Yoly Belizaire (she/her) 30

and Ernisha Dorvilus (she/her) 28 

Yoly Belizaire: Every cycle, generation, or reincarnation, it's a little different. It depends on what community you have. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's something to really explore.

Akia Dorsainvil: How are we querying these stories? How are we querying the Orishas? The Orishas and the Lewa, a friend of mine, is doing kind of similar, same, like, essential work through spirituality, where she was specifically looking at what it would look like for queer folks to embody the movement of Shango, because the stories of Shango, where he has had to cross-dress in order for his own survival, so that's the lives that queer people live every day.

Ernisha Dorvilus: That's amazing, because Shango's like a warrior. I had a friend who went to one of Shango's classes, and they were just embodying shapes of life. Like, what does it look like for us to remember these movements, or that wisdom, that ancestral wisdom that should be released from those movements? Because sometimes language is so limited when it comes to the Orisha.  

Akia Dorsainvil: And then also, they still limit the gender expression. Because there still is a colonial lens that is attached to it. And also, depending on where you find your spiritual home, a lot of queer people, at the end of the day, are being rejected from mainstream religions, so they have found homes in African spirituality. But when you find a home that's, like, transphobic, or one that's birth-phobic, or one that still has to do with locking their own participation into blackness, there's a lot there. So, yeah, I still, like I said, my framework still is a basis of Christianity, where when one or more people speak God's name, that's church. 

Yoly Belizaire  Belizaire: You have a selection of faith now.

Akia Dorsainvil: So, I'm really interested to see what does it look like for us in the next few years. How are we anchoring within faith and practice? Because a lot of our actual vision and what's in front of us looks bleak, and we have to dig deeper for vision. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: I think about how originally and patiently we were, we have to do what happens in the house in order to survive. We think about what the issue is in our lives and faith. But, like, being outside of the church, just integrating into our normal everyday life. I was talking about, like, sometimes we drink coffee before and after meetings. We can't separate it. It has to be integrated into our everyday life. 

Akia Dorsainvil: It's strict from us, like, to be openly practicing, which is openly practicing. Folks who are just not trying to lean on just one face of God. There are so many goddesses in everything, if you allow it.

Yoly Belizaire: I think, like, now is the time to kind of carve out, like, the underground for our world that we need to kind of, like, make it through. It's like, now we're, like, carving pots. And I think my system, that collective, reminds me of, like, an underground, like, how we can, like, survive outside of, like, the lens of, like, capitalism, heroism. Like, we have, like, an underground system. You know, there's still an institution to be thinking about that stuff.

So, in some way, when nothing else is there, nothing else is there. That's about the only thing we have. 

Akia Dorsainvil: You don't know your body, you don't know... That's the essence.

Ernisha Dorvilus: And the spirit can't be gone.

Akia Dorsainvil: At all. At all. Even when I'm thinking about my childhood, like, part of that trip for Puerto Rico to me ended up also being, like, the Underground Railroad didn't have to just stop here. It didn't stop in Los Alamos. Like, no, like, we need to always be figuring out how we are escaping back to what is the return to home. Doesn't mean that it has to be in Africa. It's, like, whatever's going to be allowing you to be so affirmed in your environment. So, yeah, I want to do that for Queers folks by looking at, okay, where are we going to be our full selves in the Caribbean, specifically? What islands are allowing us to be a reflection of ourselves? Because we need to escape the Empire. So, you know, there's a lot. There's a lot going on.

Ernisha Dorvilus: We actually have to map it out.

Akia Dorsainvil: There's a lot going on. And to go and see. Everything that someone told me about where not to go in, like, in Puerto Rico, I went anyway. What you call the trenches? Girl, my dad was a drug dealer my entire life. I'm nothing that they know on an island.

I have not been incidentally in my life. So, I'm not afraid of black people. I'm not afraid of the conditions black people live. So, let me go for myself. And I didn't feel, I didn't feel unsafe. You probably did because you're a gringo. But I didn't feel unsafe in this neighborhood. So, I'm not going to let people also do that to Haiti for me either. If I continue, I'm outside.

