I Do Not Rise Alone: A Reflection on Ancestral Becoming

Moments in life when growth feels solitary when change arrives like a wave crashing against the shore of who we once were. But beneath the noise of uncertainty, a quieter truth pulses:
I do not rise alone.
I rise with all that has ever lived within me.

Each breath I take is borrowed from generations past. It carries the rhythm of lullabies whispered in forgotten tongues and the strength of footsteps that marched through storms I will never see. My breath is not mine alone it is the breath of my ancestors, filling my lungs with their endurance and their grace.

And the fire that moves me? It is old. It is sacred. It winds through my spine like a thread of purpose spun long before I arrived here. It crackles with the wisdom of those who dared to dream beyond survival.

There is no part of me untouched by lineage. No action that stands separate from the tapestry of lives before mine.
I trust what returns to me.
I trust what leaves me.
I trust what I am becoming.

Because becoming is not a solo act. It is a remembering. A re-gathering of the many selves that have laid the foundation for this one. Some I’ve met in stories. Others I know only through instinct through a certain courage in my blood, a quiet knowing in my bones.

I carry the unseen.
The hopes that were never spoken aloud. The griefs that had no place to go. The resilience that never made it into the history books.
I speak with the forgotten.
Not just with words, but with how I live. How I show up. How I honor what was left unfinished.

And so, I rise not to prove my worth to a world that forgets quickly,
but to remember who I am and who I come from.

I do not rise alone.
I rise with all that has ever lived within me.
And that is enough.