the laws beneath the laws
(a reflection)
my husband asked me today
if i’d ever heard this term before.
he said it kept showing up for him,
kept circling back,
kept pulling at his attention —
papal bulls,
colonial law,
the beginnings of a world
we are still living inside.
i told him
i had never heard of it.
not once.
and when i looked it up,
i felt two things at the same time:
grateful to be learning,
and also aware
that this is something
i never knew to seek out.
not because i didn’t want to know,
but because the world teaches us
to survive the harm,
not trace its origins.
and still,
i grieve that something
that shaped so much
of my people’s lives,
my communities,
my history,
was both hidden from me
and never placed in front of me
to question.
i keep thinking about how
a law becomes a belief,
and how a belief becomes a rule,
and how a rule becomes a policy,
and how a policy becomes
“that’s just the way we do things.”
i keep thinking about how
people follow systems
without asking
who created them,
who they benefit,
who they harm,
who gets protected,
who gets erased.
and maybe we do question these things,
some of us,
sometimes,
but not enough of us
at the same time
to truly shift the ground.
i think about the people
who suffer quietly inside these rules —
their pain tucked under politeness,
their isolation hidden behind professionalism,
their harm normalized
because no one asks
why it is happening at all.
and i think about those papal bulls,
those violent declarations
that named some people human
and others
not yet.
that called land empty
when it was full of nations,
memory,
and light.
centuries later,
i can still feel the shape of that thinking
in the rooms i walk into.
rooms where some are heard
and others are invisible,
not because of holiness or worth,
not because of talent or truth,
but because someone decided
whose voice was allowed to matter.
i see it in workplaces
more than anywhere else —
how value becomes selective,
how praise becomes currency,
how silence becomes the cost of survival.
and i ask myself:
where did we learn this?
who taught us that dignity is earned,
that being treated well is conditional,
that being seen is a privilege
and not a right?
i think about leaders
who were raised inside these old doctrines,
even if they’ve never read them.
leaders who inherit
the belief
that hierarchy is natural,
that some people deserve more ease,
and others must earn
every inch
of recognition.
and it makes me wonder
how much of our harm
is not personal at all —
but inherited.
a long shadow
cast by rules and laws
that taught people
to confuse order
with justice.
but i also know this:
we were never meant
to live inside someone else’s decree.
we were never meant
to shrink under systems
that forgot our names.
we deserve
to be seen,
to be heard,
to be held with respect
simply because we exist.
because we are here.
because we carry memory,
lineage,
and the brilliance of those
who survived everything
that was meant to erase them.
and i believe
that every time we question the root,
every time we ask
why this rule?
who benefits?
who is harmed?
we loosen the foundation
of the harm.
we return to ourselves.
we return to each other.
we return to the truth
that no law,
no policy,
no rule,
no leader,
gets to determine
our worth.
we remember that dignity
is not bestowed.
it is inherent.
and when we remember,
the world begins
to shift.
---
With love and honor,
Chriseithia
Founder of Black Self Wellth™
This is sacred work, not open source.
Please honor the heart behind these words.
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