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GHANA: Why #TheYearofReturn Was More Than a Hashtag For Me

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When Ghana made the call for us to return home, I couldn’t have imagined that my trip would actually be the catalyst to me returning to, and discovering myself in many ways.

It’s taken me forever and a day (and a few more days) to actually get around to working on the content from that life changing trip. That’s because so many emotions and feelings were conjured up on that journey, I needed time to process it all.

In a way, taking the trip to Ghana while I was five months pregnant was kismet. The trip was destined to be.

I mean, think about it; tucked in my womb, I was carrying my unborn child back to the land of my ancestors’ birth, back to the place from which we and those before us and those before them, came.

Me, pregnant, coupled with Ghana’s clarion call for all Black people to “return home,” visit their roots and reconnect with the continent, it was a match made in Black Queen heaven!

While the trip was originally planned for my husband and I to attend a concert festival, it quickly blossomed into a family trip of epic proportions, one where paying homage to the heroes who paved the way for us was the order of the day.

There’s something truly special about being in The Motherland, the place of your origin, with your family that gets you to reconnect and rediscover yourself and your loved ones in ways unimaginable. From touring the sites of the slave castles, to rummaging through roadside markets and art centers, eating delicious Ghanaian foods and meeting our brothers and sisters, it was evident that everyone in their own special way, in their own special time found their missing puzzle piece, marked “home.”

CHECK OUT MY GHANA YOUTUBE VIDEO!

They say home is where the heart is and it’s a good thing too, because my heart is definitely in Ghana. I will forever cherish the memories of taking this journey back home and having my little one with me on the ride. I’ll always have the story to tell her of how she was blessed by her ancestors, whispered sweet nothings by them even as she was tucked away inside of me. They’ve seen her. They’ve touched her. They’ve called her name.