 Hi, everybody, I'm Shauna Sherman. I'm just gonna get started and let you know we're just so excited today to have Dr. Ifetow Ojalade with us to go through a workshop based on Yoruba deities. I'm just gonna talk a little bit about what we have going on and then we'll get right into our workshop. So the San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Sholoni peoples who were the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramaytush community. You can find more resources in the chat. And like the San Francisco African-American reparations advisory committee, the African-American Center also honors the gifts, resilience, and sacrifices of our Black ancestors, particularly those who toiled the land and built the institution that established this country's wealth and freedom, despite never being compensated nor fully realizing their own sovereignty. We acknowledge this exploitation of not only labor but of our humanity and are working to repair some of the harms done by public and private actors. Because of their work, we are here. And as descendants, we are invested in their legacy. So I don't know if I introduce myself, I'm Shana Sherman, Librarian for the African-American Center and Happy Black History Month, everybody. We call it more than a month here because we celebrate Black's excellence all year round, but it's extra special this February as we offer programs that tie into the national scene of health and wellness. And this is embodied in our original artwork for our programming this year, which is produced by Tiffany Conway. So here are a couple of things that we have coming up. We have a reading program at the library called On The Same Page. And so this January and February, we are reading Yoke by Jessamine Stanley. Jessamine Stanley will be in conversation on February 22nd at 7 p.m. And we're also hosting a book club for her book on February 14th, which is Monday. A copy of her book is available in all SFPL libraries and online. We also have coming up at the library in-person programming is happening. We're at the main library in San Francisco and on Wednesdays at noon, join us for meditation with Disability Rights Advocate Dennis Bullips. And then on February 16th in our virtual library at 6 p.m., join several authors for the Midnight Hour Crime Writers Panel celebrating the book, Midnight Hour, which features tons of short stories of writers of color. Thank you. And on February 20th, excuse me, at the African-American Center at the main library, which is a Sunday from one to three, we're hosting Ramacon O.R. Wister's and his crochet jam. So Ramacon will teach you one crochet stitch and then let you follow your spirit and create whatever you wanna create. No patterns, just crocheting. I highly recommend that program. And this February, we are also pleased to partner with the Reverend Dr. Carolyn Scott and distributing her Black Excellence, Black Inventors bookmarks throughout our system. You can find them at all our branches and along with plaques like this one, which highlight inventions that we might not know about, like Garrett Morgan's invention of the stoplight, which still helps us cross the street today. And of course, we wanna always thank the friends of the San Francisco Public Library who help us host all these amazing programs. Thank you, friends. And now on to our program. Thank you for going, listening to all that. We are so excited, like I said, to host Dr. Ifetayo Ojilade, who is a licensed psychologist with an interest in assisting people to heal in order to take their careers and personal lives to the next level. As an expert on trauma recovery, Dr. Ojilade works with healthcare, legal and safety professionals to manage secondary trauma in the workplace. She has particular interest in women leaders of color in these high stress roles. She works as a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator globally. Dr. Ojilade is the founder and executive director of Healing Paradigm LLC, a holistic wellness center providing counseling, psychological testing, wellness and educational programming for the entire family. She is the past president of the Metro Atlanta Association of Black Psychologists and is listed in the Who's Who in Black Atlanta. In addition, she serves as the resident psychologist for the Derek Boseman show in the Atlanta, Georgia market and is affectionately known as Dr. Ifet. Her chapter, Let the Orisha Speak, Traditional Healing for Contemporary Times is available in the book, Making Black Lives Matter, Confronting Anti-Black Racism, a link for which we'll put in the chat because it's free online, yay. So welcome, Dr. Ojilade. We're so excited to have you here today for this workshop. Hi, Shauna. Thank you so much. I'm excited about this. Also, I wanna first just kind of start out and say thank you to you, Shauna, for inviting me in the first place. I think you were one of the first people that reached out to me when the book first came out and was like, hey, come and talk about your chapter. And so I was excited about that. I also wanna just thank Anissa who is behind the scenes working really hard and all our other relatives that work really hard to make these kinds of programs happen. And everyone at the San Francisco Public Library, that really holds a really special place to my heart. And most people I always tell that I am originally from California. And so anytime that anyone in California is asking me to come and do anything, I am always there and really excited about that. I also want to make a particular acknowledgement. I am currently based in Muskogee territory, which is the unceded land of the Muskogee people in Atlanta, Georgia. And one of the things that I was telling Shauna and Anissa when we were getting ready to start is, I think this is the first time that I have been asked to speak where part of the introduction was this recognition of First Nations people in the land that we are on. Cause normally that's something that I will do myself. And so I'm really happy that that is part of the programming at the San Francisco Public Library in general and San Francisco in public spaces. Cause I do think that is really important. And along with that, one of the things that I always wanna acknowledge is a lot of the work that I do is around my identity as a woman of African ancestry. And what my ancestors always reminded me is I also descend from First Nations people. And so part of my acknowledgement is also an ancestral acknowledgement for me. So I wanted to start out there. And I see we've got quite a few people that are here. And I wanted to give people an opportunity. You don't necessarily have to turn on your camera, but I am interested in why you particularly signed up for this workshop. And if you could just share with me, if I could get one or two people to just share with me, why you signed up for this workshop? And then that's the question one. And then question two would be, how much do you know about Yoruba or the Orisha? Just wondering if anybody would be willing to share. Hi, Angeline. Hi. So I wasn't trying to be the first one to share, but I will. I, well, I've been interested in the chapter only because you told us probably maybe last year that you were writing this chapter in this book. And I know about Orisha through you. And I have also traveled to Cuba and experienced some of that religion ritual there. So that's what I know. And I'm on Lenape land here in Delaware. Thank you, Angeline. Angeline is one of my sister friends and warriors that's out here doing like really amazing work. So thank you for showing up and- Sure. Anyone else? Cammy. Anyone else? Why this particular workshop and how much do you know about Orisha? I see Annie is saying a tool of African arts in college. I'm interested in spirituality and African art. Definitely that is good. And then I see that said to learn more and connect more with my family in Cuba. That makes sense. And so I want to just kind of start out and just kind of give you a little bit of background. And I'll