Grieving in Color Episode #14:

Season 2 Episode 14: Exploring the Grief Experiences of Black Women in Higher Education with Dr. Sakeena Everett

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Welcome to Grieving in Color, a podcast that explores the various ways we navigate our experiences with grief and loss in a place where we find courage to intentionally heal in our daily lives. I'm your host, Dr Chinasa Elue a professor, speaker, and grief coach, and I am inviting you to join me on this journey, embracing our grief and the full spectrum of our emotions. A palette of feelings that colors our lives even in the face of loss. Each episode we dive into real stories of healing and growth as we also feature guests who have found strength and sorrow, love and loss, and joy, even in their darkest times. Grieving in color is about acknowledging the pain, the loss, and the grief, but it is also about finding hope, love and joy again. Whether you are currently on your grief journey or supporting someone who is, this is a space for you. We are here to remind you that you are not alone and it's okay to grieve in your own color.

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Dr. Chi: Welcome to another episode of the Grieving and Color podcast, the space where we explore the various shades of grief and loss and find healing in our daily lives. I'm your host, Dr Chi, and today we're diving into our conversation around exploring the grief experiences of black women in higher education. I have the wonderful privilege and honor of having Dr. Sakeena Everett join me today on the podcast to talk more about this important topic.

Now, before I get into the topic with her, I do want to read you her esteemed bio because it is something that you need to hear verbatim. All right, so let me read this to you. Dr Sakeena Everett is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction. She is a native New Yorker from Brooklyn. All right. Avid literacy advocate, former secondary English teacher, and current teacher educator who specializes in urban education, literacy education, and, racial justice in education. Dr. Everett is deeply concerned about the lived experiences of academically high-achieving black students and faculty. Her interdisciplinary research explores the intersectionalities of race, gender, socioeconomic status, and grief. Dr. Everett developed an intersectional grief literacies framework to support grieving educators with a special emphasis on supporting grieving black women at the university level as well as K-12 educators. In addition to her grief literacy research, Dr Everett focuses on the consequential literacy development of black male students in elementary and secondary schools, literacy teacher preparation, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and transformative, humanizing and decolonizing research methods, and education. (Come on now!) She is also the editor of the book Trauma-Informed Teaching: Cultivating Healing-centered English language arts classrooms. Her research is nationally recognized by the American Education Research Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Spencer Foundation. All right, thank you so much for being here with us today, Sakeena. I cannot thank you enough. Welcome to the Grieving and Color podcast.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Thank you so much for having me, Dr Chi. I'm so excited to be here with you and to be in community with you.

Dr. Chi: Absolutely. It's been such a joy to watch Dr. Everett's work over time. And so when we agreed to have this conversation today and really talk about this really important topic, I knew that she would bring some heat to this conversation today. So I am ready to jump right in and get this conversation going.

So, Sakeena we know from your bio that you do some really amazing work. But as we're talking today, our conversation is centering on the grieving experiences of black women in higher ed. And so tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you get into doing grief research? As a fellow grief researcher myself, we all have a story with how we enter into this work. And so if you don't mind, tell the listeners how you started researching topics around grief.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Thank you for the question, Dr. Chi. I’m, actually going to read an excerpt from a recent article that I published and the article is published in the Journal of Trauma Studies and Education. It's called Unlearning Limited Grief: Advancing an Intersectional Grief Literacy's Framework. It starts like [this]:

Imagine spending years earning your doctorate degree at the top research institution in your field. Next, you direct a major research grant at a different research institution. Finally, you secure your first tenure track position at a third research institution for what you believe to be your dream job. Three research-intensive institutions, three different states. But neither of those states is home. 

Nevertheless, you look forward to spending the next six years, which is the typical tenure track probationary period. Planning professional and personal roots in your new estate, you excitedly pack everything up you own and you relocate across the country. 

A day after you arrive at your new place, you receive an unexpected call that permanently changes your life. Your only sister and best friend is in the hospital and the doctor tells you there is nothing more we can do. It is just a matter of time. In a hurried and horrified manner, you leave your unpacked boxes in your new place, drive to the airport with the clothes on your back and purchase a last-minute flight to go home. The place where you were born and where all your family lives. Somehow you manage to make it to the hospital in time. Your sister smiles upon your arrival, you exchange a few words. And eventually, she passes away. 

