“No matter where you’re from your dreams are valid.” Lupita Nyong’o, Academy Award Winner, Best Supporting Actress

We will ever know Patsey’s real image, but through the work of Solomon Northup, a Freedman from Saratoga Springs, NY kidnapped in 1841 and forced to endure Louisiana slavery for 12 years, her prayer for a Homegoing was answered by helping Lupita to fulfill her purpose–to teach us lessons in empathy and resilience in the Oscar-winning role of Patsey.  Congratulations Ms. Nyong’o!

Patsey was indeed one of many supporting ladies to endure slavery on America’s soil and she will forever be a class act.

Through Steve McQueen’s direction, John Ridley’s screenplay, Lupita Nyong’o’s portrayal, and Solomon Northup’s words we came to know Patsey as a resilient and compromising woman despite being horribly abused.  She worked hard because work was escapism. She desired greatly because yearning gave her a reason to live beyond the putrid reality of her existence. She endured and I suspect that she never stopped dreaming, even in death.  As we witnessed in

Photo by Kevin Winter / Getty Images

the 86th Annual Academy Awards, Patsey walked across the Oscar stage with a message for each of us that we all represent the question of “what if?”

What if we gave up on our dreams because of some of the rancorous roles in which we have been casted–they don’t always appear to be fair or even humanly just, but those are our parts and we must deliver our lines?

Lupita was Patsey’s vessel so that Patsey’s spirit could soar and infect each of us with the amazing power of empathy and an example of what it means to remain steadfast to a dream. Too often we don’t know another person’s journey, but we must understand that just as we dream, so do others. Solomon Northup wrote that Patsey was the “enslaved victim of lust and hate.” And through it all, Patsey still shines as an artery of love and strength.

While Lupita Nyong’o is classically trained as a thespian from the Yale School of Drama, and while she was cast in this role over more than 1000 other women, she needed Patsey’s love and blessings to do more than act–she needed to become Patsey, and she did indeed. We witnessed Patsey’s spirit on the big screen of Hollywood.  While it took more than 10 years for 12 Years a Slave to be made, this was the moment in which Patsey chose to take Ms. Nyong’o, a Kenyan woman, by the hand in this role so that Patsey’s spirit could be transported back to the Motherland and so that Lupita could be victorious in her acting pursuits. There are no coincidences in life. Patsey’s resurrection as the embodiment of a woman descended nearest to what has long been considered the cradle of

courtesy of BBC-UK

mankind is prophetic to say the least.  And, after more than 170 years, Patsey has finally found her ancestral resting place in the beautiful face of Lupita Nyong’o.  

Dreams do come true.