In my best Biggie rapping voice but remixed, “What’s grief? Grief is when you need any noise to go to sleep, grief is isolating yourself for several weeks.”

You get the lyrical point. What I didn’t understand, until I navigated that darkness I mentioned in episode two, was that grief wasn’t limited to losing a loved one. My body was grieving some things that my mind was slow to catch up with. It was a rough few months that I was forever changed by. Well actually bufo (toad venom) and my sister’s death a few years ago, forever changed me, but that darkness was still a seminal moment. This episode features my play cousin, Shaunathn, whom I consider fra-mily, a friend that’s family, who recently lost their mother. There isn’t one way to grieve and we get candid about the multitude of things we’re still grieving.

Having immigrant parents, getting a good education was over emphasized in our household. Lucky for me, I was down for traditional schooling, having gone to a four year college then grad school. But after seeing “battle royale" play out between the Biden-Harris administration and Congress over student loan debt cancellation AND realizing how much I owe, I chatted with my co-producer, Wize Grazette of The Indie Creative Network, about the worth of getting a degree versus real life field experience.

As an Afro-Caribbean woman, I’ve had to navigate multiple worlds beyond my comfort and rarely with enough language. When I fell into a dark space at the end of 2022, I was lost and couldn’t understand why. Coming out of that moment, changed me. It changed how I viewed myself and the people, places, and things I interacted with. This solo episode serves as a preview of the nuanced journey I take my guests on, as they open up about their experience navigating their Blackness in various spaces.