Thread by @CandiceBenbow

I wish I had time to write about #BlackIsKing but August deadlines loom.

I want to say this tho:

It felt like a very specific offering. This was confirmed for me at the beginning. Bey says “you are welcome to come home to yourself” as they make offering to Olokun by the ocean.

When I heard Bey say this, I immediately thought of how she started #Lemonade. “I tried to make a home out of you.” For as much as we love Lemonade, it is a painful and *hard* story. Yes—the healing is glorious but the road there is a dark and painful.

Today, I sat and learned more about Olokun from a wise and gifted teacher. In Yoruba land, Olokun has dominion over the deepest parts of the seas—the darkness that is vast and full of boundless potential.

I thought of something one of my friends said to me this week as she encouraged me to rethink the concept of darkness away from my Westernized Christian lens and acknowledge the possibility and willingness to be fueled and transformed by it.

In this way, for me, it made so much sense that Bey would begin “Black Is King” with an offering to Olokun, in gratitude for the transformation that happened in and through the darkness.

It was Lemonade’s journey that allowed her to ask “who am I?”

It is the quest for truth and healing that moves us from “I tried to make a home out of you” to “you are welcome to come home to yourself.”).

And who we are has always been part of something bigger and we have always been guided by the ancestors and the orishas who love us. They walked with us through the darkness. They knew it was coming because they knew we would need to find ourselves.

There are many takeaways from #BlackIsKing. This one is mine and I am grateful for it. The hard and painful thing can be what leads us to beautiful self discovery. We learn so much more about who we are, who we have been and who we have the capacity to be.

We come home to ourselves and take it with us wherever we go.