talk a little bit about myself and my background. And then overall give you a little bit of background and then overall give you a little bit of background about Yoruba. And then we will kind of go from there. I'll talk again about the chapter. Anissa was very wonderful. She has already put the link for the book in the chat. So if you're interested in being able to download the electronic copy of the book, then you can do that. I am ethnically born as an African-American. I was raised as an African-American in Los Angeles, California. And it wasn't until I got older that I learned of my First Nations ancestry. People would say stuff to me when I was younger and I didn't understand what they were talking about. There was lots of comments about my looks and my features and it wasn't until I was older and I was doing genealogy research. And then I found out that my biological grandmother with whom I was raised was part Native American. She's actually listed on the census as part Native American. And then when I mentioned that to family members, they were like, oh yeah, you didn't know that? Like no, you didn't tell me. So that was pretty interesting. And so ethnically, that's kind of where I kind of the crossroads of my identity. And as I grew up and grew up in Los Angeles and didn't have any specific connection with spirituality because I wasn't raised Christian and wasn't raised with any kind of spiritual background. As I got older, I was interested and I wanted to connect with something. And the thing that was most salient for me was the idea of ancestors. And that really became salient for me from conversations with my grandfather. My grandfather talked consistently about his mother and the things that he experienced growing up in a small black town and in the South. And with those experiences, I always knew that I had the connection with these people that helped to raise my grandfather and made him who he is or who he was at the time because he's no longer living. And so in this kind of quest for understanding myself and understanding myself as a spiritual being, the thing that I knew that I could hold on to was an ancestral connection. And so I was actually initially introduced to the Akon tradition and the very first interaction that I had with any kind of spirituality was from Akon which comes out of the Akon speaking people in Ghana in West Africa. And I was very connected and interested in that. And then ultimately I found my way to Yoruba. And my connection with that was there was two things that were really impactful there. One is the idea in Yoruba that there's no proselytizing. That's huge for me. Like not the sense of I'm going to try to tell you that this is the way, this is the only way and that I'm willing to try to convert you. The other thing was around character and having good character. And part of that good character was this belief that every single person's face system is correct and no one is wrong. And those are things that have always resonated with me and my heart. I think I'm blaming on me being a Libra. I always believed in balance and that idea of balance and connection with people and feeling like whatever it is that brings you closer to spirit as long as it's not harmful to you or someone else, then it's correct. That just really resonated with me and stayed with me. And so for 20-something years, probably about 25 years now, my walk has been a walk on the path of the Yoruba tradition. Now let me talk to you a little bit about what that means. So for me, I have this dual role, like Shauna talked about professionally, I'm a psychologist. So I have a PhD in counseling psychology and I'm a licensed psychologist. So I wear that hat. And at the same time of wearing that hat, I have another hat that I wear and that is around someone that has actually been initiated. So I've gone through three spiritual initiations in different societies in the Yoruba tradition. One being as an ancestral, someone that has initiated to the ancestral society. I'm trying to avoid the word priest because I'm not actually a working priest. So I don't have clients that I see and I don't do rituals for other people. But as an ancestral initiate, excuse me, I have found myself in terms of the work that I do as a psychologist, very much tied into ancestors and understanding my own ancestral history and then helping other people understand their ancestral history in order for them to be able to legitimately heal. So that's the one. The other one is E5, which we'll talk about a little bit about in a second and then the last one is Oshun, which you may have heard of. People talk about Oshun all the time. If you've heard Beyonce's Black Parade, that's how actually I introduced my chapter, is in Black Parade, Oshun. Beyonce talks about Oshun energy. People say that part of what she was symbolically representing and there can be some debate about that and Lemonade was also Oshun, which is she's a goddess of fertility. She's a goddess of money, of leadership, of banking and finance. She has lots of entrepreneurship. She has lots of characteristics. And then going back to E5 and or Arumala is the God that is believed to have witnessed your destiny. So the belief is that everyone has a destiny and they chose that destiny before they came. So no one is giving you your destiny. You choose your destiny and Arumala is the one that listens and is the witness to your destiny. So there's he's called Ilarity Pink, which is the witness of destiny. And he's the one that reminds you of your destiny once you come here to the earth. And so those are the initiator rights that I speak from. So it's from both of those perspectives. And one of the things that I do in this chapter is I take the stories of the Orisha. And particularly I'm looking at the female Orisha and I'm taking two concepts in E5. And I take those things and then I am using them as stories to be able to talk about, particularly for black women, how do we use those stories as examples of being able to navigate through spaces of anti-blackness, of massage noir, so like this intense dislike and hate really towards black women. How can we use the stories of the Orisha in those ways that really empower us? In that vein, one of the things that I do and we'll walk through an exercise today is I ask people to look at these stories in general as stories that are just good metaphors that you can use. These, the rituals, the activities that I actually ask people to do in the book are not rituals that you would do in any kind of spiritual ceremony. And today we won't get into anything like that. And I personally don't make referrals for that. And so one of the things that I do like to tell people though is what we've seen is a rise on lines. So you'll see people now because African spiritual systems have become so popular. You see lots of scam artists that will reach out to you on social media. They usually try to send you a friend request and you don't know who this person is or they will send you a DM and so they're sending you, I have a message from your ancestors. Anyone that ever reaches out to you just know that that person is a scam artist because again, any five, it is taboo. It is very serious for you not to proselytize. So no one would ever reach out to you and tell you that they have a message from your ancestors. So I like to make that clear. So the things that we're doing today are not rituals that would be in a ceremony that would be performed for you. And I like to talk about this idea. Well, actually let me stop right there because I said a lot. Let me just check in. Are there any questions? I don't wanna just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and not give people time. So you can ask a question if you feel free to unmute yourself or if you want to put something in the chat. I am happy to answer questions there too. Okay, so we'll jump on and jump. We'll just go ahead and jump ahead. Dr. Efe, just really quickly, you said if someone's reaching out to you saying that your answer