LIFE IS CEREMONY Wise Council

WISE COUNCIL

Although the understanding of the village and tending to the hearth as the center of a community or home has been part of many cultures for thousands of years, including my own lineages, it was devouring Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen in high school that awoken the power of a collective voice in circle within me. At the time, I hadn't experienced anything as powerful as that. The sharing of stories, the reflections, wisdom and insights from those stories and finding myself on pages with people whose path had never crossed mine affirmed for me that we were deeply connected, even while living out our individuality. In my early adulthood, I was having a moment of reflecting on my life (as I tend to do during the Winter season especially) as well as trying to find the missing links in my ancestry. I had a deep and sudden urge to connect with them because I felt that if I knew more about them, maybe all of my quirks would make more sense. In my search for them, I found myself, and little did I know it then, but my life started to become more organized in "circles" as opposed to the separatist, hierarchal lines I had been programmed to operate in.

19

As I started to look around at my life and journey, I realized that I had actually been born into a circle, or village. In many ways, it was imbalanced, dysfunctional and a cauldron for chaos, yet as with life, it was a mixed bag. Because of the fact that I had teenage parents, there were aunties, cousins, neighbors, teachers, friends and godparents involved with my upbringing. Although I do not hold the same belief systems or lifestyles that many of my relatives do, I recognize that the village that raised me planted a seed that would later blossom as I was having my first "baby" , or business. I birthed Artists Designing Evolution (adé PROJECT), now rebranded as Afraka Designing Emergence in 2018 and from inception, I knew that it need to be a cooperative. From what I had studied culturally, spiritually and socially I knew that I wanted to be at round tables, not rectangular ones. As my work with adé PROJECT evolved and took me all over the country and world, but most especially making change in my own backyard I had the pleasure of coming across Collective Courage: A History of African-American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, as well as introducing her at a summit I presented at and I knew it was a signal to the universe that I was on the right track. As we move toward systems and a society that has decentralized its power and equalized decision-making to those most impacted by inequity, I believe down in my bones that we are returning to village building and circle work once again. As you move from your inner work to external action, review your support brain map from the previous section. Get clear on those that do or will support the authentic you and decide what you will build together.