Junauda Petrus

Told in two voices, sixteen-year-old Audre and Mabel, both young women of color from different backgrounds, fall in love and figure out how to care for each other as one of them faces a fatal illness.

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

joana ashley

Let the pain leave out of you with each breath. It want to be free too

Nothing in life prepares you for death, and the certain promise of it. Whether it is your own death or someone you love. And nothing in life prepares you to live, truly live, knowing that death is near. Another thing to remember is, you alive until you ain't, so live in any way you can.

And I don't even think I understand God or how I feel about him or it. Or maybe she or them? My grandma talks about God and Jesus and the Bible, and my mama is more meditation and the Universe. My dad said he knows God through growing food from seeds and dirt, water and light, and he feels God when he tastes the miracle of fruit in his mouth.

Healing can be found in connection. Dig deep, dig mindfully. 

Healing is like falling in love, but deeper. You unite with someone so that you can work alchemy with they soul. So that they might elevate and revive them and heal not only them but their ancestors. And like love, if you don't know how to protect yourself, it could consume you.

Every inch of nature is divine. There is life, there is breath, there is spirit. Queenie sees God in all these things because they in turn are alive and create life. 

Audre, what you see and feel is true; who you are is divine. All of this is God. The mango, the bake, each bush in the yard. Sacred, each chicken crying at dawn. Each lesson that hurts you, and each hair on your head that reach for the stars is God.

This is really making me want to read a book on astrology later 

In my reading, I learn that people mainly just know about what their sun sign is, but that is only one part of who we are. That the Moon, Venus, Mercury, and all of the planets and where they were in the sky when we were born will tell us the story of who we are. I close my eyes and imagine little baby me coming into the world and all of the planets and stars are imprinted in me like cosmic DNA or something.

The prettiest voices are kites for the heaviest hearts

does not excuse. just explains. what you, as the child, do with that knowledge is up to you and what you're ready for

I think what many parents struggle with, mine included, is that they may not know how to love us in the way that we need. I think that being a parent can bring up a lot of your own fears and traumas and a lot of parents don't know how to not pass that on to their own kids.

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