By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

I've experienced rage, sadness, overwhelm, gratitude, connection, and love...all in the last hour. This emotional whiplash is not my norm. Annoyingly optimistic and grounded is more my lane.

But we're not in normal times. Not me, not you, not anyone. We're in a calamitous pandemic that's shuttered us indoors away from our routines, our friends, our community. Expecting some level of normalcy in how we feel or how we work and parent, sleep and eat, act and think IS. A. SETUP. On the other side of which lies a mess of shame, guilt, and frustration.

And being mad at our natural reactions to an unimaginable crisis only increases suffering. So let's not do that.

Instead, why don't we all commit to accepting our reactions? Let's turn toward whatever shows up with curiosity and gentleness. Name our experiences. Note any bodily reactions we're having. Anchor ourselves in the present by taking several deep, slow breaths if our feelings are intense. Journal our responses. Most importantly, share what we're going through with empathic friends and family and receive others' sharing with compassion and love. We need each other now more than ever.

In peace and solidarity,

Author
Roxanne A. Donovan, PhD, is co-founder of WellAcademic, a licensed psychologist in GA, and Professor of Psychological Science and Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University. She writes and teaches about health and wellness. For more reflections, follow Roxanne on Twitter or sign up for WellAcademic's newsletter.

Nichole Guillory, PhD - Mothering in Color

I am thankful that you made the hard decision to release the video footage of two police officers arresting six- year-old Kaia at her charter school, the Emma and Lucious Nixon Academy, in Orlando, Florida. As a mom who is raising a Black child in the South, I can only imagine the great risk you took in making the decision to release the video of what I’m sure is the most traumatic moment in young Kaia’s life. The site of the arrest, specifically that it took place at Kaia’s school, is what compels me to write.

I have been an educator since 1993, first as an English teacher and now as a teacher educator, and as such, I have spent much of my adult life in schools as well as studying them. Being a teacher educator has afforded me the opportunity to work in a variety of schools: big and small, private and public, well-resourced and under-resourced, child-centered and teacher-centered, career prep and college prep, and the list continues. I know schools well. Watching the arrest, which would have been horrifying in any setting, I cannot help but think that in the one place where adults are always ethically and legally bound to keep children safe, we failed miserably.

Yes, I use “we” on purpose here. While I am not the teacher who called the administrator who called the police officer who arrested your daughter, I am a teacher educator who understands that my work is tied to a village of educators, which as I see it, makes us all collectively responsible for providing (y)our child a safe school environment. Our village failed Kaia and you.

For those unfamiliar with events surrounding Kaia’s arrest, I offer here a detailed account culled from the many news reports I reviewed, and while these news reports do not capture exactly what happened to Kaia that awful day, I offer this account in hopes that the adults reading my open letter—especially teachers—will see just how many times adults who were entrusted by Kaia’s family to keep her safe at school not only failed to protect her, but also continued throughout the day to inflict psychological and physical harm.

I am intentionally repeating Kaia’s name and her age often because I hope to remind readers of her humanity, that she is someone’s precious child, sister, niece, cousin, or granddaughter, because all too frequently these days, it seems that some of us continue to ignore that school-aged Black girls are children, that Black girls are human beings. That I feel it necessary to write that last statement and it’s worth repeating—Black girls are human beings--shows just how hopeless I feel some days as a Black mom during these troubled and troubling times. To have to remind law enforcement that a six-year-old baby should never be escorted out of her school in handcuffs is bad enough, but to feel a need to remind that child’s teachers and principals that they did not treat Kaia like one of their own children, like an important and deserving member of our village, is even worse.

Kaia isn’t the nameless “Six-Year-Old First Grader Arrested” that has populated news headlines. Kaia is a baby—and I don’t mean that description figuratively. Kaia was six years old at the time of her arrest in September 2019. This is the same age that my own son learned how to tie his own shoelaces well enough that they did not come untied throughout the day.

