Black Storytelling Week 2025 Reflections

Hey Y’all,

Black Storytelling Week has come to a beautiful close. Whether you stopped by our community celebrations or made time to connect with a loved one on your own, I hope that you found a way to honor, document, or share the stories about who and where you come from.

The week for me was such a special celebration of the many ways we make family. Of the legacies of care that have sustained our people. Of the future ancestors we can step up to become.

Each day began with a quiet moment to reflect. The daily journal prompts posted to Black Storytelling Week’s Instagram and Threads invited us to unearth and capture stories from the past, as well as seed our desires for our families' futures. You can always find or revisit them in our IG highlights. For mine, I dreamed up a new tradition, imagining how we might come together if money and conflict were no object, eventually landing on some small steps that I can take today.

During the “Who Raised You?” Storytelling Circle, we reminisced about the grandparents who stepped in; the loved ones who made their homes safe landing pads; the friends who offered affection when we faced the opposite. We expressed gratitude for the angels, spirits and ancestors who’ve protected and guided us, and shared the lessons nature and our bodies have taught us. We even conceived new ideas for gathering our BSW community (can anybody say… retreat?!).

The very next day, I called my grandma in Georgia, my last remaining grandparent. She’s the second oldest of 11 and I’ve only met a handful of her siblings. Nine are still with us, and they’re spread across the country: Detroit, Texas, Alabama, Los Angeles. So many branches to climb, roots to explore, kin to connect with. Grandma told me a little about each sibling, but her memory is fading. I did learn that her stepfather was a mechanic and owned his own shop in Selma, which made me think of my cousin/Grandma’s grandson/her stepfather’s great-grandson who’s followed a similar path in Virginia. I love connecting intergenerational dots like that.

Then, later in the week at our NYC Celebration at Weeksville Heritage Center, we witnessed families take their first portrait and elders record their voices for the first time. We saw friends deepen their intimacy, couples document their love, and siblings remember their parents and communities. One woman, Ms. Jolly, archived her family’s lineage going back to president John Polk in a zine, complete with birth certificates, photos and other documents. It was a dream!

While the holiday has passed, we look forward to continuing to hold space for those of us doing this work.

• RSVP: Our Next Convening

  Join us Wednesday, October 22 from 7-8:30pm ET! Our Convenings are an opportunity to connect with other folks doing family history work (genealogy, family storytelling, preservation, etc), learn from one another, and share best practices and resources. Whether you’re just getting started or decades deep, this space is for you.

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🤎 Martina