Sally Hemings

One woman, who's life mattered

Everything is perspective.

I have never been one for history. I’ve viewed it mostly as written by old men. Their erroneous perspectives run deep and wide. But so do mine. Everything is what you make it, and that includes the telling of stories which is basically what history is: stories.

I found myself at Monticello recently, the home and burial site of Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president of the United States. We had only an hour in our schedule so we chose to walk the gardens, not go inside the house.

As I think about my brief time there I realize I never payed much attention to history because of my own perspective. I was ignorant to how it pertained to me. I always viewed the past as dead, but what I found at Monticello was very much alive.

Around the edges of the house were the quarters of the “enslaved people.” I’m sure over recent years, the caretakers of Monticello have been twisted into pretzels trying to tell a story about Thomas Jefferson that doesn’t make him look like a complete asshole. Their information boards do cartwheels to be impossibly politically correct but do succeed in a respectful telling.

I read the brief story of Sally Hemings and it brought me to tears. She was Jefferson’s “concubine” from a very young age and had at least five of his children. Four survived. Everyone knows Martha Jefferson, but how many people know of Sally Hemings?

Jefferson owned 607 people, freed only seven, all of which were part of the Hemings family, four being his children by Sally. The story is extraordinary and sad and a testament to her ability to command power despite the ultimate outwardly expression of being powerless. She negotiated the freedom of her unborn children with one of the most powerful men of the time and found a way out for them.

This link contains a retelling written by her son Madison and other historians who have pieced together her life.

Sally Hemings

Reading her story, I took a moment to feel into her energy. Her energy as a woman, as a mother, as another human that has traveled along on this planet.

We can all do that, connect to the energy of someone else, anywhere in the world or someone from another era. It takes awareness, focus and trust in the information you receive.

This connection has various origins. Most think of the mystical, which is true, but now science is validating it through the study of morphogenetic fields (m-fields). What was once woo-woo is quickly become accepted by mainstream science. It is through this field I connected with Sally because I felt her story needed to be…seen and felt for just a moment by someone in another time, in another plane of existence: me.

That day at Monticello gave me a new perspective on history. I have a new understanding of those that came before us, their stories, their struggles. And how we are all connected, no matter the time or space between us.

On my mother’s deathbed, she was worried she would be forgotten. When faced with our own mortality, we are all worried we’ll be forgotten. And we will be, at some point in time, a hundred years from now, not even our great grandchildren will truly remember us. We may be a picture in a book or on a digital device but we wont be REMEMBERED in the minds of man.

But we will be remembered and eternally alive in the mind of God, in the M-field. Your life, your thoughts, your dreams are all recorded for eternity. I hope you take comfort in that. I do. And I promise to make my time here count.