After you brokenheartedly plan and attend her funeral, you take a flight back to your new dream job. Except now your life feels like a nightmare. You look at the unpacked boxes in your new apartment. You're deflated. However, you must plan your new course syllabus and teach class in a few days.

I did not have to imagine that story. I lived it. And that's how I came into doing grief research. Prior to engaging in grief research with and on behalf of black women in academia, I studied academically high-achieving black male students in elementary and secondary schools. And as I took on my first tenure track position, I tried very hard to keep up with that work. But what I kept coming back to was doing grief research. I kept reading all the books about grief because I was completely undone when I got back and I had to unpack and try to figure out my life in this new state where I had no family and friends. I was trying to get myself situated, and I'm an academic, so I read, and I was trying to read books for myself first, to try to understand how can I do grief. I can move through the stages and, you know, I can figure it out. I was trying to ‘get grief right’, thinking that I could intellectualize my way through grief. I'm a smart person. I read some articles and books and figure it out, and then I'll be back on my way. It's really foolish when you say it out loud, but that was kind of what I thought I could do. 

And as I continued to read books and articles and also to seek various services, I found that none of these resources really cater to black women. And they did not cater to this very peculiar kind of situation that black women faculty find themselves in. because black women are roughly 4% of all faculty in US institutions of higher education. And so there's so few of us, and we have this unique intersection of race and gender that shapes our situation. In the academy, it was hard to make sense of my new reality independent of my family. And it was a rough time, but I felt very compelled to create space for black women like myself.

Dr. Chi: Thank you so much for one, reading that beautiful vignette. And I know that you wrote the article, so we definitely will share it more in the show notes after. But then also just really highlighting in this context the ways in which we have to, at times, particularly as academics, find ways to return to a normal that no longer exists when we have these grieving experiences.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Yeah.

Dr. Chi: And to try to make sense is something that is incomprehensible in real-time. And to your point around, even how you entered into doing grief work, I share it all the time how I had a similar entry point as well after I lost my mom, and how being in the state of walking in the wilderness of it all and not knowing or understanding what was happening to me emotionally, mentally, as I was trying to process her loss, compelled me to ask some much deeper questions. And I chuckled a little bit when you said, as academics, we tend to intellectualize things a little bit because I think I, too kind of ran to some books and articles and started reading. So I appreciate you sharing your entry point into your research.

So you mentioned that you created a framework on grief literacies, and I'm just so fascinated to hear more about this. So, could you talk more to the listeners about the new framework that you created?

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Yeah. Absolutely. A lot of this is covered in my article, so I'm going to dip back in here a little bit. And also from the first page, I say, when my sister unexpectedly passed away, I was a black woman from a working-class family, starting my first semester of my first tenure track assistant professorship at a predominantly white institution in the southeast United States during a very contentious socio-political election season. And equally important, I was the first person in my family with the opportunity, not the intellect, not the desire, not the skills, but the opportunity to attend college and to ultimately earn a terminal degree, a PhD. And for many first-generation, first-person, which is like a double situation there, because it's one thing to be first generation, but then it's like another thing to be the first-generation first person going into college. And those opportunities are not just flowing. And so, for me, being in that situation, I felt like I could not leave. I had invested too much. My very being in this space was bigger than me. This was a family win. This was a community win. And it was a direct form of resistance against systemic racism, sexism, poverty, intergenerational trauma. And so it was like, all these layers. And the alternative was confronting poverty with a PhD, because institutions assume that folks are middle class when they're coming in. And I was coming out of a doctoral program, which was full-time, so I didn't have my bread stacked the way I wanted to. And so starting this tenure track position, I was super excited. Tenure track positions are very few and far to come to. And for someone who has been training for a research-intensive role. To get a tenure-track job is like the gold standard. And to start that off on a Monday and by Saturday, to have that all snatched away by the loss of my sister during that same week, it forced me to think about all the nuances about race, about class. At the time I was experiencing racism, sexism. My class became pervasive. My working-class roots became pervasive. So all of these things were coming to the surface for myself. And as I was sharing with some of my sister scholar friends a bit about my circumstance, they helped me to realize, Sakeena it's not you. There's this larger thing that's going on that you need to maybe redirect some of your energies and research from focusing on high achieving black male students, which you are not able to focus on right now, and redirect some of that energy to focus on. Like, how can we support black women who are caught at these intersections of race, gender, class, among many other things? So that's what the intersectional grief literacies framework provide. I define intersectional grief literacies as a framework that is committed to generating possibilities, to acknowledge, to process, to assess and build capacity for humane and transformative racial and gender equity, particularly in the field of bereavement and grief studies. I'm really interested in changing the face, the literal face of grief research by centering black women, which is like a tenet of intersectional research. I'm also interested in, shaping policy and praxis in ways that support black women and bring attention to their needs. The framework is committed to at least two intellectual projects. The first is to increase the visibility and inclusion of black women in bereavement and grief research because traditionally black women have not been included in grief research. Secondly, my goal is to reshape or shape black women's relationship with grief and bereavement. Resources and research I have found not only for myself, but in many of the women who have participated and who are participating in my current national project called Creating Space for Grief. They have shared with me that black women don't necessarily have models of what grief can look like in a healthy way. We often don't get opportunities to grieve out loud. We're cognizant of the ways that we are seen and how we show up in spaces. And because there are so few of us, we're keenly aware of our presence. We already know we're not allowed to be angry. 

