There is something psychologically #cosmic that happens when #blackwomen who were #littleblackgirls in the 70s & 80s(&the #poeticjusticebraids 90s) revisit what was, for many a sign of summer : getting #cornrowed #braided up so our hair’d be out the way while we ran around like banshees until the streetlights came on.

#earthwindandfire created a sonic nimbus around some of us, #zoned in on to disengage from being #tenderheaded through 8 to 12 hrs it took. #blackgirlzen is keyed into heads resting on knees watching time go by to this day for some. But then for hot assed months on end we were #Free! Free, I tell ya!

But what moves me is the transmutation of it all to joy, then and even now in a wholly different way.

Back then our parents, our aunts, our cousins or that lady down the block were being pragmatic but also silently transmitting a pride they’d embraced in the 70s. Because our #ancestors Used to style our hair by tribal affiliation in #Africa.

But when those bloodlines were Stolen,yanked across waters against their will & #enslaved to become #prisonersofwar the intricate patterns were cornrowed onto scalps as cloaked maps to a sincere freedom from slavery.

That is a decidely #BlackAmericaninnovation
I still see as keyed to the freedom we children got to fully experience AS kids due to those #freedomruns the #braidmaps once facilitated.

That richness is why I never get ruffled by #Kardashian #boderek-isms. They DO get power from the outrage & reap the hostility intended.

They never come Anywhere near to accessing the actuality of #ancestralpower #blackpeople tap into via the #mutability of our crowns with that apathetic hostility& absence of humility regarding the topic.

No one does.
Even with us a lighter introduction to the cosmic psychological psychedelic aspect of all this it only prepares the ground. & only god knows when he’s going to water that ground.

Let’em do how they do& pray for the small black bodies they have in their care.

But with us the seeds are already there.

By the grace of the transmutation of that collective trauma to freedom.

& actually that is really cool.

But our job isn’t just becoming aware of the freedom & joy our parents gave already seeded us with due to the aforementioned transmutation.

Our job is the continued Transformation and integration that builds on all that in joy, however that plays out for each of us in the now.

For me?

Minime arrived with a head of hair and had thick, raw silk like wild hair to her elbows until age 12, happy, campbell soup kid head cornrowed a good 9 or 10 summers.

In 2021… even though I’m no longer tenderheaded my braid map has naan a “scalp suturing” cornrow stapled into my head(…Sommayallknow). My scalp is a casual patchwork of easy plaits, like an ambling stretch of rice paddies wrapped around my head, freely and gently parted with my fingers and patiently braided as far out into infinity as my fingers could go, below my whathaveyous at 6ft, laidback on the road to Eembuvi/ Mbalantu-mode.

This is my #blackhistorymonth post for the week.