To My Ancestral Mothers

To my ancestral mothers—
I honor you.

I may never know all that you carried, or the times you felt unseen, overlooked, unchosen, forgotten, or not enough.

I do not know how often you were asked to survive without the protection, tenderness, provision, or recognition you deserved.

But I want you to know:

You mattered. You were worthy. You were never insignificant.

Your worth was never determined by who stayed, who left, who chose you, who protected you, who provided for you, or who failed to see your value.

You were worthy simply because you were here.

To Myself

And today, I speak those same words over myself.

I am worthy. I matter. I belong. I am enough.

I have felt this wound in more than one place.

In family. In relationships. In professional spaces where I brought my knowledge, experience, gifts, and voice, yet still felt I had to work harder to prove I belonged.

I know what it is to enter rooms where I am underestimated, where my voice is questioned, and where being Black and a woman adds the weight of proving what I already know I bring.

I am learning this:

No room gets to determine my worth. No title determines my value.

Being overlooked does not make me unworthy. Being underestimated does not make me less capable.

I cannot always control whether a person, relationship, workplace, or institution treats me as valuable.

But I can refuse to let their inability to recognize my worth define me.

To My Sisters & Peers

I speak this over my sisters and peers—the women walking beside me, building, leading, caregiving, creating, surviving, healing, and becoming.

May we remind one another that we do not have to compete for worth, visibility, love, or belonging.

There is room for all of us to be seen.
There is room for all of us to be valued.
There is room for all of us to belong.

To My Daughters

And now I turn to the ones coming after us—
I speak this over my daughters—

those born to me and those I encounter along the way.

To every young woman coming behind me, whether we share blood or not: I want you to know your worth before the world makes you question it.

You do not have to earn your worth.

You do not have to beg to be chosen.

You do not have to make yourself smaller so someone will make room for you.

You do not have to overperform to prove that you deserve to be there.

You are worthy. You matter. You belong. Your worth is never optional.

To My Granddaughters

And to my granddaughters, and to every girl and woman who will come after me—
what I have declared over myself, I now bless over you.

May you inherit more freedom than pain, more belonging than rejection, more confidence than doubt, more love than fear.

May you know, deeply and early, that your value does not begin when someone else recognizes it.

May the power of healing flow backward to those who came before me,
through me now,
through the women walking beside me,
forward to my children, to every daughter I am called to encourage, to their children,
and onward to all those who will come after us.

May what needs to end, end here.

May the wounds of rejection, abandonment, silence, invisibility, overwork, and unworthiness lose their power in our lineage.

And may everything worthy of continuing—
love, wisdom, courage, joy, safety, confidence, belonging, and the knowing of our own worth—
multiply through the generations.

The Return

I honor the women who came before me.

I stand with the women walking beside me.

I pour love into the women coming behind me.

And I make room for myself in that circle of healing too.

Because I matter. Because my sisters matter. Because my daughters matter. Because my granddaughters matter. Because my ancestral mothers mattered.

And because every woman deserves to know this:
Being treated as optional never meant you were.

You Matter

My Ancestral Mothers

The ‘S’ on My Chest Now Stands for Surrender