choose not to belong.

It ungirds people. 

Because capitalism says we must always be used to the very last drop, that our existence is for consumption. 

And yet you don’t know what it’s like to savor yourself. You have never felt in full regard what it’s like to abide in your own pleasure. What reciprocity means on your own grounds and your own terms. What it means to be in authority over yourself. 

Your being in your own power and defining for yourself what it means to be loved is disruptive. It challenges everything to see you enact your own freedom. 

Because your self-love is evaluated everyday by how you live. 

I have not always treated myself as the sacred self that I am.

I am a spiritual experience. I am to be explored and savored. 

This year if you do nothing else move beyond intentionality and into practice. 

I don’t wanna hear anymore about intentions. You can have all of the good intentions in the damn world. But what are you doing? What are you doing with those intentions? How are you living it out?

It is the wrong time for your words and actions to be out of alignment. 

How many more broken promises are you going to make to yourself?

And also contrary to popular opinion and social media, it’s okay to not speak those promises(goals) out loud. 

You don’t have to share so much of yourself, you ain’t got nothing left for yourself. 

Leave some mystery. Leave some curiosity. 

Lave some space so that someone can take the time to learn, explore and savor you along the way. 

(you see that theme there…)

Give yourself permission to be it, to live it out. Learn what it means to be fully and wholly in divine self. Get it now so you don’t have to get it later. Be free on Earth and not free in death. 

Learn how to build a life for yourself. What is it that you really desire? How do you want to feel? What do you want to see? Who’s there or not there? What does it smell, sound, taste like? 

Give yourself time and stop investing yourself so quickly. 

I think of how much time and heartache I could have saved myself if I would have evaluated instead of being enamored. 

Learn how to observe and assess your investments with friendship, with lovers, with work, with community. 

Read the whole contract. Check the temperature of the room. Take your pulse. How does it make you feel? Does it make you excited or anxious? Are you passionate about it? Is it reciprocal? Does it add value to your life? Is it the right fit? Take the time to get to know what is being offered. Ask your own questions. And don’t wait through multiple seasons and repeating the same patterns. 

You get to decide if you want more than what’s there or you don’t want it at all. 

I have tested out my limits and know my capacity better now than I ever have. And I am also open to my capacity shifting and changing. I know what I can and cannot do. What I like and what I don’t like. What I need and what I don’t need. Where I am willing to make accommodations and where I need to ask for accommodations. I ask for help. I retreat and close out when I have been overstimulated and overwhelmed and need to check in with my own voice. 

I know when I need to outright refuse and everyday I’m getting more comfortable with what I don’t know. (and when I need to and when I don’t need to unpack that)

I don’t participate in everything anymore. My ego and my savior complex is so low. Now I don’t have to be the loudest in the room. I don’t have to have the answers. I don’t have to have the solutions. I don’t even need to show up anymore to fight the battles. Because there are so many others who are equipped and can rise up on their own behalf.

I have stepped back from just about everything and everybody to evaluate–if that is something or someone that still adds value to my life and if I still add value to it. I want to make sure that wherever I am adds value. 

Things I used to believe were permemenance in my life, I:ve learned to sit with and when to shift with. I can move my commitments and I don’t have to be responsible all the time. And there was so much more freedom and space I could have in my life through my loyalty and commitment to myself. 

There ain’t no blind loyalty in community with me no more. There is always accountability. 

I don’t want community for the sake of proximity or history or emotional bonding. I want a community that I have room and space to invest in. 

Everything has to serve my highest good. I want to be around people that make me feel good and challenge me to be better. I want to be around people that help me grow into my best self. 

I think I am just starting to realize after all of these years of hearing it what Kaneisha means when she says tread softly, Be gentle with yourself. Take your time. Guard your heart. 

You get to say no. You get to choose.

Be particular about where and how you make your investments. 

Risk is an investment. Faith is an investment. Fear is an investment.

No more haphazard a— decisions. No more decisions based on your emotionalism. 

I want you to make it a priority to not make anymore fear-based decisions. I want you to not sit around not making decisions either, cause you’ll give your power over to something or someone that you will resent everyday. Cause “Nobody can take you places you cannot take yourself”. Don’t give up so much that you don’t remember what it is you asked for, that you don’t remember yourself. Be so clear in your communication of your expectations there is no room for an error you did not make way to. 

I hope you make decisions out of love. I hope you make decisions out of joy. I hope you made decisions that feel good to your heart. I hope you make decisions that don’t make sense to anybody, but yourself and you do it anyway. I hope you won’t make their fears your own. I hope that you learn to quiet out those voices, so you can remember your own.

