On starting in the middle
Lessons from the threshold.
By the time my mother gave birth to me, she had been in labor for over 10 hours. Her baby sister Bev was by her side the whole time, tending the fire as I slowly made my way into the world. As the midday sun began its ritual path toward night, I made my way out of one threshold and into another. I wailed, calling out for my mother and father, my grandmothers and grandfathers, my aunties and uncles. I called out to all of those who had come before me and all who would follow. I called out to the liminal dream space that is rooted within my Black and Indigenous ancestors. My first breath was a response, a pattern that etched my spirit into the ether letting my relatives know that I had arrived. I’m here, I cried. I’m here.
I came along on a Wednesday in 1983, the year that Fraggle Rock debuted on HBO, and mobile phones were introduced to the public. Not long after I joined the cipher, my family moved to the south side of the city. Our first home sat adjacent to an oil refinery, and sulphuric smoke would often permeate our clothing, hair, and lungs. In a sort of reverse Great Migration, we picked up our lives for the promise of a better school system, proximity to extended family, and reduced harm from chemical exposure. We were the first Black family to move into the neighborhood, and since our arrival, several Black families have come to live among us.
As an only child, I often toggled between yearnings, thankful for the company of others, while also wishing to go unnoticed. I was bullied terribly by peers and family alike for my weight and size. The impetus to shrink myself was palpable, and a hole formed in my spirit from the constant tormenting. Sometimes, I just wanted to disappear. Trauma works like that, moving deep into the mind-body, and creating prolonged stress that spirals into recurrent patterns. I often wondered if my ancestors could hear me calling out, asking them to explain how is it that the body reshapes itself through shame, rage, and grief. I wondered about joy, too, especially when I felt so unworthy of its gifts.
I was five months pregnant on the night that my father passed. After attempting resuscitation, on instinct, I utilized lavender, frankincense, and rose oil at his temples, third eye, and heart center. It was from a deep knowing that this ritual came to me. It felt immediate, essential, and, somehow, familiar. The experience nudged me toward relearning the healing ways of my people—to keep the fire burning. I was the last person to see my father alive, and it was an honor to be there for my father in his final few moments; to ensure that his transition began by reclaiming a relationship with ceremony. Somewhere within my heart, I knew that those botanical oils would help the ancestors find my father at the threshold between life and death.
Years later while reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, I was reminded again about the significance of memory. Kimmerer reminds us that to be human is to be in relationship with the living, breathing world. Many indigenous prophecies warn us about the danger of losing touch with the earth. One such story is the Seventh Fire Prophecy which comes from the Anishinaabe people. Much of Turtle Island is familiar with this teaching because it has survived as an oral and written tradition. It also connects deeply with the philosophy of Sankofa, which comes from Ghanaian relatives and means to retrieve what has been forgotten, or lost. These lessons are crucial for the cultural and ecological survival of humans, as well as more-than-human kin.
Joy came on the the day that my little one was born. It was late afternoon, and the light was on the cusp of releasing into the dark. The hospital room was warm and calm, as the aroma of lavender permeated through the diffuser into the atmosphere. There is a stillness that I can only describe as a complete pause—a space between breaths. Everything slowed down, just for a moment. As my placenta and umbilical cord slowed their pulsation, still attached to both of us, I held my baby in my arms. In this moment I recognized myself clearly: a woman of color, now mother, trying to heal her childhood wounds.
One of the most humbling responsibilities I have to my child, and myself, is to be present. Careful attentiveness is something we all want and need. I can sense this in moments when my little one is in the middle of a strong feeling, the kind that takes over the body. When this happens I simply hold space, doing my best to create a safe container where his big feelings can live, breathe, and be seen. Still, I can sometimes hear my mother’s voice echoing her disapproval in the back of my mind: You’d better nip that in the bud.
“Nip in the bud” is an expression used in the practice of gardening and horticulture, where trimming the bud from a plant prevents the bud from transforming into a flower. Commonly applied as an aphorism, it describes the need to end unsavory behavior. For me, the suggested urgency of the phrase feels especially unkind. As a gardener and mother, I understand that gentle guidance is necessary. We all require specific forms of care at different times in our lives. I think to love someone is to give your attention in a way that serves them well.
To draw out this expression, meander through the garden for a moment with me:
Attending to the suckers (small, delicate shoots) that sprout from where the stem and the branch of a tomato plant meet can help to ensure equitable energy distribution as the plant prepares to bear fruit. The shoots are removed with an easy-does-it plucking motion, ideally with gratitude, and hopefully, their essence can live on through the alchemy of a good compost system. Nothing is thrown away, or forgotten. I’m curious if the same principle might apply to parenting. If a certain emotion is “nipped” away from a child it is, in essence, removing that emotion—only allowing so much of a certain feeling so that energy is spent in other ways.
Who gets to determine what is worthy of saving?
A common struggle that we all face is the need for control. I grew up believing that I had to be a “good girl,” and that my behavior should reflect a certain level of appropriateness. I learned that to be accepted I had to be polite and productive; to nip away my feelings without restoration. Over time, I’ve come to understand that this ideology conditions children to shrink how they feel. It is, in part, how patterns of deferred or incomplete emotions are replicated long into adulthood. It also risks the relationship between a child and a caretaker and severs the chain of reciprocity.
Redirecting energy is necessary for life and in the garden, and the intention behind the action matters: good scaffolding will ensure that a plant can grow with dignity, not overwhelmed by its resources; providing water and nutrients will ensure that a plant is well-nourished; mindful planting allows room for individual growth and communal flourishing. I’ve decided that my child and I will feel, heal, and survive together. We cannot wait for our predecessors. The work of transforming intergenerational trauma is ours to engage.
Sometimes, my ancestors visit me in my dreams. My Tita Evelyn, for example, visited me with a specific message, a lesson on compassion—especially for my mother. Using her long and flowing black hair as a paintbrush, she drew a wide map. As she drew, the topography appeared and we traversed deeper inside of her creation. When she spoke the paint danced, and everything came alive. Once the picture was complete, my father appeared. His big and generous smile was like a balm. He, too, had instructions for me. He wove together a compass with language that felt like a song. The cadence in my father’s voice was rhythmic and round. Each word spun with care and began to encircle us. Eventually, words joined together, and sentences were formed. The sentences were detailed directions, the directions a call to remember. As the dream ended the gifts from my aunt and father became clear: This is where you need to go. This is how you get there. A map and a compass, not just for me, but for my entire lineage.
To know where we are going, we have to look back to locate ourselves and our histories amid collapse. We must call this caving in by name: the Anthropocene, an era in the making. As our memories and landscapes flood we must also come to terms that this self-inflicted rupture was inevitable, but it is not unrepairable. Though we don’t like to think of ourselves as small or interdependent, the truth is that humans are small components of a larger ecosystem. As Cole Arthur Riley says, “To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”
The rawness of our vulnerability and our reliance on each other is what makes this all so tender and poignant. We come to the Earth in the middle of her story, midway between the past and present of an ever-dynamic tapestry. As we ebb and flow with and for the earth, we might wonder, What does it mean to start in the middle? If we trace back into the depths of who we are and where we come from, our creation stories might sound more familiar than strange, more connected than detached. Through my personal experience and inner work, I believe this to be true. I also believe that it is possible to mend a wound amid uncertainty, to live in the transition between wounds and worlds; in the threshold between there and here, always reaching in both directions.
What I’m listening to: Nature Boy from Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, by John Coltrane
What I’m reading: The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, by theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist at the University of New Hampshire, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
Thank you for this.