reflections on leaving, liberation, and legacy
ok so i’m actually using speech to text and sharing this because i just want to let you know that if you’re watching the live video following along with the text, it might not show up perfectly. alright so let me go ahead and jump in.
i have decided to use this site “sex death and power” because it just felt right. i am not really being moved to revisit any of my old sites at this point – they are still up and live, however i may just archive everything or scratch everything and delete everything and just move on. because i mean, for those of you who know me, know that’s just kind of how i am and i find that more blessings and abundance come when i’m able to walk out of one light, i guess you can say, and step into another with as little baggage as possible. and baggage doesn’t mean negative things, just some things that we were attached to.
i am being moved to say this right now: how i operate and what works for me does not work for everyone. so if you are someone who likes to travel – and when i say travel i’m using that just as a general word but that just can mean how you move through light in different paths and cycles – if you need to pack everything up, hey that’s on you.
anyway, so i also want to add that the things that i’m saying or will say are not politically motivated in no way, shape, or form because really i don’t give a damn, never have and probably never will. i don’t know, that may change at some point in time but right now nothing that i am saying nor how i am moving and making decisions in my life, or not making decisions in my life, have nothing to do with the current politics that are happening.
for me, the most recent decisions and choices i have made are coming more from a guided spirit place, just as many transitions in my life have been, which rarely makes sense to people when i am in the midst of making radical changes. but then they look back 5, 7, 10 years later and they’re like “oh i see what she was doing” and here we are.
an example of that actually would be – and this is going to tie into the movie “the origin” and why i have decided to revisit some family stories and share with new people who are just getting to know me – about 20 years ago, for those of you who know me, know that i basically threw the american dream life into the toilet, walked away, moved across the country and got into tech. and as i have said many times before, my goal was always to not only encourage but teach black and brown people about technology and how important that would be as it relates to gaining sovereignty.
and now here we are. many people who do want to leave the states or just have the freedom and the option to know that they can leave if necessary are looking at ways they can make a living online – what many are now referring to as digital nomads. for me back in the day, for those of us in the early years of tech, we weren’t really using “digital nomads” but being location independent.
like i said, i do have other sites that are up that are still live but they have not been touched and i may or may not touch them and i have not updated them. so if you have been on the sites and things are all broken, not working, hey it is what it is at this point. that brings me to being adaptable and i guess you can say detached from certain things, especially material things which also include tech things.
for me, it’s my understanding that this is a 9 year and i have from early this year been moved to not be married to something that i did yesterday and think because i spent time and energy on it that i need to carry that action or thought out the next day, especially when the energy has shifted. something that has happened whether it can be seen or unseen, but to really be as flexible and as adaptable just as much as things change through life.
so yesterday, june 19th thursday, marked my 3 month anniversary in brazil. it was also juneteenth and i didn’t realize that it was juneteenth because those of you who know me know that i do not care about holidays, observances, and especially not holidays like juneteenth. but listen, if you’re just meeting me and you’re taking that personally, just don’t make assumptions about why you think i don’t care about these things. just ask me in advance or ask me afterwards because i’m an open book, but i hate mundane, mere mortal assumptions about me and how i don’t typically buy into common or popular or trending mirrors.
but anyway, i didn’t realize that it was juneteenth and so i haven’t really shared much about my experiences here in brazil because i have literally been processing and unpacking a lot of perceptions, especially. but it’s also been a lot of extremely magical and fast moving energies. and so all that to say that i don’t care or didn’t care or didn’t even realize that yesterday was juneteenth, i woke up and found myself extremely emotional before i realized that it was juneteenth and then i saw – and when i say emotional i was just like crying – which is kind of like this rebirth energy.
and then i peeped into the black expat and nomad group that found me actually, and they were posting about juneteenth and some of the things that they were saying about liberation and being here literally just brought me to tears because for the first time in all 50 years of my life and i don’t know how long i’ve been doing this, i felt that debt while not being on north american soil.
and then also earlier this week i had been moved over and over and over again to just really sit down and go through my family tree and share some stories. and i want to kind of wrap this up…
there were 2 things that i was 100% sure of when i left the states and that was: i did not want to be around a bunch of american tourists and i was blessed with not having to deal with that. and then i also wanted to make sure that i didn’t go into a situation looking specifically for the black community, however by serendipity they found me and i’ll share more about how that happened later on.
