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Mother to Many, Zenobia Brown Wells Collins is my Mother now known in Spirit World as Rose... And why not? She grew and taught her 3 youngest about growing flowers and food and the magic of giving the right roses to one's teacher and when.  In this world she was a healer and voice of calm to many.  She loved, Loved,  LOVED babies and children- birthing 6 then adopting several more.  Mimi's food reached the soul and changed us, though raised working class poor, to abundant blessings of God/Goddess/Spirit Alive on Earth.  In the Spirit world Mother is daily "In The Garden" with Christ learning and sharing her heavenly hands and heart in service to our Earthly highest healing.
Zenobia... Mimi... Rose. I offer this Spiritual cleaning from the Hawaiian tradition of Ho'oponopono.  " I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I Love You. Thank you."
Thank you... Thank you ALL!

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Honoring James Anthony Lovelady. 8/27/38-6/1/2022. He was an awesome father and husband. He was definitely dedicated to serving the Lord as he read his Bible everyday and got on his knees to pray every night. His life reflected the love that God cultivated in his heart. 

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Honoring James Anthony Lovelady. 8/27/38-6/1/2022. He was an awesome father and husband. He was definitely dedicated to serving the Lord as he read his Bible everyday and got on his knees to pray every night. His life reflected the love that God cultivated in his heart. 

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My Beloved Ancestor and Cousin O. Samaiyah Beyah 

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My Beloved Ancestor and Cousin O. Samaiyah Beyah 

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She was smart, sharp as a tack and mind intact until her passing on January 17, 2017 at the age of 98. "I stand on her shoulders." She nurtured me from birth through my early childhood then became my advisor when I was an adult. When then Chicago senator Barack Obama came to Oakland to campaign for president on St. Patrick's Day in 2008, she knew she had to meet him--and she did.

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Ms. Cicely Tyson exemplifies a life uncompromised. She lived her truth and would not let Hollywood frame her life in its image. This meant she didn't work as much as those Black actors whose values were negotiable. What a toll this must have had on her creative life. I often wondered what she did when not on screen. However, like so many creatives, I am sure her art was a stream, acting just one of many tributaries.

I always liked her fortitude and unwavering honesty.

I am so happy she was able to complete her memoir, "Just As I Am," before she left this realm earlier this year (Jan. 2021) https://www.harpercollins.com/products/just-as-i-am-cicely-tyson?variant=32126582095906

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Queen Abbey was such a force. Unapologetically Black, she was such an inspiration from her work with phonomenal drummer Max Roach to her wonderful writing. One of her songs I love is "Throw It Away," where she tells us to live with our "hands wide open" and tells us "we can never lose a thing, if it belongs to us." Those who know, know, nothing "belongs to any of us." Life is a gift we can miss if we spend all our time trying to hold on -- grasping as it escapes, rather than living it. Life is like air. It only works when we breathe. It can't be contained and Ms. Lincoln, Queen Abbey knew this as she made every moment count. I love her essay in Toni Cade Bambara (Ase)'s collection, "The Black Woman Anthology" (1970).

I think about the life I live
A figure made of clay
And think about the things I lost
The things I gave away

And when I'm in a certain mood
I search the house and look
One night I found these magic words
In a magic book

Throw it away
Throw it away
Give your love, live your life
Each and every day

And keep your hand wide open
Let the sun shine through
'Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you

There's a hand to rock the cradle
And a hand to help us stand
With a gentle kind of motion
As it moves across the land

And the hand's unclenched and open
Gifts of life and love it brings
So keep your hand wide open
If you're needing anything

Throw it away
Throw it away
Give your love, live your life
Each and every day

And keep your hand wide open
Let the sun shine through
'Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you

Throw it away
Throw it away
Give your love, live your life
Each and every day

And keep your hand wide open
Let the sun shine through
'Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you

'Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you
You can never ever lose a thing
If it belongs to you

You can never ever lose a thing
If it belongs to you
You can never ever lose a thing
If it belongs to you

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Abbey Lincoln

Throw It Away lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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Honor and Respect Iya Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth Day, Nov. 26, 2021 in Michigan

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Honor and Respect Iya Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth Day, Nov. 26, 2021 in Michigan

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Sorrow fills my shoes like standing water at dusk. . . Time does not still. We lose our bearings when day is night. Perpetually seasoned loss. Bodies in white sacks fill holes lined with lime. Anonymity haunts burial sites. Massive grave pinpoints, people’s tombstones, illuminate night skies.

Sojourner where are you? You who took care of so many. . . sing us a lullaby.  I feel her footsteps growing closer.

