Tag: writing

Thank you President Conroy, the Dominican Sisters, Gloria and my friend from junior high school – Jouslynn Griffin for inviting me to join you on your inaugural celebration of the African American family.

It is no accident that each of us are here to share this space in this moment. Look around you. Be aware of who else is in this environment. Some of us have been directly impacted by the recent wildfires, whereas at least everyone else knows someone. We have gathered in the safety of sanctuary to be present with one another. Others have come seeking an opportunity to advance their educational journeys in one of the finest institutions in the world and a safe place where girls and young adults can both be poured into with academic and spiritual enrichment, and explore who they are with affirmation and encouragement. Some of you may be current students and coming to learn, be seen, or be an ally to friends living their own Black experience. And then there are some of us that are just here to be. No matter why you are here, know you are in the right place. Together, we will write “Our” story – affirming our presence today and into the future.

You heard my bio – a collection of doing. But let me share who I am.

• I am the daughter of the late Dora Aliese Jones Brou.
• I am the granddaughter of the late Florence Orduna Hickerson and Aliese Lucille Robinson Jones. 
• I am the great granddaughter of Callie Butler, Manwilla Jones, Pearl Tolbert, and Bessie Hill. 
• I am the great, great granddaughter of Mary Looney Jones, Phoebe Briggs, Dora Durham Butler, Jennie Bell,  Velmer Saunders, Martha Howard, and Bruna Lopez.
• I am the great, great, great granddaughter of Minerva Foster Looney, Tena Bell, Mary Strange, Nancy Houston, 
• I am the great, great, great, great granddaughter of Roxanne Campbell 

Many of these women in my lineage experienced periods of enslavement and survived, both protecting their families and adopting in families separated from their own – kinship. Others lived through the period of post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era, migrating away from our southern roots in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to find new opportunities of freedom, safety and economic mobility in the Midwestern cities of Chicago and Omaha, NE. My mom and those of her generation, later migrated west first to Pasadena, CA – many who stayed until retirement before relocating back south. Each generation in its own right participated in their own form of resilience and resistance to settle in a place called “home” an elusive concept of place where they could experience a sense of belonging and purpose.

As their living descendent, I too have experienced this longing for home, journeying from Pasadena to New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and back to Los Angeles, and Pasadena adjacent in South Pas. The late bell hooks once stated that we are called home when we are ready to slow down and settle down. And it is not lost on me, that as soon as I moved in close proximity to the safest place in the world that I have known, after running away for so many years, it suddenly and violently erupts into transformative fires that call into question and reflection, the collective meaning of home, especially the meaning of home to Black folks and the Black family.

First, to begin, I would like to acknowledge the Chumash, Tataviam, and the Gabrielino-Tongva peoples who were the original caretakers of this land and all of their descendants who continue to thrive, work, preserve their culture, and continue to care for these lands today. It is an honor to be a guest in their homeland.

I would like to recognize and acknowledge the labor upon which our country, state, and institutions are built. We remember that our country was built on the labor of enslaved people who were kidnapped and brought to the US from the African continent and recognize the continued contribution of their survivors. We also acknowledge all immigrant and indigenous labor, including voluntary, involuntary, trafficked, forced, and undocumented peoples who contributed to the building of the country and continue to serve within our labor force. I particularly want to uplift our Indigenous communities – many who were involuntary forced into labor, and people of communities of Mexican, Central American, Fillipino, and Chinese descent who made significant contributions to the building of the state of California. I acknowledge labor inequities and the shared responsibility for combatting oppressive systems in our daily work.

Finally, I would like to open this gathering as a healing space that affirms the presence of each of you here today. In my spiritual tradition of Ifa, we use water to cleanse and cool spaces so that as we gather together, we can release the heavy thoughts on our mind and be present and supported in our convening. We say too that when coming to earth, water was asked to make sacrifice and it did rewarding it with the gift of creating a pathway forward wherever it flows. May our coming together, create a healing path of justice and transformation as we move forward in rebuilding our cities and nation and lives into one where all experience a sense of belonging.

Omi tutu – may water be cool

Ona tutu – may the road be cool

Ile tutu – may our homes be cool and peaceful

Emi tutu – may our spirits/hearts/emotions be cool

Ori tutu – may our heads be cool

Tutu laroye – may the crossroads where important decisions have to be made – be cool

Tutu egun – may those who came before us be cool and take pride in our efforts here on earth, as we continue to remember and uplift their righteous deeds performed when they were here.

Alashowada tutu – may our gathering be cool.

Ase – so it may be

Ase – so it may be

Ase – so it may be.

