Melanated Kin Mentoring

The fear. The shame. The guilt.

All the layered and nuanced shit that comes from simply existing in a melanated body that has to deal with the daily microaggressions, denied privilege, and white-normative “feminism” and “enlightenment” that run rampant… well… pretty much everywhere.

And so you tell yourself it’s you.

There must be something wrong with you or with your approach.

Something you can {and WILL} handle… just as soon as you figure out what it is.

And so you scrap everything you’ve built {again} and go back to the drawing board, trying, trying, trying to nail down and locate the fucking THING that you have been conditioned to believe to be stopping you from standing in your full power.

Except…

That “thing”?

It’s been so deeply encoded into your body, that the actions you take only serve to REINFORCE the internalized racism, oppression, and SILENCING that have been stopping you in your tracks in the first place.

Well… Fuck.

And also? Fuck that noise.

Because there is another way into, and THROUGH, the madness.

It begins with excavating the encoding and pain and systemic trauma that have been living, silently, in your body for your entire life.

And from there…

You bare your everything.

Oh. And you actually feel SAFE, EMBODIED, and FREE doing it.

It’s not true, though.

You can USE it as fuel for calling forth the raw, wild medicine of your soul and TAKING A STAND for that medicine with everything you’ve got.

Because that’s what it’s gonna take, you know?

You drawing a line in the sand and then having the sovereign LIBERATION running through your fucking veins that will enable you to not only jump over that line…

But to erase that fucker behind you, as you stroll on your merry way, doing what you came here to do, without worrying about anyone or anything other than those who stand and walk WITH you.

And yes, I know… that can seem damn near impossible.

Because even the people who love you most, try to keep you safe by telling you NOT to, in fact, do the thing your soul is demanding and commanding of you in the night.

They say you’ll be ridiculed.

Harmed.

That you won’t be taken seriously unless you do it this other way that is, more, you know… safe.

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Except the safety they speak of is not inherent safety… It’s SITUATIONAL.

Meaning:

It’s safety that is only born of you fitting into whatever happens to be societally and culturally acceptable AT THE TIME.

And it’s the kind of safety that will keep you in the shackles that have silenced your power, voice, and expression for as long as you can remember.

Now, are they “wrong”?

Well yes… and no.

Remember, they also carry systemic trauma in their veins.

And our ancestors {and even some family members in current generations} were tortured, assaulted, sold, murdered, and more… anytime they had the “audacity” to rise above their station.

Or, you know, for simply being alive.

And so when our loved ones see us potentially stepping into a leadership/artistic/activist role around anything that seems outside of the norm, they want to keep us “safe” by ensuring that we do not, in fact, put a sign on our back that says “hey I’m a rabble rouser”.

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They want us to remain less… known.

But they’re not exactly “right”, either.

Because the only time things change for marginalized people, is when we reclaim our own safety within our own bodies.

And from there, we step into the medicine and mission born to our soul, while learning to help heal the lineage we are born into along the way.

Because anytime we rely on anything outside of ourselves to determine our safety, we have given up our power to that thing.

Be it society, a subculture, a family dynamic… anything.

So we remember how to exist as free women within our bodies and we say yes to the intrinsic magic and genius carving their way through our blood…

And then we do it all over again.

Day after day.

Breath after breath.

Forever and ever, amen.

But we don’t do it alone.

It takes a village… And this just might be yours.

There is an instinctual knowing in you.

One that society has tried to carve OUT of you.

But the Wilds are always there… in the darkest, forgotten corners of your soul… breathing their life into the lost spaces, soothing the pain of denied pleasure and play and freedom.

They cannot be tamed by anyone, no matter how hard some might try.

And this place of primal remembrance will guide you home.

Into the truth of who you are… and into why the medicine of your soul was born, specifically, to YOU.

Our bodies hold more than we acknowledge.

They carry the trauma of our ancestors… and of our lifetime.

And when we try to force them into sharing our art and message on the global stage {or, hell, at the local one}, but we haven’t first done the work to support our nervous system and integrate the habitual trauma responses ingrained into our very breath…

We only serve to re-traumatize our body and let her/them know that we, too, are not to be trusted with her/their safety.

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So… where do we go from here?

Well, it takes a willingness from us to be patient with our own remembrance and healing.

It requires us to not only acknowledge the systemic conditioning and patterns our bodies hold, but to also be willing to lean into them… to light the pyre…

And to then let it all die and be reborn in the elemental medicine of our soul.

MmmmmmmHMMMMMMMM...