Dear Mama, 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, 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 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 Plus Thea uses a Negro spiritual to describe Black women's current mindset and Crystal is learning sign language and attempts to teach Thea. 💗Black Mama Magic Card: Card #25 - Motherhood is not the graveyard of dreams💗 EPISODES MENTIONS/RELEVANT TO THIS EPISODE: 🎙️DBM Ep 61: Black Motherhood & Joy 🎙️Shaping The Shift: The Wild Body With Jessica Schafer ✨PATREON BONUS CONTENT - Pre-Show Shenanigans✨ ABOUT Akilah Richards: Akilah S. Richards is a mother, partner and liberationist. As founder of Raising Free People Network and author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work, Akilah S. Richards partners with co-conspirators to challenge and encourage social justice-minded people to explore privilege and power in their relationships with personal leadership and all relationships. These days find Akilah tapped into the wisdom she gathered from her family's transition from schoolishness to confident autonomy. She is savoring her life's lessons after nearly a decade of location independence, and eight years of being invited into various conversations about intergenerational community care across the U.S., Southern Africa, and Jamaica (where Akilah is from). She guides discussions about how unschooling skills and other forms of decoloniality are shaping families and other cultures of leadership, change-work, and love. In addition to private coaching and public speaking, she facilitates trainings, small-group experiences, and consultations that help resolve the ways that unexamined experiences with bias and oppression disrupt families' and organization's capacity to sustain cultures of belonging. Connect with Akilah: Grief Circle | Community & Support | Instagram Connect with Dem Black Mamas: YouTube | Email List | Patreon | Blusky 🗣️Engage: This is a conversation. Speak back to us! Share your thoughts about the episode using the hashtag #DemBlackMamas, DM us or email us at magic@demblackmamas.com. For full show notes & transcript, check out our website: demblackmamas.com