“There wasn’t enough for Indigo in the world she’d been born to, so she made up what she needed. What she thought the Black people needed: Access to the moon. The power to heal. Daily visits with the spirits.” from Ntozake Shange’s novel Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo
I feel deeply witnessed by the work of renowned Black woman playwright Ancestor Ntozake Shange, who, like me, lived with what the Western world refers to as bipolar and went through intense emotional mood swings. She also had strokes later in life and relearned how to read and write. She often used her emotional drive to shape her artistic, spiritual, and political approaches to her work that challenged Western societal norms and injustices.
Through her struggles, she went to therapy and took medications, but frequently emphasized prayer and spiritual connection, sustaining her. In the cultures of my lineages (Sawa Bantu of Cameroon and the Ewe of Togo), spirituality is central to mental/physical health. In some traditions, emotions are often associated with the element of water and the moon (though other elements can be avenues of emotional expression; all of nature is interconnected). Some of this relationship between emotions and water stems from the connection between emotions and tears (be they happy or sad). Our ancestors also observed the moon pulling the tides of the ocean and how its phases can affect emotional processing.
In many Indigenous African spiritual traditions, water is a portal to primordial energy, creation, clarity, and ancestral memory. It is used to call on ancestors through libation/prayers, cleansing rituals, and divination practices. Ancestor Ntozake Shange frequently mentions the moon in her work. She shares through her novel Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, that “Black people need access to the moon” and “visits with spirits”. As an ancestrally guided astrologer and a Miso Mwenei (spirit medium/seer), I appreciate her emphasis on the moon and visits with ancestors/spirits, which Western society and religious indoctrination have taught people to fear. Doing ancestral water rituals, the moon/star cycles help create a portal to understand my emotions and feel supported during intense times.
The Western world historically has viewed intense emotional expressions as “lunacy”, where moon energy and emotions were portrayed as dangerously irrational, being out of touch with reality, and even evil. Intense emotions or neurodivergences of marginalized groups were labeled as disordered feminine hysteria and racial confusion (such as drapetomania diagnoses given to enslaved Africans who attempted to resist slavery). The legacy of this can be seen in the western mental health systems today through the experiences of many who have had traumatic carceral experiences when locked up in modern psych wards involuntarily, without any culturally focused care. Black people face higher rates of isolation, harm, and death in these systems, and how our experiences go beyond just a neurotype and may also be responses to oppression we and/or our bloodlines have experienced is often not considered. Sometimes my emotions aren’t just mine, but my ancestors’ too.
“it waz too much i fell into a numbness til the only tree i see took me up in her branches held me in the breeze made me dawn dew that chill at daybreak/i waz cold/ i waz burnin up/ a child & endlessly weavin garments for the moon wit my tears i found god in myself & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely”- from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.
Ancestor Ntozake Shange found the support of God/the divine through her tears. I don’t think someone needs a bipolar catharsis to get to the divine; that can be available to everyone, but perhaps due to our neurotype, which gives us heightened emotional experiences, bipolar people may access spiritual/divine experiences in unique ways. The Western world associates bipolar with having “god complexes”. This didn’t really manifest for me personally. Though I became more ambitious, I never felt superior to others.
In Indigenous African traditions, we have words like Se, Ori, Umoya, and Chi to honor our inner divinity/spirit heads. Still, these words carry deep, layered concepts that go beyond the Western definition of god/deity and align with spiritual responsibilities, unique soul needs, life paths, and ancestors. For Ancestor Ntozake Shange in the quote mentioned above, it’s clear that she connects deeply with and finds the divine not in a dogmatic or blasphemous way, but by recognizing the spirit of God/the divine in nature to activate the divine spark within ourselves, which is something Indigenous practices globally that revere nature understand.
In the lineages of my ancestors, people who display symptoms associated with what the Western world refers to as bipolar or schizophrenia often have spiritual callings. Sometimes the calling is to be a healer, medium, diviner, facilitator, artist, or nature guardian for the community. Or the person may simply be called to heal trauma within their personal family line and restore the power of ancestral healing.
The intensity of the gift finds a balance between freedom and grounding through Indigenous holistic health approaches, which can include anything from sound healing, rites, vision quests, medicines, and more, so one can learn to live with their conditions/disabilities/gifts. These healing methods transcend spirit-science binaries.
For us, spirit and science are inseparable, building upon each other. I often wonder if Mama Ntozake Shange and other Black women would have had better health/mental health outcomes if they had been diagnosed earlier, didn’t face such traumatic systemic oppressions, and were fully immersed in Indigenous African holistic healing approaches that colonization and slavery greatly disrupted.
“I have a right to think and feel what I want, and I can’t stop feeling what I feel.”
-Ntozake Shange from a University of Connecticut interview
An elder Hoodoo spiritualist told me that I have the gift of tears. I’ve gone through challenges with my neurodivergences before, so it was helpful to be reminded of this. To be able to feel in a society that views emotions as weaknesses to be constantly regulated, where whiteness determines what is regular and normal, and to be able to access emotions as messengers to be witnessed and compassionately listened to for direction and information, does feel like a gift. When fully embraced and harnessed with sacred protection, it can become a skill and act of service.
As a medium, I’ve always had clairsentience (the ability to sense others’ emotions psychically). Still, since my bipolar onset in 2020, I (I did not know I had bipolar til my diagnosis a year later in 2021), this became sharper. Emotions are an especially helpful form of communication when working with my ancestors or clients’ ancestors who do not speak English or were nonverbal. It is sacred work with a wide range of emotions; sometimes I feel sacred rage from ancestors who faced abuse or oppression. Sometimes I feel the love, joy, and determination that our ancestors have for us.
At times, emotional responses I get from spirits help answer questions people are seeking guidance and direction on. I also deeply enjoy the positive emotional episodes that occur when I listen to the Indigenous music of my various African Indigenous lineages, which create a semi-trance state. I always loved music my whole life and was in choirs, but since my bipolar onset in 2020 and the aligning of my spiritual path, a new ancestral channeling with music and nature has been unlocked that feels freeing.
The rainbow is infused into many of Mama Shange’s works. The rainbow represents integration, awareness of different colors. To me, it symbolizes that multiple truths can coexist, and trying to fracture myself into an either-or experience denies the complexity of my experiences and takes away from their wholeness.
I accept the challenges that come with being disabled. I simultaneously accept that the heightened emotional intensity of my bipolar can be tuned into to help as I and others discover clarity, creativity, meaning, ancestral healing, and sound/music healing. I don’t see my bipolar as a “super” natural ability. The spiritual was a very natural part of life for my Indigenous African ancestors. Many Indigenous African languages have a wide range of intense emotional verbal and non-verbal expressions because of our tonal languages, in which emotion can change the meaning of a word, sound, or body-movement/sign language. We also have philosophies and affective epistemologies that draw on Indigenous understandings of emotional connections to aid in communal care work and nature sustainability.
I do not mean that in my ancestral cultures, everyone is bipolar or highly clairsentient. Still, it does mean that these knowledge systems have the range and capacity to hold people who are and to respect us as integral parts of the community.
In a colonial capitalist society that has enacted so many forms of violence on my ancestors by disrupting holistic medicine traditions and by pushing erasure of identity, my spiritual and bipolar journey became a portal to ancestral memory and self memory. For that, I am grateful.