To trust yourself. To tend over yourself and render your own words, your own judgment as good.

As good enough. As worthy. As meaningful. As faithful. 

And that promise you heard from God was a reminder to trust the God inside yourself. 

Keep it always–to and from and for yourself. 

I love you. 

-Dominique 

“Love is the most spiritual thing that there is” said Roxane.

Notes on—seasons, fear, love, loss, giving and alignment.

This has been the happiest, most loving and most creative season of my life. This was a year I thought I would not survive. Three months ago, I was at my wits end with life. I didn’t have anything to give. Literally nothing. I didn’t have anything to give to show people I loved them. I didn’t even have time, emotional or spiritually capacity. I was absolutely exacerbated by life.

I remember thinking to myself, life is not suppose to be this painful.

I remember the day my car got repossessed. I was inside a hotel lobby putting a woman up in a hotel who was homeless with her grandchildren, whom I helped find resources for. Something that wasn’t my job, but I automatically moved into action cause that’s what I do. And a day before that I had just given a friend gas money who was on her last.

I don’t know what life is like without giving. I’ve seen it work so many times. But, I do know now that I’m going to more discerning with my giving of everything.

So much was taken away from me and yet and still I constantly gave. I was in jeopardy of losing my apartment, but never got evicted. I lost my car, but never went 24 hours without a car. I honestly was in so much financial distress I thought I might lose my mind.

We don’t talk enough about what financial instability does to your mental health. And how being in a constant state of crisis recalibrates the psyche, changing all your internal/external sensors and senses of safety.

But I will tell anyone and will say it again. I was willing to live in a car, on the street, with a friend to not go back to ANY of them jobs and be disrespected, mistreated and mishandled.

There is nothing I’m not willing to give up to get to joy.

Letting go is terrifying. Pivoting is terrifying. It’s hard to forge out on a path you cannot see. I really don’t believe that fear is ever going to leave you, but pushing through and trusting yourself always. Will never lead you astray. You will not lead you astray.

The reason you’re stuck is because of your unwillingness to be uncomfortable. The reason it’s not getting better is because of your unwillingness to go through a terrible, awful, very bad season.

Although, I don’t wish bad on nobody. And don’t believe you have to go through bad to get to get to good. But you got to be willing to want something different for yourself AND do something about it. You’ve got to be willing to surrender when it’s no longer in your control. You’ve got to be willing to let God and people work on your behalf. You’ve got to push through pain and fear when it’s really uncomfortable. You’ve got to trust yourself.

You don’t have to do what I did. But I want you to trust yourself enough to go through the process. Alone if you have to and let the people around you love on you.

You will always-will always land right where you need to go.

That’s a promise I hope you hold close to your heart.

I’m here as witness to you it gets better.

I went on 13 interviews before a job was created for me. Honestly all the jobs I have now were created for me and did not exist before I appeared. I was talking to my cousin Tori last night and she said, “you are the create a job for you kind of person”. I went from having no jobs to 5 at one point. I went from having no money to being able to save so much money I am able to bless other people. I loss my car and God gave me another car WAY BETTER than my old one. I am traveling and doing all the things I love and enjoy. I am doing work that matters to me and that I love, for Black women and Black community that I absolutely adore and adore me.

My daughter continues to blow me away with her gifts. She’s so smart. She’s testing off the charts in school. And just being the child she was always predestined to be. She ain’t named after Zora Neale Hurston for no reason.

I started losing weight not even on purpose, I didn’t change a thing. But it’s like my sister friend Passuh Dany says, “this is what it looks like to heal energetically align in real time”. My body no longer needs to protect itself with the weight.

I am in total alignment for my life.

The level of manifestation that’s been occurring in my life in this season, I have never seen before. I think about a thing if only for a moment and it happens. That’s cause I was willing. That’s cause I was open. That’s cause I let a lot of the shame go.

I’m willing to create a life on my own, of my own, on my terms, my values. And f- off to the rest.

What started out as the worst year has completely turned around. This year has gotten so good I don’t even want it to end. And it doesn’t have to cause we are all on our own timelines. And time is not as linear as we think. (Y’all might catch that later ).

If it was not for friends and community—who paid my rent at one point, loaned me their car for months so I would have a way to take my child to school, paid car notes, sent me money, gave me work or created jobs for me, bought me meals, willingness to take out loans if they had to, advocated for me every chance they could, thought enough to pray for me and kept sowing into my life. I DO NOT KNOW where I would be.

