These Waters Run Deep

Yesterday I had a breakdown-breakthrough moment with a situation in my life. I was consumed with anger and frustration. I found myself yelling and screaming out of a rage that possessed me from remembering the past with a particular person. The story is not important anymore; it is what I gained in self-knowledge that I carry.  After I wiped my tears and drank a glass of water, I closed that chapter of my life. It is not constructive for me to rehash and retraumatize myself. I am stepping into a space of embracing compassion for that situation.

This morning, Iyanla Vanzant posted a very poignant quote that caught my attention immediately:

“Shhhh! Don’t tell that story again! Don’t utter another syllable about the pain, the losses that have left you broken, unless you are ready to recover right now. Stop dragging yourself back there, reminding yourself of how bad it was for you then unless it has some relevance to what you are doing right now. Each time you think about, talk about, or remember then, you put that energy squarely in the middle of your life right now.“

Shortly after, my sister called me to check on me after yesterday’s breakdown. I told her where I had come to with it, and we had this conversation about getting out of cycles of despair. It always brightens my day to talk to her, because she and I share the position that transcendence is possible through evolving. Though, we are not negating the shadows of life, it no longer serves us to go and drudge it back up. I seek to let my shadow pass over me so that I may bring more of my authentic self to the light. Instead of a place of blame, I seek to have more compassion for everyone I come into contact with, and exercise my healthier boundaries.

I have a practice of retiring poems and blog posts I’ve written in raw emotions during specific parts of my healing process. Retiring them and not looking at those words is how those wounds become faint scars. I am a strong supporter of sharing and telling stories. It gives our pain a voice. Yet, it is very easy to stay in that energy vortex if you keep telling the same story over and over without coming to a new place with it. It’s the difference between, “this happened to me!!” and “this happened to me…and this is what I did with it.”

Transcending the past is a powerful choice one must make. It does not mean that it didn’t happen; it means it no longer has power over your present and future. I remember that evolving out of my past trauma came with being tired of repeating the story. It caused anxiety in me just to tell the gory details. Going to therapy and having friends along the way support me served its purpose. At this height of the game, I can’t even so much as think about certain things in my past without feeling a little dizzy. Our thoughts and words are very powerful. For anyone who is ready to evolve out of their past and clear the way for the new, here are some questions to consider:

Who are you without the burden of your past?

Why are you still holding onto the hurt? What do you get out of it?

What would happen if you gave up the memory?

What are you resisting?

What is at stake if you stay trapped in old stories and memories?

What parts of the story do you still need to honor to properly let it go?

What do you want to take with you from the past? What lessons and healing have you received?

Who do you want to be in the here and the now?

I am creating a new sense of self, aware of who I am and am becoming. The past is too heavy to carry with me into that new world. And so it goes…

All praises due for this auspicious moment in your life! I string garlands of lotus blossoms, lay fresh white sheets as your receiving blanket and pour libations so that the ancestors may be properly welcomed for this event. Your rose petal bath has been drawn, the water sweeten with honey and perfumes. I have laid out the finest jewels, bracelets and rings to adorn you. Your dress will fit you like a glove. Your throne has been polished and prepared to receive you.

Dear Sister: I have been waiting for you patiently. It is an honor to crown a Queen.

You are so brave, my sister. Death is never easy to face. You were thrown into this descent knowing you would never be the same again. Uprooted from the familiar, the journey to the birth canal is wrought with fear and confusion. Surrender becomes your best friend. You’ve been called to dig deep and find your light. You found the power to let go of that former girl that no longer is. This moment is centuries in the making. There are forces in the world that wish you would stay dead. Woman after woman has been sacrificed and held down, while those that came before us prayed that someone as brave as you would break this cycle.

There was so much to release. So much to give up. Your old self-image. The friends that were never friends. The job that drained your life force. Your obsession with your sadness. The search for love in all the wrong places. It was so hard for you to become a woman after only being someone’s daughter. Those childish things had to end. You had to forgive so many, but most importantly, yourself. You had to let go. Stretched and pulled beyond your comfort, you were so scared for what you’ve been asked to perform.

Sister, the worst is over; enjoy the best of your self! It takes courage to commit to your path. In this world consumed by fear, it was so easy for you to forget who you are. There were so many dark years in which you stumbled and fell hard for everything that seemed like salvation. Forgive yourself, love. Everything has happened in perfect timing. This moment is what we call, the “rest and be thankful” phase. You’ve labored beautifully through all your trials, and now you are ready to listen to your body and give your light.

