Welcome

Welcome home, cojourners. I'm glad you're here for another episode. I'm Dr. Tama, licensed

psychologist, ordained minister, and sacred artists, here to facilitate your journey back home

to yourself. On today, I will start with a poem, as I often do, and this is a piece

that I wrote many years ago. It's in my poetry book, Mangels and Manna, Poetry for the Body

and Soul. And I'm going to read an excerpt from the poem, the script.

I encode my secrets in poems and prayers.

If you listen closely, you'll hear.

But hearing is an art very few have acquired.

Listen closely and you'll hear.

I'm rewriting the script. The old saga of fantastical womanhood is

too unbelievable, too stale, too discrepant from my springtime reality. I am making myself from

scratch. I come with my own things, soaked in my grandmother's prayers,

marinating in my mother's dreams, stewed in my father's hopes, peppered in the valleys of my

yesterdays. There is no model for this woman I have become. I did not choose her. She chose me. There is no model for this.

My foremothers cleared the trees, but they did not walk this path. And the script I have been given

does not match this scene. That is why I am making it from scratch. I have to cut the monologues that don't fit in my mouth, don't capture my story, don't tell my true narrative.

I have to edit the dialogues where you attempt to corner me into false choices.

This dialogue drains me, makes me exit stage left, causes me to dissociate from the drama

that is supposed to be my story. I am creating myself from scratch, rewriting the script,

cutting the old monologues, editing the dead dialogues, and adding more character development.

My heartbeat can only be comprehended in the fire of my eyes, the river of my hips, the touch of my hands, the ocean of my mind.

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