Funny Thing
About Grief, 2024.

You remember your first time riding a roller coaster—how confusing it is to feel those feelings for the first time? Excitement and a knot churning in your stomach as you cannot control where the cart is going to fling you next? That is grief. The knot. That feeling. No book can exactly describe or guide me through what is now present in my life. There is no antidote for this nonsense. Grief is making up for lost time, trying to make memories that aren’t quite good enough—latching on to every last moment that accounts for what isn’t there anymore.

I remember what it was like to see your eyes. How yellow they were. At that point that is where I felt that knot. The kind that roller coasters give. That feeling fucks you up because the only way is through. I sat with you after the time I spent in Atlanta saying farewell to the one I don’t mention anymore. I hate that I have lost you both now. I remember what it was like feeling those consecutive twenty four hours. I feared every minute of you holding on because that meant I’d have to accept your last minute of breathing. You assured me I’d be okay, and everything would be okay, but that is what mothers do. They make things as comfortable as possible.

A response to an open call about grief as love persisting:

The idea of grief as love persisting welcomes a warmth back into my life and my artistic framework that I often forget lies dormant within grieving. It reminds me that the work I create can sometimes be lonely but It is important. It has a means to its end. Within losing my mother, I have come to understand grief less as an ending and more as a kind of alchemy. It can evolve you, transform a dynamic, shift the entire shape of a situation, or it can simultaneously break all of these things. My practice lives inside that tension. I work across disciplines, held together by materiality and the act of surrender.

There are pieces I create bigger than me sometimes intentionally, sometimes subconsciously that are physically large in size so the process of making them can force or encourage me to give something up to them. The making becomes record of that giving, proof that I was present and that something passed through.
Materials like burlap or archived film arrive already carrying memory, cultural weight, tactile history. Sometimes a material never appears in the final work and yet drives everything about it. Grief is like that too. Structuring from the foundation of an idea. Quietly shaping every decision.

But I like to believe that grief is also a sign of hope. That there is healing waiting on the other side of it. How much of it you receive depends on how willing you are to trust what it brings you through to get there.

Making things without praise

Battling “good enough”
July 26, 2025.

The conversation of "being enough" haunted me during my time in grad school. I found comfort in learning that I wasn't alone, nor was I the first person to experience this. During a studio visit with a visiting artist to my program, I was told,"It never goes away—so get used to it." Immediately, it made sense. She swung her head around to me, with raised eyebrows signaling to tighten up. Not in judgment, but in a way that showed she was making sure I understood what she meant by “It never goes away”. As long as you know it never goes away, you can continue to focus and do the work.

What do you do with that? "Now what?" is how I felt. In moments of doubt, when I didn't feel enough, I grew angry with myself. Pushing myself in ways I couldn't recognize until it pushed me to the edge of sickness during my program. Especially during the winters. It would be a cycle of: doubt, plateau, artist block, more doubt, and then I fall back into the groove of things—always a little too late. Eventually, by my second year, I found a system that helped me out of that cycle.

When I found myself stuck in an artist's block, I attended lectures and events where people talk about things they are very passionate about. It took my mind off things, and I often walked away motivated to get back to my practice. Those lectures were usually connected to my practice one way or another. I'd walk away emboldened by the lectures that gave me the permission to make the work and ideas I'd been sitting on. This new cycle of attending various lectures and events became the dopamine for my thesis.

During this time, my friends and peers would rarely see me, and I became more focused. I'd make it a habit to peek at what others were working on and engage with others in their practice, but I still had self-doubt sitting with me in my studio. The other step I took to give myself permission to be enough and make the work was inviting others to my studio for studio visits. I had them weekly from the summer of 2024 into May of 2025 on top of the visiting artists my program invited. An entire year of seeing people almost every day. I hope those people know how much they kept me out of my own head. When you have that much feedback in your practice, you grow an extra skill—a callous of discernment on what to keep and what to throw back at the ether.

At this point, I just wanted to be a revolving door in my practice. I don't need others in my studio for validation, but I do need them as a sounding board—I needed them for dialogue. That allowed so many significant shifts and moments to happen in my studio. Once it became a routine, it became easy to filter out noise, the fluff, and things that didn't work in research and composition. Most of these people were artists, critics, and regular friends and people I made in Baltimore City. I encouraged digital studio visits, but the logistics behind that never worked out for many; they always preferred to come in person.

