Between Today and Tomorrow

I mean, I feel like it's always felt like that in this field of work. Folks know us for being a response to emergency situations, but even when we were having our standing programs it felt urgent for me, you know? I just feel like there's always just something. I just wake up and there's something. Is it family? Is it a mom that's gonna call me? Like, there's something. So everything just feels like that's what keeps me alive and present — is just the urgency of it all right now and how it's always been for 6 years.

Overwhelming for sure, and really tender. It makes you have a level of commitment to those that don't have the same privilege as you too. I feel like Black women — we already know what disadvantages look like in terms of being a mother, having scarce resources, having to be strategic and survive under a lot of circumstances and systems. And then when you see peers of yours that have harsher circumstances, meaning like their education, their ability to just do basic things, you have a level of commitment. You feel kind of committed to wanting their children to have experiences as your children, you know.

I feel very thankful that there's trust in me and what we do because, you know, it's such a like… I don't even want to say nerve-racking. I don't even know what the best word is to explain when you're going through town and town, trying to drop some things off and you just see marked cars everywhere and just all this surveillance.

Not to compare us in an animalistic way, but just to compare that instinct of how we can respond and feel that wartime posture, that attack. How do you expect us to navigate that, right? And, you know, I think mamas all turn into mama bears. Well, those who have the heart. Racially, there's differences there.

It's a level of exhaust though, for sure. It's like, dang — even communication with the families have to be different. We can't just use our phones. We use alternative encrypted systems. I can only trust family and friends to do deliveries and drop-offs because I don't know if folks can be trusted outside of that for these vulnerable communities. So it's just like this positioning of heightened anxiety 24/7. More than we already have in our nervous systems. I feel like Black women, our nervous systems are already shot.

I'm more careful with what I say. I'm more aware of my surroundings. But I feel like because Black folks have operated under surveillance for so long, this does not feel different to us. This is not anything that's like, "Oh, I gotta look out for a cop. I need a whistle." We've always known how to operate and move around these situations — incognito or straight in their face.

I mean, when you go over North and you walk in or you're driving through, ni**as will look at your car, be like, "Who are you?" We've been doing this, you know? Like... if your car looks unfamiliar? "Who are you?" The whole way through. So, not really, you know? I think if anything it just makes me annoyed that it took this for people to pay attention to what we've done, what we've tried to build, what we've tried to say, what our ancestors been trying to say. Fannie Lou Hamer would be laughing at ni**as, honestly. She would be laughing at every single person right now, like, "You're saying what right now? Right now? You're saying it now?"

In communities where there's different identity challenges that come with your race and how you show up in America, the way that our nervous systems generationally have been wired to endure and to maintain and survive is different because this is what we've been enforced for generations and generations and generations to try and live under. Whereas I feel like other communities, they come here and they learn the system and how to endure, whereas we have been forced to have to endure this. I think there's just a different posture in that way — if you are here generationally, those pressures of scarcity, of your needs being stripped away from you and your safety being stripped away from you — the nervous system is just wired differently.

And so it does have a lot of Black American peers seem insensitive. There's many people who are like "I don't want to hear this shit." They don't want to hear and it's coming off as being insensitive, and some absolutely are being insensitive to the situation. I do think also there's this understanding that our generations have been trying to unwire this posture for a long time, and so trying to be forced to feel it deeper than we've already been feeling it is also, I think, white as fuck. And violent as fuck. You want us to feel more violence than we already feel. We feel this. We've been telling y'all.

And a matter of fact, most of us, when this shit was happening before any white folk felt more articulated to share what they're doing on the internet, we was already doing shit behind the scenes like coordinating efforts, practicing mutual aid in the clinics, in the birth centers. We didn't have to have a presence to make that known. We just do. However we articulate it is however we choose to do, but it doesn't mean work is not being done. And that's where I feel like a lot of internet disconnect happening was like "You're not speaking, so you're not doing." You're talking to the wrong people. I think that conversation is absolutely meant for other white folks. But to come in Black spaces doing that shit, it is violent. It's wild and violent.

