Just Like Nana
Dive into the journey of Just Like Nana, a podcast passionately exploring ancestral trauma, generational healing, and the profound ways our family's past shapes our present mental and holistic health. Amie Penny Sayler shares captivating, research-based fiction stories of her grandmothers' lives and features insightful interviews with leading mental health and wellness practitioners.
Learn how to break cycles of trauma passed down through generations, understand family dynamics, and cultivate a regulated nervous system. Ground yourself in your history, honor your ancestors, and find your own path to trauma healing.
New episodes every Friday. Learn more at https://justlikenana.com/
Just Like Nana
Dionne Ford
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Author Dionne Ford, discusses her memoir, Go Back and Get It. She addresses the sacred value of the family archive, what it looks like to cultivate a daily ancestral practice, and the undeniable necessity of reparations to heal the wealth and education gaps woven into American society.
About Dionne Ford
Dionne Ford is author of the memoir ‘Go Back and Get It’, which was a 2024 finalist for the Hurston Wright Foundation Legacy Award and co-editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, LitHub, The Boston Globe, New Jersey Monthly, Rumpus and Ebony among other publications and won awards from the the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. Most recently, she received a 2026 Individual Artist Finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- Reclaim Ownership of Your Family Archive: You do not need to wait for outside authorities or a formal stamp of approval to tell you who you are. Your family history and internal architecture carry a sacred authority that is contained within you.
- Value the Sacredness of Oral Storytelling: Long before documentation existed, human beings preserved their legacies through oral histories. Honoring the stories passed down by a grandparent—exactly as they were told—is a vital, non-negotiable step in intergenerational healing.
- Engage in Embodied Ancestral Connections: Connecting with your lineage can be a deeply visceral, physical experience. Cultivating mindful habits, creating a personal altar, or engaging in ancestral physical arts like Capoeira bridges generation gaps and embodies the strength of those who came before you.
- Commit to a Daily Relational Ritual: Staying connected to your ancestors doesn't have to be a rigid, distant concept. Implementing a simple morning devotional or checking in with your lineage throughout the day keeps their memory alive and treats them like a close, accessible friend.
- Acknowledge the Ripple Effect of Reparations: Reparations are a fully tangible, executable necessity to address systemic wealth gaps, property tax structures, and education inequities. Repairing a historical wrong does not just benefit the harmed party; it actively heals and elevates the justice of the entire society.
Resources
- https://www.aamchealthjustice.org/news/research/reparations
- https://www.ivoryinnovations.org/post/reparations
- https://www.ywcastpaul.org/history-of-the-rondo-neighborhood/
- https://www.ictj.org/reparations
- https://www.tonimorrisonsociety.org/
- https://www.abada.org/capoeira-history/
Connect with Dionne
Website: https://www.dionneford.com/
Connect with the Show
- Website: justlikenana.com
- Share Your Story: If you have a family story or trauma you’re exploring, reach out via our website for a chance to be interviewed.
Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.
A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.
Theme music by Carter Penny.
Race, Inheritance, and the Power of the Family Archive with Dionne Ford
Amie Penny SaylerWelcome to Just Like Nana. This is Amie Penny Sayler, your host. Oh my goodness. I am talking with Dionne Ford today, and just please, please, please run- do not walk- to get her book if you have not read it. She is the author of Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing. Just, oh, whatever the highest accolade you can give. That's what I'm trying to say right now. Dionne is an NEA creative writing fellow and the co-editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants, Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Lithub, New Jersey Monthly Magazine, Rumpus, and Ebony. She's won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the News Women's Club of New York. She lives in New Jersey with her family. Welcome to Just Like Nana, Dionne. So excited for you to be here today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Oh my gosh. So I am somewhere between avid and voracious (we can argue about which one) reader. And so have read a lot of books through my life. And I will tell you, you know how some books just kind of seep inside your bones? That was your book for me. So thank you so much. Thank you. That means so much to me. Thank you for writing it and putting it out in the world. Before we get into your book and everything ancestral, every episode we just start if you feel comfortable sharing a story about a grandma. And it can be any grandma, it can be a favorite memory, it can be something that was powerful, whatever you feel like you want to share. And also what you called her. Sure.
