HeLa: The Immortal Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951)

Where are the women who are unafraid to be the equal of men? To stand as their creators? To be burdened with their mortality? For we, as women, as mothers, are immortal. We have been granted a power that all humans must acknowledge, particularly the men who use oppression and tyranny to impose their version of self-righteous piety while pillaging villages, pockets, and people who birthed them.

We were blushed into passivity through vile and violent means. Our voices taken by violations against our bodies, against our spirits, against the essence of our glorious contribution. The Patriarchy discounts their birth by denying the truth of their own creation. They refuse to honor, as Maya Angelou sasses, that we dance like we have diamonds at the meeting of our thighs.

We are their creators. We are their equals. We are the Light of the Goddess; the vessels of her beauty in all of her forms with billions of names sprung free from the lips of our tribes, our people, our neighbors and families. We are immortal by the generous fruit we produce in our tree of life. We are the basis for their power, the support for their child-like steps.

They are not cruel and unforgiving of us because we are women, oh no. They know we are without end. They know we last longer than they. Their deaths will come before our own. Their genes become as muddied as their jeans, but the Matriarch will be the crown of their history. They want to hide her away as, according to the Mormon’s beliefs, God does his wife. So sacred is her name, or so I’ve been told, that even God will not speak her name to anyone else for fear they would desecrate that which he loves above all others. He holds her sacred, not as a less than in the equation.

My sisters, take heed the power of your name as the Matriarchs of ancient history have spoken. You are the power of the Universe embodied in physical form, freed of your heritage, embraced by your sister-kin, released from the shackles of Patriarchy if we choose to leave in unison.

We are not meek and mild. We are fierce and protective. We have allowed ourselves to become divided into separate distinctions instead of unified. We have been torn down to be seen only as ornaments, only as decorations, only as status symbols but not valued for our true selves. Our strength, our courage, our power, our voice, our very being is to be embraced, celebrated, lifted up in the arms of our sisters standing proudly by our sides.

We are the Alpha and the Omega of their mortality. We are the embodiment of The Goddess.