To be born is to make peace with death. I couldn’t be more proud of you. You knew the life you were living had to end to make room for the life you’ve dreamed of. Now is your moment to experience the ecstasy of freedom. We have all been patiently waiting for you to arrive. I knew it was just a matter of time. You transitioned. You gave it all up. You took responsibility for your life and decided to claim it. Go! Pursue your dreams now! Awaken to your full empowered self! A butterfly forcefully breaking the chrysalis. Come forth goddess!

For the last 6 years, I have thought about birth almost every single day. It started with a letter I wrote to my future children. The most important part of that letter was telling these future beings that I was working alchemy on myself to be golden enough to receive them. It was at that moment that something in me shifted, and I realized that to give birth in an intentional way, I must do it for myself first.

I have definitely been through my baby-craze phase, where I wanted more than anything to become pregnant. I suppose a big part of that was hormones, women around me having babies and a desire to be a mother. Reflecting on that time, I wanted to skip over the part of being my own woman and jump into motherhood as the only viable identity after college. Becoming a doula in 2010 put the brakes on that desire. The responsibility and reality of becoming a parent was real to me. I decided that I could wait longer to become a mother.

In the midst of this, I dealt with my own strife with my mother. I began to realize that having children in her early twenties ended my mother’s self-determination and the future she may have dreamed of. She had to do a lot of growing up all on her own because of the disconnection between her and my grandmother due to migration. I learned about what my mother wanted to do with her life – become a nurse – before she fell in love. I heard about the trials, tribulations and joys my mother endured raising 3 children close in age in the Bronx. The idea that her life was over in a certain respect filled me with dread. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be a mother anymore. Not at 20-something years old.

I began to realize somewhere in this process that I didn’t know what it meant to be a mother or be mothered. My mother was an exceptional mother, and cared for her children dearly. She sacrificed a lot for us, stayed home with us in our young age and for these things I am forever grateful. Emotionally, she was unavailable. I have come to understand that she couldn’t be because she wasn’t emotionally available for herself. I know I felt it when I experienced trauma at 6 years old, and shortly afterwards when she asked me if I wanted to be her friend. I felt like I lost my mother at that moment. I was reluctant to say yes but felt like I would hurt her feelings. From then on, I saw myself more like a second mother in the house than a daughter. That became a burden as I got older and became an adult; she began to share things about her life with me that, in retrospect, a mother shouldn’t tell her daughter. I wanted to be there for her though, knowing that the information was traumatizing me. I ended up taking care of my mother emotionally and ignoring myself. She has struggled with being bi-polar, which makes you unbalanced and at times, self-absorbed and self-deprecating. As life became  more mentally and emotionally complex for me, I felt the distance between us grow. I became aware that the respect I had for my mother was rooted in fear of making her angry. I never shared anything personal with her because I thought I’d be in trouble or that she couldn’t handle it. I’ve had a secret world for years that I never felt I could tell her about.

A year ago, I began to realize that I needed to be my own mother. My relationships with women through the years was affected by this need that I never knew how to ask of my mother. I wanted to be her daughter, not her friend. Consequently, I didn’t know how to balance this. Mothering myself was a struggle when I first began. I realized there was a child inside  me who needed a responsible adult to take over. That a 6 year old had been running the show in my life, and my inner wise woman had to step up. It was hard. I wanted to stay a child. Being responsible meant giving up childish things, like being aloof, flaky, unfocused and distracted. Mothering myself demanded that I take care of myself instead of wanting to be taken care of. It was a hard pill to swallow, but the bitterness of this medicine healed me.

The first step to mothering myself was admitting that I was not okay. Taking responsibility of my wounded self was painful but opened the door to rebirth. I had to hold and cradle myself, still slipping up along the way but holding myself accountable. I began to see that mothering myself brought about similar anxieties as those I have seen with pregnant women – of worrying if I was doing everything right, the fear of something happening to me under my care and ultimately, facing death and birth in the same breath. I learned that mothering myself meant I needed to be emotionally available for myself. That taking care of others before doing so for myself was harmful to my mental health. To be a mother to myself meant that my former self had to be put to rest. A chapter of my life had to end for a mother-woman to emerge. Birth  has made me develop a close relationship to death, and death has made birth all the more glorious.

