A Legacy of Love

Honoring the bloodline

For much of our existence, we are taught to look everywhere BUT inside for connection. We are taught that our only way of peace, salvation, hope & home exists outside of us.

But what are we taught about what exist within us? For me, I learned about my legacy of love.

In light of our current political climate, I took some time on MLK day to revisit a book I never finished. Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community? written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It felt very relevant with MLK Day colliding with the inauguration this year. What will be the choice, the energy you feed into today? It’s giving that thing they say about the wolf you feed. And the wolf you feed is the one that grows. It seems like a choice we are often presented with whether we are aware or not. Faith or fear? Faith for me is a verb. It implies action in some form or another. A leap of faith or an answer to a call if you will. Karen Rose recently said, “the chaos outside need not be the chaos inside.”

So, I ask you, what is going on inside of you?

Back to the topic at hand, there was a section in the Black Power chapter of the above-mentioned book that stood out to me. Dr. King reflected on another book he’d read, The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth M Stampp. He goes into detail about some of the rules & manuals of owning a slave. He highlighted the top key rules that were consistent in all of the manuals as mentioned by Kenneth M Stampp:

1. Those who managed slaves had to maintain strict discipline. One master said, Unconditional submission is the only footing upon which slavery should be placed.” & another “The slave must know that his master is to govern absolutely, and he is to obey implicitly, that he is never, for a moment, to exercise either his will or judgement in the opposition to a positive order.”

2. The masters felt that they had to implant in the bondsman a consciousness of personal inferiority. This sense of inferiority was deliberately extended to his past. The slaveowners were convinced that in order to control the Negroes, the slaves “had to feel that African ancestry tainted them, that their color was a badge of degradation.

3. To awe the slaves with a sense of the masters’ enormous power. It was necessary various owners said, “to make them stand in fear.”

4. Attempt to “persuade the bondsman to take an interest in the master’s enterprise and to accept his standards of good conduct.”

5. “To impress Negros with their helplessness: to create in them a habit of perfect dependence upon their masters.”

I sat there stunned, shocked. I let it sink in. How could I have missed this before? As my mom recently told me, “You wouldn’t have heard it the same before.” Because this information has now presented itself, perhaps I am ready now.

I saw a direct reflection of my inner turmoil for the last few years as I’ve been actively breaking away from many systems of mental, physical and spiritual control. As much as I knew these systems weren’t my standard, there was a wiring in my brain that continued to try to fit into them. I saw how this same rhetoric used by people who were proudly slave masters was depicted in our modern-day hierarchal systems from politics to religion to the still very alive white supremist that exist in our society.

I saw the self-hate and abandonment that we keep cycling through individually. I saw how internalized racism rears its head to remind us that we were once seen as three-fifths of a person. I saw what birthed the fear and what fed it. We always talk about how the American dream was never ours but somehow, we still consciously and unconsciously reach for it.

When we begin to recover the pieces of our soul that have been unwilling pried from our bodies, we can then recognize there was a dream that WAS ours, that we know deeply and can STILL BE OURS. Community.

There was an existence that could love you back. And you my dear, deserve to be LOVED back. The section that stood out the most was the denial to our African Ancestry. I played back the many conversations I've had over my spiritual journey, even to my Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship. I thought about the engrained fear & the desire to deny what felt the most natural to me because it was not what our society and even more so many of our black communities would celebrate. It occurred to me that this system of beliefs would always reject the truths we feel in our hearts. It was designed that way. It never cared about your heart or your soul. And when you give space to unpack that, WOW what a presence you feel. What a FREEDOM that has remained dormant! “The Negro will only be truly free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with a pen and ink of assertive selfhood his own emancipation proclamation.” - DR. MLK JR.

Stepping into that freedom, I honor my ancestors proudly. I say their names and recall their stories. I see reflections of their journey in my own. I dedicate this time as an outward expression of what has been guiding me internally, what has brought me home to myself. Your ancestors are real, and very present with you today. Many of us were taught to think otherwise, and to shame others who believe that the ancestors walk among us, whispering to our hearts. But I know that honoring their divine presence in my life is the greatest act of love I could ever do. To deny your ancestors is to deny your own existence. If you sit down long enough and listen, you’d see how we are cycling old patterns that have been passed on to diminish what has always been near to us. Our legacy. Ignoring the past means there is no future.

What The Ancestors have brought me is a true connection & relationship with God the creator, a home in my heart, a legacy I can lean on & a community that loves me back...

And so that is what I mean, when I say, "my ancestors loved me so much they sent me roses to guide me home." Pick up your roses. And make your way back home.

“It won't be long now, ya hear? Pack light.”

This month, I will be diving into the legacy of love that has been left for me.

My hope for you is that you ask yourself the question, what legacy have I been left with & how do I hold onto it during these turbulent times? How do I share their stories, and heal their hearts through healing my own?

Hope is ancestral medicine. I wonder what else they have for you?

With so much love & holding onto my legacy of light,

Marasia Simone