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I know it in my soul that Indigenous, Black, and Brown voices hold the native, sacred, and ancestral wisdom that will heal and restore our world. Together we are called to build a global and inter-generational legacy of healing and abundance for all.
Author's note: I wrote this post in October, but did not have the courage then to share it. I am keeping it and sharing it in order to provide full transparency to the imperfect and non-linear process to bring this labor of love to life.
Autumn has arrived. With its dry, crisp, cool air, and the reminder of the natural cycle of death and rebirth, endings and new beginnings, pointing its way towards Winter.
While changing seasons are very beautiful in the region where I live, I am not a fan of cold weather. I makes me uncomfortable and dries my skin and throat. It also brings about a sense of melancholy and gloom. If I had chosen for myself, I would probably live in the tropics, with its steady and glorious sunny days, heat, and humidity. However, I did not choose for myself, I have surrendered most of my big choices to where I feel God, Great Spirit, my inner Divine Light, my Source, my Creator is leading me. And I have no regrets. I have been blessed beyond measure and allowing my inner Divine Light to guide me has been the best choice I have made for myself.
That Divine Light guides me towards love at every turn. It guides me toward peace, joy, compassion, and solidarity. It squeezes my heart when I encounter need or suffering. It tells me that I have a role to play, not just for myself, but for my community. It reminds me that my own pain and suffering is a gift. A gift that expands my ability for compassion: a latin-rooted word meaning ‘to suffer with’. A gift that reminds me to slow down, and just be. A gift that reminds me that it is in my weakness that God is strong. A gift that reminds me of the complexity of human lives, and the need to treat each other kindly. A gift that reminds me that my value and worth is not given by what I produce, but rather by who made me.
I am still working to deconstruct within myself the falsehood that I am only as good as what I produce. I am also working to dispel the myth that there’s anything that I need to or that I can do to earn God’s love, or to be able to love myself. Love is already mine, within me. And it is already yours, within you.
Recently, I learned that there is such a thing as collective trauma. And that in many ways our society today is demonstrating the effects of people who have suffered greatly, regardless of the source of that suffering. I learned that this trauma is the glue that holds together the structures that separate us. The structures that separate us seek to divide, control, and exploit. And it leverages our trauma and our fears to wedge division amongst those who should be united. But we do not have to allow it. It has been demonstrated that developing and restoring relationships promotes healing. And healing relationships can allow us to develop the collective power to transform that which does not serve us, and transform our families, our health and wellbeing.
I believe that healing ourselves, our relationships, and our planet is the most important thing that we can do to correct the course of where we are heading as a human race. Without healing, we continue to transfer and perpetuate the very harm and injury that we have suffered ourselves. Healing our hearts and our relationships is not only the most important thing we can do, it is also the most accessible solution to so many of us. And I do not discount or underestimate the difficulty of healing chronic or life-threatening illness, or the difficulty of healing individual or inter-generational trauma.
Healing is a journey. It may take years, and it may never be fully complete. However, the process of restoring our relationship to our Source or Creator, with ourselves, with our family and friends, and also with our planet, can bring with it a huge amount of relief, of joy, of peace that allows us to continue moving forward in love and commitment to the world that we want to create. Those of us who have chosen to become agents for transformation are particularly called to embark on our own journeys of healing. Those of us in positions or postures of leadership, must prioritize healing as an avenue for restoring and repairing. As we restore and repair, we can create something new, we can invest a different future.
The promise of a different future is why I am pleased to announce the launch of The Healing Collective, an online community built to create space for indigenous, black, and brown people to tell their stories of healing and transformation. Storytelling is how African and Indigenous communities have passed down wisdom and healing for generations. Because many of our cultures tend to share stories and wisdom through oral traditions, history - as taught in classrooms today - is told from the perspectives of those outside our culture. And often those stories are filled with lies about who our ancestors were and what they managed to accomplish despite concerted efforts to remove, exploit, and demean our people and our culture.
Creating space for our stories to be not only told, but also documented, will ensure that future generations can have access to and be aware of who we were, how we healed from trauma, how we resisted separation and other-izing, and how we fought systems of domination, oppression, and exploitation during our years on this planet. One of my elders said to me: “Our struggle is not a marathon. It is a relay race”, and I felt it in my soul. The Healing Collective is my attempt to pass down a baton to future generations that is filled with love and wisdom for the battles that have yet to come. It is my attempt of creating a legacy of healing, wisdom, abundance, beauty, and joy that will equip our descendants to create a world according to their visions of what is possible for our people.
This space is open to all, as to be human is to need healing. However, the space will be curated by and for Indigenous, Black and Brown people, centering our voices, in service to our needs and the needs of our planet. I know it in my soul that Indigenous, Black, and Brown voices hold the native, sacred, and ancestral wisdom that will heal and restore our world. Together we are called to build a global and inter-generational legacy of healing and abundance for all. The Healing Collective will facilitate the sharing of wisdom that fosters the creation of healing legacies of abundance, beauty, and joy.
Why abundance? Because one of the greatest lies used to divide and exploit us is the myth of scarcity. Scarcity drives fear, and fear drives division. Scarcity is a lie that has those who have hoarded more than their fair share tell the rest of us: "There isn’t enough to go around for everyone." We know this is not true, and that it is used to justify exploitation and oppression and to maintain the status quo. By tapping into the Divine Abundance built into our world by our Source and Creator, we can begin to heal the wounds of poverty and injustice that plague so many of our communities. And when I talk about abundance, I am not talking about greed and excess, but rather talking about what is enough to live a happy and healthy live, something that we all deserve.
I am looking for partners and co-conspirators to help populate this space with amazing stories of healing and resilience, stories of joy and abundance, stories of art and beauty. Do you have a story to tell? Then please contact me through this website, and let’s heal collectively!
In love and abundance,
Itzbeth
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