99 Search results for "grief"

What We Carry: A Coming-of-Age Tale of Grief, Therapy, and Reckoning
by Christian M. Ivey “What We Carry” is a powerful coming-of-age story that follows Drew, a young Black college student grappling with grief, anxiety, and the long shadow of racial trauma. Get yo ass up, Drew! My alarm rang, a nasty, raggedy rang, almost soundin’ like it was yellin’ at me. Get yo ass up, […]
Juneteenth Reflections: Grief Work is Freedom Work
by Julia Mallory “…but in them days they wasn’t no time for mournin.’ ” —Mary Reynolds, Texas Slave Narratives Volume XVI Part III Juneteenth began as a day of celebration commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1866. Since then, it has offered Black folks an opportunity to remember […]
What might happen if we ignore our grief during quarantine?
I come from a whistling family. We like sound. The way tones release emotion, scent, possibility. The way whistling can shape and bend bone, can spellcast, can river. I sat at the feet of the women in my family often, feeling lucky and at home in their voices, their stories, the way they moved their […]
I don’t know what my grief looks like outside of social pressures to perform it in acceptable ways
My heroes are never buried when they die, at least not at first. As soon as I hear the news, I borrow their face from their still chilling body to post alongside a hastily written message of grief and well-wishes. I want to be the earliest to write about their loss, for everyone to see […]
Grief as Love & Memoir: Healing as a Multiracial Woman of Color through Remembrance of the Deaths of Women in My Family
By Annie Alexandrian “We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have […]
The Architecture of Removal: Black Immigrants, Disappearance, and the Politics of Survival in the United States
by Amber Butts Immigration policy in the United States has always enforced racial hierarchy, and the Trump administration further developed an aggressive removal process against Black immigrants. Expanded policing partnerships, broader detention authority, and rhetoric that cast immigrants as criminals and predators created conditions that pushed Black immigrants into detention and deportation at strikingly disproportionate […]
Being a Therapist When the World is on Fire
by Vanessa Anyanso I don’t know what it’s like to be a therapist during “normal times.” I, a Nigerian American born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, moved to Minneapolis in Fall 2019 to start my doctoral program in Counseling Psychology. The world shut down for the pandemic in March 2020. In May 2020, […]
Everything Else Keeps Going: Women of color and the tentacles of abuse in movements
by Amber Butts How many Black and Brown women have been asked to hold something so everything else can keep going? Nightmares—living ones—are why many do not come forward, especially in movements that keep the abuser’s name, knowingly or not, as part of how the work understands itself. What was done stays, and the weight […]
We Were Taught to Be Useful Before We Were Allowed to Be Human
by DeLisha Tapscott, Ed.D. I learned to be useful long before I understood what labor was. Long before I had language for work, worth, or expectation, I understood that being helpful mattered. Being capable mattered. Being low-maintenance mattered. Those traits were praised early, offered as signs of maturity and goodness, folded into what it meant […]
Mutual Aid, Fascism, and the Politics of Care
by Amber Butts My maternal grandmother, Audrie, who was a second mother to me, was my first entry point in witnessing mutual aid in practice. She became a widow before the age of 21, followed by a long bout of alcoholism and depression. She experienced her share of heartbreak. She and my maternal grandfather were […]
In the Wake of ‘The Trayvon Generation’
by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD When I found out that George Zimmerman, the white-passing, mixed race Latinx man who killed Trayvon Martin on February 26th, 2012, was acquitted of all charges, I was sitting in a massive auditorium of Black women, all members of my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. That night, we were in […]
Welcome Home to the Black Youth Project
by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD Almost a decade ago, I said goodbye to my editing position here at Black Youth Project. I was 33 years old, working on the final edits of my dissertation at the University of Chicago titled “Race, Risks, and Responses: Mapping Black American’s Reactions to Policing in the United States.” My […]