Sunday Dinner: preparing a new tradition.
Another Soul Food newsletter for the generational curse breakers; the complicated life of a multi-purposed oldest daughter/only daughter/black sheep in the Black household.
Come on in, cousins.
We are putting a pause in our Sunday Service Announcements, to fellowship as a family for Sunday Dinner, and we are serving some soul food on your plate. The intention of this newsletter is to cultivate a sense of fellowship, to feel as though we are all gathered around the table together or spread out in the house with our preferred cousin groups. While we all have our uniqueness that makes us individuals, one thing we all share is the desire to belong. Sometimes it feels we lost that feeling of belonging in Black culture, and Sunday Dinner is our way to preserve the culture rebirth.
On First Sundays we fellowship together not only with Sunday Dinner to fill our spirits but also for Writers Circle to nourish our minds, and bodies for some.
Take a moment to listen to how Writers Circle last month impacted the community by coming together to hold space, and take it up.
At the end of the circle we hold space for those that wish to stay on to take up space, and October was the first month we saw a lot of people stay on to take up said space. To dive into their work and to sign up to join us today for November’s Writers Circle CLICK HERE. Very special thank you to
, , and for hosting October’s Writers Circle.
The closer it gets to winter the denser the meals become. The weight of the food posses a grounding energy unmatched. Everything is thick and creamy. Laughter and joy burst from full bellies. There is a calm this food possesses that allows us to embrace the moment. Before you get too comfy you put some leftovers in the fridge.
“Y’all better not touch my leftovers,” you say as you drift off to sleep.
You wake from an itis-inducing nap caused by a meal so good that you took a deep breath before your last bite just to make room for it. Groggily, you stumble to the kitchen, only to open the fridge to see your leftovers eaten.
The hurt and betrayal one feels after their leftovers have been eaten is comparable to the feeling of time wasted. Defeat wash over you as you know nothing will be done. Accepting that time passes, regardless of our experience, is the difference between being a healing adult and childish adult. It changes how we receive and give to others. Acceptance of what has been lost is recognizing you are the savior you have been waiting on, especially when you are the bloodline’s choosen one.
Generational Curse Breakers to the front, I wanna talk to you for a minute. Life gifts us with heavy burdens most couldn’t understand. In the house as the second parent before being the child first. Groomed into adulthood with not an adult in sight, but you and your little brother need to eat. We developed hyper-independence because we were taught that the best thing we could be was self-sufficient. So, we suffer our silences and grease our own scalps on hards days. We are both child and mother. Being both is exhaustive. If we are not earning our keep, though, how will be prove our value?
We became champions of others and self-betrayers. Whew that’s heavy.
Take a deep breath before this next bite.
Inhale, exhale, you want some cornbread with your plate?
Cornbread is cornbread.
And writing is writing.
Last month, at the table, y’all made it known that cornbread is not a side, but its own thing. It’s the moments like this that I love so much, those moments we share and agree are jars of joy preserved on the shelf to come back to.
Writing is what moves the unconscious into consciousiness.
You can write all day but until you accept the values of your words, what are you truly writing for? Better question to ask is who are you writing for? The human ways of existing keep us battling our worthiness to share our words with the world when we aren’t met with the instant gratification of being seen, heard, and felt.
Writing is like the process of making cornbread, the dry ingredients are mixed together first like the stream of inspiration that sparks the thought being mixed in with our experiences which serve as our wet ingredients creating our batter. As we blend our words and creativity together we capture an experience familiar to the reader, and that is why cornbread is cornbread.
Let’s try this meditation from Chapter Two: Cultural Conditioning:
Place your hands on your heart.
Take a deep breath in through your nose filling your belly and exhale through your mouth.
Allow yourself to travel to a time when you needed the comfort and safety we just discussed.
How old were you?
Do you remember what happened or the people involved?
Sit with this version of yourself, and create a safe space to express your true emotions. It is so important not to judge or criticize yourself for how you feel. Do not make excuses for the behavior that was not favored.
We are giving this version of ourselves a safe space to express ourselves not to rewrite the past. In this moment give yourself the compassion and love you would give a friend who experienced some sort of traumatizing event. Be the person you needed in that moment. So that experience will no longer be a trigger in your future.
When you are ready journal about what surfaced in the meditation. Be specific about the emotions and thoughts that came up for you.
Engagement Nudge
Finish the sentence in the comments to share what community feels like to you. For me, community to me feels like a house turned into a home.
What about you?
Community to me feels like [ fill in the blank ].
Cutting through my emotional purge.
