Righteous Separation

When my husband and I moved from California to Colorado, it was as if we didn’t exists to any of our family members. Over the past 2 years we’ve heard our family’s opinions through my parents telling me what other “family members” were saying. Now it’s to the point where no one wants their kids around us… Funny because I don’t agree with my 7 year old cousin knowing where my aunt’s boyfriend buys his alcohol, and that “mommy and uncle drink on (blank) days of the week” and “this is where mommy and uncle like their alcohol to be in the fridge”. Let’s not get started with all the things that my different family members do that I don’t agree with. But my husband and I partake in a herb, a PLANT that is clearly outlined in the Bible as being food, sustenance and a holy sacrament and we’re “bad people” “hippies” “rasta” “unethical”. IT PISSES ME OFF!

And when the anger subsides all that’s left is pure pain. The people who claimed all my life they loved me lied. What they should have said was “Tina we love you as long as you remain Catholic (the religion that the Spaniards came and forced onto your raped ancestors), don’t smoke weed, drink alcohol, and fall in line with the rest of society.” How can any person with even a smidgen of common sense or a brain cell not see how that would hurt? To take it even further, how can people think that not speaking to the first born niece & grand daughter wouldn’t hurt me?

The most comedic part about it all is that NO ONE in my family has been around me NOT “high” since I turned 18! I’m now 28 years old and I’ve taken care of my baby cousins, reasoned with my aunts, uncles and grandparents, completed personal and family responsibilities… All while “HIGH”, so how bad or negative of a person can I be?! I stuck around and by my family in California even though I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS felt like the odd ball, the black sheep, and the one that just didn’t fit. I almost didn’t leave the state SPECIFICALLY FOR my family.

I bet they don’t all remember when one of my aunts moved to a house about 45 minutes from the radius most of my family lived in. I think I remember being 7-10 years old at the time. I witnessed first hand certain aunts and even my more immediate household bashing my aunt. “Well of she doesn’t want to be around us then we won’t go to any events at the house!” Or “She’s the one that moved all the way out there and now she wants the whole family to go out and visit?!” It was comments like these that brainwashed me. Because for a while I was 100% on board with all their opinions. Until the day my husband suggested “What if we move to another state?” and reality hit me, i was now going to be in that aunt’s place. I’m now the person that has been cast aside as a “bad seed” or “the one that doesn’t want to be around the family.” And I wonder, if any one of these “family members” have taken 1 second to remember the reasons why we left. Reasons like… Excessive police harassment, excessive discrimination, excessive bullshit tickets, excessive wait times at the DMV, excessive money and time spent on trying to handle bullshit tickets, cost of living, air pollution, infertility, stress, low paying jobs with high stress, just to name a few.

I wonder if anyone even listened? Did anyone bother to retain it? Does it even really matter? Or did we say we were moving and get crossed off everyone’s list automatically?

Something that is of the utmost importance to me is this Vow of Separation. It is a change that I made that wasn’t taken lightly. The Vow of the Nazarites, based on Numbers 6 states ” 6 Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. “If any of the people, either men or women, take the special vow of a Nazirite, setting themselves apart to the Lord in a special way, 3 they must give up wine and other alcoholic drinks. They must not use vinegar made from wine or from other alcoholic drinks, they must not drink fresh grape juice, and they must not eat grapes or raisins. 4 As long as they are bound by their Nazirite vow, they are not allowed to eat or drink anything that comes from a grapevine—not even the grape seeds or skins.
5 “They must never cut their hair throughout the time of their vow, for they are holy and set apart to the Lord. Until the time of their vow has been fulfilled, they must let their hair grow long. 6 And they must not go near a dead body during the entire period of their vow to the Lord. 7 Even if the dead person is their own father, mother, brother, or sister, they must not defile themselves, for the hair on their head is the symbol of their separation to God. 8 This requirement applies as long as they are set apart to the Lord.
9 “If someone falls dead beside them, the hair they have dedicated will be defiled. They must wait for seven days and then shave their heads. Then they will be cleansed from their defilement. 10 On the eighth day they must bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons to the priest at the entrance of the Tabernacle.[a] 11 The priest will offer one of the birds for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. In this way, he will purify them[b] from the guilt they incurred through contact with the dead body. Then they must reaffirm their commitment and let their hair begin to grow again. 12 The days of their vow that were completed before their defilement no longer count. They must rededicate themselves to the Lord as a Nazirite for the full term of their vow, and each must bring a one-year-old male lamb for a guilt offering.”

