portal | dreaming outside capitalism - when you've outgrown white supremacy culture

PORTAL | early spring 2025
Type: Essay & Photography

*As I revisit these words I wrote a year ago, I'm struck by how much has shifted within me since then. It is amazing how our bodies are wired for change, though it can feel disruptive and dysregulating in the moment.

For me recently, capitalism has felt like a clawing, gnawing thing clinging to my ribcage, sliding down my hips, as I continue to purge myself of its power. It falls further down my body, but its talons remain deep in my blood memory, connected to my cells, my respiration, my digestion. The difference between now and years past is that I can look down upon it, hear its keening and crying as separate from me. It is dying. And it is only a matter of time before I am free.

This piece marks a waypoint in my ongoing journey of decolonization—a journey that continues to unfold in new and unexpected ways. I share it now as both an archive of where I've been and an invitation to witness where we might be going together.*

Recently I've been reckoning with the relentless realities of collective grief. Alongside the unfolding sacredness of my own abundance—I am in the state of decolonizing. It is lifelong work—untethering myself from the violent yet often comfortable conditional safety of capitalism. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. Resisting and decoding white supremacy culture can feel like breaking up with an abusive narcissistic partner…the violence doesn't end simply because I've decided to create distance between myself and the aggressor. Sometimes I feel the wounds of this realm as a physical weight on my shoulders, in my lower back, in the folds of my knees. The violent systems I resist leave their imprints on my body—tension coiling through my fascia, constricting my breath, hardening the soft spaces between vertebrae. But I am here. More than surviving. I am actively untangling these systems from my nervous system, feeling the release when my shoulders drop away from my ears, when my jaw unclenches in moments of genuine safety. Choosing my life...choosing to live euphorically in the fullness of this body, this experience on earth, one day at a time.

I am a great-grandchild of the Great Migration—a fourth generation New Yorker who has stumbled into the divine assignment of returning home. Eight years ago I returned to the South to what I've since learned is my native North Carolina. Returning to the wisdom of my ancestors who sowed and toiled this land, to the memory of those who built enclaves of safety and joy amongst immense violence. Returning to the sun, the trees, the roots and leaves that fed them when nourishment was denied by their captors. Returning to the same plant, soil, animal, and mineral ancestors that helped their human allies to divine a future worth living. Returning to this place that still holds the vibration of community care my ancestors carried with them as they were brutalized across the ocean. This has saved me. Returning home to the South has saved me.

I didn't used to think I'd ever know the South as my home. I've had to unlearn a river of "knowings" from my northern education to get here.

A few things I used to know:

• I am safer, smarter, and more cultured living in the North, specifically the city.
• I am successful because of my investment in the colonial institution of academia.
• To stay safe, I must remain a version of a respectable Black woman that the world wants to see. Even then, I must always stay vigilant and expect violence.
• I am safer and more successful when I am assimilating - speaking, walking, acting, eating, working, and listening in a way that aligns with dominant culture (in other words in misalignment with my home, family, and ancestral wisdom).
• Authenticity is a privilege for white folks; I am safer when I do not allow others to fully see me.
• Giving to others, serving others without bounds is the best way to keep myself safe in a world that often sees and treats me and people like me as a threat.
• Real estate in proximity to white zip codes will keep me safe.

Shame surfaces as I share these old beliefs, heat rising to my face as I see how deeply I internalized these survival mechanisms. But I know that mirrors can be dysregulating if there's a mismatch between your reflection and who you know yourself to be. This discomfort is part of the metamorphosis.

You might find yourself hiding in some of these knowings. You may also notice in these "knowings" some emergent themes: safety, love, and belonging. I call these the core human psyche needs. In the evolution of my work and study as a teacher, therapist, and healer, I've observed that every other need seems to collapse into these three. We cannot thrive without meeting both personal and collective needs. Often in the effort of healing personal, intergenerational, and historic trauma, we are attempting to recover a loss of safety and a denial of love and belonging.