Dionne FordThis is so hard because I had the privilege of knowing so many of my grandmas. So this was tough for me to do one story, but I think I'll tell the story of my grandma Louise. We called her granny. This was my mom's mom, who lived about seven miles from us. So I got to see her a lot. She babysat me during the summer. And this is actually a much later memory. So she lived to be like a hundred and almost two. She died just short of our 102nd birthday. And when she was in her 90s, we went to Hilton Head together on a family vacation. And I noticed she was wearing this red cross badge. And I remembered that I'd seen this on her bathing suit over the years, but I couldn't remember if I knew the story behind it. So I asked her. And we were in the pool at the time, and she had forgotten how to swim, which was devastating. And so she told me the story behind the badge was in her 50s, she decided to go get swimming lessons to learn how to swim. And when I said, Why did you do it then? She said, Because she realized that there were kids that didn't know how to swim in her, she owned a trailer park. And so there were a lot of kids in the trailer park. And I don't know how she became aware, but she became aware that there were kids that did not know how to swim. And she felt like she needed to know how to swim in case these kids needed help. It just was such an interesting circle that she wanted to know how to swim so she could help other people know how to swim. And it was really poignant for me being together on our family vacation in the swimming pool, and she was clearly struggling to remember her swimming in her 90s, but was not coming naturally to her. So while it was on the one hand really sad, it was also beautiful how she even had that inclination, that thought.
Amie Penny SaylerI love that. And I love how she did that in her 50s. Yeah. It wasn't, oh, I'm too old for that, or that's such an easy phrase to use. Totally.
Dionne FordThat was not her way. She in her 50s also went back to school. Her and my granddad had to leave school early because they came from sharecropping families, and that was something that wasn't uncommon to have to leave school early. So she didn't graduate from high school. In her 50s, she decided I'm gonna get that GED. She did. And then she even went on to get some college and got as an associate's degree. And there was a newspaper story about it because my grandparents went back together. They went back to get their GEDs together.
Amie Penny SaylerYeah, I love that. And I don't want to say too much about the book, obviously, but they were entrepreneurs, they were very successful people without that formal education. That's just fantastic. That despite all that success, they decided, I want that.
Dionne FordYeah. It was important to them. Education was important to them. And I said that that story of swimming with my grandma in Hilton Head. We were in Hilton Head because they bought a timeshare. And that that might not seem like a big deal to other people, but for these two people who had been raised in sharecropping families in the South, were not able to finish their education, but then were able to provide this kind of respite for not just their kids, but their kids' kids. And my kids were there with us.
Amie Penny SaylerSo it was just really powerful to me. What an amazing set of grandparents. I also just want to point out I found this story about the swimming, particularly talking about that full circle, because you talk about swimming in your book. And so I love that she went and got lessons and learned how to swim. It just seems it has that little cherry on top of being extra powerful given the history there.
Dionne FordSo oh yeah. Thank you.
Shifting the Narrative of Belonging
Amie Penny SaylerIf you have a memory and if you don't, I get that too. Before you saw the photograph of your great-great-grandmother and you started thinking about researching and writing and all of that, did you have an idea of, oh, there's ancestral trauma and this is what it is? And if you didn't, that's fine. I think a lot of people don't. And then how did that kind of change through the process of getting to know your ancestors better?
