Episode 03: Surrendering to Death
“Yet once I faced death as a life process, what is there possibly left for me to fear?
Who can ever really have power over me again?”
This week Brendane is back to talk about death.
In this long-awaited episode, we wade through European and non-European schools of thought to create a Black feminist spiritual-political definition of Death/death and Life/life. (Death ain’t the end, y’all. It’s a new beginning.) We explore the testimony of Sharon P. Holland's Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity and Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals.
In our Living in Alignment segment, we have our first listener reading for C. Thank you for being willing and vulnerable.
Finally, we end with some questions for compassionate self-reflection.
Share this episode with a friend who’s been through a tough winter. Encourage them that death always leads to a new beginning.
Listen to the episode here.
Read
Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity, Sharon P. Holland
The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde
Listen
One Sweet Day - Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men
Crossroads, Bones Thugz N Harmony
Until the End of Time - Tupac Shakur
Running - Tupac Resurrection Movie
Shit, Damn, M**********r - D’Angelo
Gratitude - India.arie
Together Again - Janet Jackson
Balm in Gilead - Nina Simone
Optmistic - Sounds of Blackness
Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Mayyadda, The People’s Psalmist, for allowing us to use her song On My Way for our title theme. Check out her newest album, Try&Remember.
Transcript
[Intro music. On My Way - Mayyadda]
[Introduction 0:10] Hello, and welcome to black. loved. free. A spiritual-political podcast dedicated to black spirituality, healing and black liberation. I am your host Brendane, a reluctant anthropologist, student of Black and African indigenous spirituality, and an energy healer.
So today we are forming a spiritual political definition of death. And let me tell you all this episode is going to be a little dense. But I'm going to try my best to keep it simple. I'm drawing from all these different theories, and well, non European scholars as well.
But before we get there, I wanted to participate in this interesting trend on Twitter, where folks were sharing one piece of lore about themselves. And one that I'll share that's related to this episode is that I tend to be around people when they get news of a loved one dying. This has been happening since I was in high school. I was there to witness a few of my friends, when they receive news about the death of their mothers, or their fathers, and I was there obviously, to comfort them and be a witness to a really painful moment in their lives. And that's continued through adulthood. And it's something that I don't take lightly. Obviously. I think that it means that I'll probably do some death doula work later on in life, when I have more life experience and when I've had children, but we'll see.
[1:50] So before we get started, I want to say thank you again, to everyone who's donated to the podcast so far. Every penny matters here. Like your donations, keep the proverbial lights on and it keeps us ad free. So if you would like to give to the podcast, please visit our website blacklovedandfreepodcast.com to donate.
If you want to give us feedback or suggest topics for a future episode, write us at blacklovedandfreepodcast@gmail.com. Or send us a DM on Instagram @blacklovedandfree.
Today, we will clear the air by defining death will read the testimony of Sharon P Holland and our girl Audre Lorde, aka Gamba Adisa, she's back to testify again, and we'll also receive some collective wisdom about dealing with death. We also have our very first listener reading today. So let's get into it.
[Clearing the Air 2:51] As always, we'll start by clearing the air. So join me in a deep breath. May this deep breath help us integrate a new understanding of death and reflect on how death might show up in our lives. So as you breathe, think about what you feel. Death can bring up many emotions. What does it bring up for you? And are you willing to feel something new about death? So let's do it.
Death has hella meanings according to dictionary.com. So buckle up y'all it-there's like 12 them. So death is defined as the act of dying by the end of life, the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism. For example, brain death, an instance of this which might be a death in the family. Letters published after his death. Death is the state of being dead, to lie still in death. Death can also mean extinction, destruction. It can also be a manner of dying, such as a hero's death.