[ring bell]

Since the fires and even back in the early days of COVID – remembering the late Sci-fi and Afro-futurist writer Octavia Butler keeps emerging as her words have become guides to navigate these climate changing and politically divisive times. Elder Butler was a Pasadena resident and prolific writer who leveraged her historical knowing and future forecasting to create the Parable collection of stories and other series in the mid-90’s (the last century) that have in many ways described today’s conditions. I thus would like to honor her contribution in these words that I share today.  

When I think about my ancestors, I often think about what were the vision, stories, and gifts they focused on during their time that they hoped their future generations would draw upon to thrive and know who we were outside of projections and limitations put upon us because of our skin color, gender, sexual orientation, where we were born, and socio-economic status. As I prepared for today, what came up for me were themes of dreaming, community/kinship, joy, and home.

Let’s explore these themes.

Dreaming –

We must dare to dream. In honest conversation among ourselves as Black folks, although TicToks on manifestation and Black Girl Magic are trending, we are skeptical about dreaming and receiving the material results of our thoughts based on a history of having what we worked for – suddenly taken away. Maybe we have been dreaming of a new car to finally purchase one and it is stolen; maybe we landed a great summer job or internship to suddenly be laid-off; or maybe we finally acquired our parent’s home or were able to purchase a home of our own from the wealth they created throughout their lives – to have it suddenly destroyed in an unexpected wildfire – such as what has happened to so many.

We cannot let adversity stop up from dreaming. Dreaming is an act of writing ourselves into the future in the life we want and deserve. For Octavia Butler, writing was a process of harnessing the depths of the collective imagination, and encrypting the vision she saw onto paper as security for existence into the future so that we could be here today. I think of this act dreaming, imagining, and writing as creating a passport for the future.

Yes, we may be separated from the material manifestation of our dreams, however we should not stop dreaming out of fear, but instead honor the powerful ability to see something in our mind’s eye – often as a beacon during desperate times – and bring it to life. If you have done it once, you can do it again.

Community:

In her book, Parable of the Talents, Butler wrote about her imagined community of Earth Seed: Our gatherings, aside from weddings, funerals, welcomings, or holiday celebration, are discussions. They’re problem-solving session, they’re times of planning, healing, learning, creating, times of focusing, and reshaping ourselves.

By show of hands, has anyone in the room ever attended a family reunion or a high school or college homecoming? National or regional Divine 9 convention? Maybe a journey back to the Motherland or church summer revival? These are all forms of gathering.

Why do we participate? Gatherings are an important aspect of Black culture that hold community together and create a sense of belonging. Many of the examples we shared happened prior to cell phones and emails – people from across the South and other regions – knew when to come together based on the cycles we were in such as harvest or planting times or new and full moons, solstices, etc.

Gatherings create safe places for Black folks to come together and be seen again (meaning we have survived and are still alive); a place to share news on kinfolks and loved ones; express culture to keep knowledge and healthy traditions going; to dance and take up space in a world that wants to confine us.

Gatherings usually take place in spaces that hold meaning. I think about the Annual Turkey Tussle tradition that takes place at the Rose Bowl between Pasadena High School (my alma mater) and John Muir High School. Although a football showdown between the two schools, students and alumni and community members from all the local schools also attend and it is a homecoming for many who share memories of school, place, special events (prom and homecoming), and at a deeper level – people who share certain values, belief, mannerisms, language, etc – that have been informed by their experience.

On this campus, gatherings are the special rituals and ceremonies that build community and a shared identity. Rather a special welcoming for incoming students to special recognition upon graduating to mark the completion of this part of your journey and wish you well as you move on.

Joy

While the devastation from the fires is beyond comprehension, the response from the community to uplift those who have lost everything, has been joyful – a testament that joy comes from suffering – a protective response to sustain hope and purpose – driving forces to thrive in life.

At the same time, I want to clarify that joyfulness is not a substitution for trauma and pain, but a coping mechanism to get through it. Since the period of slavery, how we have responded in resistance to acts of dehumanization and subjugation, have been misappropriated to beliefs that we do not feel pain or suffer from burdensome emotions like other cultural groups. This is untrue and has led to health disparities experienced today. Death, loss, grief, depression, anger, injury, fear, etc. impact us on par as others, yet it is the intergenerational memory of the frequency of sudden loss and displacement that is embedded within our DNA – imprinted from living in a racial hierarchical world based on white supremacy – that we prepare and respond to tragedies with joy. We sing, we dance, we gather, we write, we laugh, we tell jokes, we mimic, we give back and take care of one another – at times, even when we ourselves have lost it all.

