have you ever taken a good look at your ego?

have you learned the shape of your ego, all of it’s attachments?

for a lot of my life my ego was attached to the idea that i suffered the worst trauma possible

i was depressed and mad at everything that came to form my experience. i was seldom happy.

at one time in my life i was an academic who thought i knew better than everyone else

the waves of my depression would never cease. i’d be in and out of it.

i would cry for no reason at times. this world was a terrible place! this world wanted me dead! i didn’t belong here.

after years of altar work and prayer work i started to be able to hold myself in these moments. my spirit would rock my wounded self back and forth. i’d say “it’s ok to cry” and “you feel better now?”

the more i could hold myself in this spirit way the more i was slowly able to let go of the pain. my pain was more personal than the world of anti-blackness. it had to do with my sense of being alienated by my mother. by both parents really.

i was looking at what felt like an irreconcilable pain...this pain i was attached to. this was my ego identity. all this hurt.

trained by years of my codependent nursing of black men and caring for their hurt egos, i used my nursing skills on my own flesh. a part of me knew i just needed to know i was held and loved. my spirit did the holding and the loving.

i learned that my depression was my ego attachment to my trauma. my trauma made me who i was. i found it in my blackness. i found it in my womanness. the pain was everywhere for my smaller self to latch onto.

i learned to use my tears differently. i cried to let go of this miserable state. mourning to move through instead of melancholia to be locked in the hold with my ancestors.

little had i known, my ancestors wanted me to be free of this pain. as my babalawo said, you can not attach yourself to their pain. they were weary of my pitiful attachment.

“let it go” sweetheart, they’d whisper. “let us go”. all along i had been disempowering my spirit guides who had always been here to protect me. they wanted my wellness. that was the only way to heal the line.