1 Chapter One – Ancestral Healing and Hoodoo Wisdom Ways: Myth Work, Magic, and Transformation

“The dead can change!” “What?” My initial introduction to the concept and practice of ancestral lineage healing was baffling. “How could that be?” I thought. Then I dismissed the idea altogether, but it refused to go away. Instead, it kept haunting me. In my sense-making efforts, I landed on the Black cultural traditions of conjuring, working the crossroads, tapping into a spiritual power that has the capacity to shapeshift old narratives and provide prescriptions for healing and wholeness. The conjuring traditions recognize the unity of all life, a universe that includes the living, the dead, and the yet to be born – in a web of connectivity and an entanglement of source energies malleable to the will and way of the adept in spiritual and ideological technologies. The spiritual adepts are the ones who live close to nature, commune with the elements, and hold a healthy respect for all of creation. They are fundi, experts in understanding the nature of spirit, accomplished at orchestrating healing energies through sacred herbalism, rhythm, sound, story, prayer, preaching, movement, and song. This is what I call the “hoodoo wisdom way” – the very same “hoodoo wisdom way” that ancestral lineage healing practitioners engage to alchemize, transmute, and transform generational troubles.

Like the map of a buried treasure, this insight revealed itself to me slowly through my experience as an ancestral lineage healing practitioner. From the beginning I was curious, even perplexed, about what was happening on the psyche-spiritual level during the guided meditation journey of contacting spirit guides, and inviting the help of wise and well ancestors. These wise and well ancestors were then asked to establish a container of prayer energy to elevate the spiritual consciousness and well-being of the many disembodied spirits on that lineage, who lived an earthly existence in the shadows of a troubled past. Certainly, this is hard to fathom on any rational level. My colonized mind struggled to make sense of it. As Toni Morrison observed, this is discredited knowledge coming from a discredited and discounted people. Unverifiable knowledge is not accepted as valuable. But Morrison came to think differently. Morrison’s way of engaging ancestral knowledge was through the novels she wrote. The ancestral presence served as a resource for her characters, scenes, plots, literary and spiritual imagination to pursue healing and restoration. Now that she, too, lives in the ancestral realm, I turn to her literary legacy, her myth work magic, for insight and inspiration.

The ancestor spirits in Morrison’s novels are characters who link past, present, and future, leading the reader to deeper levels of understanding of time, and the complexity of embedded cultural knowing that spans generations. The concept of “hoodoo wisdom ways” helps me to maintain an openness to ways of knowing and orchestrating reality that defy rational explanation. Growing up in rural South Carolina, I have vague memories of these cultural practices. There were times when my dad and granddad visited the root doctor, Miss Easter, under the cover of darkness. Though I’m not sure exactly where she lived, the town must have been at least a two-hour drive, as going there seemed to be a big deal. They always left in the late evening and returned just before dawn. Knowing what time to expect them home, my grandmother would have a breakfast of hot biscuits, scrambled eggs, grits, country ham, and coffee waiting.

Their reports of the visit fascinated me. They spoke in hushed tones, adding an element of magic and intrigue. It seemed that Miss Easter knew things that others did not know. She was a “seer” and a healer. My dad and granddad always came back with one or more mason jars of herbal medicine; a tonic is what my grandfather called it. Sometimes he also had a new talisman to wear about his neck. When I reflect on my memory of Miss Easter’s work, I recognize that the critical elements included what Arthur Flowers, author of Mojo Rising (Wanganegresse Press, 2001), refers to as “the mind, the will, and the way,” foundational components of “hoodoo” healing practices. When applied to ancestral lineage healing, this concept aligns with the four key assumptions that Daniel Foor speaks to in Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing (Bear & Company, 2017). These assumptions include: 1) Consciousness continues after death; 2) Not all of the dead are equally well; 3) The living and the dead can communicate; 4) The living and the dead can strongly affect one another. The will translates as “intentionality.” Stating one’s intent is an important step in the process. The way, in this instance, is the meditation ritual. My first exposure to the “mind, will, and way” of ancestral lineage healing started with a weekend immersion experience in Decatur, Georgia.