A woman without boundaries, she put on her shoes. . . feet worn. Uneven she walked upright, yet couldn’t shake white master, her adoptive father whom she loved. It was a kind of love that undoes. . . loosens the threads before they unravel, before the they are pulled together in the back where love marks, mar the terrain – that crooked territory she left with baby Sophia, Peter at sea.

The rugged cross the road less traveled.

The male bodied white men kept pulling her back, she who wanted to please her white father. . . a father she loved and hated. Bruised and battered Sojourner left Isabella, Columbus’s queen. . . he set sale on another coast. Captured Africans still profitable built that nation’s from a sea to another sea, Pacific Atlantic. . . .

Why were her boundaries so fluid? She wanted a home. Home was not bondage—Wandering, her name Sojourner a fitting title for her inherited life, she published and then sold the rights too. No, she didn’t sell the copyright. She controlled her legacy which is why we know her so well today.

I am going out like a shooting star, she said to those who wept by her bedside. Don’t you know this person is not me? It’s a house I am renting for a short time.

I walk too. I can walk without pain. I time myself and can get to the other side of the street in less than 5 seconds. I watch the light turn red just as I clear the sidewalk and cars turn on my heels.

Boundaries?

If I am not safe in a crosswalk on a green light?

Why aren’t woman’s words respected? Why do we or why are we asked to negotiate our property lines. . . give up our borders for fallow plots where nothing grows except broken promises? Can’t stop now. Too many Black women’s lives line the highways I tread.

Sojourner traded in her corsets for freedom.  Tall, straight and slim, she traded in feminine opportunity for freedom. She traded in wombfulness while white women sold their bodies for marketable trade.

Stocks fell whenever Sojourner appeared. She, Harriet Jacobs, Hannah Craft, Harriet Wilson. . . .all of them were more valuable as human beings than the plastic wares (wives) she/they knew.

They sat dusty in the mercantile store where one could carry her home for a nickel. All sales final.

What is it about a woman’s boundaries that male bodied persons deem negotiable? Is hell negotiable? How does sin get you a ticket to the show?

I want off the bill.

Mama Sojourner’s walk was long and the road uneven and circuitous. There were a lot of women on the road after slavery ended. Like traveling salespersons, they traded evidence – humanity – peoplehood for chattel and parcels.

Look at me—they cried. But smoke screens billowed where their faces sat in marble, granite. How does one move from a ledger to a seat at a table one set?

Sister Abby said: Throw it away. If a thing belongs to you, it belongs to you. . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2OO3vuk3r4

https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/0,9309,7-387-90499_90639-572962--,00.html

See also: https://www.scbwieasternny.org/classes-workshops-and-events/native-american-heritage-day-mc2h6

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My grandma loved her family, from 12 siblings down to her and her brother Gus until the last transition. I love to hear her pray.
My ancestors 💕

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Thank you for living a life full of prayer, the loving God, and showing your children what is means to love unconditionally and to give to others without expecting anything in return.

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GREAT GRANDPA REVEREND JOHN HENRY MOORE(1882-1952), FOUNDER OF MOUNT ZION CHURCH IN OAKLAND CA

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Grandpa, Buffalo Soldier, Veterinarian

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My Friend & Brother
Stevie Brooks

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Killed in the Civil Rights Struggle

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Stevie Brooks

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They Called Her Sallie B.

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My beloved cousins on whose shoulders I stand. They helped raise me and then came to my rescue when my two sons and I needed somewhere to live! I am forever grateful!

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"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired -- [Register to vote and vote.]" This woman was beaten almost to death for registering to vote in Mississippi. She said: "When I liberate myself, I liberate others. . . . In the photo she is at the Methodist Church Global Ministries. (Photo: Kenneth Thompson).

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Sojourner Truth, abolitionist, suffragist, fearless woman. 

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Sojourner Truth, abolitionist, suffragist, fearless woman. 

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She said: I sell the shadow to support the substance."

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Sojourner Truth; Abolitionist, Suffragist, Lower East Sider - Tenement Museum

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Aṣẹ Ellils Hazilip "Mr. Soul!" September 17, 1929 (to January 25, 1991)

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Aṣẹ Ellils Hazilip "Mr. Soul!" September 17, 1929 (to January 25, 1991)

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Baby Oulimata Niang proceeded her Granny in death.

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Mame Oulimata Diop Niang, Rufisque, Senegal (d. July, 2020).

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Mame Oulimata Diop Niang, Rufisque, Senegal (d. July, 2020).

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To my African Mother, much love

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Missing you nephew, Carlton.

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Miss you Daddy. Love Always.