#the way pandoric grief works is

[car-table-offline]

the three pandoric stages of grief, colorized, c. 1890

ft. @centeris2

#shitpost #sso #star stable #star stable online #heres part 2 #as you can see #the way pandoric grief works is #you get scared #you cry #and then you accept #simple as that #easy peasy

[jevonbolden]

My daughter is in my bed on her phone watching YouTube makeup tutorials while I’m working on an author’s book proposal. I just patted her on the head thinking about what she means to me and how only God can shield us from the cumulating clouds of unrest threatening to burst over us in a raging torrent. Her hair is parted down the middle, flat-twisted down on the sides and smoothed into two low curly, puffy ponytails. Her edges are laid, of course. That’s just Autumn. I think about how Breonna Taylor had been seventeen like my Autumn is and she and her mom may have had moments like this one.

Girls are so precious. You just love them. You want to protect them.

I can’t imagine being awakened to the news of Autumn being shot in her apartment at night while she was sleeping. But then I can somehow imagine the hopelessness we’d feel finding out she was shot by police—hopeless because we, a black family in America, would know at that moment there would not be a matching consequence. Our hearts would drop and we would know—no evidence of wrongdoing.

Almost immediately, we’d begin the work of negotiating our anger and feelings of helplessness—pitching them up against our faith, hoping with everything the rationales stick—willing the trauma to do as little damage to our souls as possible, managing our breath, swallowing tears, and measuring our words—suspending the release of emotion, scared to death of our inability to rebox the certain pandoric outlay if we didn’t hold ourselves together.

What a hellish spectacle of a day—a day we’d relive forever with no justice and no peace. Crushed. Defeated. Broken.

Lord God Almighty, be near the Taylor family. Bind up their broken hearts the way only You can. You are acquainted with their grief.

#say her name #breonnataylor #mothers and daughters