At 67 years old, I'm probably old enough to be your mother (or older Auntie!😆), so I DO kind of get it. These, at least in my old-ass case, are culturally-related, somewhat religious stepping stones for me, an African Descendant of Slaves (ADOS) here in America. I remember a lot of things about being little and watching my grandmother, as well as her 15 kids, raise us back in the day. It explains so much about "from whence we came" after having been brought here against our will. They needed to hold onto what they knew in order to deal with the unknown into which they were dumped. For a lot of us born here, we keep digging to find out as much as we can about who we were before we got here. I love learning about the similarities because it grows a cohesiveness among ua all in these alleged United States.

I hope you keep sharing, so I can keep learning so as to continue closing those gaps! Here's a simple, but I hope, relatable example: On my first trip to The Gambia when I went into the rice fields with some beautiful women who looked just like me and my family on the Island in SC --I finally understood why Black folk, particularly in the South, LOVED them some white rice! And it was so surprising and wonderfully comforting to taste Jollof Rice which was EXACTLY what we call Red Rice in South Carolina! It was yet another, important gap closer for me.