Before Kaia’s arrest, she allegedly engaged in behavior described as “kicking and screaming.” School officials’ statements say that on the morning of the arrest (around 8 am), Kaia wanted to wear sunglasses and was “screaming and pulling on her classroom door,” which was reportedly witnessed by the assistant principal. News reports indicate that the assistant principal and two staff members then took Kaia to the office. In her statement, the assistant principal says that Kaia “hit her in the stomach and chest area” and was “aggressive.” Multiple news outlets report uncertainty about who was responsible for calling in a school resource officer to intervene. An excerpt from the official school statement says that no one at the school asked that Kaia be arrested.

The police bodycam video shows us what happened later that school day. The video shows a school staff member reading a story to Kaia, who is clearly not kicking, screaming, punching, or yelling. Noticing the officers, Kaia asks why they are there and what the zip ties were. When one of the officers tells her that they are for her, she begins to cry. She begs and pleads with them not to handcuff her and to give her a “second chance.”  S. Ramos, one of the police officers who is visible in the video, then zip ties Kaia’s wrists together behind her back and (perp) walks her to the backseat of a police SUV.

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Kaia’s grandmother says that Kaia was initially charged with misdemeanor battery and fingerprinted and photographed, and because she was not tall enough to reach camera height, Kaia had to use a step stool. In a clip from a local news station, Kaia’s grandmother said she reminded school administrators of Kaia’s sleep apnea, which she says the school was aware of and which she connected to her granddaughter’s temper tantrums.

Several news stories indicate Dennis Turner, the other officer who arrested Kaia and was serving as a school resource officer, went back to the school and bragged that Kaia broke his arrest record of youngest offenders, that his youngest arrest before Kaia was seven years old. News stories also report that this officer—who is a Black man—arrested a six-year-old boy the same day of Kaia’s arrest.

The Orlando Police Department has since apologized to you, and they report Dennis Turner, who was already retired, was fired from the school resource officer pool. S. Ramos, the officer who handcuffed and walked Kaia out of school, was cleared of all charges because the police department says he followed protocol in calling a supervisor to get approval for the arrest of a child younger than twelve years old.

I could use the remainder of this letter to reflect on the horrific actions of the two police officers, or more importantly, Florida law that would even allow a six-year-old to be arrested in the first place. Or perhaps you’re hoping I discuss the systemic dimension of racism and how an already complicated arrest of a Black girl student is made even more complicated because the arresting police officer is a Black man. These are all worthy of serious discussion.
 
However, as an educator, I am most appalled by the actions of other state actors also culpable in the violence perpetrated against Kaia: school administrators at Emma and Lucious Nixon Academy who called a resource (police) officer in to settle a situation with a six-year-old child that did not warrant intervention by law enforcement. I saw at least one member of the school office staff telling Kaia she had to go with the police officers and that the handcuffs would not hurt; this is the same staff member who was reading a story to Kaia when the police officers arrived. The video also shows at least one other adult at her desk, sitting in silence while Kaia begged for help as the policemen walked her out of the front office.
 
I’m well aware that perhaps these two women were not administrators at the school and remained silent because they had to in order to keep their jobs. However, because I have spent a good amount of time in schools, I also know it is not too big of a leap to assume at least one school administrator was also likely present in the school main office—even if not visible on the police bodycam video—and within earshot of Kaia’s plaintive pleas for help and to be “let go.” I understand school administrators have a responsibility to keep everyone safe in their buildings, but what danger did six-year-old Kaia really present to school staff and students?

I fear what is more likely is that the adults responsible for her arrest wanted to teach young Kaia (and all the mostly Black students in the school) a lesson in control and submission, to teach Kaia that her Black girl body was out of control and had to be tamed, that non-compliance was unacceptable. Kaia had to become less human—less Black person, less girl—to all adults responsible for her arrest. Otherwise, how do you explain the many chances adults had to intervene, to reverse bad decision-making before it became harmful to Kaia (and her classmates), to stop inflicting violence on a child who needed help not handcuffs?
 