Yoly Belizaire: Every time I go to Haiti, it's a spiritual experience. Because living in the Empire, you enter into a state of amnesia. And you don't even realize it. We're just here. We're existing. We're surviving. So, as you go to sleep, you touch that ground. There's an awakening that happens. And I'm like, holy shit.

Akia Dorsainvil: 

So, we can start with some questions. Lovely ladies, what are your names? 

Yoly Belizaire: My name is Yoly. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: My name is Ernisha.

Akia Dorsainvil. Don’t be afraid to project. You know, I learned these past few years. Own that throat chakra, babe. Say what needs to be said.

Yoly Belizaire: Age? Age. I'm 30 years old. 30, 30. Yes. That's 94.

Ernisha Dorvilus: Come on, 94. I'm turning 28 in March. Yes, 28. Sorry, guys. What is it? The Saturn return is happening?

Yoly Belizaire: Yeah.

Akia Dorsainvil: It's about to get worse. It's about to get worse. I know. I feel so cozy in my 30. Oh, my.

Yoly Belizaire: I'm so cozy.

Ernisha Dorvilus: I'm so excited. I love it here. I'm so excited.

Yoly Belizaire: Love it here. It's shaky, but once your feet settle on the ground, you're going to be just breathing easier. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Where are you from? 

Yoly Belizaire: I am from South Florida, West Palm Beach. Bird, bird, bird.

Ernisha Dorvilus: I'm from Miami, but I was raised in Homestead. We lived in the city and then we moved into like the farmlands and all the things.

Akia Dorsainvil: Where are your ancestors from? 

Yoly Belizaire: My ancestors are from Haiti. Let me give you a pinpoint. My dad is from Pomago, Haiti. My mom is from Port-au-Prince. So, my dad is from the mountainside, farmer, very rural area. And then my mom is a city girl.

Ernisha Dorvilus: My family is from Hinch, Tomasi, Logan. And just today, we have been doing ancestry research, there's a tribe specifically that we got to hear from. 

Akia Dorsainvil: I love that. So far, I only know that my dad and his family are from St. Mark, on the way to Port-au-Prince. 

Yoly Belizaire: Have you been to Haiti?

Akia Dorsainvil: No, because every year when I'm ready to go, folks bring up some bullshit. But now I'm like, I won't allow y'all to stop me from seeing Haiti. If I'm supposed to die, I'm supposed to die a child. 

Yoly Belizaire: That's exactly what I said. If I'm about to die there, I am not afraid of that.

Ernisha Dorvilus: Are we still moving through fear of death? I'm going next year. I'm like, that's my goal. Yeah.

Akia Dorsainvil: Same. Summer. To be honest, I want to go. I want to take my pilgrimage to the mountains, get my waterfall. I'm trying to go with my mumbo because they go every year, and I'm just always missing out on the plane tickets, it tends to be a little expensive. 

Yoly Belizaire  & Ernisha Dorvilus: We do. We Do. 

Akia Dorsainvil: But you know, we just got to save. 

Akia Dorsainvil: What is your first memory of spirituality? 

Yoly Belizaire: That's a good question. I remember when I was a little girl, and it was time to go to sleep. And I would have to run to my parents' room every night because the things that I would see when it was time to sleep. Spirits and things coming on me. And I'm seeing these things and I'm hearing these visions and I'm like, hmm. At that time, I was socialized by Christianity. So, I was like, oh my God, the demons got me. I need to get my prayer class.

I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to hell. I'm like 10 years old thinking about my salvation. Like, shit. You know what I mean? I'm damned. But now looking back, I'm like, wow. The veil was super thin for me while I was younger to the spirit realm. I remember mystical things and dreams. And so that was my first memory of spirit that's out of body. My first memory is being afraid of it. And thinking that it was evil. And evilness was following me in my sleep.

But now that has changed. 

Yoly Belizaire: What about you?

