478 Search results for "intention"

It took a global pandemic, but the original spirit of Pride is finally being honored
CW: murder, antiBlack violence, transphobia When coronavirus started making its presence known in the U.S. by March of this year, it quickly became apparent that life as we knew it would have to make a major shift. One of those shifts is the postponement, if not cancellation, of various, large gatherings, including the traditional Pride […]
African Traditional Religions prepared me to grieve my mother
I’ve learned it’s best not to try to control how the memories of my mother show up, or what emotions they are wearing when they enter. This one is dressed in a rare crossbreed of inconsolable laughter and a stabbing sob, and it’s seeping out of my iphone from wherever the speaker is located on […]
6 Mental Health Awareness podcasts and shows for Black women
by Ajeé Buggam If 2020 didn’t teach us anything, it taught us the importance of our mental health and how fragile it truly is if we don’t tend to it. Oftentimes in Black homes, checking in regarding each other’s mental health is not a common conversation we inquire about. The unfortunate truth is Black people […]
Between Black artists and Black love
By Donnie Moreland It must’ve been 2015 when I first viewed Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming (2014). It’s a film which asks the question, what if the nativity story took place between two working class Black folks already raising a little boy in South London. It’s a mesmerizing dreamscape of rage and longing, orbited by […]
When Black women make mistakes, we deserve compassion, not public ridicule
By now, many of us have learned of Tessica Brown’s devastating story. Last week, Brown, a Black woman from Lousiana, posted a TikTok that went viral when she admitted her hair has been stuck in the same hairstyle for a month. After running out of her usual Got 2 B Glued freezing spray, Brown decided […]
My daughter saves me from my anxieties with the embrace of her little arms
by Donnie Moreland It’s the eve of what folks are calling the “most important presidential election of our lives.” I’m being told to prepare. I’m being told to panic. I strap both ends of my cloth mask around my ears to drop my ballot at a county library. This is the second time I’m having […]
When the Ancestors tell you to go to therapy
There aren’t enough accessible therapists to go around. I met this reality after an Ifa divination that I got while I was in Cuba, and my dreams for an entire year afterward, told me that I needed to focus on my mental health. My ancestors were LOUD about the mental work that I needed to […]
“Atonement” by Donnie Moreland
By Donnie Moreland Only on nights like this, could “sweet” be an adjective to describe the air. A prize, really. All those brothers, shoulder to shoulder on the Mall, and you can imagine how much funk can stew in a day. But a soft wind started everyone on their way back from where they began […]
How the imagination of the ‘Lovecraft Country’ writer’s room failed us
by Kamilah Bush This essay discusses sexual assault and r/pe. The first episode of HBO’s Lovecraft Country is possibly one of the most perfect television pilots of all time, in my opinion. The opening shot, drops us in the middle of a typical enough looking war scene—it is a familiar cinematic landscape with images we […]
Sex is not what makes us human
“Sex is what makes us human.” This, of course, is an absurd claim. And yet, it’s a lie that many believe. A lie that I have heard many times, in one form or another. I continually find myself having to argue that sex and sexuality are not and never will be factors in whether or […]
High rates of femicide make it hard to be a Black woman in this world
CW: graphic descriptions of femicide For, while the tale of how we suffer is never new, it always must be heard. -James Baldwin My grandmother once said to me, “the hardest thing anyone can be in this world, is a black woman.” Although I’ve carried these words with me throughout the years, it is now, […]
Black daughters and genderqueer children need your protection too, not just your sons
by Zesiro Maji This essay discusses Black death and racist state violence against Black children Timelines and headlines are saturating Black people with images, stories, and video clips of Black Death. It’s a somber, sobering reminder of the grim reality of what it means to be a Black person in America. The unrelenting violence against […]