I want my teacher colleagues to know Kaia is not the first six-year-old Black girl to be arrested and handcuffed in U.S. schools, nor is she the youngest. The list of Black girl students to be policed and overdisciplined in schools is too long. See, for example, the case of eight-year-old Jmiyha Rickman in Alton, Illinois. AND six-year-old Salecia Johnson in Milledgeville, Georgia. AND five-year-old Ja’eisha Scott in St. Petersburg, Florida. AND six-year-old Desre'e Watson in Avon, Florida. I urge all teachers to read Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected, by the African American Policy Forum, and Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, by Monique W. Morris. These books are some of the best research on the school to prison pipeline for Black girls, but, sadly, there is much to study and much that has been studied.
 
In moving forward from that awful day, your family had the added burden of finding (and paying for) a private school that does not have a police officer on site. Kaia deserves to be in a school with adults she can trust, who see her particular brilliance, who can bring some safety and normalcy back to her school life. You have visited Florida House Representatives to urge state legislators to pass the Kaia Rolle Act, which requires Florida schools and law enforcement agencies to have a policy in place against the arrest of children under 10 years of age. We know you wanted the original bills that—if they had made it out of committee—would have prevented the arrest of children under 12 years old.

I write to make you a promise, no matter how small an act this might be. I promise I will never forget Kaia Rolle. She will forever be at the forefront of the work I do as an educator. I feel a renewed purpose for building more classrooms where Black girls in particular are shown care and love such that they cannot help but love and care for themselves and each other. From this point forward, I will remind the teachers I work with that we are a village with a communal responsibility to recognize the humanity of Black girls, that they belong to a family and a community who love them more than life and in whom all their hope is bound. I sincerely hope Kaia is in a classroom where she will learn how to dream again and build into existence the future she imagines for herself. ​

Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

By Roxanne Donovan - Wellness

Sadness, hopelessness, fear, rage, panic, minimization, rationalization, numbness, denial are just some of the reactions you might be having to the current moment. Whatever you're experiencing is your body's attempt at coping with a stressful and rapidly changing situation.

Being mad at your very human reactions or wishing you were responding in some other way will only increase your suffering. So try to be extra gentle with yourself. Treat yourself with love, warmth, and kindness, like you would a dear friend in need.

If you're caring for others, know that gifting yourself compassion enables you to have more compassion to gift others. And we all need more compassion to get through these challenging times.

Below are nine other ways of caring for yourself now. 

1. Lower your standards in all areas except social distancing, hand washing, and disinfecting commonly used surfaces - e.g., request extensions for upcoming deadlines, stay in your pajamas if you want, leave the bed unmade, check email less often.

2. Although it's tempting to bombard yourself with news and social media, set boundaries instead with the goal of avoiding completely at least two hours before bed. [Make sure to boundary your kids' access to news too.]

3. Sleep at least 7 hours nightly. This practice is good at all times but especially during stressful moments when your body needs rest to heal and reset.

4. Pay attention to being pulled into unhealthy avoidance behaviors - e.g., excessive eating, drinking, smoking, drug use. These behaviors amplify stress in the long run.

5. Make space for healthy behaviors that are soothing such as reading, drawing, art, mindful coloring, journaling, or yoga. 

6. Pause throughout the day to connect with the present moment. Doing so helps minimize time-traveling to the future or past, which can amplify your stress response. 

7.  Connect with loved ones via phone, not just text or email. While we may not be able to visit each other due to social distancing recommendations, talking on the phone can go a long way toward making the present moment feel a bit more manageable.

8. Start a gratitude practice by writing three things daily you're grateful for. Gratitude widens our focus beyond immediate or imagined threats, enabling us to see the beauty and wonder that are also present in our lives.

