By Adebola — She Who Meets With Wealth
There it is again — people, even family. A lifetime of the empty and the unwell, circling me for affection and attention, not to share it, but to starve me with it. They want the relationship only to see me fall, to make me thank them for the breaking, to keep me near like a captive who still calls it love. They don't understand — God broke me first, and I do not want to be unequally yoked. They fight to remain close, to convert and conform me — but this love, this hate, this perceived authority, these connections—they're not part of God's plan for me. This environment is an opponent to my calling and destiny. Since I was a girl, I've been fighting to leave because I can see these people aren't like me and there is little here for me. They don't want to let me go unless they can break me and make me destitute before I leave.
I. The Name as Destiny
Among the Yoruba people of West Africa, a name is not a label; it is a declaration of purpose. It is a fragment of cosmology worn like a crown. A Yoruba child is not merely called something — she arrives with a name, an orúkọ àmútọ̀runwá, “the name brought from heaven.” To speak that name is to invoke the pattern of her life.
My name is Adebola — she who meets with wealth. In its simplest translation, it implies prosperity. Yet “wealth” in Yoruba philosophy extends far beyond gold or inheritance. It is the abundance of alignment — the meeting of one’s earthly life with one’s divine design. To meet with wealth is to be in rhythm with destiny, to live in concert with one’s Orí, the inner head, the personal divinity that chooses and guides one’s fate.
But what happens when the world refuses to let you meet your own wealth? What happens when every hand that reaches toward you does so not to join in your destiny, but to seize it?
II. The Anatomy of Destiny in Yoruba Thought
In Yoruba cosmology, each soul kneels before Olódùmarè — the Supreme Source — before birth to choose a destiny, known as Àyànmọ́. This destiny is sealed within the individual’s Orí — the “head,” both literal and metaphysical. The Orí is not a metaphor for personality; it is the personal divinity itself, the god of the self. It is said:
“Orí là bá bọ, a kì í bọ òrìṣà kó tó rọ̀jú” —
One must first worship one’s Orí before even the Òrìṣà will respond.
In other words, the first altar is inward. The highest shrine a person can tend is the one housed within their own skull. But Orí is delicate. It is subject to neglect, corruption, and interference. When a person falls out of harmony with their Orí, the Yoruba say Orí burúkú — a “bad head,” a misaligned destiny. And when others act with malice or envy toward someone’s divine path, they may attempt to “turn” or “spoil” that destiny. In contemporary spiritual discourse, this can be likened to “destiny swapping” — the hijacking of one person’s fortune by another through deceit, emotional entanglement, or spiritual manipulation.
III. The Parasitic Hunger: A Modern Expression of Ancient Fear
In modern psychological language, this might be called narcissistic abuse or energetic parasitism — relationships in which one person’s vitality becomes another’s food. In Yoruba metaphysics, it would be described as disalignment of Orí, a corruption of balance through contact with destructive forces — sometimes human, sometimes metaphysical.
To the victim, it feels like this: A lifetime of hollow people orbiting your light, demanding affection, attention, relationship — not out of love, but out of hunger. They need you not to be whole, but to be drained. They need your gratitude for your own diminishment. Their comfort is built from your collapse.
To be Adebola — she who meets with wealth — is to understand that such people smell destiny like blood. They are drawn not to you, but to the Orí that shines above you. They wish to trade your wealth for their lack, to occupy your place in the order of things. This is the ancient nightmare: that one’s destiny could be stolen, one’s divine signature overwritten by hands that do not deserve it.
IV. Spiritual Theft as Psychological Reality
But Yoruba philosophy is not fatalistic. It does not see destiny theft as permanent. The wisdom of Ifá — the divinatory system central to Yoruba thought — insists that what has been disrupted can be realigned through knowledge (ìmọ̀), character (ìwà-pẹ̀lẹ́), and ritual. The person must reestablish harmony with their Orí through prayer, reflection, offering, and the daily practice of integrity.
