DBM Ep 62: Grief & Black Motherhood with Akilah Richards
Release Date: 01/20/2025
DBM Ep 66: The 92%, Boundaries & Black Motherhood
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, How do we resist the urge to rescue when we’ve been taught our whole lives to be saviors? How do we set boundaries when the world is burning? What do we do when we’ve been deemed the backbone of the community, but our backbones are brittle and breaking? Since the election, these are the questions and conversations black women have been having online and, especially, in group chats. So, we decided to explore what this line in the sand means for Black mothers in the midst of state-sanctioned brutality. In this episode, Thea and I explore the parallels...
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DBM Ep 65: Marriage, Hot Topics & Black Motherhood
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, What do Telvin Osborne, Black marriage, generational wealth, Altadena, data as currency, the TV show Paradise, and white women in Idaho have in common? We cover them all in this episode. Yup, it’s hot topics, and we got hot takes well, not hot takes. We got Black Mama takes on all the above. In this episode, we talk: ✨How Telvin Osborne is relevant to Black women resting ✨The real problem when it comes to marriage & Black folx ✨Why Paradise gets kudos & white women in Idaho don’t PLUS - we talk all things Black Maternal Health, ...
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DBM Ep 64: LA Fires & Black Motherhood w/ Staci Mitchell
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, What does it mean to make it home, to create a place of rest and reprieve, joy and sanctuary, an archive of your children’s treasures? What happens when you can’t make it home, return to your place of rest and reprieve, joy and sanctuary, a reflection of your taste and intention? What happens when the archive of your children’s treasure, what they left behind to be kept safe, is incinerated, covered in ash and your community physically fractured? In this episode, Staci Mitchell, a mother of 3 who was born and raised in Altadena, CA, and our very own Thea Monyee...
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DBM Ep 63: Entrepreneurship & Black Motherhood
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, What if I told you I didn’t start a business because I wanted to be a boss? I started my business because I wanted to be free, because I saw no other path to fully realizing my dreams, and according to a 2022 article, I’m not alone in finding entrepreneurship on my liberation journey. In the article entitled , Erica Thompson writes, “As the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, Black women say they are seeking more freedom, opportunity, fulfillment and stability. They also are escaping from discrimination and other barriers in the workplace.” In this episode, we have...
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DBM Ep 62: Grief & Black Motherhood with Akilah Richards
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, What if I told you to offer grief a seat at the table? What if I told you grief has no other duties except to be with you? It has nowhere to be and is not bound by time. Grief is patient. Grief is relentless, and as Akilah S. Richards, our guest for this episode and a DBM fave, says, “Grief is not something to be fixed but something for you to learn to be more skilled at processing.” Akilah is a mother, partner, liberationist and author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing. She is now diving deep into grief work and in this...
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DBM Ep 61: Black Motherhood & Joy
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, What if I told you I didn’t think I had the words for the intro of this episode because we recorded it before the election, and after November 5th, joy was THE LAST THING I wanted to talk about? I wish I could say thinking of our ancestors pulled me through, but the truth is reaching forward in time helped me more than reaching back, and now more than ever, we are going to need joy not to feel happy but because, as Thea Monyee, one of the cohost of this podcast, who will be guiding us through the , says "Joy makes things clear," and we, particularly Black mothers, need to...
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DBM Ep 60: All Cried Out, Election 2024 & Morris Chestnut
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, There’s no deep intro for this episode. In this episode, we talk: ✨Which version of "All Cried Out" is best, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam or Allure & 112 ✨Election 2024 ✨How God blessed us with Morris Chesnut's rise from Ricky to Cory Cash WE HAVE RANGE! The way we move from levity to depth, Thea breaking down Joe Biden's scorpio tendencies to NeKisha connecting COVID to Zoom organizing to Crystal invoking Stokely Carimicheal’s definition of a revolutionary, is DEFINITELY a reflection of the times we are living in. And the truth is we were with more questions than...