Dr. Chi: We can't seem unapproachable. We're constantly in this state of collective grief, seeing our brothers and sisters on viral videos getting killed while also managing our own personal losses. Yet we are expected to kind of proceed as if everything is okay, as if everything is normal.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Yeah. And that's the expectation. And so there are so, few models of how to grieve in a way that is healthy for us. And I'm really interested in creating– Well, one, creating space for black women to be able to have honest conversations about their grief and grieving. And what's unique about this particular project is that it focuses on black women in higher education. And black women are only 4% of the faculty in US institutions of higher education. To my knowledge, no one is doing this work. At least that's what everyone who is in my study has shared with me. And so I have that unique kind of lens to focus on, not just black women, but black women who are all overachievers, high achievers, who are used to getting all the things done, who publish, who teach, who get grants, who have side businesses, and who are mothering, who are being partners and caretaking, leading communities and organizations on top of their day job. Like, this is okay. And then it's like, what happens when we are grieving? in education and faculty, it's a helping profession. And so we're constantly pouring out into folks, and we need to be poured into. So few people even know what professors do, let alone what black women professors do. And so I just wanted to create kind of a framework that allows us to focus, to create the research and resources that we need to cater to our unique positionality within the academy and to change policies, because I found some wild– Like, the average bereavement policy in the US is like three to five days off from work, which is like, that's not even enough time to plan most services.

Dr. Chi: And, you know, in our communities, at times, there's multiple services involved, you know, and…

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Hello.

Dr. Chi: …so you're tending to the initial loss and taking care of your loved one. But then when you think about what's next, then it's like the very difficult process of grieving has to, unfold. And we're back at work, we're in there, right? And we got the mask on, and we're doing the thing. I was going to ask thinking about, you mentioned so many golden gems here about how we are positioned within the academy.

We're so used to holding down these multiple roles and titles within this overarching job, role within higher ed that there is no space or time to even grieve because there are so many expectations of us when we walk into those doors. So what have you noticed in terms of some of the unique stresses that black women face and how it impacts their mental health over time or our mental health over time, our physical and our mental health? Recognizing that if we don't take the time or create the spaces where we can process our grief or where we can be cared for while we're grieving, that there will be some form of an impact. What have you noticed in, some of the work you've been doing around how these stresses impact us?

