Welcome

Welcome home cojourners. I'm glad you're here for another episode. I'm Dr. Tema, a licensed psychologist, ordained minister, and sacred artists.

Here to help facilitate your journey back home to yourself.

And on today, we're going to start with a poem

by one of the poets I really love, Lucille Clifton.

And Lucille Clifton's poem is entitled,

Turning, Turning Into My Own, turning on in to my own self, at last, turning out of the white

cage, turning out of the lady cage, turning at last on a stem like a black fruit in my own season at last.

Yes, yes, yes.

I love that piece as we think about coming home to ourselves

and turning away from all of the false selves, whether those false

selves were created by these standards and expectations based in racism or sexism, classism,

or ageism, whatever the prison that held up the should of who you should be and how

you should be to release all of that and in our own time turning into the truth of who we are. My goodness, that is liberation collectively

for all of us to be free to be the truth of ourselves and to embrace that wholly, completely, the raw essence, the soulfulness of who we are.

And I'm excited about that process and journey for myself and for each of you.

And I am trusting that as you heal and grow and learn and

evolve, that you are turning into the truth of you. And that is such a relief and such a release from all of the years of labor

based in invalidation, based on rejection, based on stigma and stereotype, based on stress and trauma and drama.

We moved further and further away from ourselves because it wasn't safe to be the truth of us.

But I am so glad in this season that we heal those scars

and see those prison bars and remove those gatekeepers that kept us from ourselves.

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