There’s a quote I keep coming back to, one that feels like scripture for those of us who create with intention, who write our truth even when no one’s watching, who build from spirit when the world around us is burning and we are hoping that at some point people will listen.
“All that you touch, you change.
All that you change, changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
God is Change.” — Parable of the Sower
Octavia Butler wrote those words in 1993, but they live like prophecy. Parable of the Sower is a story of collapse, of grit, of fire, and of faith. It follows Lauren Olamina, a young Black girl in a broken world who births a new spiritual path called Earthseed, not in a temple, but on the run, in danger, in grief, in deep knowing.
Earthseed’s core truth is this: God is not a man in the sky. God is not static. God is Change. And if we can shape Change, we can shape God.
That’s manifestation.
That’s rootwork.
That’s creation as resistance, as ritual, as rebirth.
We MUST CREATE. We must build. We must birth our future.
✨ Octavia’s Real Magic Was Her Journal
The wildest part? Octavia Butler herself practiced Earthseed before she ever wrote it.
In her journal, she wrote:
“I will find the way to do this. So be it. See to it.”
“I am a bestselling writer.”
“Every book I write will be a bestseller.”
These weren’t casual wishes. They were spells.
She wrote them in pen, in her own hand, like a woman writing God into form.
And guess what?
They all came true.
🔥 For Black Women Creators (and Black Men too), She’s More Than an Author
She’s an ancestor of imagination.
A mother of worlds.
A blueprint for survival through story.
She didn’t just write fiction, she wrote freedom.
She didn’t just envision the future, she instructed it.
And that’s the path we’re on, too.
🕯️ A Personal Revelation
The year this book was published, 1993, was the year my mother died.
Before that, I was a voracious reader. Books were my companions. Stories were my sacred space.
But when my mother passed, something shifted. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t read. It was like my soul was too loud, too shattered to sit with words. Especially Octavia’s words. Because I KNEW they were true and I knew they were real. I told everyone and noone believed me.
I couldn’t sit with it…until now.
Finding this book again now thirty years later isn’t coincidence. It’s ancestral timing.
It’s spirit returning a seed I wasn’t ready to hold back then.
It’s grief becoming ground for growth.
Back then, I wasn’t missing the message, I was becoming it.
Now, I’m ready to carry what I couldn’t before. Now, I am a woman who writes. Who creates. Who teaches. Who shapes. Knowing that the life, the lives we all had before… is over.
🌱 What Comes Next
I’m calling this a movement of makers and believers, people who create as an act of faith. Reading Parable of the Sower reminded me that creation itself is a form of prayer, a refusal to give up on what’s possible. The stories, the art, the oils, the rituals, they are all part of this living seed we’re tending. Together we’re building a new myth of survival through creation, one breath, one offering at a time.
Because we don’t just make oils.
We don’t just write poems.
We don’t just create art.
We shape the divine with every breath we dare to believe in.
This is Earthseed. This is spellwork. This is ancestral technology.
So be it.
See to it.
With love, root and rhythm,
xo Donna