And usually when death is seen with a capital letter, the agent of death personified. So it's usually represented as a man or a skeleton carrying a sythe. There were also other definitions of death on dictionary.com. So they also had a spiritual death, which I thought was really interesting. So spiritual death is defined as the loss or absence of spiritual life. And then underneath it said, Christian Science, the false belief that life comes to an end. Which I thought was interesting, and we'll come back to that. Death could also mean bloodshed or murder. And they use Hitler as an example for that, and or a cause or an occasion of death. So death really got a lot of meaning, right, in a European worldview. And when we talk about death in relationship to black people, there are so many academic ways to do this. Right. And so we all know that there are different schools of thought if we want to call it that talk about death in relationship to black people. And, of course, the impossibility. And I say impossibility, like "impossibility" and also "possibility", of black liberation and its relationship to black death and black life. And I'm not going to get shady here. I'm just going to talk about what I have defined death to be in my own work.
So if you don't know, I studied anthropology. I got my PhD in anthropology, my dissertation was based in Baltimore, Maryland. A city that is world renowned for death, right? Death and destruction in a lot of ways. I studied death and memory in social movements here. And through my studies, I have developed my own definition of death that I think helps ground this episode, but also hopefully our own spiritual political definition.
In my work, I distinguish between death with a lowercase d and death with an uppercase D. In life with a lowercase L and life with an uppercase L. And I do this because, again, English is very limited, and I know Spanish. But, you know, again, Spanish is also a European language. There are not many ways to say what I mean in the languages that I know. So the way that I'm able to signify differences is by using punctuation or capitalization in certain ways.
And so in this definition of death, lowercase death or uppercase Death, I am drawing upon Sharon Holland's, Raising the Dead, which was published in 2000. With this, I want to provide a different vocabulary for the discourse that I see on Twitter, or in academic circles, outside academic circles on Black Death and black life, in the hopes to actually show that the binary that's created between the two is actually false, right. And that being 10 toes down in black death as an analytic, a way to, quote unquote, live, right, a way to write, and or being 10 toes down in black life as a way to, quote unquote, live in a way to write, actually don't provide a path for black liberation.
So in an anti black, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal regime... Death with a capital D is the socially constructed realm for blackness and black people. And this realm does not only include social death, which is the inability to really participate fully in a civil life as a citizen. Right, but also premature death, gratuitous violence, natal alienation, which is a term that Orlando Patterson uses to describe how enslaved people around the world were separated from, really genealogies. So in Natal Alienation, you're not able to really lay claim to kinship in the same ways that people who aren't enslaved can. And we can think about that with our ancestors, right? Like, as an enslaved child? Well, one, someone can question that, like, what does it mean to be an enslaved child? Like when, quote unquote, children worked the same way that adults did, right? But you do not belong to your mother, right? You actually are alienated from your mother, you're separated from your mother, you could be sold to anyone. So kinship, and relationships, they didn't have the same kind of meaning as they did for people who weren't enslaved. And that was part a part of what it meant to be enslaved right through chattel slavery. And this is part of what it means to be marked as the living quote unquote, "living dead" or as death under anti black white supremacist, capitalist, sis hetero patriarchal regimes.
And so this realm that Death is in with a capital deep write functions to provide this illusion, that death with a lowercase d right is the natural end to life. And that this natural end to life, right, the literal giving of your last breath and no longer being able to move as a living being right, can be escaped or delayed through not embodying blackness.
So capital D Death is the void that's left by the stolen time labor and land from enslaved African people and their descendants. And this void and this theft right of time, of labor, of body, of land, has been naturalized through capitalist and imperialist exploitation.