God restores better.

God will turn it around for you.

God will protect you.

When you see me living good, know I have sown good seed. I have paid for it in tears. In giving. In serving.

I am well loved.

And God did it.

-Dominique

 

Play and listen along. 

For my niece Jania. 

Almost three months ago now I resigned from my job with the local government. With that came a lot of questions from others about why and why now. I didn’t have a whole lot of answers and honestly didn’t feel the need to explain beyond, “God said”. For the first time in my life, I didn’t ask anyone what they thought I should do. I didn’t tell a soul, not even my closest friends I was quitting. I didn’t want anyone’s opinion or to talk myself out of God’s plan. 

After I sent that email to my boss, I felt so relieved and immediately started negotiating with God. I told God, I trust you, but here’s the thing, I am not sacrificing. God, I ain’t sacrificing sh-t. Not my car, not my apartment, getting my nails done when I want to, going to a fancy restaurant and ordering whatever I want off the menu. I am not living without. I have lived too many years in lack and I don’t plan to go back. YOU KNOW. So hear me when I tell you this, I have to live well. I have to live good. I want to live so well I won’t ever think I gave anything up to pursue what you told me. 

God never once made me sacrifice, but there was some sh-t I had to let go. 

God’s promises are always yes and amen. 

Notes on abundance, resigning from my corporate job, expansion and alignment. 

During the last two weeks of my job, I sent out a formal email and posted to social media to let everyone know I’d be leaving. And that set off a fire storm I never ever expected. People were both saddened about the resignation and excited about the possibilities of what I would do. I got offers out of nowhere for jobs, contracts and speaking engagements. Things I never once sent a resume, an email or proposal for. 

But, there was one offer that humbled me more than the others. One working on a huge project that was new, innovative, vital and something our community had never seen before. EXACTLY, the kind of thing I knew I wanted to do.

Before the offer came, my coworker and good friend Travis went to meet with the leaders of this project and gave them advice and direction on ways they could get their project needs met. The leaders liked our ideas and wanted to talk more. Travis with his big ole mouth asked them if they’d hired anyone yet to do this particular type of work and they said no and if he knew about anyone. And without hesitation he threw my name out there and said, “well…whoever this person is you should look at Dominique’s resume and model it after hers.” At that moment I was so glad I had a mask on to cover my embarrassment, because I knew for sure my face was beet mf red. Following his lead, the leaders asked me, if I would be willing to come on and assist them. I told them no immediately and I think you should find someone else. But, they didn’t give up. Walking to our cars again they suggested ways we could work around it and still have time to do Soul Work Rx.

Again, I said no. 

And yet when I came home that day I was so overwhelmed, shaky and crying knowing something about this project in particular was special. 

I called Travis and he said, “I know you ain’t call me thinking I was going to talk you out of taking this.” I don’t know what I was thinking, but I felt so vulnerable and honestly unworthy. Baby girl Dominique did not believe she should be chosen for an opportunity like this. Teenage Dominique did not think she was ready. Adult Dominique knew that she had worked her entire professional career for this moment. And yet all I could do was cry. 

I voice noted Kaneisha about it and she said, “Dominique, I am really confused as to why you’re crying about this and I want you to think about where this is coming from.” But it was my fifteen year old baby girl Jania’s voice that officially sent me over the edge. “Hi Miss Dominique, I just want to tell you congratulations.” 

Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. 

My teenage self needed to hear that so badly and hearing Jania’s voice was like a balm for my soul. Maybe, just maybe I could tell myself that I was deserving and that yes, I was up for the challenge. 

The next morning those same leaders called me and said we really want you to reconsider and to meet with us just one more time. 

I said, yes. 

I said yes to God and I am now doing everything I told God I wanted to do and more, when God first told me to quit my job and I wasn’t ready crying like a lil b– at Basil Thai for lunch with Roxane.

I went from working one job to six ya’ll. I promise there is lots of naps, vacations and so much balance. 

I will go from making a little under $67k a year to possibly tripling that in the next year, after taxes of course ;-). (It’s important we talk money and be real about how much we’re making, not to brag, but for Black women to know to always command your mf worth and add tax!)

Abundance happened, not because I wasn’t afraid, but because I said yes. And it wasn’t because I didn’t f-ck up and doubt myself. When God’s got a plan for your life, it’s going to happen anyway. I wrote down that I would be working for myself by January 2021 in July of 2020. I didn’t believe it. At that time, I was working a job making the most money I had ever made. I was going through a divorce. I was trying to buy a house. Paying off debts. I had a car note. A four year old baby starting her first year of school. And my most precious maternal force would die just one month later. I had everything to lose. 