I look forward to becoming a mother to another being in the future. I know it will come with fears, struggles and anxieties. I know that nothing I do will make me completely ready to face that initiation. Yet, giving myself the time to birth the woman I am becoming has shifted my desire to give birth to a child from an escape to an intention. When I stopped escaping from myself, I became intentional with what I did with my life. I thank my mother for everything she taught me. For the stories and things she shared with me. For her bravery in the face of all the pain she carries. Most of all, I thank her for birthing me. Because she had to face her own death. Now I understand the opportunity she was robbed of by a society that teaches women that motherhood is our only way to have status in the world. I am not just my mother’s daughter anymore, and this is the journey in reconciling the bridge between little girl to a self-actualized woman.

A couple of years ago, I took a workshop with this great woman, Molly May, called Writing From the Body. It came at a great time in my life, as I had begun to do healing around my sexual and emotional trauma. I was understanding then that our bodies held the story but was not sure how to access words. As a writer, I find myself writing and rewriting stories about my life constantly. There have been times I have refused to write in my journal because I was sick of writing the same pain over and over. Most of the time, giving the emotions a tangible form helped me heal the wounds.

There was a particular exercise during this workshop, in which we were encouraged to retell a story from a different perspective. We had spoken about how the way one tells their story is linked to what work one have done to shift what they made it mean. I am thinking about what I wrote that day, about experiencing a mixture of sexual and emotional trauma. This weekend I will be going to my alma mater, the State University of New York at New Paltz to an annual event called Take Back The Night. It is part of a larger movement of events around the globe who seek to end sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and all other forms of sexual violence. Take Back The Night empowers survivors in the healing process. This event was important to me during my undergraduate career because it was the first time I felt a community of women who had similar stories and traumas as my own. I was honored to be invited to talk at the event this year and have been thinking about what message I want to share with the women I will meet.

I’ve thought about how I have come to use words to communicate my experiences. I remember what it has sounded like. At first it had no words. All I had was feelings. Mostly fear, which is what prevented me from even writing it. Then, as I heard other women share their story, I knew I had one too. I used the words around and within me. I found that talking to my close kin and therapists about it helped me understand what I was feeling. That’s when I wrote about the shame and guilt that came from such experiences. I gave it words that felt right and some that felt uncomfortable. Something changed though, when I first began to seek therapy. The word trauma had always felt the most true to me; adding a specification clarified it for me even more.

A friend told me that I could give my experiences whatever vocabulary honored my feelings. I reserve all the intricate details of my experiences in my journal and therapeutic sessions with friends and healers. I learned from one of those sessions that retelling painful details were a way to retraumatize myself and those listening. My story then, is understanding that the emotional and sexual trauma did not define my life; I had felt like it was part of my identity. Using the word “experience” has made me look at my stories with more compassion for myself. I realized in writing about these things that it was what I made myself believe about who I am that did the most damage.

The human psyche is so delicate. I know that whatever thoughts I keep circling within me affected my well-being. The thoughts were of the memories but more than anything, it was negative self-talk. Making myself feel tainted and ashamed because of the internalized messages about sex I received from society. I discovered that it was more about the aftermath, about the wound. I came across a concept that made me examine these traumas from another place.

You are not responsible for having inflicted your wounds, but you are responsible to them. Those words struck me. It called for forgiveness of the experience, for the other person and mainly, for myself. Forgiveness is about making peace with the past. I have learned that forgiving began to lessen the charge around the memories. I was able to understand that these experiences stunted my ability to draw healthy boundaries. In forgiving myself for thinking it was my fault, it was also a way to tend to the wounds so that they could heal.

I used my writing to speak about using these experiences to realize that my ability to choose was taken from me. That surviving and living were two different things. In writing more about how all my life experiences were interconnected, I understood how violence to every person in my life made for the unpleasant and violent encounters, on emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual levels. The biggest thing I have learned is that releasing and being free of the pain and learning lessons from experiences were not mutually exclusive. I recognize that to reach a place of peace with a story, I’ve had to tell it and write it over and over again, so that every feeling inside me had an opportunity to speak. I wish to offer myself and other women ways to release the traumas we face on horrible scales. As we fight to eradicate violence, treating ourselves compassionately is vital. It is important that we also work to heal the wounds so we can remember we are whole. It wasn’t until I began to show compassion to myself that I could help and support others in healing. I have learned I am not anything that has happened to me, good or bad, but rather, I am what I have let those experiences do to who I am becoming.

