[Best of 2025] Embodying Trust in a Time of Fire

[Before I begin adding new writing to this re-upped blog, I’m sharing a couple of my most popular pieces of 2025 so far.

The following was originally published in my newsletter, during the California wildfires on January 14th. In light of the fires burning in Canada as I write this, and the ongoing “crisis” Grandfather/Father/Patriarch Energy & the masculine is bringing to our attention collectively, I want to reiterate my indigenous perspectives on fire; the consciousness and spirit of it; as well as what it could mean to embody trust in a time of fire.]

First, let me speak a bit on fire from an ancestral perspective.

And let me say, more specifically, this perspective comes from my background as baby priestess in a generations-old ancestral healing tradition rooted in southern Africa. I crossed from my former life into this one by studying with South African, West African and African American teachers in this tradition, which, if I am being honest is a madly-rare trifecta of wisdom and expertise.

The tradition is called Ubungoma and has many different expressions in the contemporary world, with different practitioners, who embody different medicines. The ultimate work is that we train with our Ancestors to be able to look at healing from an ancestral level first, seeing the person in front of us as a living embodiment of their ancestors. The part where a western doctor asks you for your family history? That’s where we jam at: physically, socially, financially, in terms of your romantic life, why your leg is burning, all of it. Everything you can think of, we’re looking at it from the lens of Ancestral knowledge and helping you connect the dots. And we listen to the community, the individual, the family, the broader human circle as far back as is available, and provide healing remedies from that lens, from that level of being.

I often speak directly what my ancestors speak, which is a remedy I offer not always willingly. It can be un-fun for me to offer this as a remedy to people, but I do what I’m asked because suppressing my and Their Voice makes me physically and emotionally sick. The sickness is how I know something important is being suppressed.

These Ancestors who speak are the ones I have healed with under the watchful eye of my elders. They are not random Ancestors, they are the ones I am in agreement with under very old and tested practice and community approval to bring healing to my life and the lives of others, which, to be clear, doesn’t mean that they meet our expectations. And it doesn’t mean that they don’t. It just means we/they are speaking for awakening and healing and unification in me and in others, in the human and sometimes non-human community.

If you’ve gotten my emails for a while, you have heard from my Ancestors many times, but I’m trying to be more transparent about how I work and what the mechanisms of the journey are, now that I have more words and experience. I hope that provides grounding for deeper understanding and maybe, trust.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. (Do we still care about those?).

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So Fire, from my knowledge, is seen as a Grandfather teacher. There are literal things that Fire does: Fire illuminates, Fire burns away, Fire grows with air and lessens with water. Fire transmutes, as in it changes matter from one state to another. Fire cleanses by heat. Fire purifies by burn.

For this reason, Grandfather Fire commands distance and respect. If you do not approach a Grandfather respectfully, you can be hurt, you will be challenged. In ceremony, fire is where we come silently and then make offerings, making sure to feed Grandfather properly before we ask for things. We listen to the fire and speak into the fire what is on our hearts. Those may be words, or emotions, or songs. We sit with the fire until the fire is done. We keep feeding Grandfather as long as he is hungry, and allow him to rest when he’s ready to rest, which we know by paying attention and listening usually to whomever in the community is oldest and has known Grandfather longest.

The fire is where we purify the heart using the air between us and fire as the distance of change. We may spend hours in that change or until the elders say it’s done. When he and they say, we thank the fire for the lessons and we take the lessons away from the fire before we move to any new task or creation.

When no one remembers to respect the Grandfather, to feed the Grandfather, to offer to the Grandfather properly, we have problems with fire.

But how do we trust something we have very little contemporary context for even being important, or existing at all? In this case, I’m speaking about fire as having an actual consciousness and spirit, and I’m also speaking about the Grandfathers as having the same, and playing an essential role in the movement (or lackthereof) in our lives both collectively and individually.

I think we can trust that our mistrust of each other, and of nature-at-large, isn’t working. I think we can trust ourselves to know that things are out of balance and that we have a role to play in the balancing. We know that there is too much fire moving through the world in very harmful ways. Right now Los Angeles, California holds most westerners attention. And there is also fire in other parts of the world: fire(power), too much heat, flames raining down where water is meant to instead.

To me, embodying trust in a time of fire means that we approach fire–especially ones that we don’t “control,” as a teacher with something to say. We have a responsibility to step out of our everyday minds and into questions that help us see what larger ceremony is unfolding. We are all a part of that ceremony, no matter where we live. The sooner we learn to trust that in tragedy there is always a teaching, we will help the ceremony move forward. The longer we act as if there is no lesson, there is no ceremony, there is no consciousness the fire holds, the longer the fire remains hungry and perhaps, smolders.

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