How many of you have participated in a mutual aid effort to help other during this time? Volunteering at a local relief center, donating goods, transporting goods to people in need, sheltering kinfolks who had to evacuate, donating to a GoFundMe, cooking a meal, collecting items for hygiene packages, etc. You are a living example of joy.

This goodness of the heart compliments the pain and this expression of love moves like water retaining a sense of connection and ties to place – these gestures can make a place feel like home.

Home

I have worked in the houselessness sector for nearly 30 years. I have transitioned from using the term homelessness to houselessness, because even in witnessing some of the most desperate situations – I have come to learn that like the concept of hope, we can never take the meaning of home away from someone – as that is often the dream they are holding onto that wakes them up each day and gives them something to strive towards – creates an act of motion – “going home”, “being home,” “looking for home,” “settling into home,” “rebuilding home.”

As I mentioned in the opening – it took me the journey of the first half of life to find home. Similarly, to a heroine’s journey – I thought “out there” would be better than where I was. I was someone who could feel alone in a crowded room – accepted, but not quite feeling like I belonged. Has anyone else ever had that feeling?

Well, it took some maturity within me to fully define what home even meant. This included a process of reading, research, and listening to stories from the houselessness sector. Through these experiences, I came to understand home as a framework of aligned values, a place where all of me was affirmed and I felt enough, where I felt safe and protected, where expressing myself came natural and was not ‘policed’, and where I could offer and receive love. Through this new awareness of what home could be – I found it through repairing relationships with my family; writing in an authentic voice; reconnecting with my high school sweetheart; and even being gifted a beautiful cottage home that not only supports me, but that somehow expands to allow us to temporarily shelter others in need.  

When I talk to family members, my partner, and friends on the meaning of Dena (Altadena and Pasadena) as home I often hear their stories that formed this region of the world as the place where the dreams of Black folks manifested into a safe pocket where they could experience safety, validation, financial security, wellbeing, and belonging.  It has its shadows too, but the good far outweighs the stress of the “isms” found in other parts of the region, state, nation, and world.

Exercise:

But this is my story. While I hope it may have inspired some thoughts – I want to know, what is your story? What does home mean to you?

Each of you should have an index card or two and a writing utensil. I think there is something magic about the act of writing, however if typing into your phone is easier – please do so by all means.

I am going to guide you through a series of questions with pauses in between so you can write what comes up for you, then we will take 5 minutes pairing up with a neighbor to share a few of your thoughts on the meaning of home.

1) Think of a time that you felt a sense of belonging. What were the cues in the physical environment that made you feel as if you belonged? E.g. sounds, sites, people, scents, physical comfort.

2) How did it feel to belong? What were the emotions or physiological responses (warmth, smiling, high/low heart rate)?

3) Now reflect on the concept of home. What does home mean to you?

4) Are there any overlaps between having a sense of belonging and home?

5) What do you need to carry the sentiment of belonging and home so that anywhere you go, you can find your welcoming place?  

• Now, turn to a neighbor.
• Introduce yourself and something about you – maybe – what brought you here today.
• One person will take up to 2 minutes to share what came up for you, and the other person will listen without interruption. Then switch. You will have about 5 to 6 minutes total.
• If we have time, I will then take a few examples from the audience.

Closing

In closing, I thank Flintridge Sacred Heart for hosting this space to reflect on the resiliency of the African American family and to share learnings from the history of our resilience to help us move through these times and the unknown ahead.

I hope that if this place is or becomes your place of residence, if you have recently repopulated your house after the fires, or you are in transition between here and there, until your house can be rebuilt – that you hold onto this meaning of home as a connecting strength gifted by the universe. That the uncomfortability of being in a new environment or the disruption of physical space does not hinder your sense of belonging or impede any other part of your identity. Find your people, your place, your song, your dance, your re-membering of who you are.

The specific key take-aways that I want you to remember are:

1) Dream yourself into the future that you imagine

2) Continue to gather in places of meaning where you are affirmed and are able to affirm others.

3) Lead with joy to compliment feelings of anger, grief, and loss, etc.

4) Find “home” for you and nurture the sacredness in its meaning so that the universe can meet you with love, validation, affirmation, connection and joy.

Close out with this affirmation from Octavia’s Parable of the Talents:

We have lived before

We will live again

We will be silk,

Stone,

Mind,

Star,

We will be scattered,

Gathered,

Molded,

Probed,

We will live,

And we will serve life.

We will shape God

And God will shape us

Again,

Always again,

Forever more.

God is change

And in the end

God prevails.

Thank you!