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DBM Ep 59: Black Motherhood, Myths & Matrescence w/ Stepha LaFond
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, What if I told you there’s no such thing as snapping back after giving birth, only expanding into? What if I asked you to imagine Black motherhood without suffering? Could you do it? Have we made suffering a rite of passage in Black motherhood? Have we shrouded Black motherhood in self-sacrifice as opposed to sacred sacrifice? These are the questions we explore in this episode about matrescence. Coined by reproductive psychologist Dana Raphael, matrescence is the process of becoming a mother, including the physical, psychological, and emotional...
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DBM Ep 58: Cultural Identity, Spirituality & Ancestral Reconnection with Dr. Gina Paige
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama, Who is the girl the woman who survived in the belly of the boat that brought you here? Where did she come from? How do we find our way back to that place? Why should we find our way back to that place? In this episode, WE JOURNEY & Dr. Gina Paige, co-founder of African Ancestry is ridin with us! Along the way: ✨Thea shares the profound impact of tracing African roots through DNA had on her ✨NeKisha reveals the impact Dr. Paige’s business model had on her journey as a tech innovator ✨Dr. Paige reminds us that the ancestors are a cloud of witnesses...
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DBM Ep 57: Meditations By Mamas: Rising Meditation - You Are Enough w/ Jamarah Amani
Dem Black Mamas Podcast
Dear Mama You are worthy to rise each day and dance in your dreams with your children by your side. You are worthy of serenity in birth. You are worthy of joy while holding your children. Join of in partnership with the WNBA for a meditation experience to remind you: You are complete. You are not alone. You are magic. Meditations by Mamas are led by Black mamas to help us maintain alignment with healing, creativity, and liberation to manifest joy and abundance. We’re coming to LA on September 3rd!!! Early bird has been EXTENDED TIL SUNDAY, AUGUST 20th. Get on the mothership...
info_outlineDear Mama,
What if I told you to offer grief a seat at the table? What if I told you grief has no other duties except to be with you? It has nowhere to be and is not bound by time. Grief is patient. Grief is relentless, and as Akilah S. Richards, our guest for this episode and a DBM fave, says, “Grief is not something to be fixed but something for you to learn to be more skilled at processing.” Akilah is a mother, partner, liberationist and author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing.
She is now diving deep into grief work and in this episode we talk:
✨Grief, language and the body
✨Grief and generational shifts
✨Grief and creative projects
✨And of course grief, Black women and the political landscape
Plus Thea uses a Negro spiritual to describe Black women’s current mindset and Crystal is learning sign language and attempts to teach Thea.
💗Black Mama Magic Card: Card #25 - Motherhood is not the graveyard of dreams💗
EPISODES MENTIONS/RELEVANT TO THIS EPISODE:
🎙️DBM Ep 61: Black Motherhood & Joy
🎙️Shaping The Shift: The Wild Body With Jessica Schafer
✨PATREON BONUS CONTENT - Pre-Show Shenanigans✨
ABOUT Akilah Richards:
Akilah S. Richards is a mother, partner and liberationist. As founder of Raising Free People Network and author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work, Akilah S. Richards partners with co-conspirators to challenge and encourage social justice-minded people to explore privilege and power in their relationships with personal leadership and all relationships. These days find Akilah tapped into the wisdom she gathered from her family’s transition from schoolishness to confident autonomy. She is savoring her life’s lessons after nearly a decade of location independence, and eight years of being invited into various conversations about intergenerational community care across the U.S., Southern Africa, and Jamaica (where Akilah is from). She guides discussions about how unschooling skills and other forms of decoloniality are shaping families and other cultures of leadership, change-work, and love.
In addition to private coaching and public speaking, she facilitates trainings, small-group experiences, and consultations that help resolve the ways that unexamined experiences with bias and oppression disrupt families’ and organization’s capacity to sustain cultures of belonging.
Connect with Akilah: Grief Circle | Community & Support | Instagram
Connect with Dem Black Mamas: YouTube | Email List | Patreon | Blusky
🗣️Engage: This is a conversation. Speak back to us! Share your thoughts about the episode using the hashtag #DemBlackMamas, DM us or email us at [email protected].
For full show notes & transcript, check out our website: demblackmamas.com