In secular terms, this is a form of psychological decolonization — reclaiming one’s inner authority after long subjection to exploitation or abuse. Where the modern therapist might speak of boundaries, the Yoruba elder speaks of propitiation: an act of recognition between the self and its divine essence. To honor the Orí is to say, “I belong to myself again.”
V. Naming as Resistance
To reclaim your name is to reclaim your destiny. Adebola becomes not merely a statement of meaning, but a strategy of resistance. To “meet with wealth” in this context is to meet with wholeness — to gather the fragments of power that others tried to scatter. The wealth is sovereignty. The wealth is the right to choose your companions and your peace. The wealth is knowing that your Orí cannot be permanently swapped, only ignored or suppressed. Yoruba tradition offers an antidote to despair: destiny can be obscured but not destroyed. The proverb says,
“Orí rere kì í fọwọ́ kọ́ ni.”
A good destiny never rejects its owner.
Even when you have wandered in exile — emotional, familial, or spiritual — your Orí still remembers you. It waits for your return.
VI. The Cosmology of Survival
So when I say that people have tried to take my wealth, I do not mean only money. I mean my life-force, my peace, my name. I mean that I have stood in rooms where love was another word for bondage, and family another word for possession. I have felt the quiet hands of the spiritually starved reaching for the gold they imagined I carried within me. But I am Adebola. She who meets with wealth. And wealth, in its truest form, is the unbroken contract between my Orí and my God. What they seek cannot be taken; it can only be refused.
VII. Afterlife Legacy Wishes
A. DNA Diamonds or Stones.
They call them alternatives — to cremation, to burial — but to me, they sound like a promise that something beautiful might rise from what’s left behind. My thoughts turned to them after my dealings with the Minnesota Department of Human Services — an experience that made me reconsider everything about what happens after. Not just the body, but the voice, the memory, the trace of a life once lived.
I realized there wasn’t a single person I could trust to hold that conversation with me honestly. No one who would listen without interruption, without suspicion, without the need to rewrite my wishes in their own image. Even in life, my voice was something to be managed, not respected. And so I began to wonder: if they wouldn’t honor me while I was breathing, what would they do with me when I’m gone.
But in 2013, I decided I wanted to be put into stones for my children that could be passed on generationally, because my freedom to be with them while I was alive was stolen in 2003 and never returned. The stones would be tangible items they could hold and feel me holding them. Everything I was doing to get my body back was to gain financial independence, whether through work or self-employment, so that no person or system could abuse me or break my body anymore. Then I could enjoy motherhood and also give my children the foundation for a stable life that my parents did not give me, because my mother’s mother, Dixie Howell, and my father did not prioritize providing foundations for children. That is why you will see that, after my grandmother’s generation (she had parents), on my mother’s side there is generational dysfunction, addiction, and incarceration, and on my father’s side, his children have had difficult lives, except the ones who had their mother with my father. Physical handicap could not withstand that lack of foundation.
The failure of both systemic and familial intervention in my health care and housing stripped me of the freedom to build a stable foundation for my children. We were robbed of security and dignity. I survived only because I was tenacious, relentlessly determined, and remarkably strong—just as the Bible instructed me to be, and as God empowered me to be.
Yet without justice, as Scripture reminds us, “faith without works is dead.” No amount of personal effort could overcome every barrier placed before me. I didn’t need feedback; I needed action—something more than prayer and perseverance, which had already demanded more of me than any human being should have to bear alone.
Since 2013, setting aside funds for DNA cremation diamonds (and memorial trees) has been part of my long-term plan and effort. Having felt trapped my entire life, I could not bear the thought of a traditional burial. However, I would value a funeral for my children’s healing—a chance for them to say goodbye—or even a gravesite they could visit if they wished.
