101 Search results for "grief"

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, […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

By Taylor Allyn On the apps, it is always the same choreography. I open the grid and feel my body enter a market, lit by the cold light of my phone. Faces slide past: white, light, maybe one or two Black men scattered like decoration across a page that was never designed for us. The […]

by Amber Butts I take my shoes off and step into the dirt. The ground is cold, damp enough to come up through my feet and ease something that had been tight all morning. Leaves press, then give, then press again. The soil shifts under me, not giving way, just answering back. I stand there […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]