A sister. A global force of joy. A builder of community, gone too soon.

This is a remembrance of Maria McCloy, a woman who made space wherever she stood, and whose love continues to move through all of us who were blessed to know her.

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We’re better together, so share this podcast widely. Care is infrastructre™. Character>

We are the joy we seek🧚🏽‍♀️

Podcast hosted by Davida “Geechee” Arnold, MBA, Matriarchal Laykeeper ™

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Subscribe to the Stories I Tell Podcast everywhere you listen to podcasts. Write us a review, it helps us grow and be with more people as awesome as you are, dahlinks.

We’re better together, so share this podcast widely.

We are the joy we seek🧚🏽‍♀️

Podcast hosted by Davida “Geechee” Arnold, MBA, Matriarchal Laykeeper ™

This is a reflection on self-possession, truth, and the discipline of building character in systems that benefit from our fragmentation. We explore how shame fuels manipulation, how clarity disrupts it, and how community is built when we choose to stand in what is real.

This is not about perfection. It is about recognition.

Because when we know who we are, we move differently.We decide differently. We build differently.

And that changes everything. Character>

Remember who you are⚓️

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Subscribe to the Stories I Tell Podcast everywhere you listen to podcasts. Write us a review, it helps us grow and be with more people as awesome as you are, dahlinks.

We’re better together, so share this podcast widely.

We are the joy we seek🧚🏽‍♀️

Podcast hosted by Davida “Geechee” Arnold, MBA, Matriarchal Laykeeper ™

We’re better together, so share this podcast widely.

We are the joy we seek🧚🏽‍♀️

War does not always arrive with boots.

Sometimes it arrives in language. In policy. In the casual, wide declaration that an entire people can be erased. And? Something in the collective body knows.

We’ve been here before, fam. This is cultural memory at work. Not panic. Not performance. Memory that steadies. Memory that remembers how to move without asking permission. Old ways meeting new times.

A spiritual war made visible, and the matriarchal knowing that nothing real is ever fully erased. Only transformed, carried, and called back. So the question becomes:

What do we tend… even now?

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We’re better together, so share this podcast widely.

We are the joy we seek🧚🏽‍♀️

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Hola darlings,

This Full Moon in Libra, I am thinking about my grandson.

A Libra baby.

Balance in his bones.

Clarity in his chart.

A reminder that truth stands on DIVINE BUSINESS.

And as his grandmother, as Big Mama, as Glammie, I know something for certain. No certificate needed. I am the work m’baby. My crown? Is my character. I am who I say to am - the good, the bad, the sweet, the sour.

We do not need more performance.

We need more character.

So let’s begin with the first law of character.

The First Law of Matriarchy:

Be who you say you are.

You are the work.

The living work.

Not the post.

Not the platform.

Not the performance.

The work.

If we say we are matriarchs, then BE A MATRIARCH.

Are we fortifying our families?

Are we telling the truth when we fall short?

Are we accountable when we get it wrong?

Are we growing when we know better?

Are we hugging?

Are we holding?

Are we creating spaces where people can breathe? Are we praying? Are we???

Are we pushing away bullshit…

and embracing clarity?

Because being who we say we are is not cute. It’s definitely not bad bitch behavior. WTF is bad bitch behavior as a goal? Being a self-absorbed, brat is peak corny. Brat behavior is anti-matriarch.

Being a matriarch is hands in the dirt, cowboy boots on the ground, tears on the pillow, laughs at the bedside, being FULLY COMMITTED TO BEING.

Matriarchy is courage.

Matriarchy is humility.

Matriarchy is shadow work.

Matriarchy is integration.

Matriarchy looks in the mirror and does not turn away.

Matriarchal Laykeeping is 24/7 joy warrior business. The work that works. The works that work.

Refusing to do the work to come back together…

and calling that leadership?

Is corny. And corny is neglect parading as self-care. Calgon can’t take us away from nasty work. From performance platforming.

Because there is a difference between tending and performing.

Big Mama? She knows the difference.

She is not in the kitchen coughing over the gumbo, pretending everything is fine, making everyone sick because she’s too self-consumed to be trusted.

She rests.

She recalibrates.

She returns when she is right.

That is integrity.

But some of what we are seeing right now…

is people leading while unwell.

Teaching while untended.

Touching others while disconnected from themselves.

Hosting. Posting. Ritualizing.

And not even in right relationship with their own lives.

Not at peace in their own homes.

Not accountable in their own families.

Not honest with themselves.

And still proclaiming their right to lead.

Still proclaiming their right to be trusted.

Still proclaiming their right to be paid.

That is not matriarchy.

That is matriarchy cosplay. Sounds about divisive patriarchy to me.

And this Full Moon in Libra is calling it out.

Clarity does not need a certificate.

And we are being asked, collectively, to come back into alignment. To do the work. To be with elders. To plant herbs and see what works, see what doesn’t, to adjust. To take the time to be with the work. To commit.

To be who we say we are.

With love.

With boundaries.

With character.

With veneration for those who came before. With respect to the ones to come. With accountability to who we are now.

Because when things truly matter…

we are not asking for credentials.

We are asking,

who can be trusted?

This is the work.

Grace is the roux,

Davida “Geechee” Arnold MBA

Be who you say you are.

And since a large part of who we are is who we came from, I’ve got a gift for ya. Click here for your FREE genealogy guide. Future you thanks you.

Subscribe to Stories I Tell @substack for more updates.

Interested in getting to the roots of your family? Get The Laykeeper Method™ Free guide by commenting "ROOTS" on my Instagram, Geechee_Vida.Are you a Matriarch confused about the poweer you hold?