So death as the slot for blackness becomes naturalized as part and parcel of the world. So we understand blackness, black people to live in this realm of capital D Death. So the construction of capital D Death, and its overlay with black Life with a capital L serves capitalism. And this is where I quote Sharon Holland, where she says "The death of black subjects or the invisibility of blackness serves to ward off a nation’s collective dread of the inevitable. Someone else bears the burden of the national id; someone else—always already—dies first." And so this logic of pushing blackness be be black, right? Black subjects, if you are part of that camp that believes in black subjects into death, right allows for a kind of mental trick for people for non black people. Right, they're able to believe that the inevitable, which is death with a lowercase d, is something that they won't face because that is, what is life, right for us. And so this logic undergirds the fantasy that wealth, health, whiteness, and maleness allows one to escape death with a lowercase d. And death is actually something that capitalists are horrified by, right, because it is a physical condition in which one can no longer participate in a capitalist economy. And so for capitalism to survive, death with a lowercase d must be eliminated. And so this happens through the illusion of the displacement onto black people. Right? Or, and or, through the pursuit of these life-saving technologies. Right, so life saving technologies, like the new fad diets, right, the medications, the androids that they're building, so that people can live forever, right? And if you really think about it, it's unnatural, to live forever, right? Nothing lives forever. The things that are around forever are the things that man made that are partially destroying the earth, right, like plastic.
So this pursue of everlasting life, we'll put it that way. Right. It's actually like undergirded by an anti black, white supremacist viewpoint of life and death, that makes death an enemy that was not a part of indigenous thinking. And so we have to unpack that, right? Like our fear of death that we talked about in last episode really is connected to having a European white supremacist understanding of what it means to be alive and to move through the world. European understandings of life and death rely on a linear vision of progress, that centers purpose. So if we think about life in a European viewpoint, right, it has a set beginning and ending and of course, the beginning of life is under contest right now because know, the political environment, right, folks are trying to argue that life starts at conception versus at birth for the purposes of enslaving people. But we'll get we will talk about that in another episode.
So, life starts at the beginning, wherever that beginning is marked for a person and then you have this elusive purpose, right? And this purpose as defined into by Greek philosopher Aristotle is something that you work towards is something that is materialistic. So your purpose is, is visible is something that that you can tap into. And your life then shows evidence of right? This purpose is something that you progress through life to achieve. So every stage of life is hierarchical, you move through it. And it's move forward in a linear fashion. So you have a beginning and an end, that moves in a straight line. This way of viewing life is actually antithetical to a lot of indigenous thinking about life, and it doesn't really actually serve the purpose of what we need spiritually.
So, to kind of work against this European understanding of life and death, I turned to the African scholar Marimba Ani, whose work "Yurugu", an African centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior - looks very thoroughly - like she did the damn thing. She looks very thoroughly at life and death and European philosophy, religion. If you're trying to change the way you see the world, this is a book to pick up and work through.
So she discusses purpose as defined by European science and philosophy, as quote, "an essential ingredient of the Progress mythology and the technical obsession that was subsequently developed in European culture". And she says that the African worldview presents an eternal cycle of life that offers a possibility of transcendence, of harmonious interrelationship, of wholeness, integration, and authentic organicity.
European culture actually looks at death as the scary end to things. Whereas African indigenous cultures in their cosmology in their understanding of life and death, see life more as a cycle or a circle than a line.
So death is not the end death is actually the gateway or the portal to another transcendent form of life. And so modifying the way that we understand death in this way allows for us to kind of let go of some of the fear of scariness of death.
European modern life is deeply tied to capitalism is deeply tied to anti blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, etc. So death needs to be scary. Death needs to be frightening to keep people to participate in institutions and systems that kill them.
It's really a mindfuck when you think about it. But, for me, reading these texts especially the texts of indigenous scholars, especially spending time with my ancestors has really taught me a lot about what it means to reconfigure my own view of death. And to think about it as something that is not scary, but actually could lead to a new beginning.
And so another spiritualist who also talks about death, and she is a yogi as well, describes that in some Yogi traditions, right, death is actually talked about as another level of liberation. Life is a dream. And death is actually a waking up in finding oneself freed from life. And so this is a Caroline Shola Arewa, who wrote "Opening to Spirit".
If we think about death differently, death as a portal death as a new beginning. What does that allow us to kind of embrace in our own movements, but also let go of? And we think about our attachments to life with a capital L. And so I can explain a little bit more about why I even capitalized life - what does that mean right, life of the capital L. And so I use a capital L to mark it as a social construction right rather than leave it to our common sense understanding which might be the ability to breathe, right? As opposed to life with a lowercase L, which may be granted to most beings who are alive. Right?
