Dear friends,

I’ve always believed that story is one of the oldest ways we remember who we are. Before doctrine or data, a woman with a memory and a voice taught us how to recognize ourselves and the places we call home. Rooted and Reckoning began as my attempt to understand what we bury in the landscapes of our places and our bodies and what happens when we begin to dig again.

I am a psychologist by training, a writer by devotion, and a daughter of women whose names sometimes vanish from the record. My great-grandmother was ostensibly Saura Indian, other foremothers both enslaved and slaveowners, and I’ve spent much of my life tracing the lines between silence and survival. In this searching, I’ve built my own understanding around the idea that divinity doesn’t live in an elsewhere but within each of us and only waits to be reclaimed.

Here on Substack (a completely new venue for me), I’ll share small stories and reflections from this new WIP, as well as shorter bits and bobs: moments when the sacred and the ordinary brush hands. I hope something here reminds you of your own light.

Thanks for being here at the beginning.

Kindly,
Stephanie

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