So I just feel like there's a point where folks are wanting to use their privilege, as we've been saying, for many years. However, the use of privilege has now been self-promoting into spokespersonship, which has also caused erasure. I think also, there are such loud voices of folks wanting to help that they're also forgetting that they have to be accountable. So if you said you were fundraising for some folks, you are accountable to also be transparent on where those funds went. And I don't want to sound like a police ass bitch. I also don't want to just go off the words of people wanting to be helpful, but then not be accountable all the way. Because a lot of folks were like, "I'm doing this. I'm donating, I'm doing this, this fund's going —" I'm like... great! After that, we don't hear nothing. And these are big orgs and big voices, and I'm confused. So I'm just — y'all are kind of moving a little violent. Because how are you being accountable to the people that you're being a spokesperson for?

There's also been a level of erasure for the specific Black individuals impacted by the occupation enforcement, and that's not being spoken about. Now, I feel, again, when I'm thinking logically, it's understandable, because there was a very specific target towards a community outside of Black immigrants. However, it does make it seem that there wasn't an issue, that there wasn't also targeting happening towards them. And so my main thing was, yes, helping everyone, but also making sure — for example, my children are half Ethiopian. Their church was horrified. None of them speak English. So they don't know, they don't wanna leave. They don't have systems other brown communities do. They don't have big markets that you can go and know that you've talked to someone, they'll get you connected to something. So they're freaking out. They don't know who to call because there's no translation services for them. So, you know, things like that. It's just everyone wants to self-proclaim and be a personal spokesperson, but you're not hitting a mark for universal accessible care.

Honestly, it's really hard to be hopeful. It's really, really hard to look forward to the day that we all care about seeing systems that serve us all. It's hard to look forward to that and everyone's like, "Yes, I want to be a part of this alternative system and this alternative form of care because I care about your children just like I care about my children." Awaiting that day seems like it'll never come. But also on the flip side, when I look at my children, I'm like, "Oh, there's no other choice." There's no other way. This is gonna happen. Whether I'm a part of it or I uplift it because we dissolve at some point, we gotta make this shit work. There's no other way because I'll be damned that I'm no longer here and this world is worse for my children. I just don't see that happening. It's not gonna happen.

I think about this all the time in terms of personal accountability. I'm going to be starting this series where Black folks, we have tough conversations about personal accountability in public. Just how we have those tough conversations about what the white man has done to our communities, it's really important that we have these conversations of what we have in our power to control, which is how we respond and how we do better than what our parents did to us or what our children should experience. That side of hope makes me excited. Because I think there is beauty in the other side if we see it.

They look at me and they see me sobbing all the time. They see me burnt out, typing at 4 a.m. in the morning. I don't think I'll ever stop that because it's the only time I get work done, but just in terms of how we navigate and respond to joy and make it also an intentional effort too. That's something I'm really trying to do this year, and that's why Seeds Worth Sowing, hopefully we'll be able to be ran and operated a majority by someone else. Let's hope, so that I can step back and really reset my nervous system and not feel like I was saying earlier, that constant urgency that keeps me alive and present, but is also just making my health shot, my perception of this world shot, and my perception of community shot too.

I really don't want it to sour me. Because the way everyone else is experiencing the care that Seeds Worth Sowing is doing is not how I see it, right? I feel the pressure. I feel the responsibility. I feel the isolation. I feel the "Hey, we need help" and hearing echo chambers. I feel bad and I don't want that to turn me sour into distasting the word, the concept, the idea of community, because then, like I said, who does that serve? So I guess to your question, yes, I feel hopeful. I feel excited for the future and I also feel like there's a lot of work that I need to do to not allow the misery to override what we have to do.

How are you taking care of yourself? How are you maintaining your nervous system in the midst of this? What do your children need? When can a cleaner come and help clean your home? Those would be the questions I ask.

I had my daughter when I was 19, and life was crazy. Trying to go to school, be a mom, wanting to enjoy life, so many things happening. So I just felt like I was going through processes, all of these — I think 18 years now? And now I can enjoy life. I love my job, I love my family, I love my friends. I have a good support system in place, and yes, life is hard, but there are a lot of good things. I'm not just getting through the day to get through the day. But there are parts of the day that I look forward to, and each one is a little different. Whether it's with my patients, how I show up in the community, how I show up for me, because taking time out just to go to the gym for me to be healthy, to spend time alone with myself, which I enjoy doing. So I would say this is the best chapter of my life. Not only how I give care, but how I intentionally show up with the people that I'm with.

