My grandmother Bernice had hands that were soft + strong at the same time. Those were the hands that wiped my tears + cleaned up my scrapes. The hands that pulled me into some of the best hugs of my life. I would give up everything I owned for one of those hugs again. The hands that strangers came to her house for, just so she could lay them on a shoulder + pray. Something about her touch. Her aura. Her being, was so healing. Everybody knew it.
She smelled like Dove soap. In her youth she had long black hair that went past her knees + when I was little she’d let me brush it for hours. When it turned, it didn’t turn grey. It turned silver. The BRIGHTEST silver + then it was my daughter’s turn to brush + braid it.
She spent her mornings quiet with God. Her bible, coffee + the sun was all she needed in the mornings. Gospel was always playing somewhere in her house, her humming in the kitchen while she made us something to eat. If she didn’t have much, we never knew it. Everyone was welcome. When she wasn’t home receiving people, she was out with her ministry. She was so good that way, out visiting the sick + the shut-in.
In her whole life, I’m not sure she knew rest.
Being born in 1926, she was raised in a time where there really wasn’t any rest for people who looked like her. Rest wasn’t allowed to mean relaxation. It wasn’t allowed to mean quiet, or moments to herself. Rest had to be disguised as something else, it was hidden in how she took care of her body. When we were doing her hair. When someone was oiling her scalp. When she took her time with her facial creams + powders. Rest couldn’t be blatant + out in the open, it had to be apart of ritual that was grooming to not be met with resistance.
Truth Moment? I inherited that.
Not just the serving. Or even the healing hands. The earning. I’ve spent so much of my life laying hands, praying, pouring outside of myself. That part is very much every bit my grandmother + along with that there was a long season where I didn’t know if I had done enough to deserve rest. That’s the part that is lonely. The hard of it all. To be the person that cares so much, so deep + to never feel like anyone cares that much or that deep for you. I can’t recall the last time my body got unhurried care from hands that I didn’t pay for. Before my divorce, I caught myself doing instead of receiving. Again. Always.
Then, in the dead of winter in 2015; my first winter after my grandmother passed, sad + carrying the biggest hole in my heart that I couldn’t explain, I stumbled into a heated yoga class.
I didn’t even flow. I laid on my mat + cried. Not a single person noticed lol, since it was a heated class everyone was sweaty my tears were masked.
Week after week I kept going back. Even if I didn’t flow. I kept going back because that rectangle mat was the one place I could leave all my troubles. Sixty minutes that belonged to me. I didn’t have to do anything for anyone but myself.
From the mat, I found the mornings. Up before everyone. Sitting quietly on my front steps, coffee, breakfast, sun. Just like her. It’s in those mornings I finally understood the saying: joy comes in the morning. I didn’t ask permission for those mornings. I technically didn’t earn those sixty minutes on my mat either.
That’s when I realized something about my grandmother + me. She found rest inside devotions, because that was the only door the world left open for her. I found devotion inside rest. I didn’t break her pattern. I am FINISHING it.
In a previous post I talked to you all about my 60 plants + coffee can garden. All of this is connected to the very thread that is me. That is us. The land is the great connector.
I know we have a complicated past with land. For women who look like me, land didn’t mean rest. It meant labor. But hear me: the land is OURS. It’s where we plant seeds. It’s where we grow. It’s where we can find solace + yes, rest. We don’t have to do the hustling + bustling. There is another option, one that doesn’t require labor, but could, if that’s what we chose. And that’s the whole point. The freedom of choice. Feet touching the earth. The sounds of nature calling back to us.
So this fall, I’m taking a small circle of women to a beautiful Black-owned farm for one whole day. Not to work the land. To be held by it. A portal + an invitation to take back the parts of ourselves we’ve been told we don’t deserve. To honor the matriarchs by being joyful + whole on the land where some might have thought we were broken.
Because what I’m really offering is an invitation home to self. Actually, much deeper than that. Home to the matriarchs. Home to our strength, the years + years that came before us. That is liberation + part of the medicine.
Back to the land. Back to the Body.
Back.
If your body’s been asking, the day is called Rooted in Her Body. It’s here →
XO
Denawa Deniece