How I learned how to cook was the foundation for my cooking style. My days in the kitchen started as young as five or six; removing the stem from the collards, snapping the ends off the green beans, layering the macaroni with the cheese, and my wrist game was nothing to play with when it was my turn to mix the cornbread batter. Homemade, from scratch, garden-to-table, an ingredients household.
The other grandkids were running around playing and getting in trouble, but I was always in the kitchen right by Grandma’s side, where it was safe.
Safety is a feeling that we identify as sacred. It’s as delicate and precious as grading your cheese blend rather than buying shredded cheese for the macaroni and cheese. That feeling of safety is like that warm, cheesy goodness bonding the dish together. But when you weren’t in the kitchen at Grandma’s side, you missed her adding the milk and butter while seasoning until the ancestors said enough.
And that’s why I get stuck making the side for every occasion because nobody can make her macaroni and cheese but me.
I carry this resentment in my jawline, clinching my teeth when they ask - the tension in my body as I go through the process to make it. Mind, body, and soul. However, the meaning was never explained. I feel it now when I experience it; the mind and spirit will be in alignment, my body and spirit does not feel safe.
It happened at Grandma’s house and it left me feeling unsafe at her house. I didn’t blame her but soon after that, she transitioned into my ancestor. I never got to tell her what happened, but the forgiveness I can give to my cousin showed me she knew. While I can know in my mind, and feel in my spirit that I forgive him I still can’t shake that feeling when I step foot in Grandma’s house my body and my spirit immediately feel unsafe. I don’t know why I stopped loving macaroni and cheese but I remember exactly how to make it. Maybe after it happened she pulled me close to her and kept me by her side in the kitchen and I learned to disconnect from that feeling by letting it all go in the process of making this dish.
Maybe it’s not love that makes soul food taste so good.
Maybe it’s the pain from the trauma the women preparing it endured.
Maybe ripping the stem from the collard leaves, and breaking the ends off the green bean, or peeling the skin off the sweet potatoes is the only outlet she had to let go of the resentment and the pain.
Maybe by the end of the process, she found forgiveness in her heart to sit down to enjoy this meal and hide what just happened from everyone at the table.
Maybe Black women have a reason to be angry deeper than the surface.
When we asked your favorite side macaroni and cheese was the number one choice and I thought about the dopamine menu again.
Macaroni and cheese is meditation on the dopamine menu in all of the stages of acceptance. The compass of direction that you gain in meditation ushers the emotions through the process of healing. Oozing like the cheesy goodness of an household favorite crying is the act of release which is how we accept the situation as it is. The irony in thay same household we are shamed for the natural act of healing.
The preparation of this classic side is a long process adding ingredients that build the bond with flavor; how deep meditation gives the timeless comfort and the warm love to heal. As we heal from the cultural conditionings that kept us in these liminal spaces, environments, and identities; we break the curse.
wrote a piece about how anger can be rooted in unfairness. Black women are tired from having to do so much in the household and not having the level of respect for who we are as the true provider. That anger fuels the more we experience this unfairness, yet we continue to show up to nourish the same family that abuse us. We long for the chance to truly define family and can’t wait to have a home of our own.Between the greens and the candied yams, not together, but the back-and-forth balance from the bold savory favor of the greens and the sweet soft textured yams symbolize the fine line crossed in music grooming the Black household to build a world of secrets and lumpy rugs from all the abuse swept under it.
Music filled house with songs like Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number by Aailyah echoed in our homes knowing the words sang were wrong. Conditioned the minds of Black families to turn a blind eye to the kids saying the same things about that one Uncle that holds his hugs a little too long or always says something that turns the room still. Speechless like a fork-full with greens shimmered on the stove smelling as good as it tastes, or when the beat makes your body move ignoring the words affirmed through the lyrics.
“Get up and show them that little dance you be doing!”
Blinded by their conditioning, some of us generational bloodline curse breakers had to start healing in the same environments that caused the wound. Hard to break through resembling the sweet potato before the tranformation into the warm, soft, sweet candied yams. I am one of those cousins who will change my envirnoment the moment I feel someone try to dim my light for their comfort. The anger built up from how my traditional home environment tried to keep me buried in the dirt triggered my drive to plow my way to nagivate a new experience of home and family.
That anger cut me and I bled over everything I valued until I was only left with myself. It was through writing that I soften my sweet potatoes and transformed into a soft, tender, sweet classic, and the creation of my book was that process. Grieving the things that I could not change from my childhood allowed me to accept this reality and build a new world for myself. Sharing this story with others through my writing inspires them to do the same.
Catfished from the start.
How can we carry ourselves if we are weighed down by the debt of our existence? Catfished into believing that we are the joy in our mother’s eye however at times it feels like we were left ashore to make it back to the sea alive.
