Reiki Master

I was born in a family system that had at least one formal healer in each generation. My family system was directly affected by the systems of southern Alabama chattel slavery and emancipation. I was blessed to meet at least three of those healers. My great-grandmother Sally was a major hands on healer who was called a “Root woman” because she would dig up roots to make medicine for sick people in her community and she specialized helping sick White babies that no one else could help . She was a midwife, folk nurse and a churchwoman who was part of the great AME Zion Methodist movement. She learned her craft from relatives affected by enslavement. She wore a white nursing outfit to church. She migrated with her husband William Liddell and children from Alabama to Pennsylvania. Great grandfather William died when they arrived in Pennsylvania.

Cousin Annie was my grandmother’s close cousin. She was quick to pray and utilized “hands on healing” for healing especially on my disabled mother when she was in town. She would breathe hard and deeply , touch, and pray right into the body of my mother. We would hold hands in a circle of silence and the only voice heard was her voice calling on the Holy Spirit was her speaking in tongues in a rhythmic tone and sway. I was the only little girl standing there transfixed looking up and in awe not realizing that I was being anointed in the art of Healing Touch. She was considered our middle-class relative who lived in Long Island New York who was always dressed up looking wonderful like a White woman staring in a black and white TV movie… She was a deeply religious Pentecostal woman who created her own tailored suits . She worked as a private caretaker in a Jewish home . She looked like Rosa Park by looks and style.

Cousin George was my mother’s first cousin and he spent a large portion of his life in Los Angeles as a metaphysical healer. He was a Science of Mind minister. He was a very light skin Gay man. Being light skin and Gay for a black man produced a lot of emotional baggage. I learned that he was a New Thought healer thirty plus years later after we found one another. In less than a year after re connecting he would die but not before he shared important family history and gifting me with his healing oil and instructing me to rub a circle of oil around my solar plex area. He died in 1995. One of our last conversations by phone was when we were both watching the Million Man March at the same time on TV. He was excited and thought he would never experience another great day like that.