Rx #11: Black Women’s Mental Health A few days ago I watched this episode from The Grapevine about Black women and mental health in response to athletes like Simon Biles, Naomi Osaka, and Sha’carri Richardson and how the media treated them when they decide to put their health first. This is a conversation I feel a lot of people need to hear because it is so easy to disregard Black women’s health…

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but here are some musical inspirations and conversations that have been on my mind since the last time: https://soundcloud.com/user-631670519/mmiri-mixtape https://vimeo.com/551562421

Rx #10: Inside the Black Psyche Hey everyone, I am back after a needed break. Since I am reading through James Baldwin’s work in preparation for a possible reading and discussion series I am leading, I wanted to share this conversation, “James Baldwin: Race, Media and Psychoanalysis,” about his cultural criticism work and psychoanalysis, featuring Annie Lee Jones, Ph.D., a psychoanalyst,…

Rx #9: Workshops! This month I am take some time for my own care after a busy April, so I want to share a couple of workshops I led last month for the Queens Public Library. Somagraphy: Writing the Body Muditations: Tending to Our Poetic Gardens Enjoy and let me know what you think! I may expand these workshops into series. Image Credit: Paul Brent

Rx #8: Black Midwifery History and Current Black Midwife/Doula Organizations Black women, non-binary/genderfluid people and transmen face many challenges when it comes to birthing, reproductive health and maternal and infant mortality rates. Healthcare systems are embedded with problematic practices and education based on medical and scientific racism. A few days I was fortunate enough to take a…

Rx #7: Plant and Herbal Books by Black Authors Previously I compiled a list of self-care and wellness books created by Black women authors and today I would like to continue with plant and herbal books from Black authors. I recently found out about Beronda Montgomery’s book Lessons from Plants, which prompted this post and searching for other similar books from the perspective of Black thinkers.…

RX #6: Review of Embodied Black Girl’s Global Healing Day Yesterday I attended the second annual Embodied Black Girl Global Healing Day event founded by Thérèse Cator. I want to share some of my thoughts and takeaways from it. Hope is about having the imagination to see other possibilities I’ll admit that personally I feel that I have very little hope in the world. The world outside is bleak…

Rx #5: Reading List # 1 for Black Mental, Spiritual and Physical Health Since it’s Women’s History Month, I want to share some books written by Black women from my growing list centered on Black health. The books below are centered on topics such as self-care and radical love, spirituality and ritual, and medical and environmental racism. Do you have any other book suggestions to add to the…

Rx #4: What Would True Health Care Be? As we near the end of Black History Month, this series of tweets from Dr. Ashon Crawley response to the release of the recent movie, Judas and The Black Messiah, stood out to me: Reading Crawley’s series of tweets helped me to realize how much care is commodified, exploited, and hoarded by privileged communities of power, while for marginalized,…

Rx #2: Body Rituals I believe it’s important to develop a set of rituals to be more in tune with and responsive to your body. Your body is the first body that you have to engage with before you engage with any other body. So, I want to offer a list of rituals that I have been doing or that I am currently practicing to do regularly: Morning Stretches: I don’t always have the time to exercise or…

Image Credit: Chrysalis by Michael Kelly Williams Rx #1: Stopping my Fear of Pain 2020 was a year or letting go. I began the year sick physically and mentally. I probably had the virus and didn’t know it and I felt directionless. One of my low moments was collapsing on the floor because of leg and foot spasms. For the next two months, my legs were weak and I had to slowly build their strength…

Image Credit: Houston Conwill’s The Open Secret, 1986, MTA Permanent Art Welcome to 2021! The world continues to be in crisis, but in every crisis, there is opportunity. This year, I am starting a new series on my blog and in my general life called KWhole Apoethecary that explores health and wellness from a Black-centered, Queens/NYC-based, integrative approach, including looking at self-care,…

Yesterday, I went to two online events that inspired the poem below. First, my friend Yasmine invited me to a Nichiren Buddhism conference and then I attended Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative’s black/water: The Digital Ceremony. As you know, sound, wordplay and etymology are part of my spiritual and poetic practice, so watching both, certain words and phrases stood out to me, flowed and mixed…

Hello Everyone! Sharing some news with you: 1 ) Holy Clown Syllabus Harlequin Creature, a small press on which I am a board member and editor, recently found out some of the problematic history of the Harlequin, akin to Blackface minstrelsy in the United States. After learning that, the founder of HC, Meghan Forbes, and I created a syllabus of various resources that “ interrogate the ways in…

Here are some of my Creative inspirations from the past month: She’s currently one of my favorite artists [youtube…

Currently I am participating in a workshop with poet and activist Joey De Jesus’ workshop, Unsettling the Wor(l)d from The Liminal Lab. I wanted to share the poems I crafted from their prompts, especially since I wrote them during this stressful week. I hope you are feeling a bit lighter today!

Image Credit: dejesus2020.com

Neon Arts

Commonpoint Queens’ Hoodoo Tarot

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