Rowana Abbensetts-Dobson

“For him it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, then again to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time always to unknowing nowhere, this time and again for always to nowhere, now not to be borne once again always and to nowhere, now beyond all bearing up, up, up and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“we cannot divorce capitalism from race, nor can we divorce our struggle against racism from our struggle against capitalism. Every financial crisis is a racial crisis as well.”
― Jenn M. Jackson, Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism

“To be seen in this life, truly observed without judgment, is what it feels like to be loved.”
― Cicely Tyson, Just as I Am

“Several years before Maya [Angelou] went home to heaven, she penned the poem popularly known as 'When Great Trees Fall,' but properly titled 'Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield,' a lyrical ode she ends this way:

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly....

Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

Her sentiments, so often repeated, powerfully sum up what loss does to the human heart, how it lowers our heads and deepens our sorrows, and yet how, in the end, it miraculously restores us. When great trees fall, we weep in unity with the forest--and we rejoice at the legacy that lingers.”
― Cicely Tyson, Just as I Am