I use this Substack as a bulletin board for the work I’m making elsewhere, and I have two new things to share with you.

I wrote about returning to South Africa with Thea. There were whales, elephants, a banana-stealing monkey, old friends, new learning, and a Soweto commemoration that showed us something important about grief, memory, and continuing with joy.

Read Fur, Feathers, Fins, and Flowers at Radical Selfie Grounds

I also made a grief story in seven sentences. It’s short, and it holds a knowing I return to often: an ending can be over as an event and still active as an influence for how we live.

Watch the seven-sentence grief story on YouTube.

That’s what I’ve got pinned to the board for now.

Since the Unschooling Summit, I’ve gotten more subscribers here. Aaayyye!

I’m really glad you found your way here, and it means something to me that you did.

However, I don’t write on Substack anymore. Over the past few years, I made the decision to move my writing somewhere that feels more honest to who I am and how I want to show up for the people who read my work.

If you’ve interested in walking alongside me through unschooling, grief, and liberation-minded living, that work hasn’t stopped, but it has found a new home—my blog, radicalselfie.org.

Right now, I’m deep in a series called Grief & the Unschoolers.

It came out of something I kept noticing, which is that so many of us have been carrying a diversity of types of grief for years, quietly, without always having the words for it. The grief of choosing a different path. The grief of becoming someone harder to explain at family gatherings, or to old friends. The grief of raising children outside of sameness, outside of the scripts we were handed. The grief of sovereignty, as in what it actually costs to live by your own design.

And underneath it all is something I keep coming back to: unschooling has been teaching us a kind of grief literacy all along. We just haven’t always called it that.

If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to keep reading on radicalselfie.org

In this program, you’ll be invited to:

• Move and breathe with your grief, letting your body speak what words can’t.

• Witness and be witnessed in a circle of shared humanity.

• Listen for the teachings inside your sorrow.

• Discover how somatic movement and breathwork can offer relief.

• Find your paths toward mending and tending.

Aligned with the energy of the spring equinox, this experience invites balance between what is dying and what wants to live. You’ll leave with a deeper trust in the ways grief continues to shape, soften, and strengthen who you are becoming.

Register here on Kripalu’s site for a beautiful on-campus experience.

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January is moving like molasses for me. It’s dark, it’s slow, and it’s deliberate. February will move with that energy too, but less of it as the Spring approaches and I let myself wake fully from my Wintering.

On Grounds, my blog, I wrote about what I’m savoring, where I’m gathering, what I’m slow-walking towards in relationship to grief, joy, unschooling, and the slow work of being on the ground with people again. You can read it in full here.

About This Space

This Substack is a bulletin board.

I don’t write long-form work here anymore, but people still arrive here, and I want you to land somewhere that’s filled with words that reflect my aliveness.

If you’re here because you’re curious about my writing, my grief work, or what I’m tending this season, these are the places where that work actually lives now:

Radical Selfie Grounds
This is where I write slowly, honestly, and in depth. Essays and reflections on grief, the joy-grief interlocks, savorism, unschooling, and the long work of becoming more human over time. RadicalSelfie.org

Patreon (my Make-It-Happen Family)
This is where I share more personal, process-oriented work. I share monthly Savor Journals, behind-the-scenes reflections, audio notes, and early or expanded versions for what I’m creating, especially around grieftending, in-person gatherings, and what it looks like to live this work, not just talk about it. It’s also a place to support the work if that feels aligned. Patreon.com/Akilah

You’re welcome to stay subscribed here for updates and redirection, but if you want to read, listen, and stay close to what’s unfolding, those two spaces are where it’s happening. Thanks for finding your way.

I don’t post here anymore. That’s not because I stopped writing or teaching or building, but because I’m not aligned with some of this platform’s practices.

But. I also know that many of y’all still follow me here—and new folks keep finding me through this feed. So instead of shutting it all down, I’m reshaping this space. I’ll be using it as a kind of bulletin board. A place to say: Here’s what I’m tending. If it resonates, meet me over there.

These past few months, I’ve been moving with collaborative energy on specific projects, yes—but also tending to my young adult daughters, my plants (the ones inside and the ones greeting the sun), and my perimenopausal body, which is asking for new forms of care, slowness, and spaciousness. Alladat is for sure part of the work, too.

Coaching & Companioning

I’m still coaching. If you’re navigating grief, change, or identity shifts—and want a companion who’s not here to fix but to witness—I’m here for that.

🔗 Learn more and walk with me

Land, Grief & Reclamation: Hacienda Casa Campo

I’m working with Chemay Morales James and My Reflection Matters Village to raise $1.4M to repatriate a sacred piece of land in Borikén (Puerto Rico). This land will become a healing retreat, an ancestral classroom, and a home for grief and joy literacy in practice. We’re calling in Resource Weavers to help fund this vision.

