Jewish Postpartum through the Stories of JOC in the United States
This project is a collaboration between Ayeola Omolara Kaplan and Rose Espinola. Ayeola created a series of five artworks depicting the postpartum traditions and rituals of Jews of Color in the United States. Rose curated a chapbook of postpartum stories. This art series and chapbook build upon twenty audio and/or video interviews in 2021-2022 with Jewish people of color in the United States about their experiences with pregnancy, postpartum, abortion, pregnancy loss, and infertility. This collaboration is part of the Jews of Color Pregnancy and Postpartum Project, and was funded by the Jews of Color Initiative.
There will be an online ceremony on Sunday, November 16 at 3-4pm ET. Click here to RSVP.
Statement from the Artist
There is incredible radiance in the ritual practice, culture, and communities of Black, Brown, indigenous, and melanated Jews (BBIMJ). Through five illustrations inspired by the stories of pregnant and postpartum Jews of color, I transform and coalesce their words into a series of illustrations celebrating the mundane to the surreal. While Jews of Color are often relegated to the margins, my artworks center the inherent divinity and beauty of their journeys and contributions to Jewish culture-making.
You can reach out to Ayeola with questions about the artwork and opportunities for collaboration at ayeola.o.kaplan@gmail.com.
Statement from the Curator
When I first became pregnant with my child, I grew curious about postpartum rituals and traditions. I was already aware of some Indigenous & Mexican traditions from my father’s ancestors, and wanted to learn more about Jewish practices from my Ashkenazi mother’s lineage. There is little research compiled about Jewish-specific practices that center the experience of the birthing parent. This multimedia exhibit uses artworks, interview clips, a recipe, and poetry to fill that gap — while centering, preserving, and celebrating the postpartum rituals and traditions of Jews of Color who shared their experiences. Every story in this exhibit is Jewish because it comes from a Jewish person.
The accompanying chapbook, rooted in reproductive and healing justice, uses Torah, Talmud, and interviews to define the postpartum period. It includes prayers and songs meant to support new parents. We cover the often invisible, harder parts of postpartum: physical pain, healing, and emotional wellbeing, and highlight how extended family and community can support postpartum families with meals, chores, and other kinds of care. The chapbook closes with ritual and meaning-making though mikveh, heirlooms that hold memory, and ways to bring postpartum care into your own communities.
In the interviews I facilitated, many people spoke of pregnancy loss, infertility, and abortion. This exhibit and the chapbook focuses mainly on postpartum experiences, but I hope future projects will explore those stories more deeply, along with baby naming, brit milah, babywearing, chestfeeding, and the rituals that honor pregnancy and birth.
You can reach out to Rose with website issues, reflections on your experience interacting with the exhibit, and opportunities for collaboration at espinola.rs@gmail.com.
Access the Chapbook
Meals
Ayeola’s Experience Creating the Art
To initiate this series, I listened to the interviews of BBIMJ conducted by Rose Espinola and took note of scenes, objects, and emotions that stood out as visually promising. I then considered which themes united folks’ stories to help me collage them into five different pieces. I wanted every participant to feel reflected by at least one aspect of the artworks. The breakfast and dinner illustrations showcase various food items that were part of participants’ pregnancy and postpartum journeys. The juxtaposition of Jewish meals and the culturally significant foods of the participants creates a unique spread that honors the abundance within BBIMJ culture.
Rose’s Reflections
In interviews, participants discussed the foods they ate postpartum. Some came from their ancestors. Some came from the world around them. Some are new traditions, created by the interviewees or their community. I asked interviewees, “What foods did you eat during postpartum? Who cooked the food? Do they come from your family?” Their stories show it isn’t merely what parents are eating that helps them along the postpartum healing journey, it is also how these meals are prepared (namely, by others). The chapbook includes examples, beyond cooking, of how people can show up and help lighten the load for a postpartum parent.
Breakfast by Ayeola Omolara Kaplan
Dinner by Ayeola Omolara Kaplan
Video Clip from Ayesha on Friend & Synagogue Support for Meals
Ayesha discusses a friend from her synagogue community who prepared meals for Ayesha’s family around the time Ayesha gave birth to each child. In her interview, Ayesha also shared that the synagogue community does a meal train for a couple of weeks to support the family.
