What African Spirituality Taught Me About Belonging
A personal meditation on ancestral wisdom and spiritual reconnection
There was a time when I searched for home in the external world — in places, in people, in approval. I wore many masks, answered to many names, and played many roles. But beneath all that noise, there was always a longing. A soft, persistent ache in my soul. A yearning to remember.
Not in the world of structured religions that felt too far from the Earth.
Not in the endless grind of modern life that demanded constant performance.
Not even in the progressive spaces that spoke of identity — but not of soul.
African spirituality found me in that in-between space — between forgetting and remembering, between survival and truth.
It met me not as a dogma, but as a mirror. It didn’t ask me to follow rules; it invited me to return — to the root, to the rhythm, to the remembrance.
And then, I began to remember.
It wasn’t a loud awakening. It was quiet — like the rustling of leaves in the early morning, like water finding its way back to the root. The remembrance came in pieces: in the stories my grandmothers told, in the smell of imphepho burning, in the silence of the mountains I lived close to for 7 years. It came as I started listening — not just to what was said, but to what was always there.
African spirituality, for me, is not a doctrine. It is a relationship. A return. A remembering.
It’s the feeling that I am never alone — that I walk with those who came before me and those yet to come.
It taught me that belonging is not about geography.
It’s about energy.
It’s about resonance.
It’s about walking barefoot on land that recognizes your blood.
About dancing around fire not just to celebrate, but to commune.
It taught me to speak to the ancestors, not as abstract ideas, but as family.
To see divinity not just in the sky, but in the soil, in the river, in my breath.
To understand that healing is not linear, and that wholeness comes from returning to the circle, not climbing a ladder.
Now, I know, belonging isn’t something we earn. It’s something we inherit.
It’s in the soil that remembers our footsteps.
In the songs that rise from the land when we are still enough to hear them.
It’s in the sacred pauses. In ceremony. In the names we carry, and the meanings they hold.
As I wrote in my poetic reclamation, I AM WATER:
I am the daughter of forgotten kings and dream-soaked women.
The drumbeat of memory lives beneath my skin.
In a world that often tells us to choose — to pick a label, a side, a version of “ — African spirituality reminded me that I am many things.
I am the daughter of soil and star.
I am sacred because I am.
And I belong because I exist.
Through this remembering, I learned that African spirituality isn’t a path back to something we never had — it’s a reconnection to what has always been ours. To see God not only in the heavens but in the water, the wind, the fire, and the womb. To understand that healing is circular, not linear — and that we are held even in our unravelling.
This journey has not always been easy. I’ve had to unlearn, relearn, and sit in uncomfortable truths. I’ve had to grieve the versions of myself that were shaped by disconnection. I’ve had to trust the unseen, even when the seen felt overwhelming. But every step has led me closer to myself.
There is such deep peace in knowing that I don’t walk alone.
I walk with ancestors.
With memory.
With the prayers of those whose names were never written in history books, but who are etched into the living tapestry of my soul.
Belonging, I’ve come to realize, isn’t about fitting in. It’s about coming home to the truth of who you are. It’s about releasing the colonized idea that sacredness must be sanctioned or certified. It is an intimate knowing — a bone-deep clarity — that I am enough, that I am of something greater, and that I am never, ever alone.
This journey is not without grief. I have had to bury the girl who thought she had to earn her worth. The one who performed, perfected, and polished herself to survive. I have laid her gently in the soil — not as a rejection, but as a rite of passage.
In her place, I rise. Not as someone new, but as someone ancient.
As someone who remembers.
As someone who belongs.
To belong is not just to be accepted — it is to remember who you are.
And I remember now.
Dear Reader:
What have you forgotten that your spirit is ready to remember?
Where do you feel most at home in your body, your lineage, your soul?
What are the sacred threads that tie you to your lineage, your land, your essence?
What have you forgotten that your spirit longs to reclaim?
To Magic Moments, with Love
Bohlale
