'Tis the Season of Forgiving and "The Tao of Abbey Lincoln" at Lincoln Center

Full Moon in Gemini 🌕 ♊️

Greetings fam,

Happy Full Moon in Gemini. 🌕 ♊️

I’ll jump in right in and say it’s been an emotional time over here for me. December 7th marked the 3rd year of the passing of my brotha Greg Tate and then I learned that one of Max Roach’s sons, Daryl Keith Roach, also transitioned last Saturday (the 7th). I didn’t know Daryl well, in fact we had only communicated a few times after our initial meeting in 2017. We met at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles when Burnt Sugar was there to perform our rendition of We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite. I was in touch with him when I was in LA a few weeks ago as we were trying to connect to talk about Abbey Lincoln for my project. She was his step-mother. We texted a couple of times while I was there, but we were not able to make the conversion happen. He had been diagnosed with ALS and shared that he was in a nursing facility. Armed with that information, I was not inclined to press him on a meeting time. My needs in this case were not a priority. Little did I know that communication would be our last.

Me & Daryl Keith Roach

When Burnt Sugar was at the Hammer in 2017 I sang Abbey’s songs, “Lonesome Lover,” “Throw it Away” and “Driva Man/Freedom Day.” It was a transcendent performance (Starts @ 1:29:40) if I do say so myself and it was where my connection with Abbey began. I met Daryl at the end of that night and he was very complimentary of my performance. So much so that he agreed to talk with me about Abbey whenever I was ready. I’m so sad I wasn’t ready sooner. 😔 Rest well Daryl. Thank you for your kindness. Please give my brotha Greg a hug for me.

Of course I can’t get out of here without showing love for Nikki Giovanni who made her transition on Dec. 9th. There have been so many beautiful tributes to Nikki on the interwebs, but the ones that resonate most for me are clips of her speaking on love.

In one she said: “Love is a responsibility because you make a commitment. Love is that, I’m here for you, or as our friend…Toni Morrison said, ‘Love is a bench,’ and a bench is something that no matter what, when you're tired, when you're sad, you can sit. It’s gonna be right there, and it’s got your back. And that’s what love is. It’s got your back.”

In this time fraught with an energy of fear, scarcity and disconnection, let us not forget love. Let us not forget that it is love that will bring us through. Love and connection. I am and have always been a love warrior. Even when I’m angry or sad I look for and to the light of love.

Finally, they say this is the season of giving, but I’m going to go a little deeper and say it’s the season of forgiving. I know that action can be loaded for many of us, but on this moon I’m sharing my thoughts and personal work around it. As you read my words think about or meditate on where you can extend forgiveness first and foremost to yourself and then possibly to someone else or where you can extend an apology so that forgiveness can be extended to you.

On the music front, I’ll be back at the Lincoln Center Atrium with my fam for the Burnt Sugar Smokehouse, Jan. 24th & 25th. I’ll be sharing a few songs from my forthcoming “The Tao of Abbey Lincoln” project (Jan 25th) and I’ll be performing with the Black Sound Salon Collective that same evening. I might be crazy to be sharing Abbey so fast, but a girl just works better on a deadline. 😂 It’s going to be two nights of amazing music! Be there!

Happy Full Moon in Gemini! 🌕♊️ Big love as usual to all my new free and paid subscribers. Ya’ll Rock! Have a great weekend!

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January 24th and 25th
Burnt Sugar Smokehouse
Hosted by LaRonda Davis
@ David Rubenstein Lincoln Center Atrium
61 W. 62nd Street
New York, NY
7:30pm/Free for the People! 
Featuring…
January 24th: Michael Veal’s Aqua Ife, Honeychild Coleman, B Mack, Julia Kent, Rivers on Mars, Biscuit’s Buddy Miles Band
January 25th: The Black Sound Salon Collective, Unruly Neighbors, My Brother’s Dream, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Electric Powered Soul, The Tao of Abbey Lincoln feat. Shelley Nicole
Both Nights (in between sets): Ms. Olithea (Voice+Electronica) and Jared Michael Nickerson (Bubble Bass on the Bottom)

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‘Tis the Season of Forgiveness

I’m gonna keep it one hundred and tell you that I have been in my feelings about a lot of things since returning from California a few weeks ago. I was there on a business/leisure trip. The leisure side was a belated b’earthday trip for me so I scheduled an astrology reading with someone out there, which is something I try to do annually; meaning get some sort of divination (Tarot, shells, bones, etc.) for my solar return.

The reading this year was long, like 2 ½ hours! It included looking at my chart and also a bit of past life information so that I could clear things up and move forward with a clean slate this solar cycle. Now, whether or not you believe in past lives (as woo as I am I’m a bit skeptical too), just roll with me for a minute. For all my astrology heads out there, I’m going to talk about a few things in my chart, but if I mix up the lingo please forgive me, but I’m not an expert, I’m just sharing my story. So…

I have a lot of planets in my 10th house of Occupation and Career. So many that it indicates that a girl should be rich or famous or something like that by now, but alas that is not the case; YET. Well maybe I’m “hood famous” but you know that does not necessarily equal dollars. Opposite that is my 4th house of Family, Property, Domestic Life and Inheritance. I have some other things going on or maybe rather not going on there that, according to this reading, is blocking whatever should be happening in my 10th house. Ya dig? So what is a girl to do? The person who was giving the reading said that when she sees things like this in a chart she likes to give people a way out or through and according to her for me that way is forgiveness. For me this spoke of a very specific person who was with me here in this life, but also came up in her channeling of my past lives. Like I said above, I’m not really all about past lives, but I’m gonna tell y’all that she was on point!