Life with a capital L is status, wealth and power achieved through an anti black patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist, cis-hetero sexist and ableist forms of oppression. Life with a capital L is an unachieved promise for many. And it is the aspiration for that status that wealth and that power under life with a capital L. And which requires a stonch refusal of death with a capital D right, but actually violently entangled all of us in a destructive relationship with each other and with the earth.
So life under these nested oppressive systems, is dependent upon the destruction, the exploitation of blackened people, and the very earth that feeds and houses this. Under capitalism, life with a capital L looks like the ability to consume to produce and to accumulate freely. Life becomes a series of accomplishments always gained at someone else's expense, even if the cost of that achievement is alienated from the achiever. Because death is the realm of the black, right, life with a capital L becomes a property of whiteness. So living no longer becomes about experiencing events or experiencing moments or experiencing these moments of transcendence. It's about getting all that you can, right.
To use Denzel Washington's words, right? I'm from round the way, I'm 'bout to leave you here with somethin' right? But life is about leaving here with something, but not just anything, right? It's achievements, wealth, material objects and time.
So Sharon Holland, poignantly ask us right, when living is something to be achieved and not experienced, and figurative and literal death are very much a part of the social landscape, how do people of color gain a sense of empowerment?
And so my answer to our question is that I believe that we must accept that death with a capital D, is the only possibility for black people, under the current regime that we live in. There is no way that we will be free. Until we accept that the only possibility for us no matter how much money we make, no matter what we do, no matter what we achieve, is death with a capital D. That is the realm that we are in. But not just stopping there, because there are school of folks who will stop there. Alright, but actually accepting this and allowing this to breathe as be the springboard for which we resist fear. We resist the fear of lowercase D death, we resist the fear of resistance. And that fear that compels us to desire the white construction of life, with the capital L.
So when we accept death with a lowercase D, as a natural process that is integrated into life, that actually might allow us to reimagine our relationship to power. Which is ultimately animated by blackness.
So to call that this section, because I know I told y'all it was kind of dense. So my apologies, feel free to ask me ask questions. I'd be like, Girl, what you mean. But I tried to condense all the theories into some into like 20 minutes, so forgive me.
But I wanted to round out this section with some input from our listeners.
I want to thank The Majestic Maij and Jeida K. Storey for answering the question on black loves free's, IG story.
I asked, "What does death mean to you?"
And so The Majestic Maij said quote, "death for m,e creates a space where decomposition and allows us to let go of formations and patterns that no longer shape or inspire us".
And Jeida said, quote, "death is a doorway, a portal, a bridge into a new reality and experience. It's a new beginning".
And so if we think about these definitions, right, it really takes the sting from death, as the Bible would say. And if we think about life, right, no longer is this line where you move from birth to death, but now a cycle in which death allows you to transcend And and enter into new realms perhaps as an ancestor, an elevated ancestor who lived no good life, right? Or an ancestor that needs to be elevated if you didn't, or you might not enter into the ancestral realm for a variety of reasons, depending on of course, what do you believe or your spiritual practices.
But if we begin to think about death as a new beginning, as something that's natural and integrated into life that allows us to let go of different formations and patterns that no longer shape or inspire us as a bridge into a new reality experience, we might experience life differently. And so in tarot - for those of you who read tarot, like myself - there is the death card and death card is 13. And you know, you'll see it in like Netflix series and other things where people pull the death card and everyone's like, "Oh, my God, somebody's gonna die". But that's, you know, that's not the case. In Tarot, death actually signals that new beginning. It says whatever needs to die or fall away from you in life now will and has the space to do that.
It is the 13th card, which in numerology reduces to the number four. But the 13 four pattern in numerology is actually a karmic number. And so when we think about karma, right, karma is literally about cycles, about circles about beginnings and endings. But coming back to things continually, right? Karma is not just I did something bad to you, so it's going to come back to me. It's a lot bigger than that. So we're going to bring all of these different definitions together in our next section where we talk about testimony.