It helped that I had a director I trusted. If you're considering grad school and happen to be reading this, it's crucial to have a mentor with significant field experience that you trust. There will definitely be educators, mentors, and peers you may not like, but you will still have to learn from them. This was a life lesson that I knew about, but I feel like grad school challenged me on this topic on a different level. People are trying to undermine every little thing that you say, especially when you know you’re right. Educators say things like, “You remind me of myself,” even though we’re nothing alike. You’ll have those moments where people will project onto you as if you were begging for it, and it will make your time within feelings of being “good enough” way worse than you expected, but I leaned on my discernment. In times when I faced insufferable moments of doubt and interactions like this with others during my time in my program, I trusted my sense of self. I often feel like many took my sign of vulnerability as being lost. This wasn’t the case. My attempt at vulnerability in my practice was an attempt at being a sponge. The only thing with that is that there’s no way I could have prepared for others to project their fears or ego onto me during that period of vulnerability.

All of this is simultaneously happening, and I'm still not enough—as a revolving door, as a sponge in my practice, trying to make the work. The parameter changes, though. I think that's what's missing from the explanation of the—not being enough feeling always lingering because I've officially graduated now, and it's still here. Still learning, engaging with things, advice, and information like a revolving door. Keeping what aligns and composting the rest.

For the first time in my life, I'm arriving at a place of how to answer the feeling of not being enough. It just is. If you don't make the work, you deny the world an opportunity to evolve from what you have to offer. You, your practice, and what you have to say matter. Even in the smallest way because one day someone will walk up to you and say, "I didn't think anyone got it but thats exactly how I've been feeling" when you decide to make something like an experimental film for the first time or "this works gives me a place to just let go, I feel so seen". That world where people say these things doesn't exist unless you put in the effort. That is the difference between navigating a place like graduate school and the real world. Your sense of self is defined by your confidence to handle and conquer your circumstances. The more focused you are on trusting yourself, the easier the not good enough narrative subsides.

Scarcity is my best friend.

Food insecurity, becoming and more.
August 15th, 2025.

When attending grad school (2023-25), I told myself I would try to do as much as possible to feel comfortable and fully experience my time during my program. I knew that during most of my time pursuing higher academia that I couldn't afford it, but it was a calculated risk that I believed would help my future for the better. During undergrad at SUNY, Albany, I had the privilege of getting a mentor, Dr. Burns, who told me the ins and outs of how bureaucratic higher academia can be. One of the many things she shared with me is how at-risk graduate students are at homelessness, especially candidates from lower-income economic backgrounds. This was something that I appreciated being shared with me, as it illustrated the kind of student I was at the time. SUNY, Albany, was quite affordable, so the next school that I chose for grad school had to be a very careful and calculated decision, knowing this. I also knew that I had been going through a very quite stressful time in my life while finishing my undergraduate degree, so that any school that I chose for graduate school would be my “way out". It had always seemed like that, as some sort of beacon of light, that school would change the trajectory of my life, and it did for the most part, but I’m in a weird place at the moment where I still feel like a failure. I’m back home now while seeking employment. I knew that getting an offer before graduating was the right thing to do, but this brings me back to my initial sentiment. I wanted to be comfortable within the time in my program.

I had always been functioning from scarcity my entire life. Splitting my things into three, for example, (being the eldest child), since my mother raised me to share my food, things, attention, and belonging with my siblings. I believe that’s where this while functioning from scarcity thing started. It in a way has been ruining my life because it caused me to run away a lot in my life. Running away initially to Brooklyn for college and now running away to Baltimore for grad school. I know I shouldn’t feel this way. These decisions I made weren’t fully due to feeling “not enough” or that I didn’t have enough, but because I also wanted better for myself and wanted to carve out my own way of life. I had always been so determined to live (I’ll expand on this later).