🔗 Learn more and contribute

Bringing Flowers: Grief + Joy as Interlocked Teachers

This is a collaborative project with Thea Monyeé that explores how grief and joy move together, in rhythm. From live events to future retreats, we’re shaping spaces where these emotions can be honored, held, and understood.

🔗 Explore the project

WILD Podcast: What I Let Die

Season One is complete! Twelve episodes that dive deep into grief literacy, non-closure, relational shifts, and the sacred work of letting go. I’m doing live reflections sessions for a few of the episodes. Details here. This podcast is a public service, and I’m deeply proud of it.

• 🔗 Apple

• 🔗 Spotify

• 🔗 Libsyn

ILID: I Let It Die Grief Course

If you’ve been feeling the swirl of an ending—of a role, a relationship, a version of yourself—this course is for you. It’s not about clarity or closure. It’s about making space, learning to trust your grief, and finding your own release valves.

🔗 Join the waitlist

Grief Circles at Kripalu

Every month, I facilitate a grief affinity circle in partnership with Kripalu. It’s a space for communal tending—a chance to be with others who are learning how to hold what hurts.

🔗 Sign up or learn more

RadicalSelfie.org: A Garden for What's Dying and Becoming

This is where I house my writings, resources, and reflections on grief, growth, and rebirth. It’s part archive, part altar, part invitation. I created this space to honor my past work, witness the transitions I’m in now, and share what’s blooming in the midst of it all.
🔗 Visit the garden

That’s the roundup. That’s the reminder. I’m still here, still doing this work. I just moved the furniture. Come find me where it’s better built.

We grievin and we growin,

Akilah

I wasn’t taught how to grieve.

Not in school.

Not at home.

Not in any of the religious spaces I grew up in.

Nor the ones I later tiptoed in and out of.

Not even when death sat right beside me, breathing heavy and close af.

Most of us weren’t taught how to grieve.

We were taught how to function, how to perform, how to suppress and move on.

How to hide it until it oozed out somewhere “less disruptive.”

That’s why I started What I Let Die with this episode—the grief basics.

Not a definition or a dictionary entry, but a remembering.

A first step into a different literacy.

A practice of looking at what we inherited about grief,

and letting some of that sh!t die too.

Episode 1 is just that—an opening.

A way in.

A slow walk toward the work most of us never got invited into.

If you haven’t heard it yet, I hope you’ll sit with it: Episode 1 – What We Were Never Taught

I also shared this carousel on IG to hold a few of the core truths from this episode. Share it with someone who might need it.

And soon, I’ll be inviting a few folks to join me for a short, recorded conversation about this episode—followed by a private, unrecorded grief circle. If you’d like to be in that space or hear more when it’s time, just comment on this post or send a quiet DM with a “give me details” nudge.

You’d think we’d learn to grieve in the obvious places: home, church, school, therapy, funerals. But the way I see it—and what I name in that first episode—is that grief work often starts somewhere less sanctioned: in the body, in breakdown, in silence, in rupture, or in hindsight.

So yeh, we weren’t taught how to grieve. But we can still learn. Together.

Week One is ready for you. Engage it here.

For the next five weeks, I’ll be sharing a single question each week.
Simple questions. Big questions.
The kind of questions that don’t need quick answers. The kind that asks you to slow down and listen a little deeper.

We’re talking about endings, about grief, about how we hold ourselves and each other when things feel messy and uncertain.

We’re also talking about trust — the shaky kind, the stubborn kind — and the tenderness it takes to stay present in the middle of it all.

Each post will give you one question to sit with. I intentionally designed this so that there is no right way to engage.

• Maybe you read the post after a shower, when you’re feeling soft and unguarded. • Maybe you bring it into a silent lunch date with yourself.
• Maybe you invite someone you love to reflect with you.

Remember - No pressure. No performance. Just practice.

At the end of the five weeks, I’ll pull these questions together — along with some savor practices — into a free printable you can use on your own, with a friend, or in a community circle.

You won’t need to sign up for anything new — just stay tuned here and open the posts each week.

This is another skill-builder for your grieftending skills. It’s about making space for it — and about noticing the beauty, the stubborn life, that’s still here too.

I do this type of thing 'cause I need it, and I need to do it in connection to others. If you get down like that too, or want to explore that way of doing our work alone together, join me in this. Will you? For real, will you?

Week One is ready for you. Engage it here.

I’m in the thick of a GRIEF LITERACY service project for you. And for myself. I’m laying out the next 12 to 15 episodes, shaped into four parts, each one walking us deeper into the ways grief moves through us and what we can actually do with that. This ain’t about “overcoming” grief—it’s about recognizing it, walking with it, and letting it teach us things that will help us, not break us.