[Testimony 26:55 ] So today, we'll be drawing from Sharon P Holland's, Raising the Dead: Readings of death and black subjectivity. And Audre Lorde's, The Cancer Journals.
Sharon P. Holland is the Townsend Ludington distinguished professor in American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a PhD in English and African American Studies from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is the author of Raising the Dead: readings of death and black subjectivity. Which won the Laura Romero First Book Prize from the American Studies Association in 2002. She's also the author of The erotic life of Racism, which is a theoretical project that explores the intersection of critical race, feminist and queer theory. She is currently finishing a decade long project, hum.animal.blackness, an investigation of the human-animal distinction and the place of discourse on blackness within that discussion. You can see her work on food, writing, and all things equestrian on her blog, the professor's table.
So of course, I discovered Dr. Holland's work while I was writing my dissertation and trying to think about death in a different way. And what I found really compelling was how she theorized death and its place in the national imaginary in the US. And so she says, quote, "in the imagined life of a US citizen, black subjects constantly haunt and therefore threaten the stability of the working nation".
So we start with the placement of black subjects, black people black-ness, right at the center of life in the nation, even if that life is like imagined. The book talks about haunting, and, of course, starts with Toni Morrison's "Beloved" to think about the black feminine body in person as a haunting figure, which is central to my own research. But in thinking about what, you know, just what the typical US citizen even thinks about right blackness, black people and death kind of sit at the center of their imaginary. And so she talks about blackness as a measure of how all peoples in the United States construct an intimate idea of their self in relationship to the nation. So by having in that little corner of their imagination, a black seed against which all action and therefore in the existential sense, all being, is differentiated. In other words, right, people don't know who they are without us. People don't know how to function in society without measuring their purpose. Right. And we talked about earlier in our definition, right, their purpose, their life and their death by what happens to black people. And we can think about this logically and thinking about when folks talk about in a mainstream way where violence happens and to whom it happens, right? There's always already a kind of imagined, black body or black standard for that violence.
Like when people call the human trafficking, white slavery. Why does the modifier white need to be in front of slavery? Unless they already imagined that slavery, and the horrible violence of trafficking, is something that can only happen to certain bodies, right? So, blackness being the measure of how people construct their intimate idea of self and if that blackness is tied to death, right. Then that means that the fear of death means a fear of blackness or fear of black people. But that's nothin' new. Right, and we talked about that last episode.
So as we move through the introduction, we get to really see how holen unfolds. This argument, where fear, death, imagery, imagination, and blackness are brought together to think about and to critique power. And she says, in quote, "like power itself, images of blackness are visible to everyone when the populace is called upon to solve a national problem. Like the end of welfare as we know it, for example. Yet the same black image, subject, remains oddly invisible, unseen, like the anonymous dead, when the nation conjures an image of itself. Might I then be so bold as to say that there is no such thing as power, without the fear and force of blackness? Which enacts it in the first place".
And so she goes on to talk about this power, right, and to critique this power that lies - I guess, if we were to hierarchize it, right - at the top of this amalgamation of blackness of image of imagination, of death. But the figure who really sits at the center of this is the black woman or the black female body. And without getting too technical, without getting too jargony about why there's a distinction between the two. But she goes into discussing Hortense Spiller's "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" in American grammar to really talk about how the central figure of this is the black female body. And the black female body then forms the passageway between human and non human right. The passageway between life and death, is marked by the body of the descendants of enslaved Africans.
So when we think about death, and its death with a capital D, right, and its connection to capitalism, its connection to anti blackness, right, we can really visualize that through the way that those who are identified and treated like black women are treated, how they're regarded in society. And that's putting it very simply, without going into the nuances and complexities around gender, because there are many, right. But when we think about death, the silencing around it the the ways in which both black and non black people assign death to black bodies and to black people, right? Black girls, black cis and trans women, black non-binary people who are femme experience a particular kind of violence and a particular kind of assignment to death. What do we do with capital D death?
