the legacy of little nate (part 1)

Potential Activation Warning- The following episode description contains references to suicide. Please take care while reading. We include helpful resources after the description 

In this initial installment of a special 2 part episode, Tiffani and Kenjus chop it up with Cassandra Edwards and Canada Taylor Parker to explore potent intersections between grief, mothering, activism, and the weight of trying to sustain life within an relentlessly anti-black world. As mothers, organizers, health practitioners and caretakers, both guests reflect on how grief is not a one time event across our communities. Instead, such disproportionate suffering is an ongoing, systemic process that Black women and femmes have often been forced to shoulder and navigate across generations. 

Mrs. Cassandra Edwards shares the painful story of the loss of her son, Lil Nate to suicide, which has profoundly shaped her organzing with other grieving mothers. Although Mrs. Cass accepts her role in her community, she speaks to the exhaustion and anger of being forced into activism, of bearing the responsibility of protecting and constantly having to grieve Black children in a world that constantly marks them for death, and of refusing to let systems define how Black mothers grieve. Canada Taylor Parker unpacks the ways intergenerational trauma, parenting, and grief justice intersect, and how she has worked to disrupt cycles of harm through her own intentional mothering and transformative community care.

Our conversation explores the inherited burdens of ancestral pain as well as the the weight of mothering within structures that were never built for Black survival. Together, our guests confront offensive violence of systems, which are responsible for many of the conditions of our suffering, profanely attempting to dictate how Black people should grieve. They also challenge dominant narratives around suicide, making space for a deeper, historical analysis that links Black suicidality to the long arc of enslavement, colonization, racial violence, refusal, and generational memory.

Listen as they hold space for an honest reckoning with loss, love, and the labor of breaking cycles, while also lifting up the legacies of those who came before us—those whose names and stories must be remembered.

In this episode, we also honor and acknowledge our ancestor, James Baldwin. Thank you for your life and your love. Thank you for continuing to guide us.

Stay connected: www.apocalypticeducation.org

Hosts: Tiffani Marie & Kenjus Watson
Guests: Canada Taylor Parker & Cassandra Edwards
Music By: Redtone Records
Production By: Jesse Strauss, Paxtone Records
Sponsored By: The Institute for Regenerative Futures

Note: All episodes this season explore themes of death, transition, and capture, with an emphasis on spiritual and ancestral grounding.

Black and BIPOC Care Resources and Contacts

Call BlackLine
Call 1 (800) 604-5841
*This resource is divested from the police
BlackLine provides a space for peer support, counseling, witnessing and affirming then lived experiences to folxs who are most impacted by systematic oppression with an LGBTQ+ Black femme lens.

Lines for Life Racial Equity Support Line

Call (503)-575-3764
Available Monday through Friday from 10AM-7PM PST.
This line is led by people with lived experience of racism and offers support for those who are experiencing the emotional impacts of racist violence and microaggressions.

BEAM-Black Emotional and Mental Wellness Collective

https://beam.community/wellness-tools/
The BEAM toolkit has outstanding resources to support your emotional wellness journey. Explore the BEAM website for grief resources and a local directory of Black wellness practitioners.