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Hearing the Wisdom of my DNA

In recent times, nothing has brought me in stronger
communication with the voice of the great mothers in my
DNA, than being the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
empty store shelves were a jolt of reality. No paper goods
whatsoever, no disinfectants, no aloe vera gel, no colloidal
silver…. I was in a panic. Maybe I waited too late to begin
stocking up. Maybe I’m not a diligent mom. My thoughts

were racing. To my further dismay, even pantry staples like
flour, rice and beans were just not available anywhere in a
five-mile radius of my house.

“It’s a set up,” I said in anger. “They are intentionally underserving the black
community.”

I came home many days defeated, carrying what little I was able to find. I had to
allow myself some quality alone time, to rest and quiet my spirit in order to hear my
truth above the chaos. In the silence, I began to perceive the voices of the mothers

who came before me. The ones who swallowed their pride, and scrubbed white folk’s
floor for a living. Those defiant women who keep their crowns close, took the pennies
they were paid, and walked this world in queenly stride.

I heard those women of unspeakable fortitude who endured the lash, and the
heat of the mid-day sun, while they remained bent over with a machete cutting end-
less rows of sugar cane. Beaten, broken, with hands raw and blistered she could still
run those same hands over her husband’s back, stare at the despair in his eyes, and
whisper, “It’s gonna be okay.” In fact, she learned to smile at the children in the morn-
ing, even though she was snatched and stolen by weapon-touting, trembling, pale
hands on many nights.

I heard the voices of those women who managed governments, who laid out cit-
ies, who constructed temples to the feminine divine, and who waged successful war
against European expansionists—women like the incomparable Kandake (Queen)
Amanirenas of Meroe, Nubia- the only known civilization to exalt women to a stand-

ard unmatched by any society since.
Most importantly I heard the voices of those original mothers who kept children
alive, and families together at the dawn of life on earth. There were no drug stores,
there were no doctors to call or ambulances to rush in. All those early African moth-

ers had was their community, their faith and the power of the natural world. And they
made it. We are the greatest evidence that early life in Africa was successful.