Having Freedom Within and Embracing It

The Legacy of Survival and Celebration

What a joy it is not only to be free but to know it for yourself. There are no limits to the things we can do when we know ourselves, where we come from, the reason we do the things we do and then become with Intention. We are the legacy of survival and celebration. We are the legacy of grand wishes and people who believed in futures they would never see in person. We are the legacy of knowing that we are so connected that our individual steps forward are as much ours as they are our grandchildren’s. We embody freedom because we know that it is ours. We know. 

The recent Juneteenth holiday reminds us that there was a time between the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the full knowledge of freedom for everyone previously enslaved. Time passed and the truth was withheld. There was a gap between who we were and who we believed ourselves to be. In that gap, someone else’s Intention for our lives. In that gap, the belief that life will be better and the efforts to make it so. Time passed before we knew that the American institution of slavery was written out of the law by way of the Thirteenth Amendment. 

This is our Juneteenth prayer: Let the full knowledge of our freedom come in like an army to Galveston Bay, Texas. Open all the doors and let us enter into the chapter of our lives where we call ourselves something new. There is an “I am” that lives in our story about who we are that no longer aligns with the “I am” of our future and we vow to get to know it. In fact, we already know. The “I am” we believed in exists now. Any gaps in our experience of that truth are evidence of an old reality trying to remain relevant. We know now. We embody freedom because we know that it is ours.