Reclaiming My Voice: A Journey Back to Wholeness

I keep telling my co-workers that I’m going to facilitate an entire class in Jamaican Patois. Every time I stand up in front of the class, I forget and naturally fall into my NYC accent. I can’t help it. My current voice has become my default.

Here is why: I was horribly teased in elementary school about my accent. So much so that I wished I could take it out of my mouth and throw it in the trash.

That is where it all begins—my dissociation from my authentic self. I pushed it down so much that I have to “force it” now when I want to use it.

Now, it sounds so strange that my mom would say, “Oh stop it. It sounds horrible when you try to talk patois.”

It sounds horrible when I try to resurrect who I am?

That is quite discouraging, isn’t it. But I will. I will facilitate a class in my Jamaican Patois. It will be dynamic and the audience will love it.

The Weight of Being “Different”

Most people may think, “Being Jamaican is cool!” But when I was growing up, a fresh immigrant dropped in the pool of American culture, it was not cool.

I was called an African Booty Scratcher and maybe other names that I chose not to remember.

I look back thinking, maybe I wasn’t like the Jamaica they saw on TV. The nice “browning” mixed with Indian. I was the dark-skinned Jamaican girl from Linstead, Saint Catherine, a country girl. We get the brunt of the injury, you know. Because colorism is real. It runs in our families like a poison we can’t shake.

So I learned to survive but not by becoming invisible. For me, it seemed like I talked more, I became more determined to take up space. Don’t get me wrong, I did swallow my words and reshaping my tongue, erasing the parts of me that made others uncomfortable. The accent went first. Then the way I expressed my joy. The stories I told. Piece by piece, I changed myself to become more palatable.

Why This Matters for Holistic Wellness

We talk about holistic wellness as if it’s just about green smoothies and meditation apps. But true wellness requires us to be whole—and we cannot be whole when parts of ourselves are buried in shame.

When I suppressed my patois, I wasn’t just changing an accent. I was severing myself from my heritage, my family’s stories, my grandmother’s laughter, the rhythm of my first language. I was learning that to be accepted, I had to be less Jamaican, less dark, less country, less me.

How many of us have done this? Straightened our hair, anglicized our names, softened our “loud” personalities, dimmed our light to fit into spaces that were never designed for us? How many of us carry the double wound of being rejected by the dominant culture and then being told by our own families that our attempts to reconnect are “horrible”?

Holistic wellness calls us to examine these fractures. To ask: What did I leave behind to survive? And more importantly: What do I need to reclaim to truly thrive?

The Poison and the Antidote

Colorism runs through our communities like poison, yes. But here’s what I’m learning: the antidote isn’t just acknowledging the poison—it’s in the act of reclamation itself.

Every time I practice my patois, stumbling over words that should come naturally but don’t anymore, I’m doing the work of authenticity. I’m saying that the dark-skinned country girl from Linstead deserves to take up space. To be heard. To be celebrated.

My journey back to patois is not about perfection. It’s about permission—permission to sound “strange,” to stumble, to be in-between. It’s about understanding that the path to wholeness sometimes means becoming a student of yourself again, even when your own mother says you sound horrible.

Especially then.

Because maybe what sounds “horrible” to ears trained by respectability politics and internalized shame actually sounds like freedom. Like truth. Like coming home.

The Promise

When I finally stand in front of that class and let my patois flow—imperfect, resurrected, mine—I won’t just be teaching a lesson.

I’ll be embodying one: that wellness is not just about adding healthy practices, but about courageously reclaiming the pieces of ourselves we once threw away.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be another dark-skinned country girl in that audience who needs to see that it’s possible. That you can go back for the parts of yourself you left behind. That wholeness is worth the awkwardness, the discouragement, the stumbling.

That she is worth it.

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿

Nyoka Samuels is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-raised nurse educator, wellness rebel, and author of 7 Dimensions of Wellness: Breaking Free from Modern Medicine to Honor the Whole You. She’s an ɔkɔmfoɔ (traditional priest) and holds multiple nursing degrees.

After nearly 20 years in healthcare—and a mental health crisis at 19 that changed everything—Nyoka founded 7 Healing Waters LLC, where science meets spirit and cultural wisdom flows freely. She’s a graduate of Dr. Uché Blackstock’s Advancing Health Equity Champions Program and Luvvie Ajayi’s Book Academy.

When she’s not writing you’ll find her podcasting on AuthenTEA-cally Nyoka, planning international wellness retreats, or running barefoot through her garden with a cup of herbal tea—or maybe a second cup of coffee, because holistic health means listening to what your spirit needs today.

Hip hop and reggae raised her. Pregnancy transformed her. Burnout nearly broke her. But ancestral wisdom rebuilt her.

Connect with Nyoka at https://calendly.com/7hwaters/testing-the-waters  or follow her journey on Instagram @holistic7hw or LinkedIn @Nyoka Samuels.