Dr. Sakeena Everett: There are several things to consider. My work is bringing together at least two different fields. I know it's more than that, but for simplicity's sake, in this moment, I'll say at least two fields. So, on the one hand, we have bereavement and grief studies, or some people might call it thanatology studies. And all of that, basically, is the study of death and dying and grief. Within that particular field and paradigm, there are at least two major camps. So you have the folks who study the impact of grief on the brain, like psychologists and neuroscientists who do studies with folks who are grieving, and they're asking questions. They've developed a number of assessment scales to assess grief and document the symptoms of grief. And then you have at least another camp that talks about the pathology of the body and what happens to folks who are grieving. So, we know from research that folks tend to have a higher incidence of heart attack, stroke, cancer. Also, when you are grieving, your body goes through these physiological states of dysregulation, where your heart rate, your sleep, your cognition, your blood pressure. There are all these physiological things that get dysregulated. The trauma of the loss just makes your body dysregulate itself. So you don't know when to sleep or when to eat. Some people overeat or don't eat at all. Some people go for days without sleeping. You have what some folks call grief fog and your cognition, your prefrontal cortex, where a lot of your executive functioning goes offline. When you're overwhelmed, your body produces high levels of cortisol and all these stress-related hormones. So there are all these physiological things that I didn't even know happen until I was in that situation with my sister. And because of all these physiological things going on with your body, it's hard to function, like, literally get out of bed. And so, within that field of bereavement studies, you have the folks that focus on the body reactions, and then you have the folks who focus on the brain and cognition, things that happen, the mental, the emotional, the social workers, the therapist. And so my work crosses over and looks at both areas, the brain and body, things that happen. And then over here, you have intersectionality studies. For me, as a black woman, I cannot separate my race and my gender. I'm a black woman. I walk through the world as a black woman. And intersectionality scholars talk about how we don't have this luxury of single-access research. We have to do race and gender at the same time, and those are just the two. When you throw in class, when you throw in sexuality, when you throw in any other number of variables, it just gets more nuanced. So complexity is at the heart of intersectionality studies. My work crosses over into this nice little Venn diagram of bereavement and grief research, as well as, black women studies and intersectionality. And so the framework is sitting in that middle to better understand the unique experiences and the unique needs of black women who are grieving.

Dr. Chi: And that's so profound in terms of what you share, because there are definitely some unique experiences and needs that are present because we're so used to caring for other people. We're so used to wearing the cape and the mask and saving the day. And not that we necessarily need anyone to come in and save us when we're walking through our own grief experiences, but we do need care.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Right.

Dr. Chi: When we entered into the start of this year in particular, we had two high-profile higher education leaders pass away. They were college presidents. We had Dr Joanne Epps from Temple University, who literally dropped dead on, the stage while she was at a memorial service and was later pronounced dead at the hospital. And when I was looking at her passing, I was looking at the stories and how people and colleagues were narrating how she was committed to her institution and gave of herself effortlessly in a variety of different ways. And in that same week, we found out later that Dr. Arinthia Montague passed away. Just days later, another college president at a university in Tennessee. And so it was like witnessing our sisters passing away days, apartheid. And as a black woman asking myself, what in the world is going on? Right? And then to hear, a few short weeks later, Dr. Antoinette Candania Bailey's passing the state of affairs for black women in higher education. It's abysmal right now. And there's so much to be said about the types of support that are needed right now to create a safe space for us to not only exist but to thrive and do our work.

And so, as we're having this conversation today, we're talking about grief and the grief experiences of black women. And I would be remiss to say, I have actively been grieving our sisters that have passed away. I've been actively grieving them because it's been so painful and unbearable to not only witness, but then to still exist in the space as well.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Yeah.

Dr. Chi: So thinking about that in the nature of higher ed–

Dr. Sakeena Everett:  I just want to add on to that, if I may. It's very painful to persist in the wake of those sisters passing. It's painful because it's a, reminder of how disposable black women are in higher education spaces. Obviously not to me and not to you, but to the institutions where we give so much of ourselves. We're also disposable to them. The issue is we're not disposable to our families that need us.

Dr. Chi: Yeah. What do you think is the starting point for us to continue to engage in this conversation? Because I've seen several town hall meetings after our dear sisters passed away, and a lot of meetings to really, one, create a safe space for us to process the pain of losing our dear sisters in higher ed, and then also thinking about a call to action on ways to go forward.

A piece of that call to action has been to hold leaders accountable. What do you think, perhaps as you've engaged in your research and have been hearing the stories of black women, needs to be said to leaders right now to bring more than just awareness, some deeper action to support our abilities to thrive in these spaces that we occupy.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: I mean, I would start from a very simple standpoint. Listen to black women. Listen to black women, and then protect black women. There are so few of us in these spaces. It would be quite beneficial for administration and the powers that be to actually just listen to what our needs and concerns are, because I have found that oftentimes, black women are not just looking out for ourselves, but we're looking out for the wellness of our entire class, our unit, our, institution, the community, our family. And because of our unique positioning, we have this lens that allows us to see all the nuances and what different people need. And if folks listen to us, they would know what needs to be done. Then they have to protect us as well. Too often, black women make lots of sacrifices to their detriment. And when things happen to black women in higher education, folks do not show up and protect black women.

