✍🏽 1,000+ Words: Refusing to Apologize, Housing Trauma, and Death Doula Work

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

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Table of Contents:

1. 🕒 Since we last chatted...

2. ✍🏽 1,000+ words

1.🕒 Since we last spoke…

I was about to apologize for being away, but I should be better about not apologizing. 

Over the last few months, I have encountered some personal health issues and family health crises in the midst of moving. As such, I have shifted to a more humane cadence. When you are so used to apologizing for having normal reactions to things, it is hard to stop. “I am sorry I was ill and unable to help you,” and “I am sorry that I was unable to advise you amid this family crisis” – these are all denials of my humanity – things I am doing to myself. I am so grateful to Allah for carrying me through the last few months. I am also so thankful to the entire Rasheed clan, who have been my pillars of strength (I for your humor and reminders to eat, N for your humor, check-ins, and advice, A for your kindness, J for your calming spirit, Mama for making trips here to help me out, and my Pops for the spiritual regrounding) and my dear brother from another mother in De Deur who, despite preparing for his album launch, made time to ensure I was okay.

My world became very small this summer but large simultaneously. Despite the grief of ending relationships, I am deeply grateful for the small world I have created. After a brutal summer (lots of travel - Norway, Turkey, France, and then COVID), I moved at the top of August but only finally settled in last night. Today, I made my first full meal in this space.

Last night, I stood in the hallway, just thanking Allah repeatedly.

Since we last spoke, I:

• launched the newest Orange Tangent Grant applications! (three 1275 USD awards; one reserved for a practitioner over 50.) Please apply by November 21st.

• published on Protocinema, Vibrating Sentences

• started a new job (full-time lecturer at the School of Art Sculpture Department at Yale University)

• was announced as a shortlisted artist for the Artes Mundi 11

• was announced as the 2024 High Desert Test Sites Fellow

• installed work in Svolvær, Norway, for the Lofoten International Art Festival

• watched the entirety of Kath and Kim — I think Australian comedy

• opened a solo exhibition at Anonymous Gallery (New York, NY), beneath this sentence is a hole* and your words are leaking. i place my mouth at the puncture site, waiting to be engorged by your lactating punctuation

• made some time actually to sit and read two books: Yellow Face (R.F. Kuang) — about 90% done and When We Cease to Understand the World (Benjamín Labatut) — about 60% done

• developed a nasty case of insomnia and body pain because of a new medication

• worked too hard, and now I’ve got carpal tunnel syndrome, which feels like someone stabbing my wrist each time I try to type

• developed an aversion to eggs alongside a new love of yogurt

2. ✍🏽 1,000+ Words: How is my emerging death doula practice connected to my interests in ecology, housing justice, and a somatic relationship to “home”?

I look forward to nesting and guarding this space as my first home (other than my childhood home), where I have felt safe and comforted, surrounded by the (selected, lol) memories of my past and the anticipatory objects of a beautiful future. I made it a rule not to mention specific names, events, and objects in this space to avoid muddying the space's energy.

The last few months have felt on hold because I could not do anything until my home space was sorted out. ADHD and OCD, plus moving, is quite a storm. I am so grateful to all the grounding forces that made this significantly less miserable than it could have been—a big shout out to my mama, who came to town twice to help move and organize.

Also, moving is hella expensive, so yall should subscribe to my newsletter as a paid subscriber! 

On Sunday, when I returned from my matcha latte run (note: I asked for a bit of vanilla, and it was way too sweet, so now I have matcha for the next few days!), I ran into a woman (we will call her Rachel) who said her grandmother used to live on my floor. I asked which apartment, and when she said the unit, it was mine! I wondered where her granny had moved, and she said she passed away in April 2024. She asked if she could see the apartment — she wanted to know if she could see the apartment. I let her in, and we looked at pictures of the home when her granny still lived there to compare. She did a lot of custom work — entire mirrored walls and beautiful chandeliers — and kept all the original molding. My apartment was stripped — no chandeliers, mirrored walls, the lovely French door replaced, and molding flattened. We walked around before she asked me to do interior design for her (!!!! - very interested in this as a casual offering like in the future, far future). We exchanged information, and I let her know that anytime she wants to come by, she can. I told Rachel that her mama could visit any day.

About 10 minutes later, I heard a hesitant knock, and it was the mother we will call Rebecca. I welcomed her in. She said she just wanted to ensure the apartment was in good hands. The super told her I was a “nice lady who travels a lot for work” and the apartment was in good hands — but she wanted to see for herself! She cried and reminisced a lot about the fifty years in that place. I now have a new friend in the building. As she cried, I thought a lot about my mother — how she sometimes would say on the phone with me, “lemme call my mama,” before realizing that she just could not. We are figuring out what will happen with my granny’s home in South Central. Space has such a profound impact on memory and our relationship with those who have transitioned.

I am honored to be a steward of this beloved woman’s home. I have been stalling on enrolling in my doula training because the last few months of grief have been heavy in ways that required me to give more to myself than I do to others. I have also stalled because I want to be more intentional about what I offer as a doula. This interaction made me think about my offering as a spatial one — an offering to help people rehome after leaving the homes of deceased loved ones and support what I call these pilgrimages back to these home sites – physically and virtually.

The home we had to leave when I was 12 before a decade of housing instability is one I want to pilgrimage to. For most of my life, I have dreamt about this home in full HD almost every night. I often look up Zillow images just to see what the inside looks like. Other times, I will encounter a pattern or a scent that reminds me of that home. I feel lucky to have such an active dream life because I can see and touch in an astral context. I have been chasing that home feeling for the last two-and-a-half decades.

My childhood home inspires the doilies and the mantle design. We had a mustard yellow fold-out couch in the living room, and I wanted the living room to have a similar brightness. I remember the “playroom” vividly. Because East Palo Alto was a former agricultural utopia and is still quite rural in some regards, our home was built around an actual well, which the landlord covered with a giant piece of wood lest one of us kids would fall in. The playroom was wrapped around this well and had the worst carpet. The playroom had the highest ceilings with a giant skylight that now reminds me of my late granny’s bathroom, which also had a skylight. There was a workroom with random computer parts, art supplies, and other stuff. And there was an unfinished room in the far back that I commandeered at my studio at the tender age of 9. It had a large window that overlooked a small garden where we would have BBQs. 

Many of these emerging realizations are related to my interest in spatial histories and the lifecycle of a location—like a geological and emotional core sample. 

I am thrilled (and terrified) to announce that I will be starting my death doula classes on January 19 next year. This is a significant step in my journey, and I am filled with fear and eagerness to expand in all the ways I did not know were possible. Once that is done, inshallah, I will have an opportunity as a Black Muslim woman to a funerary home in New Jersey. And after that, inshallah, I can take my exams and be of service. I hope to do transitional care for the body and the home. 

I needed this time to process my grief in a way that would clarify my work in this Dunya.

Thank you for reading,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL