Bella holds still as her mother dresses her for her first time as Atabey in a Taino Full Moon Ceremony in their neighborhood of Hazelwood. The ceremony marked the last full moon for the winter season and honors the monthly cycles of the earth, human women, and Atabey, or the cosmic matriarch in the Taino people’s tradition. Miguel Sague, a behike (or shaman) at Caney Indigenous Spiritual Circle, spoke of the way that the full moon pulls on the tide’s of the earth’s blood, or the oceans and water. “Human blood also does the same thing, at least in the body of women,” he said,  "All of us, including men, all benefit by this cycle of fertility.“

Bella’s mother, Dayvanna, held tears in her eyes as she watched her daughter take this right of passage. "I get to witness you and all the studies you’ve done to be able to embrace this moment for yourself.” She thanked the cosmic mother for another month of life and blew prayers in smoke to her ancestors.

I felt the weight of hundreds of years of colonization on my shoulders as I watched this beautiful moment unfold. I know the harsh history of photojournalism, white colonialism, and indigenous people, the conflict and misunderstanding caused by the lens of outsiders, pressing up against the understanding that there I was, in a small living room, witnessing something that this young woman had been anticipating her whole life. My head still swarmed with thoughts of the history of my whiteness crashing up against this beautiful, breathtaking, quiet acknowledgement of the infinite and divine, womanhood and moonhood, of a repeating line of mothers and daughters that goes back farther than I can understand.

Miguel must have sensed my struggle. He looked at me and told me that the Taino people had painted their ceremonies on cave walls, which read as accounts of those times, the revelations and traditions and manifestations that occurred. “You are one of those cave painters on those cave walls,” he told me. Dayvanna agreed.

I don’t know if they knew that this week, with what we’ve been dealing with in our newsroom, these words, this beautiful expression of forgiveness and understanding, would give me the strength and clarity of purpose I need to carry through. There’s still more work to do (okay, a lot of work to do), but I’ll never forget that moment.