In many modern societies, childbirth has become heavily medicalised, reduced to clinical procedures, birth plans, and hospital monitors. While modern medicine offers life-saving interventions, something deeply spiritual has been lost along the way. For generations across the African diaspora, birthing a child was never viewed merely as a physical or medical event. It was a…
Have you ever felt a sudden, inexplicable pull to turn down a street you have never walked before? Or perhaps you have experienced a quiet, persistent nudge to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, only to discover later that they held the exact piece of information you had been searching for. While travelling…
There were periods in my life when grief seemed to arrive one loss after another. My mother. My father. My siblings. During those dark, heavy seasons, I discovered a profound truth that changed the entire trajectory of my healing journey. Grief was not merely an emotional response to loss. It lived physically within my body….
During one of my recent visits to Nigeria, I found myself being led to places filled with stories. These were places where history, memory, and ancestry seemed alive in the very dust and trees. I met people carrying enormous burdens while continuing to show extraordinary resilience. What struck me most was how many people had…
‘Radiance exudes out of Gloria’, says Member Rev Deb Connor of her friend and colleague Gloria Tinu Ogunbadejo. So who better to tell us about her healing practice? But first here’s Deb to introduce Gloria’s contribution. There’s a radiance that comes with the best kind of communities. I feel very passionate about the sense of…
The air we breathe is more than just oxygen and nitrogen. In our Yoruba tradition and across many African diasporic cultures, breath is the carrier of Asé, the divine energy that makes things happen. When we are stressed, disconnected, or carrying the heavy weight of intergenerational trauma, our breath becomes shallow. We stop drawing from…
There is a profound and ancient language that exists beyond words. It is a language that bypasses the busy, analytical mind and speaks directly to the spirit. For many of us, this language is carried on the breeze, found in the earth, and bottled in the sacred essences of plants. I am speaking about aromatherapy:…
There is a quiet, persistent ache that many of us carry in the marrow of our bones. It is not always a physical pain, but rather a sense of being adrift, as if we are looking for a home we have never visited but somehow remember. For the Black woman, the elder, and the seeker,…
There is a profound, silent language written upon the bodies of our ancestors, a script of resilience and spiritual fortification that many of us have forgotten how to read. As we navigate the complexities of modern life, many Black women and elders feel a persistent, dull ache, a sense of being untethered from the roots…
There is a profound, silent wisdom held within the earth beneath our feet. For many of us living in the fast-paced, digital-heavy world of today, the soil is merely something we walk over or try to keep off our shoes. Yet, in the Yoruba tradition and across the vast landscape of African diasporic wisdom, the…
