Dear Steele: I am having a storytelling ceremony in honour of our ancestors for my earthday, and it is dedicated to you. You are the first person in the ancestral world I feel I really know, and who really knows me. But when I think about it, you are no nearer or farther away than any of my other ancestors: not my maternal grandparents, my Uncle Michael, my God-mother Aunty Arlene, my cousin Elizabeth, or my great-great-great-great grand mother, for whom I don’t know what language she spoke, where she lived, what she looked like, what her name was, or how she managed to endure the Middle Passage.
I am inviting everyone to share stories about their ancestors: people they love who have passed away, died, transitioned, gone in the forest, gone on vacation indefinitely, or whatever they choose to call it. I really want people to tell stories they remember about you, but also stories about other people they love.
I am celebrating the living seed energy that has transferred itself from one body to the next, from one generation to the next, from the beginning of human existence to the time of September 4, 1984 when that living energy gave birth to me on my earthday.
SAVE THE DATE!
Noelle’s Earthday Celebration: Ancestral Stories
Sunday, 9 August 2009 (Kingston, JAMAICA)
Saturday, 5 September 2009 (Nassau, BAHAMAS)