And so this is what I want to pivot to Audre Lorde, my girl. And we, of course, have already talked about her in previous episodes. And of course, we'll use both of her names Audre Lorde and Gamba Adisa. And I think that Audre Lorde actually offers us a useful way to integrate all of these different meanings of death in our political movements. And she offers a view of death that I find to be really useful for living in these times. And she writes, "I am not supposed to exist. I carry death around in my body like a condemnation. But I do live. The bee flies. There must be some way to integrate death into living, neither ignoring it, nor giving into it." And so with that short piece of wisdom, I think that the integration of death into living is essential to surviving in the world where gratuitous anti black violence is the norm. And were a violent form of mis recognition, which is the inability to see black people as people, to see the way that we feel as feelings, to see the the way that we live as life, to see the way that we die as death that deserves retribution. When those things structure how we move through the world, our social and internal experiences, right to think about integrating that, as well as thinking about death with a lowercase D as a part of life. And resisting this kind of normative discourse, within and outside of black studies that to me really aligns itself with white supremacist thinking, and thinking that the way that white people have shaped the world is the only way that the world can be shaped. Relying on the ancestral knowledge and technology, that life is not linear, but circular, that death is a form of transcendence and transformation, and not submitting to what we've been told and shown is the meaning of our life, I think is one way that we integrate death into living.
So while it is true, that the social and premature physical death is the realm of the black, and that reality can be observed and felt, we know every day, what that reality is, and feels like, it is important for us to reclaim an understanding of death as a natural end of life. So I think the resistance to accepting death with a capital D, to truly reconciling with this socially constructed condition of the black and of black people, is actually a belief that life with a capital L. A life constructed by and through white supremacist capitalism is living and is life in truth.
And so this is a false dichotomy between black life and black death, that eliminates the possibility of a radical imagination because we've accepted these kind of enlightenment and you know, Greek philosopher-derived binaries. And so I'm gonna come for the respectability politics girlies that be like, you know, we can't do certain kind of action because you know, what would a whites think of us or whatever? And think about that, right?
Like at the core of respectability, politics and recognition, under a kind of white supremacist, anti black framework, is a self destructive acceptance of life with a capital L, that is dependent upon the destruction and exploitation of blackend people in the earth. So once we accept that death with a capital D is the only true way that European descendant folks and those who ascribe to anti blackness allow those of us who are black or blackend to move to the world, we can begin to imagine worlds beyond that. And if we rethink, right, this kind of capitalist belief that the natural end of life, death with a lowercase D is bad, what are the possibilities for what we're able to do? Right?
And Audre Lorde actually says this. She says, "Yet once I faced death as a life process. What is there possibly left for me to fear? Who can ever really have power over me again?"
So if we think about it, right? If we no longer fear death, who can ever really have power over us again, if we no longer fear death, or accept capital D death as the only slot of being in the worlds that we create, ould we be more willing to collectively imagine new life versus dying faster and in fear with the false hope of integration?
With that said, let's move to our last section and we are going to do something exciting and new today.
[Living in Alignment 39:53] So I have drawn some cards for a very brave listener. And I will call you "C" and C thank you so much for writing in and just sharing the impact that the podcast has had on you so far. We're so incredibly grateful. And thank you for being brave enough to be the first person getting a reading on the podcast.
I do readings for people, when I have the energy to do it. And this is kind of a simulation of what it is. And so C, you left it wide open. And so since the theme of the episode today, or the topic was death, I wanted to think about death in the African sense, right?
I wanted to think about it also in a kind of tarot sense of a new beginning. So I asked spirit, what is C's new beginning, what should C look forward to in her new beginning? And in response, also, your ancestral team are hilarious, and they love you very much. And so they have lots to say, and they say this moment of transition for you is just the beginning. There's so much more for you than what you could possibly imagine. And so I pulled the hierophant, the Four of Disks in reverse, and the Knight of disks. And I used the Afro Tarot II deck by Jessi Ujazi.
