By Patrice Peck — 2021
Mother-daughter bonds within the Black community can be powerful counters against systemic oppression. We invited four moms to share their wisdom in open letters to their daughters.
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CLEAR ALL
Kwanzaa was instituted as a means to reaffirm the human agency and cultural dignity of people of African descent. This agency was disrupted during enslavement as persons who owned enslaved Africans, influenced a displacement of practices that were intrinsically African.
Black people should not deny themselves spaces where we find joy and wonder—they are too rare in our lives.
Motherhood is supposed to be all about love and joy. So why do so many moms feel so bad?
How did I picture us all living together in that house? I didn’t. I was like someone who shows up a bridge tournament and says, “Oh. I didn’t know we’d be playing cards.”
Motherhood is an identity that calls for women to forgo belonging in their romantic relationships, professional aspirations, and even the public sphere in exchange for isolation and disconnection peppered with private praise drowned out by public critique and social exclusion.
Through studies of fetal DNA, researchers are revealing how a child can shape a mom’s heart and mind—literally
Worldwide, mothers are overworked, underpaid, often lonely and made to feel guilty about everything from epidurals to bottle feeding. Fixing this is the unfinished work of feminism.
In the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minneapolis, dharma teacher Larry Ward says we have to “create communities of resilience,” and offers his mantras for this time.