I'm moving back to my village

Getting back to basics

Early morning, window down, with the warm, not yet hot air lightly touching my fro, my eyes were fixed on the luscious green foliage and towering trees that lined the road to the village of my late Grandparents. Journeys always force me to pause and reflect. But I had not anticipated this.

I was beginning to experience a deep shift in my thoughts and feelings toward myself and my life at that moment. I wondered … who exactly am I becoming? I had allowed people, things or situations outside of me to give me a false sense of security, a false sense of value. I had forgotten who I was and what I truly wanted.

Living in Australia, I had been operating on autopilot. This lack of consciousness about my very own life and the direction it was going in was stopping me from living a life that was more raw and real.

It can be scary to be confronted by such thoughts and feelings, especially because they can make you start questioning everything. These thoughts and feelings were like an echo or a voice that starts off soft and then gradually grows louder, demanding attention. I knew some difficult decisions lay ahead if I stopped living on autopilot. Changes would be inevitable. I was afraid.

But I was going home.

My Grandparent’s village lies within Ghana’s Central Region and is about a four-hour drive from the capital city, Accra. It was December 2022 and the occasion for my visit was the one year memorial of my Grandmother’s passing, a moment of remembrance of her life and coming together of community.

On our way to the memorial, we passed my Grandfather’s house built many years ago. My Grandfather, Nana Kojo Abesse, was the Omankrado of the village. The Omankrado is the chief’s councillor, and my Grandfather was chosen for this role by the town elders because of his good reputation as a level-headed young man. This is significant to me because I am named after him.

Left to right: en route to my village, my Grandfather and my Grandmother.

My Grandmother was Joana Abena Aframa Odua, and my sister is named after her. My Grandmother was a remarkable woman. She was married to my Grandfather at 17, a businesswoman in her own right, mother to 9 children and began a course in adult education with no prior schooling.

Sitting in the church where the memorial service was taking place, the fear that was holding me back from change subsided as I bore witness to the full life my Grandmother had lived. Being at home in my village brought me back to basics. It made me resolute to not live with regrets or just pondering about other possibilities. It took me returning to my village in Ghana to literally go back and get (Sankofa) my authentic self. I began to wonder what I could do, who I could be, where I could go and what I could believe if I started showing up fully to my life as my Grandmother did.

Oprah says:

Unless you are finding a way for what you believe to be true about yourself to express and manifest itself in the world, you are not living your fullest life.

That was it. At my village, faraway from the people, things or situations I was equating with my self worth, I remembered what was true about myself. Viola Davis, in a conversation with Oprah, says:

… I didn’t know that you sorta come into the world worthy. I really didn’t. I felt, you know, you had to get an education, you gotta go to the top school, you have to look a certain way; and so I didn’t know that it was something already in me …

And that is one thing that is true about each of us. We are born with inherent worth. But the question is, do we believe this to be true about ourselves? Because when we know that we are worthy of the life we want to create, of living fully in who we are, we transform, we rise and we learn to set ourselves free from the limiting beliefs of the mind.

So I ask you …

Do you believe you are worthy of the life you want to create?

Are you living your fullest life? If not, are you ready and willing to?

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