It’s been a year and seven months since my world shifted — the day my mother transitioned from this earth. Life hasn’t looked or felt the same since.
Grief, it turns out, doesn’t come with a rulebook. It shapeshifts, lingers, and surprises you. But somewhere in the chaos of losing her, God quietly planted something else: a community. Not in a formal support group or through a hashtag, but within my own circle of friends.
Two of my close creative sisters, actress, singer and artist Dominique Toney and actress, poet and artist Yazmin Monet-Watkins, both living in Los Angeles, also joined the “lost parent club.” None of us signed up for it, and certainly not this early in life. One lost both parents within two years. The other lost her father just months after my mother passed.
We were already bonded through art, womanhood and vision. Now grief has stitched us even closer.
It’s a club no one wants membership in, especially not while the world feels like it’s falling apart. These last few years — pandemic years, protest years, pick-yourself-up-again years — changed us. For me, it felt like an out-of-body experience, like watching my own life from a distance.
I’ve spent a long time wondering what we lost in that season. I’m not even sure what it was. Was it our humanity? Or was it the comfort of togetherness, something we may never experience in the same way again?
What I do know is this: the emptiness I’ve felt goes beyond losing a parent. It’s the sensation of being suspended in the air, close to the ground but never quite touching it. I haven’t been able to find solid ground since.
I’m doing my best to land again, to feel the grounding I once had through my mother’s presence. And I know now, some journeys don’t end. They just soften over time.
That’s where the film idea began.
It started with the three of us, sharing pieces of our grief and wondering what it would look like to create something from it. Not a eulogy. Not a breakdown. But something that held space for sorrow and joy, for pain and healing — maybe even humor.
Out of this shared loss came a project we didn’t know we needed. What began as my submission to the PhotoVogue 2025 contest, themed “Women on Women,” quickly became something deeper.
Spoiler alert: we didn’t get chosen.
But that rejection didn’t sting as much as you might expect. Something else had already taken root.
The photos we created for the submission became a visual breadcrumb trail of our process — raw, honest, unfinished. Just like grief itself.
This isn’t just a story about loss. It’s about who we are becoming in the wake of it.
As Black women.
As daughters.
As artists.
As humans with open wounds and open hearts.
We call it Joy on the Other Side of Grief, a first glimpse into something gentle, authentic and still unfolding.
Black woman it’s time for leisure it’s time for respite we’ve talked a lot of talk, but are we taking enough action?
Submission summary to PhotoVogue, July 2025
These acts of leisure are a form of power and resistance to the constant and impending social, political, physical and mental pressure structure that we must deal with every second every minute every hour of every day, what makes it so hard to take some time to be soft and pink? Deep red currants, rose, cranberry blush peachy, watermelon juice, cucumber water, rich in love and wealth and health well moisturized, smooth as silk and satin, cheekbones, natural full lips, natural hair, thick and curly, coil cues, fine and sleek, braids, extensions extending draped against our skin dark chocolate, deep burgundy wine brown and almond and peanut butter, mocha and cinnamon and toasted marshmallows- mama’s bag, grandma’s purse, candy- flowers, fresh floral, curtains, and tapestries and patterns and colors.
It’s exquisite opulence from toe to head to toenails to nails, curvature of hips and butts and tits. We exist because despite the ever-given directives of our “forefathers,” but there is a such thing as our foremothers that scream from the rooftops that yell in overture of not only our grief of these systems, but in satisfaction to be alive to continue the fight! We are tired. we are weary, but we are not broken, not broken. We are strengthened by our unbreakable resilience. We are soft. We are gorgeous.
We are petals to be watered, cared for and seen and heard and given a life to live to feel illuminated in leisure- it is our time, it is our time.
Joy on The Other Side of Grief (Credits)
Starring: Dominique Toney and Yazmin Monet-Watkins
Voiceover & Poetry by: Yazmin Monet-Watkins
Produced and Edited by: Aja Patrice
