What We Choose to Carry Forward

Returning to my grandmother, Alice Birago Dapaah, after nearly twenty years apart. Ghana, 2022.

I have been thinking about what happens after we return.

Throughout September, I have been thinking about returning in different ways—returning to ourselves, to familiar practices, to things we once considered ordinary, and to parts of our lives that time and distance allow us to see differently. But returning cannot be the whole story. Eventually, we have to ask ourselves what we want to take with us as we move forward. That question feels especially personal to me.

What We Carry With Us

There are things we inherit without ever realizing they are being handed to us.

Not only possessions, but ways of doing things. Ways of caring for people. Traditions. Recipes. Language. Faith. Stories. Expectations. Even the small habits we pick up simply from watching the people who raised us.

When we are young, we don't necessarily think of these things as an inheritance.

They are simply life.

It is often much later that we begin to recognize where they came from.

And with that recognition comes another question:

What do I want to carry forward?

I don't believe everything from the past needs to be preserved simply because it came before us.

Some things deserve to be kept.

Some deserve to be questioned.

Some deserve to change.

And some things we may decide not to carry at all.

Perhaps growing into ourselves means learning the difference.

Returning to Someone

When I returned to Ghana in 2022, the trip held more than one purpose. I traveled to Tamale because I wanted to experience and understand shea butter production more closely. That journey would eventually influence the way I thought about MAAGO and what I wanted the brand to represent. But there was another return happening at the same time. I was going to see my grandmother.

Her name was Alice Birago Dapaah.

My name is Alice Birago Dapaah, too.

I had not seen her since I left Ghana in 2003. Nearly twenty years had passed.

There is something difficult to explain about seeing someone again after that much time. You recognize them, of course, but you are also meeting all the years that have passed between you.

I had changed.

She had aged.

Life had happened to both of us.

And yet, she was still my grandmother, and I was still the granddaughter who carried her name.

After that trip, I returned to Ghana every year to spend time with her.

I didn't know how many more of those visits we would have. I only knew that going back mattered.

Time with my grandmother, Alice Birago Dapaah, during my return to Ghana in 2022.

She passed away in June 2024.

Now, when I think about returning and what we carry forward, I think about her.

More Than a Name

I have carried my grandmother's name my entire life.

Alice Birago Dapaah.

Where I come from, among the Asante, there is meaning attached to naming a child. Who you name a child after matters. The name you give them matters.

I grew up understanding that a name was not simply something chosen because it sounded beautiful. To name a child after someone could also be a way of honoring that person and, in some ways, connecting the child to the person whose name they would carry.

And a name is one of the few things we are given at the beginning of our lives that can remain with us for the rest of it.

I did not choose Alice Birago Dapaah.

It was given to me.

But I have carried it everywhere.

Alice Birago Dapaah and Alice Birago Dapaah. Grandmother and granddaughter, namesakes.

From Kumasi, where I was born and raised, to the United States. Through every version of myself I have become. And eventually, after nearly twenty years away, I carried that name back to Ghana and sat beside the woman who had carried it before me.

There is something about that I understand differently now.

When I was younger, being named after my grandmother was simply part of who I was. Today, especially after losing her, I think more deeply about what it means to carry someone's name.

Because what we carry from the people who came before us extends far beyond a name.

We carry stories.

We carry expressions and mannerisms.

We carry things we were taught intentionally and things we absorbed simply by being around them.

Sometimes we recognize pieces of them in ourselves long after they are gone.

And then there are the things we consciously choose to keep.

As I grow older, I understand that what is given to us and what we choose to carry are not always the same thing.

We get to decide what still holds meaning.

What deserves to continue.

And what we want to carry forward in our own way.

What Stays With Us

I have come to understand that carrying something forward doesn't mean keeping it exactly as it was

Our lives change.

We move. We grow. We experience things differently from the people who came before us.

And perhaps that is okay.

The stories, values, traditions, and ways of caring that stay with us may take on different forms in our own lives. We may understand them differently now than we did when we were younger.

What matters to me is not recreating the past.

It is being able to look back, recognize what still holds meaning, and make room for it in the life I am living now.

Some things will change along the way.

But perhaps the things that truly matter don't have to remain the same in order to remain with us.

What We Choose to Carry

As September and The Ritual of Returning come to a close, I find myself thinking less about going back and more about what we take with us when we move forward.

Some things are given to us before we are old enough to understand their meaning.

A name was given to me.

So were stories, traditions, ways of caring, and ways of understanding where I come from.

I did not choose those beginnings.

But as an adult, I get to decide what they mean to me and how I will carry them forward.

Maybe that is true for all of us.

We inherit so much before we ever have the language to call it an inheritance. Then life allows us to look again—to question some things, appreciate others more deeply, and decide what deserves a place in the lives we are creating.

For me, returning to Ghana gave me that opportunity.

It gave me time with my grandmother.

Our last photograph together. Ghana, January 2024.

It allowed me to experience parts of home through the eyes of the woman I had become rather than only through the memories of the girl who left. And it reminded me that returning does not require us to remain where we began. We can return, gather what still holds meaning, and continue forward.

So perhaps the question isn't only, Where do I come from?

Perhaps it is also:

What from where I come from do I want to carry with me?

I know one thing I will always carry.

My name.

My father gave me the name Maame, meaning mother, in reference to his mother—my grandmother, Birago.

When my brother was little, Birago was difficult for him to pronounce. He started calling me Ago. As he grew and learned to speak more clearly, Maame Birago became something else in his little voice.

MAAGO.

A name spoken by my younger brother long before any of us could have imagined what it would one day become.

And now, all these years later, MAAGO is the name I have given to something I am building and carrying forward.

I don't think I fully understood the connection when I began.

But I see it now.

My grandmother carried her name.

My father honored her when he named me.

My brother, in his own childhood way, reshaped that name into one that stayed with me.

And I carried it into MAAGO.

Perhaps that is what I have been trying to understand throughout this month of returning.

The things we carry forward do not always remain exactly as they were given to us.

Sometimes they change with us.

Sometimes they find new expression.

And sometimes, without realizing it, we give an old story somewhere new to live.

MAAGO is one of the ways I carry mine.

With gratitude,
Alice