This is one of my favorite portraits I've taken of my Grandmother. She is the most pure, and unconditionally loving woman I've ever met. Her love is all-pervasive. It has been a gift to be her granddaughter. And my Grandmother, like so many black women, has worked and worked and worked. She is still working as I write this, and she has devoted the essence of her being to caring for us.

I coupled this work with the poem, “I am accused of tending to the past” because this photograph also speaks to a wider story about black women; and about our elders who have lived through so much; seen so much.

This image makes me think of my lineage and of black women being at the forefront of tending to falsified histories and constant erasures; persevering and preserving memories and personal histories, in the midst of challenges sprouting from seeds they did not plant.

Black women exist outside of societal and historical constructs. We are not to be collapsed into stereotypes, labels and archetypes of strength, servitude or over-sexualization. We will not be written off as angry or oversensitive. Black women have an emotional and spiritual intelligence that is unmatched. We are not invisible. We are invaluable. Black women are unbounded. We’ve always shown up; and yet we too have softness. We deserve reverence & regard. We are multidimensional.