I’m no grief expert, but I am a wise and willing guide. A resource. Because I’ve been guided, and I keep listening to what this work asks of me. Here’s how it’s shaping up:

1. FOUNDATIONS: Understanding Grief & Non-Body Death

2. PERSONAL GRIEF WORK: Recognizing & Managing Our Own Losses

3. GRIEF IN COMMUNITY: Understanding Others & Holding Space

4. TOOLS & PRACTICES: How We Move Through Grief Daily and As-Needed

Which of these pulls you in the most?

What’s something you wish more people talked about when it comes to grief?

The trailer is live on Spotify and LibSyn if you want a feel for what’s coming.

And here’s the cover art. There’s a story behind it that I’ll share soon, but I’d love to hear—what do you see in it? Let me know because the way I see it, we build this together.

p.s. I’m doing almost all of my writing over on The Grounds. If you dig my writing, that’s where you should join me (free and paid options available). I will very rarely write here going forward. Thanks.

ON FRIDAY, FEB 7TH at 9:30AM Eastern, I'll read you to a short essay (5-minute read) written by Chevanni Beon Davids, someone I love and deeply appreciate. It's about grief and about connection and about unsolvable things we must learn to walk with. …

ON WEDNESDAY, FEB 13TH at 7PM Eastern, I'll post a video (here on radicalselfie.org) that will guide you through a teaching around the connection between LOVE and GRIEF. A recent convo with the always-awesome Crystal and Thea conjured a savor sermon that I want to offer you through this video. …

When we think about grief, oftentimes we diminish it as an emotion, and a fleeting emotion at that. But even more troubling than calling it an emotion, or expecting it to be a fleeting emotion, is dumping grief into a catch-all category with the other fixable and often avoidable emotions.

Before I go into the fixable and often avoidable, picture me leaning into one of the most valuable things unschooling taught me when I say this to you:

Something not being visible to you does not mean that thing doesn’t exist.

In the case of grief, when we don’t feel the gravity or weight of a loss, we feel like we are not grieving. And when we do feel it, then we say we are grieving.

What I am learning and unraveling from the wisdom of multiple grief circles, and the deep studies that I’ve been immersed in over the past few years in seminary and then Thanatology school, is that grief, like love, is always present.

Sometimes when we love someone or something, we can identify and even articulate how they are loving us (the actions they do that we equate with love), or the feelings we have that we equate with being loved. Just like with learning, there are times where we can say ‘yes, I am learning this and here’s why this counts as learning, and here’s how I can see it and prove it,’

But learning, loving, and a lot of other experiences, are happening even when we cannot name, articulate, see, hear, or otherwise witness them. That perspective is really important because it addresses the other aspect, which is the notion that we can fix or solve grief.

READ THE REST ON MY GROUNDS…

The video I shared with you is a clip from a short message for my make-it-happen family that’s now moving from Patreon to My Grounds Space. Join me there too!

• Where to listen, watch, and everything else ever about the Grief Episode (Ep 62) :)

• DMB's Instagram

What Crystal said about this episode…

What if I told you to offer grief a seat at the table? What if I told you grief has no other duties except to be with you? It has nowhere to be and is not bound by time. Grief is patient. Grief is relentless, and as Akilah S. Richards ( @radicalselfie ), our guest for this episode and a DBM fave, says, “Grief is not something to be fixed but something for you to learn to be more skilled at processing.”

Akilah is a mother, partner, liberationist and author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing.

She is now diving deep into grief work and yaaaallll this work is made for times such as this! The best way to describe this episode especially in the midst of world events is TENDER and that word is critical for us right now because a lot of us are so tender right now and the world is in a tender place.

In this episode we talk:
✨Grief, language and the body
✨Grief and generational shifts
✨Grief and creative projects
✨And of course grief, Black women and the political landscape

Peeking into Dementia Through a Virtual Tour

I was part of a small group that did what's called a virtual dementia tour, an in-person simulation designed to give a glimpse into the lived experience of those grappling with this often devastating disease. I looked on YouTube to see what some of the tours were like, and I knew that since this one was being offered through the hospice and palliative care facility that I've been volunteering with this year, I’d leave the experience with more education about the sobering realities of living and caregiving.

I don’t think I have the words to explain how that felt. Especially as my mind repeatedly called up some of my elders who suffered in some ways because they died before we understood that they were experiencing some wild shit called dementia.