is on it, speak to you. I've never seen a message like that. You probably aren't in a circle to get that, Angelian. But yeah, I've seen quite a few people like one, we can talk offline, but one person, you know, mutually sent me one of those and was asking me. I was like, oh no, that's a scam artist. It's like those messages are similar to the ones that you get that say your relative left you $10 million. All you need to do is, you know, send us $2,000. It's the same kind of thing. Okay, interesting. All right, thanks. Yeah, don't be surprised if one day you get one of those messages. Alrighty. Okay, and so Yorba Ontology. I use this word ontology very purposely in the book and I don't say mythology. So a lot of times when we talk about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, if we talk about kind of major religions that people are familiar with, we talk about theology and we use these very concrete terms to be able to talk about those faith systems. When we talk about something like, when we think about the Greeks, when we think about the Greek gods, we say mythology, when you think about anything that has to do with people of color, it's always mythology. And it's this idea that if it comes from basically this kind of Judeo-Christian background, it's concrete, it is something to believe and then everything else is myth. And so I wanted to get away from that idea and specifically look at the concept of ontology because ontology is talking about a way of being. It is an organized science when you're thinking about how is the world organized? How do people come into being? How do people interact with each other? Why are, where does the idea of spirituality come in? And then how do people organize their lives around that? That is very different because it comes out of the field of philosophy, but it's looking at everyone's lived experience as something that should be studied and respected and examined and not just something that is on a Marvel movie like Thor. And so I wanted to get away from that. So I started out with calling it Yoruba ontology. And it's really important to think about that in terms of Yoruba because when we say Yoruba, first of all, we're talking about groups of people that have kind of a unifying language but has different dialects that are predominantly, but not all predominantly in the country that we now know today as Nigeria. And because of them, there's lots of reasons for this academic nerd, because I was trained as a researcher, but the last wave of Africans that are coming out of the continent of Africa, the last big wave are predominantly Yoruba people. So one of the theories is that is why the Yoruba spiritual system is so predominant in the new world. So if you look in the Caribbean, if you look in North and Central and South America, you're gonna see Yoruba in different ways. Someone said that they wanna connect with their roots from Cuba. So in Cuba, you have a group of people that are going, that are Yoruba, that speak a Lukumi dialect. And those people are holding on to their traditions. And so what you see in Cuba is the very strong presence of the Orisha. And some people, I won't get into the debate here, some people will say that presence of the Orisha is syncretized or blended with Catholicism. And you have people that will say that that's true and some people that will say that that isn't true. And so it just really depends on who you talk to. I would, one of the things that I wanna point out to you is this is how popular the Orisha are if you look at Cuba. So if you look there, one of the most famous actors that comes out of Cuba is, can somebody tell me? Even just put it in the chat. Like not necessarily modern day, but like old actors, one of the most famous ones that everybody I'm sure at some point saw on television with his wife. Somebody said Ricky Ricardo. Yes, Ricky Ricardo, Ricky Ricardo. So Ricky Ricardo, I love Lucy. And his most famous song is Babalu. And so I can't sing. Thank you, Annie. Annie put it in, Ricky Ricardo. And so I'm not gonna try to sing, but remember he had the drums playing and he would say Babalu. He was singing to Babalu, yeah. And I need to do a little acknowledgement for him. That Orisha, traditionally, we actually don't even call his name, but that Orisha is Orisha that is over disease and pandemics. Surprise, surprise, something that's going on right now. And the priest of that particular Orisha would be the priest that would focus on inoculation and being able to protect communities from global pandemics. And I think it's interesting that I grew up hearing that song all the time. I did not know that that song had anything to do with an African deity, but it did. And so you had Ricky Ricardo singing his song. So that's Cuba. So oftentimes what you hear out of Cuba is people will say that they are Lakumi practitioners. And the very interesting thing is that you see it show up in very dynamic ways where in some ways it can get divorced from the fact that it's an African spiritual system. And one of the examples that I recently saw of that is one of the leaders that was arrested from the Proud Boys. If you look at the pictures, he was the one that got arrested right before the riots on January 6th last year. And he has, if you look around his neck, so I don't know what his name is, but if you look around his neck, you'll see that he has beads, lots and lots of beads around his neck. And he has beads of Dororisha. And I thought that was really interesting that he's spreading all this hate and hate of Africans, yet has this connection with these African deities. And we can go, that's a whole time for a whole other conversation of people that hate Africans, but then connect with African spirituality. But you see that oftentimes, like I can see people over and over again, that there are different symbols that people wear where you can see that they're connected to Dororisha, and that's one of them. And I think that that one is interesting. You can also see people from Puerto Rico, you often see kind of these negative racist stereotypes of like, oh, that that's witchcraft or evil, even just kind of the moniker of voodoo, which is actually, and I would invite you if you are not familiar with it, is actually the spiritual system is voodoo. And it is a very beautiful spiritual system that comes out of Benin, and is actually the national religion of Benin. And they are very brave in holding on to their indigenous religion and not taking outside religions as their national religion. And so you will see that from these kind of negative comments about it. But if you look at folks from Puerto Rico and that Santa Maria, there's a beauty there. And again, it's considered by some, a secretization of Catholicism, where you have the saints and the saints are the way that the Africans were able to hide Dororisha. So when they were talking about a particular saint, they were really talking about one of these divinities. In places like Honduras, you will see Dororisha. Anyplace I've seen him in Panama when I've traveled in Brazil is called Condomble or Ambanda. You can see it in Yorukwai, almost in Nicaragua, which I think is really interesting. There's a whole hotel called Yamunja. And they actually acknowledged from that hotel that Yamunja is an Orisha. She is a female deity on this side of the world that is associated with the top layer of the ocean. And so the whole hotel is named after this African goddess. So I say all of that to say that the Orisha are everywhere. Like even when you don't know it, I guarantee if you read a book, particularly if you read books that come out of the Caribbean, if you read Afro-Latino books, you're gonna see conversations about the Orisha. You're going to see whether it be conversations about ancestors or these different divinities that people or beads that people wear or the divinities where people are lighting candles to those different divinities or praying or leaving food out for divinities. You see that often. And I remember just