Ancestral Lineage Healing Weekend Intensive

We gathered at an urban oasis, in the muti-purpose room of a white stucco building in a park-like setting in downtown Decatur, Georgia. Members of the Ancestral Medicine host team greeted us warmly as we entered. A racially diverse group of about twenty-five participants had come from various locations, mostly from the Southeastern United States. The leader gave an overview of the weekend agenda, and we were on – three days of intensive ritual work. On the first day, we eased into the work with background information and short guided meditations. By the second day we were fully immersed. With each guided ritual meditation, I felt a deeper, stronger, more emotional connection. Grief that I didn’t know I was carrying released in a flood of tears. The attentive ritual team pointed out the sage sticks, bags of rose petals, and bowls of water strategically placed about the room to absorb difficult energies. The frequent breaks also helped us stay grounded and aware of our physical surroundings.

By the end of the day, I was emotionally drained and felt as if I had been to a funeral. I went to bed earlier than usual and slept for twelve hours straight. My initial skepticism faded during the night, and I awoke refreshed and renewed, but still perplexed about the experience. I was curious about where this path was headed and what it meant for me and my work as an educator, change agent, and justice worker. The weekend intensive ended on Sunday. During the debriefing session I realized that I was not the only one who had a somatic grief experience. I questioned if some of what I had encountered was not only my personal grief, but also that of the gathered community, visible and invisible. I wondered if I had stumbled upon a ritual tool that held answers for interrupting the intergenerational impact of oppression and enslavement. Over the course of the weekend, I completed the spiritual wellness assessment work with my four primary lineages and the healing work with one line.

Beyond the Weekend

I returned home with a commitment to continue the ancestral lineage healing work. That commitment led to the award of a scholarship. Not only did I complete the healing rituals with my four primary blood lineages, but I also signed up for the practitioner training, which turned out to be quite an intense experience itself. Becoming proficient in guiding the work for others required practice, practice, practice. There were times when I was filled with anticipation, other times when I was overcome with self-doubt, but I was driven and sustained by the desire to find and embrace the ancestral medicine that held the promise for generational personal and cultural healing.

In one individual session with a practitioner, I asked my ancestral guide to show me what the experience of capture and separation from the African ancestral lands had been like. I realized too late that I had made a very bold request. There was an onrush of voices, a sea of people all talking at the same time. The emotional and psychic pain was real. I was flooded with emotion. Recognizing my distress, the practitioner guided me back to the room. It was difficult to speak. It took a few minutes for me to catch my breath. The potential of engaging the ancestral presence had become real in that moment.

Again, I was curious about what had just happened. I began to think about the altered state as another world, an invisible one, just as real as the everyday physical world. I never went looking for relatives by name, but sometimes folk that I knew showed up. For instance, my paternal grandmother, whom I never met, once appeared in the likeness of a picture that I had seen of her. She said, “I am preparing for my daughter to come home. Your prayer should be that her soul be made ready, and her family be prepared to release her.” The daughter to whom she referred was my aunt who was in the hospital with COVID. I had dropped in to pray for her recovery. This message left me stunned. I didn’t tell anyone, but I called my cousin (her daughter) and asked how things were going. She reported that she had accepted the fact that her mother would not be coming back home, and she had gone for a long walk in the park to clear her head.

Within a week, my aunt transitioned to the ancestral realm. We had another COVID death in the family and I also received a message about that impending death. Again, it was during a time when I dropped in for prayer. A father and his son were both in the hospital in critical condition. I heard distinctly, “We will take one and leave one.” I didn’t ask which one would survive. For a while, I tried not to think about it. But as the days and weeks passed, I knew the father would live, but the son would not. That’s exactly what happened. After that experience, I was somewhat reluctant to “drop in” for an ancestral dialogue. I was not afraid, but I just had no desire for this type of ‘advance’ knowledge from the ancestral realm. It felt a little too eerie and unsettling.

Becoming a Practitioner

Recognizing the potential of ancestral lineage healing practices, I adjusted my schedule to make the practitioner training my primary focus. I moved along steadily. When I look back over the certification training period, much of it is a blur in my mind; however, there are a couple of experiences that I will always remember. One was the “blessing of the bones” component in which practitioners learn to guide clients through the ritual process of extending blessings to the extended family of the ancestral line and fanning out the healed and blessed energies of the lineage to all the remains – all the bones, property, artifacts – throughout time and space, anywhere on earth. During this meditative process I focused on my son, whom I had lost to suicide a few years back. Fanning out the lineage blessings to his remains opened an emotional flood gate that was draining, so much so that I had to excuse myself from the group and take a break before continuing. Again, the power of the unseen energetic world of spirit made itself known in very real ways.

