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Labor Nurse Adds Unnecessary Pain

Columnist Stacy Graham-Hunt after giving birth to her second son Elijah When I was in labor at Yale New Haven Hospital’s Saint Raphael Campus, my labor nurse wanted me to validate the size of her butt. I’m sharing this story because it’s #BlackMaternalHealthWeek. White nurses + doctors, please don’t do this. It’s not funny or cute. We’re trying to make to make it out of the delivery room alive. Instead, pay attention to the pain we’re reporting. Read the full story here. (That’s Elijah. Yes, he was born with his eyes open. Also, this story received an award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists.)…

My First Heartbreak (Rerun)

by Stacy Graham-Hunt Me and my great-grandfather James Jenkins, aka “Gramps” back in circa 1982 This was the first story that I shared on Facebook back in 2016. I almost deleted it, but then a reader encouraged me not to. Since I’ve published this story two of my great aunts, Gramps’s daughters, have died from Alzheimers – Aunt Rose and Aunt Ernie. One or two of the other aunts have signs of the disease. Read the original story here.…

Processing Pain Turns Seven

The year was 2016. My boyfriend had just broken up with me, and I was trying to figure out how I was in this place again. I had just gotten divorced two years prior. I was shocked, heartbroken, and deflated. I turned to writing in my journal. With no plan in mind, I wrote about whatever bothered me that day. I noticed that the things that triggered me most were betrayal and abandonment – a continuous pattern of feeling like people were leaving my life before I was ready for them to. I fervently wrote about my great-grandfather dying when I was 9, my grandmother who died just a year before I was born, the boy who spread a nasty rumor about my vagina in 10th grade, and the abortion I had the summer after my sophomore year in college.…

Licensed Therapist to Join Tonight’s Journaling Session about Texas School Shooting

Ronella Ellis Ronella Ellis, a fellow mom and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), will be joining our space tonight (Friday, May 27th at 7PM, EST.) to support us as we journal about Tuesday’s school shooting in Texas. She is a native of Connecticut and a fellow graduate of Hopkins School, where we met. She’s a very proud graduate of Spelman College and Nova Southeastern University. She is a multidisciplinary practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience She believes that mindfulness is a bridge that heals an unhealthy relationship with past and forges a healthy relationship with the future.I am so grateful that she has offered to support us tonight at 7-8:15PM on Zoom.…

Texas School Shooting: Journaling Space for Moms

Hi everyone, I’m really having a hard time wrapping my head around the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, so tomorrow from 7-8:15pm, I’m hosting a virtual journaling space on Zoom for us moms to be together and write, talk and share. I’ve created this healing space, admittedly for myself, in hopes that some of you other moms will join me in taking a moment to begin to sort out all of the intense feelings inside of us, as an act of self-care. I feel helpless in this situation, and I’m hoping that if I can figure out which parts of the situation anger me most, then I can figure out what my role can be in making these shootings stop.…

I was quoted on the Senate floor!

My recent column, “Call Me Black, Not BIPOC” was quoted by Connecticut State Senator Marilyn Moore while she spoke in favor of #TheCrownAct, a bill that bans natural hair discrimination in the workplace. “‘She pointed to a recent New Haven Register op-ed by columnist Stacy Graham-Hunt, a journalist who is also the director of membership at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven,” Lucy Gellman of the Arts Paper reported. In the piece, Graham-Hunt argues that wide adoption of the term “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), particularly among white institutions, has become the newest way of controlling the language and perception of Blackness through a white, Eurocentric lens.…

Home remedies for COVID-19

I watched a bunch of Queen Afua videos over the last week after watching her interviewing Lauren London about healing from grief. In this video, she talks with Angela Rya about transitioning to a holistic lifestyle, and she even tells you what to do if you’ve contacted Coronavirus. I really enjoyed their conversation.…

Why I Chose Toxic Men

I chose toxic men because I too was toxic. The Insider’s article, “Why intelligent and high-performing women fall for toxic partners,” got me thinking about my own relationships. I think I may have stayed in toxic relationships too long because I was also toxic. After breaking up with my first love in college, I fell for the next guy simply because he made me forget about the first. I would hate for someone to tell me that they love me because I make them forget about someone else, but it happens. I’ve used guys as rebounds, and I’m certain that I have been a rebound before…because karma.…

Not content to live with tokenism

Tokenism is being the one black student in a classroom full of white students. It’s being the only Hispanic employee in a predominantly white organization, and it’s when that historically white school or organization says it’s diverse because of that one black or Hispanic student or employee. For me, it’s meant being one of two black students in my class at my Connecticut private elementary school, St. Thomas’s Day School. It’s meant being the only black person in most of my classes at Hopkins School, ranked as one of the top private middle and high schools in the country. I never understood why these private schools in New Haven didn’t have more black students when the city’s black population has been at least 30 percent for decades.…