May 2025 Issue

SOUND OFF

CULTURAL RELEVANCE

by Jo-Lynn Herbert

It's beautiful.

It's radiant.

It's sharing

It's understanding and accepting

It's music and sounds you hear on your walk.

It's food.

It's laughter

It's shared struggles and kindness

It's a time, place, and lived experiences

It's language and accents.

It's fashion, design, and style

It's knowledge and wisdom

It's resilience.

It's courage

It's dignity

It's everlasting conversations of memories, facts, research, writings, and maps

The scents, scenery, flowers, and fruit

It's family, individuals, neighborhoods, Islands, Cities, Boroughs, the Great Lakes, Pacific Islands, Continents, Kingdoms, to the far lands and distances that we don't usually see but have an impact.

I can go on and on identifying, visualizing, and expressing Cultural Relevance, the significance of who we claim to be and where we come from. Our being has so many levels of magnitude and energy, it has no other concept other than to be genuine and true

Cultural relevance will never dissolve as our learning comes from what we see, know, practice, and questions to be asked.

Culture stories don't end when there is a story and experiences to be told. You and I are our stories as we have been given a gift of life to be filled with an abundance of learning, movement, and choices to become a diverse and valuable society.

Cultural relevance is a living multicultural testimony of acceptance, observations, and courageous resilience of survival to gain and appreciate not destroying or acting like generational trauma does not occur In trauma or life successes; no one person or group is greater than the other, we live on one earth, and we all have basic needs to be met

As our needs are met human nature of creation benefits the world we live in with knowledge, wisdom, communication, curiosity, skills sets and abilities that can benefit each other.

The impact of Cultural Relevance is meant to foster new ideas to resolve crises and mysteries of life. To discover solutions, to recover from pain and loss, to reset ourselves with mindfulness as needed to be able to look into the mirror and take that giant step that individuals and communities have taken day in and day out to influence and guide present and future generations to be strengthened and empowered for our greater good for monumental growth spurts for global respect, equity, safety, and justice and economic sanity

Jo-Lynn Herbert is a Published Author, Writer, and a Licensed Social Worker (LMSW)

She is a regular Indie Incognito columnist.

Jo-Lynn-Expressions.com