STORIES
Stories help us make sense of grief and imagine other ways of living. The stories gathered here are created by Indigenous and Black young people who share what grief has taught them. They are shared in ways that resist extraction, inviting us to listen with care rather than consume.Some of these stories are visual. Some can be read, while others can be heard in the voices of those who created them. However you choose to engage, the invitation is to attend slowly: to spend time with what emerges, notice what resonates, and remain open to what these stories might teach.Click *** to read a research reflection.
Keith
let’s say for a moment
it was always meant to be this way
this painful
this exciting
this difficult
and no matter the outcome you’re still here
every ounce of your energy
every story of your being
because what is life without feeling all these tragic unpredictable feelings
what an honour to feel the grief of a love so big
Melanin Monroe
Grief 101: Righteous Rage by Melanin Monroe
How could I not be angry?
I lived as you told me to the world still cursed me several times over?
I lived as you told me to and you yourself betrayed me.
I lived as you told me to and yet felt my back carved into and my flesh served as charcuterie to all my supposedly trusted confidants.
You cheersed over the plates of flesh
Loudly clanging cups full of my tears, mulled wine of my mercy that would stain oxblood red, just as the life blood I’ve shed in silence to keep my serenity.
I let you consume me as I watch in silence.
Angry
How could I not be angry?
I who must watch my world burn to the ground and rise like a Phoenix from its ashes
over and over and over and over again.
I do not know how much more heat I can endure.
Smoke fills my lungs now, I cannot breathe.
Phoenix in my dreams, Jean Grey, a mere mortal in reality.
I couldn’t have pictured this future even with the gift of divine sight.
You set a light upon my dreams but hid the matches in my back pocket.
People still think I set the fire.
People still think I deny the carcinogenic toxic fumes of the retroactive accountability.
People still see me as foolish.
How can I not be angry?
When the world you can only see me as ‘mad’
Mad as the hatter
As lost as Alice
Is there even still Wonder to found in these lands?
How could I not be ‘mad’?
Mad, insane, crazy
Rebellious, defiant, lazy.
These words finally hold no power.
How could I not be angry?
At the source of words that cut like well sharpened fabric scissors into the hem of my humanity, into the cloth of my character the inseam of my individuality.
Maybe I am crazy
but I’ve learned the right to be.
Maybe I am crazy
but nothing is ever as it seems.
Maybe I am crazy
but I see truth now for what it always was and no one can take away, the vestige of valor, that comes with being called crazy when all you’ve done is swallow bitterness and arsenic with a smile.
Maybe I am crazy
but what a Righteous Rage I do carry.
So well earned.
My truest companion.
I remember when
I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much, hm
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly
yam
In death, we grieve for 40 days. Then after, if you are a neighbour from a village or town, we teach you how to grieve so that you can be held by the community. I can't find all the tools from back home, but as a human, I practice what's here, processing with people that don't share it with me.
qolati
Salt I
every september
a ritual for you.
find the nearest body of water
seek remembrance,
seek memory
in the waves.
watch as the ocean
folds over itself
again
and again.
join in kinship
regrieve
grief
press your palm
into the waning tide,
let the salt sting
the papercuts
and kiss
the torn skin at your nails.
welcome it
welcome it
a gift left
by ancestors.
an heirloom
to protect
for descendants.
will you welcome
a prayer?
Salt II
the ocean
throws itself incessantly
against the rocks.
the rocks
welcome this beating.
i listen
to the sound
of this one sided war,
a familiar mother tongue
felt in the marrow.
the sun is long set.
i stand
step toward the water
and whisper your name
to the seafoam.
as i turn to leave
i hear you answer
through the waves
that melt
into each other.
i smile.
what is water
if not memory
shifting
and full of kept secrets?
my secret is:
here,
you are immortal.
Black spruce
This is a picture of overpasses that I took from underneath. I added a teepee ’cause it’s along the river, probably what would’ve been there a couple hundred years ago. I put it on a canvas, and on the canvas painted the medicine wheel which is the four colours: white, yellow, red, and black. I was gonna add a question: Have you taken the time to learn the Indigenous name of where you live? Calgary is otos-kwunee, the Métis word. That’s something I’ve started looking into more, it’s a part of connecting with my identity. Whenever I go to a park or trail, I imagine what it would’ve been like if there wasn’t all these brutal structures and how much forest there would be, or where people would set up camps. I’ve thought about what if there was a different timeline? I feel like it would've been more beautiful if it looked the way it did.
