Pray Eat Slay

I spent the day standing on ground that once held unimaginable suffering at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. What was meant to be a Holistic Health and Fitness training turned into something much heavier than I think anyone could have prepared me for.

At first, I couldn’t understand why we were there.

Why would Soldiers be brought to a place where human beings were dehumanized, tortured, and killed? Why were we standing where roll calls were conducted by SS officers, knowing that for many, those moments led to death?

And then something shifted.

As an African American woman, I couldn’t separate what I was seeing from what I already carry. The more I walked, the more I realized this experience felt like what it would be like to walk through a slave plantation.

Not in comparison of suffering. Not in competition of pain. But in recognition.

Recognition of systems built on cruelty.

Recognition of people being stripped of their humanity.

Recognition that history, no matter where it happens, has patterns we cannot ignore.

It made me think about home.

When I purchased my house in Richmond Hill, Georgia, there was one thing I knew without hesitation I would never live in a community with the word “plantation” attached to it. I don’t care how beautiful the homes are. I don’t care how polished the marketing sounds.

Because names carry memory.

Land carries history.

And I refuse to build my peace on top of someone else’s suffering.

Walking through that camp forced me to confront something deeper than history. It made me think about choice.

The choice to remember.

The choice to acknowledge.

And the choice to not normalize what should never feel normal.

I thought about my daughter too.

She told me she didn’t want to go on a field trip to this very place. At the time, it seemed like a simple decision. Now, I understand it differently.

Sometimes, protecting your peace is its own form of awareness.

This experience didn’t leave me inspired.

It didn’t leave me motivated.

It left me unsettled.

And maybe that’s the point.

Because some places aren’t meant to teach you comfortably.

Some places are meant to remind you what happens when humanity is ignored.

And some things, no matter how much time passes, should never feel normal.