Right before I was to leave Miami for good, a place I truly felt adrift in the 21st century like nowhere else, even with all the arthead success & pathways that welcomed me & kept me there…God did something that changed the course of my life.

I was introduced to & welcomed by the elders of the primary Native American tribe running through my veins on both sides of my family. They knew Me on sight, too.

That part I was used to. At FIT, a dude in my division walked up first day & was like “…we’re related. Cousins. I can tell.” & he was right. He’d literally made it into FIT from a reservation down south. & Chinese people saw my grandmother in my face everywhere I went in my 20s.

In the Miami case I had stumbled into their…terroir in grievechronic mode. It wasn’t on some reservation, at a whatever. It turned out they were the primary movers in regards to an excavation site that I kept being drawn to research-wise that stilled me, the activists making the corrupt money laundering building class in Miami not fuck shit up.

My ‘mom’s eldest sister’ walked up to me & my jaw dropped. To this day I don’t remember if she really cupped my face or her spirit did lol. But she laughed when I was like “you look Exactly like my aunt” & was like “just wait.” She introduced me to a motley crew of other activists who were professors et al up & down florida & around the basin, fighting the actual fight, real Cherokee & Chickasaw hidden in plain sight, that looked like they’d stepped out of all the old pictures my grandparents had of their elders.

They doused me in love, too. They knew exactly what malaise was rubbing me the wrong way, and in hindsight I understand the blessing in a wholly different way.

I was upset with God for a while afterwards, all “Why didn’t you let me meet them until the end?!” Because I’d been so psychologically lonely in Miami . Only place it ever was that. But it was because I wasn’t supposed to stay in Miami. He connected us so they could bless the journey they saw he was calling me to.

They knew exactly what was “on” me and specifically showed me how to use sage correctly for US. & it got what was on me, off. & it wasn’t… the same as what is normalized at all. Passed down, mouth to ear, all hands on me, impromptu. Mindblowing. & if I’m given a family, it will be given to them as such too, when the time is right.

Hindsight? I think they prepared me for Joshua Tree six months later, Taos, Sedona & beyond with all their blessings they pragmatically tatted me with. To walk into those holy grounds with my eyes open. At the time, I only knew I had to go. But now I truly believe they knew where I was going.