Hi friends,

Happy lunar new year black history ramadan mubarak carnival mardi gras and lent! (Did I miss anything? lol) In a moment of history filled with unprecedented events and once in a lifetime transits (shout out Saturn Conjunct Neptune at the World Axis), I’m grateful we’ve been gifted a beautiful moment of cross cultural synchronicity to celebrate and transition into a new season.

To be honest, the past week has been pretty intense for me as an energetically sensitive person. With the Solar Eclipse in Aquarius, the start of Pisces season, the beginning of the year of the Fire Horse, and the Saturn Conjunct Neptune transit, I’m feeling a lot all at once so I’m going to need some more time for things to settle and integrate in a linear way.

However I did want to share one thing I’ve been reflecting on which is how we can approach reclaiming our roots. As we navigate the collapse of colonialism, there’s an invitation to reindigenize meaning instead of just focusing on clearing the impact of colonialism; we can also be intentional about integrating the indigenous practices of our ancestors into our lives. This year there has been a noticeable uptick in content about Lunar New Year and the Year of the Fire Horse on social media. Unfortunately things got weird pretty quickly because some white and non-Asian influencers/practitioners saw it as an opportunity to be on trend and claim authority to sell their products rather than be a student and learn. After seeing a few Asian practitioners and content creators call out this appropriating behavior (alongside the weirdness of the “Chinese time in my life” trend), I reflected on my own interest in the Chinese Zodiac and Lunar New Year. In that process I realized that, although I was more aware of Lunar New Year because of my own energetic sensitivity and ongoing exploration of traditional Chinese medicine, I actually didn’t know all that much about how my ancestors celebrated the New Year.

For context, my relationship with my ancestral lineage is complicated as a first-gen West African and wellness practitioner for a few reasons. My family is from Togo in West Africa but my parents chose to assimilate so I wasn’t really taught many specific aspects of my culture and its traditions. In addition, because it’s a smaller French speaking country, it’s harder to find English information about it that’s not filtered through a white tourist/NGO lens. In terms of religion, one of the most practiced ancestral religions in Togo is vodoun which is deeply deeply stigmatized as a result of Western and Christian influence. As a practitioner this is something I’ve always struggled with because many healers I share space with are very grounded in their ancestral medicines whether it’s traditional Chinese medicine, Curanderismo, Ayurveda, hoodoo, and more. I’ve been very lucky/honored to learn about indigenous healing traditions all over the world and my favorite part of that journey has been realizing how they’re all connected. Most ancestral practices have a deep connection to and reverence for the Earth, nature, and the elements and see the body as an extension of the Earth rather than separate from it. In my own ancestral practice with my guides and ancestors and my training as an energy worker, I’ve been able apply these principles to my own life. However, I sometimes still feel a bit of a block from not knowing the actual specifics of how my own lineage related to these frameworks, which brings me back to looking up how my people celebrate the New Year.

I learned that there’s a festival every year called Epe Ekpe which translates to “taking of the sacred stone.” The first part of the tradition includes a cleansing of the energies from the previous year followed by retrieving a stone from a priest in a grove. The color of the stone reflects the theme for the year. I also learned a bit about our deities or vodouns which are very similar to the orishas in Ifa (traditional Yoruba religion). Even though it was small, taking a moment to reattempt learning about my culture’s traditions was a moment of reclamation for me and my identity. I think especially for those of us who are displaced or removed from our cultures because of colonization, reconnecting with our lineage can feel like an insurmountable task. It can also bring up a lot of grief, anger and frustration. I’ve learned that reclamation is an ongoing process and it can happen in big or small moments. The most important thing is to choose to show up every day, believe that you have a right to your wholeness, and act from that place. At the end of the day, what you seek is seeking you so if you’re looking for more clarity around your identity or any other aspect of your life, that information is finding its way to you too. I’m very grateful for all of the content creators and practitioners that have taken the time to share their wisdom with us for Lunar New Year and I hope more people recognize these moments as opportunities to come home to themselves and respectfully engage with different traditions rather than being harmful and extractive.

With that being said, I wanted to share an update on Reclamation Studio. Rather than continuing with the full launch, I’ve decided to start the program as a workshop series. I really enjoyed hosting the Reclaiming Your Relationship With Love workshop (thank you to everyone who attended!!). Afterwards, I realized it would be more accessible to you to make the program material available in smaller amounts and for me to co-create with you and improve each module before launching the program in full. Sooo if you’re interested in joining the next workshop in the series, I’ll share more info on the next one in March’s newsletter. However you can also subscribe to my calendar on Luma, to be notified automatically when I create the next event: https://luma.com/calendar/cal-Ww16FoccvYZ1OwA?period=past I’m also offering 1:1 sessions inspired by the Reclamation Studio Method which you can learn more about and sign up for here: https://paulaami.com/offerings/

Thank you as always for witnessing me and reading some of my thoughts about life. Sending you so much love!

With gratitude,

Paula