Legacy/Repeat After Me

poem written by akasha (gloria) hull

My great-grandmother compacted all her grief until it festered as a life sore in her side. She huddled it close changed her pus-stained rags in secret. Nobody in the family knew about her shame until they smelled the cancer which ate her breath away

My grandmother never found her proper nourishment. They said she ate "too much cornmeal". Pellagra, we call it today- a deficiency disease which killed my grandmother. Little quick woman who never stopped moving until she died.

My mother lives out their lives of lack and limitation old pains, old wounds, old angers, resentment, grief, fear, and shame. Her milk soured in the mouth of my baby brother. Thirty-eight years later they cut the whole breast off. Lack of self-love, love-criticism hardening her joints she still holds on. Holds on.

All this they willed to me. This freighted legacy I want to cast away.

I say-to myself-repeat after me:

Throw out those old clothes (Let the latest and hottest fashions take their place)

Give the leftover spoonsful to the dog (God will set a fresh dish on the table)

Do not hoard pieces of string, clean rags, or colored ribbons (Say: What I need will be at hand when I need it)

Give up extreme gratefulness for pennies (so that thanks for thousands can be made)

Give away love (then love, and then more love will fill the place)

Let go fear (Come power and possibility)

Expel anger (Welcome joy)

Let go of children (who will then embrace you happily at every turn)

Release pain and dis-ease (Spirit pushes the healing through)

And now I say: Repeat after me