Nearly six months ago, the Latinx and LGBTQ communities in Orlando, FL, reeled. A gunman had killed 49 people and wounded more at Pulse, a local club and sanctuary. A fiftieth casualty died from his injuries on September 11, and the grief is still both raw and dense for many. The city of Orlando installed a […]
Welcome company
The density of bad news is such that we can say a place name, and, just like that, the name conjures up for us the entire tableau of suffering that unfolded there. Columbine. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Ferguson. Maybe we say a person’s name instead. Islan Nettles. Jessie Hernandez. John Crawford. Sandra Bland. In the last two weeks, there have been […]
Grieving
When I’m grieving, as I am today, words are hard and all I can do is feel. I’ve been reading James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and thinking about the fact that spaces we create to live lives without self-monitoring or code-switching or defense-strategizing are only as safe as the world around us allows […]
On Dodging Grief
My friend J Mase III, poet, writer, and co-founder of the weekly #qfaith Twitter chat, wrote an article about grief this week. He’d asked his followers about how others react to grief, what they say, and what we wish others said. Working on an article about grief. What do you wish someone said when you were grieving? […]