Ernisha Dorvilus: I'm just thinking about, as a kid, my mom would have these different altars, all these different things, and I used to blow out her candles. I used to be like, what is this? Because at school, I was so conditioned to believe everything was demonic. And my mom would never press me about it. But she's like, “One day you'll understand.” So, like, having these altars and her explain things to me, how she would just be in her prayer and, like, include me even though I was resistant. She was always like, come sit here, just, you know, be in the earshot. And then you can feel like, whatever resonates with you, you can take with you. It was never, like, a hard line. Like, you've got to do this thing.

Akia Dorsainvil: I love that.

Yoly Belizaire: I love that. Always being earshot to music. You know the Sunday morning gospel situation? Like, you got Bob Marley, you got all the different things that my mom would play. The walls and then the halls would just be so filled with all this type of music and rhythm that I couldn't run. I would find myself dancing and doing it everywhere. So, it was like through the music, and my own resistance, and my mom being like, sit here and listen. 

Akia Dorsainvil: What is your religion, or practice, or spirituality base? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: I'm a student of life, babes. Period.

Yoly Belizaire: Same.

Akia Dorsainvil: Everything.

Ernisha Dorvilus: There are so many places I've been. The mosques I've been. The Lakous in nature. Everybody has something to tell me. Something to be taught. Something to be. There's no one thing. At the base, Christianity is a thing. I feel that way. At the base, I'm like, yeah, I can see it. 

Akia Dorsainvil: We love Jesus.  We hate colonialism.

Ernisha Dorvilus: So, it's not one thing. Yeah. I really want to stand on a student of life, because if there is one thing you take from me, I think that's the point of life. 

Akia Dorsainvil: I recently got put onto another meaning of the three wise men.

The three wise men represents what they were bringing to Jesus for the birth, was all the things that he would need for his life. That's the representation. Of the three wise men. They brought everything he would need for his life.

Yoly Belizaire  & Ernisha Dorvilus: Whoa. Whoa.

Akia Dorsainvil: The Bible really does have a lot to tell us. It's up to us now with our informed realities to not let people tell us what the Bible is. We read it for ourselves and interpret it. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: And live the experience.

Yoly Belizaire : I think people try to use it as a tool for oppression. But once you break past that and you're looking at it from a very decolonial lens, you can see there's different downloads in the Bible. Like, when they say, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was God.” That’s like sound and how sound is the vibration of the universe. There is going to be downloads. But I resonate. I feel like I'm a student of life. I think the baseline is Christianity. And then I feel like I've learned a little bit from yoga and Hinduistic practices, and then a little bit of mystical and voodoo practices. Taking in all the things that can inform my personal faith and relationship to spirit. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Yeah, that's the Queering of the religion. I get to be the architect of which I follow.

Yoly Belizaire  & Ernisha Dorvilus: Of which I follow. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Okay, so how do you describe your practice? 

Yoly Belizaire: Smile. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Exactly. Exactly. 

Yoly Belizaire: But you know one thing that I'm realizing is that life is a smile. It is. Because you're met with the same circumstances. And sometimes it feels like a loop, like you're looping.

But in every loop, there's an opportunity to deepen. You know how the smile is getting closer to the center? You can go around and repeat the cycle, but you can actually go deeper ,too. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: And you can give it breadth. The way that it widens. What you're catching and bringing into that. Hell yeah. I resonate with that.

Ernisha Dorvilus: I'm thinking about how the elements play an essential part, incorporating the elements in every way. I feel like nature doesn't lie. That's the spirituality. That's the real church. That's where that comes from. 

Akia & Yoly Belizaire: Yeah, yeah. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: The spiral is in that. 

Who introduced you to your practice?

Yoly Belizaire: My grandmother. But not in the physical ,though. I would dream of her a lot. She would always come and tell me things and affirm me. But like I haven't had a chance to meet her in the physical realm, but I knew something special existed outside of our human body. I was like, I have to tap into what this looks like. So, I feel like it started from her, and then my mom just kind of affirmed after that. So, it was really her who honored me.

