AN OPEN LETTER TO AFRICANS ON THE CONTINENT AND IN THE DIASPORA FROM COMMUNITY HEALING NETWORK, INC.
We are escaping. Come with us.
We are escaping from the 600-year-old narrative of White superiority and Black inferiority. We are on the road to emotional emancipation, healing, wellness, and empowerment.
In August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the first recorded forced arrival of Africans in what would become the United States, Community Healing Network chose to honor our ancestors by hosting the 2019 Valuing Black Lives Global Summit where we broke free of the centuries-old lie that Black people are inferior.
Two hundred people of African ancestry joined us in Richmond, Virginia, to walk the Trail of Enslaved Africans to draw the line between a past shaped by the lie of Black inferiority and a future driven by the truth of Black humanity, and to be equipped with the resources of Emotional Emancipation Circles, a culturally grounded self-help support group process designed to help us heal from and extinguish the lie.
In 2020, we will continue on our Global Truth Campaign and Tour, sounding the alarm about the need for us as people of African ancestry to embrace the truth.
We are headed to a new mindset. We are headed to a future in which:
- We are back in our right minds and living in the spirit of Ubuntu and Sawubona*
- We love and take care of ourselves and each other
- We trust ourselves and one another
- We are emotionally empowered to work together
- We are flourishing in body, mind, and spirit
- Our children know how truly beautiful, lovable, capable, intelligent, worthy, and valuable they are; and
- The lives of Black people everywhere are valued.
Come with us. Join us on the journey toward emotional emancipation. Take and share the pledge to Defy the Lie and Embrace the Truth: a personal declaration of freedom from the lie and commitment to the truth. Stay with us on the journey toward complete freedom by signing up for Flourishing While Black, connecting with us on social media, and learning how to bring EE Circles and other healing resources to your community. Together, let’s make 2020 the start of a decade for creating a more perfect vision of who we are as the people of Africa.
Our children—and our ancestors—are waiting.
Happy 2020: Our Year and Decade of Perfect Vision!
By Enola G. Aird, CHN Founder and President
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* Ubuntu is a core African value—a general quality of character, attitude, and behavior that holds that “A person is a person through other persons.” It is focused on the connectedness of human beings. In the words of Desmond Tutu: “it is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.'”
Sawubona is a Zulu greeting that essentially means, “I see you.” In saying sawubona, or si ya sawubona (we see you/we see your family), one is saying our eyes are connected ancestrally and spiritually. Sawubona is a deep witnessing and presence where seeing is also feeling and connecting and healing. The response is “Sikhona” which means “I am here.” This response is meant to say that “until you really see me, I do not exist, and when you really see me, you bring me into existence.”