And yet I did it anyway with no real plan, no savings, no back up, just faith truly the size of a mustard seed. Every time, I doubt or question God about all of this I get a sign, a person, a meal or some money. 

My life has been a series of faith walks. I’ve done this at least seven times in my life that I can count right off hand. 

1. Coming to Brunswick at 3 days old on the greyhound from Ft. Lauderdale
2. Leaving Brunswick to move in with my grandparents at 14 to Miami
3. Being the first one in my entire family to go to college at 18, 8 hrs from home in Tallahassee
4. Leaving my first professional job at 24 in Tallahasse and packing all my sh-t in my red chevy cobalt cause I hated and moving to VA
5. To moving back to Brunswick after meeting Zora’s daddy in only a few two months of knowing each other long distance
6. To leaving Zora’s daddy and moving out on my own 6 months into a new job with a one year old baby 
7. To resign from my last job. 

I have nothing but real tangible evidence that if I follow my heart and the voice of God it will work out. I have always betted on my damn self, because I’ve always had only myself. I’m still figuring it out. I am still free falling. It all hasn’t come together yet and I’m sorta kinda most days not alright with that, but I am making peace with it, as much as Virgo can do without order. I know even this evolution of myself is not the last of what I will do. But, I’m gonna find a damn way to enjoy the mf ride. 

I am going to continue to climb this path of expansion and follow the alignment. 

Because when you’ve reached your limit there is no capacity for growth. And that’s what we should all be after, the growth. I knew I wasn’t growing anymore where I was and that I would exhaust my creativity if I stayed any longer. I also knew that my soul wanted more than what it was being served. And if I stayed my authenticity would have diminished.

I had to let go of the need to feel worthy and deserving. I am processing through what it truly means to love and revere myself on a spiritual level. I am learning so much as my level of enlightenment and awareness grows. 

Now, to be honest with you I have accomplished more than I ever truly wanted to and my focus is less on career and “the work” and more on living and enjoying life. I am giving more of my energy to love and romance. I want to explore those areas of my life. So in my true Virgo nature, I have calculated how much time I can dedicate to all these jobs and how much mandatory vacation days I’m giving myself a month. Setting up boundaries with folks where there is no reciprocity. Pulling back from a public life and some of my deepest relationships. And like my sister Chrissy say, I’m collecting my àṣẹ. 

So Jania, this is for you baby girl. Life is hard, but it is also kind. Life can be so very divine if you give yourself over to it. You don’t have to work yourself to death to get it either. Learn this lesson early on that burnout should not be synonymous with your name. You don’t have to work hard, just strategically. You can do more in less time, than people spend lifetimes trying to master. But, mastering yourself baby girl and enjoying the present is the ultimate win in this lifetime. 

I’m so proud of you, me. And where we’re at and where we’re going.

I love you.

Listen and Read along

Sitting at my desk all the whispers of my life are telling me it’s time. 

It’s time for us to rise up and surrender from every comfort and lean into every desire.

We cannot be willing participants to the merry go round and limbo that we have chosen for ourselves. 

It’s time to go.

---

Owning your power is about surrendering to the whispers of your life. The whispers of your anointing. your call. your purpose. Surrendering is like going home to yourself. It is the tightest hug, the softest kisses, a pillow to rest your head from the storm. It is getting out into the thick of the storm and making a mess of yourself. You cannot save yourself. Only God can. Fully submitting over to your natural inclination, inside yourself. 

You are ready to go home. 

You are ready to see what God sees. Feel what God feels. Move how God moves. You possess all of the power. And yet you are afraid. You fear what it means to completely and utterly yield. 

You hear it and you think you have made a mistake. You have not. You are hearing the call. You have felt the call. Brush up against you, bury it inside yourself, planted in the mouths of your circle. 

You know you have the call. 

Because it’s been telling you to get everything in order. Make plans and preparations. Visions coming to you like never before. Pack up. Organize, get rid of some shit, because most of it cannot go. You must start over again. You are creating the version of your new lifetime. 

You are expanding.

For some of us this means a literal move. A job change, a clearing, a new path made way, a house upgrade, a shift in our health.  

Don’t you go against your instincts right now. Don’t you ignore it. Cause you will miss it in your disobedience. 

Surrender all of your ways. 

