Being in recovery frees me to heal my ancestral lineage.

Being in recovery frees me to heal my ancestral lineage.

My ancestors guided me to recovery because they didn’t want me living out the same patterns of addiction and dysfunction they had. They didn’t want me living in anguish or dying young at the mercy of systems of oppression and addiction.

My ancestors wanted me to be in recovery to be awake.

My ancestors wanted me to answer the call to heal the agony from colonization alive in my cells, numbed out from generations of colonial trauma. My ancestors wanted me to be in recovery to have a life worth living, to be alive and present for the work of liberation.

My ancestors wanted me to be in recovery to remember and celebrate the cultures of my African and Taino ancestors, who have been so suppressed, and be in community with others who are remembering and living rooted in their Indigenous cultures. 

My ancestors want me to bring my culture forward and use it to bring about new ways of being on the planet.

My colonizer ancestors wanted me to be in recovery to understand the harm they caused with compassion since their harm and trauma and the tension between my lineages lives on in my cells.

To understand what would drive someone to cause all of those levels of harm, to understand their dehumanization experience as people who have dehumanized others. 

My ancestors wanted me to be in recovery to contend with living with the colonizer and the colonized within me. They wanted me to offer perspective and compassion to others who have descended from colonizers as we heal and envision ways to live differently from the legacy of colonization. 

My colonizer ancestors wanted me to be in recovery to get out from under the spell of white supremacy, and to move forward with immense pride in my Blackness and my Indigenous roots. 

My ancestors want me to be in recovery to remember the love of Earth. To be part of the remembrance of this sacred relationship and the restoration of our close relationship with her through environmental justice. 

Engaging with ancestors can be uncomfortable, especially when we descend from ancestors who don’t want to contend with the harm they’ve caused or encourage us to perpetuate more harm. 

But when we work on the relationship, when they’ve got our back and we’ve set boundaries with them on what and how we will heal, it can help to get their support to further us in our healing for their benefit. It can help us identify where the intergenerational pain lives within us and finally heal it, so we can all be free and stop the cycles of harm.