As many of you know I’m interested in how race, religion, culture play out in our everyday with the emphasis on how much they impact on our ability to grieve the loss of motherhood. As a black woman I have my childhood memories that have influenced my journey into adulthood, not in a negative way, just in a “I never expected that” or “no surprises there” kind of way.
Since that pivotal, in 2018, moment when Jody asked me why black women were not connecting with her there have been a number of conversations that have gone a long way to re-framing my thinking around my experiences today. I have also been blessed with the many women I’ve meet on my journey, all of whom have added and helped me to grow my story in a way that I did not think possible. These moments have lead me to have conversations that I did not think possible. These conversations have allowed me to bring women together to explore aspects of race and religion that other forums would possible not allow us to have. For this reason I started my Women of Colour platform where I can have conversations (with other women) to explore how race and/ or religion has or has not impacted on our ability to grieve the loss of motherhood.
So I invited my friends Dr Krista Cooper, Civilla Morgan, podcaster at Childless Not By Choice, and Haneefah Muhammad to join me for my first conversation on this topic.
I am so grateful that they were open to having such an open and revealing conversation with me, a conversation that enabled me to explore areas of religion that I had not thought about. I won’t say too much more as you can listen in via this link …… but I just wanted to close with these quotes…
“as childless women we can carry the burden of the disappointment of God”
“…it should be about a relationship with God, not religion… just because we are in a relationship it does not mean that it will all work out…”
“the bible holds a gamut of human experiences… use the bible to know that we can survive, not to instruct us how to live…”
“the best thing to do (with our grief) is to hold kindness, compassion and quietness”
These were bits that really stood out for me during our conversation, things that I had not heard or thought about before, but quotes that I will continue to think about and use as they re-frame my thinking. I feel so honored to have been able to gather these women to talk about this topic and so grateful that they said Yes. Thank you to Krista, Civilla and Haneefah and thank you all for listening too – I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did… click here to listen.
Watch out for part two where Ruth Levy Abramson joins me to talk about her experience with the Jewish faith.
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