I have wrestled with this for months — how to address the despair that many of us feel heading to the ballot box in the next few days. We are angry. We are exhausted. We are furious. We are grieved. We want nothing more than to dismantle this society that continues to work exactly as intended — keeping so many marginalized humans in bondage, operating off of proud imperialism and colonialism, funding a mass genocide, and upholding white supremacy at all costs. 

My grief didn’t care that I wasn’t ready. My grief needed to escape. It was already bursting at the seams. I couldn’t keep it concealed for much longer. God used this documentary project as an unexpected catalyst and vessel for my grief to surface and process what it needed to. My grief needed to tell me that I could no longer fool myself. My grief needed me to feel it, embrace it, and let it consume me. My grief needed to remind me that the love I have for my father did not deserve to be buried, and that grief is simply love looking for some place to land. 

The Olympics are a reminder that sports are the same in every language, and it is a language we all speak with fervor and felicity. The Olympics are a reminder that we are so much more alike than we are different, and that we are magical in all of the good that we do. The Olympics are a reminder that there is more than one way to pursue good, and sports can be one of those ways.

The moment the world implodes with, yet, another political or humanitarian crisis and everyone’s think-tank caps immediately spring into position, the only thing I feel inclined to do is hide. I find myself mindlessly scrolling as I internalize my panic and anxiety. The pressure to have the perfect academically intelligent response to the events that just occurred is looming.

“It’s not fair that freedom was only for white men,” she responds with disgust. We’ve discussed at length the irony and cruelty of the then-American colonies fighting for freedom from so-called tyranny while simultaneously holding enslaved persons captive and continuing to embezzle Indigenous lands and obliterate their population.

This is not breaking news.

Saying the words, “America is an individualistic society,” is like saying “water is wet.” Yeah, we know. This is not breaking news. American society does not function without its populace completely buying into the belief that individualism is the one right way to function as a human.

My protector, my rock, and my best friend was gone. Just as I had experienced in the dream, I felt his essence vanish from my body. I felt an emptying, physically and spiritually. My core, my being seemed to evaporate just as he was disappearing. The breath vacated my lungs. Surviving this was unthinkable, unimaginable. Life as I had known it would never be the same.

Many people will read this and assume I am blaming white people for the mental health crisis in this country. No, not even close. I am blaming white supremacy. A system created to ensure the supremacy of not just white people, but whiteness, and the religion of anti-blackness that shapes every corner of society.

I grieve for us because you and I never got to experience that euphoria. Instead, our connection was severed immediately upon my arrival. They ripped me from your arms and determined our destiny without consulting us. They second-guessed your abilities because of your disability. Our society, built on a supremacy of able-bodied whiteness, decided that your disability, your race, and your class were inferior and treated you as such. They stole your autonomy over your body and they stole my only need as a baby in the process: my maternal connection with the only mother my newborn self knew.

So, I’ve somehow arrived here. I blinked. It’s 10 years later. I’ve reached the age that I used to tell myself would be the magical age when everything would finally feel aligned. I’m here. And, so very little feels aligned.

If you had asked me a week ago if I knew what a trad wife was, I would have stared at you with a dumbfounded look on my face. I had never heard that term before. Honestly? I still wish I didn’t know. I would love to travel back in time to about seven days ago when my ignorance of what a trad wife is was strong. Sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss. But, alas, I now know what a trad wife is. I can thank TikTok for that. Someone mentioned this trad wife movement on another social media app, and in an effort to cure my ignorance, and at the risk of screwing up my algorithm, I took to TikTok to teach me about this odd phenomenon of trad wife-ism.

I often have to remind myself that Beyoncé is a regular human like me. She has arms and legs, fingers and toes, fears and worries, anxiety and peace, grief and joy — just like the rest of us. The genius of her work is proof that she is in a league all her own, not because she is some beyond-human species that is above the rest of us, but because she put herself there.

I always feel as though I am in the middle of a game of tug-of-war. Each of my arms is one side of the rope and my body plays the role of the middle. The pressure of consistency and my mixed feelings about the desire for success pull one side of me, and my humanity and limited capacity pull the other.

It’s Women’s History Month — what honest progress can we say we’ve made in the lives of American women, especially American mothers? To answer this question, we must be honest about the direct correlation between white supremacy and womanhood and motherhood in the United States.

It’s okay to feel fear, anxiety, or overwhelm when participating in advocacy work of any kind. This is far from easy, which is why most people choose silence. Silence is comfortable. Silence is safe. Advocacy work is rarely comfortable. And, sometimes, advocacy work is not safe. There are real threats to this work that must be taken seriously, and protecting your mental well-being is crucial. You should never push yourself to the brink of burnout or sacrifice your mental state in your advocacy work. Breaks are key. Self-care is non-negotiable.