business as ancestral medicine

When I was five, my dad told me I wasn't allowed to have anyone round to play. I'd just had a school friend come home. We'd gotten very excited, and there were toys strewn all over the landing. My dad, returning from a long day at work, was incensed. My mum tried to explain to him that ‘this is what children do’, but he was adamant. No more friends round. No more mess, he told me. This memory is etched into my body as the initiation of a lifelong struggle with leaning into messy action and ‘playing’ in community. 

In elementary school, my father would be locked outside the house at night if he didn't come first in class. Play was a privilege he could not afford. This was a time of British imperialism and segregation in Kenya, where getting a Western education was deemed the only avenue to stablity. When I go into my body and feel into the roots of this, I hear the hum of male ancestors hyper-focused on ‘excelling in education’, because they believed it to be the only way out of an incredibly brutal world shaped by colonial forces. 

All the way into my twenties, that hyper-focus played out across the landscape of my body and life. Cambridge grad. Forbes awardee. Always first, I must always come first. This mantra was like an incessant whirr in my mind, the often frenzied fears of my ancestors trying to keep me safe. I write this with the utmost gratitude to them. I feel the force of their love and how it was always present - even when it led to misery, isolation, burnout and panic attacks.

But… well First name / sister, there comes a time when some of us are called to break karmic patterns and forge new paths. If you're reading this, it's because you're one of those rare gifts of your lineage. The instinct towards disruption and deviation came first as a desire to travel the world, then to commune with plant medicines - and then, finally - to begin my own business. I speak on this in a lot more detail in this Instagram live, but I do truly believe that for many women of colour, entrepreneurship is an ancestral stirring. We embark on this path when we are ready to recommune with ancient pre-colonial threads in our lineage that once honoured exactly the medicine our world now needs. We feel this deeply in our bones. We are prepared to move through the initiations required to reawaken that medicine, and to innovate it into an expression that feels true to our lived experiences as diasporic, global beings. 

This is what my business did for me. It became the vessel that invited me to meet that deeply etched perfectionist pain. The spirit of my business knew this was exactly the initiation my ancestors had been waiting for, and deemed me strong enough to carry it. I cry as I write this. I think you will understand the emotional charge of these words - because some expression of them lives in your body too.

Your business is a vessel for ancestral medicine. This is a truth I see playing out with my clients, over and over. In my group container The Sanctum, I have witnessed women heal the harms done to their grandmothers, the water-bearing women of their lineage, those ancestors who had to brace against colonial violence and male anger. I have witnessed the power of orienting to the spirit of our businesses as carriers of ancestral medicine - and how when we truly lean into this, we just land. We root into a relationship with this world, and connect back to the magic and mystery of life in a way our family did not have capacity to.

It's not about the five figure weeks and new clients per se (although of course, my clients claim this too, and it is what has been emerging for them inside Sacred Sanctum). Foremostly, it's about the aliveness, creativity and innovation we gain access to when we devote ourselves to a path that weaves together body reverence, ancestral healing and nature-aligned business strategy. The power of doing this work with the loving witness of BIPOC folks around the world is… hard to fathom, let alone express. It must be experienced and felt. 

This is why I created The Sanctum, a business coaching container for the women of colour coach or healer claiming her rich, revolutionary era - ready to craft a thriving body of work that will lead you to easeful multiple four and five figure cash months, time for long, slow mornings, seasonal living and spaciousness for your creative process without urgency or hustle. You can explore more of its spirit here. 

I created this space because I needed a playground to find safety and creativity with other women of colour. What an honour it is to share this brave, powerful work with BIPOC folks, and to witness it flourishing through their missions, and their medicine for the world.

Come play with us by stepping in here.

much love,

heenali