In this social and political moment, I’ve been seeking inspiration. Grounding. Uplift! How are creative / healer / activists reimagining the world, daily? I asked Tameika about her experience creating in the now.
Read More
For this month’s e-letter, I wrote about “sweeping the yard”, a Black diaspora tradition of sweeping floors and the yard as household labor, ritual, and spiritual cleansing. Lately I’ve been inspired to sweep the ground beneath my feet – in a literal and figurative sense – with the busyness of spring. I must slow down. I must breathe.
As with so many old ways, “sweeping the yard” is practical and metaphysical. Sweeping the yard deters snakes. Sweeping keeps floors clean. And sweeping is a spiritual and energetic practice, one that removes negative, heavy, and repressed energy. One that tends to spirits who have stayed past their due.
Researchers have long connected swept yards of the American South and the Caribbean, with similar practices in West African yards and burial grounds. (See further reading below).
A Mini-Ritual
Though I don’t have a yard these days, I live in an apartment with an outdoor patio and an entryway. “Sweeping the yard” in my case is a bit more like sweeping the floors. Here’s a mini-ritual I practice in this smaller space, but it can apply just as well to larger homes with or without gardens.
Read More