Maybe I do have words for this, not full sentences, nothing clearly articulated, but I do have words.

trapped. angry. frustrated. annoyed. alone. like an inconvenience. dumb. like a bother. helpless. childlike. vulnerable af. like a gnat. like a lost puppy. embarrassed. did I say trapped? trapped.

After the paperwork part of the process, we were ushered into what they called the garb room. There, I was instructed and helped as I put things they gave me over my ears, eyes, hands, and inside my shoes. Whole thing felt like I was gearing up for some kind of hazmat situation. Then, I was walked down into a second room, where someone explained five sets of directions without repeating them, and then moved me into the behavioral room to carry out the instructions.

First, I was the only participant with one other facilitator in the room whose job was only to observe. A few minutes in, a second participant came in and was trying to carry out their set of instructions. The observing facilitator was someone with whom I was familiar, unlike the person in the garb room and the person who gave me the instructions. Because the observing facilitator was familiar to me, I found myself particularly frustrated, and even angry, at her for not being willing to offer me some help. I talked to myself out loud and squinted my eyes to try to zoom in on her face to gauge if she could hear me. I couldn’t tell. There was too much stimuli for me to focus. There were two distinct moments I remember feeling like I was just going to walk out of the room, grab my purse and my car keys, and leave that stupid-ass, triggering-ass, palm-sweat-inducin ass experience.

After some time in the behavioral room, another facilitator came in and walked me out of that room, and back to the garb room to take off all of my equipment. I was shaky and in tears. When we all debriefed from the session, there were almost no dry eyes found around that blonde wood conference table. And for most of us—I know this because we talked about it—the tears were partly because we realized more deeply what people we knew or loved had been going through. And we wished we had known so that we could have been…better. More patient. More... something.

I won’t go into more specifics of the experience because if you are interested, I recommend it, and I don't want to lessen your experience by telling you what to expect in details. Besides, me saying it and you experiencing it, damn sure ain't the same thing.

We basically conducted a grief circle as part of our debriefing and regrouping. They didn’t call it that, but I’m calling it that. We talked about what we would have done differently with our loved ones who are no longer here, and we talked about what we will be doing different for those who are still here. And for the type of volunteer work, and for some, career work, that they are doing as caregivers, medical professionals of various kinds, hospice workers of all forms, family and friends and loved ones, all of that.

This is yet another example of the type of non-body death, what I've come to call Kananápo, that we experience. It’s about the living, the thinking, the feeling, what's happening in our brains and our bodies. And though this is about a disease that is ultimately fatal, a lot of the grief is about what's happening while they're alive, and while we are alive to witness. It's not about the fact that they're about to be dead/ transitioned, but about what they are experiencing in life.

I poured into the "I let It Die" Grief Course to do six gatherings throughout Autumn and Winter, specifically with a focus on non-body death and the multiple ways that grief exists without a tether to physical death. The core purpose of the ILID Grief Course is to acknowledge and honor our diverse experiences with grief, and show rituals and tools to help us uncover more of the interconnectedness of life's transitions.

https://www.alz.org/help-support/caregiving

I’m drawn to patterns. I’ve read that it’s not just me—our brains are wired to seek them out—and that tracks because this fascination has been a constant in my life. Patterns are part of what compels me to write about how I’m shifting. I’m slowing down and savoring the way I work, and this shit is way lighter on my brain and my spirit than my former, fast-ass ways.

Over the years, I’ve experienced the full range of financial realities as an entrepreneur. There were times when I felt the pressing need to create, to produce something that could generate income quickly. But there were also times when I was driven by something else—by intellectual curiosity or spiritual inquiry—creating from a place of cosmic obedience and passion rather than solely necessity.

In my 20s, 30s, and even early 40s, I would often burn through the night, sacrificing sleep to stay laser-focused on launching a course, collaborating on a project, or meeting a freelance writing deadline. I was undeniably creating impact. People would tell me how much my work moved or helped them, and sometimes the words would flow effortlessly. Alongside my own blogging, I worked with a range of editors—some incredible, some mid. One of the incredible ones would later become my short-term literary agent (shout out to Nick Chiles!) and helped me birth my most recent book. But despite all these genuine connections and heartfelt impacts, I couldn’t seem to crack the pattern that kept me from translating that energy into consistent financial stability.

From 2012 to 2015, life felt like a whirlwind of upheaval. We became nomads, not because we wanted to, but because we had to. Once both of us stepped fully into self-employment, we weren’t generating enough income for the kind of stability two people raising children need. So we packed up and traveled, spiritual and emotional resources aplenty, financial resources not so much. Our journey eventually brought us back to Jamaica, where my partner and I are from. Living there for half the year became a vital financial strategy. We could move with the seasons, traveling in the off-season when flights, short-term housing rentals, and real food were still within our li’l rinky-dink budget.