However, not all my encounters were defined by intensity. There were lighter moments as well, like the time my mentor asked if I wanted to contact a cultural ancestor. My response was, “What! You can do that?” She said, “Yes, would you like to try it?” When I said that I would, she suggested that since I was a storyteller maybe I would like to meet with a literary ancestor. I said, “Ok. Let’s try Zora Neale Hurston.” Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is a cultural icon in the Black literary world. She is well known as an author, folklorist, anthropologist and storyteller. I had always admired her work. One of my professors once referred to me as Zora Jr. and I considered that the highest compliment. I could hardly believe that someone was telling me that I could go to the world of spirit and talk to Zora Neale Hurston!

My mentor guided me through the drop in phase of the meditative ritual. I asked for a spirit guide to come and assist me. I was completely and totally awed when an image of an old house, a small shack, appeared in my mind’s eye. Zora walked out on the porch wearing one of her famous hats, and said, “Come on in the house, child, I been waiting for you.” She led me into the kitchen and invited me to have a seat at a table by the window. A wood stove crackled in the background. She said she was cooking a pot of grits, and I was welcome to stay and eat with her. I thanked her, told her how much I admired her work, and asked if she had any words of wisdom for me. She said, “Girl, y’all are in trouble. So much mess going on over there. My advice to you is to tell stories of joy.” By now, the practitioner was letting me know it was time to close out the session. I thanked Zora for meeting with me and began to shift my awareness back to the room. As I was leaving, she said, “Keep up the writing.”

When I opened my eyes, my mentor was smiling. She asked me what it was like. “Absolutely amazing!” I replied. I didn’t know what to think. I could kind of get the blood lineage thing, the idea of communicating with blood line ancestors, but this was another dimension altogether. As time passed, I thought more and more about Zora’s directive to tell stories of joy and why. This cultural ancestor was directing me to make space to remember, not only the pain and sorrow, but the moments of joy that are a necessary component of nurturing the soul. That perspective was consistent with psychologist Barbara Frederickson’s theory of positive emotions, a concept that interested me. Following this initial visit, I had one other encounter with Zora. This time she appeared in a classroom. She was standing at the front of the room by a chalk board as though teaching a class. When I opened the door, Zora said, “Come on in. I saved a seat for you.” I entered and took my seat. I don’t recall what else transpired in the session, but I remember feeling affirmed and supported, and the directive of telling stories of joy stayed with me.

Working the Wake

The more I engaged in the ancestral work, the more I became aware of the energetic balancing act required for “working the wake,” calming the disturbance left in the waters of the Middle Passage slave ships. To sustain the energy to “work the wake,” one must have moments of joy. The concept of “wake work” comes from Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke University Press, 2016). Ancestral lineage healing work among the descendants of the Maafa (Middle Passage) certainly qualifies as “wake work,” not an easy undertaking. As Sharpe points out, the metaphor represents a disturbance deeply embedded in the psyche, an intergenerational soul-level wounding. Often that generational disturbance is uncovered through the wake work of ancestral lineage healing. The following excerpts from my case files reflect some of what happens in wake work:

Cynthia

Cynthia dropped in easily. Her ancestors spoke in vivid imagery. As the guiding practitioner, I listened and prompted her to share her experience. In one of the sessions, this is what she told me: “This group of ancestors went into a little white church as their healing container. They are singing and doing a “foot washing” ritual. …. Now they are coming out and getting on the buses in the parking lot. “Where are the buses going?” I asked. Cynthia said she didn’t know. I encouraged her to ask her ancestral guide. She reported, “They said we’re going to the show. The buses are leaving the church now and pulling up to a building that looks like a theatre.” I prompted her again, “What’s the name of the show?” After a long pause, she chuckled and replied, “He said, Cynthia it’s your show. We are waiting on your show. Do your creative work. Stop sitting on your talent. All those ideas come to you for a reason.” Here I interjected, “What’s been holding you back?” She said, “Fear.” I should have asked her what she was afraid of, but instead I suggested that she ask her ancestral guide if they could help her. She did and they responded, “Yes, of course we can help. We’re sending you teachers. We have sent support. Continue writing and the support and resources will continue to show up.” Cynthia was silent for a while. After a few minutes she said, “I see three busloads of people. They are all going to the theatre.”