Ernisha Dorvilus: Wow. That's powerful for me. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: I think for me, when you're saying that, I definitely think like grief and death has been what like opened the door to me thinking about spirituality. And I would see my mom in my dreams. And there was like a yearning to be with her. Dreams are the way that spirituality kind of like manifests in my life. I would dream and I would have lucid dreams, and I would have all of these spiritual experiences happening. So, I'm like, “Oh my God, if I'd never experienced this grief, I wouldn't unlock this whole world.” In the grief, I was able to find my practice. Honoring God, sometimes it requires a heavy loss. When you feel like, I still need connection with God. I still need to be close to Him. Finding yourself in His presence. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Can you tell me the history of this practice. If you had to break it down to your son or a cousin, like, Yo, this is where our people found God. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: I feel like the first thing that comes to my mind is my birthing story. Because I feel like my mom called me down from somewhere. My sister is like the oldest of six. I'm number six. And my mom was telling me this morning. She was like, your sister wanted a little sister so bad. So, she had a bunch of boys in the family. And my mom was like; I went in my prayer closet. She has a prayer for everything. It was like, “I need a daughter. I want her to have someone. I just don't want her to navigate the world by herself.” She ended up having a dream, ended up pregnant a month later, and found out it was a girl. Even from there, I felt my mom's faith from her mom, like, she called me into it. And then that's where it would come from. 

Yoly Belizaire: That's beautiful. Faith to evidence. For a daughter.

Ernisha Dorvilus: That is because my grandmother was so real. So, like, whatever you want, you can call it. And it's still that. That’s the origin of all of my family lineage; the ability to know that we are that powerful to call things down. That’s where that comes from. It's that practice. 

Yoly Belizaire: I think my practice, the way I define God, is through dance and movement. Since I was a little girl, I've been dancing and doing different things, moving, and I think dance is a vehicle to go to different realms. So, even in ceremonial practices, or even in church, we go somewhere, you know?

Akia Dorsainvil: Exactly. Wake the spirit up.

Yoly Belizaire: I think that's where I find God, in those movements. And I think that the practice is moving my body: in ceremony, day-to-day, going on a walk, dancing. It takes on different shapes. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Who do you consider a teacher, leader, or mentor within your practice? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Nature. I am always going to find nature. We should get close up. I'm outside. I'm in the grass. I'm hugging a tree. I'm sungazing. I'm doing something. Especially by the water.

The water, the womb space, you lock in at that point. Shout out to Plant Medicine as a teacher. Our journey this year has been very, like, how do we co-create? How do we hold these containers? How do we navigate the things? I'm thinking about the people I commune with. A teacher. The people I keep close to me; we're navigating life together and downloading in real time. I get to see how these downloads unfold. How they benefit them and then, ourselves.

Akia Dorsainvil: How has your son taught you about spirituality so far? He's the closest thing to God right now.

Ernisha Dorvilus: That one? That one? King? King has taught me, oh my God, things about myself I didn't know was possible. I didn't know that I could expand so wide. I can go down so deep. He just brings so much dimension and so much texture to my life. Like, when we say patience, he makes me change my posture. I think so deeply about what I say, how I do stuff. Not to hide from him, but to be authentic so I can explain to him why I'm showing up this way. Even if he's little, I still explain to him when I'm having a hard time, when I’m navigating the thing, or I'm feeling like this. He makes me the most authentic and real. That might be my biggest teacher. 

Yoly Belizaire: I echo all of the elements, the medicine. I think some physical teachers in my reality have been, like, Luke G. Noel, who, like, really opened my eyes to Ifa and those practices. And I just have so many funny stories of Babas and, like, running different errands for them.

Ernisha Dorvilus: Shout out to my father.

Yoly Belizaire: Shout out to Luke. And so, [Ernisha Dorvilus] really opened my eyes to, like, Ifa and African ways of being that are decolonial. For me, it is Luke, my cousin, Ernisha Dorvilus, my teachers, Dantra, my sisters. Also, witnessing birth. That has been another big teacher for me. Being a witness to someone dying and witness someone being born, that has shifted my whole world view.