Dionne FordI don't think I had that terminology of ancestral trauma, but I definitely understood from a young age that there was slavery in my family from speaking to my grandfather, who also didn't use those words, slavery, but I understood from a conversation with him that there had been enslaved people in our family. And I think a big sort of overarching idea in my mind was this sense that in school this would come up a lot, that we were all immigrants. And while that so many of us know were not indigenous here. Of course, some people, but most of the people that I grew up with were not, we did get here in different ways. And there never seemed to be a space to talk about the way my people had come here. Even other black people who had maybe immigrated more recently. There was still, it's almost felt like more connection for them with immigrating Europeans than with those of us whose ancestors were brought here forcibly. So there just felt like this big disconnect for me that, like I said, I would not have put in this framing of ancestral trauma because I didn't have that language. But there was a deep disconnect that did make me feel unconnected to my own country and my own story. I think as I got older and started to just be drawn to different stories, whether it was fictional stories or like when I got to college and started to be able to choose classes that interested me and started taking African American history and things like that, then I started to see, oh, there is language for this feeling I'm having of disconnection. And even then, I don't think that the books that I was reading put it into the term of ancestral trauma. I feel like I started to learn about that much more recently. But I was seeing my story being conveyed in academics and in literature, reading Tony Morrison or taking these classes. I was starting to see that this history of enslavement in the United States was being discussed and looked at, and I connected with that.
Amie Penny SaylerYeah. If you don't mind, I kind of want to talk about that belonging that you've named. I think we've discussed this just briefly, but I'm writing a book about my grandmas, and it's because I did a DNA test. I saw, oh, I have all these grandmothers named Elizabeth. They just called to me, and my middle name is Elizabeth, which I've never really liked. And it just, it just felt like this connection that I hadn't had before. And I will say for various reasons, and a lot of people sadly experience this. There have been various parts of the family through the years where there's not really a lot of access for me just because of decisions parents or grandparents or whomever made. And so there was that lack of sense of belonging. But I just I do want to acknowledge, so that's why I could sense that in your book and finding that thread of here I am, and here's the sort of imagining a pyramid or an iceberg of okay, you're on top and you're learning. Here's everything underneath that's girding me, and still today on my existence and all of that. But I do want to acknowledge because I don't want to pretend it's the same, there's a disconnect, I think, with the societal belonging that, like you're describing, okay, we're all immigrants, but we're not. And there's a difference in how people came. And so I'm wondering about both pieces of that as you were writing. Did you feel that belonging more with your family? And that not that I think you didn't feel like you belonged, but you got to know them. And then did you feel that belonging more as a person occupying this space in this time? Yes, I there is a lineage here and I belong here, and here's why, and here's my story. Did you experience that?
Dionne FordAbsolutely, I absolutely did. And I actually did feel somewhat disconnected from my own family, from my own, because of my own personal experiences within my family of some trauma, which I did want to explore through then recovering my ancestors' history. It was a similar kind of trauma under different circumstances, obviously. I was never enslaved, but the sexual trauma experienced by women. So I wanted to explore both those things at these different times and under different circumstances. So I did feel a disconnection in my family because of that abuse. And as you've already named, and I think I was trying to talk about as well societally. And over the course of researching my family's history, finding out these stories, I absolutely did begin to experience much more of a sense of some kind of cohesion, I think. And I do think that's because it was very, I guess, healing for me to place my family in place and time, like to put flesh on their bones, to understand something of what they were experiencing, what their what their circumstances might have been like and their trajectory after slavery ended as well. Of course, like it's not like I had personal diaries or anything, but I did get to get a sense of how they lived and some things that happened to them that did make me feel a bit more, yeah, connected to their histories. And did also connect me to my history or my place in this society, in this country, and in like our evolution too. And then so I guess it's been less important, although it would be nice for the African-American experience to be, in my opinion, more broadly acknowledged in our contribution to American history. However, for me personally, to just get to understand my family's own story and understand more about what was happening at certain times, that has been very satisfying for me to understand, yeah, I knew this, but to see my family specific stories has really been enriching and helped me to feel more connected, even if black accomplishments like aren't always acknowledged. It has definitely helped me feel much more connected. And yeah, it was a really great experience for me and definitely did help me feel more connected to, I guess, my place as an American, if that makes sense. Yeah. Not so much what other people think of me, but what I know of my own culture's contribution to the American experience.