What parts of yourself feel most alive or present?

The part that builds communities, because a lot of the times we look at communities as a form of luxury. Something that a lot of the community members that we serve here feel like they left their community from countries that they came from, right? But this is their community, and how do we build it so that one, it respects their culture, and two, they can partake in that — whatever environment that they're in right now? So I love building things, nurturing it, and helping people that are struggling. Whether it's creating programs for mothers, which we do with Motherhood Circle. Whether it's doing Pathway to Medicine because people are not sure what careers to take, and how do we bridge that gap? I'm good at healthcare. So, Pathway to Medicine was a calling and we're able to do a cohort at a time, 24 students, 16 to 26. And we could show them how they can be in healthcare, how to apply for jobs, how to get certifications, and make sure that they get jobs in hospitals so that people that look like us are taking care of us. So that is part of me that is most alive. It's building communities.

It creates this constant awareness that many families around me, many patients of mine, who are afraid to leave their home, who are afraid to go get care, who are just trying to do the basic things that they need to do — go to work, come back — but are not picking up their medications, are not coming in to do something that will take them one visit. Now they may need to be hospitalized. A procedure that would have been done outpatient, that would take them an hour to get it done, and they're able to go home same day. Now they end up staying in the hospital for days in recovery, and all of that because of the fear of taking that risk of, "I'm gonna leave my home."

So it's consistently there. I see it in the communities that we serve. I see that a certain deal of, "How would I stay here another year?" People feel like they're a guest in their own room.

So it is a scary part, not only for patients that we're trying to show up and look present for and strong for and say it's going to be okay, when myself I'm not sure if it's going to be okay. And what I do is not for the community — I am the community. I am the people who are impacted. And the doctors that work here, the nurses that work here, they're all that community that are in fear every day. So we're showing up knowing that there is a lot of uncertainty around a lot of things, and that is scary. To just not know. It's the fear of the unknown.

I think it adds an added layer of stress, right? So now we get pulled over. Not only are we worried about the police, but it could be anyone who is pulling us over. It could be a masked man who would not identify themselves. It is noises that we're not used to. The sounds have changed. And for people who have experienced war in countries they came from, this is a trigger. And now that brings back memories that were suppressed — memories they've never healed from but pushed down.

And it's patients like that that give me a pulse on, "Yeah, I see it." I can say this: I experienced when George Floyd was murdered around this area that our clinic is based in, right? For me, it was almost a trigger for that. So for some people, we go back to 1990 — what happened, right? For me, it was that unruliness that happened then is still happening. But this time it's actually worse, because then we could name what was happening. Now we can't even name it. And it's stronger.

Oof. I think it changes how I trust institutions, and especially schools, as a mom. Teachers have had such a big impact on my life, and I would hate for a teacher not to give my child the full opportunity because she doesn't think he belongs here, or she doesn't think that he's good enough, or she's good enough. That is my biggest fear, because I do think teachers have such a big impact on our kids' lives — whether it's a kid who is from North Minneapolis, and who people disregard, or whether it is an immigrant kid that has an accent, and now is considered garbage. This world has never been kind to people that look like me or my kids, but at the same time, it wasn't so bluntly obvious. So sometimes, Minnesota life works for me, where we all get along — which the Minnesotans are the best people ever — but, like, we're not rude, and we're not in people's faces. And now I feel like that is more obvious. That's more scary.

I've been thinking deeply about politics or policies, and how policies impact our lives. How our local electeds show up for us, and how we as a community are able to vote. Beforehand, I felt safe enough to know that there was right or wrong. I voted, I didn't care about midterms. But now I think about those, and how I want to mobilize — where I want to use my strength in bringing people together. So my thoughts go to: how do I exist? What is my side? My thought goes to what is my responsibility in this, and how do I make sure how these policies are being formed, and who is shaping them? And how do they impact little boys, little girls — who these systems are not built for, but should be?

I think of Martin Luther King, or like Malcolm X — and who was in between? We should have had people that — yes, we had Obama — but we need to make sure that we have tough people we can still quote 50, 70, 80, 100 years from now. And that is the people that I want to create, I guess, mentor and see if we can come up with policies that are going to set them up for success, that are going to make sure schools, teachers are respecting their autonomy and seeing them as human beings. Because sometimes Black and Brown people tend to be dehumanized, and I see this with a lot of Black girls even in the emergency rooms. You will see a Black girl come in — 12 years old, who is being sexually trafficked — and doctors may use different labeling than her counterparts, where a 12-year-old girl is being looked at as a child. But the other one is labeled as a young woman.