Ernisha Dorvilus:  And I got to add my dad. My dad, my stepfather. I can't remember my father. He is so heavy into church, but he gives you the real. The way he deconstructed the Bible to make it make sense to me. He just brings so much resonance, so much meaning making. Because half the time, I come to him like, “I feel like I'm failing. I feel like I'm going to fail.” But he will say, “The Lord has said…” But he puts it in a way that doesn't contradict moving forward and my real lived experience. He doesn’t use it to oppress me but to affirm me in a sense of, You're human. Shit gonna happen. Things happen. And I feel like I've got to big him up first. He keeps me grounded forever. That's right.

Akia Dorsainvil: Who taught you how to pray?

Yoly Belizaire: My dad. There was this random verse that we would sing. We would recite. And we would sing Precious Lord at the, in Creole. We would sing Precious Lord, like, every night. And then we would recite this verse, Psalms 3 verses 6 right before bed. That was the practice for me, doing this and reciting this every night with my sisters, tired or not. You're sleeping, but we've got to sing the song and recite that verse. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: My Dad. He would be praying. He would go to church. “You want to come to church with me?” I'm like, “I don't know about that.” But he would come and be like, “You want to do something?”  He would be so intentional about incorporating me in bite sizes: “This is what amen means. This is how you do things.” It's a felt sense. You know? 

Akia Dorsainvil: You know what's funny? Like, I learned how to pray. I want to say at school. That’s my earliest memory of, like, learning how to pray.

Yoly Belizaire  & Ernisha Dorvilus: What school?

Akia Dorsainvil: Pre-K. I went to Tiny Titans for Pre-K in Boynton. Yes. It would be our lunch prayer before we ate. We would bless the food. I still kind of recite it today, when I need to get a quick prayer out to bless the food. God is good. God is great. Thank you for the food we ate. Thank you for the verse I sing. Thank you, God, for everything. Amen. What a nice lunch. And I had, like, a good 12 to, like, 20 kids all reciting in unison. Just beautiful.

Yoly Belizaire: I love that.

Akia Dorsainvil: Black folks don't do it every time.

Akia Dorsainvil: How do you feel comfortable and safe to practice or engage in rituals outside of your spiritual home? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: I had to push past that. Yeah. Do I feel safe? I think so. I think I feel safe. I think. I don't know. I feel like me being authentic, and people know who I am, at the root and at the heart, that when I'm able to practice, they know it's not coming from a place of malice. They put comfort in the idea that I'm comfortable and that I'm according to. I haven't been very resistant, except, like, at work, I'm, like, do I want to put this altar up? I feel like I'm called to put this altar up. But I wasn't really resistant to this. 

Yoly Belizaire: Yeah, I think so. I feel like it's safer underground. When we are in closed spaces and you hear deeper layers and deeper places that we can go, versus a different level of public. The level of safety, I think, is different and the level of depth we can go, but I think it's important for it to be public. I think it's important to be able to do stuff like at work and, like, show people, like, African spiritual practices and altar installations. I think it's important. And I think that makes our ancestors proud. Even the ceremony I had for my birthday, we can showcase people full of our heritage. 

Akia Dorsainvil: For the longest, I didn't feel comfortable. I feel like I had to kind of compartmentalize versions of myself for different spaces. But as I've gotten older, and more and more unapologetically not giving a fuck, it's just like, “Yo, babe, like, I am a witch.”

Yes, I do practice fucking voodoo. Yes, I am going to fucking pray and go to church when I fucking feel like it.  And it's all the same. Because the God that I know loves me and blesses me in all of my versions of myself. 

Yoly Belizaire : I breathe life in all of us. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Do you feel comfortable or safe to talk about your practices with your family?

Ernisha Dorvilus: Mmm-hmm. No

 Akia Dorsainvil: I feel that, but do you care?

Ernisha Dorvilus: Why would I, you know what I mean, if they don't understand? 