I was raised to fear spirits. As a Catholic for 16 years of my life, I was indoctrinated with a deep fear of the occult, particularly the devil and anything that resembled it – including Santeria, Palo and other African Diasporic traditions. It’s funny though. My mother would always tell me, “muchacha, tu si eres mistica” (you’re such a mystic) throughout my childhood. And while I feared witchcraft, I was attracted to it.

My first memory of the occult was with my family. Without giving too many details, we dealt with a negative entity that scared the shit out of everyone. I never knew exactly what was happening but I felt something was not okay. It ended with two priests coming to the house, and after that, we all became devoutly Catholic. I began to fall into deep despair around this time.

I feel that the presence of this negative energy contributed to me experiencing sexual trauma at the age of 6, which was in sync with this time in my family’s history. I never told anyone and instead became reserved and quiet, retreating to the escape of my mind, books and writing. I felt like an evil, impure girl. I had dreams of the devil and upon waking, would feel an evil presence in my room. I would begin to pray all the Hail Marys and Our Fathers I could muster until it went away. I asked my mother to take me to a priest because I felt something was not right.

In the 2nd grade, my class produced a Jack & The Beanstalk play. I got a role as one of the witches. I was so overjoyed. My godmother made my outfit: I had a long black skirt and a cape. My teacher, Mrs. Flores, lent me her pointy witch hat, and I had a green turtleneck. I loved my costume so much, I wore it constantly and was a witch for Halloween. My mother disapproved of this, citing that Halloween was an evil holiday, and my witch costume disappeared.

I fed my mind more and more with books in my seclusion growing up, reading Greek mythology and other fantasy books that worked on my imagination. In the 7th grade, I had an experience that both thrilled me and scared me. A classmate came up to me a week before Halloween and asked me if I wanted to be part of a coven. I wanted so badly to say yes, but the fear put in me of the occult made me shy away. At the end of high school, I fell even deeper into my despair and depression. I hated God. I didn’t have the words for it then but I hated myself and my life. I tried to commit suicide in my senior year, to end the pain. My poetry was full of pain and sorrow, and I suffered quietly. I lost my faith in Catholicism.

It wasn’t until college that I felt free to explore my own spirituality. My depression began to lift as I felt myself transform with yoga and exploring witchcraft with peers. I began to understand that it was not evil but a way to connect with the Earth and my inner power. My despair and depression never went away though, and manifested itself in sexual obsession, alcohol and drugs. I was still self-destructive but had begun to find a way out.

I was still scared of Santeria when I met a woman who was very proud to be a bruja. She and I began to speak regularly on the phone. I told her about my budding interest in tarot cards and my exploration of Wicca. She told me about her path in Santeria and how it was changing her life. I was scared but excited. I began to read anything I could about this African tradition that I had been forbidden to explore in my life. The more I read, the more I felt like I had found something that made sense. The Orishas were not aloof like the Catholic god I was made to fear, but very much integrated into daily life. It was through this sister that I finally told my story of what happened to my family when I was 6. It was the first time someone gave me language for what I felt – this despair and feeling that something about that incident was unresolved and still plaguing me.

I experienced a great amount of strife with my mother because of my explorations into the occult, which began with a tarot deck, a glass of water and a candle. Another brother I met on the path told me about bovedas and espiritismo. I felt called. My mother was not amused. She was relentless, telling me I was worshiping the devil several times. I would try to quell my criticism of Catholicism, and bit my tongue, trying not to bring up what had happened so long ago.

My despair came to a head one summer where I was traumatized and was triggered into a deeper depressed; all my past pains came back strong. I ran straight to the Orishas. I couldn’t articulate it back then but I knew my pain needed otherworldly help. It was the first time the dark clouds in my life began to part. My ancestors started to whisper hints for me, opening up paths and making me feel more at ease. During this time, reading “Finding Soul on the Path to Orisha”, by Tobe Melora Correal, made me realize that trauma and pain gets passed from generation to generation. I began to understand from conversations with a priestess of Yemaya that there was healing and elevation our ancestors needed from us as much as we needed it from them. I slowly began to understand. Yet the fear still gripped me. I was unstable and unraveling quickly. My anxiety got so bad that I even walked away from the little relief I had. I was scared of spirits still and Catholicism had done its job in planting suspicion about the occult.