Your shadows. Your past. Everything. All of it is enough. You have everything you need. Because your power has always existed inside of yourself. It was your external circumstances that told you to go searching for something else. And it will never be enough, because it isn’t. You won’t ever get full off of anything outside of who you are. It is inauthentic to your mankind. To your makeup. To your origin. It does not belong to you.  

I know we have been taught to naturally go against our inclinations and to believe it won’t work. But this is no time to go against your instincts and follow rules, policy and structures. 

You were never meant to conform. 

There is no playbook for your life, dreams or desire. You just got to go out there and go for it. 

DO IT NOW. 

There is something bigger for all of us here than what we are currently settling for. 

And now is the time to make the biggest leaps of faith that your mind cannot fathom. 

Your soul knows. 

Your external circumstances are limited by the environment you have placed yourself into. You have the ability to change your circumstances and not surrender to it. You don’t agree with that shit anyway. 

Huge shifts are happening at super speed because of what God has designed to plant at this time to rebirth and unearth. 

There is some shit that you’re gonna have to let go of right now that I know you really want to hold on to, but it’s holding you hostage to the bigger possibilities of God. 

Death to it, death to the old thing. 

Those natural uges and inclinations you have- lean into and focus on it’s sound, it’s taste, it’s feeling. It is home for you. 

More energy. 

More time. 

More expansion. 

More innovation. 

More creativity. 

God wants you to submit over to the complete and utter whispers of your life. The call is to surrender. The power is in surrendering. 

My first known encounter of racism was at Satilla Marsh Elementary School. I was in the 5th grade and 10 years old. A group of Black students and I were written up and damn near suspended for “bullying and beating up” a white male student on the playground. This never happened. The white boy made it up.

Prior to this I had never been written up in my entire elementary school career. I had always excelled. Always the only 1 or 2 of a few Black kids in predominantly white schools in the “gifted” classes, whatever that means….I realized years later that white folks liked to make me not like the “other negroes” and a token to access their unobtainable privilege.

But the thing is—I have never wanted to be othered, special or unique. I have always tried to fit in. To purposely make myself small and shrink to not be seen. By 10, I’d already had enough of  being that multi-racial, fat, smart girl.

My mama and sister pointed out something to me today that I’ve been sitting with the last couple of hours. “Did you know your mouth twists up when you’re trying to talk white?” my mama said. “Yeah go back and look at cho lives” laughed my sister. My mama said that when I was in kindergarten I had learned to blend so well with white people that she would go to PTAs and wouldn’t even recognize me amongst a sea of white children, she would go in these settings and couldn’t even recognize the sound of her child’s voice.

How do you learn to contort yourself at 5?

To survive in white spaces at 5. To not see yourself reflected in an American history book until the fourth grade. And even then in a thick textbook only take up a 3 sentence paragraph.

How do you find resolve with that?

To intentionally seek out yourself and create Black spaces that smell, look and sound like you. You devour and create your own history notebook of Jet, Ebony, Right On and hundreds of pages from history.com

How do you at 22, leave an internship everyday at the FL State Attorney’s Office with your mouth hurting from trying to slowly morph words from a language and sound that feels unfamiliar to you?

How do you unlearn all that?

TBH, some of it you don’t, some of it’s so deep ingrained in parts of yourself it leaves a stain on your DNA. Some of it is a pattern you don’t even realize you’re doing anymore.

Over the last seven years I’ve intentionally learned to trust the sound of my inner voice.

It soothes, calls and challenges me in my discomfort.

Dear white folks-I know that knowing all Black Lives Matter is an unfamiliar territory and sound for you. But, it’s an act of necessary silence. Necessary bending. Necessary contortion. And a purposeful call to listen to the Black voices that have been trained to do this for you.

I promise you, if you sit still in this sound and resist it not, it will awaken you from the discomfort you are surely to learn.

 

Play audio version of text

I woke up one morning this week with the word requiem in my heart. I had heard the word requiem before, but honestly didn’t know what it meant. It took me until around 11am that wednesday morning to unbusy myself to google the word, requiem . Requiem-in the catholic tradition means a mass response to the souls of the dead. 

And indeed the requiem is here. 

Requiem did not come to me by accident. It was planted there. Requiem has a reckoning. A reckoning of a sound. And I knew it to be a sign of how our 2020 unfolded. 

