A Personal Story of Loss, Grief, and a Joy that Dies to be Renewed.

We conjured it. In a rusted cast iron pot filled with unknowns and WTFs, looking at the cards we were dealt—the ingredients to create rainbows and waterfalls. We knew it had to be so. Yeye said it would be. We came from all possibilities, landing on a canvas streaked with deep, dark blues that would one day lighten into brighter blues and bursting orange sun rays. We knew it. Yeye said it would be so. The current held everything we needed to create bliss. Like a seed planted in dark, moist soil that only knows to unfold, to reach, grow, and stretch until...

She bet on joy. All of it. Over and over. Sometimes she won, sometimes she lost. But she kept betting on joy. No matter the loss, heartbreak, or struggle, she kept choosing joy. Some might call it blind faith. But she knew. She collected the winnings from every dream-come-true moment and reinvested them with gratitude. Her energy was currency, her attitude, her focus, her time—all of it. She kept her eye on the honey, and she put in the work.

She listened to the anxiety, the hate, the depression, the rage, the doubt, the hardness, the emptiness. They led her to the tiny holes in her heart, the walls in her spirit. And she ritualized her way to joy. She laid herself bare before the Divine, incarnated as an "I," to be inspected inch by inch. It was painful—picking trauma from her bones, trauma from her lineage. Painful, but an honorable sacrifice. Invited suffering; she lost to gain. And then came the softening. The release, the softening, the release...the universe opened its heart. She could hear everything.

Time spoke in every moment, revealing the pregnant possibilities it held. The air - filled with zillions of molecules. The Earth - overflowing with beauty. The Sun. The Moon. Life sang operas in the morning and lullabies at night. And she realized—she was in love. In love with the smell of autumn, with smiles and laughter. Everything was full: dancing, meditating, sleeping, friendships—all full. The bumps in the road—an occasional flat tire, a failed relationship, or a petty hater—were either random happenings in the course of miracles or catalysts for even more joy. It all fit.

Until it didn’t.

*****

One day, just like that, it was gone. I lost my baby, Divinity, just short of six months gestation. She was born via C-section, and I held her until her last heartbeat. I went home without my baby. Left empty handed but still holding the love I had for her.  My breasts swelled with milk, but there was no baby to feed, to nurture. Every morning I awoke to a nightmare, debilitating heartbreak and grief. I didn’t know where or who I was. Life was no longer beautiful; it was gray. I was gray. And it scared me, the way joy had just vanished. I couldn’t access it, not even a trace. It was gone.

Then, seven weeks later, my younger brother died suddenly of a massive heart attack. My baby girl and my baby brother, plucked out of this existence. While I had found some answers to my daughter’s passing, my brother’s death was much harder to reconcile. It didn’t matter that I knew life flows into another, that no one is ever truly lost, and that connection is eternal. None of that could stop the tears. And the hardest part to accept was that I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t make it better for my daughter or my brother. I had always been able to find the solution to the problems of those I loved, but I wasn’t given the chance. Physical death is final like that. When my baby and my brother died, so did a piece of me—chunks of me.

For a while, I felt disfigured, like parts of my side and face had been torn away. I was raw, wounds open and bleeding. I stopped smiling. Stopped wanting to. I had nothing left to give, and I didn’t want to. My new strengths were pain, IDGAF, a freakishly heightened intuition, and the prayers of those who loved me—those whose hearts broke with me and for me. They were the things holding me up, and I leaned all the way into them.

The journey to a new me, a sweeter and more rooted joy, was a lesson in breaking down to rebuild. A lesson in metamorphosis, in shape-shifting. A lesson in sitting squarely in the middle of my pain, grabbing it, pulling it close to me and embracing it fully—even without knowing if I would survive it. Not knowing if I’d ever see the light again, not even looking for the light, but simply being present. Completely present in my love and loss.

I had questions—not “Why me?” questions, but ones about where they were, what stages of spiritual transformation they were experiencing. Questions about quantum entanglement, particle-wave theory, and the existence of multiple dimensions. I’d studied these concepts before, integrated them into my worldview and spiritual practice, but now I was engaging with two souls from beyond this realm. I needed to understand what was happening to them, how, and why. This inquiry turned into months of what I call "conversations with the Universe." I consumed myself with this exchange because nothing mattered more than the whys and hows about the two I couldn't make better. I emptied myself, and listened.

Bit by bit, a new picture began to form. It shattered some of my previous beliefs and opened a door to a more nuanced, complex version of life and death than I had ever held before. Nothing was black and white. Everything was in flux, constantly being created and destroyed in each moment. My intuition sharpened, and I spent a lot of time in ritual and meditation—listening and connecting. Individual rituals. Community rituals. I connected to the heart of spirit and with the heart in people. I embraced the death of my daughter and brother as an opportunity to purge and be renewed. I allowed it. I was pleasantly surprised by it. I no longer saw anything how I was conditioned to, but for what it was. The liberation birthed a different joy. Joy. That joy I'd lost, that I once invoked or possessed, was replaced by something deeper—something I am - an ever-presence. I could hold a range of feelings and joy remained. 

The challenges still come. Though ever-present joy is a higher vibration that nurtures and protects my right to express and feel all things as they are. And once again, I choose it every moment of every day. When I wake, I don't let my feet touch the ground without it. I understand that we have far more power in our choices than we realize. As a collective, we hold an ability and responsibility for shaping the realities we experience. Love and freedom are supreme, because they are rooted in our ability to choose.

However, there are moments when choice is taken from us—those are far fewer than the ones where we can choose. And it’s in those moments of choice that it becomes all the more important to protect our agency, to guard our right to welcome joy whenever and however we can.

*****

We conjure it. During hood cookouts and family gatherings, during clearing rituals and trance, in classroom discussions and friendly debates, at open mics and jam sessions. Sitting among moss-draped oak trees, next to silent rivers and roaring oceans. Fireside chats, birthing a new Earth. It’s there. It’s here. All we must do is breathe, stretch, and breathe again.

Be free,

Iya Ife