To embrace my humanity, our humanity, humanity, in the face of a dehumanizing world is resistance.

I will be nothing if not authentic.

To be human as a woman of color in a world that is constantly pushing dehumanizing narratives, that is constantly trying to separate you from being deserving of love and grief and joy and the full range of human emotions that we are born into, is resistance.

To be human as a woman of color in a world that is constantly tearing you apart from those you love, either through physical violence at the hands of man-made weapons, warfare or “lone-wolves” in packs, through dehumanizing psychological violence that erases your contributions and silences your words, is resistance.

To be human as a woman of color in a world that tells you that you are alone and unsafe when in your heart, you know that safety is found in coalition and community, is resistance.

I am crying for myself.

I am crying for my family.

I am crying for my communities.

I am crying for all of us.

I am crying for our families.

I am crying for our communities.

I refuse to believe that I am only worth my contributions, if my contributions would cause me to deny my own humanity, my own grief, my own communities, the humanity of others, the grief of others, the communities I walk alongside.

Today I am so, so deeply sad. I grieve for the generations of women, present and past, who have been denied our humanity. I grieve for subsets of women who are told that they are not deserving enough to be grieved for, whose humanity is disregarded because of what they do or don’t do, because of what they look like or don’t look like, because of where they were born or how they were born or to whom they were born.

I am so sad.

I am so tired.

I am so human.

To grieve is to be human.

Hold on to humanity, even as you move through grief. It is our collectivity that connects us. We can only come through the fire more beautiful, if we pass through it together.

Hold on to those you love.

Hold on to yourself.

For though I may be drowning in grief, though we may be drowning in grief, we are alive.

Hold on to me.

I will hold on to you.

Together, we will keep moving to a far distant shore.