hood therapy vol. 2
this week as home has been the center of my world offline, it feels good to be at home online!
hey y’all!
It’s exciting to write this post today because I feel the community that’s been cultivated. I reflect on the way y’all showed up for the first hood therapy newsletter. The response was overwhelming, to say the least, and I appreciate every single one of you for the likes, comments, restacks, and shoutouts! I am forever grateful for the love and support y’all have shown me over the past week on ‘hood therapy vol. 1’ so I am excited to bring it back again with volume 2!
Ever since
compared the feeling of reading Vol. 1 to watching an episode of Fresh Prince or Martin I’ve felt like I might have carved my own lane to call home1 here on Substack. This is my weekly ‘newsletter’ and I will share posts I was moved by within the community here on Substack. The aesthetic flow and vibe of the newsletter will be based on my creative inspiration for that week. I want less pressure as I explore my creative writing. I decided to suspend paid subscriptions to continue to focus on conversations that will invoke freedom-driven thoughts. I want to cultivate a book club environment that will feel nostalgic like summertime cookouts when you and your favorite cousins play catchup. Those who want to support me can purchase my book, UN-TRAP DA HOOD, through my website or Amazon. Or I love coffee and having a latte from a cute coffee shop downtown.
Today, I am writing to you from a place of peace, empowerment, and purpose. There has been a lot of heavy energy recently when it comes to topics related to black culture, and I want this to be that collective time-out
called for.2 Now don’t mistake that as me not sharing some heavy topic pieces, but I am mindful of the heaviness within our community right now.Summer, summer, summer-time!
Reading poems from Summers with Big Jo by my big sis
feels like hearing the ice cream truck pulling into the neighborhood at Grandma’s house. You and your cousins running outside with your dollars trying to decide between a strawberry shortcake or the Spongebob popsicle. I reflect on my great-grandmother’s lines to the past ran across her face as she smiles outside waiting for me3 to spend my summer with her. Sitting in the backseat of the car looking out the window with my chin resting in the palm of my hand. If I close my eyes I can feel the excitement I would express when we turned off Randleman Road onto Craig Street, passing Mrs. Annie Lou’s house at the top of the road. I think about pulling into the two-car driveway that functioned as a one-car driveway because my uncle’s race car occupied the second space dormant still to this day. Grandma Louise is sitting in her chair on the porch with a cigarette in her hand, legs crossed with the water can sitting on the step waiting for me to take ownership of my summer job.She always stood outside
Waiting for me.
Under a sky
That had no end.
Lines to the past
ran across her face.
Music has always been the escape.
Rhythm and musical creativity have been a part of our culture dating back even before slavery. It’s encrypted in our DNA, coded messages and spirituals for niggas still on the slave ships of society. Music of all genres has been curated by sounds soulfully orchestrated by black culture. Our pain is expressed through blues, our oppression is expressed through hip-hop, and our innovative nature to overcome societal setbacks birthed house music. The other day I was strolling through TikTok and came across a video of Zach Fox’s DJ set at the Movement Festival in Detriot. Black people and music go together, real bad the music is just a reflection of our culture.
As I reflect on the history of house music I can’t help but think about
piece when she said, ‘flourishing under scrutiny requires that we let them see us’. This sentence resonated so much with me because I never came out, I just popped up married to a woman. Upon my ‘pop out’ I understood the scrutiny that was coming, raising my daughter with another woman, once being in open relationships with men but secretly with a woman. I could hear all the chatter before it came, but to my surprise, I received none of that.House music was created before its time, I am sure the men who created house music at the kitchen table in their home in Detriot understood the scrutiny they would face, but the music felt good to the soul. Love feels good to the soul when you are open to receiving healthy unconditional love. I won’t say that house music is for the gays, but the gays can relate to that soulful connection that is a testament to our resilience, and a reclaiming of our narrative4.
You’ve got mail!
The woman’s voice we all grew to know and still remember before we replaced her with Siri and Alexa. The infamous AOL line “You’ve Got Mail” brings back the memories of that dial-up sound as you attempt to connect to the internet. Hoping no calls come through or your parents don’t need to make an important call that will knock you off the internet before you can check your AOL Instant Messager.
I remember growing up always looking for fashion inspiration for my next outfit for school. Since middle school, I took pride in being titled, Best Dressed, every year in the yearbook leading up to graduation. Of course, I realized that title meant nothing in the ‘real world’ but it was nice to be recognized for my research and creative expression. Before there was dial-up internet my go-to for inspiration was magazines. Since I can remember I’ve had a love for magazines, all of them. Maybe that’s where my passion for writing began - in school projects, I would find ways to incorporate a journalist style of writing or collages into my assignments.
wrote a piece titled, The Importance of Essence, Jet, and Ebony Magazine Today, and it reminded me of the piles upon piles of magazines I’ve collected throughout life. As someone whose face would light up when I found my one piece of mail in the mailbox, with this month’s documentation of black history displayed on the magazine cover.5 I couldn’t agree more that these magazines serve as archives for our culture’s history and cultural milestones.Other magazines like The Source and Vibe were created due to the success of these top three magazines, capturing the history of hip-hop culture. Before there was social media, we had magazines to keep us up-to-date on the new fashion trends, new music albums being released, celebrity gossip, and here is also where the narrative started to be projected onto us. Marketing catchphrases that would grab the reader’s attention at first glance in the checkout lines of the grocery store spreading the latest rumor. I can’t help but reminisce sitting on the floor in my bedroom flipping through the magazines and tearing out the outfits I was inspired from. Because of my curvy shape, my mom never allowed me to wear the popular Baby Phat mini skirts or Apple Bottom ‘booty shorts’ as she called them, so my Barbie dolls wear my muse.
