Baldwin understood struggle not as an abstract concept, but as lived experience. He knew what it meant to wrestle with identity, belonging, fear, love, injustice, and the longing to breathe freely in a world that often resists honesty. Yet what makes his legacy extraordinary is not only what he endured, but how he transformed it. He turned observation into insight. Pain into precision. Anger into illumination. Complexity into unmistakable truth.

To read Baldwin is to encounter a mind fiercely devoted to integrity and a heart deeply invested in humanity. He challenged denial without cruelty. He confronted injustice without surrendering tenderness. He reminded us that truth telling, though uncomfortable, is one of the highest forms of respect — for oneself, for others, and for the future we are shaping together.

This reflection honors James Baldwin not simply as a literary giant, but as a witness to the human spirit. His words continue to steady those finding their voice, those reclaiming their dignity, and those choosing honesty in a world that sometimes rewards silence.

May his courage echo where it is needed most.
May his clarity strengthen those still learning to trust their own knowing.
May his legacy remind us that truth, once spoken, cannot be undone — and that is its power.

1. He survived a childhood shaped by fear and scarcity and still chose truth.
Baldwin grew up in poverty and under severe emotional strain. He did not pretend this away. He transformed it into insight.

Affirmation:
My beginnings do not define my limits.

2. He left the United States to save his spirit, not to escape responsibility.
Moving to Paris gave Baldwin the emotional distance needed to think clearly and write honestly about America.

Affirmation:
Choosing myself is sometimes the most responsible act.

3. He believed naming reality was an act of love.
Baldwin insisted that truth telling was not cruelty. He saw it as care for the future.

Affirmation:
Honesty is one of the highest forms of care.

4. He refused to flatten himself for acceptance.
Baldwin spoke plainly about race, sexuality, faith, masculinity, and power at a time when silence was rewarded.

Affirmation:
I do not need to shrink to belong.

5. He understood that survival includes emotional literacy.
Baldwin wrote about fear, longing, rage, tenderness, and grief with precision and dignity.

Affirmation:
My feelings carry information, not shame.

6. He confronted institutions without surrendering his humanity.
Whether speaking to politicians, journalists, or hostile audiences, Baldwin remained grounded and composed.

Affirmation:
I can speak firmly without abandoning myself.

7. He believed denial was more dangerous than discomfort.
Baldwin warned that societies collapse when they refuse to face what they have done.

Affirmation:
Facing truth protects the future.

8. He valued inner freedom as much as external change.
Baldwin wrote that liberation without inner clarity is fragile.

Affirmation:
My inner freedom matters.

9. He trusted language as a tool for healing and resistance.
Baldwin treated words as instruments that could wound or restore depending on how they were used.

Affirmation:
My words can build safety and strength.

10. His work continues to comfort people who felt unseen.
Readers across generations return to Baldwin not just for critique, but for companionship.

Affirmation:
I am not alone in seeing what others avoid.

11. He turned lived experience into illumination.
Baldwin wrote from the inside of struggle, not from a distance. His work carries the authority of someone who lived what he examined.

Affirmation:
Nothing I have lived is wasted when I give it meaning.

12. He chose distance to gain clarity.
Relocating to Paris was not abandonment. It was self-preservation and creative strategy.

Affirmation:
Creating space for myself can sharpen my voice.

13. He believed truth telling was a moral act.
Baldwin challenged cultures of denial with courage and precision.

Affirmation:
Speaking truth is an act of integrity, even when it shakes others.

14. He wrote about vulnerability without apology.
Long before it was widely accepted, Baldwin explored tenderness, fear, love, and identity.

Affirmation:
My sensitivity is not weakness. It is awareness.

15. He refused easy narratives.
Baldwin rejected oversimplified explanations about race, power, and human behavior.

Affirmation:
I am allowed to hold complex truths.

16. He understood that silence has a cost.
Baldwin warned that what remains unspoken often becomes destructive.

Affirmation:
My voice protects my inner world.

17. He stood firm in rooms built to resist him.
From televised debates to lecture halls, Baldwin carried calm, grounded intensity.