Again, I prompted her. “They’re going to the theater to see your show. So give them a show.” She hesitated and I asked, “What do you see? She said she saw scenes in a rural town, images of baskets, quilts, a farmers’ market, and she was reconnecting with family. Then she said, “Oh, the show is my trip that I am planning to my homeland. When I travel, it’s like a show for them.” She said they kept telling her to go on with her show. When the session neared its end, I reminded Cynthia to thank her ancestors and ask if they wanted a gratitude offering.

They told her the trip to the homeland was the offering they wanted. I reminded her to clear her energy field and slowly shift attention back to the room. As she shifted her awareness, Cynthia said her head was spinning and she needed to take a nap. I certainly understood. Dialoguing with ancestors can be physically as well as emotionally exhausting, but sometimes energizing as well. Everyone’s experience is different. I worked with Cynthia in multiple sessions over a three or four-month period. She accomplished her goal of connecting with her ancestors for guidance around fulfilling her life’s purpose. In early sessions she felt an inner conflict between loyalty to the Christian tradition of her upbringing and her attraction to African spirituality. In the end she received her answer from her maternal ancestors, who told her there was no need for a conflict, that she could wear both a gelee (African headwrap) and a church hat.

Ben

When Ben came to me for ancestral work, he expressed apprehension about one of the bloodlines of his multiracial ancestry. He was convinced that there could not be well and wise ancestors from that lineage no matter how many generations back he went along the line. After all, he said, they were colonizers, enslavers, and oppressors. He wanted nothing to do with them. It took some persuading to convince him that these folk were his ancestors, no matter what, and that he could not divorce himself from them because they were part of his DNA. And since that was the case, why not do the healing work with them, rather than freeze them in time with a judgmental execution.

He finally agreed, but said his biggest concern was with the living. He was estranged from his only sibling, a brother with whom he had not had contact in years. Ben said he had attempted to reach his brother several times, without success. He admitted that he was holding a lot of anger and resentment against his brother and his paternal ancestors. The process moved slowly for him. After several ancestral healing sessions with his maternal lineage, Ben was able to continue the lineage healing work with his paternal ancestors. Following the “blessing of the bones” ritual and the weaving of the two lineages together with new healed energy, Ben reported feeling a great sense of relief. Not long after that, he contacted me with exciting news. His brother had called him on his birthday, and they had made plans to meet up and visit their mother’s grave. Ben was ecstatic and attributed this turn of events to his ancestral lineage healing work.

Ancestral Meditations and Memories

My experience of guiding clients through the ancestral lineage healing process and facilitating their communication with their wise and well ancestors has been nothing short of amazing. But so have my own ancestral meditations and memories. I’ve learned to connect easily and often, to recognize when a message is coming through as an intuitive insight, a knowing, or an uncanny experience of serendipity. The ancestral healing with my own people has taught me to listen and pay attention, to honor the whispers and the barely discernable thoughts, to shapeshift stories and redirect energies, create space for alchemy, imagination, meanings and musings that create new stories and new futures.

Grits and Eggs

When my house sold more quickly than expected, I needed a place to stay for a few weeks. Rather than incur the expense of a short-term rental, I decided to move into the home place, the house my parents had owned, now owned by two of my brothers. The house was not occupied, and my brothers agreed that my temporary residence would not be a problem, but there was just one little caveat. They knew about my ancestral work and took advantage of every opportunity to tease me about seeing ghosts. Whenever they stopped by on the weekend and made remarks about ghosts, I would laugh and say, “I ain’t scared of no ghosts.” They kept asking, “Have you seen anybody? Have you heard anything?” I just laughed it off. Then one evening as I was preparing for bed, I distinctly heard, “Why don’t you get up early enough to cook yourself some grits and eggs before you get on the road.” I stopped in my tracks.

“What?” I heard the query of my own voice. Apparently, some ancestral presence had decided to join in the game with my brothers. “Oh, you got the wrong one. I’m not the grits and eggs girl. Don’t know the last time I’ve eaten grits and eggs.” That was the final thought before I drifted off to sleep. What seemed like minutes later, my alarm sounded. I hit the snooze button and got up just in time to hurriedly get dressed and start my 90 minute commute to work. Certainly no time for grits and eggs. But that was not the end of the “grits and eggs” mantra. They, whoever they were, were not going to let me forget. I shared the story with a friend who chuckled and said, “Oh they just want you to sit down and talk with them. You know, people talk at the kitchen table.” I laughed and laughed; the thought had never occurred to me. My friend pointed out that this was my ancestors’ way of welcoming me home. That Saturday morning I cooked grits and eggs for breakfast, and I never heard anything else from the ancestral presence about grits and eggs. My brothers had a field day when I shared the story with them.