I come from the Sneakerhead Era.
I come from an era when your status and popularity were determined by your sneakers. It was a forbidden law to be seen in Team Jordans or any ‘dupe’ sneaker. An era where the word dupe was straight-up knockoff or bootleg. I wasn’t knowledgeable about this cultural rule with a mom who felt ‘Jordans were Jordans’. I later learned this was furthest from the truth. I remember in college weekend plans were centered around waiting in line outside of Foot Locker praying your size doesn’t sell out before you get inside. And if you didn’t get the new release, the crew can cancel looking for you to show up at the function that night. I went to an HBCU and I remember campus events specifically for sneakerheads to display their thousands of dollars worth of exclusive releases with opportunities to trade for other exclusive releases. This is where my feelings of being disconnected from black culture are rooted. Music culture and street fashion went hand in hand and still did up until the influencer era.
To be deeply rooted in the sneaker game is to be grounded in street fashion. Street fashion is the most impactful influence in all of America in my opinion. Why else do you think Mr. Trump was at Sneaker Con selling sneakers this year?6 Movement and change happen on a ground level first, the government proposes a narrative and it’s up to the streets to buy into it. Mr. Trump’s move further proves the point made in
’s piece, Make America Grimey Again, that America’s greed thrives on the whiplash scars on the backs of our ancestors.7 From a ground level we hold the power for groundbreaking change. I’m not suggesting through fashion we will invoke change, but I believe if we focus on groundwork in privacy we will see the change we desire. Our food is poisoned, let’s cultivate some community urban farms. Learn trade skills other than lash extensions and after-cut enhancements, but carpentry, plumbing, and electrical to provide homes for our community. My point is, that this revolution cannot be televised, we must do the groundwork amongst ourselves as a community. Perhaps this is the reason we are all yearning for community during this time of chaos in our world.
Community reads that felt like home.
spoke to my soul in relation to my current realities offline and it felt good to read this post and know I am not alone. calmed my overthinking down with this read and reminded me that this journey is not linear so it’s okay to lean into the process of transformation rather than looking for the healed outcome so much. felt like someone took off my coat carrying the weight of the world at the door and gave me a safe space to simply exist. No expectations, no conditions, just to simpy be. reflected back to me like a mirro hanging on the wall. The title alone replaying in my mind all week like a mantra as I continue my search for home. 
I would love to hear from you in the comments! Did anything in the post resonate with you and bring back memories? Or have you read some of these posts yourself this week, if so how did they resonate with you?
In
’s essay Dancing in the Desert, there was a paragraph that stood out to me as I reflected on feeling defeated in my efforts to secure a home offline, but online in this community space through community within I have found a way to carve my own path and call it home.This week
posted a note that read, ‘Can we as a society just take a collective timeout.’ I felt this so deeply as my timeline became filled with dark topics that just weighed a little heavy.In
poem, The Arrival, her opening reminded me of seeing my great-grandmother outside waiting for me. Great-grandmother highlighting the wrinkles Shondra beautifully described as lines to the past.Based on how house music was created, I do not believe it was imagined to be the go-to music genre for gay clubs and bars. It was ahead of it’s time and I wonder if it was robbed of it’s intentional experience because of that. However, I’m sure it influenced Jersey mixing and the New Orleans bounce music. In
’s piece as she talked about the intimacy of scrutiny I couldn’t help but think about the comparsion to house music and the scrunity they experienced for the unique fast pased music. Through Bethany’s coming out in her piece, the intimacy of scrutiny, and June being both Pride and Black Music month I found creative expression through my love for house music.In
piece, The Importance of Essense, Jet, and Ebony Magazines Today, as the opening she mentions how these magazines were documentations of Black History specifically Jet, Essence, and Ebony. She goes on to highlight that had it not been for these magazines, our history and culture would have been erased again. My take on her piece is that we gained a great level of progress as a culture by being able to document our cultural advancements, milestones, and history.Donald Trump understands that the only way he will be able to connect with the black community is through our communication portals, the streets. I believe that Mr. Trump (I loved how
referred to Trump as Mr. Trump) thinks the black community resonates with his crook behaviors and has this unspoken ‘pass’ within our culture. His arrogance shined the spotlight on his attempt to undermine the intelligence of street culture.Although
’s piece was not specifically about Mr. Trump relying on black culture, or street culture for that matter, the points made in Make America Grimey Again convey the hidden message when it comes to street culture and politics. When we say “they don’t want to see us make it” this country is who ‘they’ are.
Ugggh there is so much goodness in this piece. We all had to live the same childhood, just in different versions. This reminded me so much of summer days spent at my grandparents’ house! The dormant car parked in the driveway, yes! This is a piece that feels like home. And thank you for sharing my piece, so glad it felt like a place to lay your weight down 🤎
Choco Taco, allllll day!