Catfished by the emotions carried that never belonged to me. The weight my mother carried took the place of me, I was the catfish, the disguise, the physical burden. As children our parents get to teach us our value. As adults we get to decide if they were right.
Paving my own path, I chose to carry myself differently than the teachers, resources, and practices presented as the source of guidance. I made the decision to face the generational curses in my family learning to put down the burden of their limited perception of me. My compassion developed when I realized they formulated and reflected those opinions because they were growing up themselves.
I stopped catfishing myself and took a look in the mirror reflecting my truth. Slowly, I regained my personhood and autonomy. Leo Sun shining past the limited experiences of womanhood expanding me into the essence of me.
As I come in contact with the truth of my value a huge part of that is listening to myself. When I looked externally for my validation I found myself down an unpleasant path because my compass was skewed by lack. Operating from a deficit of value and using others to fill an un-fillable cup.
Fried catfish served as I affirm to myself; I am valuable. Repeating those words to make sure the edges are fried crispy on the old versions of me that were created by a catfished reality. By shifting my perspective on my value I was able to connect with my core identity.
The tenderness that described in Reset & Rewind is the perfect example of how we can keep parts of our cultural conditionings that serve our new indentity. Almost like how fried catfish and spaghetti were a Sunday dinner classic in our household that I carry with me. The balanced textured with the combination represent a well portioned plate from the dopamine menu. Spaghetti on the dopamine menu is the boundaries we put in place to remain soft and tender to ourselves.
Entrees bring us long term balance to continue explore the depths of our core. To move through these feelings we create distance from these wounded versions of ourselves. The best piece of advice I received about boundaries was to create them for yourself not other people. That means set boundaries understanding the emotional pay off, and choose to meet our emotional needs.
Fried catfish served as I affirm to myself; I will not be silent when I feel disrespected. When we set boundaries for ourselves, we can hold ourselves accountable. Our emotional payoff looks like no fight our siblings for eating our leftovers because now we make their plate too so they feel loved and cared for.
Here, let me add come greens on your plate. Nipsey Hussle once said “never taught you how to drink I just lead you to the lake.”
This means as the generational curse breakers, we are the example our bloodline will follow but it is not our job to make sure they drink the water or if they drink enough for the journey ahead. We can only lead them to the water and in the water they have a choice to look at their reflection to see their truth.
Masked pretty in red velvet.
As I rediscover versions of my identity hid to protect myself from the judgment of my expression through style. Looking back those were the most important years of my development into self masked to feel accepted.
One cultural conditioning that comes to mind about red velvet cake is how the slices being cut up to make sure we weren’t cutting slices too big, being inconsiderate for others. Now, I might be reaching but this is kind of dominance in the Black family is the same pattern behavior we grow older to break free of. Determined to show up for ourselves however the more we are met with celebration and recognition we notice the discomfort from being in the light. We grew so used to the dark that now in the light we struggle to shine in our brightness.
It’s not every cake that treat this way, it’s the rich ones like the red velvet that we as a Black culture tend to preserve. And while we are cautious with the rich things we preserve it’s the unhealthy riches we hold onto the tightest.
The light fluffy moist cake layered with the sweet sugary buttercream icing is how we mask our circumstances to dictate your identity. Hiding behind the sweetness cravings to bypass the reality that no boundaries can lead to unhealthy choices.
Red velvet cake on the dopamine menu is like that extra time spent in the mirror affirming yourself. When we make choices for ourselves in the mirror, it changes the way we accept our reflection, we move differently in our lives. The mirror work itself is the process of looking at your reflection and accepting your truth.
Rather than using makeup to fix or cover the imperfections explore makeup as gateway into your self-expression manifested into your reality. Redefine why you get dressed up to feel as pretty as the sweetness we taste in every bite of red velvet cake.
Next time you are feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, go look at yourself in the mirror and repeat these words over and over until you feel as good as you look.
Mirror Affirmations
I accept myself.
I love myself.
Thank you for everything in my life exactly how it is right now.
I am wealthy everywhere I go
I release parts of myself that no longer serve me.
I trust myself.
 | A guest post by
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Community feels like a deep breath next to a wisdom tree. Community feels like the purist love. Community feels like feet in the dirt. Community feels like the earth. Community feels like hearts beating as one. Community feels like a deep dive in the ocean.
A week ago, I had a different interpretation of community. I had bruises from passed communities that had limited my perspective of community.
The black writers circle, black stack, Jacquie has been a huge part of helping me unlearn. So thank yall for taking time to read and engage and feel. It means a tremendous amount to me.
Community to me feels like a house turned into a home.