Affirmation:
Steady presence can be more powerful than loudness.

18. He wrote about love as transformation.
For Baldwin, love required honesty, courage, and growth.

Affirmation:
Real love deepens truth. It does not erase it.

19. His words continue to accompany Survivors.
Across decades, readers find recognition, language, and strength in Baldwin’s work.

Affirmation:
Voices rooted in truth outlive opposition.

Closing Affirmations:
My voice is allowed to be honest, complex, and enduring. Truth is not too much. It is enough.

My story, my voice, my truth — all worthy, all powerful, all mine.

<p>The post 19 James Baldwin Truths and Affirmations That Still Strengthen the Human Spirit first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Me: But you don’t know anything about it?

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a cornerstone of American cultural history, carrying a weight and resonance that has spanned over a century. Often referred to as the Black National Anthem, its journey from a school presentation to a global symbol of resilience is remarkable.

Here are 10 facts about this historic hymn:

Written by Brothers: The lyrics were written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson in 1900. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, composed the music five years later in 1905. It was written during the era of Jim Crow segregation in the American South.

A Birthday Tribute: It was originally written to honor the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. The song was first performed on February 12, 1900, by a choir of about 500 Black schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida.  James Weldon Johnson was the principal of the segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, at the time.

Spiritual Ties: The lyrics draw on biblical imagery, especially the Exodus story, and are both a prayer of thanksgiving to God and a plea for faithfulness, freedom, and perseverance

Adopted by the NAACP: In 1919, the NAACP officially dubbed it the “Negro National Anthem.” James Weldon Johnson would later serve as the organization’s first Black executive secretary.

A Symbol of the Civil Rights Movement: During the 1950s and 60s, the song became a rallying cry. It was frequently sung during marches, meetings, and sit-ins to provide spiritual and emotional strength to activists.

The “Black National Anthem” Title: While widely used, the title “Black National Anthem” was intended to signify a distinct cultural identity and shared struggle, rather than a desire for a separate physical nation.

Musical Structure: The song is a hymn, but it incorporates elements of African American musical traditions, including subtle “blue notes” and a rhythmic build that culminates in a powerful, triumphant finale.

Global Reach: While deeply rooted in the African American experience, its themes of liberty and endurance have seen it translated and performed worldwide, often in solidarity with various liberation movements.

Modern Resurgence: In recent years, the song has seen a massive “mainstream” revival. It has been performed at major televised events like the Super Bowl and the Democratic National Convention, sparking both celebration and national dialogue.

Congressional Recognition: In 2021, U.S. Representative James Clyburn introduced a bill to nominate “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as the national hymn of the United States, further cementing its status in American law and culture.

<p>The post 10 Facts About Lift Every Voice and SING! first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Black harpists have carved out a profound and unique space within the world of meditation and sound healing. While the harp is often associated with European classical music, its roots and its contemporary application by Black artists bridge ancient African traditions with modern wellness, making their contribution culturally and spiritually significant.

Pioneers of Spiritual Jazz and Healing

The shift toward using the harp specifically for deep meditation and spiritual transcendence was pioneered by figures like Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby.

Alice Coltrane: Perhaps the most influential figure in this space, she integrated Eastern philosophy and Vedic chanting with the harp. Her music wasn’t just “background” for meditation; it was designed to be a meditative journey in itself, focusing on the concept of Turiyatita (a state of pure consciousness).

Dorothy Ashby: She broke barriers by bringing the harp into jazz and soul, proving the instrument’s versatility in creating “groove-based” meditation that resonates with the rhythms of Black life.

Modern Sound Healing and Wellness
Today, a new generation of Black harpists is explicitly focusing on the wellness industry. Their work is significant because it provides:

Representation in Wellness: In a meditation industry that can often feel exclusionary, Black harpists create spaces where Black practitioners feel seen and heard.

Somatic Resonance: The physics of the harp—where the player leans the instrument against their body—creates a physical vibration that many find deeply grounding for somatic healing and nervous system regulation.

