LA: That’s an incredible story.
TR: The story of The Guerrero is a story of a pirate chase. So pirates, they raided other ships and stole Africans and put them on their ship and they were headed to Cuba. This is when the slave trade had been made illegal and so the British were patrolling the waters looking for illegal slave ships. And it’s the HS Nimble. It’s a British naval ship. It spotted The Guerrero. The Guerrero took chase, and The Nimble is chasing after The Guerrero, but The Guerrero wrecks on a reef not far from the coast of Florida, and The Nimble wrecks as well. I mean, this is not funny, but it’s astonishing wrecking events and stories.
LA: Along with Tara’s new interest in history comes an understanding of the healing power of ancestral connection. After the break.
Pivoting slightly back to your story. You’ve talked a lot about the healing power of diving. When you described its sort of meditative qualities, that sounds like that is definitely part of it. But what do you mean when you say the healing power of diving?
TR: Yeah. For me, there’s just something about the water. Water is known as a healing property. It’s a property of renewal.
There’s something about the ocean that also feels feminine to me. I love this idea of mythology. I’m a sci-fi fantasy girl. I love goddesses and gods. And there are all of these African traditions and goddesses that are connected to the water, and I felt this connection to Yemaya, who is the goddess of the ocean, that spoke to me.
I also, like we’ve talked about how I was at a crossroads and I was questioning, who am I in the world? Where do I belong? Where do I as a woman, as a person of African descent and as an American, where do I fit in this world?
LA: It sounds like when you say that, I mean so much of this is wrapped up in ancestry. Had you been interested in your ancestry before or was it being presented by these stories that suddenly got the wheels turning?
TR: Your audience can’t see this, but I am like pursing my lips and shaking my head like, “Girl, no.”
LA: I mean, I suspected the answer based on your complete lack of interest in history before you started doing this, but.
TR: Yeah, this work has completely transformed my connection to my own ancestry, which is something that I didn’t know I needed. Just like I didn’t know I needed the ocean and I didn’t know that this connection meant so much. I’m an Aquarius. I don’t know if anybody follows astrology, but I’m floating in my own world. It’s like Nelly Furtados, I’m Like A bird, just floating. I don’t know where my home is. That’s my life.
I hadn’t thought deeply about my own ancestors. I am descended from enslaved people, so I know that I come from that kind of ancestry. And it felt like too much. I didn’t want to go there. My mother has always, she’s always been interested in her ancestry, and she’s got pictures of her father and mother, her grandfather and mother, and her great-grandfather and mother. So I’ve seen those pictures on the wall forever. Never been curious because again, it just seems like it’s too much, too painful.
