​My Roots & Ancestors

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When I think about my heritage of being black, white &

indigenous ​​I have to acknowledge the deep complexities 

that are embedded within me. I know the violence & 

erasure that was caused by the hands of my European 

ancestors from Sicily & France, I know the interracial & 

forbidden love that was between my West African, Blackfeet, 

Cherokee ancestor's in the Deep South of North Carolina

and the hard labor in the fields, plantations & kitchens and

laundry rooms my West African ancestors did everyday of

their life just to keep food on the table & survive the violence 

of Jim Crow. 

To exist within so many racial identities has been a lot, to learn 

of what life was like for all of my ancestors has been immense.

How do I make sense of who I am? Who I come from? 

Who I belong to? For most of my life I felt like I never belonged. I felt like I was never black enough, never white enough and never indigenous enough. I would often get called mulatto, half blood, mixed or mutt. Which has always  really hurt. 

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It’s taken me a while but I understand now that if you don’t fit nicely into one racialized category ​​Then the world will see 

you as nothing, different, other and living outside of what they can even imagine. But you know what? That is what it is like to be trans, to be queer is to be living & coloring outside the lines. To show others that the lines we are living in were constructed  by others but were not made for us to thrive in.  And I like tripping the wire of society, blurring the lines between  this reality & the others, making people double take because they don’t know if I am a man or a woman or something else.

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This is my role, being different is apart of my gift & embodying the wild diversity of ancestral lines that move through me is how I feed my ancestors and make them proud.

Akpe, Nia:wen,SikSikimasiituk,Wado Grazie, Merci

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​My Initiation From Spirit: 

This work of walking with grief and death found me after being diagnosed and hospitalized with a chronic illness called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It was in my most challenging days and scariest moments where death was close---that I realized what it was I had to offer to this world. I knew that being with death had always been apart of my life, I just hadn't realized how much.  

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It was when I began to face my own death from my long term chronic illness that I was initiated in the astral plane by my grandmother who was in spirit. She told me I would be supporting others in the physical world, lessening their fear of death and being a bridge of communication from the spirit realm to this physical realm. To here the story of my how my illness lead to my near death experience & initiation of my gifts listen to my podcast episode below: 

​https://open.spotify.com/episode/2PNOBF1arnPjgqBLQKnywj?si=YtdjmWxXTJKrGqSxquCjgw

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I am certified as a death care provider through Alua Arthur and her amazing program: Going With Grace. With my death care skills & my gift of mediumship, my hope and prayer is to bring about healing from the other side  and a profound peace around life after death.

In Awe & Wonder,

Ash

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-Ash

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