The presence of Black harpists in meditation is significant because it challenges the “ethereal” stereotype of the harp, grounding it instead in rhythm, soul, and a deep-seated history of survival and peace.

On Inner Harmony and Resonance

• I am tuned to the frequency of my own peace.

• Like a harp, I allow my experiences to vibrate through me without breaking me.

• I honor the tension in my life, knowing it is necessary to create a beautiful song.

• My spirit resonates with the wisdom of those who came before me.

A Meditative Practice

“The harp is an instrument that you lean into. It rests against your shoulder and vibrates against your chest. When you speak these affirmations, imagine that same resonance—feel the words vibrating in your own body rather than just thinking them.”

<p>The post Afro Harpists: Pioneers in Spiritual Jazz and Healing (w/affirmations) first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Memory does not keep time the way clocks do.
It keeps impact.
It keeps feeling.
It keeps the moments when something inside us recognized truth before our minds had words for it.

That is why so many people remember February not by dates, but by what it felt like when Michael Jackson took hold of the world’s attention and did not flinch from who he was.

When Black or White premiered at the start of February, it wasn’t just a video.
It was a pause.
A collective breath shared across borders, languages, and living rooms.

And when Remember the Time arrived at the edge of February-Black History Month- it carried that same gravity.
It did not need the exact same calendar placement to land in memory the same way.
It arrived with meaning already attached.

That is how memory works.

Michael Jackson understood something many never learn:
universality is not achieved by erasing yourself.
It is achieved by standing fully inside who you are.

We always knew where he came from.

A working-class Black family. A large one. Jehovah’s Witnesses. 
A small house in Detroit.
Siblings stacked close together in shared space and shared dreams.
A childhood shaped by discipline, music, labor, and love.

Those roots were never hidden.
They were the ground beneath everything he built.

He did not run from them.
He carried them with him into stadiums, into studios, into history.

Some people mistook complexity for rejection.

They misread his skin condition instead of learning about it.
They misinterpreted his wide circle of friends as disloyalty.
They confused his love for many cultures with a lack of love for his own.

But the truth was simpler and deeper.

He did not abandon his culture.
He expanded the room.

He showed what it looks like when a Black man is so at home in himself that he can welcome the world without shrinking. (Never said one demeaning word about Black women or men, only put us all in beautiful lights, set us to music, and put us on stages with alongside him)

That confidence unsettled people who needed identity to be narrow, controlled, and easily categorized.
So they rewrote him.
They projected.
They speculated.

Memory, however, kept the truth.

February remembers him not because of a date on a calendar, but because of alignment.

A Black artist holding global attention without apology

African and diasporic imagery centered with beauty and authority

Unity offered without surrender

Love expressed without dilution

That is why people say, “It was February,” even when the math gets fuzzy.

Meaning leaves fingerprints.
Calendars do not.

Michael Jackson had the world in his hands.
And instead of running from who he was, he stood inside it fully.

That is why people from everywhere found themselves in his work.
Not because he became less specific, but because he became more honest.

Memory remembers that.

Not the date.
Not the broadcast schedule.

But the moment when truth met timing and stayed.

P.S. And hell yeah, I’m feeling Jossie Harris Thacker. Because if I had danced with the Janet Jackson (That’s the Way Love Goes) and the Michael Jackson in REMEMBER THE TIME…

No Sir. No Ma’am. You could not tell me nothing ever again.

She did not say that exactly ……but I would. LOL.  (which is probably why it was not my blessing. lol.)

As Ｓｈａｙｌｙｎｎ, @mjsaura on X.com points out ….in a time when Black women were STILL as underrepresented as we are now, Michael Jackson cast Black women not just as background dancers and singers, but as his love interests, his queen, long lost love, the “girl next door” and the woman that he was in pursuit of.

He showed all cultures on this planet love and adoration, but he never failed to showcase the love and beauty of his home culture.