By 2016, when I launched my podcast, I felt a new rhythm begin to emerge. It was subtle, but it was there. Over the nearly 300 episodes, the show brought more impact and attention—people began inviting me to speak about the intersection of liberation work and parenting. Slowly, damn near imperceptibly, a path opened. One listener, in particular, became a vital part of that shift. She had benefited from my work and had the resources to offer support.

She came through like a force of nature, machete in hand, cutting away the dense overgrowth I had been chipping at for years but could never quite clear. That’s when the soil beneath the foundations of what I now call Savorism began to soften and take root.

This partnership was transformative (and that’s not a word I throw around all willy-nilly). What began as a tentative donor-donee relationship bloomed slowly, carefully, softly, yet bravely into something deeper—a friendship turned sisterhood. Together, we waded into uncharted waters, unlocking a form of wealth I hadn’t accessed before—not just the love and emotional support I always knew I was rich in, but actual financial resources. Money. Currency. Bread. This shift gave me the space to step back and finally reckon with feelings and patterns that had long been buried beneath my workaholic tendencies.

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I had always known I was surrounded by love, but there was a hollow space between me and the people I cared for. I wasn’t fully present for my children, for my partner—not at the levels I wanted to be, and in some cases needed to be. And they felt that absence too. I know because they’ve told me so, and because I’ve seen the evidence of what I missed showing up in aspects of my children. The grief of knowing I had been so consumed by work, and so under-resourced in space to rest and regroup, that I couldn’t truly be available for the ones I loved was heavy. I’m not saying I wasn’t present at all, because our unschooling life supported so much necessary presence and emotional work. I am saying though, that plenty of things went untended and sometimes that’s haunting.

In July 2019, I made a conscious decision to bury that old version of myself. I grieved her, and I’ve been commemorating that loss ever since. The gully of sorrow and anger I felt for all the years I’d worked so hard without seeing a financial return was overwhelming. Going through old portable hard drives and Google Docs felt like exhuming a graveyard of projects—so many dead ideas that never saw the light of day. Or saw the light of day, but made no real difference, and no significant dollars. I was furious, but also heartbroken. I create from the heart, so there was a dense sense of loss in how much of myself I’d poured into these creations, only for them to go unfulfilled.

But as is sometimes characteristic of death, there was also room for new life. My sister-friend’s machete werk became a tool that helped me carve through the wreckage, making space for me to sit with my grief, to sift through the ashes, and see what I could salvage. Over time, and with the support of other amazing women I met and who expanded my sister-count, I laid everything out before me and freakin’ realized I wasn’t evolving! I was just repeating old cycles, running harder on a path that was leading nowhere. I wasn’t creating from a place of growth, but out of habit. I was trying to resurrect the past, instead of allowing a new chapter to emerge.

Committing to my practice of Slowing down and honoring that grief gave birth to the "I Let It Die" course. It’s a space where we confront the things we’ve clung to for too long and finally let them rest. Creating this course has been like sitting in vigil for the person I used to be, letting her go with intention and care. Unlike before, I didn’t rush through the process—I took my time, rewatching the sessions, taking notes, and connecting deeply with participants. It felt like I was midwifing something new into existence, not from the frantic energy that once drove me, but from a place of stillness and presence.

As I open the doors for this next roving caravan of "I Let It Die," I carry this same reverence for the process. I’m hella committed to moving at a pace that honors what has passed, while nurturing what’s yet to come. This is for sure a journey of death and rebirth, of letting go and leaning into the unknown. Thankfully, I’m not on this walk alone! When we sit in our sessions, we work together, we learn to sit with our grief, to let things die when they need to, and to be curious about what comes afterward.

As we gather here today, let us honor the Akilah who once carried so much with such grace and determination. She was committed to her work, pouring her energy into projects, conversations, and points of connection, driven by a deep desire to foster change and nurture community. Her efforts weren’t in vain—they mattered, they built something meaningful, and they laid the foundation for everything that followed.

But in honoring her, we also acknowledge the weight she carried and the toll it took. She was running on fumes, sacrificing sleep and precious time with loved ones just to survive, always hustling, always chasing. She couldn’t step back, unravel her emotions, or make the shifts her soul was calling for—that Akilah was stuck in a loop. The long hours, the juggling of roles, the moments when her energy was stretched thin—those were real. And so, we honor her by allowing her to rest, knowing that she gave all she could in the ways she knew how.

This isn’t a goodbye—it’s a recognition, a deep bow to the Akilah who did the work, held the space, and kept moving forward, even when it was hard. She is a part of everything that exists now, her imprint remains in the work and the relationships she nurtured.