Dr. Chi: Thank you for sharing that. And to your point, a thousand percent agree. And there's so much work that needs to be done in order to create spaces where we can flourish and thrive and do the work that we've been called to do and go home to our families and our loved ones as well. Yeah.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Going home is no small feat at all.

Dr. Chi: Yeah.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: And so part of what I try to do in my work is to develop precise language to identify and describe our unique positioning and our unique needs. And in doing that, I want to shape intellectual thought and ideas, and theories around the unique needs of black women in higher education. And then also we need to think about grief frameworks that adequately assess our needs. Because we have a right to grieve. We have a right to grieve and our grief, meaning black women's grief, is often layered with institutional racism, sexism. There are some unique class dynamics that affect us differently. And so when you are battling racism, sexism, and any other variety of isms in your respective institution, and then you go out into the community, and you're also reminded that your blackness and your womanness is not valued in the streets, it's a hard situation to navigate daily. And so I'm hoping to forward assessment tools that not only get at the traditional markers of, like, have you been sad for however many days? Do you think about your loved one? Do you have continuing bonds with them? These are traditional grief assessment scale questions, but I think we need to add on the ways that black women experience racism and sexism inside of their grief and how that complicates their grief and how that shapes their capacity to grieve.

Dr. Chi: That's so good. And I'm just looking forward to all of the amazing things you have coming down the pipeline. So you've been doing this work for some time right now. And I'm curious to see what are some self-care strategies that have been helpful that you've identified to support black women as they grieve, particularly black women in higher education, as they grieve and manage all of the different aspects of their job, all of the stressors, all of the things that are part of their day to day experiences. What are some self-care strategies, even community care components, that may be necessary for us to navigate our own grief journey?

Dr. Sakeena Everett: First and foremost, literally creating the space to have the conversations about what black women are experiencing. I have, through my current national study, Creating Space for Grief, met a number of black women who say that they didn't have time or space to share all of the different ways that they were grieving. And they signed up to be a part of my work as an opportunity to put their stories on record, because there were no other places, no other venues that could hold space for their stories. And so creating a space for black women to share their stories is a first step. I think a second step is asking them what they want and need. Something else that I do in my work is focus groups. In the focus groups, black women get to interact with other black women in academia who are grieving, because many of my participants have attended various grieving workshops or groups, but none of them have been specifically catered to black women. And so having a space where black women can come together and talk about their grief, and it feels like just some sister girlfriends getting together in the very unique ways that we do. And like, I'm thinking of Dr. Joy Braddon Hartford. She wrote a book called Sisterhood Heals, and she talks about the unique ways that black women get together and create these energies among ourselves, and sisterhood helps us heal. And so I think about those spaces, and then all the ideas that black women generate together when we're in spaces together, we can come up with the things that we need when we're in community. But what I have found is that the isolation that we often experience in academia, whether that means we're the only black person in our unit or the only black woman or one of a handful, that isolation is a strategy of white supremacy, and it keeps us from building, it keeps us from community, and it attempts to divide and break us down. And so my work creates the space where black women can come together and have authentic conversations to develop ideas, to meet with one another outside of the research space, and to build bonds that we have these kind of unique understandings because very few people know what any professor does, and then very few people have any idea what black women professors do. You know, we have at least three jobs.

Dr. Chi: I say many more. Come on.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: That's why I said at least three jobs minimum.

Dr. Chi: Three jobs.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Right. Teaching. Teaching is a full-time job. We teach.

Dr. Chi: Correct.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Research is a full-time job. We do research service and, sitting on various committees and, shaping policy in the. the unit, at the college level, at the university level, and in the field, editing journals. All that service work is a whole job in itself. (Right.) And then on top of that, folks tend to have administrative roles, whether they're directing programs in their units, being chairs and upper-level administrators. And that's just. Those are like three or four jobs just in the day job part. And we know from sociology and social psychology that studied the second shift that women in general tend to take on when they get home. They're doing the mothering and often the caretaking for elderly and ill family members. And so when you combine all of that, black women are doing at least four to eight different jobs, on top of grieving, which is physically draining. And we know that from the field of bereavement studies. And so I want to bring attention to the ways that black women can heal in sisterhood, heal in community. I am a huge proponent of black women getting therapy, taking care of their bodies. And in fact, I've designed my study in a way that I give them a decent-sized stipend, if you will, or incentive so that they can pay for a massage or a therapy appointment or childcare for the hour that they spend with me. I think about the unique needs of black women and who will care for black women. and I take it very seriously that black women have given up their time in their day to spend with me, to share their stories.

