I Want You To Know About This Person

and her decolonizing teaching and work.

With slow and deliberate speech, she looked at a large group of White people over Zoom and told us that it’s essential to offer thanks and prayers to the land, any land, the land you are on or near or visit—once a week, at minimum. Ideally, much more than that. Different from “grounding” or taking energy from Mother Earth. Offer, offer, offer. Hearing this truth, my breath settled and I knew immediately that I was in the right course. Minutes before that first live class, I had squirreled away from my family, still flustered from negotiating time for myself; but within 5 minutes, my body dropped in deep. Undistracted. Present. Feeling the feelings. Thanks to Dra. Rocio Rosales Meza and her approach. Not cognitive. Not fast.

I’m halfway through her 12-week program called “Decolonial Shadow Work: Unlearning the White Colonial Mind.” There’s so much to say about her and this work and I want to keep it simple here. Please go learn about/from her. She is bringing a profound spiritual component and earth rootedness into the decolonization movement (of which I, as a White person, am a forever student, as she reminds us). Much like Resmaa Menakem brought and brings the nervous system and somatics into abolitionism. Her story of leaving academia moves me; she also runs courses for therapists and healers who are decolonizing their practice—creating a “new paradigm of care.”

I don’t know how to describe the impact of this class on my cells—affirming in 1,000 ways what my body has already been telling me for years (!!!) about urgency/pace and interdependence and ownership of lineage, pushing me to take deeper stock of how I have colluded and still do, holding me accountable to continual building of capacity for the discomfort of my role and ancestry, instilling earnest and focused vision (instead of cynicism and hopelessness) for the freedom that might be possible for all humans.

Because I’m a body person, I walk in the woods as I listen to Dr. Rocio’s teachings. I pause a lot to notice how my body lights up, somersaults, gets queasy, absorbs, contracts, expands.

Because I’m a language person, I write down her phrases in my phone and read them back to myself, look at the words, say them out loud, hear them on my own tongue. Especially if my mind thinks it already “gets” the concept. It’s like tasting them so that I can know them.

I have made offerings to nature my whole life and here are some recent ones: on behalf of a loved one, a giving back to Mother Earth, an invisible seeing.

Below are a few of Dra. Rocio’s words, as I heard them from her. These came orally from both her live and recorded teachings. Her transmission of them is woven with her wider deeper presence.

Train your vision to see a higher perspective.

You are the answer to your precolonial ancestors’ prayers.

Set firm boundaries with colonial ancestors.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just start the work.

It’s not just about people, it’s about land.

Shame and guilt are dense energies. Confront them but don’t stay in them otherwise you are colluding.

We’ve all been trained to think like a European White settler: take and extract.

All spaces are colonial except for indigenous spaces.

Security is a colonial illusion.

Being a good White person doesn’t mean punishing yourself. Call your spirit back. Say your name and call your spirit back.

Be an accomplice (who takes action) not just an ally.

The shadow is thinking “I get it but other white people don’t.”

This is lifelong work.

Spirituality is simple.

Being in urgency makes us more susceptible to colonial control.

You are less likely to be manipulated by the colonial paradigm when you are well and resourced.

I am healing and I am divesting money and time consistently. Multiple truths.

We have all been harmed by White Supremacy and White people have benefited from it.

We are reconnecting the invisible umbilical cord to Mother Earth severed with colonization.

If you are moved, pass on the word about Dra. Rocio’s work, or support it or partake in it or ALL of the above. I am learning how to re-humanize my White self (which seems so wrong but she insists is imperative for this movement), how to no longer collude with colonial fragmentation, how to divest in bigger more consistent ways. More to share on it all in future newsletters.

So much of her teaching aligns with what I’ve felt about attention and relationality in this modern era. In many ways, it’s kin to my intention for My Walk.

Be a relative, Dr. Rocio says.

Be a relative.

Be a relative.

Be a relative.

Finding my way,