Sageprotector

BLACK WOMEN DESERVE THE WORLD.

BLACK WOMEN DESERVE THE WORLD.

BLACK WOMEN DESERVE THE WORLD.

BLACK WOMEN DESERVE THE WORLD.

BLACK WOMEN DESERVE THE WORLD.

To say you are “covered” in Hoodoo is not a light thing. It is not bragging. It is not fantasy. It is knowing.

When a Black woman says she is covered, she means the prayers of her grandmothers still hover over her shoulders like a well-worn shawl. She means the hands that picked cotton, tilled soil, cooked in hot kitchens, and whispered Psalms in the dark did not labor in vain. Their breath is still moving. Their protection is still active.

In Hoodoo, being covered is spiritual insurance rooted in survival. It is red brick dust at the threshold. It is Holy water flicked in the corners. It is a Bible open to Psalm 23. It is the quiet power of ancestors standing guard in the unseen. It is knowing that even when the road bends hard, something bends with you instead of against you.

To be covered means harm has to ask permission before it reaches you.

It means that what was meant to break you bends instead.

It means you may cry, but you will not collapse. You may be tested, but you will not be taken out.

Covered is ancestral alignment. It is protection layered thick — like quilts stitched from scraps of sorrow and triumph both. It is High John laughter in the face of oppression. It is roots in your pocket and faith in your chest. It is walking through this world as a target sometimes, but never unguarded.

Covered means your name is known on the other side.

It means when you step out your door, you do not step out alone.

And when a mature Hoodoo woman says, “Baby, I’m covered,” she is saying:

I am prayed for.

I am protected.

I am guided.

I am kept.

And what is kept by Spirit and Ancestors cannot be easily undone.

We keep holding on.

Not because it is easy.

Not because the road has been kind.

But because our blood remembers how.

I keep holding on through my ancestral relationships — through the quiet counsel of those who walked before me, whose names may not all be written down but whose fingerprints are pressed into my spirit. I feel them when I rise before dawn. I feel them when my hands touch earth, when I light a candle, when I whisper gratitude into the unseen. They are not gone. They are organized in the spirit.

And when I call on High John the Conqueror, I am calling on that laughing defiance that slavery could not crush. That cleverness that slipped chains without always breaking them. That sacred joke that says, You thought you buried me, but I was a root all along. He stands in the unseen with that knowing smile — not loud, not boastful — but certain. Certain that we will endure.

Through faith.

Through devotion.

Through the steady discipline of remembrance.

We keep holding on by feeding our ancestors — with clean water, with good food, with spoken names, with stories told correctly. We feed them with our upright living. We feed them with our refusal to forget. And in return, they feed us courage. They feed us dreams that refuse to die. They place confidence in our backbone.

My Indigenous and African ancestors speak in different tongues but carry the same drumbeat: Stay. Stand. Survive. Thrive. Their traditions are not relics. They are living technologies of the soul. Prayer over smoke. Protection at the doorway. Roots in the pocket. Psalms on the tongue. Earth under the fingernails. Memory as medicine.

Holding on is not passive. It is active resistance. It is sacred labor. It is waking up each day and choosing alignment with those who survived worse than we can fully imagine — and honoring them by walking with dignity now.

When my knees feel weak, I remember: they crossed oceans.

When my voice trembles, I remember: they sang anyway.

When the world feels uncertain, I remember: they built worlds inside worlds to keep us safe.

So I keep holding on — not alone, but accompanied. Not afraid, but fortified. Not empty, but fed.

Because the root still lives.

Because the drum still sounds.

Because the ancestors are not behind me.

They deadass look at this and think “Wow, our daughter really likes mythology”.