Whose story is told has everything to do with whose humanity we believe in. From our music stages, Manou’s voice channels for the voiceless. I have seen him literally give the shirt off his back many times in Africa and America to young Black and African brothers who wanted to carry a memento of him, the feeling they received in the wake of his revolutionary fervor. The fire we tend together alchemizes insidious distortions – empowering those who have been most harmed and excluded by existing systems of inequity.
Our home is host to a rainbow assortment of heroic thrivers. I think of our friend, Joseph, who is like a brother to us and comes here from St. Croix for respite every other year, or so, and is a Black man parenting his son, Wadada, and daughter, Isis. I think of Raquia’s last visit here. Raquia is part Mohawk, part Jewish, parenting her son, Raphael. Her son is also Black, and he dyed his curly Jewfro fiery red because, he said, he is “friends with the element of fire”. He is gentle, orbits his mom like a protector and looks directly into my eyes when we speak. I think of all our African relatives from Senegal arriving here from their inner-city dwellings in Providence, RI several times a year for celebrations, bursting into spontaneous drum and dance and speaking 4 languages, all at once. I think of our friend who is like a brother to us, AbbahZero, coming over every so often and speaking about the pain of loss; the excruciating loss of his young son, Justice, who drowned in Puerto Rico in February of 2022. AbbahZero’s youngest daughter, Lalibela, had been drumming with me for several weeks last year and we were all assembled on our front porch; Lalibela, her sister Shehim, their father, AbbahZero and Manou and I, talking about life and death, Africa and liberation. Before they left, AbbahZero said, “I have a song for you”. He stood even taller, mystically risen before our eyes, clad in vibrant Ethiopian robes, ivory, gold, plum and turquoise stripes, bold, wide, and vertical. He gave us a song, his textured voice simmering, ancient and warm, accompanied by his rhythmic heartbeat: “Let the healing begin. Heeeeeaaaalinn’…Heeeeaaaalinnn’… to end the sufferin’… healin’… let the healing begin… to end the sufferin’… healin’…. Heeeeeaaaaalllllinnnnnnnnn’……”
Alpha, from Senegal, who now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter, and Manu from Jamaica who also lives in Brooklyn came and stayed with us for a week earlier this year. They took walks in the woods, often. They both remarked, separately from the other, how quiet the land was. Their experience of being in the woods calmed their nervous systems. Inspired them. Alpha came back a month later and set up a recording studio in our music studio. We had a 7-day recording retreat focused on new music Manou and I will be releasing. Living in the city gives Alpha and Manu easy access to work, financial gain and close proximity to all the cultural and community assets they provide their kids. It also positions them closer to the dangers and downfalls effected by systemic inequities and oppressions. Access to land and rural spaces, to the peace and stillness that’s here is valuable. It’s life giving.
Many languages are spoken in our home: Wolof, African Creole, Senegal French, English and sometimes, Hebrew at sundown on Fridays. These earthwide voices- making our own unique and delectable gumbo of spoken word.
Stewarding our home brings about a convergence of leading-edge conversations and spontaneous, innovative cultural advancements. These orchestrations of galvanized love are meant to be integral to everyday life. These constant, soul-filled gatherings of people, of people of colors, taking place in our home, our sanctuary in the woods in Leverett is a revolution.
The wealth gap between white and black people in America is daunting. The median income for Black folk is a fraction of the median income for whites- 44k to 285k as of the 2022 census. Black folk own less than 1% of rural land in the U.S., while white folks own 96%.
Paying more than half of what we earned on rent with the rest going to bills and food was unsustainable. Seeking innovative, cooperative and communal means of securing economic progress is invigorating. Collapsing and rising and collapsing from not only the confronting of trauma injuries but the toll that poverty exacts on the body and spirit is harsh. Owning our home where we absorb the potency of the natural world, expand into the sacred quiet and privacy, lean into the comfort of organic space is a solution. Welcoming people of colors here is a solution. Home ownership providing economic advancement for our predominantly black family is a solution.