We don't have a lot of behavioral health therapists that focus on younger children. We don't have healthcare systems in place that could support those kids that actually really need their mental health resources, and communities may not be equipped on how to ask for help either. It goes both ways. I would say we're going to see a lot of kids that may have anxiety or may feel uncomfortable with certain people or things that just trigger them, or behavior that may seem unruly in other people's eyes, but it could just be that child crying for help and never receiving that help.

Now they're labeled as, "this is a bad kid," or "this is someone who bites, he's aggressive, she is fast" — words that we've grown up hearing. But now we're going to hear more, because those kids never received the therapy that they should have received. We didn't talk to them in time when the issues were happening because we didn't even know what the next steps were either. So I see a generation of people that are going to need a lot of resources.

I think many communities understand them as part of the broader system of surveillance and control. And when people see repeated examples of violence by law enforcement targeting Black communities through policing, where it's like pursuing Black men driving certain cars, or just stopping them and invading that space when they didn't do anything wrong.

I remember when my son was getting his license. You know how people say, "Oh, this is about freedom." But for me, it was almost the opposite. I wanted to sit him down and tell him the things that he needed to do. He had to have his license with him. There was no way he could have more than one friend in the car. He wasn't allowed to use his phone; it went in the trunk when he was driving because I didn't want him to text or pick it up and have someone mistake that for something else. Because then something happens to my kid. So we had to have this discussion that went on for months.

And my kid is very different. I wanted him to understand how to behave if ever pulled over, so I could say I taught him everything he needed to know in case something happens. So I don't look back and think, "I wish I had taught him." So how does it look? I think whether it's policing or immigration enforcement, it creates a shared understanding that certain communities are more vulnerable to state power. And history shapes that.

Protecting my family — the mother bear, right? Protecting my community. I think even how I carry emotions and how I carry fears. And this may not even be the healthiest sometimes — when I say carrying emotions — but making sure that I show up bravely. I don't break down in front of them. I hate to say this, but even in front of someone who may not see me in a great light, I don't break down. I stay strong even when inside I'm struggling. And that's something I'm working on, because I don't have to carry that.

Not to say, "I don't want to break down, I don't want to show emotion," but to say, "I am emotional about this. I am sad about what's going on." But at the same time, I can get through it. That's the power they gave me. Does resilience come from a place of necessity or desire? It comes from survival. But also, it comes from not being alone. It comes from being in a community where we go through this together. It's a network of trust and care and shared responsibility. That's where my resilience comes from.

But seriously, not showing our own fears to our kids is something we've been talking about lately — even if we feel displaced, even if people may look at them as "garbage" or something like that. How do I show them that they're worthy, that they belong in this place just as much as anyone else, and that they need to show up and be responsible for this community?

And this is one that I'm really glad that you asked. But it is a question that is so scary to ask, because — and the reason why I say that is… I hope that they understand that I did everything I could. I did not stand by, even when it risked my life. To me, I take this quote to heart: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And I live by that. There's another quote — said by two different people, but they both kind of come together for me in how I show up — "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

My kids need a mom that can show up at the end of the day, regardless of whatever fight I'm fighting, and that is my goal.

It reminds me that what we do today will shape the environment that my grandkids are going to inherit, and it motivates me to build systems and spaces that prioritize their care, that give them opportunities. Schools are such a big thing in my head, because I do think that there are two things that shape kids first: the books that they get to read, and the history that they get to be taught. And the kind of dignity that they are seen in — I think that shapes the environment for my grandkids, my kids.

I think a lot of mothers would agree with me that we're focused on creating strong networks of support. You realize the importance of having strong networks of support — family, community members, trusted institutions, because you do need institutions also. Also prioritizing open conversations, making sure children's growth, dignity, and a sense of belonging are centered — because, like I said, sometimes here doesn't feel like home. I understand I have my own battles that I need to go through, but how do I make sure that they don't have to feel the battles that I have within me? So, letting them know that they belong. This is their home. I can't imagine them going back, right?