Yoly Belizaire : But my sisters, they're cool with that, but how do you control it? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: They won't get it. So why waste it, right? I feel like, my family's like, what is she doing today? That's what everyone's like, what is she doing? What is she doing here? She's going in the baths, that type of stuff. I remember one time a brother was like, “Yo, what are you doing?” I said, “Don’t worry about it sweetheart.” I was in the tub for like three hours. It was a full-blown meditation mantra situation, and he's like, “You came out glowing. What happened? “And it really cultivated a good conversation. But I feel relatively safe. I know there's some folks in my family that's a little resistant. They're very deeply in church, and I'm like, “I love that for you.” You know what I am saying. “Send me a word, one or two.” But to your point, I don't care to share, but if you want to know, if you're curious, just ask me, and I'm going to answer honestly. Just tell me. If you won't ask me, you won't get an honest answer. Don't just come on some bullshit. No. You're going to get the answer you're looking for. 

Akia Dorsainvil: So, I come from a family that does believe in practice voodoo, like on my African American side. Therefore, we are full, aware. We don't sweep our feet. If we sweep our feet, we spit on the ground three times. It's a whole thing. My mom, me and her, we get tarot reading all the time. I told her about when my brother had passed, and I went to go see my mambo before. She was very much interested in seeing what she had to say. She let me know that the same mambo that I go to, my dad went to before he passed away. My sister, she's a little bit more conservative, which is funny, but we were raised that way. My mom, I've never been to church with my mom. Which, when I look at my family's history, that is the cycle. My mom reminds me a lot of my great-grandmother. They had a very close relationship. My sister reminds me of my great-aunt who was in North Carolina, who, she had maybe some judgments about the life that my great-grandmother led. She was a woman that is from a very small, country-ass town in Quitman, Georgia. She didn't know how to read or write, and respectability politics, especially in the 50s, 60s, 70s. She didn't understand her. She didn't understand her, and maybe some trauma also at the end of the day afflicted onto her, and then she ran to the church. She ran to the church and found her church mother, and yeah, she never looked back. She left for it, and she's never been back.

My grandmother is the reason why my family has lived in West Palm for so long. She went to University of Florida. She had my mom at UF. My great-grandmother had cancer. She went back to take care of them, but she had plans to come back to West Palm. She came back, and then, yeah, now we're the fourth generation here. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Those people must be serious. 

Akia Dorsainvill: Yeah, but the folks, if they pay close attention to the family cycle, they’ll see that we're doing the same exact thing. It repeats itself.

Akia Dorsainvil: Who's the first practitioner, if not you, in your family? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: My mom's gonna be a lot of my answers. Me and my mom be locked in. My first one, my first everything. That's how you study the Lord. That's how you do this. That's how you do that. She was very adamant. To this day, she's like, “I'm not gonna leave this earth without showing you some shit, because you're gonna be somebody's first touchpoint of spirit.” That's my mom. That's my girl. That's my girl. I love her down.

Yoly Belizaire: Who's the first practitioner? I don't know of anyone that's really initiated in my family, but I think of my aunt Jeannie, she's like the matriarch of my family. She's the very first person to migrate here from Haiti to the US by way of nuns. And she was like, you know what, I need all my niggas with me, and she got all of us here. So, she has an altar, her husband passed away, so every morning she offers some coffee to her altar. She practices her own form of memory work, and I really resonate with that. So, I have my altar, and our lives mimic each other. She goes to yoga; I go to yoga. She's into film photography; I'm into film photography. She has vinyl records too. She's just super effective. She’s, I would say, is the first person that I can think of in my family that really offers coffee to a picture. You know? And my dad's probably like, “What are you doing?” Love her down. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: I'm just thinking about those we love, and as they get older, we're really going to have to hold these things.

Yolly: We're the next elders. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: We're really going to have to hold these things. 

Yoly Belizaire:  Same.I feel like I'm not doing enough to collect, you know? I'm thinking about even the minimum of even cooking. Conjuring, cooking, recipes.

Ernisha Dorvilus:  And the medicines, the herbal medicines. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Do you have a spiritual home? If yes, can you describe why you have chosen this space? If no, what are the challenges preventing you from finding one? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Let's see. I feel like I haven't formally found a spiritual home. I think I'm looking. I feel like I always run into respectability situations. Or like, I got to see how the people in the Lakou room feel. You know what I mean? Like, you can have a name, but if your people don't feel safe, they don't feel represented or there's a lot of patriarchal type shit going on. I'm like, you can't blame me because of my gender. Like, if I'm supposed to be a priestess, you gonna let me do that. I know it sounds good, and the pataki. So, I think I'm looking for someone to honor my values. Or at least align together. And I feel like I'm so non-traditionalistic it can be hard. Honestly, I'm telling you, the ocean. I'll be at the ocean.