And so, we honor her life, her dedication, and her journey. We hold space for both the grief and the gratitude, allowing her story to be felt fully, as we continue to learn from all she lived and gave.

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“Get where God is. Get Here. Choose Now. Show up for what Presence has to teach. The practice of Presence is the most powerful, peaceful and beneficial course study on this plane.” -In the words of the late Jasai Madden

Hearing about Jasai's death was a subtle wave. I saw the post on Instagram, like many of us, and I, my brain just tried to freeze it and make it wrong. It's because it said, the late Jasai I was like, late? What? Late. Late. Late.

And then went down to the comments and, realized.

And a part of me wants to sit real time with other people who knew her in various ways. ways. Like people who knew her as in they talked on the phone often. or people who knew her because she tied beads around their waist and they had a freaking divine experience. Or people who read The New Fast Girls, her book, and it changed our lives. Or we didn't talk often but the conversations that you and I had with Jasai whenever we had them, they stayed with us.

A part of me wants to gather us in real time, to share space, to grieve, to wail, to wonder. to breathe together.

And then the other part of me, which is where you meet me now, wants to be alone and together around it. So that part of me said, just share, put it out there as an invitation to other people who are moving through their own waves of grief, acknowledging, coming to terms with, or not, the news of Jasai's death.

And so that's what I'm doing.

I've been allowing myself to recall her teachings, her ways with words and Her assertive, well worded ways of reminding us of our right to peace and ease and the benefits of stillness and authenticity. Just letting her teachings live in my recalling, in my actions, in every way. I'm also hearing from and reaching out to other people who knew her in those ways that I mentioned, those various ways, and just talking about her together.

I'm letting die with Jasai the expectations or hopes about any time she and I might spend together in this realm. Collaborating, plotting, planning ideas, laughing together. You might know Jasai's laugh, big and rambunctious.

I'm letting die with Jasai the hopes of getting my waist beads treated and nurtured by her and tied by her.

I'm letting die with Jasai the podcast that her and Stori created and poured into already. I'm letting die with Jasai. my intentions of listening to those episodes in bulk and reaching out to her to tell her what it sparked and sharing episodes with my daughters

I'm letting those things die, and I'm letting what remains, remain. And so much of her wisdom and work. And as Thea was saying to me the other day, the archives of Jasai's work live in her own writings, and in her own knots, and bead choices, and string and all of the things that were touched by her. And the stories she told, and who she raised, and how she raised our vibrations in so many ways.

I'm letting that remain and celebrating that those things will remain.

I'm letting be, for now, any sense of unfairness or curiosity or sense of urgency about what and why, how she died, what caused it, who caused it. You know, all these things swirling around in my head, I'm letting that be for now. It's just here. It's not something I need to tend to or solve or bring to anyone.

I'm just letting it be, while I remember her, and bring so much value and joy and realization that Jasai is so much more than that she died.

The garden has taught me to live, to appreciate the times when things are fallow and when they're not. - Jamaica Kincaid

My sistren told me about a plant depot not too far from my house last year. My money was funny that month, so I went with my paltry plant budget and no attachment to taking anything home.

The first surprise I got was how much grown-ass-woman energy I felt that day from leaving my house specifically to shop for plants. Never needed to do that before because a) in my mind, plant shopping was for the elders, and b) all my plants at the time were gifted to me. That day, I made a note of the upgrade to my tings-I-fux-wit-now list because I had the time of my life perusing plants, reading their labels, kiki-ing with other plant lovers, and deciding which plants to add to our plant-n-people family.

A second surprise came in the form of an unusual fern, one called a tatted fern. The intricate pinnules (the small leaves on a fern’s fronds) look like beading to me. They reminded me of the alchemy that some Black girls just be knowin’ how to do with hair that is thick and textured, always willing to be twisted and laid in complicated and beautiful ways. All that called me to take this fern home and figure out what it meant to live and thrive together. I bought it, happily, and despite my full attention, the fronds on this curly cutie went from bright green to dull dreary brown and went on to glory last winter.

But den, plot twist we seh, because when Spring rolled around, she stretched and stretched her brown, bare fronds until pinnules formed, and she went bright green again! I hadn’t experienced that level of resurrection with any of my other plants, mostly because this was my first outdoor plant that was potted and preferred minimal direct sunlight and a particular amount of daily moisture. I’m looking at that same tatted fern right now, and it is alive, but not as vibrant as when we first met. Try as I might, it isn’t thriving here with me.