the origin connection
so in closing, i still haven’t seen the movie “the origin” but some people have reached out to me like i’ve mentioned about the movie and apparently there’s a scene where they talk to people that go somewhere and they tell them that they need to leave, right? and so i want to emphasize that i packed up with not much planning at all – when i say not much planning, like a week – and decided to move to brazil. that was in march and i don’t know when the movie came out but the movie came out after i left.
so i’ve had a few friends message me kind of ironically with a lot of humor and also curiosity and questions like did i get some type of download inside or a message saying to get out when i left in march? and so i will go into more of that later on.
but let me just say i know that there are a few that would like to leave the states or are being called to leave the states whether you feel it as a deep soul calling or if you are more of a practical type of person and you’re watching the news or whatever’s happening. i know a lot of people are ignoring the spirit in making the move and adjustment because they don’t know how. so instead of asking for help and guidance and doing research, they’re just ignoring it.
and for those that – as people say my spiritual girlies know – we know what happens when you ignore those intuitive and instinctual nudges, right? it’s like that joke we used to always make: go or be dragged.
so if you have felt anything but can’t figure it out because of finances, kids, whatever it may be – fear. fear is a big thing because i’ve talked about this many times in group coaching, the porch, whatever it may be – that the fear of travel, especially for black people, is something that has become a cellular imprint on us due to unfortunate historical events that i’m not going to get into right now. but very few of us really want to talk about that.
and also let me touch upon how in this video i go into the migration from mississippi to oklahoma, right? so the movie is based – “the origin” that is – based in mississippi. but how did so many black people end up in oklahoma and other parts of the world? but i’m going to focus on oklahoma because that’s where my people are at and because they had the largest majority of black towns.
but yes, it was in search of opportunities but also a lot of it was out of necessity to survive, right? so just like here in brazil they have these simple spaces that’s called quilombos and that was out of necessity for survival and just getting sick of people’s shit, right?
but does that mean that our ancestors literally wanted us to stay in certain places? was oklahoma an ideal place to settle? hell fucking no, right? especially when people have only known how to live and survive in certain environments and then some assholes telling them “no, we need for you to live where you’ve been and move here and figure out how to protect and fend for yourself.”
and yes, just because our people have been able to do and make the most of what they have been given, what they have had – let me tell you something. here’s the thing that annoys me so fucking much – see now i’ve got it started, now that i’ve started talking again let me just get this shit out because now i feel all of this fucking shit coming up so let me reintroduce myself: courtney’s fucking back.
on resilience and moving forward
i’m sick of the word fucking resilience. oh we’re so resilient. fuck that. yes, that is a great character trait to have but listen, it’s always like this fucking starting point – they don’t go whatever – like we need to fucking stop romanticizing being resilient. i’m over it. i’m not trying to be resilient, i’m not trying to survive.
i have great pivot skills, i have great chameleon skills, i have great adaptability skills, i have great ingenuity skills, but i’ll be damned if the rest of my life and the life of future generations is going to be built on the narrative of just being resilient.
and in closing, regardless of how you feel about any of this, i know for me this ain’t about me. this is about the generations after me. this is about the kids – your kids, my son, my nieces and nephews, all the kids who could very well experience the shit that many of y’all listening to this are experiencing and don’t want to experience right now because the generation before you did not want to be uncomfortable.
the changes here… i can’t help but think about everything that my great-grandmother accomplished with what she had back then and literally what she would be accomplishing if she had the access and the resources that i, my cousins, my siblings, my nieces and nephews and many of you – all of us have right now in this moment.
i can’t help but think i’m just gonna speak for myself – her looking at me because again she is a sagittarius like me – like “yo courtney, this is it.” and it is not even about proving a point to anyone else but myself. and because of the risk that she took, the fearlessness that she had, i and my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my siblings have foundational things to not only build on but actual tangible spaces and land and access and a certain privilege that comes with the name association, the family name association.
so i’m always in this mode of possibilities based on what i know. so you may not be inspired, moved or motivated to do this for yourself, but what is life and the world going to look like for your kids, your nieces, your nephews, your god-children?