---

Remember the Time Facts

• Premiered late January 1992 with heavy prime-time rotation spilling into early February

• Cinematic scale, ancient African imagery, and unapologetic Black brilliance

• Premiered as a high-profile TV event in the U.S., heavily coordinated across major networks and MTV

• Closely tied to Super Bowl weekend attention and prime-time placement

• Felt like a cultural takeover, even if it wasn’t a single worldwide clock-strike moment

While its official premiere date is generally cited as January 31, 1992, many people experienced it during the opening days of February due to:

• Saturation airplay

• Prime-time scheduling

• Super Bowl–adjacent media attention

<p>The post Remember the Time: Memory Remembers Meaning, Not Calendars first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Photo by David Kwewum

We might not be able to be friends and that’s okay.

• Part of my healing is recognizing that not every person deserves access to my spirit.

• I release relationships that require me to dim, shrink, or dilute who I am becoming.

• I do not need companionship that confuses peace with silence or growth with obedience.

• I am not governed by another person’s fears, projections, or unfinished thinking.

• I honor that others may have beliefs, but I am not required to live inside them.

• My inner world is sacred, and I choose what is planted there.

• I am tending to my own beliefs with care, discernment, and wisdom.

• I nurture thoughts that strengthen me, steady me, and remind me who I am.

• I choose friendships that celebrate clarity, not control.

• My light is not arrogance. My light is alignment.

• I am allowed to grow beyond who others are comfortable understanding.

• I trust myself to know what nourishes me and what drains me.

• I am becoming more myself, and that is enough.

<p>The post Survivor Affirmations: I Tend My Own Light (w video) first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Life does not call us to evolve through advancements in technology only. Life calls us to evolve culturally as well. 

Without cultural evolution:

Ingrid Silva

• speed grows, but wisdom stays small
• tools multiply, but tenderness thins
• systems scale, but souls shrink
• harm becomes efficient instead of rare

Culture is where we learn:

• how to protect the vulnerable
• how to live with difference without domination
• how to tell the truth without turning it into a weapon
• how to measure success by who is still whole at the end

Here is where one learns to cultivate moral weather — the atmosphere people breathe while deciding who matters.

That is a different kind of innovation:

• evolving language so Survivors are not made to feel criminal for needing safety
• evolving stories so Black life is treated as art, not content
• evolving norms so women’s boundaries are seen as intelligence, not inconvenience
• evolving care so protection is practical, not performative

A society that upgrades its machines but not its conscience only becomes more dangerous.

But a society that evolves its culture:

• invents technology with restraint
• builds systems with memory
• creates power with accountability
• and leaves room for the human nervous system to survive inside progress

That is not slow work.

That is the deepest form of advancement.

Technology can extend our reach.
But culture is what teaches our hands what not to take.
It teaches our mouths what not to say.
It teaches our power where to kneel.

Black culture is structural to America.

Not as decoration.
Not as trend.
Not as a “contribution.”

Structural

It shaped:

• the nation’s music before the nation had a conscience
• its language before it admitted whose mouth it came from
• its sense of rhythm, humor, style, resistance, mourning, and joy
• its very idea of “cool,” long before the word was profitable

There is no area of American culture that is not braided with Black culture.

And deeper than influence is function:

Black culture has been one of this country’s primary moral technologies.

It taught how to survive when systems were designed to erase.
How to make beauty under pressure.
How to encode memory when history was censored.
How to pass truth through song, food, gesture, hair, church, laughter, cadence, silence.

It carried:

• warning systems
• grief rituals
• protection codes
• dignity when the law refused it
• human interiority when society tried to flatten it

That is not aesthetic.

That is civilization work.

When Black culture is dismissed, what is really being dismissed is:

• intellectual authorship
• emotional architecture
• ethical labor
• and the right to be seen as creators of meaning, not just producers of style

America’s technological future will be shallow if it forgets the cultures that taught it how to be human under conditions of extreme inhumanity.

Black culture doesn’t just belong in America.

It is one of the reasons America learned how to endure itself.

That kind of remembering is cultural infrastructure.
It holds nations together longer than steel.

