To all of the voices in my belly, heart, head and cells and the spirits inhabiting this vessel - to their council I belong. I belong to intuition and innate knowings - witch at times are ineffable and cannot always be articulated or intellectualized. I belong to the body’s sensing as valid fact or data. I belong to their conviction in the face of their delegitimization. I belong to remembering and re-enchanting myself, this world.

 

I belong to the forgotten. The forgotten memories of who I am, of why my spirit chose to come here at this time in space and of the forgotten roots of my ancestors. 

I belong to my ancestors. To a people of both superiority and inferiority. 

I belong to clay, to soil and microbe, bacteria and fungi.

I belong to the lost mothers, fathers and parents, to the lost children, lost siblings, lost family - lost to fire, to the state, to borders, to dogma. 

I belong to the unseen, to the unknown and to the unconventional. 

I belong to the deracination from Earth, to the separation from each other, to consequence of divide and conquer. 

I belong to: my daughter - and her unborn children and their unborn children. 

I belong to histories of stolen islands built on separation, genocide, slavery and bodies becoming machines. 

I belong to my body, this mycelial network, this vessel that shelters my many spirits.

I belong to a people of not knowing where we belong. Of exile, of massacre, exodus and thousands of years of diaspora. 

I belong to Reindeer and Rain People. Whale, Lightning and Crow People. 

I belong to white washed patrimonies fashioned out of broken promises, lies, othering and extraordinary inequality. 

I belong to the darkest hour of night where I walk in parallel universes and the nuances of my subconscious. 

I belong to the darkness of racism, the silhouette of legacies of white supremacy, to forced migrations, violent assimilations and the ghosts of settler colonizations. 

I belong to black, brown and red hands, in service to their grief and healing. 

I belong to the wholeness that I am able to access when black, brown and red hands are accessing thier own. 

I belong to queerdos, weirdos, unsung heroes and underdogs. 

I belong to breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and transforming harms my ancestors both caused and endured. 

I belong to a declaration of interconnectedness. 

I belong

to remembering

what was meant to be forgotten. 

 

I belong to sky and to the mysterious objects that hover over me.

I belong to my underbelly firmly rooted deep into Earth’s beating heart. 

I belong to the antibodies of Earth. 

I belong to a species that is killing the body upon which we breathe. 

I belong to the wild, to water, mountains and forests, to flowing river, lake and ocean. 

I belong to Redwood, Sequoia and cedar, and to Salmon and Owl. 

I belong to murky waters pumped with bleach and chemical, to sacred sites buried with crosses, to wars whose stories were only ever written by those who won them. 

I belong to smoke at the center of our circles and I belong to grandfather fire himself.

I belong to women who’ve been raped, to children who had exploration of their own bodies stolen from them, to sage femmes whose hands rubbed Mugwort on bellies with child, who made teas of Rue for those who never gave consent to procreate, to matrilineal lineages whose palms were ripped from pelvic bowls and dipped into kitchen sinks while their husbands co opted the sacred feminine and masked it with cesareans and big pharma. 

I belong to survivors, to babushkas, to the Yiddish and Hebrew tongue, to assimilation as resilience - to abolitionists, and tornados of rapists and murderers.  

I belong to the grandmothers making handmade tortillas on the comal, to their hearts that house stories of their struggles, their love for their descendants and their ideas of what it is to be the pillar of the family. 

I belong to the neuroplasticity of my brain, heart and gut, to breaking intergenerational patterns of harm and to ending perpetuating cycles of behaviours that no longer serve me. 

I belong

to remembering

what was meant to be forgotten. 

 

I belong to the shadow workers of pride, judgment and control, of competition, jealousy,  scarcity and perfection.

I belong to the fear of saying “no” born of a fear for loss of connection. 

I belong to distraction and procrastination, to the languages of colonizers; English and Spanish, to the phobias of being in this world who it is we really are.

I belong to romanticizing people, setting them up for inevitable failure and myself up for assured disappointment.  

I belong to making mistakes and internally beating myself up for not being perfect or for being wrong or for harming someone. I belong to growing into a greater version of myself because of them. 

I belong to memories of trauma in my bowl, to lines of chronic illness. 

I belong to wailing. I belong to my shadows and my beating heart that comes out of my mouth when speaking aloud in new spaces. 

I belong

to remembering

what was meant to be forgotten. 

 

I belong to putting myself above no one nor below anyone. 

I belong to touch and story and song and dance and the land and the people. 

It is the heart of the belly that I belong to, to Intuition, to prolonged-deep-rooted and intertwined relationships... to community and warmth. 

I belong to fluidity and welcoming. 

I belong to ritual, beauty and spirit, to laughter, movement, dance and joy - to grief and rage, to creativity, to understanding and being understood

I belong to cultural transformation, to resensitizing, to re-animating, reclaiming, reawakening and regenerating.

I belong to pleasure and sensuality, playfulness and steadiness, authenticity and vulnerability. 

I belong to the people with their hands covered in soil and clay.

I belong to inclusivity, to unity, to complexity, to flow and flexibility. 

I belong to stillness. 

I belong to non-binary thinking, to community singing, to the underdog, the unkissed frog, the paranormal, to wonder and phenomena, to anything BUT normal. 

I belong to the unheard stories, the voiceless, the unsung heroes, to a collective consciousness, to fractals and holograms, to abundance and rest. 

I belong to holistic healers, alchemists, medicine people, bards, keepers of wisdom, songstresses, priestesses, songcatchers, storytellers, herbalists, witches, midwives, ancestor wolf and their full moon howling.   

I belong to the ancient ones, the star people, the whale and dolphin people. 

I belong to spirit world, to magic and mystery, to death and dying, to falling leaf, to naked tree, to blossoming rosemary, to the in-between, the crossing and to source. 

I belong

to remembering

what was meant to be forgotten.