Tell Me So I Can Help

Since I am talking about the home place, let me tell you this. One of my brothers lives next door to my parents’ house in rural South Carolina. This brother was the primary caretaker for my father during his several years of declining health. My father was a gentle spirit, an outdoorsman who loved the land. He was a gardener as well as a sheet metal worker for many years. But his greatest joy was in selling produce at the farmer’s market. Sometimes he was the produce man who drove around the neighborhoods of the town selling peaches, apples, watermelons, sweet potatoes, wood, whatever he could get his hands on. What he couldn’t sell, he gave away. People all around knew and loved him. He loved counting his money at the end of his market day. He always wanted cash for his birthday or Father’s Day gift. Someone had a picture of him counting his money. When that image flashed up on the memorial slide show during his wake, everyone laughed. His money was “hot,” as the Ifa priest would say. It passed through his hands quickly. Now I wonder if I inherited his “hot money” traits, as my money never seems to linger for as long as I would like.

My father was mostly quiet, but he did love to tell jokes that made my mother laugh, and he loved to share with us words of wisdom that he leaned from his own mother. I never knew that grandmother, as she died long before I was born, but my father used to tell me that I reminded him of his mother. That always made me smile because I knew how much he loved her. He talked about her often, and every Mother’s Day he wore a white rose or carnation in his lapel in honor of her. He was a dark-skinned Black man who worked exceedingly hard to support his family of ten children. I mention the color of his skin because that made a huge difference in the race and color conscious society in which we lived. Only now can I understand how hard things were for him. Yet he always found moments of joy. He loved to sing, and one of my fondest memories is of him singing softly to himself early in the morning as he walked in and out of the house doing his farm chores.

One of my father’s favorite songs was “By the Power of God.” The only phase I remember was “Everything moves by the power of God.” He sang it with such heart and conviction. I think it is that conviction that kept him going during hard times. Even now, my father continues with devotion and commitment from the other side. Once he showed up in my brother’s dream and said, “Tell me what you’re working on so I can help you.” In another dream he threw a pair of work gloves in my brother’s door. My brother had recently retired. Dad’s message to him was, “You still have work to do. You need to bring the family together.” My brother was obedient. He extended the mowed lawn of the land around the home place and invited folk to come for a tailgating party. About fifty people showed up with food, tents, and outdoor grilling equipment. I’m sure my dad was smiling from the other side. I’ve never gotten messages from him in a dream; however, he has communicated through Ifa divination sessions.

For instance, once when I was looking for housing I had a divination session. The diviner told me that my father wanted to help me find the right place. He said I should go to his house and offer prayers asking for his guidance. I said it would not be convenient for me to get there any time soon, so would it be alright if my brother who lived next door did the prayers as my proxy. When the diviner threw the shells, the answer was no. I then asked if my sister could offer the prayers in my stead. This time the answer was yes. I called my sister, and she agreed to do the prayers for me if I could send her some prayer notes. I wrote a few affirmative prayers to my father, expressing my gratitude for all that he had given to us as a father and asking for his help in finding the place that was right for me.

In a few days my sister called me back and reported that the mission had been accomplished. She had walked out in the yard by my father’s old truck, poured a libation on the ground and prayed. Then it occurred to her that the reason I had not found a place was because I had not decided what I really wanted. She was right. Once I established clearly in my mind that I was looking for a place in a live-work-play-walking neighborhood no more than 20 minutes from my job, the location was easy to find. After I moved to Atlantic Station, I walked around the town center trying to feel a sense of connection, wondering what it was before it became a residential community. One day on my walk, I looked down and read the marker on the ground. It marked the former site of Atlantic Steel Mill. The Mill opened in 1901 and was active for several decades. My father was once a sheet metal steel worker. How uncanny that he had led me to a place with which he had a strong energetic connection.

Auntie O’s Transition

My father had six sisters, and all but one has already joined the land of the ancestors. The last one to transition was Auntie O. I was by her bedside when she gasped her last breath. Witnessing that final moment of transition was strange for me. Auntie O was a gentle spirit like my father. I visited her in the hospital the week before she died. While I was sitting with her, I noticed that she seemed to be peering off into the realm of the invisible. Suddenly she waived to a presence that only she could see. Then in a quiet voice she said, “It’s ok. It’s ok.” I imagined that she was speaking to egun – the ancestral collective in Yoruba cosmology – and saying that she was ok with leaving the earthly realm. She was teetering between life and death. When I told her that it was time for me to leave, but I would come back soon, she said, “Ok, but don’t wait too long.”