<p>The post Life Calls Us to Evolve Culturally Too: Sinners Dancers Revealed !! Juke Joint Scene Explained — Dance Styles, Symbolism & Forgotten History first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

It isn’t that people think that Black art should never be critiqued, but there is undeniable and die-hard racism within the critiques. Further, when most people dislike other art, they simply choose not to engage with it in favor of what they do like.  Not so, with Black art that garners high praise.

Some of you are about to learn something the hard way….like we and all the the people before us did. 

The conversations around Sinners

(nominated for a record breaking 16 Oscars and 18 NAACP awards) are about to expose a truth Black Americans have known for generations:

Many people were taught how to consume Black American art.
BUT, they were never taught how to respect and appreciate it. 

They learned how to copy it.
Dance to it.
Profit from it.
Quote it.

But not how to sit with it.
Not how to read it through the eyes of the culture that made it.
Not how to analyze it without shrinking it.

So the language starts.

“Popcorn movie.”
“Let’s see how it ages.”
“Overhyped.”
“Not that deep.”

Translation:
I don’t see myself centered, so I don’t recognize the value.

There is no white savior to orient them. 
No familiar doorway into the story where they get to be the moral center.

So instead of listening, they pretend to “grade”.

They will overlook:

• the Choctaw presence (as someone said: “one of the hardest film photos of the year”)This is a great video explaining why the Choctaw were chasing Remick.
• Here’s another
• the Irish music (did y’all catch that line dance?)
• the dynamic Asian characters (for me, I love the departure from the typical Westernized “demure & non-observant” Asian woman-Black people know there is more. She is human.)
• the blues lineage (a genre originated by Black Americans with Blues legend Buddy Guy making an appearance)
• the sacredness of the music montage scene that made film LEGEND Spike Lee leap like an excited child with sincere enthusiasm
• the white woman shaped by Black life, raised by a mother who took in Black twins, bound by a complicated love story this country doesn’t like to name
• the fact that the film quietly unfolds as the last night of many lives. It could
•  have been a sad obituary but it was a celebration of life. Much like the going home services (funerals) in Black culture. 

That alone lifts it out of “popcorn.”
But nuance is invisible to people trained to see Black stories as disposable.

This is not new. We were there. We heard it before.

They said it about The Color Purple.
They said it about What’s Love Got to Do With It.
They said it about Boyz n the Hood.
They said it about Eve’s Bayou.
They said it about Crooklyn, Mo Better Blues, and Do the Right Thing
They say it about any Black story that does not kneel.

No matter how groundbreaking. The quality of the work was never the issue. 

If the story does not position certain people as rescuer, validator, or final authority, they call it “small.” If Black Americans are not criminals, sexually promiscuous, or servants then not everyone knows how to engage with that thoughtfully.

At least not from a self appointed position that looks down as the “master” or “judge”.

Not from a place that can hold several dynamic truths at once because it lacks the courage to face OG truths. Foundational truths. 

And yes—
many of us learned this in college classrooms first. Rejected it in our essays and in our spoken the truth.

Where professors “correct” your interpretation.
Where your cultural literacy is treated as bias.
Where your lived understanding is treated as emotional noise.

They will take the teaching posture.

They will explain your story back to you. Maybe even sell it too.
Flatten it.
Sand it down.
Rename it something safer.

But in ten years, everyone will “remember” how they didn’t behave this way.

And then wonder why there are so few films like this.

• As if scarcity is accidental.
• As if it is not engineered. Intentional. 
• As if Black Americans controlling narrative, memory, grief, joy, complexity, and ending is not treated as dangerous.

We are not supposed to tell our own stories.

Not with this much interior life.
Not with this much authority.
Not without permission.

And to my people—and to every person from a minoritized culture watching this pattern unfold:

If it takes this much effort to dismiss your stories,
to reframe them,
to downgrade them,
to re-teach them,to mock them into smallness—

then you are looking at proof of value.

No one attacks what is empty.

People do not work so hard to minimize what has no power.

They do not rush to control what does not shape the world.

Create anyway.

Write anyway.

Film anyway.

Sing anyway.

Archive anyway.

Tell it from the inside.

Tell it without translation.
Tell it without apology.