We have a close friend in our community who both times, two out of two times, she called me earlier in the week or something and was like, “Hey, don’t worry about cooking for Shabbat. I’m going to make both your meals for you.” Then I ended up having both of my kids on Shabbat morning, in the hospital. And so we had all of her food with us in the hospital. So that was really nice. I have no idea how she always just manages to do that, but she’s a good friend and always shows up for us in that way.
Video Clip from June on Food Traditions & Being Away from Mother
June’s mother was in Jamaica during her birth and postpartum. June and other interviewees discussed what it felt like to be away from their mothers, whether as the result of migration, death, or other circumstances.
I don’t think I ate anything special. It would’ve been–this so one of the things I think I miss about maybe my mom not being with me in that I feel like she would’ve maybe made me some things. Even if it was just extra cornmeal porridge.
My mom is a strong believer in ginger and lemon. Ginger will solve all problems. Especially when you put it with lemon, maybe some turmeric, mix it all up, make a tea. So much ginger in my family’s life. I wasn’t craving it or anything, but I think she would’ve made me so much of that.
Video Clip from Leah on Preparing Freezer Meals for Postpartum
The month before my due date, I had my mom—her task was to fill up my freezer with ready-to-go meals that I could eat on the go, because I had read a lot about how you’re not going to have any time to cook or anything. So that was her task, which she—first she thought we were going to do it together. I was like, “No. I don’t have the energy. You can do it.” But it wasn’t traditional Jewish foods; it was just things that were easy to freeze. She made me a lot of homemade bone broth which was great.
And then, yeah, people came and would drop off meals and stuff, that I didn’t ask for, because I didn’t even know to ask for that. And it was coworkers, actually, who had just recently given birth, probably a year before I did, and so they knew what it was like to be in those early postpartum days, and that was incredibly special and meaningful.
Video Clip from Kristin on Nourishing Postpartum Foods
Kristin had read the book The First Forty Days. She received support from a postpartum birthworker who prepared nourishing meals from the book, specifically meant to aid postpartum healing.
So she made the chicken and red date soup. She made some teas—chamomile and lavender tea that was cooked in oat milk that was really delicious, with some honey. She made a lot of like infusions, with herbs. She prepared sitz baths for me, which was really nice.
There was this dish that I loved; it was like a black sesame paste—it was kind of a desserty thing—black sesame paste with some porridge. In Japanese, it’s okayu, rice porridge.
I feel like she actually cooked so many things for us. And as someone who loves to cook, and my partner who doesn’t cook, it was very, very, very nourishing to have somebody else cook really beautiful, delicious food.
Video Clip from Aliza on Heritage Foods
Many participants discussed eating heritage foods from enchiladas to bagels to plantains. In this clip, Aliza shares the Dominican foods she ate postpartum. She also discusses loss of blood from her C-section and the need to eat specific foods that promote healing. The chapbook contains additional stories of managing illness and disability during the postpartum period.
I pretty much eat the same thing. So, for breakfast, I had plantains and eggs. Plantains are very, very Dominican.
For snacks, I had cheese and crackers and fruit. I ate a lot of grapes, strawberries, mango.
And then for dinner and lunch, I would have pretty much the same thing — I would have some kind of chicken and rice – very Dominican, also; rice and beans – and then I would have carrots or broccoli, or, because I had lost a lot of blood after my c-section, I had to have green beans for a really long time and take iron pills to replace my blood that I had lost.
Video Clip from Ahvegyil on Family Support with Meals & Chores
Ahvegyil talks about the foods she ate during both pregnancy and postpartum, including foods that are traditionally considered “Jewish” like matzo ball soup and pomegranate. She also mentions that her mother-in-law had her eating a lot of soup, which is considered a nourishing postpartum food across cultures.
The other big craving with the first one was matzo ball soup and pomegranate. So I probably ate three pomegranates a week. Postpartum—my mother-in-law had me eating a lot of soup. Like, a lot of soup. And was very much like, “You need to pack on calories. You’re trying to pump and breastfeed and do all these things, and heal your body.” So that was really lovely, to kind of be cared for. Because my family of origin wasn’t stepping up or doing those kind of traditional type of things. With the second one, eating was hard. Oh my god. I was sick up until the day I had her. I think I ate a lot of fruit. Watermelon was my go-to thing, with her. And, cherries. That was it.
Head Coverings, Jewelry & Herbs
Ayeola’s Experience Creating the Art
The magic of using herbs, clothing, and jewelry as an aid during significant periods in a person’s life is rooted in the traditions of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and melanated people. Mentions of these spiritual tools are found throughout the interviews. In my artwork, I highlight the ways these tools are melded into the unique culture of BBIMJ.