That same year, after a minor surgery, I was gifted a philodendron birkin, another plant that called for different attention than my longtime plant homies. I watched 50-11 thousand how-to videos, I moved the plant to different areas of the house in efforts to collab on finding its ideal spot—no luck, plant seemed destined to die in my house. Some efforts yielded new light-bright green leaves, but they ended up browning to a halt before they even opened. Neither change of soil nor scenery was enough to invite a healthy relationship between that plant and this house. It’s still sporadically sprouting, and the existing leaves are still firm and sun-seeking, but overall, the plant isn’t bursting with life and blooming the amount of new leaves that this plant can. Try as I might, it isn’t thriving here with me.

It, like the fern, seems to be dancing between life and death, vibrancy and the void. It, like our planet, like some of the/our people in the thick of genocides and (other) government sanctioned violence and grief-bringing, must be seeing the blurriness of the line between life and death, thriving and slowing to a screeching, dead-dead, halt.

Witnessing and directly experiencing the rage and other stages than can come with grief seems to be more of an everyday conversation over these last few years. Are you experiencing that, too? I see death and it’s slow ever-present dances everywhere these days. In plants, in thoughts, in speeches, in chats with people I love, and in watching the experiences of people I root for and stand with, death and grief are present-present. Even in the celebration of aspects of life, it is seeming more and more ridiculous to ignore the truth about the things we may not celebrate or prefer, but must face and become intimately familiar with their language and their inevitability.

Refer a friend

Over the last few months, I was part of a sort of roving caravan of people who chose to co-create a container with other people who craved guided space to tend to our experiences with individual and collective grief. The grief that comes with our slow recovery from that first year of the COVID pandemic and all of the different personal, social, communal, job related, school related, health related, money related, changes that so many of us experienced and watched other people experience. The type of grief we called Kananápo, which is the type of grief that comes with the little d deaths—the deaths that aren't about someone's physical body dying.

So, things in the little d death category include a relationship ending, whether it's a friendship and/,or a marriage or a partnership. It could be brought on by a big change in one’s sense of identity when they leave that job that they spent years leaning into, even if they didn't love it. It could be brought on by letting go of something that needed to be let go of, but that let-go doesn't change how much it hurt to release it. The aspects of our childhood selves that didn't get to name, let alone grieve certain types of losses. Those types that we may have learned how not to focus on, but still needed to tend to, to lay it to rest, to actively let die.

In the moments that each of us chose to share parts of our grief, we collaborated to hold that person's grief together, just for those few moments. And ooooh chile, the lightening of the load, the brightening of the space that needed some degree of light to it, was for many of us, the type of relief we needed in order to go on. It's what we were looking for because we weren’t trying to avoid grief, we wanted to become more skilled grieftenders. We each wanted to take grief off of our chest so that it could walk on its own, probably right there next to us the whole time, but on a very different vibe than having it sitting on our chest or riding our shoulders. We needed that space so much, all of us!!

The content... All the things you shared. The rawness of it. The decomposing body. To be in that space fully and not shying away from it. Amazing. Kananapo... I have a new word and I'm using it! What a gift. Aaaah Akilah, I never thought I would be able to savor grief, longing to be with it and letting it die as I'm present. The rituals... I feel so much clearer and so much more intentional with so many more things. I want to write more, but words can't express what this experience has been like for me. Just forever grateful. - B.K. (Oaxaca, Mexico)

What aspects of these sessions were most useful or valuable for you? Seeing Akilah model ways that she ritualizes her grief; talking about the process of death; allowing grief to be for a multitude of things, not just death;… - A.C. (USA)

Thank you (for the term) excavating. I feel that. Before this group, I was afraid to dig because I didn’t want to follow that thread to find those bigger organs. It’s scary in there once you start digging. 😱 Thanks for bringing the bravery. - A.F. (Chicago, USA)

As I continue to tend to my plants (more than 30 of them now), my people, my purpose, and my prayers, I give thanks for the education that nature in plant form offers me. Things will die, but my efforts must not be void of creativity and willingness in support of life. And when life wanes, I am learning about how to let things die, how to accept death that happened through unjust and henous means, how to learn to be more accepting of death as part of life. None of that stops me from also trusting in my capacity to do all I can with light and water and love and breath and research and commitment and community connection, in support of thriving life.

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What if every time you thought, 'I need to do something,' you replaced the word 'do' with 'grieve'? What if grieving is the thing to do? What if grieving is a valid, even necessary, way of moving through your experiences with your emotions? Especially emotions that feel like stuckness, being trapped, or are rooted in trauma? When you visit a certain family member, step into a space at your job, or join a group, and afterward, you feel out of sorts—you feel detached from your groundedness and wholeness—what if instead of thinking 'I need to do something,' you said, 'I need to grieve something'?

