Quanita Roberson on Ancestors, Elders, and Healing
On a sunny winter morning a few weeks ago, we met with author, consultant, and life coach Quanita Roberson at the Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Though we hadn’t met before, we fell into deep topics quickly – touching on race, wisdom, and much more. While we walked around the museum, we learned about her path to healing, the leadership workshop she facilitates, Fire and Water, and the book, “The InnerGround Railroad,” she wrote over the course of a decade.
Interview by Suzanne Wilder. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
So tell us why you wanted to meet at the Freedom Center.
One of the first times I was here at Freedom Center, I was in the slave pen and the ancestors started yelling at me. And they said, how dare you? How dare you not be and do all that you promised with what we went through? And all I could do was cry because I knew it was true. And I didn't come back for a long time.
How long ago was that?
It was early on when Freedom Center opened. Well, I guess after they got the slave pen, I don't know when that was put in, but what I didn't know then is that the slave pen came from the area where my family was enslaved. I thought they were just general ancestors yelling at me. I didn't know that they could have been mine. And, for years, I would come here, and every time I would come, I would come into the building and have to apologize to the ancestors because they weren't happy because they didn't know what they were doing here.
So when did you eventually come back?
Well, I came back because one particular year, first, a friend who's an Anglican priest from Vancouver was coming into town and asked me if I would come here with him if I would bring him here. And that same year, another woman from New Zealand asked me if I would come. So I came because they wanted to come, and I said yes. I've been back many times since and even helped host an event here with James Baldwin's niece. Aisha (Karefa-Smart) and I showed the film “I Am Not Your Negro,” and then we talked and spoke about the journey. After she left, I hosted three events as a follow-up to conversations about “Let's be curious together around race” here in the city.
Tell me about those conversations. What was the idea behind them, what made you want to have those conversations, and where did that come from?
I was uniquely born and raised to do this kind of work. My work really is around healing, and that [discussions about race] is just one of the doorways. My mother knew my stepfather from the time I was two, and they got married when I was about first grade. But he was white, so I was raised in white families and African American families.
I went to the School for Creative and Performing Arts, and the whole time that I was there, from 7th to 12th grade, it was under a mandate to have everything in the school be racially balanced. The principal used to give what we used to call “the race speech” every year: “If you're a Black student in this school, you don't have a white friend, something's wrong. If you're a white student in this school, you don't have a Black friend, something's wrong.”
And then my children are descendants of slaves and descendants of the sons and daughters of the American Revolution. I say I literally have skin in the game. Who am I called to be, to be the mother of these kids who are descendants of slaves and descendants of the sons and daughters of the American Revolution?
The shadow side of the slave archetype is being a slave to a person, a thing, or even an idea. But the light side of the slave archetype is being a slave to the divine spirit within. It actually teaches us self-mastery. It's how we find our freedom. But the way we hold the story of the legacy of slavery, especially in this country, is we hold it almost as if people of color are the only ones that carry a legacy of slavery. But to enslave another, you have to be enslaved as well. When you make up the rules, you can't even see that you are [enslaved by something]. So I always tell people, I don't want you to be my ally. I want you to save your own damn self.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, in “The Water Dancer,” says that one of the things about slavery is it made infants out of white people. Everything they needed to survive was taken care of by someone else. And so I really think it's tied into this piece about how we have such an adolescent adult culture. And the problem with that is if you don't have an initiated adult, you can't have initiated elders. And if you don't have initiated elders, you can't initiate the youth. So it becomes this vicious cycle of adolescent adults growing adolescent adults.
You talk about this idea of elders, so define it for us.
Yeah, I think oftentimes we mistake elders for teachers and guides. Teachers and guides aren't necessarily elders, but elders are usually teachers and guides. And so I think the difference for me with elders is that elders can put you first. Teachers and guides don't necessarily have to.
So, I run a 16-month leadership rights of passage cohort for adults, and it's about how we grow up as adults. And it's through, for me, through initiation. And so, in those 16 months, we have had three retreats, Wednesday evening through Sunday afternoon.
We now have about 50 alumni. We've done three cohorts. We're setting up the fourth one now. And so it's having someone be able to hold space that you trust enough to see you when you can't see you. And to hold the vision as you are walking your way, and that you trust them enough when you get scared of the journey that you don't turn around and go back.
I've had amazing elders in my life. And I would say I “elder well” because I've been “elder-ed well.”
I think maybe I want to check my own assumptions. It does not mean old, and it's not necessarily someone that is older.
We have olders – and we have elders. But I think there's something you can only get with age on the planet. But just because you're older doesn't mean you're an elder.
That's an interesting phrase – this idea of leadership rites of passage. And then it's a long period, 16 months. Why is it structured that way? What happens in that period?
Well, we move at the pace of nature. You don't often grow deep wisdom in three months, you know unless something really bad is happening. It's like, how do we do this? In the process, there's crumbling. I tell people there's crumbling that happens in that time. We don't have a lack of leaders in this country. We have a lack of wise leaders. And you get wisdom through being on a journey.
And so the three retreats are like the heroine's journey. The first retreat is the preparation for it. And my main purpose in that first retreat is connection, connection, connection, to self, to the land, to each other, to me, to spirit, whatever that is for you.
The second retreat, I call the medicine retreat. And because the crumble has happened, they're starting to happen. It's about what medicine you need at that moment. And what medicine are you at that moment? We also, in that second retreat, tend to fire for two-and-a-half days. And then, after two-and-a-half days, the fire tends to us. We take our bundles to the fire, and we do a grief ritual.
