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letter to charity, as she goes home

i just received the news that my friend and comrade charity mahouna hicks has made her transition. here is the statement on her life from lila cabbil:

Our dear Charity Hicks joined the ancestors on July 8, 2014. She had recently directed her community in Detroit to “wage love” as a strategy in our fight for justice and equity. Her mantra was her love for her people and consistently bringing in the voice of those who were marginalized. As we prepare for her homegoing services let us reflect on her rich legacy of passion, knowledge, vibrancy, sharing, commitment, mentorship, persistence, giving, wisdom, advocacy, and deep pride of African heritage and culture. We are all Blessed by her God given gifts. The global beloved community she cherished is collectively charged with continuing her extensive, unmatchable, intellectually brilliant, work that reached out lovingly to people world wide.

Support for services (including bringing her home) can be directed to Gofundme.com/wagelove

i have been writing to charity since the accident, trying to understand it all. here are some words pulled together from that writing and in response to her transition:

charity love,

i write this with tears in my eyes – i just heard that you’re gone, at least in the way i know you. black beautiful soft round tall beaming you. i want one of your hugs. i have a hard time believing your body could not recover. i knew it was impossible, i knew it. i thought of you as a cosmic ancient superhero.

when we worked together, i found myself trying to keep up with your mind, trying to stand with you in massive emotions. your mind moved faster, drew easily on more data, connected everything together. and the connections you made filled you with rage, with sadness, with incredulity…and with such tenderness.

the way you would take my niece’s face into your hands, the way you would hug people in greeting, the way you would listen to a curious young visitor to detroit and then affirm her curiosity by blowing her mind out with an explosion of stories and facts. you brought to the world equal parts tenderness and fire.

and no one could bring fire quite like you.

we had our different approaches. i wanted you to focus, you wanted me to ignite. the place we found each other over and over in our work together was love – for family, for Detroit, for justice, for our own bodies, for the ways spirit was moving through us and our lives, for new ways of grasping the universe, for our own potential. i loved our kitchen table talks. i wish we could have more of them.

and what will Detroit do without you?

for the years we worked together i watched you with amazement and worry, as you tirelessly attended one meeting after another on the unreliable bus system of Detroit, carrying a mental map of issues and people and histories, bags full of documentation and computers and flyers, a hundred keys to the universe hooked to your top.

i remember meetings where you stood up and demanded that we all get naked, say what we really meant, say what we were going to do. you were daunting, generative, wholistic, healer, soldier. if there was a right action you would take it first. you embodied a commitment to justice.

i didn’t always understand your fire, love. you were a friend and a mystery, deeply rooted and incredibly complicated. Detroit needs your fire now, your kind of thorough love, compounded, burning out of control. the world does.

you led with your love, water warrior earth goddess in motherland cloth armor. you have always been larger than life.

when i last saw you, i felt awe. even as you were in the between place, your vibration filled the room. i hope you heard and felt all of the love that was flowing towards you, from me, from Detroit, from all of the people you touched.

i need you charity. you inspire me. simultaneously, i hold on in disbelief, and i let go wishing you only ease and rest and goodness on your journey. keep an eye on us, on Detroit, send us some divine sacred fire for the work and the change that is coming.

love you, and miss you
amb