how to ally

Last summer, I was invited to write for a group book project about physician loss, in the various ways “loss” can be defined. Others were writing about their loss of a spouse, a child, a marriage, even a sexual harassment lawsuit. I was invited to write about my experience as a Black woman leaving academia, representing the loss of the only work community I had known for the prior 15 years.

I integrated the project.

my mother been gone

My mother’s body died today. With the lack of hospital care available to Black people at the time and parents lying to children to keep them working the land a little longer, her body was 90 or 89 or 91 years old, depending upon which document one chose to believe. I think we’re gonna go with 90. It’s a nice round number.

But the mother I knew died years ago. I mourned her then, when she died—the woman who I spent hours upon hours alone with.