BLACK HISTORY ACTION ITEM: POST DATED 12 FEBRUARY 2022
The National Black Doll Museum had to shut down due to Covid in 2020. They were hoping to reopen this year, but they’ve lost their physical building.
They’ve found a place that’s like “hell yeah, we want the National Black Doll Museum! We have land we’re literally looking to develop for cultural improvement and preservation!” in Attleboro, MA. But to make that happen, they need $1.5 million dollars for a building. Their collection dates back to the 1700s, and dolls that old will need special lighting, climate control, knowledgeable curators, etc. to help preserve them–plus of course they need staff, display cases, you know, stuff. They want to crowdfund the first $100k this February to make that happen. As of the date of this post, they have 16 days to go and have raised only $27,435. While the minimum donation listed is $25, I checked–it is actually possible to make a lower donation if you only have $5 or $10 to spare. (There’s a custom screen after you select your donation level.)
All too often, when we discuss history at large we cut out the part of women and girls–preserving dolls is part of preserving that history. And all too often when we discuss Black history in America, we kind of go “they were slaves and then they weren’t” and ignore that while they were slaves, they were also people, and that their existence was commodified beyond just being cheap labor. (And that there were free Black people, and that those people were also taken advantage of, and and and….)
Let’s celebrate Black history. Let’s celebrate Black play. Let’s celebrate Black women and children. Let’s celebrate the visibility of Black people, as people, for 300 years.
I want to say this bc it does not get said enough: most grief you experience in your life will have NOTHING to do with death.
This is not talked about enough and as a result ppl struggle to process grief bc the world is telling them that grief is something else.
Grief is about loss, and IF you’d like to define it as a loss of life it is not restricted to loss of life via death. Even then I’d implore you to not view grief as about death or life but again, just loss.
Grief is also about having a shitty childhood that nothing can fix even if you have healed from it as an adult; your childhood was shitty and there’s nothing retroactively you can do about it. You grieve the loss of thriving your past self was denied.
Grief is about friendships that ended abruptly, confusingly and again, there’s nothing you can do to change that. You just have to sit with it. This is the only way grief can ultimately be processed and all it wants by the way: to be accepted and sat with. That’s it.
Grief is about opportunities that have passed, experiences you can’t have because of the way situations have ended up, and having to accept that while you do have your whole future ahead of you, there were some things you wanted to be a certain way then and they weren’t, aren’t and will never be.
Grief is being estranged from your family and missing family closeness even though you do not want to be closer to your parents, because you’re grieving the fact that there is a healthy part of human life you will not experience through them.
Grief can be the job you lost, the plans that fell through, the events that spiraled out of your control
If grief is strictly about life and death, understand that it includes grieving the life you never had and the death of who you used to be, too.
But moreover, grief is about loss.
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