Soil Time: Moments in Grief
Contributed by Triniti Watson
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain”
~Kahlil Gibrarn, Lebanese American Writer
“The nature of time is rooted in our body, and our bodies are rooted to each other as miraculous manifestations of nature”
~Asia Dorsey, Black bioregional herbalist
My grandma holding baby me in loving and caring relationship. This love time traveled to the future where I then held her.
On April 30th 2022, Healing by Choice! held our Spring Visioning Retreat for practitioners and staff to deepen in who we’re becoming, and posed the question: What does it mean for me/us to be healing by choice in these times? A week prior on April 23rd, my grandma took her last breath in this realm, and I held her hand while guiding her through transition. My mother and I had unknowingly been caregivers for her final moments in this world for four months up to that moment. The week prior to her ascension, I was in New York City for an Unconference organized by Black Quantum Futurism to contemplate my relationship to Black space-time in a transitioning world. My body had been sensing change.
Each intricate moment in April was sewn by a common thread: the search for peace within the illusion of control in an uncertain world. Octavia Butler’s “Parables of the Sower” has been scripture for me since the beginning of the year, and her mantra “God is change” has been speaking to me as I experience life’s peaks and valleys. Since entering my many phases of grief, I’ve arrived at the question of how can I embody change instead of being broken by it? When I sit with my grief, answers to this moment are revealed through memory and embodying time.
Life has reminded me of the necessity of relationship within healing, and the symmetry between plant life and our own life cycles. Photosynthesis is the process of connection through relationships between the elements (air, sun, and water), plants, and soil systems to create life sustaining nutrients. It is the network between each component of life that transforms them, and the elements of our world are guides that help us locate harmony while in-between moments of transition.
I’ve chosen to embody soil as a measure of time in this moment by observing the layers of my grief, and understanding that it holds both decomposing matter and the grounds of rebirth. Within each layer, the possibility of joy is always rooting. My grandma’s time for rest was something I could not control as it was tied to her body’s clock, and there is no way for me to be settled in this truth without the memories I shaped while caring for her, as she did for me when I first sprouted in this world.
“Healing by Choice means finding peace in things we cannot settle. As community, we choose to heal because we choose love everytime". Written during HbC's fire ritual on April 30th, 2022.
To me, healing by choice means finding peace in the things we cannot settle. I know this grief will last a lifetime, and to witness change over, through, and beyond time is life’s fortune. I’m still learning to dance with fate while in the dark, and though I’m currently shapeless, this moment is an opening. I’m learning to submit to the air to allow me to float in my grief, and I trust that it will move me towards peace. As I reflect on the unknown and still find gratitude for this life, I hope to always feel the relationships that surround me both in physical and spiritual realms. To be with those that hold my hand and my heart as I walk with God.