This rose means everything to me; it represents my Grandmother and her messages. I remember walking up to the house in DC that I now live in 7 years ago full of nostalgia but the years of abandonment of the home left the garden overrun with ivy, the inside falling apart, and the energy of the home I remembered was missing.
Luckily, at the beginning of 2013, I met an amazing soul, Dean, who helped me clear some of the garden, slice the ivy vines that had grown as thick as my thigh off the trees, and regain some composure to the garden outside.
Later that year, I had a very beautiful dream of the garden. I dreamt there was this red-orange rose bush blooming outside the front of my house. There wasn’t a rose bush there, but because of the dream, I woke determined to plant on there.
The morning of that dream, I walked out the back of my home and to my surprise, I see red-orange blooms on a bush in the garden. I had not noticed this bush before and I screamed with joy when I saw three little red-orange roses. I was looking for a sign that life was going to be okay and there was my Grandmother’s rose bush blooming.
I took this to mean a message from my Grandmother and every time I see the bush in flower, I know she is there with me.
Lately, for me, I’ve been on this personal journey into healing the matriarchal lineage in my family. Taking a step back and really paying attention to my patterns, what are mine, what is learned, what is programmed, and how can I change the course of our heritage through my current day actions?
It is a trip to take a step back and notice aspects of yourself that do not really belong to you. I feel like sometimes my life is not my own and I can be on autopilot with these programmings and ways of thinking. They surely do not really belong to me because I do not believe half the shit my head is saying.
Through daily meditation every morning and evening, I am unpacking and revealing more and more hidden “truths” locked under this persona I call, April.
As my friend Lucinda has reminded me lately, “All actions are permissible because there are no mistakes. Life happens as it does, so we do not make mistakes.” I am meditating on this as I look at the woman I am in my day-to-day world, the experiences I have, and the loss and gain of friendships.
There are some days when I just want to call my Grandmother, aka Bigmommy, and ask her what she thinks. See, she was the spiritual preceptor in the family, holding down the meditations, prayers, and medicine of the family. Her and I were connected telepathically and also in so many other ways.
What did a small town country, Black, Native American, woman have to do in her life to get to be in DC? How did she become the first black family to live on the block, have big family cars year after year, and afford to have a large family?
I am sure her story can never compare to the story I carry, but then at the same time, is my story unfolding this way due to her story? A story I will never know because I didn’t think to ask her those things while she was alive. I was lost until her death. Her dying propelled my spiritual walk exponentially. Almost as if her spirit had to leave this plane so mine could be groomed.
I walked home from a healing last week from Iris, an amazing woman in DC, and in that healing, I was re-awakened with my power. I was told my Grandmother is there to talk to me whenever I desire and there was the rose blooming when I came home.
I leave today for the beginning of my journey to Peru to continue the work on healing the maternal line in my family and this rose is blooming to remind me the strength of the female in my family and the messages from my Grandmother.
This time as I head to the jungle, I am not going to figure out who I am and why I am here. I am going to be in service by teaching yoga, I am going to learn about the Matriarchy, I am setting the intention to learn more about the plants in the jungle, and most importantly I am going to continue my daily meditation practice in a location where I can shut off the world for a few weeks, go inside, and release more patterns.
I am going there to be me.
Me inside the wild.
The wild inside me.
Wildly Yours,