2020 did exactly what it was laid out to do, clarify. It brought us crises. Fear. Opportunity.  Opportunity to see clearly, the very thing, that the business of living has distracted us from. 2020 in the midst of all the confusion and chaos of this world brought us clarity. The earth has begun to travail from the underlying consciousness and our humanity had no choice, but to respond. This year has forced us to lose the distractions, quarantine, lean in and fine tune. Come face to face with ourselves and the world around us. This global pandemic crisis has been indeed an incitement of fear, but also opportunity. 

Opportunity to dismantle the status quo and dismember our traditions, as these patterns are no longer serving us. In our personhood, in our agencies, in our business, in our agenda, in our families, and  in our society. IT’S NO LONGER WORKING. IT’S NO LONGER WORKING. Our defenses are down and at this juncture no longer necessary. That season is gone. 

The change makers are here. And the change makers are you. 

Will you listen to the fire inside of you?

Do you see how the external has responded to our internal response. 

This is generations long of spiritual warfare coming to life in human form. Our protests and our rally cries are the Kubler-Ross grief and loss model come to life. It is our groaning, it is our anger, it is our pain. It is our public memorial as a community of every breath we have lost in this fight.  

Dear Black people-we have a right to be messy and complicated, incohesive and not monolithic. We do not have to have the same tactics in this movement to punch this agenda forward in all areas. We do not have to agree. this change is not on us. This is on the establishment who created this “the powers that be.” But I ask you to stand with me in this, if we gon be up in arms, let’s be up in arms for all our brothers and sisters, for all our family members-not only our sons. Lest us covet and protect all of us. 

Say her name was never a marketing plug. It was an intentional conscious effort to uplift the name of Sandra Bland and all the women whose names we may never know. And to protest I know now is an act of breathing for Eric and George, running for Ahmaud and saying Sandra and Breona’s name. 

Our grief here is on display. 

For all the world to see. 

And I want you to intentionally sound the alarm in your life. 

Your rally cry. Your protest. Learn it’s sound deep inside of yourself. It may never be on anyone’s front line. It may be in your local community, it may be in your family, it may be behind a computer screen, it may be in preservation. But do not feel forced or moved to activate. An activist carves a lane for change. And every agenda is different. Your activism begins inside of your heart. 

Your activism may be in your own patterns of belief. Your own behavior. Your own thought processes. 

You own these and you are not defenseless and let no one tell you so.

Do not feel a pressure to perform this grief. Don’t you subdue it. Don’t you drown it out. Your rally cry may be taking a day off to deal with your own grief. Going home to hold your sons and daughters closely. 

Your rally cry is the reckoning and the power.   

Going into 2020 I wanted to do something a little bit different. So I decided to create a tangible experience to signify letting go of the past, grief, shame and toxicity. 

Together with a group of friends we decided to hold “A 2019 Release Ceremony” and here’s a few things we did. 

Preparation:

• Write a letter to yourself about what you intend to release.
• Fast the day of until after the ceremony (water only).

Location:

• Near a body of water or near nature. 
• Your home(backyard/bathroom/closet).
• A safe place.

Time:

• An hour before sunset or sunrise. 

Suggested materials:

• candle
• lighter
• materials to make a fire
• essential oil/blessing oil 
• sage
• your letter
• pen 
• paper
• water 
• hand towel
• bowl
• mediation music 
• crystals

Directions: Start today with writing down all that you would like to let go/rid yourself of. Don’t worry about what it looks like just get it out. The day of the ceremony fast, pray or mediate. If you can’t do either get still, turn off the tv and/or phone and sit with yourself. Once you arrive to the ceremony wear lose clothing and walk barefoot to your body of water with your bowl, if you’re at home run a bath add some salts, rose oil, etc, if you’re at a safe place take some distilled water or ocean water and place it into a bowl. Try your best to quiet your minds. Sit close to the earth whether inside or outside get literally grounded. Use the water how you choose: hands, feet, face. Where do you need to feel cleansed? In a burn safe space light a fire. Place your letter to burned, burn sage in your space, diffuse, light a candle. Purify. Using your language, raise your voices and move your body, your heart knows what to say and how it needs to vibrate. 

Following your chakras if you can, use the chart above to assist, anoint yourselves and/or each other with oil, leaving a positive affirmation with every place you touch. 

Embrace, feast together and write, draw out, vision board your intentions for the following year. 

Most importantly create your own ritual that feels natural and authentic to your own experience.  

Gather your girls, guys, your family, your spouse. There is power in coming into agreement with one another. 

“For where two or three gather…there am I with them.” 

We need each other. To lift us up. To keep us safe. To keep us accountable. To carry the weight when the road gets too hard.

This healing circle will never be unbroken.