9. Finally, don't forget to play. Have a pillow fight with your kids, schedule a home movie night, dance around your house, sing some Prince at the top of your lungs, have a joke off with your partner...whatever you need to remind yourself sunshine lies behind the clouds.

I hope these practices bring a bit of peace in the chaos.

Stay well (and inside),

Author
Roxanne A. Donovan, PhD, is co-founder of WellAcademic, a licensed psychologist in GA, and Professor of Psychological Science and Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University. She writes and teaches about health and wellness. For more reflections, follow Roxanne on Twitter or sign up for WellAcademic's newsletter.

By Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings 

Note: I initially wrote this post on recognizing and honoring loving friends in mid-February, when the coronavirus first began to touch citizens in China. As Roxanne and I post this issue of the WellAcademic newsletter, the world is in upheaval, social media is abuzz with paranoia, and national borders are closing tightly. Since I’m drawing strength from sister-love to stay grounded during these first days of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the pandemic, I offer my blog post as solace to you; even in quarantine, we can remember we are cared for and we can support each other with kindness, laughter, and encouragement.
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On an afternoon in my campus office when I felt down—it was the day after I submitted a long-haul multivolume book project to the publisher and submitted my annual review using cumbersome online forms and the vexing software program Digital Measures and taught my 3-hour evening seminar—I texted a good friend, one I knew I could count on to reply with wit and hope.
 
Sure enough, two mountain ranges and a national forest away, she came through with sisterlove, and even ended her text with the opening lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals” (1991). Brooks’s title wasn’t the operative part, so my friend (who has kept her hair natural) didn’t include it. Instead, she typed these lines to me:
 
Sisters!
I love you.
Because you love you.
Because you are erect.
Because you are also bent.
In season, stern, kind.
Crisp, soft—in season.
And you withhold.
And you extend.
And you Step out.
And you go back.
And you extend again.
 
This gift moved me. So perfect, so timely. So resonant with appreciation for a whole lotta my women friends, especially my Black women friends, I’ve been feeling lately—lessons from my meditation practice. This particular friend has, as we say, a lot going on: a mother who knows her some days but not all, a husband in a city 100 miles from the bed she sleeps in on weeknights, office struggles, money’s tight.
 
But trust her not only to find the one pearl in a heap of oysters, but to extend that pearl to a gloomy sister. In my post-heavy push fatigue, receiving Brooks’s poem as a gift from my dear friend made me aware more deeply of how loved I am by so many sisters when I “Step out” and allow myself time to reflect, when I open my heart to receive a wide spectrum of gifts without doubts about my worthiness or the giver’s intentions.
 
Last month, when I read Roxanne’s inspired invitation to name my year to remind me of aspirations I’d set, I decided on the Year of Love. So often, I feel sisterlove cradling me and guiding me, keeping me buoyed and brave. I’ve felt a keen sense of love for some months now—ever since one of my friends became my new interim dean and another my department chair, since our WellAcademic retreat reunited me with Roxanne, Nichole, and the beloved friend who typed out Gwendolyn Brooks’s lines to me in a text, and with our WellAcademic retreat sister community on the mountaintop last November.
 
I am privileged to be loved by many amazing women. The Black and Brown women I know who have my back where I live now, who show me in myriad, steady, and hilarious ways they love me “because [I] love me.” The badass women involved in the enormous book project I’ve just come through—and the sisters still hanging tough with me as we complete the remaining volumes. Black women like my cousin, older by four years and still showing me a righteous way, as she did when we lived on the same block in Mobile. Sisters I got to know better at academic conferences we all attended recently. I am loved by women in Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, Tucson, Champaign, St. Louis, Houston, and beyond; I am wildly fortunate.
 
Early last January, stepping out from an academic conference, I had dinner with one of my earliest academic mentors, a brilliant Black poet who now lives half the year on the US West Coast and the other half of the year Down Under. This frail, elderly, and bold woman’s current dual residence speaks volumes about her adventurous spirit: half-a-lifetime ago she insisted I cultivate a yearning for possibility. Be lionhearted, she said, pushing me toward audacity with two firm brown arms, with uncompromising love and a big old laugh.
 