Forgot how to keep your peace of mind while the world you knew is disappearing by the second? It's easy to get lost in the matrix. Anchor here. Join our forming Founding Circle: linktr.ee/geecheevida

That work was not branded. It was lived.

I call this tradition Matriarchal Laykeeping.

A Laykeeper tends the energetic grid of people, homes, and communities through cultural memory and embodied practice.

Some learn this work through certification.

Some are raised in it. I am both, and a grandmother. Ain’t God great!

Through Geechee Reiki, spiritual baths, divination, and energy clearing, I continue that lineage.

Founding Circle sessions are now forming.

Reserve early access at the link here: Glammie's Hands Founding Circle

Grace is the roux⚓️

February beckons January: “Wanna dance?”

January kicks down the door. February stands in the doorway, swaying softly, pulsing drums , sentinels that decide what is allowed inside. And what will never be placed outside again.

It is the shortest month, which is not a weakness. It is a discipline. Twenty eight days to tell the truth. Twenty eight days to feel the body. Twenty eight days to see what fits and what does not. Unless, of course time bends and births a leap day. Ah February, you memory of memories, cradle of community laden in beneath the sea waters wealth. Olokun, much? Ashe.

This full moon arrives on the first of the month, claiming monies due like a landlord. Dispersing memories due like a Matriarch. Fortifying faith like a Father. Yep, this is the way, and the footing corrects, tempo like a mean two-step on a barn raising in Estil, South Carolina. Baba Birdie, Ibae.

February is not a month for buildup. It is a month for reception and release. You receive what is real. You release what was never sustainable. February is tantric power, pulsing, folding you into worlds endless, holding you before release. I said what I said. Iya Ola Mae Ibae.  Iya Bert Ibae. Iya Caldora Ibae.

I was born on a waning gibbous moon in February, an Aquarius honey-moon baby conceived in a waterfall in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. First born. Daughter of a Geechee Jawn virgin like Mary and an alchemist like Solomon of Bogalusa, Louisiana. The Veil was thin when I was born, which explains a lot about how I vision. Rose colored lens but verify the frame, dahling.

I was ushered into containment upon expansion, and learned early that capacity comes from the strength of the vessel, not the volume of the noise. That lesson has followed me everywhere.

From Philadelphia streets to Louisiana pilgrimages. From Geechee blood memory to Gotham boardrooms. From row restaurant kitchens to lectures on campus. From marriage to divorce. From learning two favored sons to holding my first graced grandson. From founding businesses to walking away from them. From being held not quite right, to remembering how to hold myself just fine, and that I am always held, Divinely.

I am favored. I get to be just about every woman, like Matriarch Chaka Khan summoned: Sister. Neighbor. Auntie. Niece. Granddaughter. Mother. Grandmother. Friend. Employee. Founder. Dreamer. Doer. Wife. Divorcee. Girlfriend. Single. A February woman, sovereign.

Multiplying joy, walking alone for now, tracking ancient maps home to myself. The navigation is impossible without trusted guides, community, conjuring destinies lived fully.

February is this life. A sovereign way. A communal remembrance. A place where our little lights shine, how big a thing to do together, this trust.

This month holds births,  deaths, dreams, actions, in the all-womb. A gathering, people are arriving. A nurturing, people are resting. Some things are ending. Some things are not ready to be named yet. This is not confusion. This is choreography. Syncopated. You feel it too, right? Drops the needle, “Pearls” by Sade undulates through shared knowing.

We start February with a full moon, a moment of illumination that does not ask us to act. It asks us to notice. What is too tight. What is too loose. What is being forced. What is finally ready to be set down.

Later in the month, the fire horse arrives, all heat and movement and appetite. And just after that, eclipses begin to rearrange what we thought was fixed. February is the inhale before a long sentence. It is not the time to rush the words.

It is also Black History Month, which is an absurd container for the knowing that birthed the world before racial construct, the all-womb cradled in Eve, resident of Africa, mother of all true.

Trying to compress that into the coldest month of the year is madness. But Eve’s kin know something about producing life, full-stop, swaying at the doorway, pulsating. When the bass hits…absolutely absorbed in its grip, restraint before the first move.

Restraint is not silence. It is precision. It is knowing when to speak and when to hold. It is choosing the shape of the container so what matters does not spill everywhere and disappear.

Some mistake urgency for importance. Noise for impact. Burnout for devotion. February is not impressed by any of that.

February is impressed by regulation. By breath that returns to the body. By joy that does not need witnesses. By laughter that breaks the spell of grind culture. By harmony, peace of mind, and caring made real.

There is humor in February, if you have the crow’s memory and the Ancestors wit. It is the humor that wrings the tears from a cousin’s eyes after three too many “remember that time?” full-belly laughs shakes joy aloose. The humor of knowing. Matt 5:8. Saint Grandma Dot Ibae.

This month is not asking you to become someone new. It is asking you be you, where you are, fully.

“Wanna dance?”

That question applies to everything. Your works. Your energy. Your stories. Your anger. Your tenderness. Your ambition. Your grief. Your joy. Your doubts. You.

February teaches us that capacity expands when the container is honest. When boundaries are clear. When we stop pretending we can carry what was never ours to begin with. When we honor the dance.

Later this month, I will be in conversation, a literary salsa if you will, with a doula.

Someone who understands how to hold what is arriving and what is leaving at the same time. Cadence matters.

Maybe, life is a ring shout where we give birth to stories we sometimes do not tell, but that always do tell themselves. A thought.

For now, let the full moon do what it does best. Illuminate. Release. Return you to your own rhythm.

February does not need you to hurry.

It needs you to remember. Do you? Do you remember how to dance too?

To Joy,

Me