looking back in my childhood where I would read these stories and I was fascinated by stories that came out of the Caribbean because that was the only place where I could find authors that were talking about stories with people that looked like me. And there was always something that was there about this spirit world. And now what we see is more authors that are from different backgrounds that are actually writing about, not just the Orisha, but in the United States, you can find Yoruba, which is called here. You can find Akhan practitioners, you can find Vodun, Paolo. So there's lots of different practitioners of all these different spiritual systems. And what I will say is like anything, like we can look at Christianity and Islam, you have people that are harmful and then you have lots of people that are doing really, really good work. And one of the things that I have been really interested in is really pushing these against these notions that things that are African are automatically harmful or they are negative because I think that that's part of psychological oppression, particularly when it comes to, for example, and then I'll say this and then we'll get ready to go into that activity when it comes to things like ancestors and being able to connect with ancestors. One of the biggest examples is I live in the South, I live in the Bible Belt, people come to my office and I don't hide anything about who I am and how I show up and people come all the time. And I just recently had a conversation with someone and she's a psychologist and she was saying, well, I can see and hear people and I know that they are real, they're not trying to harm me and I can see and hear these people and it was more powerful when I was younger but because I didn't have a space to talk about it and people were saying that that wasn't of God then I just pushed it away. So they're not as powerful but I still have this experience. And so she wanted to be able to talk to me about how to figure out how to navigate that. And what she said to me is, I know that I'm a medium. So for me as a psychologist, I'm not going to say, okay, there's something wrong with you or you need medication or that's a sign of a mental illness. That's not gonna happen. Now there is a time where people are saying that they see and hear stuff and I know clearly this is a sign of a mental illness and I feel fortunate now in most cases, I'm able to distinguish the difference between someone that has a mental illness and someone that is actually legitimately having an experience and maybe I cannot explain everything but what I can do is tell them that or validate their experience, not tell them anything but to validate their experience because just think of the psychological impact on someone if they are having this experience and everything in their world tells them to have that experience means that they are evil. So God brought you to this earth with this gift but you're being told that that gift that you have makes you evil. To me, I'm sorry, that doesn't make any sense. I just, I can't do that one. I can't do that one. And I can't sign up for harming people in that way because so many people have these kinds of gifts and I think it is really interesting because for oftentimes for BIPOC people, so Black Indigenous people of color, then what you'll see is these messages of that there's something wrong with you or that's not normal or that's not Christian or that isn't, that's hit or off if you're thinking about from an Islamic perspective. You see, you hear those messages and then at the same time, I remember, I don't know how long, I don't even know if she's still on television or how long ago this happened but you see folks like the Long Island Medium. Has anyone seen that, the Long Island Medium? And I thought that that was really interesting because when this white woman does this thing, so she's basically saying she can connect with her ancestors and she can connect with other people's ancestors and people think that that is legit and she has a whole show where she makes money, apparently so much money. So I remember seeing one episode where her daughter wanted a car and in the, they were buying her a BMW, a BMW SUV. So I mean, obviously that's not a little bit of money and they can afford to do those kinds of things yet people of African descent or people of color in general are often told that these experiences that they have means that there is something wrong with them. That's how I know something is up when I see those kinds of discrepancies. So what has happened for me in the United States, in the United States, in Atlanta and the work that I do is I've always been interested in how do I normalize these unusual experiences that people are having? And sometimes that's just simply to just evaluate. It's just to tell people, that makes sense, I've heard of that, you're not the only one. I know one of the things that happened to me, now I don't see and hear stuff that's not really there. I don't think that would be good for me. So that is not one of the gifts that has been shared with me but I have dreams that are really interesting and I started having the dreams and I was not really clear about the significance of the dreams until this one experience. And I wonder if any of you have these experiences in your dream. I had this dream of my uncle, my mother's brother and it was my mother who was the season and her and my uncle and they're in the dream and they're giving me information and my uncle was specifically giving information about my cousin and his daughter. And so the next day I wake up and I call my cousin immediately and I'm like, I need to tell you about this dream that I had because I'm very clear that I need to tell her. And in the, well, I'm trying to tell her, she lives near where I live and she had flown back to the West Coast because her grandmother on her other side of her family was dying. And so I was like, okay, well, just call me when you get back. So we talked as soon as she got back and I was like, well, your dad was in the dream and he was giving me these messages and to the day I don't even remember the messages I just gave her what the message was and my mom was there and they needed, need to know that I was really there with them. And so there was this other woman who held up a picture and it was a picture of my uncle and he had, he was wearing a military uniform. He was like a sailor or whatever in the picture. So I say to my cousin, yeah, and he had on this military uniform but that was really weird because he's never been in the military. So I don't know why he had that uniform on and they were telling me to look at the picture because they needed me to know that was proof that I was really there with them. And I was like, oh, but he didn't have the uniform. He wasn't in the military. And my cousin said, yes, he was. So I had this moment. I was like, huh? She said, yeah, he was in the Navy. I didn't know that. I did not know that until that moment. And so it was having that experience that made me get really clearly that my dreams were not simply just dreams. And because I had that experience myself I was better able to work with clients in the work that we were doing together because I could understand the things that were unexplainable. I'm wondering if anybody else has had those experiences where you've had a dream or experience or you just knew someone was coming before they were coming or heard a whisper in your ear of something. Has anybody else had those experiences? I hear it a while. Shana. Hi, my dear friend of mine had passed and I only dreamt about him once. And when he came through, he was waving at me from the door and I was scared. And I figure, I think he never came back because I was scared. But one night my husband dreamt about him and he'd never met him. So it was like very, very odd. Like, he had passed right before I had met my husband and he'd showed up in my husband's dream. So that was interesting. Yes, okay. And I see the