As the spring semester reeves up and makes more demands, I’ll need to remember to pause and remember my sisters care, they are close. Consciously recommitting to the Year of Love, I know I will find my sisters waiting, as Brooks says,
In season, stern, kind.
Crisp, soft—in season.
 
Throughout this year as well, I pledge in turn to be a woman sisters can look to for love and grace whenever they need.

​Until next time,

Nichole Guillory, PhD - Mothering in Color

I am fortunate enough to be on a research leave I was awarded through a competitive process at my university. This leave grants me time away from university teaching and service obligations for one semester to focus on completing some long-neglected research projects.

Because I’ve worked a continuous loop of fall-spring-summer semesters for the last 14+ years, I still have not quite settled in yet to my new research leave schedule.
 
Faculty readers, I know what you’re thinking because so many of my colleagues have told me the same thing over and over: You’re going to LOVE being on leave.
 
I have been on leave for exactly 14 days and 10 hours as of this writing and I have yet to feel the leave euphoria that my colleagues explained and radiated. (I’m talking about you, Anete Vasquez, and the leave glow we saw when you returned to work.)  
 
Mostly I’ve just felt tired, getting messages from my middle-aged body that it can no longer keep pace with the schedule I’ve been keeping for the last 14 years, sometimes by choice but more often by familial and institutional demands. Migraines. High blood pressure. Insomnia. My body is exhausted trying to manage these chronic conditions, especially with the more frequent episodes I am experiencing lately. My friends have heard me say more than a few times that (middle) aging sucks.
 
Before I move ahead here, I want to be clear that I still enjoy a lot of age (and health and class) privilege. I have healthcare benefits through a university system that so many others do not have access to that helps me to manage symptoms of what can be debilitating and life-threatening conditions for the under/uninsured.
 
What has been most striking to me in the early days of my new work schedule is just how physically fatigued I am. Add to this physical fatigue the emotional exhaustion that comes with being “on” all day every day because of (social justice) work, mom, and partner responsibilities (see my November 2019 Mothering In Color post “A Wish List for the Emotionally Exhausted”).
 
Now that the pace of my schedule has slowed considerably, I realize more than ever that I have been on automatic pilot, just moving from one responsibility to another, one set of projects to another, no matter what my body told me about slowing down, taking a break, or resting. I just kept going.
 
Whether it was professor-ing or mothering, I rarely, if ever, prioritized wellness. Clearly, this is not sustainable, and feeling this tired is a wakeup call for me. I have a twelve-year-old son who deserves more than I have been able to give. I cannot wait any longer to enact a more wellness-focused, and hence more (middle-aged) body-friendly, approach to scheduling my day, an approach that is doable not only while I’m on research leave but especially for when I return to my regular work responsibilities.
 
On Roxanne’s suggestion, I’m giving a name to 2020; it’s my Year of Wellness. I recognize the power in naming, especially in communities of color where naming is linked to being/becoming/calling into existence. Thus, by naming this year (especially in this very public way), I am conjuring a healthier year for myself and by extension my family.
 
I’m starting with only a few changes to my work schedule so that I’m more likely to enact these changes more consistently over time. I have other goals, but I’ll work on those later in the year.
 

1. When I have choices about what to do first in my day, I will use wellness to guide my decision-making, which means that answering emails has to be an afternoon task. I begin most days—I’m still working up to every day—by writing in my gratitude journal. Just as research indicates, a gratitude perspective positively affects physical and mental health. (Thanks, Roxanne, for introducing this practice to me a few years ago.)
2. Where two options will result in a similar outcome, I’m choosing the one that is healthier for my family and me.
3. I’m committing to some kind of movement before I write. For this one, I’ve asked one of my writing accountability partners to walk with me for 30 minutes before we sit down and write at our favorite coffee shop.