All of my friends, what are we doing? Let's be in fellowship together. Because I can't.

I haven't found that house yet. Or that Lakou yet. So, it's like, actually, I got to create it out.

Akia Dorsainvil: I'm happy to see my mambo. It is just so beautiful to watch when the most powerful person in the room is a woman. And everyone is making space for her. And she has nothing, but she has a lot of daughters., her son who runs drummers in the band. But it is really nice to just watch this whole community of people in Delray, Florida. West Palm Beach, Florida, respecting what she has had to offer the community. And really leaning on her. She's had newspaper clippings about her getting close to the tribe. She's a blue queen. She goes to Haiti. That's why I want to go to Haiti with her. But, no, regardless, we will be good. But, yeah, it's very important to be, I think, in a spiritual space that has reverence to the community. Yeah. And she has reverence. There’s people who are Queer. To see queer studs in the midst of, not just passive or just attending. Actually, being a part of the ceremony building. It's leadership. It's assisted. And her whole family, all her daughters are involved. I'm watching all the daughters having kids. Seeing the kids now. It's beautiful. I used to work at this hair salon in Delray and my friend Desiree also introduced me to them. And we just became really locked in. And through that relationship, we ended up finding out that I had the same last name as their younger brother. And then I ended up finding out that their mom owned a botanica. And then I ended up going to the botanica. Then they started introducing me to the Lakou and how they do it and things in the home. I ended up telling my mom. She was telling me, “Yo, your dad used to go. I used to drop him off.” I've never had a relationship with my dad. My dad got deported to Haiti when I was one and died there. We have never talked. But I'm like fully walking in the exact same paths, in the same rooms, everything. And I've never had a conversation with that man. Yeah, no, it guides me a lot.

Akia Dorsainvil: What about you? In terms of a spiritual home? Have you found one? If not, what's preventing you? 

Yoly Belizaire : Some good questions. These are really good questions. Maybe a little bit. 

I live within that world. Exploring, I think my inspiration has been really about creating that. And when I create it, I can include all aspects of myself. None of them get left behind. Creating our own Lakous. Our Lakous have been my spiritual home for the past few years. We've been doing journeys together.

Ernisha Dorvilus: Ceremonies. Bible study.

Yoly Belizaire: Altar installations. Crying. The depths of our soul. So, creating a project and sharing all that. Creating my own spiritual home. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Like I said, when two or more people speak about God, that’s church. What are some practices that make you feel closer to God?

Ernisha Dorvilus: Probably dancing. Yes. 

Akia Dorsainvil: That's a big one. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Dance for real, for real. Something about moving. And just. Being in flow feels like. That alignment is crazy. I think about that. Even sometimes when I'm painting. I feel like. The things that people can't see, I have the power to actually bring it alive and manifest it down. I feel closer to God in that way. Those are like my main tools right now. Nature: sitting outside, sitting on the porch. I’ll pour my little coffee, have my little prayer. I feel closer to God like that. When I'm laughing. When I'm happy. When I'm joyful. I feel like God is the closest. He's like, “Let me commune with you, in a real way.”

Yoly Belizaire: Definitely with dancing, when I'm in the ocean. When I'm in communal space with people, I feel God. I feel good seeing God in other people. Writing, like my spirit consciousness, writing. I just let God come down. Yeah. 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Also , plant medicine. My music. Music, music, music. Yeah. Music rhythm that echoes. When I'm on the dance floor.

Ernisha Dorvilus: Period. Portals. Exactly.

Akia Dorsainvil: When you open.

Yoly Belizaire: When I'm on the dance floor. Right. And the plant medicine is flowing. It's a drink. You know. Not too much. I feel like a portal opens up. Very transcendental. That opens up.