Manou and I are committed to breaking cycles of displacement and impoverishment. I’ve moved 9 times since Naia was born. Each move resulting from exorbitant increases in rent, house sales, or landlords moving back in. Each move more exhausting than the last. And what of Black ownership? Our home is a sanctuary delivering our family from overwhelming inequity embedded in systems. Every dawn, spirits of Africa arise in this home- my husband and our soulseeds. And then me. A blended Jew. Together we are a nexus of ancient and emerging worlds.
A question I’ve had since before Naia was born has been how does one participate in the attainment of physical freedom? Of wealth that resources such freedom? Of wealth that resources family? Safety? Progeny? Dreams? Creative outpouring? I have generated currency rooted in purpose. I have desired wealth that enables the fullest expression of artistic liberation. That supports security for my children and husband. That abolishes generational poverty. I have desired wealth that affirms my value. That affirms our value.
I recently wrote a letter to our member subscribers reflecting on an 11-month journey stewarding my mother’s journey to her ascension/ death. I call my mom, MaJoy. Before we moved MaJoy in to live with us, a couple of well-meaning friends told me that my MaJoy’s need came about at an inconvenient time, in part, because of the disruptions to practical matters that I’d been tending, like for instance increasing financial security and freedom. Yet MaJoy deserved to live out the remaining months of her life surrounded by life. Our elders deserve to be centered in family life.
Admission and acceptance have been essential to healing and manifesting where we are now. I grew up in an American version of poverty that was a breeding ground for mental illness, extreme parental neglect, domestic and gang violence. Manou grew up in even more poverty in Africa, and yet with more kindness and connection through his siblings and a brotherhood of friends. I had been practiced at living in despair. Then, willed a practice at living an extraordinary life. I had become practiced at both and at extracting myself from a numb unconscious. The medicine and expansion in music and dance, the love for and from our people, the miracle of childbirth and children, world changing perspectives through travel, the relief in rootedness warmed the shocks from yesteryear.
Pain can fool one into thinking that the things that come around like pandemics and death, war and broken bones, that still have you curling into a fetal position are the big threats. Or, MaJoy’s decline into dementia (I call my mother MaJoy), breaking her back and the sudden loss of essential boundaries that forgiveness in me relied on. But the really big threat is if trauma suspends action on your dreams. Or if it convinces you out of your dreams, if it compels you to stop becoming your dreams. Anything else simply becomes curriculum for the dream itself. For the extraordinary life one has awakened to. For the inheritance that all humans have as uniquely assigned creators.
I had been estranged from MaJoy for a couple of years, forgiven her from a distance. When we responded to her call from the nursing home in CT, picked her up from that off putting environment, I understood that I was going to forgive her up close.
11 months later, her dying process magnified acceptance, forgiveness, humor, breath. She’d regaled fantastical dementia stories. Her room glimmered with sweet and tender hush; Ashirah, Yahsi, Manou, me, friends, hospice miracle workers and formidably so, ancestors and god. Her dying amplified love.
Relationships can expand sense of self to include other- can shift boundaries to include the cosmos. This fact conjures a river running alongside this tenderly architected missive. It currents toward this sanctuary, and the soul family, community, Earthwide human family in our midst. It is our people, our sacred relationships who have resourced our fullness, our evolution and joy, our courage, championed our dreams and awakening. Our appreciation of you is the deep current of rivers.
These years I’ve been initiated through outliers of trauma which have provided a harvest for a syllabus on worth and want.
Sometimes wanting becomes met with the annihilation of it, of the child-like enthusiasm for more. Because wanting is born of one’s assumed position in the Cosmos- grace that endures. Sometimes the obliteration of it is taught. It was for Manou and I. One could only not see annihilation for so long before it announced itself. Along the life of wanting, annihilation, yearning, and wanting born of the Soul became the crucible for impoverishment and liberation. They are the nemesis that has called us forward to courageous reclamation of our divine inheritance, our rite of humanness, our responsibility to create.
I am sitting here now in our rainbow sanctuary. 3 weeks ago, 3 people and 2 cats lived here full time. Now, 8 people, 2 cats and 2 dogs live here. Because we are all centered in family life. In a cosm of soul-filled gathering. It’s how we expand sense of self and other, write and tell the story of our greater next, champion the dream and wake up in it, increase the sacred and divine in our human experience.
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