My mama raised me.....

REV JO COLEMAN

​The Harvest by Harmonia Rosales

I don't know about you - but my mother line is dirty. 

Dirty dirty dirty.

And not just my mother line.

My mother in law line.

My mother's friends maternal lines.

They all got some serious shit to hand down.

Makes me damn glad I never had a daughter, I can tell you. 

REAL TALK

I mean, I know you're meant to forgive.  

But perhaps at the end of the day I am just - Not. That. Spiritual.

So that's why - when I came across one of my favourite teachers recently - the Reverend Joanne Coleman - and listened to a sermon over the internet that she delivered about prayer and how the female line in her family had passed down such generosity and protection in their invisible "basket of prayers"?  

It hit me hard in the heart.

And I thought I'd share it with you.

Because that kind of love is deep solace. And we all need a little bit of that kind of pure drop from time to time. 

reclamation of the ancestral

Here's a question for me then. As I sat and listened to Rev Jo, and the tears began to fall down my cheeks. I started to wonder.

Because her ancestors had it hard.

I mean, they had it as hard as it gets.

Sold like animals.

Shipped like animals.

Worked like animals.

Like my people didn't take enough from her people already and yet, here I am. Taking more. 

Still here she is anyway, glad to share her basket of prayers.

And it got me wondering - because my ancestors had it bad too. Unfashionable though it is to say - the first victims of the British Empire were the British. Some had it harder than others, of course. I mean some benefitted and continued to benefit. And if you really take a good look at white privilege then you understand that all white people benefitted, ultimately. From that colonial mindset. And still do. 

And yet the empire was and is brutal. And it took all in its path. It took souls. Property and ownership of land and female bodies was propagated.  The trauma cycle began to spin. Slavery and colonialism grew on the back of that poison. And subsequently fed it/feeds it at the same time.

a deep bow

My own family grew up deeply impoverished by it all. On the unluckier side of the spectrum that is white history.

One grandmother lost 5 children and a husband to tuberculosis in the East End of London. She survived. But she was - understandably - lost and embittered.

My other grandmother worked in service. She was single and pregnant (was she raped by the master of the house?) Far from home she was then sent to the workhouse for punishment. A relative came to rescue her. But the baby was left behind. And if you don't know about the kinds of terror and abuse that happened in those places? Well. I'll just leave you to imagine.

So I write this piece as a deep bow to Rev Jo and her female line.

To what they survived. 

Because if Rev Jo is anything to go by, they survived gracefully. Their struggle was immense. And yet their faith in the power of love so strong, that it emanated across generations and out into the field of me and you. Right now.

Just pause and imagine the kind of power in that. 

It's actually unbreakable.

TEARS GONNA FALL

So that's why I found myself crying as I listened to her.

Because my mother line broke. 

And I don't know why. 

those 5 prayers got me

Ain't nothing gonna take the grief of that away from me, Rev Jo.

Nothing.

Yet. They they are. Beating like a human heart.

Companions in the dark.

A basket of prayers.

Damn big enough to hold all of us.

And I thank you for that, Rev Jo. I thank your mama. Your grandmothers. Your great grandmothers. All your aunties.

For their grit. And their generosity.

And for birthing and raising women like you to lead the way.

Love is the answer. Each and every time. It's so great to be reminded of that in the midst of these times.