 
I’m no wellness expert, but I am a determined mom who is tired of being tired. I write this post in hopes that naming my intention and committing to it publicly will push me toward more long-term wellness habits.
 
Wish me well!

Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.

Joycelyn Moody - JMoody's Musings

“It’s coming on Christmas,” as the song says, so, of course, as a mature Black lesbian, I am facing a dilemma, not to say a crisis. What to do during a bereavement visit with my father that falls close to Christmas but wasn’t meant to be a Christmas visit? How do I handle the inevitable painful memories of past Christmases and my family’s coercive reinterpretation of my trip?

Against my goals, I’m going “home for the holidays.” The last time I tried to visit my parents for the holidays, I was warned the door would not be opened for my life partner, Lorraine, and me because “Christmas is a time for family, and she’s not my family. If you come, you’ll be sorry.”

Based on past incidents, I believed Lorraine and I really would be sorry, so, as badly as I yearned to see my mother that last time, I changed course. The year was 2009. 

At Christmas 2018, after taking fresh stock of my values, I sent my father a white-handkerchief greeting: I forgave all, and I asked forgiveness. He granted forgiveness. We’ve spoken a few times since, superficially only until he endured a health scare last September, then a series of deaths in October and November. Because I couldn’t attend those funerals with him, I’ve taken the first opportunity to visit him and my mom. That’s this Not-Christmas visit I'm anticipating, as I write this. 

Since 2002, when my only sister first hosted family Christmas but declared “no room in the inn” (Luke 2:7) for the 2 of us, Lorraine and I have made—or not made—Christmas in myriad ways. Sis’s daughters were ages 8 and 4 then, and she told me she didn’t want to expose them to lesbianism, for she considers it unchristian and ungodly. 

The thing is, I meant my forgiveness last year expansively. I don’t want to hold onto old grudges. At the same time, I will not walk knowingly into an abusive situation—or remain in one. I dishonor, rather than honor, my beloved elders and ancestors when I allow myself to be abused.

Recently, watching this short video on neuroplasticity, I wondered if I could reimagine my upcoming visit with my parents, transforming it from a dreaded re-immersion into unbridled African American homophobia into opportunities for me to practice compassion for elders and self-compassion. 

I know it’s distorting the point of the video, but I trust watching it often enough will help me resist traumatic family patterns and triggers and instead shape-shift as needed from a sad and “queer” daughter into a grown Black person eager to honor their 85-year-old parents. May it be so.

The video reminds me of the many tools in my kit. Just a few:

• Just a few weeks ago, I revitalized my Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training by joining my initial teacher in an all-day silent meditation retreat in community with others. (Yes, I’m aware of many critiques of MBSR, and as I’ve noted in earlier posts, I even agree with some of them.)
• I gained a range of valuable insights as a student of Cognitively Based Compassion Training, studying intensely at Emory University with my treasured friend Roxanne.
• I reunited with Roxanne again last November to create intimacy with a third group of open-hearted participants at our most recent WellAcademic women of color retreat.
• I keep working toward compassionate community with smart, devoted colleagues.
• I stay connected to my friends—and my therapist.
• Paramount tool: Lorraine’s love, solid as flint.

I also just finished teaching Roxane Gay’s Hunger, which stirred dormant feelings I’ve had as an African American queer academic and Black feminist daughter. Besides arousing sorrow and anger I’ve felt as weird, isolated, recalcitrant daughter, Hunger reminded me of the power of the written word. It reminded me of what efficacy writing, journaling, self-expression and self-representation can endow. So, two tools more: reading and writing.

How will I care for my father and myself on this bereavement trip that happens to fall on a holiday laden with grief for us?