I asked for clarification on the hierophant. Because I was like, why was the hierophant doing here. And I got the nine of daggers, which is the nine of swords. And what I heard from your spirit team, what I heard from spirit, was that this new beginning for you requires a letting go of what might seem to be conventional ways of being, conventional ways of thinking, conventional ways of approaching the desires of your heart. And you've already started doing that. Right. But the things that you've told yourself, maybe in the past, that you weren't good enough, or you weren't smart enough, or you weren't beautiful enough, and for some reason, I heard like light enough, which is a concern, as darker skinned black women have right about desirability in certain spaces. But letting go of the anxiety and the worry and the stress that comes with observing the way that things are done conventionally. You're being called to do that, let go of that worry, that anxiety and that stress. This new direction is yours, is yours is for you to walk through, and is for you to lead others through. So letting the old ways of thinking, the things that you hold on to, that you thought were making you prosperous or keeping you safe, letting those go, because there's something that you're holding on to that's in you that you're scared to share boldly, and dashingly with us. But sharing this new beginning, sharing this moving forward doing things unconventionally is connected to your growth and is connected to your abundance. So it could be something that you're meant to write or something that you're meant to speak or something, something else that you've held deeply inside. And even as you're making this new beginning, and you're expressing yourself differently is something that still scares you to say, because you're unsure of who might walk away from you. And, again, why I say your answers are hilarious is because you know, they're laughing because they're like everyone who's walking away from you, were people that you held on to entirely too long to begin with. So you're being led to a new space, where you have new opportunities. New opportunities for abundance, new opportunities for prosperity. But in order for you to get there, you have to fully move in this, this death space can't hold on to the old and to the new. You have to let go and release what you're holding on to too tightly release what you're holding on to deep down inside. And of course, do it in a way that feels good to you. And I say good, but not safe. Because it may not necessarily feel completely safe to walk away from your past. But once you've done it, it will feel good. And you'll have a whole new view. And it might sound contradictory, but I hope you feel assured in the fact that you're moving on the right path. That's what's being shaken from you and what's falling from you is necessary and it's needed. And as you continue to pursue you, continue to love you, continue to pursue the desires of your own heart, those true desires and not just the conventional ones that we are known to expect, then you will feel so much joy. There was also a warning to be careful about who you share your most sacred parts of yourself with during this time of transition and rebirth. Not everyone around you can hold you in ways that support the person that you're becoming. But know that you are protected. And in time, you will know who to release, you'll know who to let go of, and you'll know, who to bring closer to you.
So I hope that is helpful. Girl, let me know if it resonates and if it doesn't, it might in the future. But I hope that feels constructive and edifying and supportive.
And the reason why I do this on the podcast is because Spirit can confirm what spirit might say to one person might be edifying for others.
[Collective Reading 46:10] But I also did pull a collective reading- collective energy. I asked spirit, what do I tell the listeners who listened to this podcast about thinking about their new beginning as we move into spring, right, so we're escaping the kind of death period of winter - not escaping, we're leaving the death period of winter, we're transitioning into the new life of spring.
And so what as a collective do we need to think about? And I pulled the nine of daggers, the ten of daggers, and the queen of staffs, and the moon in reverse.
And the nine of daggers, the ten of daggers are the nine of swords, the ten of swords in the traditional Rider Waite Tarot system. And these are cards that talks about worry and anxiety. And so we are coming from this space of worry and anxiety, and spirit is calling us to rest. And not just any kind of rest, though, like not a complete and total checkout from the world, which might be what we see in a moon card. But the kind of rest that is grounded in deep self reflection that's also matched with action.
So the moon in reverse, it speaks to some clarity, some truths, some exposure. So finding something being revealed and allowing ourselves to get back on track, allowing ourself to look at the time that we spent worrying. And also hopefully, learning and reflecting with ourselves so that we can move into the our queen of staff's era.