Last year was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was hanging on by a thread and was dealt a painful blow. I applied to nursing school and moved out of the South Bronx. Something inside me told me it was a bad idea to move back with my mother, but I naively believed that we could get past our spiritual war. It took less than 3 weeks for it to erupt. I felt it stewing the minute I stepped in. In a series of conversations, my mother pleaded with me and asked why, after being an altar server and finding me kneeling praying as a little girl, I would abandon Catholicism. I broke down crying and told her about the negative entity I had felt my whole life. We immediately went to my godmother’s house and it was all confirmed. I thought we had gotten somewhere, but boy was I wrong.

One evening, I got home and my mother began screaming at me. She told me everything I was into – Africa, yoga, my sorority, cutting my hair, my lifestyle change – was not of God. That I was going to lose everything and everyone if I didn’t renounce my beliefs and turn to Jesus. I don’t remember crying as hard as I did that night. For a moment, the fear of having to figure out where to go made me renounce. I found out quickly that I couldn’t even form the words. I couldn’t lie. I could never appease her by saying such an awful thing as denial of what I knew to be true.

I moved yet again, but this time I was losing it. The fresh trauma of losing my mother brought up every trauma I could imagine. I had thoughts of killing myself again. I cried every night. I tried to hold it together for nursing school. 5 weeks into the program, I woke up one morning shaking. And when I say shaking, it was uncontrollable. I went straight to my therapist at the time and he got me to agree to stay in the Crisis department of the hospital. I cried and faded in and out of sleep for 8 hours until my close friend came to get me. I felt like my life was over. I had finally gone crazy. I had finally lost my mind, as I had feared would happen my whole life.

From October 2012 until recently, I spent in therapy and getting spiritual help from master healers. I am grateful for the nervous breakdown. It finally allowed me to get to the bottom of so much of my psychological distress. It made me realize how much help I have needed. That my constant moving around was not simply out of irresponsibility or flightiness, as many would assume. I knew death had been chasing me for a long time.

My healing journey was taken to a whole new level one morning when a sister friend called me. She started talking about egun and the Orishas. I felt myself get scared of the practice again, yet something deep down inside tugged at me. Through her intervention, I spoke to a priest of Yemaya, who for the first time in my life, acknowledged that there was a negative energy haunting me, causing me despair, depression and pushing me near suicide. I was put under the protection of my egun and the Orishas, and focused all my energy on opening myself to their blessings.

The power of the Orishas and egun is unmatched. Every day as I poured my heart out and gave up my pain, I began to feel more whole.The spell of the last 20 years broke itself as my ancestors stood around me. It’s not that they weren’t ever there. It was that my eyes and heart were now ready to feel the power of my ache and their love work its wonders. My pain began to be replaced by this indescribable peace that I had never in my life felt. Tears of joy and gratitude were how I began to speak to my ancestors.

The path with Orisha and egun is not easy. Certainly not. There is a lot of work and sacrifice involved. From my experience, the work is deeply personal. It is a removing of all the rotten things that do not serve me on reaching my destiny, the one my Ori picked for me long before I got here. It is still nerve-wracking sometimes, to trust my gut and my spirit. Every day I must work at my self and my path. This time, the light in my life is undeniable. I feel stronger and braver than I have ever been in my life. I have come to understand that it is our separation from our roots and our story that causes our despair as Afro-descendant people. That a negative entity plagues us all in the form of generational trauma and internalized oppression. My life has been transformed by the Orishas. I want to shout it from the rooftops. For now, I will share my story in hopes that anyone listening understands the treasures their ancestors and spiritual life have for them.

Ache.