Only a few days later my cousin called to confirm what I already knew: Auntie O was about to cross over. The next morning my brother and I got on the road at 8:00 am to make the four-hour drive to the hospital. When we were about 20 minutes away, my cousin called to say he had spoken to the hospice nurse and been advised to go to the hospital immediately. I arrived at Auntie O’s bedside about 10 minutes before she took her last breadth. The room was quiet. My brother and I, and four of my cousins were standing around the bed. There was no hospice nurse, chaplain, or pastor in the room. I sensed that my family was looking to me for guidance. One cousin said, “Velma, you got here just in time. I think she was waiting for you to come.” I had never been at the bedside of a dying person, and I didn’t quite know what to do. Instinctively, I pulled out my cell phone and started reading poetry from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Then I read scriptures from the Bible and prayed for Auntie O’s easy passage. My family seemed very appreciative that I had stepped in as a spiritual leader.

Several hours passed before the mortician arrived to remove Auntie O’s body. At first, I was annoyed that the funeral home was not providing prompt service, until I realized that this wait time was an important part of letting go. It was like an informal wake, as we shared funny stories and memories of my aunt. In fact, it was the only wake, as her son wanted just one gathering – the funeral. I spoke at the funeral service and shared the story of my final visits with Auntie O. When I finished speaking, the appointed soloist sang, “May the work I have done speak for me.” The people were well pleased, and I believe Auntie O was, too. Several days later I was very aware of her presence, and felt as if she were saying, “Oh this is not bad. It’s peaceful here. If I had known it was like this, I would not have been afraid at all.” I think she eased into the ancestral realm.

Spiritual Ancestors

“Why do the Orisha keep showing up?” This is the question I asked Daniel Foor when I first engaged with the Ancestral Medicine ritual process. He asked me who was showing up. I shared that as soon as I dropped in, I saw an image of Obatala on my left and Oshun on my right. He said, “Well, you’re initiated to Obatala and Oshun, so they are your spiritual ancestors.” At the time I wasn’t thinking of that at all, but it made sense. The term “orisha” means aspects of consciousness. In the Ifa/orisha tradition, spiritual initiations are for self-alignment with one’s consciousness or soul’s code. One of my favorite Ifa sayings is, “The gods cannot grant what the Ori has not sanctioned.” If the Obatala and Oshun energetic matrices govern my thoughts, actions and ways of being in the world, then it certainly made sense that their presence would show up in ancestral work.

Often when I enter the light trance state of ancestral connection, images of the egun (ancestral) dancers appear in my visual feel. Sometimes they are whirling and dancing around me and other times they appear moving about in the forest. Several years ago, I did my doctoral dissertation on the Ifa/Orisha tradition and wrote about the impact of divination readings in the lives of practitioners. In answer to my inquiry about what really happens in a divination session, one of my priestly research partners told me that when the diviner does a reading, he/she is tapping into the field of all knowing – the morphogenetic energy field – and is telling the client the story they are living. The divination narrative is connected to the Odu, the sacred text, and often the ancestors will speak through the Odu. This level of transpersonal, depth psychology remains a mystery to me.

But the “hoodoo wisdom way” embraces mystery, accepts the vibrancy of the spirit world, and recognizes the field of all knowing. I experienced these ancestral ways of knowing recently while on a spiritual pilgrimage to Ghana, West Africa. I visited the slave dungeons in Cape Coast and walked the path to the last bath river. I stood on the very ground that my ancient ancestors probably tread before their horrific, traumatizing journey to an unknown land of enslavement, brutality, and misery. The diviners named me Maame Esi Enyimpa, meaning woman born on Sunday with favor. They told me that “goodness” follows me wherever I go, no matter what challenges I face, no matter what circumstances. As I received my naming certificate, a chorus of villagers began to chant, “Favor! Favor! Favor!” It is good to know that my ancient ancestors were fundi of spirit. They understood the transformative power of the spiritual realm and how to engage it. This is my inheritance, and I gratefully embrace the “hoodoo wisdom way” of ancestral lineage healing for an Afro future of healing and wholeness. I no longer ask, “How can that be?” Now I know.