ON LEAVING ELDERS/TEACHERS

It has been a minute since I posted much, and I am aware. I needed to tend to some personal and family things, and also do some retooling work for my own content creation business. I DO have some exciting things coming down the pike as we round the corner of the first quarter of this 2025 year. Some of y’all have been asking me for certain types of courses, and I always aim to please, so keep a look out for information coming soon!

As the title says, I wanted to reflect a bit on my overall experiences having to take leave of certain elders or teachers. Barring circumstances like violence or abuse, it is hard to leave most relationships in life, even when we know in our hearts it is time to. If you are a person who values loyalty in your relationships like I do, this makes it even harder.

Sometimes, though, what has tripped me up for a good long while is the confusion of how it got to the point where it wasn’t working anymore. I think this is for different reasons, but for me when the negativity or toxicity is more of a subtle, slow-burn sort of thing, it can be really hard to see when you are still in relationship. Case in point: I went to Carrie Leitch, who I respect and regard deeply as a woman of faith and diviner, and asked for advice and guidance about an ended mentor relationship. There were things about the way things ended that was sudden, confusing and painful. There were also weird blockages in how things went down that I also did not understand. Of course, it is also really hard to see clearly when our own grief is involved.

What Carrie helped me to see was that the blocks and issues were not because of something I had done (which is what the toxic person kept saying), but in fact an intervention of my ancestral spirits to END that relationship before it deepened and the toxicity became more enshrined in my life and spiritual development. She was, in essence, saying that the relationship had run its course and for me to continue to grow, it needed to end.

Now, I trust her 100%. But it is still not easy to hear this. It is not easy to go from the creature comfort of a long-term relationship that has brought some blessing into your life to striking out solo into the great unknown of life. This is especially the case with ATR stuff, which requires mentorship in the way the tradition functions.

I did make the choice to step away, and when I did, What I found after I did, though, was that my spirits were better able to guide and teach me. I found that there were things that I had to unlearn in my current practice, because they were mixing things that should not be mixed. I found out that there are basic things I should know as a Santero that were not in place.

I also began to discover other people like me who teach and are generous with their time, who will help me to fix what isn’t quite right. I also found other people who too endured religious trauma and are working their way through it, and did not give up their faith. I discovered that I was not as alone with this as I felt like I was. Perhaps that is my important word in writing this. You are not alone either. It is okay to leave. There are others who choose temporary exile over captivity. The exile does not last forever. It is just long enough to lick our wounds, find our True North, and hopefully engage healthier community.

I also discovered deeper compassion and gratitude. Even the teachers who have wounded me, hurt me, or lacked capacity for self-reflection. They continue to teach me long after the relationship ends. What I mean by that is sometimes the teaching is about what not to do based on those negative experiences, which for me means reflecting on them and picking them apart to see everyone’s role in creating the breakdown. Most times when I do this, I can see my own participation. This reflection helps me then try to minimize or avoid doing the same in kind when I bear the responsibility for someone’s development. For this, I will always be grateful to all of my teachers past and present.

In close, be gentle with yourself. Those of us with a strong sense of loyalty, responsibility or affection for our mentors tend to be hard on ourselves, or even internalize a sense of failure that is not helpful. I remember discussing and teaching about the role of white shame in antiracism work. A lot of progressive white people I served in that work would often express this sense of shame about racism and all its historic and contemporary manifestations. But as a facilitator it was my job to gently move those people from the paralyzing shame to an active place of transmuting that shame into how can their white privilege be used to undermine and dismantle racist structures? When people knew they were safe, amazing conversations would result. You would see a vitality rise in their room. A palpable sense of hope as people formed community together and took action in their community.

I believe this kind of work is important here too. There is a place and space for those of us working through things like religious trauma to form community, prioritize ethics, and figure out healthier ways to practice our traditions. But no one person is going to have the panacea. The cure is the collective. This is the kind of future that gives me hope, even in the midst of pain.