It’s Black History Month, and the ground feels loud.

ICE actions. Protests in Minnesota. Sirens in the nervous system. Grief braided with rage braided with love for people we may never meet but somehow know intimately. History isn’t past right now—it’s tap‑tapping us on the shoulder like, hey… this is your moment.

And here’s a silumatenously empowered, but perhaps inconvenient truth: we are here at this time because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Not the perfect ones. Not the fully healed, never‑mess‑up, always‑say‑the‑right‑thing ones. The ones who are becoming. The ones who keep rising—sometimes clumsily—to what this moment is asking of us.

Becoming Is the Assignment

We are not meant to arrive polished and done. We are meant to be in process—again and again—meeting the edge of ourselves and choosing growth anyway.

Collective and ancestral healing isn’t just candles and poetry (though yes, also candles and poetry). It’s also looking directly at the parts of us that have caused harm. The parts shaped by supremacy, silence, fear, extraction, and dominance. The parts that learned to armor instead of feel.

Healing asks us to compost patterns that no longer serve, and start to look at these parts to help them heal and soften.  Let what no longer serves break down into something that can nourish compassion, accountability, and courage.

These wild times of being alive are asking us to hold multiple things: We can do the much-needed shadow work AND keep our eyes on the vision. We can compost AND create.  What kind of world we are midwifing even as the old paradigm thrashes and gasps for it’s last breath?

There Are Many Paths in the Work

Social justice is not a single-lane highway.

Some people are going to protests. Some are donating money. Some are organizing behind the scenes. Some are offering therapy, healing, and support to activists and impacted communities. Some are raising children differently. Some are changing policies from the inside. Some are making art that keeps the truth alive in our bodies.

All of it matters.

Please—do the small, good things you can do to help create the world you want to live in. Small does not mean insignificant. Small is how ecosystems actually function.

This Is Not Spiritual Bypass

Let me be clear: this is not an invitation to look away.

The brutality must be acknowledged. It must be named. It must be resisted. The most vulnerable populations need real protection—now, not someday.

And—and—we also need to create more of what we want to see.

Create community. Make art. Feed people. Rest together. Tell the truth. Practice repair. That is not to say that we are meant to be “calm and regulated” all the time. The rage is sacred, the grief tells you that your heart is still working. AND feel what the energy of liberation, compassion, beauty, equity actually FEEL like in your nervous system and try to operate from them more often. What are the textures, the rhythm, the overall energy of these values that we want to embody more?

Resistance without creation burns out. Creation without resistance disconnects from reality. We need both.

Connected, Not the Same

There is discernment here.

My experience as a white‑bodied person is not the same as a Black‑bodied person. Full stop. The risks are not the same. The histories carried in the body are not the same.

And—we are still inextricably connected.

When it happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. Trauma moves through systems. Healing does too.

Black History Month is acknowledges ALL of our history, and some of it isn’t so pretty, but it reminds us that the world has been changed—again and again—by people who refused to believe they were powerless, even when power was violently denied to them.

We are here, dear ones; we are here at this time, and we are the people for the job.  

Here are some of my favorite Black Influencers, whose wisdom I am eternally grateful for:

Prentis Hemphill has an amazing podcast called “Becoming The People,” but also drops lovely wisdom on her IG. 

Dr. Bertice Berry brings grounded, joyful stories to life

Shanika Malcom speaks to planetary liberation

Organizations to consider donating to:

The Loveland Foundation provides FREE therapy to Black women and nonbinary folks, but also pays their clinicians fairly! 

National Immigrant Justice Center

You are here at the right time, my loves. You are on sacred ground right now. We are in a great turning, and we are part of pulling this arc closer to the values of equity, compassion, connection, joy, and beauty. We are here to remember our inherent oneness, while still showing up in our unique and fullest expression.

Holding you tight, 

Erica