The Archive Is in Our Skin: A 28-Day Ancestral Education for Becoming

In my favorite Mariah Carey voice: “It is timeeeeee.”

Happy Black History Month, y’all. 🖤✨

I want to invite you into something that feels like both a ritual and a return. Understanding where we come from shapes who we are. Our ancestors left behind more than stories—they passed down knowledge, values, survival strategies, beauty practices, and ways of loving that still live in us. And not just in a poetic way. I mean… in a literal way.

Because the truth is: we are taught to go looking for history somewhere else.In archives with white gloves and locked doors and rules about what counts and what doesn’t. We’re taught that knowledge is something you have to travel to. Something you have to be granted access to. Something that lives outside of your body and outside of your life. But Black people have always known—in that deep knowing that doesn’t need permission or proof—that this is not true.

The archive is in our skin.

It is in the way our shoulders tighten when we walk into certain rooms. It is in the way our hips loosen when music comes on without asking. It is in the way we can tell danger before it speaks and love before it names itself. It is in our scars and stretch marks and the lines on our faces that came from laughing too hard, crying too long, and holding it together when nobody came to help.

It is in the way we cook without recipes, pray without scripts, teach without classrooms, and survive without applause.

And during Black History Month, I want us to honor that kind of knowing—the kind you can’t always cite in MLA format because it was never meant to be trapped in a textbook.

This is why I’m launching The Archive Is in Our Skin: A 28-Day Ancestral Education for Becoming—a month-long series for reflection, remembering, and coming back home to ourselves.

Why this series belongs at Blyssom by Shapel

Blyssom by Shapel has never been “just skincare.”

Blyssom is skin-care—care as a verb. Care as a ritual. Care as resistance. Care as reverence.Our ancestors lived in a world that tried to turn Black bodies into labor, spectacle, property, and problems. And still—somehow—Black folks found ways to practice tenderness:

• Lotion became prayer.

• Oils became remembrance.

• Bath water became a small, private liberation.

• Fragrance became a boundary.

• A clean face became a return to self.

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So when I say “the archive is in our skin,” I mean it in a Blyssom way too: our skin holds memory, yes—but it also holds inheritance. It carries what we’ve been through and what we’ve learned. It remembers what soothed us. What harmed us. What helped us survive. This series is an invitation to slow down enough to listen to what your body already knows.

Why ancestral wisdom matters today

Modern life will have you busy, distracted, and moving through your days like you’re sprinting through a tunnel. And I’m not saying this from some mountaintop. I’m living it too—work, parenting, deadlines, dishes, love, grief, bills, dreams, the whole thing. Life is filled with distractions and daily tasks that can consistently capture our attention.

But ancestral wisdom is not abstract. It’s practical. It’s real-world guidance for living with purpose, resilience, and community.

When we engage our cultural roots, we can:

• understand family traditions and what they were really meant to protect

• recognize inherited strengths and challenges (the gifts and the patterns)

• build a clearer sense of identity that can’t be shaken by outside opinion

• strengthen empathy for people with different histories and lineages

• practice self-care with meaning—not as a trend, but as tradition

What does it mean to say “the archive is in our skin”?

To say the archive is in our skin is to say our bodies are not only sites of harm or labor or survival.

They are sites of knowing.

• The scar is not only a wound—it is a record.

• Pleasure is not extra—it is necessary.

• Anger is not a problem—it is a message.

• Softness is not weakness—it is evidence.

  
  

Evidence that we made it through something that was meant to break us completely—and didn’t.

This series is an attempt to listen to that evidence.To hear what our bodies have been carrying all along.It is an ancestral education because so much of what we know did not come from institutions—it came from people who loved us and taught us how to live:

Grandmothers. Aunties. Elders. Children. Neighbors. The dead. The living. The almost-forgotten.

What the 28-Day Ancestral Education involves

This is a structured journey, but not a rigid one.

Each day offers a small prompt—something you can do in 15–20 minutes. It’s designed to be manageable, meaningful, and personal. You’ll explore your heritage through story, ritual, memory work, reflection, and Blyssom-style embodiment.