chat. It's like, yes, I've had that. I think of someone and then they show up. And so we have to have some kind of way of being able to understand these things. And it can't simply be that's not a God, that's evil, that's a sign of the devil. That does not, for me, it just doesn't make sense. If that makes sense to other folks, then okay, but I just can't wrap with that one. And so that is why I have found myself back looking at African spiritual systems, looking at African ontology, a way of understanding a way of being because it can explain this. It explains the unexplainable, the things, and even if you look back actually, not just African ontology, I'm looking behind me. You guys can't see it, but I have a book that is on Indian psychology, Indian from India. Psychology and what they talk about is precognition. So precognition, just simply being that we understand things before they happen. Are there ways to be able to understand the world that are not about our five senses in these things that we can see concrete from a Western perspective in front of us? But there's other information that we are getting and that we must honor and respect that information. So that being said, I wanna take us into an activity. So with that, if you can, just do me a favor again, you don't have to turn on your camera. I would invite you to have a piece of paper. If you've got a journal, that's great. I will take a couple of seconds. If you need to go run and get a journal and a pen or a pencil, even if you have colored pencils, that is good too. And we're gonna walk through a couple of activities, but we'll do this one for sure. And then we'll see what happens. And what I want us to do is just kind of play with this idea really quickly of your precognition. Knowing of stuff without fully understanding, why do you know? So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start out, I'm gonna do a quick entering prayer. I think there's someone who's got their thing that is not muted, let me see if I can mute the person. I think I got it, I'm gonna keep an eye on it for you. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna do a quick centering activity for us. And then I'm gonna ask you, and I'm gonna tell you a story. And then I'm gonna ask you to write some stuff down. And I am going to invite you to share. Again, don't have to put your camera on, but I would encourage you to verbally share what your outcome is. Let's do the centering part. If you'll close your eyes, I'm gonna do it with you. And just breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. And I want you to do that in a smooth rhythmic cycle of breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth and just simply continue to breathe. You don't have to worry about judging or questioning. Just breathe. I am the caller of light, I am the owner of the space. I'm calling the stable, secure, safe, supportive ancestors of everyone on this call. Ancestors, the guardians of light, the guardians of good character, the guardians of integrity, the guardians of healing. I call you, come and protect your family, come and guide your children, come and give them message of good health, messages that allow them to grow in heal. Ah, shit. So now I'm gonna tell you a story and then I'm gonna ask you some questions and I just want you to write. No judgment, just write. The first one is a story of Olshun. And this is a story that comes from one of the verses in the sacred literature, Olshetura. And in this particular story of Olshetura, Olshun and 16 other male Orisha or divinity are coming down to the earth. And these are the seven, there's a total of 17. So 16 male, one female with Olshun. And they are called a Rumele because they are the 17 that have been specially chosen by God to come from heaven to the earth. And they are charged with making the earth fit for everybody to hang out and have a good life. And so the men get down to earth and they start to go to work. They start meeting and planning and just deciding like, okay, here's the water here, the people are gonna have families here. This is what families will look like. They started doing all of these activities. And every single time they meet, they leave Olshun out. Why? Because she's a woman. They're like, she doesn't matter. We've got it, we're the men. And these are the powerful men. So you've got Orisha like Shangol, who's a king. You've got Ogun, who's the God of war. You've got Eshu, who's a trickster, but he's always, always there to make you suffer the consequences of your behavior. You've got Arumila, who we talked about earlier is the God of destiny. You've got all of these Orishas there and they're working, working, working. So they're taking all of their gifts and all of their power and they are trying to get the earth to blossom. But nothing's working. Every time they plant crops, crops don't grow. They try to encourage people to go and create families. The women are barren. They try to encourage people to go and fish. Nothing happens. Water is not fresh. Nothing is going right. And the male Orisha are frustrated. And so what they decide to do is they get together. Again, they left the ocean out. They get together and they say, you know what? We need to figure out what's going on because things should be popping because we're the powerful Orisha. So they go back up to God, Olodumare. And they say, hey, nothing's working. You sent us. We're the heavenly beings that have been sent directly to earth for you, by you. And nothing is working. Why isn't anything working? And Olodumare said, what happened to Olashon? The woman I sent down there with you. And they say, hey, she's the woman. We just put it to the side. And God said, how's that working for you? And they're like, what? God said, I think she might be the answer to your problems. You need to go back down there and apologize. You need to include her. And you also need to make offerings to her. So the Melorisha, they go back to earth. And they go to Olashon and they make offerings and they apologize, my bad. And Olashon, the whole time when these men were excluding her, she was sitting there, you know, she's about beauty. She changed her clothes about five times a day. She put on her clothes and put on, you know, a little shea butter and, you know, making sure she smelled good and everything and like filing her nails, making sure her manicure is straight. She was just like, all right, y'all, that's for y'all, not a problem. When the men apologized and made offerings, she said, all right, bet, tell you what. I give you some of my, I shake my power. But in exchange, you must initiate me and tell me and all women, all of your rights. And, because y'all showed your little selves from now on, anytime, anytime in the future that you're gonna do anything, you better be sure that a woman is included. So once they agree, Olashon said, all right. And she let go of her ashe, her power. And the earth woke up. Women had children, plenty of food to eat, water was fresh, the world was good. And the male orisha understood from that day forward in order to do anything and it be a success, a woman needed to be included. Now let me tell you something about that story. That story, Olshetura, is read every single time that someone does not ritual, every single time. Now, there are things that you can, that can, you be in different spaces and kinds of patriarchal problematic things can happen even in the spaces and different manifestations of E5 or the Yoruba spiritual system. But one of the things I can tell you is there are rituals that happen and a woman must be present. Woman is the one that actually begins and ends the ritual. If a woman's not there, it can't happen. So having heard that story, one of the things or several of the things, I want you to think about these questions for yourself. Let me get to the right page. I was on the other one. Okay, so notice in this particular story, the way that Olshun responded to the conflict. She just held back her powers. She didn't get into