Your stories are not “popcorn.”

They are memory.
They are lineage.
They are evidence.
They are inheritance.

And some truths only sound loud to people who benefit from silence.

Keep shining and make them put on sunglasses.

as i post this today………

so why learn to engage when you can just tear it down and say that it has “no value.”

AFFIRMATIONS FOR CREATORS

• • I am not here to translate my soul into something easier to digest.

  • My voice is not an argument.
    It is a record.

  • I create from memory, not from approval.

    

• Their misunderstanding does not reduce my meaning.

• I am not responsible for educating people who profit from not knowing.
• My culture is not a genre.
  It is a universe.

• I do not need to center myself in someone else’s mirror to be real.

• What unsettles them is not my craft —
  it is my authority.

• I refuse to shrink what my ancestors survived to preserve.

• My art is not “content.”
  It is continuity.

• I am allowed to be complex without being explained away.

• I will not soften my truth to be graded gently.

• My stories are not lonely.
  They are accompanied by the dead, the living, and the unborn.

• I create even when the room pretends not to notice.

• Being minimized is not a verdict.
  It is a reaction.

• I am not behind my time.
  I am ahead of their courage.

• I belong to a lineage of people who told stories while the world tried to erase the language.

<p>The post When You’re Trained to Consume a Culture but Not Understand It (Amplifying Affirmations for Black Creators) first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Affirmation: I speak to myself in the tone I once searched for in others—
gentle, unhurried, faithful to my becoming.

Oh how I love, adore, and appreciate me for being me…every time I needed me.

Great news! He has a book. Let’s support art.

(He USED to be on TikTok. I am not surprised that he was part of the exodus.)

<p>The post Survivor Affirmation: I Appreciate Me for Being Me (featuring poet Steven Willis w Youtube video link) first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Alberta Hunter’s life was a testament to the power of the “unpolished” authentic soul. She was a woman who conquered the world’s stages, walked away to spend twenty years quietly nursing the sick, and then returned to her art in her eighties with more grit, humor, and truth than ever before.

Her quote reminds us that technical perfection is often a mask, and that the most profound truths come from those who have lived them, not just studied them.

Here are a few affirmations inspired by her journey and that specific, hilarious and grounded wisdom:

• I trust the wisdom that was forged in the fire of my own life. I do not need a title or outside validation to be an expert on my own survival.

• My raw truth is more valuable than a polished lie. I give myself permission to be unrefined, as long as I am honest.

• There is dignity in every season of my life. Whether I am center-stage or quietly tending to the needs of others, my worth remains unshakable.

• I value the “musicians” in my life who lead with their hearts. I surround myself with people who understand the language of feeling, not just the language of power.

• It is never too late for my second act. Like the blues, my voice only grows deeper and more resonant with time.

• I do not need to “know all about” the rules to play my own song. My intuition is a more reliable guide than the expectations of a system that wasn’t built for me.

• I build from what I know to be true in my bones. I honor the “socialized bottom” within myself—the parts of me that are humble, resilient, and deeply human.

Alberta Hunter proved that you can lose everything—your fame, your youth, your platform—and still possess the one thing the world can’t teach: soul, baby, SOUL!

Know who you are.

<p>The post Playing by Heart: Alberta Hunter and the Power of Soul Wisdom first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>

Before the world started using words like “somatic experiencing” or “nervous system regulation,” our people were already experts in the science of survival. They’ve gone and put brand names on our medicine, but they didn’t invent the cure. We carried it in our bones across oceans.

We need to talk about why we dance—really dance—and why it has never been about how we look to the people watching.

The Medicine in the Movement

For a Survivor of violence, abuse, or the systemic weight of racism and genocide, the body is often a place where “the story” gets trapped. When you’ve been through the fire, that trauma doesn’t just vanish; it settles in your hips, it tightens your shoulders, and it clouds your spirit.

We FELT that before we had words for it. We FELT that even when doctors turned us away and told us that it was in our heads. We FELT that when they kept telling us that all we had to do was lose weight and we were at our lowest high school skinny weight.

