They are the two people I know I got brought to HDS to learn from and with. Dean Melissa’s vision a decade ago as a student for a Racial Justice & Healing Initiative created an HDS that I got to experience-one where a community committed to creating an anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS and a world healed of racism was large enough to find home in throughout my time here. Leading by love and example, each of their rigorous practices of truth-telling have invited me into more and more courage (meaning heart). These two incredible women have mentored and grown me in huge and significant ways.

It was so powerful to read the entire essay aloud to 100+ people (half in person, half on Zoom!) for the first time, and to respond to the questions it aroused for people: how do we approach our families when they do not want to talk about the harm caused by our ancestors? How do we hold the depth of the grief in this work? What has my healing journey looked like? How are things with my family now? Where is there joy amidst it all? What do I mean by the spiritual dimension of reparations work? It’s still terrifying to talk about these things in public, but I’m becoming ever more clear that it is a risk I am being asked to and need to be willing to take.Įndless, boundless gratitude to Dean Melissa Bartholomew and Writer-in-Residence Terry Tempest Williams. Looking out at the Williams Chapel filled with friends, fellow students, professors and local community members for my book launch & reading of “Decolonial Dames of America” in April! I had the privilege to have this little red prayer book published by The Constellation Project here at HDS in March. I think the biggest change for me is having a broader sense of community in terms of who I am in this work with for the long haul. I feel ever more clear about the work that is mine to do in this lifetime, reckoning with my family and our country’s histories of colonization and enslavement, and moving towards repair. David Ragland to bring his class “Reparations as a Spiritual Practice” to HDS. When I applied to come to HDS I said in my essay I would “dedicate my study at Harvard to the racial reckoning that is long overdue in this country.” I am so grateful to have been able to do that in ways I could not have imagined or predicted, from engaging with Harvard’s Legacy of Slavery process, to offering a student-led course with Emma Thomas (MDiv ‘24) titled “Ancestors & Money: the Spiritual Dimension of Reparations Work for White People,” to supporting my friend and collaborator Dr. HDS communications reached out to our 2023 graduating students to hear from them in their own words about their experiences at HDS, the people who've helped and inspired them along their grad school journeys, and their plans for the future.

Red by Terry Tempest Williams