Forgiveness is one of those funny things that can put people in a quandary. My pastors talk about forgiveness work a lot! According to them (and they are not alone) it’s basically the answer to all of our suffering and I’m inclined to co-sign this bit of information. When I speak of forgiveness at this point in my life I know it must begin with ourselves. If we can give ourselves grace first, grace for whatever mistakes or decisions we made in the past, then I think it’s that much easier to look forward and outward. I think forgiveness gets people stuck because the first place folks go is to that person who wronged them so terribly that there is no room for any type of forgiveness; and the real question is do they deserve your forgiveness? I know someone is reading this right now and saying, out loud, “Hell Nah!” 🤣 Listen, I totally understand where that outburst is coming from, but when we hold on to things, thinking that it’s hurting someone else, it’s really just hurting us. I have a friend who shared a philosophy with me that she learned in AA that really resonates. She said, “Resentment is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die.” Whew...

When forgiveness came up in my reading it was very clear what someone(s) I needed to do this forgiveness work around. It’s not going to be easy, but it needs to be done cuz a girl is trying to get the bag! 😂 But seriously, I’m doing it for myself first. I recently realized that I have been holding on to some things that are not serving me, but that revelation was shown to me in the most unexpected way.

I was recently watching a pretty innocent Christmas movie on TV, but the plot line was so close to something that happened in my life that it made me upset on the spot. This seemingly mundane show made me so angry that it caught me off guard. You know how it is when you think you’re done with a thing and then suddenly, BOW! There it is again and you realize there is still work to do? Well, that was me, on the couch, realizing that I needed to talk with my therapist, and quick! 😂

That moment really got me thinking about people that I think owe me an apology and I mean a proper apology; you know what I’m sayin’? Have you ever had someone do something to you that was so out of pocket and when the shit hit the fan they come back with an excuse driven, weak and clearly disingenuous text apology thinking that’s enough? Well, that is just one of the things that happened to me and I still feel like that person needs to call me or SOMETHING with a real apology, but real talk, they may never do it. So what do you do with that or the better question is, where am I holding that in my body because reading this I know you can feel that I’m still hot! 😡

During my recent trip to Cali, I had a dream about one of the people that I believe owes me a proper apology. In this dream we were in a car together. I was driving and they were sitting in the passenger seat not saying anything. They had an energy of waiting on me to say something, but they said nothing! When I woke up I was like, “Damn, am I going to have to reach out to this person first?” I wondered because in the dream I was driving! Damn! This is what I mean when I say forgiveness is for us and not so much for the other person. I’m not going to give the details of that story, but I will say that when the situation in question went down, they did in fact send me a whack ass text apology and it felt disingenuous! (FYI: People, if you know you did something out of pocket to someone else and you really want to make amends and they are still on the planet, do better than a text apology. Please! Do better.) Clearly this is a space where I need to forgive myself and extend some forgiveness because I may not know exactly why they made the choice, but because I know them and what’s going on in their life I do understand how they could have come to the conclusion that it would be “OK,” albeit all wrong, to cross the boundaries. I’ll just say loneliness is a mutha and you can do with that what you will.

So how does forgiveness work, especially if you want/need to extend forgiveness to a person who is no longer with us or if the person is with us but you don’t want to be in physical space with them ever again? As I stated above, it starts with you. No judgement. No blame. Just take a breath? Why have you held on to the anger or sadness so long? Is it serving you? If so, how is it serving you and is it a healthy serving? Have you been carrying around shame? Guilt? Fear? Resentment? Remember, forgiveness doesn’t mean letting someone off the hook per se, it’s more about shifting the energy of the situation and moving it to a place that is out of your body so it’s not hurting YOU any longer. Remember at the top of all this I talked about getting angry watching a seemingly mundane TV show, well clearly that mundane show set off something in me that I thought was long gone.

Finding a space of forgiveness takes work. Some ways of how to get there include writing the person a letter and airing it all out, looking at all sides (to send or not to send it up to you), you could work it through radical forgiveness / self forgiveness worksheets (click the hyperlinks to see the sheets), or maybe move through The Work: Four Questions to Change Your Life from Byron Katie to help release what you are holding on to. What is that you ask? Well, think about the situation that is making you angry, sad, frustrated or the like and ask yourself:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

For example: Let’s say, everyday at work you complain about your co-worker Mike. Then every night when you come home you call a friend and continue to complain about the same co-worker to the point of giving yourself a migraine and then you are wrecked for the night or for days really. Maybe the story is, "Mike is trying to sabotage me at work by not cc’ing me on company correspondence so that I look unprepared in the staff meetings. Now ask the questions.

1. Is it true? Yes, because you found out about a couple of emails that you were not on and you felt lost in the staff meetings.

2. Can you absolutely know it’s true? Well, no. Maybe Mike just made a mistake, forgot and used the same email list that accidentally didn’t have my name on it.

3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe this thought? I complain all day and get a migraine which leaves me incapacitated for the rest of the night or longer.

4. Who would you be without the thought? I would be headache free. I would have less stress on my body and less anger in my spirit in general.

Trust me when I tell you that this alone is a deep practice. In fact, I’m glad I’m telling y'all, cuz now I know I need to get back into it ASAP!

I’ve been in a 40 day daily yoga practice since Nov. 11th (more on that when the 40 days are up) which is also bringing up a lot (mind, body, spirit), but I believe that that Christmas movie was a wakeup call for me to let go; burn down some old things that are not serving me. I have been heartbroken for a long time now. I don’t think I knew how long till this moment. So right here, right now I’m working my way to forgiveness. First for myself so I can lay down my sword and shield; and then looking outward to others. Then, where it feels appropriate, I will be making some calls. ✨️✨️✨️

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