As people of African descent in the Americas, we consistently find ourselves navigating the effects of untended ancestral and collective grief and trauma. Whether this looks like coping with the normalcy of public killings, the disproportionate deaths due to diseases that target us specifically, or the unending ripples of the trans-atlantic slave trade, enslavement, and the legacies therein; there is no aspect of Black life that is not touched by the hand of colonialism and anti-Blackness. There has been and continues to be unending loss.
Let us grieve together on behalf of ourselves, our ancestors, and our descendants. Let us bring our personal, ancestral, collective, land-based, compacted, and compounded griefs to offer up on behalf of ourselves and of all of our relatives who could not. Let us make space for all that we wish to create to be birthed through us with ease. Let us loosen and dislodge griefs centuries old. May this practice support our healing and liberation and that of all of our relatives across time. May it be so.