In this garden of hope, we pause to honor Juneteenth — a day long delayed, and yet still unfolding.

June 19, 1865 marks the date when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the end of slavery — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Freedom was promised. But it wasn’t delivered… not right away. That delay is a wound. But it is also a mirror.

Because in the journey of healing, we learn something important:

Freedom does not always arrive on schedule.

Sometimes it creeps in like a sunrise.

Sometimes it moves through breath, through rhythm, through rest.

In Hope Garden, we don’t just celebrate arrival.

We honor the journey.

The sacred waiting.

The slow blooming of liberation.

My Body Was Late Too

I didn’t always feel free in this body. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, the fear pressed against me like a second skin. My thoughts shrank. My space tightened. My time felt… stolen.

And yet, even then, a seed remained.

It came in the form of movement — ancestral, spiritual, alive.

I returned to the dances I knew as a child, the ones whispered to me through the feet of my foremothers.

I heard Einstein’s voice in my healing:

“Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think.”

I began to think in rhythm.

I began to breathe with the earth again.

And I made a sacred vow:

If I live, I will not rush through life again. I will live each step, each sway, as an offering.

Juneteenth in the Garden

So yes — today, we celebrate Juneteenth.

But we also mourn the delay.

We hold both the bloom and the buried root.

We remember that healing — like justice — is not a line.

It is a spiral.

It is ritual.

It is the holy movement of a people who choose joy… anyway.

In this garden, we know:

• Freedom can feel fragile.
• Growth can be uneven.
• But faith, when rooted, always finds the sun.

A Breath for Today

Wherever you are, pause.

Place your feet gently on the ground.

Take a deep, kind breath.

Feel the earth hold you.

Now move — even the smallest movement. A shoulder. A hum. A breath stretched wide.

Let it be your Juneteenth.

Your body is the garden.

Your rhythm is the prayer.

Your freedom is blooming.

#JuneteenthInTheGarden #SlowFreedom #HopeBloomsHere