I think as a name in it, right? So when I'm feeling something, when I'm feeling anxious, it helps me to know what that is. Even if in that moment it may just be saying, "Hey, I'm scared." Or shaking it up — not shaking it up where it just disappears — but knowing that this is placed on me, not by me, right? So I can only be responsible for certain things. And to me, doing the working out like this or moving around or being active, I think that is how I can regulate.

My kids need a mom that can show up at the end of the day, regardless of whatever fight I'm fighting, and that is my goal.

And the last question she asks — when can a cleaner come and help you clean your home?

Oh my God. I like a clean home. But by the end of my Friday, there's no way to keep that at all. Girl, it gets a lot. So every Friday before I go home, I would love to have things cleaned, because then I can enjoy the weekend, right? So maybe a good idea. But anyways, I would say Fridays — maybe every other Friday.

What lessons from your mother or grandmother guide you and how you raise your children today and why? How do you help your children feel proud of who they are in a world that sometimes tries to define them in narrow ways?

Right now, as a multidisciplinary artist, I'm focusing mainly on youth and creating spaces for young people to learn about the arts. And by way of learning about the arts, learning about our activists and giving them spaces to really think about and express what's happening in the world through a social justice lens.

I think that I have had the privilege in this one city specifically to continue that work, and what's activated in me is:

And that's always been with me most of my life, because I've always understood the importance of passing down knowledge, passing down tradition.

I've also seen the natural resistance and resilience in passing down knowledge and passing down tradition. And right now I'm grieving because I have to let a lot of my elders go. I have to let them go.

There's no more room right now for the elders that don't get it. And I, as a Black woman, understand how this country is designed to break me down like I'm a literal mule — literally break me down. And right now I have to politely allow for my elders to speak among themselves and let them go so that I can have more space and room to nurture myself and to really intentionally bring up not only my children, but the next generation of children and support moms right now. Like the young moms in my friend group — how am I having conversations with them and holding space for them? Because COVID did a thing to us, right? There's not a lot of community. After COVID, everybody likes to be in their house and to themselves and the kids have felt that. And then how do we begin to connect the babies that didn't have that during their developmental time to community and give them a sense of belonging and help them kids see and feel everything.

I remember when my son was three — he'll be eight in May. I started reading The 1619 Project and Born on the Water, because I started to think about how I'm going to talk about slavery with my Black son? How am I going to do that? The most pivotal point in my life was learning Black history at Malcolm X College by a man from Ghana. He said, "I'm not going to start you at the Atlantic slave trade. I'm going to start you before so you can understand how valuable Africa is."

And we all had to study the resources that the land had in Africa — the palm oil, the gold, the diamonds, all of the things. And then he asked us, "What was the most precious asset in Africa?" And we started yelling out resources. The crops, the palm oil, this, this, this. And he said, "No, you're missing it." And we said, "What is it?" And he said:

Because the people could tend to the land and turn over the soil in a way that didn't deplete the land of its resources. If I would have heard that in first grade, in second grade, in sixth grade, in seventh —

So as I'm reading The 1619 Project to my son, before we get to the Atlantic slave trade, it talks about culture and the people and the song, and then it brings us through the tragedy, but then it brings us back to what we've become through that.

When talking to my family in Chicago during the surge there, and my son was there during that time because he lives in Chicago with his dad right now, I was calling his uncle. I was so worried. "Are they over there? Are they by the house? Are they by the school?" And he's like, "No, I'm gonna keep you updated." But they're kind of staying in one part of the city and he told me they were in the South Shore area. I had called my uncle and I said, "Hey, I heard ICE is over there. How are you doing?" He said:

And I was so disappointed.

What made you feel disappointed when he said that?

There is no staying out the way. How do we stay out the way of this when they raided that apartment building in Chicago? There were Black families in there too.

Black people are communal people, just like Indigenous people, just like Latinx people. Just like white people — more white people go into their culture and get out of whiteness, they learn we are communal. We are not individualistic.

