After being ravaged by postpartum depression for most of 2015, my 2016 goal was to retain sanity — by any means necessary. Things had fallen apart soon after I gave birth to my daughter, with the pressures of work and new motherhood driving me to depression and sleep deprivation. To overcome this I was willing…
➠ Continue ReadingI had always been curious about camping. Something about a tent, a fire, and marshmallows sounded like a lot of fun, but when I brought it up, no one in my family wanted to sleep on the ground outside when we had perfectly good beds inside. With a child’s eye, I began to notice that…
➠ Continue ReadingWhen you hear the term “crack baby, ” you might picture the movie Losing Isaiah with the screaming baby suffering due to his mother’s drug habit. He was the classic crack baby: disruptive, troubled, and fictional. Crack babies aren’t a real thing Yes, some children were exposed in utero to cocaine, but there is no…
➠ Continue Readingwww.encouragegrowingfamilies.com I wish I could paint this fairytale picture that where I am now in my life is what I’ve always wanted, but that’s the furthest from the truth. With a Bachelor of Science in International Business, I thought I was going places. It didn’t matter that I didn’t land my dream job fresh out…
➠ Continue ReadingCarrie Mae Weems : The Kitchen Table Series, 1990 From seeking advice about teething and feeding, to getting help with the laundry and babysitting, family members and friends make up the village most women depend on to help them bring up their child(ren). But, the reality for some of us is that we have made our homes in foreign countries or other locations that make it hard to see our loved ones regularly. Some of us are in this…
➠ Continue ReadingBy now you might have heard about the controversy over baby carrier company Baby K’Tan’s marketing for their sling. One box features a white mother and baby, with her partner standing behind her, the other features a black woman and her baby standing by themselves. Many feel that the packaging furthers the perception that black…
➠ Continue ReadingAs an African-American woman with an unusual name (Dara Tafakari), I know all too well that America is unkind to difference. People have always butchered my name mercilessly. When I got pregnant with my daughter, I considered naming her as my first act of motherhood; I could not afford to mess it up. Black parents…
➠ Continue ReadingBy Alicia Barnes, liciabobesha.com When I was pregnant, I felt sorry for my husband. I knew our child was going to be brown, lighter than me but still brown like me. I knew he was going to have thick curls that turned into an afro before he could even hold his own head up….
➠ Continue ReadingIt’s been almost two years since I had my baby, and my hair is still recovering. Sure, I had heard about the postpartum shed, but I never thought about how it’d impact my thin, easy to break, super slow to grow natural hair. The hormones of pregnancy disrupt the normal shedding cycle of hair. This…
➠ Continue ReadingThe Out of Africa photo series by Georgia-based Blue Sky photography celebrates black mothers who breastfeed, and the photos are just gorgeous! Click here to view the full photo series.
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