Amie Penny SaylerYou're right. Black contributions have not been acknowledged in the way they need to. And I realize that this exact moment in space and time doesn't feel like the moment where that's going to get fixed. But I do like to believe that, and this is either optimistic or foolish, I don't know which one, but that you've yeah, that we will get there. And sometimes we go backwards and sometimes we go forward. And the hope is that we continue to go forward.
Dionne FordYeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Reclaiming the Family Archive
Amie Penny SaylerI loved this, it's a portion of a line where you talk about how you say, My grandmother's held the family archive. And as you were talking, I was realizing that part of what I think you got to experience is that it wasn't always other people explaining your great-grandmother this or your great-grandfather this. It was understanding it through their experience instead of someone else telling you about their experience. And one thing I will say about your great-great-grandma, who I just think is a badass and I love her. I loved that she used the opportunity to have you learn and put out into the world a story about one of her children. And I do see it that way. I feel like that was her mom energy of I want people to know this. And I loved that. And it's obviously a horrible story, but it's things need to be said and heard.
Dionne FordOh, wow, what a beautiful framing of that, actually. I really appreciate that. I didn't really think about it in that way. I felt like I was being charged to share this story. It was horrible, but it needed to be told. Like the entire Equal Justice Initiative's memorial of lynching victims. This is very painful, devastating history, and we need to remember. So that's what I felt like I was being tasked to do. But I love that this idea that Tempe, you know, my great-great-grand grandmother was saying, please do this.
Amie Penny SaylerAnd what I loved about that, my grandmother's held the family archive is this very powerful recognition that we don't need other people to tell us this is your story, this is your experience, this is your place, this is what I do, and this is what you do, and you just need to conform to that. It is within us. Amen. It is within us.
Dionne FordAnd for me, it's something that I need to be encouraged and reminded of all the time. I think I'm very influenced by authority. I want to be validated by some stamp of approval. Give me a certificate, give me a diploma, somebody tell me that I have the right. I think it's very Western, I think it's very American, I just think that is culturally, that's like our thing. You once you've been stamped the expert, then you're allowed to talk. And coming from this experience where all the information I had about my ancestors was because my grandpa told me a story. It was like, I need to honor that. I need to honor what my own family passed down to me and the way in which it was passed down. And of course, there is a place for documentation, etc., but there's also like a sacredness about oral storytelling and giving that its value and its due.
Amie Penny SaylerAnd what an incredible value and do. That's what we've been doing for thousands of years, as humans. Exactly.
Dionne FordExactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Amie Penny SaylerWhen you were talking about sort of that, you know, you need the certificate, you need the stamp of approval. First of all, yes, everything you said, and I think as women too, that is a very much we learned how to be good girls, and good girls have someone else tell them that they're being a good girl. And so they've earned the right to whatever the next step is.
Dionne FordYeah.
Amie Penny SaylerAnd what I love about the your grandparents, and this you talk about this in your book, is they knew who they were, and they knew what their capabilities and strengths were, and they knew how to take care of their family, and they did it. And they didn't wait for anyone to tell them, okay, you have permission to do this. They just did what needed to happen. They were obviously incredibly bright and capable people and didn't let that get dimmed. Thank you.
Dionne FordVery human, flawed, and also strong and doing their best
Embodied Experience and Walking with the Dead
Dionne Fordand doing really remarkable for us. So, yeah. Right.
Amie Penny SaylerDoesn't come from someone else, it comes from you. And kind of that, we all have that inner knowing intuition, our ancestors' blood flows through us. Whatever that is, that component, that piece, it is within us. I love you. You have this part of a line in your book where you say, When you're walking on your hands, you're walking with your dead. And that just jumped out off the page at me. Because it made me think that you were experiencing it as an embodied experience. Am I right about that? How did that work for you?
