IF ONLY WE KNEW WE WERE STARS

By Farah Lawal Harris, 2024

I come from a generation of latchkey kids. Freddie Kreuger, Friday the 13th, and New Jack City helped raise me, taught me to be afraid of what bumps in the night. Got me used to fright and anxiety. Fight or flight has been holding me so long, I ain’t know what to do once it was gone. Fawn? freeze? Or just be?

To breathe is to be. Let all things that have breath coexist. The greatest commandment, love, often gets missed. Those who dwell on past versions of themselves live in present hell. This is my personal heaven because I declare it to be. The generational trauma ends with me. More and more, joy fills the spaces and holes dug by depression and anxiety. I never in my life cried so many happy tears.

Like Akeem, I am very happy to be here!

Ecstatic about the feeling of being aware. I didn’t know how dark it really was until the light turned on. I’ve gotten used to the super bright now, light up rooms with my smile, leave trails of rose and jasmine oil wherever I go. Open my heart to the vulnerable parts. I am finally free.

It took the possibility of death to start loving me. Plus a dash of radical honesty, a splash of holy water in the form of tears, acknowledgement of the spirits of my ancestors that still exist here. I dared to talk to God, expecting it to be a monologue. The dialogue we share is the reward of faith. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of the unseen.” I simply believed and the Holy Spirit filled me. Consider my words an outpouring. May we all be light beings. May we all face the truths that are revealed so we may heal.

I recently read: “Every atom of oxygen in our lungs of carbon in our muscles, of calcium in our bones, of iron in our blood—was created inside a star before the Earth was born.” If we only knew we were stars, imagine what we’d become.