They may seem like just dreadlocks, and it may seem like we just want to smoke but only to uneducated people who refuse to be open-minded and listen to parts of the Bible that churches skim right past, don’t explain or don’t teach! It wasn’t easy to take that vow, it wasn’t easy to vow not to attend any funerals when I haven’t last any of my immediate family. It wasn’t easy to give up drinking alcohol, or eating beef, or stop eating grapes or raisins. And it dam sure wasn’t easy to loc up my hair and watch everyone treat me as less than a person, or assume that I don’t wash my hair.

None of this is easy but InI wasn’t call to a life of ease and cupcakes. Jah has a righteous plan for InI time on this Earth and InI won’t let the negative of people, INCLUDING FAMILY, to deter InI from I mission!

JAH!!!!!!!!! RAS TAFARI!!!!!!!! ❤️💛💚

A Rasta in Longmont: Part 2

This is the exact kind of treatment that prompted us to leave California. Then here we are trying to get out of the city and meet people in different areas and we’re treated like this. Up until that point in the day I hadn’t noticed that we were the only people of color but this officers actions was a swift kick in the ass of reality. At that moment I remembered that we didn’t look like anyone else, we don’t have hair like anyone else, we don’t act or talk like anyone else that we were around that day. It really sucks because my husband and I had been discussing moving out of Aurora and into a more remote area. We had traveled from Aurora, to Brush to Longmont that day and were so excited to see houses for sale that we can afford and our imagination was running wild. Now, I don’t wish to return to the city of Longmont, I don’t want to advertise our business there, and I don’t want to visit anyone in that area. To add a cherry on top of the situation, when we left the event on our way home, we made 2 lefts and saw an undercover police car sitting around the corner from the park. And my first thought was “Are you serious!?!!!!!! Aren’t there REAL criminals out on the streets that need to be watched?!”

Needless to say this experience has convinced me that Colorado is not the place we will call our permanent home. It hurt and felt like we wasted our time even moving to Colorado. We get that people are not going to understand why we have our hair in dreadlocks or why we even choose to smoke LEGAL marijuana but what really pisses me off is that no one ever tried to understand. No one asks why we smoke and if they did they would know that smoking isn’t something we do as a recreational sport to just get high. This plant is a holy sacrament clearly defined in the Bible as food and sustenance that was given to us by God himself! We don’t smoke it for fun we smoke it to connect, meditate and communicate with the Creator. So when people stereotype us because of our locks or smoking they don’t realize that they are violating our right to practice our spiritual beliefs, or in the phrase Babylon goes by, our “religious beliefs”.

Something that adds gas to the fire is that my husband and I never violate laws just to adhere to our beliefs. We left the state where we were born and raised at because of the open-mindedness we thought Colorado was about due to the new marijuana legalization laws. Like I’ve told many officers from California to Colorado that continue to harass my husband and I over our look and our dreadlocks, we’re not bad people, we don’t aim to give police a hard time, we don’t harm people with our smoking, we don’t get angry at or force our beliefs on people, we’re not violent and we’re upstanding, contributing members to our community, where ever that may be. But to be in a state, completely apart from our families and old friends and treated the exact same way is disheartening and disappointing. All these laws are being passed and yet the discrimination continues. Black and brown people are treated like parasites, like we weren’t here before any white skin touched this land.

One of my biggest disappointments as well as amusement at this occurrence is that there was no attempt by this officer to hide his intentions, nor a desire to be clear on what his intentions actually were. In addition, I recall seeing some sort of statement from law enforcement saying that they were not going to be responding to marijuana complaints. So the statement comes out that they won’t be going out to these kinds of calls and a couple days later our family is harassed in the park because someone in that area had a problem with 1) people of color 2) people with dreadlocks or 3) people that look like they smoke marijuana. Indirectly, this officer represented his department and the police force as being liars. They say one thing and do another. Which is what we’ve come to accept as regular treatment from the police but then why even bother making the statement if you have no intention of following it to the letter? What is the point of passing these new laws if police officers who are against it, or officers in general, are not being briefed or re-trained or properly trained to disregard their prejudice, or not stereotype people of color or people with different hair? Re-education needs to be done and enforcement needs to happen. If the police departments are coming out and making statements I feel they need to stick by them, discipline the bad apples that are giving police officers a bad reputation, or just not make the statements at all!