People are communal. That's why at these vigils you see Indigenous people doing their ritualistic dance. That's why when you are with Black folks, regardless of where we're from, what are we doing? We're cooking. Come eat. Come break bread. Let's have a conversation. No matter where we go in the world, no matter where we go in the diaspora, we do that communally. Let me feed you. Come sit down. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on. That is of us. And through divide and conquer, white supremacy, systematic racism and oppression, what do you begin to see? "Oh, I'm glad it wasn't me. I'm glad it wasn't my family. Oh, I'm just gonna mind my business because if I don't mind my business, something's gonna happen to me."

And that's why I said I don't have room for my elders right now. I love them. But if you're 40, 50, 60 and you're saying "That ain't my business, that ain't my fight" — we're coming down to the wire.

I have to teach my kids about Black history. And when I say Black history, it's African history. Not just Black American but Caribbean history, Nigerian history. The Liberian Uber driver, when I said, "Yeah, Black people went to Liberia and were a part of that civil war" — he looked so shocked at me. "How did you know that? How did you know Black American people were a part of that? Nobody talks about that, especially not a Black American."

I'm never of the mind of "oh no, just walk around with your passport" or "just walk around with your birth certificate, you'll be fine." I don't trust this administration. I don't trust this country. I don't even trust institutions. The whole business as usual, as if we didn't just all experience trauma, blows me. Our mayor not being like, "Yo, y'all are not allowed to evict people right now. What's wrong with y'all?" We have watched two people get shot in the street. You don't want me to be human, you want to desensitize me. So whatever you do next, I don't even have the strength to fight back. That's what's happening right now.

Two people were shot. And it played on social media over and over and over and over again.

I follow so many news outlets. I don't know who to trust. I'm reading article on article, source on source. I had to disconnect from social media for a little bit. Then I'm posting all this shit that I see, because I don't want my peers or my community to keep going on as business as usual. But I'm a single Black mama. I have to work. This economy is whooping my ass. But I can't stop.

They're cutting so much funding from education and the arts. Minneapolis has a very incompetent mayor. The youth are not okay. The young people are not okay. I had so many spaces in the Twin Cities when I was a child — spaces to be a young person. How are we funding mutual aid right now? How are we funding youth programming right now? How are we making sure that the vulnerable people within the Twin Cities get the resources that they need?

I remember one time during the surge, St. Paul Police was in Minneapolis. I was getting off on 394 at that Dunwoody exit. And there's just a bunch of St. Paul Police cars. And I'm like, what are y'all doing over here? Hennepin County Sheriff's Department? Don't get me started.

This is such a nuanced question for me because of my name. I've been received differently by a lot of different Black folks a part of the diaspora — no matter whether you're from Africa, from the Caribbean, from Europe, America.

People are like, "You can't be Black American." And I'm like, "Yeah, I am" — and I'm never offended. But it's always odd for me when people ask, "Where are you from?" And I'm like, "I'm from Chicago." "Well, no, where's your parents from?" "They're from Chicago." "And they gave you a name like that? Where are your parents' parents from?" I'm like, "I don't know, they were slaves many, many years ago."

And then people say, "In my country" or "In my language, this is what your name means." I had one Uber driver from Liberia tell me I should do the 23andMe to figure out what part of Africa I'm from. And so I've been a bystander in the Diaspora Wars, watching it and trying to correct people. When I was younger, I was a part of that — where we made fun of how dark a kid was. And I always had a curiosity: why does it matter? Regardless of whether you're African or African American, why does this distinction matter so much? And I was like — we are proud people. Globally, we are proud people.

If you look at anything that we do, we are very proud people. "I'm Somali." "I'm Kenyan." "I'm from the West Coast." "I'm from LA." "I'm from Brazil." Afro anything is very proud, very bold, very — "this is who I am" — which is to our benefit. But where it hurts us is when we start to do the thing that white supremacy taught us, which is to say, "I'm more than you because I am this thing. I'm better than you because I am this thing." Difference don't make you better or worse. You're just different.

And then first generation African babies grow up side by side with Black American children. And they're like, "I can't hang out with y'all?" First generation African children start experiencing systematic racism. Now you're being called Black American — you're not even Black American. You start to experience certain things and then you're trying to take that back to your parents and say, "Hey, we cannot be talking about Black American people like this. They have dealt with the wrong drugs, they have dealt with food apartheid, they have dealt with so many systemic things that are not on the surface."

You literally would not know unless you are doing deep history or research, or you are friends with somebody that can clearly articulate what's going on, or you are just so empathic and observant. It is so embedded in the fabric of America that sometimes you have to be close enough to it to see what it's made of.

