06/09/2026
I come from a deeply religious family. I grew up in the missionary baptist sect of Christian faith. We never had altars in our home or talked about Orisha. We had no tethers to Africanism or Black Diasporic practices.
Despite my great grandmother being known for her hoodoo practices and faith and her relationship to the land, my mother's and grandmother's generation abandoned all of that work wholesale for white-centered and white-coded spirituality. My mother wouldn't even put up a picture of ancestors after they passed on because she said she wasn't about to be "worshipping" them. Hoodoo was deemed "demonic" and anything "secular" was, too.
It has taken so much work for me to reclaim and recall these parts of my Black life and identity. It has taken more than a decade for me to understand myself and commune with my ancestors in ways that feel like home.
Now, I am teaching my children about the rituals and practices that keep us grounded. We feed the corners of our home with offerings of black-eyed peas. We sweep from front to back. We set intentions at the new moon. We speak to our ancestors and charge our crystals. We touch soil and speak life over and through our plants. We grow food. We call in love and beauty through herbs and supplication.
Our children deserve to know who they are and whom they come from. They deserve the fullness of their Black lives. We owe them this.
Asé
Image:
Teach Black children ancestral veneration. Teach them about hoodoo. Destigmatize African and Black Diasporic faith practices.
