The Ranis and Rajas of our Bloodline
Author’s Note: This piece is about reclaiming worth and healing generational pressure in brown families
Reclaiming Worth and Healing Generational Pressure in Brown Families
Pressure is stitched to my name
Can’t you see my skin?
Can’t you hear my name—
Dripped with ancestral baggage
If even for
A second
I exhale
They remind me
Grind,
Push,
Chase,
Not just for you
But for us
For our salvation
Don’t dishonor
Your ancestors
And their graves.
Their struggles
From which you’re born.
When their liberation
Were chokehold,
Their native tongue
Overruled.
When we had to desert
Our belonging
Our kin,
Just for a brighter future
For you.
When everything
About our
Personhood
Our skin,
Our native tongue,
Our medicinal wisdom,
Our connection to Mother Earth,
Gets eroded
We must prove
To them
That we are not unworthy
We are beyond worthy.
Hence,
We freeze our pains
To chase,
To grind,
To bulldoze,
Beyond our sweat,
Our blood,
Our tears,
Beyond the extinguished fire
Deep in our bellies.
There’s no time
We must railroad
To claim all we lost.
It’s as if
We demanded
Our power
From the stars themselves
To survive.
Except,
This power,
It masks us.
Because internally
We’ve been running on fumes
And we haven’t even begun
To identify
Where the hearth was.
They stole it from us
We inherited
Woven their lies
Into the fabric of our beings
That we’re somehow
Primal.
Animal like.
Even if we are
The cream of the crop
The guardian of your well-being
Out here
In the west
Deep down
Ghosts gnaws
At us
If we stopped
To breathe
Even for a second
To exhale—
Those demons
We buried
At the hands of being overruled
They would haunt us
From their graves
The inner truth
That would betray us
That
We
Will
Always
Be unworthy.
Scum.
Dark.
Primal.
Animalistic.
But what if
Just what if—
The true lie
Is that?
That somehow
We were less than
As a culture.
What if
Our connection to
Mother Earth
Was the true path
Towards liberation
Our inner wilderness
Was always medicinal?
And we didn’t
Have to become
Doctors
Engineers
Computer Scientists
Toppers at school
Masters of Math.
We were born
Ranis.
Rajas.
Crowned not by empire,
But by essence.
What if
We were born
Into this world
Knowing
That we were wholly
Worthy.
No.
We don’t
Settle
Chase—
But we magnetize
From that holy place
Within us.
We get to have edges
Weaknesses
Strengths
Not fragmented
Not broken
Not unworthy
Not inferior.
But enough.
Anchored.
Whole.
So if I let go
Will you join me?
Let’s reclaim
Our truth
Of inner sovereignty
And rule the kingdom
Of our selfhood.
So that for once and for all
Our ancestors, and elders
Can finally rest easy
In their graves
Freeing their atma
Of wishing they had done more
We grant them salvation
Beyond the battlefield
Of fighting
Confronting—
Enemies,
Colonizers,
Oppressors,
In their mind
For their country
Beyond the years
Of harvests
And desert
That they birthed us
And in us
They are born again.
Enough—
As their blood
Rushes through our veins
We carry them
To our greatest
Finish line
Enoughness.
Their coronation
Where they stand tall
With their beautiful color
Of the earth itself
With their wisdom
That we were nature
That our health
Lived with her
And we crown them
Ranis
and
Rajas.
Once and for all.
Sakthi Ramesh, AMFT #155011
Associate Marriage and Family Therapist
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