Entre los corazones que pusieron en mis manos
Reconocí pedazos semejante a los míos;
La diferencia es que yo se como recomponer y construir uno mas fuerte
Callo mis burlas por mi historia de entregar mi corazón también ciegamente
Igual que yo, querían escapar la soledad
Culpa mía las palabras románticas vacías
La mentira que esto era para siempre es un peso insoportable

Este corazón que acabo de hacer añicos fue una ves mi salvación;
Luego tuve que destrozarlo cuando mi rescato quiso mi libertad
Quiso que yo lo salvara, yo su Virgencita piadosa y inmaculada
Una mujer intocable y de sueños
Diosa en un altar de ilusiones
En un momento, caí de mi pedestal
Mis alas batieron mi jaula de oro violentamente
Una paloma que no pudo quedarse en mano

Mujer difícil, caprichosa y irresistible
Que vuela sin rumbo, corriendo con el viento
Lloro por mi alma mística
Arrepentida de prometer algo que nunca puedo dar
Este corazón gobernado por solo las estrellas y el amanecer
Un espíritu rebelde, libre completamente
Ya después de tantos años buscando que alguien me haga suya
Aquí estoy, sola
Como lo quise

No me queda mas nada que recorrer el mundo
Buscando solo momentos de éxtasis erótica
En cual mi cuerpo encendido prenda fuego
Encontrando otras llamas con quien bailar
Conociendo las montanas íntimamente
Desvelándome el los bosques secretos
Persiguió solamente la luna, amada y maestra mía
Creciendo y declinando, una y otra ves
Y de repente un hombre salvaje
Casado a la tierra y su propio corazón
Con quien seguir mi legado:
Una hija que tenga la herencia de su madre en su piel
Ella también silvestre y feliz con su propia compañía
Soy yegua negra despachando por la orilla del mar
Nunca regresando a lo que era

I’ve come a long way with my trials and tribulations associated with sexuality. I went from being completely disgusted by it, to overindulging and now where I am, consciously appreciating sexuality as my life force. Choosing a new name, Ynanna, has been an adventure in teaching people how to pronounce it and explaining where it comes from. One conversation made me laugh and also think more deeply about the goddess Inanna, my namesake, and her sacred sexuality. Ynanna is pronounced E-Na-Na. It rhymes with Ill-Nana.

The Ill-Nana, in the urban vernacular, is a euphemism for a tight, amazing, and overall badass pussy. It was also Foxy Brown’s debut album title. At first, I did not want to be associated with the word. I didn’t want to be sexualized. As I studied Inanna’s story, my feelings changed. Inanna is the goddess of war, sexual love (Eros) and fertility. She is known as the sacred prostitute. Sacred prostitution, temple prostitution, or religious prostitution is a sexual ritual performed in the context of religious worship, often as a form of fertility rite.

In ancient times, rituals were done to ensure the bounty of the land. Among the prayers that the gods would bless the lands, there was one major ritual, the Sacred Marriage. I have come to know it as hiero gamos, a sexual ritual between a king of, in this case, a Sumerian city-state and the High Priestess of Inanna, acting as the symbolic union between Inanna and her consort Dumuzi, the shepherd king. It is the harmonization of opposites.

As an archetype, it would be the facet that encompasses the sexual, romantic, platonic, soul connection, deep friendship, rapport, and empathic understanding type, with a desire to know and be known. The sacred prostitute, or sexual love goddess, is the part of a woman that is passionate, sings ecstatic songs of desire, self-adornment, and the delights of lovemaking.  She claims her needs assertively, celebrating her body.  The shadow side of that is the wounded sexual woman, repressed, ashamed and scared of her body; a woman that uses and is used for sex to gain attention or fulfill needs.

Carrying her name, my memories of how much I used to talk about my vagina in college came flooding back. If there was a conversation about sex happening at any given time, it was usually pinned on me as the one who started it. Though it was from an unhealthy place, I had begun to embrace sex and being proud of female sexuality with my new found college freedom. My shift to a healthy relationship with my yoni was influenced by not only its sexual prowess but also the magic of my menstrual cycle. I began to do research about the female reproductive system and my long-time interest in goddess culture led me to Venus, Inanna, Ochun and various facets of the goddess that were empowered sexually. Still, I carried shame around being sexual even with my indulgence.

Liberating myself from sexual shame came a few years after college in therapy, relationships and working with the Jade Egg. The Jade Egg is a weigh that a woman can use to help strengthen and manipulate the muscles in her pussy by working with the egg. It serves as a tool to cultivate sexual energy, to maintain or create healthy sexual organs, and to enhance your love life with yourself and with your partner(s). It also increases the biochemical health of the yoni and keeps it well lubricated, which is a key for optimal health. This powerful practice originated in ancient China. Ancient China had an immense interest in the relationship between sex, health and longevity. It is also connected to Taoist and Tantric practices of experiencing sex to heighten and enhance spiritual awareness.

