With each braid, I’m manifesting something: abundance, peace, compassion, light, renewal, liberation, etc. A process of manifestation, giving birth to the qualities that I want to increase in my life. Now I can see it as a form of sowing seeds. I have shifted from viewing it as a burden of being a Black woman to a form of self-care. Thus, although it is a lot of labor, planning, and energy, I imagine this is the maintenance of the crown. When I do my hair or my daughters’ hair, I imagine our hair like a crown. At 29, I am retired and share my gift as an act of love, honor, and friendship. It was her daughter who taught me to braid on my baby doll’s hair (a blue-eyed, blonde-haired Cinderella doll – I could go more into depth about that, but I won’t here) and the rest was history! I was braiding hair for money at 10 years old. This house and yard sit on a plot of land that has been passed through momo’s family, the Batiste family for a few generations now. Every year my extended family would gather around a bond fire to bring in a new year together through prayer, food, and fireworks (we call them firecrackers). It’s a place I spent picking bay leaves and berries in the woods and jumping on the trampoline with my siblings and cousins in the wild, humid Louisiana heat. She and her husband (we call him paw paw) spent a chunk of my childhood building their own two-story, 3-bedroom 2 bath home. She was a cosmetologist and is so incredibly creative and talented, she can do ANYTHING with her hands: jewelry, hair, grow plants and food, and soothe the souls of her grandchildren (because there’s nothing like grandmother’s hands). I believe I inherited the ability to be good with my hands from my paternal grandmother- we call her momo. Braiding is a practice that has been practiced for thousands of years to protect afro hair (my maternal grandma used to always tell me that I should give my hair a break and plait (braid) it up.) It’s a practice and a skill in which I channel my ancestors as it is a miracle that our fingers still remember this art form. Today we live in a circumstance in which our history is lost, but some things transcend physical enslavement and the erasure of the history of a people. But there are times I must acknowledge and appreciate the unforeseen history and journey of the three-strand braid, created by my people and the motor function that has been passed down from generation to generation for us to know how to braid today. When I braid my hair or baby Lola’s hair, I am often in a rush. I leave it up to her to choose how she will carry that torch forward! A Torch and a commitment to elevate our community and move the community forward. Instead, I manifest her revolutionary future to carry the torch of our ancestors. Enslaved Africans brought these foods to the new world, a direct result of slavery.Īs I wash my daughter’s hair (which for Black women and girls is a PROCESS!!), as I moisturize her hair, and as I braid my hair, I am thankful that no one has a right to my child and that I do not need to fear her enslavement. Rice, okra, yams, watermelon, and so MANY more crops that would go on to make white slaveholding Americans so rich (passing their wealth to their descendants and zero reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans), that they were willing to fight a war to sustain their evil practices of owning human beings as chattel (Check out High on the Hog Netflix documentary which was adapted from a book by Dr. While planting and constructing my indoor container garden, I thought about how my ancestors put seeds into their children’s hair so that in case they were taken away to live and die in chains, they would at least be able to sustain themselves with a piece of the motherland. Today, once again, I got to touch the earth!
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