And it is very clear to me that the project of capitalism and its benefactor, white supremacy culture, are extremely, dangerously effective at ensuring we experience a chronic loss of safety and denial of love and belonging.

In response to this violence, we've historically turned to the very machines that harmed us to meet those needs. That is by no fault of ours. These projects have surgically severed us from natural, immersive, ancestral methods of ensuring safety, love and belonging.

But we have always been more powerful than these systems. It is why they must work so tirelessly to keep us bound.

What white supremacy culture knows and is always prepared to violently account for is that indigenous knowledge does not rely on western institutions for the transmission of wisdom. We get free in safe community, and we are currently living in the actively evolving dream state of a communal revolution. People are remembering who they are. People are remembering the lost wisdom that birthed them. People are remembering why they are here. People are recoding and restructuring their home and work lives to match their needs. This remembering is not abstract—it's happening in kitchens where recipes are being reclaimed, in gardens where traditional plants are being grown, in living rooms where elders' stories are being recorded, in community spaces where mutual aid replaces systems of scarcity. And when I say people, I am speaking specifically to the Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, Queer, Trans, Disabled people who have historically, persistently resisted white supremacy culture in some form—even if, in an effort at conditional safety, we were complicit in its violence in our lives and the lives of others. Those who have ALWAYS heard the nagging whisper in their spirit of…"you don't belong here."

And let me tell you…you don't. This culture wasn't built for you.

Recently I explored with a coaching client the transition that is happening for many of us who have been actively healing trauma. There is a moment where you notice that you long for more. Beyond the dialogue of talk therapy...maybe you wonder if your therapist is still a good fit…maybe wondering if you've outgrown your support group...if maybe you need to increase the dosage on your SSRI...

I believe that what is happening is that you are outgrowing white supremacy culture. You are longing for more, bigger, wider, deeper than what you've inherited. And it could be that western medicine has cleared the path enough for you to see yourself clearly…and now it's time to get into your body.

I've been living in the sweetness of more, bigger, wider, deeper for some time now. I've lost, grieved, and shed many layers of my colonized life (people, jobs, clothes, pronouns, etc). With each shedding, my body transforms—my shoulders roll back to their natural position, my diaphragm expands to welcome fuller breaths, the chronically tight muscles in my neck begin to remember their innate suppleness. I'm no longer interested in being a boss bitch or building an empire or even that PhD that has been on my vision board since I was six years old. My body rejects these ambitions now, responding with headaches, fatigue, and a deep knowing in my gut when I try to force myself back into those constricting containers. I am no longer denying my authenticity and needs as a queer, trans-AuDHD disabled being. I am deeply committed to cultivating a safe environment in my body and home for ancestral wisdom to come through. And my days are deeply sweeter in new ways of knowing. I have everything I need, and things seem to travel to me on sweet waters of ease that I couldn't have dreamed up a decade ago. Not bad for a kid with an ACES score of 9. That's my version of freedom. What is yours?

My calling, my ori, my embodied choice is to be a conduit in this collective transition. To hold tenderly the hearts of those longing for something that this culture cannot give them. To remind them of the joy that is always present in the remembering. To awaken the body as a doula to the mind and spirit—starting with my own. To hold space for grief—that tender, ancient bridge from the deep pain of generational trauma to the liberation of a decolonized life. I call this space a remembering because we are all experimenting with a freedom that lives in our memory—mapping a new way forward out of the darkness we've inherited. This "remembering" is both a recollection and a literal re-membering—putting back together parts of ourselves that were dismembered by colonization. We all have our gifts to share and our hearts to mend. And we're not meant to do it alone.

You are made to be free. And there is another way to freedom beyond the path set forth by our captors, colonizers, kidnappers, and thieves. And the best part is, despite the myth of scarcity within capitalism—you were born with everything you need.

Remembering your indigeneity is not an effort of the mind; it is love embodied.

Aṣẹ