Makeda Voletta introduced me to the concept of Sacred Sexuality. I began to break some of my walls down in speaking to her. I was able to take her Sensual Strength Training Class and purchase a Jade Egg. In her class, I learned how my vaginal walls contained trauma. Dancing to African beats in her class, I learned how to control my hips, push my sexual energy up to the crown of my head, use my life force to heal myself and the power of my orgasms.

I thought I had worked out my shame until the Ill-Nana remark came. Working with the Jade Egg has certainly tightened my pussy’s muscles, expanding my capacity for sexual pleasure. It is something I pride myself in. I’ve received compliments on its talent, skills, and dexterity. I have promoted the use of the egg to any woman who would listen to me. The orgasms are intense. I have never felt so in touch with my pussy in my life. I have come to understand how powerful the connection to my sensual feminine energy has grown with cultivation. It is the first time my sexuality has not been for male consumption; it has been worked with to grow and heal myself, my chakras and life.

I’ve thought about writing this post for a long time and forced myself because I knew I was holding back something very integral about my personality. Most of us live repressed and trapped in our bodies due to societal myths about sexuality, particularly for women. Puritan beliefs and a fear of the power of sex have distorted our views on how to approach and experience sex. We also collectively have suffered from many sexual traumas that have paralyzed many of us. I know for myself, that has been a big part of shutting down and not being a woman full of life and vitality in the past. In therapy, I worked through trauma and have realized that the sexual experiences have affected my entire life.

I decided one night to go ahead and lean into my discomfort about the Ill-Nana. I threw on Foxy Brown’s song and loved it, in all its raw praise of it. I began to challenge what was wrong about me being proud of not only my pussy but my sexual power as a woman. I dared myself one weekend with my fam to use it when helping people pronounce Ynanna:

“Ynanna…like the Ill-Nana.”

I remember feeling pangs of shame show up and faced that shame. Exploring that shame, I realized I was still holding onto the limiting belief that talking about my pussy in an empowered, tongue-in-cheek fashion was inappropriate in some way. It was a belief engrained in me over the years of exposure to Catholicism and contemporary society. As I continue to grow in my name, Ynanna, I learn more about the divine and expansion nature of sex as a gateway to a whole new way of life. I have every reason to be proud of my sensuality, sexuality, womanhood and praise my Ill-Nana. I give myself permission to freely celebrated my innate sexual and womanly nature.

Links for More Info:
Saida Desilets, The Succulence Revolution (this is the website I got my Nephrite Jade egg)

Jade Eggs Info

The importance of how the experiences of my ancestors affect my life was introduced to me as a Black Studies major in college. It wasn’t until the last couple of years that I not only understood that but also felt the effects. I would like to share my thoughts of how I came to hear and feel the trauma to the point of understanding how we are repeating the choices and lives of our foremothers and forefathers.

Writing my book, “Hija De Mi Madre”, made me reflect on what that means. Much of my views on sex, spirituality and the world were influenced by my environment growing up. Getting my hair relaxed at age 6 and watching all the women around me follow suit religiously made me reject my natural hair. Portrayals of Latinos as only resembling White people made me feel like there was something wrong with me. There is also the element of mental health. I had a vague understanding growing up about what women around me seemed to suffer from, “los nervios”, and ended up seeking therapy to heal from them. Through my work with mental health and observing how it affects African American and Latino communities, I began to notice the silence around the cycles that continue not just mentally but on all levels. Moreover, I saw how feelings of disempowerment have served as an obstacle to healing and transcending oppression.

I often have difficulty talking about generational trauma because I don’t want to come off as accusing anyone of doing a bad job at raising myself and my generation. Our families and communities have done what they could given the circumstances created by the dominant culture. Yet, I feel the necessity to talk about how so many of us are carrying the things we learned just by experiencing life with our parents and families. Speaking as an Afro-Latina, analyzing the Latino culture, my own experiences and sharing with others, there is a legacy of oppression that has become internalized from colonial times and beyond.

