Bones of the Womb: Healing Algorithms of BIPOC Reproductive Trauma with Rituals, Ceremonies, Prayers, Spells, and the Ancestors (The Production of Life Affirming Epistemology of Grief)

Abstract

How do we BIPOC folx survive amid cavernous terror and soul-ripping trauma? In this heart-centered literary story, I embark on a mystical, womanist narration—autohistoria-teoría—to provide the broken-hearted a pathway to better conceptualize and practice irreparable grief. From the incomprehensible pain of walking through the loss of three of my children as a WoC in the American nation-state, I serve as a mirror to BIPOC folx who sit in loss of any kind, and I demonstrate how to piece back together the wandering fragments of our Soul from shattering grief. In this work, I respond to the paucity of BIPOC-centered (un)birth trauma research by raising the volume on BIPOC reproductive trauma. I urgently step away from the multilayered inadequacies and insufficiencies of “western” psychotherapeutic models of trauma healing that are violent to us BIPOC folx and serve to pathologize our grief, and I dedicate myself to excavating critical Indigenous epistemology. I accomplish this with a deliberate and intentional blend of the personal, spiritual, and the scholarly to uncover the ways in which our narratives as BIPOC folx are often erased within material experiences.

Grief (Work) Is Heart (Work): A Critical Race Feminista Epistolary Exchange as an Offering on Death, Grief, and Well-Being to Academia

“…Badruddoja [7] theorizes life-affirming epistemologies of grief as a process that embodies multiple modes of knowledge and knowing to subvert discourses of BIPOC communities to ask, "What manages to live (survive and thrive) in the ruinous and damaged landscape of BIPOC trauma?" (p. 620).…”

“…As with hooks [1], we return to love as a means to return to what has been lost in the physical world but lives on in our beating hearts and memories. We argue that recognizing and affirming death and grief is a life-making process that creates spaces for healing through our epistolary offerings [7].…”

“…Using a critical race feminista epistolary methodology [4,5], we document our epistolary exchanges that contain dehumanizing attempts on our bodymindspirits [6] as active grievers of color. Unlike the Western psychotherapeutic tradition of overcoming death and grief, we "stake a claim, sit with, and affirm it" [7] (p. 620). As with hooks [1], we return to love as a means to return to what has been lost in the physical world but lives on in our beating hearts and memories.…”