Letter to My Daughter, With a Side of Spunk and Holy Fire

Sweet precious love,

Let me lace your crown with truth real quick—
Not that fairytale, soft-focus, sugar-coated stuff,
but the real kind—
the kind that smells like castor oil and ancestral smoke,
that hits your chest like a Sunday testimony
and makes you laugh while you’re wiping your tears
with last night’s eyeliner.

Let’s start here:

You come from Haitian warriors.
Not the textbook kind—they left our names out—
but the fire-breathers, root-workers, spirit-whisperers,
women who turned salt water and prayers into armor,
who carried worlds on their backs
while humming lullabies to freedom.

You were born from a line of women
who knew how to make feast from scraps,
who turned silence into strategy
and pain into poetry
right in the kitchen, barefoot,
still glowing.

I’ve walked through storms with no umbrella,
laughed through tears I didn’t feel ready to cry,
and made altars from every mistake I ever loved.
I’ve trusted shadows in daylight,
been gaslit into doubt,
and still built cathedrals from my healing.

Yes, I cussed a few folks out along the way—
because sometimes grace comes with grit,
and holy sounds like “I said what I said.”

But baby girl, hear me:

I also danced until my knees remembered joy.
I kissed until I forgot I’d ever been hurt.
I screamed into the moon and heard her scream back,
“Yes, daughter, rise.”

So know this:

Your thighs are sacred.
Your no is gospel.
Your softness is not for the weak.
And when the world tries to shrink you,
don’t you dare fold—
expand.

You were not made to make anyone comfortable.
You’re not an apology in pearls.
You are thunder stitched with grace.
You are the answer to an ancestor’s drumbeat.
You are love with a tambourine.
A lullaby dipped in hot sauce.

And when life comes for you—
as it always will—
go to the well.

Yes, that well.
The one carved from ancestral marrow.
It lives in your belly. Your dreams. Your bones.
Go there.
Draw from it.
Drink.
Then rise, baby.
Rise with purpose.

You, my love,
are the revolution braided with jasmine.
You’re the prayer I didn’t know I was whispering
on nights I chose to keep living.

So don’t just rise—
soar.
Make joy your protest.
Make love your legacy.
Make your life the poem
they swore a girl like you could never write.

And when they ask you where you got your fire?

Tell them:
“My mama.
She lit the match.—

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