Part IV | OG: Original Ground → OG: Original Gift

Remembering Who I Am, Whose I Am, and Who I'm Accountable to

There’s a bridge of sacred bricks connecting land and self to ancestry and accountability. Original Ground made this accountability unavoidable. It forced me to ask, “Who am I honoring with my life and my work? Whose sacrifices make my breath and ‘freedoms’ possible? Whose dreams am I carrying forward?”

The past informs me about my responsibility in the present. Understanding more about where I come from refines my commitment to where I’m going. It tells me that my voice is never mine alone. My brilliance is not by happenstance, and my courage is not self-generated. None of us are “self-made.” I’m an extension of people who survived the unspeakable, built beauty from beneath brutality, and refused to let their humanity be stolen just because their bodies were.

The Original Gift, knowing myself in my fullness and freeness, is attached to my inheritance. It’s the ability to see truth clearly and refuse to look away. The instinct to resist dehumanization of myself and my people, and all human beings, wherever it shows up. It’s the capacity to imagine freedom even when evidence is scarce because I am evidence. I am what ancestors envisioned when they dreamed of being free. Their pain will not be in vain.

Original Ground rooted me deeper into this assignment because it confirmed that I'm accountable to fighters who endured and to communities still navigating the afterlives of exploitation, and to generations yet to come who deserve more than just survival. They deserve wholeness and honesty. They deserve leaders who do not trade their souls for “safety.”

I know that when the path gets dark and when risk feels heavy… when resistance seemingly costs more than I anticipated… that I’m never walking alone. I hold memory and have an obligation. I am walking with love.

Liberation has never been about arriving at a destination. It’s a daily practice of alignment between who I am, whose I am, and what the moment demands of me. And it’s in this very alignment that is the work I will continue to pursue. Come what may.