Were the Ancestors Whole? Reparations Café Reflections
On honoring both ancestral resilience and the cost of survival
We facilitated our first Reparations Café session on February 13th as a part of Black Exhale’s resolute initiative to create spaces of sanctuary for the Black body.
The premise of Reparations Café is that when we gather with the intention of witnessing, the field we create becomes a strong resource for everyone individually. It’s a space to honor and acknowledge the resilience that flows through our ancestry, confirm the wisdom that lives in the body, and build on practices that support natural daily living.
In this session, we invited participants to reflect on and share what was possible when intentional healing spaces are created. As we explored, we realized we first needed to talk about the ingredients necessary to conduct the transformation of dense history into learning, resilience, and a future different from our past.
What arose through the contemplation was the inquiry into how our ancestors resourced and survived the unfathomable. A participant brought the question “How did the ancestors remain whole?” How in the world did they manage to live—while subjected to such brutality—all while remaining whole? She called on them to advise us on how to remain whole in the current critical point we live in.
“Were the ancestors whole though?”
This question did not come from an attempt to diminish the resilience or humanity of our ancestors. Their strength is unquestionable, and their humanity carries so much beauty that we have not sufficient words. We will perpetually venerate them and lift them up for surviving what so many of us, living in today’s world, believe we could never survive. They will forever receive their flowers.
Instead, the question came from a place of really honoring the cost of such brutality on our psyches, hearts, bodies, and communities. The truth is that many of our ancestors did not survive these impossibilities.
The trauma lives somewhere. Even as the ancestors, and all of us, have a wholeness that is forever ours–that fundamental dignity that cannot be taken away–we can remember that transgressions leave a scar that’s transmitted through the tissues of one generation to the next. With their human rights–to be, to be a part of, and manifest–stripped, they were certainly not whole in their humanity.
These wounds echo through generations. Through witnessing our ancestors, we acknowledge the cost, the fragmentation, the numbing, the ashes, the tears. The parts that cried out, “no more.” The ghostly silencing that echoes in the larynx of those inhabiting diasporic bodies today.
The question, “Were the ancestors whole though?” was a confrontation of assumptions that imply we need something more in order to heal or overcome. It challenges the notion that we must somehow achieve perfect wholeness before we can do the work of healing and liberation.
Our conversation transformed into asking the ancestors how they continued without being whole. How can we be encouraged to start where we are? How can we use our intrinsic wholeness as a resource to stand against the iniquities we face?
Learnings we’re taking from this session
To re-establish being seen as wholly human our ancestors needed to tap into a wholeness that was beyond their humanity–even if they didn’t get to see the outcome of their inner alchemy. And this is a resource we have as well.
This conversation also points to titration and what Resmaa Menakem refers to as “bites.” Colonialism is a monster whose veins have fed the organs of our current systems. Changing systemic racism and injustice bite-by-bite is more sustainable than trying to confront the system at once. Sometimes we need to acknowledge we can only do what’s possible today, and that’s enough.
The oppressive forces of the colonial framework will induce us to believe that something more must be added to actualize wholeness. But if we remain steady, making small but significant actions, this narrative loses voice. Even if we have to back off for some time, relinquishing beliefs that we have to remain whole while doing this work, this is a part of the repair process.
We have to continue to hold the perspective our ancestors held for a better tomorrow. Knowing that the vision of tomorrow may not actualize for generations beyond us.
Next Session is Thursday, February 27th at 6:30 pm ET
We invite all those inhabiting diasporic bodies to our next session of listening, witnessing, and digesting.
Reparations Cafe is a Black Exhale initiative facilitated by Antoinette Cooper and Jaden Ramsey.
ANTOINETTE COOPER is the founder of Black Exhale and an Advisory Board member for the Narrative Medicine program at CUNY School of Medicine. With over two decades in education and training in Collective Trauma Facilitation with Thomas Hübl, she brings deep experience in creating sanctuary spaces for collective healing. Her recently released book UNRULY (Legacy Book Press, 2025) has been praised as "a healing balm" offering "equal parts memoir, lamentations, liberatory manifestos and poetry." Her work spans from coaching at Rikers Island to facilitating community healing spaces that honor ancestral wisdom while addressing contemporary needs.
JADEN RAMSEY is a bodyworker, somatic coach, and facilitator trained in Collective Trauma Facilitation. Through his work weaving artistry with trauma-informed embodiment practices, he creates spaces of restoration where wholeness can emerge. Born in southern California and raised across several US states, Jaden brings a deep social curiosity shaped by his mixed heritage with ancestral roots in Trinidad and France, informing his passion for collective repair through embodied practice.
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