anybody's face. She didn't start a big commotion. She's just like, all right, y'all do what y'all want to do. I'll be over here. I want you to think about for you, how do you respond to conflict? Whether it be in your work environment, whether it be in your home environment with your family, with your mate, how do you respond to conflict? Write that down. Thank you, Shana. How do you respond to conflict? And as you were writing that, how do I respond to conflict? The second question is, what is the best part of how you respond? Or another way of saying it, what's good about the way that you respond to conflict? Final question, what do you need to do different? When you think about the way that you respond to conflict, what do you need to do different? Once you have those answers, I wanna see if I can just get a few people, like two or three. Again, you can leave your camera off if you want. I'd love to hear your answers. If you missed the questions, they're in the chat. How do you respond to conflict? What's good? What do you need to do different when it comes to conflict? Ready, let me go. I'm not trying to be the only one. Because my husband would say here, teacher's pet sitting in the front of the classroom. Okay, I used to be that too. I remember in undergrad, people would say, we were in class together and I never knew because I was always in the front. My hand up. Hand up. I don't like her. Oh man, that is too funny. There are probably several different ways that I respond to conflict, but I just wrote down like one. I tried to process a solution in my mind, and then I try to fix it, even if it's not my fault and I'm not to blame. And then what's good about my response is I can often see more than one side. And then what do I need to do different? I need to let people handle their own issues because I'm not responsible for everyone's happiness. What do you mean? I say. I say. Anybody else willing to share? Brace yourselves. And just so you know, it's only your voice that we can hear. You're not on, you're not streaming or anything. It's just only gonna be me. That's okay. Well, if you wanna share in the chat, then feel free to do that. Let me talk a little bit just further about Oshun. And as I'm talking, if you decide, yeah, you wanna share. Oh, okay. I see one is question three. Keep my mouth shut sometimes. What she needs to do different is keep her mouth shut sometimes. Fair enough. Fair enough. I pointed this out with this particular Odu because when people talk about it, they're not necessarily talking about it from the perspective that I have. But I think about this in terms of black women and how we show up in spaces. And oftentimes people will just make us invisible. And I don't know, in California, are y'all having that experience or maybe it's just only happening here? Is that people just, you can be professional and people act like you don't exist? Is that happening to anyone? Let's see, question two. So Annie said, what's two? Because I respond, not great to conflict. Oh yeah, lots of people don't respond good to conflict. True in San Francisco. Okay, so true in San Francisco where people just assume that you don't exist. Where it just happens, where you're there, you're a professional and yada yada. Now, I think there's an interesting mix that happens here in Georgia because I live in a predominantly black city. And because I live in a predominantly black city, I'm not necessarily invisible in the same ways that I have been invisible in California. Like for example, in California, what I can experience, I remember one of the first times that I took my daughter and she was older, like old enough to process stuff kind of on her own and we walk into a store and she hadn't had this experience in Georgia. So we walked into a store and she had like a little bag with buttons and beads or something like that and she had a little paper bag and she was walking around with the bag and somebody came up to her and they were like, saying something about the bag, like she was gonna take something. And I remember just turning to her and cause she was just so confused that what was happening. And I remember turning to her and I said, oh yeah, I forgot they had a little vibration stuff here in Los Angeles because they think black people won't steal. I said it in front of the lady, it just kind of went off. She was just like, what is going on? Cause she's an African-American child that lives in a predominantly black space. And so her primary experience is not people assuming that she's going to steal. That's not, it just didn't happen to her until she went to California. And to me, it was just that reminder of a sense of invisibility where you're not seeing as kind of an individual. It's just that the color of my skin then makes me a potential thief. So which is kind of, it makes you invisible in the sense that like you're not this distinct person. Like I just don't have that experience. I don't walk into a store and worry about someone thinking that I'm going to steal in Georgia. In fact, I had an experience last year where I went in and I had to get something at Walmart and you have to like go in and pay for it and you go outside. And I was exchanging these propane tanks for my barbecue grill. And I went outside and the guy was putting the tanks in my car. And I was like, what, do you want to see my receipt? He was like, no, you wouldn't do me like that. I know you pay for those things. And I remember thinking to myself, that would never happen to me in California. It would absolutely never happen. There would be the automatic assumption. Nobody would assume that I had a PhD. No one would assume that I'm not gonna steal like a $15 tank. There would be this assumption because of my skin that I was a criminal and then that would be the only assumption about me. And so from going to this O'SheaTour story, what Oshoon is saying, regardless of what the assumption is about you, however people make you invisible because of their own racism and sexism, there is that point where sometimes you just have to, you know, be very direct. But in this particular instance, Oshoon just decided, let me withdraw my power. It goes back to that notion. I don't know if you've ever had older black women in your family or your community say to you, I can show you better than I can tell you. Keep playing with me. That's essentially what Oshoon is doing here. Now that what is really interesting is that's what she does in this story. She just simply withdraws her power. There's another story with Oshoon where she goes to war and it's more violent. Like she takes care of business. And so it's not that she's always in this passive position where she withdraws, but she's strategic. So what she understands is she can show these men that she's got more power than all 16 of them by simply doing nothing. And so that's what I want to, for you to walk away with from this story is that you don't always have to engage in the fight. There are times where it's completely appropriate and important, but I want you to still think about when are you showing up? Like we saw somebody say in the chat, when are you showing up and you're ready to take heads and just really kind of wreck shop and it's not needed. All you need to do is withdraw yourself from the disrespect. I'm glad somebody said that. Okay, so Angelina said that's a aha moment for you. I'm glad. Because there are so many times in our lives, particularly as black women, that we continue to show up over and over again. And we give and give and give. And people still like piling on the disrespect as opposed to you just being like, I've been doing this, okay, all right. Like I said, I can show you better than I can tell you. And that's what I've shown you in this story. Let's do one more. Any questions with that? This one is different. So the first one that I was all shown, this one is actually a character trait. I see someone with a Yorda Bani. That's on here. Ayo Aide. Hello. We're gonna talk about Iwa. And in this one with