And then Black American people feel like, "Hey, you won't talk about me. You have been connected to your roots and your language and all the things all these years." We're missing something. We're not whole — they took us. But because we don't start at Africa, we learn about the transatlantic slave trade and we don't understand how they ripped Africa apart, how they colonized parts of Africa, how they engaged some of our ancestors and our people inside of Africa. That is history we don't talk about K through 12.

In the United States, we're so hyper focused on the transatlantic slave trade to America, but we don't talk about it to South America. We don't talk about it across Europe, across Asia. We went everywhere. We didn't just come here.

My mom says that Brantley women are alpha women—we're strong, we're independent, and we don't need a man for anything. And my great-grandma always said "potawipski gypsy." She taught me how to hold my first gun when I was a little kid. It wasn't a big gun; it was like a little .22. She said, "Man put their hands on you, knock them upside their head."

I'm teaching them that joy is in them; it is not outside of them, that strength is in them; it is not outside. Resilience is inside of them; it is not outside of them. I'm teaching my daughter that her "no" means no and that she doesn't have to do anything to earn the space and boundaries she needs.

The one thing they taught me without teaching me is that I don't have to be afraid of her power, because a lot of the time we see mothers be proud of their daughters for knowing and being firm, and then when they get older, it's like me and my mom fought, my mom and my grandma fought, my grandma and my great-grandma fought. But a passive thing I learned from that was that I don't have to be afraid of her power or her sureness.

I want to cheer that on as much as possible because the world is going to try to take that from her. People are going to say, "Are you sure you know who you are? Are you sure you know what you want to do? Are you sure?" Because when they get you questioning, they can breed confusion, and I always want to be a safe space for her. And my son is the same way. He's very like, "Nope. I'm not doing that."

I was raised to not take my trauma and make it who I am, and my father taught me to blaze my own trail if I don't see one. I stay behind my kids 100%, ten toes down.

I have three main jobs. Running Atlas of Blackness is one, and that's a whole different ball game when it comes to looking at what was happening here in Minnesota, especially in regards to how it impacted Black mothers who are foster youth, and fosters, and formerly incarcerated folks. But in regards to being a therapist, seeing how a lot of the mothers' stress manifested in the micromanaging of their children, and then going to work as a special education school social worker and seeing how, when you micromanage your child at home, how it manifests within the classroom for those kids — and having to hold both truths, and having grace with mothers and parents who are just emotionally exhausted and are scared for the safety of their children, and also not knowing how to express that they're scared for the safety of their children.

As a therapist, if I'm doing family therapy… if I have therapy clients who are teenagers and I have to meet with their parents, I have to be very careful of how I'm having conversations with those young people around their valid response to the micromanaging and surveillance from their parents — while they're also being surveilled at school and being surveilled outside of their homes. And then also trying to get them to understand why the surveillance, the conversation that their parents — which their mothers are having with them — feels like surveillance without dismissing that what they're going through is actual harm as well from the hands of their mothers who are just fearful that their children are gonna be harmed once they leave.

I'll even add Isak Aden and Daunte Wright. I think what's interesting is, I always laugh sometimes when I hear Black folks — especially Black folks who are American — who have citizenship — even some Africans who've been here a long time, is this idea that Blackness is even allowed to be legal within this land. That your Blackness won't strip you away from citizenship. Even when we talk about Dolal Idd, the separation between Dolal Idd, Isak Aden, versus Winston Smith, Daunte Wright, George Floyd. I always find it so interesting when I hear Black people talk about how these things are not their fight.

And sometimes our removal from that access is death by the hands of the system, and it doesn't matter who ends up doing it. It doesn't matter if you're murdered by your neighbor, it doesn't matter if it's an ATF agent, or an ICE agent. When the system wants to strip away your rights, it can do it by any means necessary.

It's the idea that because of the different color of the badges doing the killing, therefore, is some separate type of issue. The same folks who are anti-Black in our schools are also the same folks who are becoming ICE agents as well. My foster mom literally saw someone she used to work with as a correctional officer, on the streets as an ICE agent. So the same folks are harassing and harming people within our prison system are also ICE agents.