• Live music, jazz clubs, a jook joint I’ve scoped out
• A couple of Black history museums he loves but doesn’t frequent alone
• Their city’s internationally renowned art museum
• Board games and cards, Bingo 
• I’ll teach both my parents some MBSR meditative movements—and maybe we can get some younger Moodys to show us a few dance moves
• Neighborhood walks, as Daddy and I used to take alone together on Sundays in my girlhood
• And should hurtful words begin, I’ll walk away.

​Until next time,

By Nichole Guillory (WellAcademic Guest Blogger) - Mothering in Color

It’s that time of the semester when students and faculty alike are exhausted. This time is always the point at which my students start to break down. Their absences are more frequent. Their requests to extend assignment deadlines increase. They start to panic about their final grades.
 
This is the time that exhaustion also creeps into professors’ bodies. We start to get sick. We hit snooze more often. We need extra shots of caffeine to get through the workday (and in my case sixth grade homework).
 
Sound all too familiar?
 
I am feeling more emotionally exhausted than usual, and when I considered the reasons, I realized that I could not point to one cause. What I realized instead is that I’m feeling the cumulative effects of a consistent stream of challenges, including macro and micro aggressions.
 
Because there are so many, I chose a list format to catalogue them in this post. As a restorative to my own emotional well-being, I decided that a wish list was an appropriate way to remind us all how we might be/do better for each other.

1. I wish my son’s sixth grade teachers would read what Alfie Kohn says about how useless and damaging most homework really is.
2. I wish I were disciplined enough to write outside the company of my adult baby-sitters. (Wink, wink, I meant to call them my accountability partners.)
3. I wish my Georgia peeps would stop wishing for warm weather to go away.
4. I wish for a public show of support for those who take great risks to speak up rather than the private thank you they often get when no one else is around.
5. I wish truth mattered to all people, especially presidents.
6. I wish I committed to exercise with the same intensity I have for eating.
7. I wish people did not pretend my voice matters when it really does not.
8. I wish people would start calling their friends more for no other reason than to just listen.
9. I wish women of color academics were not greeted with suspicion when we ask hard questions.
10. I wish my Generation Z students would not try to argue with me that any rapper since the early 2000s belongs on a Greatest-Rappers-of-All-Time list.
11. I wish my students evaluated my teaching effectiveness on my actual teaching rather than their racist assumptions about Black women professors.
12. I wish more brilliant Black women were not leaving academe because their institutions did not value their many significant contributions.
13. I wish I had more emotional energy right now because my son deserves more support from me as he navigates a constant barrage of unfamiliar middle school expectations.
14. I wish women of color faculty good luck as they navigate higher faculty ranks and take on administrative roles. I hope you remember that we are supporting you to make decisions based not only on your personal gain—which we celebrate—but also on our collective interests.
15. I wish for more bowling Tuesdays with my university friends. You know who you are.
16. I wish meeting time was spent engaging in vigorous intellectual debate about how best to support students.
17. I wish Black women in the academy were not mammy-fied into fixing other people’s messes, feeling forced to smile through our pain, and agree even when we disagree.
18. I wish fake social justice scholars would take a seat and get out of the way of legitimate social justice scholars doing the hard work of dismantling oppression. 
19. I wish I had more time and space to write about social justice education instead of constantly having to protect myself and my son from social injustice.

 
I have one final wish, and this one is big. It’s my wish for everyone reading this post because it’s why I continue to stay in academe.

1. I wish more people had a set of scholar-teacher-activist friends like I have, who love me unconditionally, who always tell me the truth even when I do not want it, who do not construct me as the angry Black woman, who value my work as significant, and who see me in my full humanity. You know who you are.

 
For those of you who have such friends, you know the deep gratitude I feel every day. For those who don’t (yet), keep looking because authentic, compassionate friendships are possible. And we need each other now more than ever. 

Author
Nichole Guillory, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Kennesaw State University. She publishes on the experiences of women of color in the academy. She is mom to Nicholas, the love of her life. We couldn't be happier that she has agreed to pen the Mothering in Color series for WellAcademic.