Here are sample daily themes:

Day 1: Mapping Your Lineage

Gather names, dates, and stories from relatives (blood + chosen family). Build a foundation for your becoming.

Day 7: Exploring Cultural Traditions

Research customs, holidays, or rituals connected to your people. Bring one small tradition into your day.

Day 14: Listening to Ancestral Stories

Record or write down a story passed down by an elder. Reflect on what it taught you about love, survival, and community.

Day 21: Connecting Through Food

Prepare a dish tied to your heritage. Food carries history—sometimes more honestly than language does.

Day 28: Reflecting on Your Journey

Write what changed. What you remembered. What you’re choosing to carry forward.

Each activity encourages active participation and reflection—because this isn’t about learning “facts,” it’s about reclaiming connection.

Practical tips to make this work in real life

This is not meant to stress you out. It’s meant to bring you back to yourself.

Here’s how to keep it grounded:

• Set aside daily time (even 10 minutes counts)

• Keep a journal for discoveries, feelings, names, memories

• Reach out to family—texts and voice notes count as “research”

• Use multiple sources—oral history, books, archives,-- your body

• Be patient and open—some truths might sting before they heal

And yes: sometimes your “ancestral practice” will be you doing this with a bonnet on, the kids loud, and dishes in the sink. That still counts. That might be the most honest version.

The role of storytelling in ancestral education

Stories are the threads that weave the past into the present.

They carry lessons, values, warnings, humor, grief, and love—things textbooks can’t hold without flattening them.

Listening to and sharing ancestral stories helps us:

• preserve cultural knowledge

• understand historical context

• feel connected to those who came before us

• recognize patterns we want to keep (and ones we’re ready to end)

Try recording an elder telling a story. Or write your version of a family legend. Or tell the story you wish someone had told you.

Ancestral education is what happens when:

• a grandmother teaches you to rest before you collapse

• a mother teaches you to survive without disappearing

• an elder teaches you to tell the truth even when your voice shakes

• a child teaches you how to begin again because they are always beginning again

It is not linear. It loops. It repeats. It pauses. It returns.

And it always asks the same question in a thousand different ways:

Who are you becoming in relationship to what you’ve inherited?

Beyond February: how to integrate ancestral wisdom into daily life

The goal isn’t to “finish” ancestry like a project. The goal is to live in relationship with it.

After the 28 days, you can keep this alive through small practices like:

• celebrating cultural holidays with intention

• practicing traditional crafts or arts

• learning ancestral languages or phrases

• using ethical teachings from your heritage in your decisions

• turning skincare into a daily ritual of reverence

Because becoming is ongoing.

Black life is not finished. We are not done.We are not just trauma, not just history, not just survival stories.

We are still shaping ourselves.Still learning how to love without fear.How to build without burning out.How to rest without guilt.How to dream without apology.

We are becoming mothers, lovers, scholars, healers, builders, elders, children again.

We are becoming people who can hold grief and joy in the same breath.We are becoming people who refuse to pass down everything that hurt us.We are becoming people who choose softness on purpose.

Resources to support your journey

If you want extra tools, here are a few starting points:

• genealogy platforms like Ancestry or FamilySearch

• local archives and libraries (including Black history collections)

• cultural centers and museums with community programming

• books and documentaries connected to your specific lineage

• community groups focused on cultural preservation

Use what serves you. Leave what doesn’t. This is your journey.

A final word

So this 28-day series is not about mastering Black history.It is about remembering ourselves inside of it. Each post is a small offering.Each offering is a lesson.Each lesson is a ritual.Each ritual is a return. Read it slowly. Or skip around.Read it with music on or candles lit or kids climbing on you.Read it in the morning before the world asks too much.Read it at night when you need to remember you’re more than what today demanded. There is no right way to hold this.

Just know this:

The archive was never lost.It was waiting in your skin.

And maybe, through these days together, you’ll feel it waking up.