The third retreat is what I always joke is [like] Christmas. It's when we do presentations of learning. It's where you present what you've learned in the 16 months in whatever way you want. And people do it in all kinds of creative ways. But it's not what you did, it's “What did you learn? Who are you now?”
Who does this leadership experience? I mean, I feel like it takes a certain type of person.
You might think that, but I think we're all so hungry for it. I've had lawyers come through, and we have one woman who applied who was a pediatric physician for this next round. We have a policeman who said yes, who's coming in. We've had people from all across the country. We have one Canadian who came through. We have social workers, educators, and evaluators who come through. I think we have so many people who are searching. The youngest I've allowed in is 29; I think so far, the oldest was a woman who turned 70 when she was on the journey.
Our first cohort, one of the women who was in it, is Amy Howton, who is co-author [with me] of the book “The InnerGround Railroad.” I didn't meet her until I had been in a relationship with this book for 14 years. And she heard I was writing. She's like, "Well, when will I see some of this book?"
And so I sent her the first 25 pages And one of them said something to the effect of, "I'm a dark-skinned Black woman, who was a dark-skinned Black girl, born and raised on this side of the Ohio River, the side of the river that represents freedom for so many, but not for me.” And she sent me a blog post that she wrote before we met that said, “I'm a white woman whose life crossed back and forth across the Ohio River, the river that represents freedom for so many.”
And I said, “I think you're supposed to write the other part of this book.”
I've always known that it was a book for not just African Americans but all Americans. One of the lines she writes in the book that I think is so incredibly powerful is she says that one of the hardest things to heal, for her as a white woman, is that we have been purveyors of half-truths and willfully not seeing.
So the book is printed now. It's out in the world. When did it come out?
So, it came out last year; I self-published it. I created my own publishing label because I didn't want anybody to touch it, actually. This year, we finally got a distributor. My publishing company is called Akan Publishing. And the akan drum is the oldest known African American artifact to exist. It was brought over on a slave ship to exercise the slaves to keep them strong for the journey. What I wrote about the drum is that it really showed the difference because the slave traffickers used the drum as a utilitarian. But the Africans use the drum as communion, celebration, and communication, you know? And that we each can find our own drum beat. Sobonfu Somé of West Africa, Burkina Faso said, “The beat of the drum is the tuning of the soul.” And so we each can find our own and do our own healing.
So, did the book evolve along the way?
At one point I had written about 17,000 words and lost the book (due to a technology backup failure). And it was gone. I was really belly-aching about it a lot. Because the first parts that came out were my stories. I was resisting writing again, going back again, because I thought I would have to go through that and write all my stories again. And a friend asked, “What age does this book want to be written from?” And I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Over on the bookshelf – some are written for young adults, some for adolescents.” And I said, “It wants to be a wisdom book.” And he goes, “That's what I thought you'd say.” And it always wanted to be a wisdom book. I just wasn't ready to write that book yet. So the stories are there; they're just told in a different way now.
The book uses the Dagara medicine wheel from West Africa and Burkina Faso with the five elements of fire, water, nature, mineral, and earth. And I tell my stories for each element. Then Amy tells her stories for each element. And then, we walk you through 40 days of your own journey, one week for each element.
How did you come to the practice of paying attention?
At age 15, I went to court and pressed charges against my stepfather for sexual abuse. My healing journey started at 15. And so at 52, I have over 35 years of healing under my belt. It didn't seem like a gift then. There are so many things I’ve been able to do because of that, because the people showed up when I needed them to. There's a chapter in this book that I wrote: “Spiritual Healing from Sexual Violence.” One of the things I wrote about is this attorney who worked in the prosecutor’s office and helped prosecute the case when I was a teenager. And I decided after this book just came out earlier this year that I would find him to tell him who he was to me. I wrote in the book about these earth angels that show up for you. And that he was one of the earth angels for me.
What do you want people to consider after meeting you in this story?
My journey is about healing. You know, as a matter of fact, in February, I'm so excited because I'm going to Mexico. I rented a place for two weeks, and I'm working on this book called “Birth by Many Mothers.” It's about all the community mamas and the gift and legacy that I carry of them, and vice versa. It’s another avenue for healing.
Tell us about an influential woman in your life.
Jojopahmaria [Nsoroma] – she's one of my elders and teachers; she was the first person to introduce me to the Dagara medicine wheel. I met her [through work] years ago. I remember saying to her [after meeting her], “I’ve been waiting for you.” She looked at me and laughed. Jojopah left the organization and went on the road for six years. She would drive across the country and just stop in places that needed her help and support, and our house was one of those places she would stop on our way to the East Coast. And she started to teach me and hold space for me. When my mother-in-law was dying, Jojopah came to our house, and she cooked and cleaned and took care of our kids so we could go back and forth to the hospital as much as we wanted to.
One of the biggest gifts is that she mothered me, which allowed me space not to expect that from my mother, to heal something with my mother before my mother died. And she's continued even now to elder me. She continues, even 20 plus years later, to elder and guide and teach.
One of the lessons I got from Jojopah is that the world is out to gift you and not to get you. So often, we ask, “Why is this happening to me?” instead of, “Why is this happening for me?” And that shift changes everything. When we really get that everything shows up as a gift, we can ask a different question.
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