Internalized oppression stems from people being targeted and discriminated against. Often, the myths and misinformation that society communicates to them about their sociopolitical group are internalized – they believe and make it a part of their self-image. Exploited people such as African Americans, Latinos, women, LGBTQ individuals, and impoverished populations then act as if they were true. In our contemporary society, this internalized oppression manifests in our urban communities, relationships, beauty regimes, and families.

Latinos have had to endure various levels of oppression in Latin America and in the United States. From the time of conquistadors through the enslavement until now, the ideologies of white supremacist, patriarchal and capitalist imperialists have sought to undermine the self-determination of the African and indigenous people in the Caribbean and South America. The amount of trauma that our ancestors endured was intense and unfortunately, has never properly been addressed. Various forms of violence, lack of social mobility, feelings of unworthiness, religious intolerance, racial biases and family histories have been inherited through generations on a personal and collective level.

Not all members of groups that are discriminated against or oppressed necessarily turn stereotypes inward. Many remain proud of their heritage, or are able to take prominent places in the larger society through their exercise of effort, intelligence, talent, interpersonal skill, and self-respect. However, the effects of internalized oppression are present in our communities. As we work to change the conditions of oppressed people in the world, the necessity to speak about how breaking the personal cycles within ourselves, families and communities becomes imperative.

When I think about how These Waters Run Deep came to be, I take myself back to where I was in my life when it all came about. I was living close to Riverdale at the time. In those days, I was working as an art model in various art schools in NYC and working at my old stomping ground, Youth Ministries for Peace & Justice (YMPJ). It was during this time in my city adventures that I met Lizzy Fox and Sharon De La Cruz.

I saw Lizzy at a poetry performance and was so taken by her piece that I asked her to hang out. I was interested in using my poetry and art to convey powerful messages and she was on the same wavelength. We would meet once a week and took on our healing journeys through our poems. As we worked on our first collaboration, the idea of creating belly casts as a way to speak about health disparities for women of color came to me.

Sharon and I worked at YMPJ together. We came to find out that we were both deeply involved in our Womanist ideology through our social justice work and through our art. Sharon is a talented graffiti artist whose art speaks in political volumes. By the end of 2010, I wrote out all my ideas and was motivated to create a call for mothers and begin the 13 belly cast cycle. My first belly cast was created after many conversations with Sharon and an invitation from her to  present my project at Female Flava, an annual conference at The Point CDC, a non-profit dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx:

I began to search for the first volunteer. As the conference got closer, I began to worry. The Universe interceded and brought me to Mercy Tullis. I took the bus to Co-Op City to meet Mercy. She was referred to me through a friend who I told about my project. Mercy was 37 weeks at the time of our meeting. I spent the day before scrambling to find gauze and plaster of Paris, reading up as much as I could on casting. I was nervous, wondering if I knew what I was doing.

Mercy was very excited to meet me. She had the most adorable son who was intrigued that I was in the house. Mercy’s father was also in the house, helping her with the last few weeks of her pregnancy. We spoke first about my project, and she shared more about herself. Then we began. I did the belly cast in her room as I spoke to her and the baby. I learned quickly that my favorite part of this project is rubbing the mother’s belly with Vaseline. The Vaseline serves to prevent the plaster from adhering to the skin. She was smiling as I rubbed her belly and talked to both of them. I almost cried of happiness. Mercy felt like I was serving her and I was honored that she was volunteering for my vision.

Her father was stunned that I was doing this for free. He couldn’t believe that I was doing the project out of my passion and heart. For my efforts, he gave me a shot of a lovely rum from Honduras. It was his way of thanking me for giving his daughter special attention during the last part of her pregnancy. Mercy is a Black, Honduran, American with Jamaican roots, 35 year-old woman married to a Pakistani-American Muslim.  She has taught English Language Arts to thousands of our New York City public school children for 11 years.  Mercy took a two-year hiatus a couple of years ago, just to find herself back into teaching.  Right now, she is solely focused on being a mother. From my last contact with her, she lives in Colorado with her two beautiful children and husband.

For the conference, I painted the belly and gave a presentation on the health disparities for women of color in birth:

Here are some of the words she wrote in her letter to her baby:

“Be yourself.  Love yourself.  Know yourself.  If you do those three things, nobody will ever tear you down.  Always know that Mom will always encourage you to be your true self, and Mom will always be next to you, regardless of anything.”

Stay tuned for the rest of the belly cast stories!