Challenge yourself to replace 'do' with 'grieve' and observe what happens. It’s a significant shift in perspective, particularly in societies with poor grief literacy, like the U.S. and many other Western cultures. Our relationship to grief, loss, and death in all forms—bodily death, end of cycles, unmet expectations, and broken relationships—is often focused on prevention, avoidance, suppression, and fixing. Due to this mindset, we often don't immediately recognize the validity and importance of accepting and feeling our grief. Whether that grief manifests as righteous anger, tears, pausing, or moving into or out of certain spaces, acknowledging our grief can be a key to understanding how to navigate it.

My invitation, my challenge to you, is to reframe your thoughts over the next seven days. Each time you think, 'I need to do something about this,' instead say, 'I need to grieve this first.' It's as simple as that. What might it look like to grieve instead of fix? To grieve instead of trying to change?

Of course, this doesn’t apply to everything. Some situations genuinely require action. However, even in those cases, if we first acknowledge our grief, it can inform how we affect change. It can help us understand the grief we are experiencing in relation to the situation. For example, childhood experiences that we have not grieved might impact our relationships with our parents, relatives, or other significant people in our lives. We keep trying to 'do' something to change it. But if we first grieve what we lacked or needed, that might clarify what actions are necessary.

So, what if, instead of thinking 'I need to do something,' you thought 'I need to grieve something'? How might that change your everyday life experience?

Exactly 71 years and seven days after the origins of Juneteenth in 1865, a person I love dearly was born. I found myself reflecting on their recent shift from fierce, hard-earned independence to being told something that effectively limits their independence, overshadows their freedom, and plays out like the opposite of joy.

This person’s shift from independence to needing around-the-clock care due to the aging process and the changes that come with it, have been a turbo jet-pack on my recent studies on loss, on intergenerationality, on aging, on dying, on grief. Grief is how we savor loss (remember?), and while some losses are fast and furious, there are some, like this kind, that are slow and sporadic, spiky and persistent.

When a close family member is diagnosed with dementia there are layers of slow-ass moving grief. And I’m not speaking from a place of theory; I have experienced this personally, am experiencing it personally.

There is, for me, a sense of panic, like ‘How did I miss it? How come I didn't see it sooner?’ Shit like that. Then there's also the reality of experiencing the person who was diagnosed, being given that diagnosis. I see them going through that experience, while having lots of lucid moments to process what is happening to their brain, to process the part of aging that can happen, and is happening to them.

There's also the people who care for that person, and how it changes our lives, in terms of everything from the logistical and financial elements of a different type of care for that person. That person who was recently independent, living on their own, going out to shop for food to eat and yarn to knit! Their independence was accented by regular check-ins from various people in the family, some in person, others by phone. And now, they must live with one of us and be cared for, even if we are working outside the home or working from home and can't give them consistent attention. We changed, some of us much more than others, what our daily lives look like to now include the attention and care to this family member who's been diagnosed.

Then there's the type of care that each of this person's caregivers will need. They'll need to tag other family members in to do other tasks like following up with a doctor, or tracking a particular insurance verification process so that more in-home care can be covered under the insurance. Scheduling time to come see this person and give their primary caregivers some relief so that they can go out of town for a few days, have time to themselves, and to other people and projects that are important to them and that need attending to as well.

And in all of that, each person who loves the person who was diagnosed is also facing, a little bit more directly, their own mortality, their own genetic predispositions. The people born after us, our children, or nieces and nephews, or young people in our lives who would be in the position that we’re in now. Who will be the people who are affected by whatever diagnosis you or I may get if we get to age?

Each of us are now facing that a little bit more directly and perhaps in conversation around that. We are bringing it up in our conversations with other friends and collaborators. ‘Hey, have you talked with your people about, or have you thought about a dementia care plan? or an Alzheimer's care plan?’ Things we probably weren’t thinking (as much) about a year ago.

Then there's the anticipatory grief of being that person, or having it happening even closer to home than the family member that's experiencing it now. Maybe going into a sense of newer urgency or attention around what you can do now from where you are now, with all the mental capacity that you currently have now. Perhaps seeing it as a privilege to have this level of mental capacity, and attempting to make sure that you use it to minimize the weight and pressure on the people who (we hope) will care for us as we (if we) age.

So, when we talk about the layers of grief, we're talking about so much more than the death of a physical body. We are also talking about all these other types of grief, including all the spin-off grief that we might be experiencing and don't even recognize it. When we don’t recognize grief, we are hard on ourselves when we can't operate how we're used to operating, or how we want to operate.

When we do recognize the presence of grief, we can each say, Oh, no wonder I'm frustrated and can't get a handle on this particular thing! I'm grieving! (taken from my notes from the ILID Grief Course)

And if we can become more knowledgeable about grief, more grief literate, then imagine how much more space and grace might we offer ourselves and people around us who are also grieving.