from someone in far better shape than me… Amara let me cry-talk for a while then leveled her gaze at me and said, “This is not a show. I am not asking you to perform. Just come as you are. I know you can’t see right now but I still see you. I know your power. I know your magic. Just come and speak what your tongue knows to be true. That’s all you have to do and it will be enough.” And so I did that, brought my true tongue, unvarnished and vulnerable. At first it was hard because I felt so exposed with all my pain and struggle hanging offa me. But word by word I just kept going, feeling my way with authenticity as my touchstone. And I soon found out this was indeed enough. With the breath and bodies of all the women in the cir- cle holding and supporting me, before I knew it I was in the flow of prayer and praise, no longer feeling broken; the magic had begun. For the next 24 hours, 75 or so of us sang and hummed and made sound together continu- ously without interruption. We howled and sobbed, raged and bellowed. We napped when we needed, nibbled on snacks, moved our bodies and shared sleepy-wild laughter. Leav- ing nothing out, we filled that massive room with Black Woman True-Tongue. Together we brought down a fiercely powerful healing--on the city of Oakland, on the Black women and girls of our bloodlines and most importantly, on our own beloved selves.
This is what you give us, House/Full: an embracing invitation to, as Amara said, come as we are, to entrust it all to your circle. Tucked and pinned into the folds of the full spectrum of our Black Womanness, we bring offerings of sweet bread and tears, comfort and courage, for you House/Full, our Sacred Ground. Mother Who Turns Jagged Edges To Magnificent Joy, you are our bowl of sugar, our honey water cleansing. When the poisons of systemic racism and misogynoir have us confused about who we really are, you still see us. By the bright light of your gaze we learn to treasure one another when, through the eyes of a sister, we re-find truths we have forgotten we know. You remind us we deserve to be held, our stories honored. You insist we are worthy of being seen and heard, fully and with the deepest love. Never do you ask us to explain any aspect of the unique intersectional web of oppres- sions we each have to fight against every day as we do the endless work of challenging the structures of greed and what Ellen calls “the lies of whiteness.” You make a place for Black women to gather and bear witness to one another as we make revolution. The House/ Full revolution is Black women creating a cul- ture of loving mutuality and radical accep- tance, mending and tending, as together we stitch the fabric of renewal. For our people, for our ancestors, for ourselves and--whether
they know it or not--for the world. While we tarry in your healing presence, the lost ones who work against our aims, the hungry ghosts who would rather dominate than love, feast on the entrails of their own rotting flesh, devouring themselves into annihilation. Some say House/Full performs. “Ha! We do not perform,” we whisper amongst our- selves. We pour libation to the Deep Dark Bowl of Ancient Feminine Mystery, wherein all manner of Black Woman genius, power and beauty dwell. We sit at the table of She- Who-Brings-A-Thickness-Of-Blessing. Where Black woman pain is offered up to commu- nal digestion, and the metabolic powers of our togetherness are activated and unleashed. By dancing and resting and processing 2 and remembering together we conjure medicine in your name, House/Full, to serve the sacred work of your alchemical mission: That Black women be free, so that all may be free. TOBE MELORA CORREAL was initiated in 1990 as a Yoruba-Lukumi priestess of Yemaya. She has an M.A. in Consciousness Studies and is the author of Finding Soul on the Path of Orisa. She is honored to serve as spiritual advisor for House/Full and lives in Oakland, California. 1 “New” as in contemporary. “Not new” as in expressive of and grounded in ancient healing practices of earth-based ritual and medicine-making traditions 2 As in processions.
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