So the queen of staff's especially in this deck, honey... she's the boss ass bitch. She is wise, she's independent, she's beautiful, she's sensual, she's radiant, she's got a lot of firepower. Right? She can command that firepower at will and does so. And so when she shows up, she is bright. She brings abundance, she brings protection, she brings power, she brings sensuality, she brings a notion to live boldly and to express herself. And all of these things are important as we move into spring and into the rebirth of the earth. It's important for us to move into a space where we are truly commanding ourselves, truly mastering ourselves and releasing those anxieties and worries, so that we can move on to live in our own sensual, loving, powerful and protective and independent ways.
I also pulled some additional cards because I was like I got time today. So I pulled some oracle cards that I have from a Numerology deck. And all of the cards I pulled - I pulled three cards - they all have sixes. And so if you are familiar with numerology, six is a number that can connote transition. And so five is the number that precedes six. Five is a number that symbolizes change. So this change can happen, it's neutral, it just shifts right, it's it's quick. So something can change, but then six is about that transition, that move after that change. So something has shifted, and now there's a transition to accept or move through that change. And so six is about that transition.
And so I pulled three cards: love, which was six, relationship change, which was 56. And healing, which was 66.
So this spring for many of us who have been consumed by our worries, who have experienced the kind of death or defeat, that is symbolized by the ten of daggers, where it's literally in this deck, it's, it's a prostrate person who has like ten daggers in their back. And it's like, I've literally been stabbed in the back so many times that there's nothing else for me to do, but to submit, to lay my black ass down, and to reflect, and to rest.
Alright, so we have the moon in reverse, showing us that we have the clarity in this season, to move from these hard times and to move into our queen of staff era. And we have the independence, to look forward to. And we have the supportive energies also moving with us. So we have love, we have these changes in our relationship, we have healing, moving with us as we remove the daggers from our back and regain our strength.
So for some of us, as the season continues and unfolds, we will find so many relationships falling away from us. But ultimately, that is for our own healing. And we must heal because I mean, we can't fight wounded.
We must move through the cycles in life in order to prepare for what's to come. And in order to live the lives that we deserve, the lives that this white supremacist capitalist says hetero patriarchal structure would tell us that we don't deserve so as you walk into this spring, this chaotic eclipse season - and I'm not an astrologer, so I'm not going to speak on nuttin happening with the moon in the stars. Okay? Y'all can look that up with somebody else - this Mercury Retrograde, mercury in microbraids, and Gatorade, right? All the things that are happening, I want you to think and reflect on these questions.
What are the worries, the anxieties, the pains that I need to let go of?
What are the things that I need to let die in my life?
What are the things that I will no longer try to pour breath or water or spirit into, because they do not ultimately serve me?
What are the things the people the places that cause me harm, but I hold on to with the hope that they will change?
Is it time for me to let those relationships die?
What are the ways that I can invite life, love and healing into my own life?
And what are the ways that I can show up as my true, confident, beautiful, sensual, exciting self?
And if you hear that last question, and you're like, "huh girl? Confident, beautiful, sensual, exciting. I don't see myself that way", then what are the thoughts, the beliefs, the institutions, the systems that you need to let die, so that you can see yourself as who you are?
[Outro 53:38] Well, that's all I got for y'all today. I really wanted this episode to be about us about shifting our own thinking around death. So with that being said, that's all I got for y'all.
Thank you for taking the time to listen, I hope this episode gives you permission to rethink death and to integrate death into your living.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to my elevated ancestors and spirit guides, to the Most High God for giving me the inspiration and the fortitude to do this work. I do not take it lightly. I also want to thank and Andrew Vinales, our audio editor for all of their work.
Thank you for your wisdom to Sharon P. Holland.
And, of course our ancestor Audre Lorde, I honor you.
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And lastly, may you find a sacred, soft place to care for yourself and for each other. May you radiate in the truth that you are the one who saves you.
And may you find the strength to be black, loved and free.
Until next time, bye.
[Outro music. On My Way - Mayyadda]
