A Litany for Survival in Pandemic Times: DisCrit Mothering and Radical Love

• In Event: DisCrit Mothering: Interrogating Consequential Education for Our Children's Lives and Humanity

Abstract

Purpose
It has been over two years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and most of the White able-bodied world has declared a “return to normal,” despite the U.S. surpassing one million coronavirus deaths (Donovan, 2022) and the global outbreak of monkeypox (Thornhill et al., 2022). My disabled activist friends and I watch in horror as we are reminded of our disposability in a racist ableist world. A line from Audre Lorde’s poem A Litany for Survival repeats in my head – “We were never meant to survive” (line 24). How am I, a disabled Latina motherscholar, supposed to teach my children about the value of all life within this context? How can DisCrit mothering foster radical love in, not only my children, but all people who have been written off as “incapable,” “broken,” and “unlovable”?

Theoretical Framework
To honor my positionality as a woman of color and social justice activist, I adopted a critical autoethnographic approach. I used CRT and DisCrit to think about DisCrit mothering and radical love in education. I shared my distinct lived experience as a Latinx motherscholar with a dis/ability to reveal how racism, sexism, and ableism have been amplified during this pandemic moment as well as how DisCrit mothering can serve as a lens to mediate the trauma currently experienced by children and young adults. I specifically touched on DisCrit Tenets one, three, six, and seven (Annamma et al., 2013).

Methods & Data Sources
I engaged in critical autoethnography, which is used to question, reflect, and act on experiences “with a specific focus on epiphanies that are deemed to have a particular influence on the course of life” (Winkler, 2018, p. 237). Following CRT’s voice-of-color thesis (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), critical autoethnography with a CRT/DisCrit lens allows me to center my personal experiences of racialization, gendering, and disablement through story-telling to reveal how the pandemic is changing how I view myself as a mother, researcher, educator, and disabled Latina as well as how I choose to navigate academic spaces and relationships.
I meditated and journaled each week about DisCrit mothering and radical love, either alone or with my sangha (community). Upon settling my bodymind, I opened my journal and jotted notes about my meditation experience via analytical memos, trying to capture the essence and any insights of the meditation. After six months, I pulled patterns and themes using inductive data analysis (Bhattacharya, 2017). Through my data sources – journal entries, analytical memos, poems, and sketches/drawings, I identified excerpts and quotes related to mothering, disability, embodiment, and relationships with others.

Findings & Significance
As a disabled Latina motherscholar, there is a tension between wanting to speak truth and the desire to preserve hope in our ability to transform the world for the better. In the end, my musings revealed a refusal to perpetuate harm unto oneself and others and the necessity of centering our embodied experiences and interconnectedness. DisCrit mothering and radical love gives us the opportunity to remind marginalized youth that they are inherently valuable.

Author

• Lisette Esmeralda Torres-Gerald, TERC
  Presenting Author