While still on the topic of scarcity, I want to illuminate how that affected me during my time in grad school. For one, it forced me to budget in a way I haven’t before. I already knew I was good at budgeting, but I still could have been better with my money. I moved to Baltimore with like $500 at the time, and my community on TikTok and family is who actually helped me move with little things that I needed: A kettle, $100, a garbage can, and more. These are the things that carried me through to actually getting to my program. My time in grad school forced me to be vulnerable, able what I wasn’t good at, and mainly that thing was asking for help. On the first day of my program, I didn’t have money to eat for the day. Hungry and anxious, we had a dinner that night and I panicked about attending—so I told my director about it. He assured me the dinner that evening was already paid for and then gave me lunch money to grab something to hold me over until then (I returned his change). I still reflect on that moment and am grateful for his grace then and even after that. I know many people fear being seen as weak for asking for help, and I still feel like I ran the risk of that opening up to him and others in times of need, but I’ve learned a few things about life since my mother's passing in 2019, and shame isn’t one of my biggest concerns.

Another person who helped me a lot during my time in grad school was my grandmother. She gave me $50 each month to help with groceries, and it helped me in a significant way. I’d would usually put it together with another $50 or more if I had room to splurge, mainly shop at Aldi and some months use it only for food for my studio. This meant a lot to me because for the past 4-ish years, I have been dealing with food insecurity. I lost my job at Home Depot for something that they honestly can’t justify, they let me go while out on sick leave during the peak of the pandemic. Luckily, I was in a new relationship and my partner held me down financially for most of my needs, but still, I didn’t have my own. That put me in a tough place. I did my best to do freelance work and even eventually did gig jobs like Instacart, but it still wasn’t enough. Not to mention my home dynamic wasn’t something I was rushing back to every evening, so most of the time I stayed with my grandmother or boyfriend at the time before heading off to grad school in 2023.

After all that context—I just have been wanting to be back in a position to make my own money and handle myself with care and the attention I need. Grad school was the first time in a long time that I felt I had enough money to stay afloat. I had grants and school loans to handle my cost of living, but still scarcity loomed over my head like a dark cloud because I knew if I didn’t plan carefully, I could be back at square one, with no budget, food, and independence; and we’re here now.

I know many people have been encouraging me not to see it as a failure, but I’ve been sulking about how to get this grey cloud named scarcity from under my life. Luckily, I choose now to have a different perception about what success and failure look like in my life. I accept that my situation is temporary and that actually, grad school offered me more gains than losses. I have always pivoted and stayed focused on where it is I want to go, and now more than ever before, things are becoming clearer about the life I want to lead. Instead of feeling bad for my lack of knowledge about how to beat scarcity, I have now been giving myself grace about what I didn’t know in the past and have been teaching myself about investing in my life in several different ways.

I have invested my time in giving myself grace regarding my love life. I feel like I made many mistakes regarding love, and knew that after graduation, I would have more time to date again and pursue love. I have spent the past couple of years reframing how I thought about relationships (both romantic & platonic), what I wanted and the type of person I wanted to be. With patience, I have found the partner I had been praying about, and I still am learning things about love and how to cherish it. I have also invested in my future by pursuing higher academia. No matter my feelings towards my journey, I know that my life is much different now that I have my master's degree. The offers and rooms I am in are much different than before. This is sort of what I was getting at earlier when I said, “I had always been so determined to live”. I wanted better for myself so that things could be much better for me and others around me that I loved and cared for. I grew up a very sad child, with varying signs and episodes of depression, but I still knew I had so much to offer the world. I had a burning feeling that I had too much talent to waste and let depression win. This and growing up with a sick parent created the tunnel vision I had on creating a better life for myself. At 18, I thought If I go to school for toxicology and study the medications my mother was taking for cancer maybe I could create something that would help save her from cancer. This is why college was and has always been my odd beacon of light. I later learned that you should never look to institutions to be your everything regarding hope. I eventually left pharmacy school due to not being able to afford it, but if I’m being honest, I was struggling and couldn’t focus on pursuing that and still being present for my mom. She was working overtime to help me pay for school after year 1, my school fees had increased. So you see—scarcity has always been the boogey man in my life.

I’m still learning about ways to disconnect from functioning from a place of scarcity, but I feel like with time, self-care care and intention that things will get better. In a time of extreme socio-political uncertainty in the world, somehow I still have hope that my life can be something good. I also have my concerns about our collective future, but life is too short to give in to fear and scarcity.

Dia[spora]: a garden in dialogue curated by Zindzi Harley and Evan Roosevelt Brown on view at HeartbeatInk Gallery in Athens, Greece. Through May 8th-June 2nd.