At the same time, I would not want to burden them with the responsibility or emotional weight of maintaining my cremated ashes. They have already carried enough, having been overburdened by my physical handicap—or more accurately, by the systemic barriers that denied me proper treatment and a therapeutic environment, such as access to my own apartment and consistent funding for my medical care long enough to get back up after diagnosis.
The cremation diamonds can serve as both a memorial and a comfort. They carry my essence, travel with my loved ones, and symbolize permanence without the weight of upkeep. That is why this is my chosen legacy for my family.
A. The Eternal Mission and Tree Burial
A. DNA Diamonds or Stones.
They call them alternatives — to cremation, to burial — but to me, they sound like a promise that something beautiful might rise from what’s left behind. My thoughts turned to them after my dealings with the Minnesota Department of Human Services — an experience that made me reconsider everything about what happens after. Not just the body, but the voice, the memory, the trace of a life once lived.
I realized there wasn’t a single person I could trust to hold that conversation with me honestly. No one who would listen without interruption, without suspicion, without the need to rewrite my wishes in their own image. Even in life, my voice was something to be managed, not respected. And so I began to wonder: if they wouldn’t honor me while I was breathing, what would they do with me when I’m gone.
But in 2013, I decided I wanted to be put into stones for my children that could be passed on generationally, because my freedom to be with them while I was alive was stolen in 2003 and never returned. The stones would be tangible items they could hold and feel me holding them. Everything I was doing to get my body back was to gain financial independence, whether through work or self-employment, so that no person or system could abuse me or break my body anymore. Then I could enjoy motherhood and also give my children the foundation for a stable life that my parents did not give me, because my mother’s mother, Dixie Howell, and my father did not prioritize providing foundations for children. That is why you will see that, after my grandmother’s generation (she had parents), on my mother’s side there is generational dysfunction, addiction, and incarceration, and on my father’s side, his children have had difficult lives, except the ones who had their mother with my father. Physical handicap could not withstand that lack of foundation.
The failure of both systemic and familial intervention in my health care and housing stripped me of the freedom to build a stable foundation for my children. We were robbed of security and dignity. I survived only because I was tenacious, relentlessly determined, and remarkably strong—just as the Bible instructed me to be, and as God empowered me to be.
Yet without justice, as Scripture reminds us, “faith without works is dead.” No amount of personal effort could overcome every barrier placed before me. I didn’t need feedback; I needed action—something more than prayer and perseverance, which had already demanded more of me than any human being should have to bear alone.
Since 2013, setting aside funds for DNA cremation diamonds (and memorial trees) has been part of my long-term plan and effort. Having felt trapped my entire life, I could not bear the thought of a traditional burial. However, I would value a funeral for my children’s healing—a chance for them to say goodbye—or even a gravesite they could visit if they wished.
At the same time, I would not want to burden them with the responsibility or emotional weight of maintaining my cremated ashes. They have already carried enough, having been overburdened by my physical handicap—or more accurately, by the systemic barriers that denied me proper treatment and a therapeutic environment, such as access to my own apartment and consistent funding for my medical care long enough to get back up after diagnosis.
The cremation diamonds can serve as both a memorial and a comfort. They carry my essence, travel with my loved ones, and symbolize permanence without the weight of upkeep. That is why this is my chosen legacy for my family.
A. The Eternal Mission and Tree Burial
For me—and for the mission I believe I was given when I came to this planet—to stand for humanity, especially for the West African Yoruba people in the Americas and in Nigeria, and for all vulnerable life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ, I wish for part of my remains to be placed within trees. These trees would be planted in Minnesota and Nigeria, near moving water, where sojourners could rest against their trunks and beneath their shade, feeling the quiet presence of one who listens and empathizes. In this way, I would find honor in the living strength and standing of the tree. Both of these memorial options involve the use of remains, and it may be possible to fulfill them entirely through cremated remains. This is not a task for my children to undertake themselves; rather, it is information to be kept in case, by some great grace, funds become available to them for my after-death arrangements.
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