We didn’t just dance for the rhythm; we danced so that the pain wouldn’t rot inside us.

It’s Not a Trend, It’s Blood Memory

Modern psychology is finally catching up to what your grandmother and grandfather already knew. When you see our people shaking, catch a spirit, or moving with a ferocity that looks “aggressive” to the untrained eye, you are witnessing somatic release.

• Rhythmic Shaking: This is the body’s natural way of discharging the “fight or flight” energy that gets stuck after a trauma.

• The Pulsating Funk: That heavy bass and syncopated rhythm weren’t just for a good time. The rhythm acts as a metronome for a dysregulated heart, bringing the nervous system back into alignment.

• Communal Trance: We have always known that healing is a collective act. (Native American and other Indigenous culture Pow Wows, church, cookouts, clubs, rent parties, basement parties, skating rink, dance teams, Soul Train line, jumping rope, hand clapping, line dancing, our unique marching band style; bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire or The Jacksons-where choreography and singing go hand in hand.)

Moving together reminds the body that it is safe, seen, and supported.

Correcting the Narrative: Soul Train and the Funk

I see the young people online looking at old footage of Soul Train. They see someone dancing with every fiber of their being—sweating, eyes closed, muscles straining to the funk—and they make jokes. They say, “Cocaine was a helluva drug,” because they can’t imagine that kind of intensity coming from a place of pure, sober necessity.

But they don’t understand the “Pressure Cooker” of the time.

When you spend your week navigating a world that denies your humanity, that 1970s bass funk line was your ventilator. Your oxygen. Your connection to your “last good nerve”.

Those dancers weren’t “high” on substances; they were high on the relief of finally being able to shake off the indignities of the world. It wasn’t an aesthetic. It was a biological imperative. They were dancing for their lives.

A Call to Return to Your Body

To the Survivors who have been dancing in their kitchens, in the clubs, or in the privacy of their rooms just to make it to tomorrow: I see you. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Do not let them tell you that you need a “method” or a “certificate” to heal. You have the wisdom of the Diaspora flowing through your veins.

1. Avoid dancing for the “look”: Close your eyes. Don’t worry about the line of your leg or the grace of your arms.

2. Find the vibration: Let the music hit the parts of you that feel numb or heavy.

3. Shake it off: Literally. Shake your hands, your feet, and your torso. Let the “tremor” happen. That is your nervous system letting go of what you no longer need to carry.

Our ancestors didn’t survive the Middle Passage, global colonization, the Trail of Tears, the fields, and the Jim Crow South by just “thinking” their way through it. They moved through it. Sang through it. Hummed through it.  It’s always the right time we reclaim that power within you.

“Your body remembers the trauma, but it also remembers the rhythm of the release. It remembers the healing. Listen to the blood memory.”

Affirmations for Reclaiming Your Rhythm

• “I don’t need a clinical label to prove my healing; my rhythm is my birthright, and my body already knows the way back home.”

Use this when the world tries to make your survival feel like a new science instead of an old soul-truth.

• “When I shake and move with the music, I am not just dancing; I am shaking off every lie, every heavy hand, and every indignity the world tried to settle in my spirit.”

Use this when you feel the weight of the day—or the decade—clinging to your shoulders.

• “My intensity is my medicine. I give myself permission to move with a ferocity that clears my blood, regulates my heart, and restores my soul.”

Use this when people misunderstand your power or try to tell you to ‘calm down’ when your spirit needs to ‘move through.'”

• “I am connected to a long line of Survivors who danced in the face of the fire. Every step I take is a sacred echo of their strength and a testament to my own.”

Use this to remind yourself that you are never dancing alone; the ancestors are in the room with you.

• “I move for the feeling, not for the look. My body is a sanctuary, not a stage, and I am the only audience that matters when I am dancing my way to freedom.”

Use this to ground yourself in the internal work of healing, letting go of the need for anyone else to understand your ‘why.'”

<p>The post Somatic Healing and Ancestral Wisdom: How the African Diaspora Heals Trauma Through Movement first appeared on Survivor Affirmations.</p>