I have dreams; all sorts of dreams
Learning about integrative healthcare and practicing accessible applications of it to serving my community. The skills of Midwifery. Herbalism. Astrology. Care. Integrity.
Ancestor Emma Dupree
I want to sing like a bird, my throat housing the contraction and expansion of my vocal cords. My ancestors must have been favoured by birds. My ancestors must have become birds, and birds must have become them. I immediately recognised that we learned to dance from them from the way one raised a wing and strutted. It was familiar, like I was there when it danced its first steps.
Of playing instruments, singing in playful harmony to the striking of a vibrating chord, singing a beat ahead of it. A beat behind it. Two beats above it. Three beats beneath. In tandem. Casting a spell, making geometry that my body recognises.
I have dreams. Learning to sew because I love beauty, because I am beautiful, because beauty is my birthright. Swimming, my body one with the flow of the water. My body cutting against the tension of the water - friction can be a site of transformation as well. There is everyday magic we make. There are spells we cast. There are meaningful things we do everyday outside building empires and creating shareholder value.
Learning more about my disabilities and embracing them. It's taken me a long while to get here. To survive the filth of the world, of a world that hates that I exist without being extractible. The grief has almost swallowed me whole. I have begged to die. I have tried to die. I am here wanting to know about the ways my body is different, and how I can live with it. Not in resignation, but in participation.
I have dreams, dreams that aren't throwaway vessels for forgettable sentiments. Dreams that hold me together. To honour my ancestors, commune with them, grow and tend to the gifts they've given me. To leave a better world behind for the next seven generations. To know the privilege of being human, to know the gift and divinity of being alive here. Why else do we come back? There is magic here, in this blood and sweat and tears.
Making friends. Being heart led here. To know that we find other humans based on values that are cultivated with love, not conviction bred in fear.
Being near the sea. Being near the sea finally. Meeting the sea with integrity. I had a dream where the sea called my name, and I responded with everything in me, like a bird oriented north when flying home.
In the dream, I remembered what it's like to see the ocean and every atom of you remembers that you came from her. Nature makes me an ardent believer over and over, renewing my faith in the cyclical nature of existence, the inherent nature of our purity, and the eternal journey towards goodness, over and over again. They tell me my father and mother are Adam and Hawaa, but it's the ocean that birthed me. I know her true name, in the fullness of my marrow, consisting of all that makes me corporeal and surreal. And I responded back to her, all of my cells calling out in recognition.
The ocean is Mother. Where I'm from. What I carry in me. I will never be apart from you. I have never been away from you, even when he took me apart and broke me.
