Generational Mending

It’s been a while.

I’ve been in my little cocoon, living life, drinking water, meditating and tending to my healing. I have a tendency to go into hibernation and step away from my business for months as a time. I know that’s probably not the best business model but since I’m still in the early stages I think that these breaks are crucial for me to take a step back to reflect on what I’m doing and the direction that I want to continue to move in. But more than the business this time away has been very eye opening. I deleted my old blog posts and revamped my website. Initially I felt like I was being pulled into a new direction in my spiritual walk and so I dove in head first. I started going to church. I got baptized. This was all new to me. And yet each step of the way Spirit was guiding me, holding my hand as I walked down this very unfamiliar path.

I’m not sure if I shared this in a post (honestly I say this all the time that even I get tired of hearing myself repeat this). I did not grow up in the church. I was raised with a more new age/spiritual upbringing. There were moments in my life where I did attend church and each time I had a wonderful experience. But I never stayed in church for long because often times the pastor would start talking about topics that I did not align with.

“How could God be a loving God but want me to fear him?”

This often perplexed me. Still does to this day if I’m honest with you. I had many critiques about the church but yet there was still a pull. I consider myself to be someone who honors what Spirit tells me. I may not understand it, may not even follow through with it all the way at times, but when I trust in the universe I find that what I was being guided to gives me greater clarity and understanding of myself. So after a couple of years of receiving many random messages and hints from Spirit I started attending church last year (2024).

I found a church that I liked and seemed to fit me and what I believe while also giving me that warm and fuzzy feeling. I still go to that church to this day. Lately I started asking Spirit why it was guiding me to go to church in the first place. One reason was that there were keys to some of the spiritual teachings from my upbringing that actually gave me deeper understanding through reading certain scriptures. Truth be told, Christianity as we know it today, has co-opted many of the indigenous practices from our African ancestors. There is truth in the Bible but you really need to weed through a lot of the surface layers to get to the meat at the core.

But that’s not the ultimate reason why Spirit had me going to church. In 2020 I connected with an ancestor of mine that I had never met before. My great, great grandmother. Ever since 2020 her presence has been close to me but I can never sense what she needs or why she’s become a part of my life. Regardless of the why I acknowledge her presence and I communicate with her as much as I can. That’s when I noticed something interesting. My great, great grandmother does not speak. Now you may be saying to yourself Of course she doesn’t speak, she’s a ghost or an energy. How would she speak? Well believe it or not many of my ancestors and even friends who I have had relationships with and passed away in my lifetime communicate with me often. Some people actually talk and use words while others speak telepathically or through emotions. But this ancestor does not speak because her mouth is shut and she does not (or cannot) speak telepathically.

So this led me down a rabbit hole to understand what may have caused my great, great grandmother to be silent. I have some revelations. I’ll share one.

Many of the women on my mother’s side of the family had what we call “the gift”. It’s basically the ability to see, hear and/or perceive subtle energies, a.k.a. ghosts or spirits. Now this is a gift that I have had since I was a child and I knew this. I knew that I could see and feel things that other people couldn’t. Fortunately for me my mother supported and uplifted this gift rather than shun it or call it demonic. In fact she did all that she could to foster this gift and let it flourish and shine. I had a sense (even as a child) that some of my great aunts also had this gift, but I never spoke about it with them.

Much of my extended family are church going people. Not strict but they do go. I’m not certain where they fall on the spectrum when it comes to strict or liberal christianity but I would say that they lean more on the liberal side. And this is something that I feel has evolved over time. Being raised in the church many of great aunts had to make a choice as to whether they would follow the church or follow something that they could not necessarily understand but knew they had a gift in. Understandably they chose the church. And I can’t fault them for making that decision. But I think where they got it wrong is making the assumption that they had to choose one over the other.

See, in all of my years of seeking, learning and studying other religions and spiritual beliefs and ideologies I have learned that there is one common thread in everything. There is God and God is in all. When I came into Christianity last year I wasn’t sure how I would feel and if I would abandon what I had grown up with in order to now go to church and develop a relationship with Jesus. And I’ll be honest with you, for a moment I did just that. I let go of some of my spiritual practices, threw out some of my African statues and got rid of one of my tarot decks (I couldn’t bear to part with one and still kept it). Then I looked around at my crystals and my herbs and wondered would I be getting rid of all of that stuff to. That’s when Spirit/God interceded and told me that I didn’t need to give all of those things up, I simply needed to sit down and cultivate a relationship with God. I needed to carve out time in my day to chat and not just pray or ask for things.

So I kept my crystals (thank God) while picking up my Bible and meditating. I can hold both and in fact doing so has brought me much closer to God. So close that my internal and external world has begun to shift and change quickly. I can see God’s hand in every aspect of my life when in the past I wasn’t able to. And that was with all the hippie dippy spiritual stuff. I don’t think I need to abandon anything when it comes to a spiritual practice or religion

“I just need God”