“It’s time to move home to help the black girls in the community…”
The words, the instructions, the images—they were so vivid, so precise, it didn’t feel like a dream. And maybe it wasn’t.
Whether it came through a dream or divine visitation, I knew the message was real the moment I opened my eyes in the middle of the night, in my El Cerrito, California apartment, back in September 2019. My Ancestor had spoken, and I felt it deep in my bones.
The message was clear: “Go back home.”
Without knowing exactly what “home” would look like, I began preparing to return to Thibodaux, Louisiana. All I had were the instructions—and the unshakable knowing that I was being called back to the land of my roots.
So I followed the call. From Northern California’s Bay Area to the heart of southern Louisiana, I made my way.
I arrived in Thibodaux just one month before the world shut down with the 2020 pandemic.
My story, Simone Boveland Harris
photo by: Laura Mcknight
The Emotional Recovery Covenant honors and weaves together the ancestral wisdom passed down through generations of Storytellers, Pattern Seers, Circle Keepers, Culture Bearers, and Tribal Counsel members.
We pay tribute to all those who have paved the way before us, creating space for our voices to be heard in this moment. This includes researchers, sacred scientists, ancestors, and all beings, seen and unseen, whose contributions have shaped the wisdom we now carry forward.
Collective healing circles have long been a part of the southern Louisiana, a tradition that has supported native and indigenous communities for thousands of years. The Chitimacha and Houma tribes, among other first stewards of this land, such as my African ancestors from the Yoruba tribes of Nigeria and Benin, used these circles to restore peace and well-being in the community during times of transition, loss, change, disaster, conflict, and other trauma-inducing experiences. Restorative Storytelling Circles have enabled communities to move beyond trauma responses, creating a path toward the restorative and regenerative culture we truly seek.
As such, the Emotional Recovery Covenant and the programs we cultivate are founded from those same healing practices that are inspired by Nature, backed by Science, rooted in Ancestral wisdom, and accessible to All.Our approach centers ecological, sustainable, and inclusive paths to well-being, promoting health equity through a trauma-informed lens. We recognize that we are all on a lifelong healing journey—one that requires understanding the individual and societal traumas we’ve inherited, as well as the biases and behaviors that have emerged as a result.
Together, we are intentionally working to create more balanced, trauma-informed systems that foster shared understanding, belonging, and healing for everyone.