Anger. Fear. Grief.

Is this grief? I don’t feel like eating, I didn’t want to go to sleep. For hours all I could do was scroll through social media, CNN in the background. I was searching, all posts, all updates, all memes. Sometimes, we just can’t look away, but this is different. I’m seeking it out, and I can’t stop, nor do I want to.

This is about connection. You see, over and over these horrific crimes and tragedies, and each time something inside you breaks, even just a little, and fear grows. A lot of people are using words like “tired” and “exhausted”, I would say exasperated, desperate. It is the weight of our entire history; 300 years of Slavery, Jim Crow, The Civil Rights Movement, Rodney King, mass incarceration, police brutality…our collective Black history is weighing down on us now, and it is a heavy feeling. It is exhausting.

The grief over the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X is as raw today, as the loss of George Floyd is. It is all connected.

The only way to survive, is through connection. A connection to the movement, a connection to our brothers and sisters in the streets, a connection to the history and legacy of what it means to be Black, not just in America, but in a White world.

In my grief, the comfort I find, maybe even hope, is in the words of my brothers and sisters, the words of the movement past and present. All I can do, is continue to be present with them, continue to listen, speak out, engage, and educate myself.