The first batch of EarthChild body butter ever sold!
just a few short years ago...
all the parts of myself were scattered about. The folks that saw me onstage or attended my classes knew me as a dancer. The folks who I chanted with at kirtans and pondered headstand alignment with knew me as a yogini. My roommates at the time were often subjected to trying out my latest lotions, potions, and culinary experiments. Those who took my workshops or marched alongside me in the streets saw me as an activist striving toward racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice. The only problem was that I wasn't any one of these things- I was all of them.
The deeper I got into my yoga studies, the more compelled I felt to integrate the many aspects of myself. After many conversations, vision boards, and deep meditation, EarthChild was born as a space where I could merge my creative passions in service of co-creating a more equitable, harmonious world. Now, ways to connect to my performances and yoga classes, and purchase my body care products can all happen in one place.
The most important uniting factor of these three passions is that I came to them because, at one point or another, my physical and emotional well-being or that of my loved ones depended on it. These creative passions challenge me to decolonize my mental space, physical and spiritual being, and the ways I move through the world. They have been and remain investments in joy and healing for myself and my community. As a black, female-bodied person who is the beneficiary of chronic generational poverty, joy and healing are imperative if I/we are to survive and thrive in spite of the racist, heteropatriarchal, capitalist paradigm in which we find ourselves. Indeed, our joy and healing carves out space for a new paradigm to emerge.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
why the name earthchild?
The name EarthChild grew out of my profound respect and love for Mama Nature in all her bounty and glory. The glistening black soil and the dusty red earth my ancestors imbued with their life force and whispered to for support and wisdom. Whipping winds that remind us that nothing is permanent. The river and ocean waters that heal and cleanse, even while needing our prayers. Sun rays that warm and delight the skin.
I am forever a student of Mama Nature listening to her wisdom; a child, bowing to her beauty. I also grieve her suffering- the centuries of continuing exploitation inflicted upon her mirrors centuries of continuing horrors endured by both my ancestors, kidnapped Africans, and by indigenous peoples worldwide. As such, I try to use my life as a prayer for restoration. In all aspects of EarthChild, I aim to move with the rhythms of the elements, the seasons, the moon, and the sun in ways that support sustainability, healing, and grounded connection.