The Land Knows My Name

As I sip my loose-leaf tea outside, I feel an inner calmness wash over me with each sip, drawing me deeper into relaxation. In the background, birds sing and cicadas chirp, their songs sending healing frequencies through the Earth and into me.

The sun beams on my skin, activating my melanated body, each ray a gentle embrace that awakens something ancient within me. My bare feet rest on the ground, receiving energy from Mother Earth, roots extending from me, merging and expanding through all that lives.

The wind dances through the trees as my ancestors and nature spirits join in, swirling around me in a sacred rhythm. This feels like heaven — and yet, there’s something deeply familiar in it, as if I’ve been here before.

We have forgotten our connection to nature — how powerful, beautiful, and comforting she is. Nature is our greatest teacher, showing us when to slow down, when to move forward, when to release our tears, and when to rise in joy with the morning sun. She shows us the necessity of clearing through the storms and the fierce winds.

But as a society, we’ve been conditioned to go, go, go — to perform, to skim the surface of connection, to stare into screens while the living beauty of the world waits for us to look up. We take so much and give so little. We’ve created the illusion that we can overpower the original stewards of the land, moving with entitlement rather than reciprocity.

And somewhere in that illusion, many of us learned to conform to rules that were never meant for our spirits. We forgot that there is power, greatness, and even necessary sorrow in the truth of where we come from. I feel the weight and the wisdom of my ancestors in my bones — and I know now, I can no longer stay small.

There is a medicine within me, born from Earth and ancestry, ready to be seen.

Nature is not separate from me. She is me.

And every time I return to her, I remember — I am a Black woman, whole and unshaken, standing in the fullness of who I am.