Dionne FordI think that is true. The further along I got in this research, I didn't want to just be doing this vainly for me. You know what I mean? But to be connected to what would be appropriate in connection with my ancestors. And that came up with the part you were referencing about the very terrible information that I got about a family member and writing about it and then being challenged by someone who was not a family member about whether or not it was okay for me to write about that. And so, as far as this embodiment, I think the further along I got in this research, I did become concerned about how to honor my ancestors and not, and so I began to try to connect with them in the ways that I could. And for me, this was through creating an altar and spending some time in prayer and meditation to be connected to them and hopefully be doing the next right thing through some guidance. And that for me was embodiment, absolutely. Yeah. I think also that thing about when you're walking on your hands and walking with the dead, I think was something I learned about through like Capoeira. And that practice is a very embodied experience. I think, but especially capoeira is a dance, martial art that enslaved people in Brazil created in the 1500s. And music was a big part of it, drumming in particular. And that is a way to call and connect with ancestors. So yeah, definitely I think any way that I could try and be connected to my ancestors, I did consciously try to do that.
Amie Penny SaylerDo you feel that connection still today? Do you feel that has stayed and you're able to call upon that?
Dionne FordYeah, I mean, I do have a specific ancestral practice of connect with them every day, the way some people pray or go to mass and light candles or whatever. I have my own ritual and it is important for me to acknowledge them first thing, you know, before I get started, because they are why I'm here. And I also thank them every day for bringing their story to me and for the gift of this book that hopefully will allow their other descendants to be able to know their story. They're not forgotten. Yeah, my practice, my morning devotional, I call it, is how I stay connected to them. And then I guess if I need to, through the course of the day, sometimes stuff comes up. I feel pretty easy and relaxed about speaking to my ancestors, the way other people might call a friend.
The Crucial Case for Reparations
Amie Penny SaylerI would love to talk about reparations. And I am being very specific. We're talking in the United States of America, so I mean descendants affected by slavery. And is slavery and sharecropping. And I am this is in no way intending to diminish that because that is very specific. And I want to talk about that. And I think while listeners are listening, it does have broader implications. We can think about what reparations mean and how do we, I don't know that we can right wrongs, but we can symbolically acknowledge wrongs and make a gesture that I think has meaning to say that was wrong. Not only are we using words to name that wrong, but here is an offering, if you will, to acknowledge that wrong. I would love to just hear your thoughts on reparations, how we get there, all of it.
Dionne FordYeah, I had the great honor of being on the New Jersey Reparations Council, working with these amazing, bright, accomplished, experienced people who were all looking at this idea of reparations just in terms of New Jersey. So I think reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the United States is super important, long overdue, not a new concept, and completely doable. I think it's really important also to me that the reparations is focused on descendants of enslaved people, but there is also a component I think that's in part important around people who perhaps were not descendants of enslaved people but have experienced the effects of racism. I think that's all important. But yeah, I really do find that it seems like something is always more important than reparations for descendants of enslaved people. Or how can we do that? It's been so long, it would be so much, yada, yada, yada. Well, there is a will, there is a way. And there are many in formulas that have put been put in place that just need to be followed. So it's not out of the scope of possibilities. And also now other countries are beginning to have movement on this. And so if we feel like we're stalled, we can maybe look to some of our fellow countries who are now getting this ball rolling and follow their example. And of course, there are states in our country that have decided, you know what, we're not going to wait for a federal mandate. We're going to start taking action on our own, which is what happened in the sense of this New Jersey Reparations Council. And California has made some great progress. And we definitely looked to their example when we were looking at our own recommendations in our state. And in Illinois, Evanston has done some great work. I think it's, I guess what I want to say is that they're important, they're owed, they're due, they're overdue, and that they're possible, that they're very possible, and that our country just needs to look at all the work that some of us within this country are already doing. And if that isn't enough inspiration, then look to other countries that are already getting this ball rolling. And I think really it's a matter of will, not a matter of way. We have many ways. We just need to commit.