How folks interact with Blackness within schools, Blackness within therapy settings, Blackness on the streets, is literally the same. And sometimes the violence happens to be the one that's writing your case report. The police officer is the one writing the case report, and that includes someone like myself. Our badges look very different, it could literally end up destroying someone's life if we're not consistently checking how we move.

I think as a society, we're wanting to have clarity in everything. And I think, for a lot of the social workers in the district, it wasn't about giving clarity to the families and the youth that we work with, because ICE and immigration itself is based around not being clear. It's based around confusion.

So you can never actually fully explain chaos to families, because there's no way to really clarify what's happening around them. What my job, I felt like, was making sure that folks were able to function within chaos, and function as much as possible without having answers.

We're consistently craving answers to things, we're craving having some type of form of clarity. That's why it's so easy for these AI systems like ChatGPT to consume us, right? That's why it's so easy for us to be consistently on TikTok, because we're always searching for some type of answer or clarity or some type of knowledge. But white supremacy does not offer you that. And because you don't have access to it, it's purposefully trying to make you ill. 'Cause when you don't have answers to things, your body starts to worry. When you don't know what's coming up next, your body starts to worry and it starts to manifest into different forms of illnesses. Chronic pain, chronic diseases.

One of the things that I noticed was that non-Black kids who were impacted by the ICE raids could go online and wouldn't be judged by any of the administration or teachers. But Black children — whether they had immigration issues, or family who were refugees or immigrants, or were just Black American youth, period — could not go online or do virtual learning without suspicion from the administration that followed along with that. It was just so interesting to really watch, and how so many — even Black teachers — would be like, "Why is that kid taking time off from school?" While those questions were never asked to any of the non-Black students who were going virtual. And they wouldn't ask that to the kids themselves, they wouldn't ask that to their parents, but it would come up in conversations. You could also tell by how they were naming which kid was going to be online — because they made lists.

You have these mothers — these Black mothers — who are taking their kids out of school for safety, and then you have administration questioning it. But that's never a thing for non-Black kids. And then you see how it manifests: if a non-Black kid is not coming onto their Zoom or Google Meets call for class, it's "It's because they're stressed because of what's happening in the world." When Black kids don't come onto it, it's "Because they went online just to avoid school," because they avoid school even when they're in school.

That they were able to learn that each of us have rage in us that a lot of us weren't able to express, but for them, society has not allowed them the privilege to express any of their emotions, their rage, their sadness. But the spaces that I created allowed them to be complex, allowed them to be rageful, allowed them to be depressed, allowed them to be happy within the same day if it called for it.

I think the big thing for me is if I had access to stability. We make jokes a lot, like we just did — "you know, sometimes money does buy happiness." But having access to stability is the biggest support that would solve so much of my problems right now. It would allow me to not have to be in an alert state consistently, and would allow me to be able to pause and deal with the consequences of pausing. Because once you pause, your body goes into this very distraught state, and then by the time your body starts to release all of the hormones that are balancing you, you have to go back to being on alert and go back to working.

But if I had stability — which would look like my org being fully funded and me being able to also be an artist — I would then be able to pause, to rest, and then deal with the physical and emotional consequences of resting and the 20-plus years of not actually being able to rest.

What are the consequences of finally allowing yourself a moment of rest, and then having that rest cut short? When you're forced back into survival mode, does that interruption make things harder than if you had never stopped at all?

It's very dangerous because then your body gets used to that pause. It's like a person having frostbite who has been left in the cold for so long, and now you are abruptly bringing them into warmth and expecting no reaction from their body. You're expecting their body to be able to defrost. But in reality, that frostbite can end up getting worse because of that abrupt shock. Instead of wrapping them slowly, bringing them somewhere warm gradually — putting something on their hands, that slow buildup to full body warmth — your brain is only then getting used to "oh, I'm actually more warm, I'm actually relaxing."

I see the same thing with this idea of self-care. Folks think taking two or three days off is going to reset their body, when your body has been on alert every day of your life and you're 37 years old. So you're telling me you're 30 years old, but your body is actually that of a 50-year-old because of how hypervigilant you've had to be. You have a bunch of stress knots in your neck and your shoulders, and you're thinking two days is "rest" — but you're not actually resting, because your body is already thinking "okay, I have to go back to this in two more days, three more days." Even a two-week break isn't enough.