Iwa, Iwa is a divinity, but it's a characteristic. And so she's not like the Orisha, but let me tell you the story at Iwa. So if you translate the whole, actually let me just read this little part in here. Translated into English, Iwa is described as the essence of being, while Pele means gentle. So Iwa Puele is then translated to gentle or good character while Iwa Baruku is bad character. And so in this particular story of Iwa, Iwa means Orumila, the God of Destiny. And she is character, her father is Suuru, patience. And she decides that she will marry Orumila because he's infatuated by her and he wants to get married. And Iwa has one thing that she demands. She said, I'll marry you, well, it's more than one. But she tells Orumila that in order for them to get married, that he must respect her boundaries. And her boundaries are that he can't abuse her, he can't be disrespectful, and he can't ever tell her to leave his house. So the God of Destiny is married to character and she's like, okay, well, we got some boundaries here. And originally, I mean, initially their marriage is fine, they hang out, they do all the newlywed stuff, kiss, kiss, kiss, all that kind of stuff. And then things start to go awry because Iwa, she's cute and everything, but she's messy. So she don't clean up around the house, she don't like to cook, she don't like to do all the stuff. She may go to the market, she may not, she just, her little stuff is raggedy. And so Orumila becomes upset with his wife's behavior. And what he does in response is he becomes abusive and he starts arguing with her and just being mean-spirited. And depending on which version of story that you have, he either tells her to get out or he's just fussing at her, she chooses to leave, we don't know. But let's say in this version of the story, he tells her to get out. So Iwa leaves and she returns to the house of her father, patience. And as soon as she leaves, Orumila notices all these changes in his life. So character has left and now he's got money problems, his clients have abandoned him and his finances are all crazy. And so he starts looking for character again. He starts looking for Iwa. And he goes from town to town. So he goes to 16 different towns and he's looking for Iwa, he can't find character. Finally, somebody gives him a hand and say, hey yo, your woman, she went back to her daddy house. She up there at patient's house. So he goes and he finds Iwa and he begs, please, please, please, character, please come home. And she's like, nah, shawty, not doing, can't do it. I told you, I told you not to show yourself but you showed yourself, not doing it. And so what she does say is though, I'm not gonna leave you permanently. I'm not coming back to your house but I always will be with you in spirit. And what she does is she says, in the future, what you need to understand is that you need to treat your wife good, you need to be respectful, you need to always show that I am present. And Iwa tells Arumala that whatever he does to her will impact the quality of his life. So here we are. And this is God, Arumala. So he's good, he's just got a destiny. And he's being told that it is character in his relationship with character that's going to determine the quality of his life. And what people usually do is they focus on Arumala and that this is a sign of like even this God of destiny, the God of God's needs to make sure divinity of divinities, if you wanna say, needs to make sure that his character is good. On the other end, let's look at Iwa, his wife. So what Iwa in this story is representing, again, is that character, but what she's representing is like, okay, all of us. Like if we're being honest, we'll get in a relationship and we can do some problematic stuff. We're not perfect. And but what she's showing us is even when you're in a relationship and you are doing problematic stuff, it doesn't mean that someone has the right to disrespect your boundaries. That first, before you even get in the relationship, you need to be clear about what your boundaries are and you need to communicate those boundaries. And then when you're in the relationship, even when you're doing stuff that's problematic, it doesn't mean that somebody has the right to abuse you in that relationship. And if that person is violating your boundaries, then you need to take immediate and direct action. So now let's think about you. And I'm just gonna give you one cause I know we're coming to the end of our time. So this is the one I want you to do, this journal prompt. How comfortable are you with setting boundaries? With boundaries, how comfortable are you with setting those boundaries? Particularly, I want you to think about this in terms of intimate relationships. In your intimate relationships, whether that be a romantic relationship with your family, with your friends, how comfortable are you with setting boundaries? We'll say, this is what I'm okay with, this is what I'm not okay with and holding that boundary firm. How comfortable are you? Thanks again, Shana. I like that, Annie. You said, I've come a long way in 50 plus years. I heard that. Anybody else you wanna do it verbally or in the chat? How comfortable are you with setting boundaries? I agree with Annie. I've come a long way, 50 plus, closer to the 60 than the 50. And I think one of the things I do with my family and friends is I had decided that I wasn't gonna answer the phone after 10 p.m. and before 7 a.m. So, I mean, that's the boundary that I've stuck to for a few years now. So my family knows, my family on the West Coast, don't call me after 10, because I'm not gonna, the only time I will answer the phone is if I look down and I'm awake and I see that you're calling me, but otherwise I'm not paying attention to the phone because it's not ringing after 10. Like there's no notifications, there's no texts, nothing goes on, unless the alarm, if I have to wake up before 7, which is very seldom. So, I like that one. I like that. I remember that a few years ago, before I figured out that there was that do not disturb function that you could set on your phone, I was like, why are people, why would somebody text me just because you can text at 11, 12 o'clock at night, why would you do that? I was so upset by that. And then I had to figure out that function. So mine actually doesn't go off until 8 o'clock in the morning. So from 10 o'clock at night to 8 o'clock in the morning, if you are not in my emergency contacts with only two people in there, then it's not happening. You will not hear from us. How did you say that I may change that? Because I still hear the notifications at 7 o'clock. Things ding, ding, dingin'. Yeah, I don't want that. So like I'm just like 8 o'clock. So every time it goes off in the morning at 8 o'clock, I know it's 8 o'clock. So it was like, okay, there's a notification. Mm-mm. I see another one. Yvette said, need to improve on the upfront versus dumping on, dumping folks on the quickness. Everybody does. So the thing that I really like about Orisha stories, which I learned over time, is that the Orisha and the Divinities, the stories that you hear, the people are not perfect. They are hot mess. They are hot mess. I can tell you, I just told you one Oshun story. That seemed like the, you know, oh, yay. And then there's another story with Oshun and Oba. Oshun was not nice. The hierarchy was all jacked up in that story. But what the story show us is that one, I think it allows us to realize that even these Divinities aren't perfect. And two, that there are these opportunities for us to improve the way that we move through the world by looking at these examples. And with this story of Iwa, I always like telling this story because people think of character and having good character is don't lie, still cute. Those is the easy ones, don't lie, still cute. When it comes to stuff like if you're in a relationship with someone that is problematic or you see the problem coming and you are unwilling to set a boundary and then enforce that boundary, that's still a character issue. Not for them, for you. And we don't necessarily think about that in American Western culture in the United States. We're just always thinking about character issues kind of pointing fingers. And we think about it in a very like judgmental perspective as opposed to thinking of character and having good character is like a 360 full development. It is not just about don't lie, still cute or harm other people. It is also about protecting yourself. So not being in situations or allowing yourself to be in situations where other people are gonna be harmful to you. It's not okay. I see one comment that says, I am trying to recover from a narcissistic abuse and I'm having difficulties, no negotiating. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, if you're in situations with narcissists, I know somebody personally doesn't situation with the narcissist. You don't get a medal, I'm sorry. You don't get a medal for martyrdom, for staying in that relationship. No medals for that. Those are opportunities for you to work on your own personal character development by taking care of yourself and setting boundaries. I know one person in particular is that that's kind of how that individual shows up. It's like, oh, what was me? Look at these things that are happening to me. And when I would have clients that would do things like that, I would always just like, okay, don't know, don't know. When I complain to other people, what we're gonna do is look at the ways that we can make those simple yet difficult decisions to do something different in our lives and elevate our own character. And that's what you're saying. You can be imperfect, but if someone is harming you, that's the time to end that relationship. That being said, I'm wondering if there last, we're like six minutes before we are done. Is there other comments, questions, thoughts about these stories or was this even useful? So, okay, now wait a minute. See, I'm not gonna let y'all get away with this. Now, one of the things that happens, y'all know, so if you've been to an African-American church, you've been around African-Americans at all in your life, you know, we gotta have some energy. So y'all gotta give me some energy. So you gotta tell me something. Even if you don't wanna unmute yourself, tell me in the chat or something. Was this useful, not useful? Like, did you get anything? Did you have any questions? Tell me something and share energy with me as a sense of reciprocity. So I'm gonna say that this was useful. I didn't know what this was going to be. And, you know, I spoke it to you many a time. I interviewed you, you've interviewed me. It was useful because it was something like the prompts. I enjoy prompts because it forces me to think outside of the box differently than I would normally think just every day thinking. Like I write in the journal, you know, about weight loss. But this forced me to think a little bit differently. So I appreciated that. And I wasn't trying to be the teacher's pet, but I know how hard it is to do a presentation on Zoom and you feel like no one is there with you. Because people are, you know, they're muted and they're off-camera. So that's why I interjected so much. Plus I used to be very shy and I'm not any longer. My husband's like, when were you shy? I said, like, you know, when I was like- When you were- Thank you. 910, 910, you know, I lost my mother very early. I was very shy and probably around 13, 14, 15, maybe 15, I kind of grew out of it and just kept going. But some of the prompts were really important, I think, to just get us to think a little bit differently about how we maneuver in this world and where we are in this world. So I'm in a different space than you are in Atlanta. I'm in the middle of Delaware that is predominantly white and I have to often question things like, my husband has to take back a box of popcorn and I was like, where's the receipt? I said, you probably could go to Walmart without the receipt but he's a black man in America. He needs to have a receipt just for a box of popcorn where some people wouldn't even think that that's an issue. So I appreciate the prompts and I appreciate you. And yeah, that's what I... I have a question about the Nigerian piece that I missed in the beginning but we could talk offline about that. Okay, and I see Angie's comment. Thank you, Angie. Thank you, all of you. Thank you, Shauna. Thank you, Anissa. Yeah, thank you for just like inviting me and just sharing, allowing me to share my thoughts and ideas about this. Does anyone else have questions? Comments or thoughts? Well, thank you, Dr. Ife. I hate to jump in, but like I wanted... I put a link in the chat again to the article in Making Black Lives Matter and there's a lot of different stories in there and more than just journal prompts. So I just wanted to encourage folks to go to that link and check that chapter out because it's truly great to run through those prompts. And thank you. Thank you. I see one more. Ayo Ade says, thank you so much. Oh, you're, ethnically, you're of a good, yeah, trying to learn the language. Would you mind saying the names of the Orisha in the second story again so I can read more later? Oh, okay, so the second one that I did is not an Orisha, technically, Iwa. So in Ayo Ade, you didn't hear me at the beginning. I am African-American. So my pronunciation, we all jacked up. So Iwa is just, it's like symbolic of like she's character. And so it's basically taking a characteristic and making it a story of divinity. So when you read the Odu, so if you look in the Odu, you see lots of things, inanimate objects, characteristics of people that end up being used as symbols. And this is just a symbol there. So that's Iwa. So the first story I did was of Oshun, which is one of the most popular ones, and then Iwa. Yeah, Dr. Ife, is there a resource that we can, another resource for stories of the Orisha? Everybody asks me that all the time. I have a hard time here. I've put this one in. This is an old, older book. It's from 1996. The reason I have a hard time, so there's tons of stuff on the internet. And there's a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of stuff that I don't necessarily, I'm losing my Oshun diplomacy words. Promote? Thank you. I like academic stuff, which can be really dry-reading. So this is one, it's Oshun Shigeshi by Diedre Badejo. Dr. Badejo is actually, she's an African-American, but she's considered one of the foremost scholars in Oshun because she did her research in Nigeria, took her 10 years to write that book. I'm gonna put it in here, put it in, because this book is still available. I actually interviewed her last year on the 25th anniversary of this book. So, and then there's another book by John Mason. That is more from, there's one thing that's called femininity. Ishe is like traditional, trying to talk and write at the same time, not going so well. Ishe is like traditional if I practice. And so this is more traditional Ishe where John Mason, I'll just put him in. Anything by John Mason is good, but he's gonna come out of the Cuban line. So you can look up his books on Amazon. There's, let me just give you names of people. Jacob Olapona, who is ethnically Yoruba. He writes a lot. He is a Christian, but he does write. He's out of Harvard University. He writes a lot on the Yoruba. And Toyin Folola is also ethnically Yoruba. I like their stuff. Those are the ones that I kind of stick with. Thank you for those resources. You're welcome. And one more time, what just said to say, check out the book, Making Black Lives Matter. And let the Orisha speak with Dr. Ife, Tayo Oje Lade. Thank you so much for this workshop. We really had, I got a lot out of it. And I think other people did too. So thank you so much. And thank you everybody for coming. Check out sfpl.org for more of our Black History Month programming and our San Francisco Public Library YouTube page, where you can find what we've done in the past and this program. Yay, thank you. Thank you.