Amie Penny SaylerAbsolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And I am going to put some links in the show notes to some of the reparations that are happening around the world. So wonderful.
Dionne FordYay. Yeah, it was such an honor to be a part of the New Jersey Reparations Task Force. Yeah, council. It was really remarkable, especially to meet so many people and get it just to learn about the work that they were already doing that I didn't know about. Some people were already doing amazing work. And also to get a chance to dive deeper into New Jersey's history of slavery. I don't think people really think about the North. We all had slavery. And New Jersey was like the last state in the Union to ban slavery. So I don't think people think about that. I think people think New Jersey is such a liberal state, and in many ways they are, but New Jersey did not vote for Lincoln twice. So I just think that there are things that would shock people that are important to understand because they did help shape our country.
Amie Penny SaylerYeah. So I'm in Minnesota, and as you were talking, beyond descendants of enslaved people, also the really doctrinal racism, I'll call it, where it was ingrained in the program. So of course, homelending obviously comes to mind. I will also say for Minnesota's history, when the interstate was being built, the interstate in Minnesota divided a black neighborhood. And it was a thriving neighborhood with black-owned businesses. So there's something to be said for reparations for that act.
Dionne FordAbsolutely. And yeah, this is these are all the kinds of situations that the New Jersey Reparations Council was looking at as well. Of course, historically, but also how racism continued to affect black people economically. And that's one of the things that we also show is the wealth gap in our state between black people and white people. It's enormous. So yeah, it's really important work.
Amie Penny SaylerYeah. Same Minnesota. If I don't know if other people think of this or if this is just Minnesota's feeling braggy, but we always think, oh, our education is at the top of the country. And we do typically. And the education gap between white people and people of color is toward the bottom of our country. And part of that is Minnesota pays for much of its education through property taxes.
Dionne FordWelcome to New Jersey. We do the same exact thing. Exactly. Totally. And New Jersey also always ranks among the highest states in education. So yeah, this is an issue.
Amie Penny SaylerThere's still a lot of work to do and a lot to look at. And I think for some people that sounds scary or like they're being attacked personally. And I wish I knew how to say get over yourself. That's not what this is about. This is not actually about you at all. And we can all come together as a community to figure out how do we make this right.
Dionne FordYeah, my experience too, like I think when we acknowledge a wrong and repair it, the benefits reverberate beyond the harmed party. They do have a ripple effect to benefit the entire society. I think people need to look at it that way, but begin by saying it's the right thing to do. So if I want to be in a just society, then I have to contribute justly, whether it's about my personal justice or not. Thank you for that.
Amie Penny SaylerI want to respect your time. I feel like I can ask you 20 more questions, but I won't. Is there anything that we didn't address that you think, oh, we should have talked about this?
Dionne FordNo, oh my gosh. So I'm just so excited. I always love it when people are interested in my book and want to talk to me about it. It's a huge honor. Seriously. I know that so many books are published every year. And that my book was published three years ago, and people continue to reach out to me and find me to discuss it. It's such a huge honor to me and a validation that what I felt that my ancestor's personal story, which is not uncommon but is particular, could be of value, not just to my family, but to anybody who read it. So I really appreciate you reaching out and wanting to talk about it. And that means so much to me. Yeah. And it just feels like a gift on the altar to my ancestors too. So really thank you. Thank you so much.
Amie Penny SaylerYou are welcome. And I love the idea of honoring Tempe because, like I said, she's a badass. So yay! Thank you.
Dionne FordI do feel that way about her. Obviously, I don't know how she was, but there's something about that picture of her and the things that I've been able to find out about her that make me feel like she was a sort of a quiet force. Not unlike her great great granddaughter.
