Sol Services by Bulaong Ramiz

i am the daughter of a puerto rican migrant and a black american descendant of enslaved africans. this is my foundation. these two people, their parents, and their parents parents, whose resistance, resilience, passiveness, assimilation, trauma, healing, celebrations and disappointments have all lead to the being that i am. raised by my paternal grandmother in bloomfield, ct, i often navigated environments where i never really felt like i belonged. whether in my predominately white private schools or sundays at my local masjid, i learned early on how to leave parts of myself outside the door of any given space i would enter. as i have engaged in living over the 30+ years, my greatest task has been learning to put the pieces of me back together and to proudly bring all of me into all the spaces i enter and occupy. i strive everyday to celebrate my uniqueness, my sameness, my messiness, all the sparkly and the mundane that make up who i am. now, as a mother, i am on another journey t