That's what I feel like. There are people who try to talk to me too much when I'm on the dance floor. I'm like. Babe. Hold it. But yeah.

Akia Dorsainvil: If you’re not saying that the DJ is fab, shut up.

 Yoly Belizaire: I'm on the dance floor. That's how I feel God. At Masisi party the other day. 

Akia Dorsainvil: Do you consider your relationship to spirit ancestral?

Ernisha Dorvilus: Yes. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.

Yoly Belizaire: I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.

Akia Dorsainvil: What are your practices around death and grieving? 

Ernisha Dorvilus: Water's always in the mix, for sure. We're always by water; we're always communing with water. A lot of crying, a lot of respective-ass questions we have together. Sometimes we're pulling cards, sometimes we're just doing nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is enough, just to absorb. Absorb and be, you know what I mean? You don't have to force it. Grief shows up so differently. And how to navigate it is not one correct way or one linear way. So, I feel like, honestly, we need to be so open to just whatever happens in the moment. Whatever we feel like, if we gotta scream, if we gotta...we've been going all types of different ways. That’s what I love about us, is that it's just unapologetic. We're in it together, we know we gotta go through this. We just need to move forward into the story. It's so hard to pinpoint one thing.

Yoly Belizaire: It's hard to say one thing, you know what I mean? One of the things that we did, in the ocean, we'd be by each other. And that was beautiful. There is something in the water that unlocks. I think grief is always present. And there are things, cool places, that will unlock our level of it. And I think our journey is to excavate it like, how can I get there? How can I journey to that place? I learned to come back to something new. Hold, just hold this space.

Just hold this space. Not forcing it. 

Akia Dorsainvil: What are your practices around birth?

Ernisha Dorvilus: Hey! When I push my mans out?

Akia Dorsainvil: When you push your mans out. When you push yourself out into the world. Because you're birthing every time you wake up.

Ernisha Dorvilus: The breath is sacred. No, for real. The breathing, the intentionality behind it, the holding, the release, all of it. I don't give enough credit to breathing and my body's function to allow me to do it. Prepping for birth was...there's no credit. There's no credit. You can think you can do everything. You can have the doula, you can have the ball, the bean, the this… or you can even think you have the answers to your life and how you want to move and govern yourself. But life can spiral and you just gotta be able to trust yourself. I think trust is the main thing. You just have to trust what is, and trust that you have what you need to go through this birth in front of you.

Yoly Belizaire: I think with birth, it's like attraction. I've never given birth. But you have to create.

Akia Dorsainvil: You have created. You give birth to creations all the time. 

Yoly Belizaire: I haven't given birth, but yes. Birthing ideas, birthing this life that I live right now, birthing myself. Relationships, all those things. I think the breath, I think contractions. I think contractions are gonna come, ruptures are gonna come. You have to have those contractions using the breath, using the support that you have in your community. It's terrifying. How do you move through that terrifying thing? The birth of a new world, birth of a new idea, birth of a new relationship, birth of a new baby. You have to move through terror. And I think that's the thing, that's our life's homework. How do we move through fear? We have to take trips. 

What are some important dates, holidays, and celebrations to you?

Ernisha Dorvilus: My son's birthday. That's a lucky birthday, because it was a birthday, and I became a month. I would definitely celebrate that. Independence Day. I don’t know. Honestly, I'm trying to live every day like the holidays. There's not one, not for real, because I don't really align with the holidays for real. I do honor my Sundays, though. I try to honor my Sundays. Like, if I have one part, it's at rest. I want to be communal, so if I have to narrow it down, Sunday is the time. Yeah. Decompress, do good things. You know? For me. I love that.

Yoly Belizaire: Yeah, I think holidays for me are, like, the death day and birthday of my loved ones.

I honor both. Fèt Gede, November. We love Fèt Gede. It's our favorite holiday.

Akia Dorsainvil: And Damballa, too. It's good. Because I just love, just like, watching everybody in their power covers.

Yoly Belizaire: Yeah, yes, yes. It's such a good time. The veil is thin. People are entering and embracing the darkness. It's just so beautiful to be there.