Becoming Again…

S.A.D.D. Season in Brazil and the Path Grief Opens

I’m in the upside down. For the first time, I’m spending the end of year holiday season in 90 degree weather in Brazil. I’m away from the familiar, away from family and friends, yet comforted by the warmth and energy of a new place. 

As I passed the official one year mark of being laid off from full time work and entering into what is typically my S.A.D.D. girl season, my old companions' grief and loneliness are rearing their head in a new way. The sun is still going down at 4:00 pm but it now melts into the ocean horizon. The sting of the cold hits as relief from tropical sun and humidity rather than an icy breeze. The warmth of Baianos softens the absence of familiar holiday rhythms. Even though I’m hundreds of miles away from my friends and family, I still feel a sense of home returning after a long, long year. 

2025 has held the kind of accelerated personal healing that drags all types of things to the surface. The year of the snake and this past Scorpio season has made transformation an undeniable reality. I’ve been shedding so many stubborn beliefs about who I am in love, friendship, and work.  The people pleasing, perfectionist version of me has taken a back seat to allow a truer and more divine version to emerge. 

The corporate Black baddie, who wanted titles and a big salary  has been replaced by someone living a messy, creative, nonlinear bohemian life led by desires instead of deadlines and calendar dates. Healing like this is painful and lonely. It’s been hard yet necessary work. I’ve cried more than I have ever cried in seasons past. And as we get towards the end of the year I’m noticing this pile of things that I used to hold at the center, ready to be discarded for good. I’m making space for a life that is anchored in self-trust, community care, liberated creativity, and divine abundance.

Like most folks, I get seasonal depression. It kicks in right after my birthday in October. On top of the changing and darkening season that I’m used to, I’m also revisited by some of the biggest losses and changes: my dad, my grandmother, and now financial and professional stability. But this year the darkness is hitting different. I have access to the beach in a powerful spiritual nexus. 

African religious practice is strong here. As I experience ceremonies and celebration, I recognize the echoes to my Southern Baptist and Pentecostal upbringing. Ancestral roots run deep. I see a global family in the people of this city. Even as I struggled with Portuguese, I can understand and connect to so much without opening my mouth. 

Salvador is a portal that offers a unique and personal grounding after a year of huge transitions. It reminds me that like seasons and cities, grief is also a portal. Transformation and change can be uncertain and lonely. And it can offer a path to becoming a more empowered and liberated version of myself. 

All of this personal transformation is unfolding against the background of anti-Black, anti-queer, anti-migrant harm, political, economic, and climate chaos. And I still haven’t been able to come to terms with the loss of icons like D’Angelo and Miss Major. To speak from the U.S./western context, Trump’s reelection has forced the march toward fascism into the public eye. Where many of us have been feeling the untick in violence, bigotry and hate, the world now sees that we are following our own footsteps of oppressive, uncontrolled authoritarian power. At the same time, we see reckoning for Trump’s global counterparts: GenZ coup in Nopal, former Brasilian president Bolsonaro tried and convicted. There is possibility, there is a way out and a way toward freedom and humanity for more than just a privileged few.

So many of my friends are navigating layoffs, major life transitions, uncertainty and loneliness of distributed families and communities. We’re crossing thresholds into a new season and paradigm, experimenting with new ways of being and sitting with mounting grief and loneliness while it seems the world marches on. We each have a calling to participate in bringing this new way of life into being and it starts with noticing what’s been in the way, honoring what needs to be released, and reclaiming the vision and values that will bring us closer to the most ideal future. 

Around this time of year, we all get reflective about the accomplishments and challenges that we had. I have my own practice to review and capture the important lessons and I notice as I check in with my community how many of us are working through similar things. 

As with all Rooted Reclamation offerings, I want to extend and expand the conversation to create a space for anyone processing transition, loss, or the weight of collective grief this season: Becoming Again: Grief as a Portal for Transformation. This workshop holds grief as both personal and political: as evidence that we still care, still feel, still dream. It’s a sanctuary for Black and Brown women and femmes to name what they’re shedding and explore what transformation might be possible through release.

This space is for you if:

• You’re navigating loss or transition (quiet or loud).

• The holidays bring up complexity, grief, loneliness, or ache.

• You’re grieving the state of the world — and the parts of yourself shaped by it.

• You want a grounded, facilitated space to process, reflect, and breathe.

• You desire community with others who understand these layers intimately.

We’re all becoming again.
Let’s move through the portal together.