Dr. Chi: Yeah.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: And so I want to honor and take care of black women who gift me with their grief.

Dr. Chi: I just want to thank you so much for everything you shared, especially around the importance of not grieving in isolation. Because to your point earlier, we are typically siloed in a variety of different ways on our campuses that it's very easy to just stay by ourselves and just weather the storms of life alone. But to your point, we can grieve together in sisterhood. We can cultivate and build spaces that are regenerative for ourselves, and that can be really supportive as we're navigating and humanizing our lived experiences, especially when it's time to grieve. Yeah, I can't stress that enough. Oftentimes we say we don't have time. We must make time to grieve, or else it will manifest in a lot of other ways and so ways that honestly aren't really helpful in that context. Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Yeah. I mean, you don't have time for grief, but grief got time for you.

Dr. Chi: Okay.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: I trust and believe when you have finished doing all your duties and running around and all the things, grief will be sitting right there on the kitchen table. Grief will be sitting right there in your bed, waiting for you to come back so you can cry yourself to sleep. Grief will be sitting right there like, hey, miss me? Grief will show up when you least expect it and be like, hey, you forgot about me, but I didn't forget about you. So here we are together.

Dr. Chi: Yes, and yes.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: And it's perpetual. It's perpetual. (Yeah.) So I do the work that I do because I want to create, or at least create space for, to talk about, to acknowledge healthy models for grieving. Oftentimes we are not encouraged to be honest about our feelings and what we're going through. And to be clear, there are lots of reasons why we typically do not share how we really feel. And we certainly don't share how we really feel with our colleagues, particularly if they are not black women colleagues. It is a part of our survival and our coping and our literal life-affirming capacities to stay around. (Yeah.) Ah, that's part of why I do the work, too.

Dr. Chi: That's amazing. That's so amazing.

Sakeena I want to thank you so much for your time today on the podcast. How can listeners stay connected to you and your research? I know you are actively engaging in several studies right now and writing articles and all the things. How can listeners hear more and stay connected with you?

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Well, there are a number of ways to get in touch with me. I have a blog called Unfinished Stories, and you can connect with my blog at unfinished storiesbyse.com and I have a website, Sakeena dot everett.com, and also my Instagram account is Sakeena Everett, PhD. Yeah. 

Dr. Chi: Awesome. And I'm going to link all of these ways to stay connected with Dr. Everett below in the show notes.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: Thank you so much.

Dr. Chi: Absolutely. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today for the Grieving in Color podcast. Listeners, Dr Sakeena has one more thing she wants to drop before we go ahead.

Dr. Sakeena Everett: I just wanted to say that in the show notes, if you could include a link to participate in my research study. It's open to black women in higher education who are faculty. If you want to contribute to this work and help build the frameworks and resources that we need for black women. Sign up. (Yes.) Complete the survey and do an interview. Do a focus group. Yeah

Dr. Chi: Absolutely. You heard it here. We are definitely continuing to support Dr Everett in her quest to really cultivate spaces where we can critically examine what black women in higher education need as they are navigating grief and loss and elevating the importance of this work, especially during this time where we need it now more than ever.

Y'all, that concludes our episode today for the Grieving in Color podcast. Stay connected for more episodes as the season continues. Dr Everett, thank you again so much for your time today, friends. Until next time, keep grieving in color.

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Thank you for choosing to spend time with me on this episode of Grieving in Color. If today's episode has resonated with you, or if you know someone who might benefit from our conversation, please share this episode with them. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts, your stories, and the ways I can support you as you navigate your own grief. You can reach out to me on my website at www.drchinasaelue.com or connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram @drchinasaelue. Your participation, feedback, and story help us keep this conversation going and reach those who need it the most. Remember, there's no right way to grieve. There's only your way, and every shade of your grief is valid. 

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This episode of the Grieving in Color Podcast is brought to you by Rachael Sanya and Productions.