Rose’s Reflections
I asked interview participants questions like, “What are some of the customs, practices, or rituals you used postpartum? What items did you use?” They shared about herbal medicine, hair coverings, jewelry, amulets, and family heirlooms. Accompanying Ayeola’s art below are several interview clips, as well as a postpartum herbal recipe. The chapbook includes many other stories about ritual items, as well as shared prayers interviewees found or created to give meaning to moments of transition.
Head Coverings, Jewelry & Herbs by Ayeola Omolara Kaplan
Video Clip from Adi on Healing Herbs
In my work as an outdoor educator, with children, I found myself fascinated with herbalism, and that’s a sweet way to teach children about plants. Then I studied herbalism. I did a yearlong intensive in 2019, at California School of Herbal Studies, and learned so much. After that, I’ve just been weaving it in, and making different things.
For my birth—there’s a lot I can say about herbs. I would drink a tea as much as like—daily, ideally. I think I tried to have a tea every day with nettles in it, which is great for blood-building and vitality. And I’d have red raspberry leaf, which helps strengthen the uterus muscle, and for contractions during labor, but also just as it grows and expands and comes back—the muscle of the uterus. I drank rose for my heart to open up. I had chamomile a lot, for relaxing, and it was a gentle herb that helped me go to sleep. It felt like a grandmother herb. It felt like—it’s just such a sweet, relaxing herb. Also, a lot of what I have worked with is pretty much what people know about. People know about chamomile, rose. So I had that a lot.
Then when I was in labor—I mentioned how my water broke but it took me three days to give birth. I worked with home birth midwives who are also herbalists, and were very trusting of the body and the process, and had seen that. In the hospital, I wouldn’t have been able to have that much time. But I did have to take some herbs to help me—to induce the labor. So I took black cohosh and cotton root, which—these are not like ancestral herbs to me; they’re just herbs that I know, and that have been studied, and—historically, many cultures—work, to help bring down the energy, and bring on the uterine contractions. Then I also had to take—well I chose to—had to—I took castor oil, which is like a seed from a tree, and a powerful, beautiful plant that brings—everything down. So that’s what really did it for me, to bring on my labor.
But I would say, also—there’s the herbalist me, and then there’s the Mizrahi person in me, which, it’s all woven. I love connecting to my ancestry, through food and through herbs. It’s such a practical but also—just the most direct way, I think, I feel connected to my lineage and my family. We cook with a lot of cardamom, for example. I put cardamom in everything. I put it in my coffee, in my tea, in my dessert, in my oatmeal in the mornings every day. The smell and flavor of cardamom—I put it in tahini sauce. I just, yeah—we make cardamom flavored syrups and things. That is a clear direct way I connect to my Iraqi lineage. And same with rose. Rose water, and—that’s why I drank rose, too. Cardamom-rose—everything. I would always add that into treats. Rose is also a harmonizer in herbalism, so I would throw it into every tea blend I would make, basically, for the heart, and for ancestral connection, and for balancing the blend. Yeah, I would also—I had some orange blossom water, which also feels pretty Iraqi and Middle Eastern, that I throw into like—I made elderberry syrup, while—I make it every year, actually, in the late summer, early fall, when the—more like mid-summer—when the elderberries start to come in, as immune medicine. And I throw cinnamon and cardamom and—not throw; I put in—ginger and including orange blossom water. I know that some of these herbs come from my lineage, and some I just have been learning along the way.
There’s one other one, too—lemon verbena. It’s “luiza” in Arabic. And “hel” is cardamom in—I guess that’s in Hebrew. But yeah, luiza, I would have all the time, too. I have it in tea. I think I take it more energetically, for connecting to my lineage, and for its sweetness and fragrance.
So, yeah, wove in the medicinal qualities of herbalism with my ancestral—and there’s probably more herbs that I work with, but those are some of the main ones that I’ve been with.
I will also say—oh—I did postpartum sitz bath blends, regularly. I did it—for the first two weeks, every day, I took a sitz bath, with astringent herbs to help tighten and tone my pelvic floor, after having the baby, and heal. Yeah, so herbs were a huge part of my birth experience and my life.
Video Clip from Antoinette on Covering Hair
I’ve been pregnant four times—they’ve all been different from the other. The level of spirituality that I feel differs also with all of them. My first, it was such a—I felt like I knew I was gonna get pregnant, and I wanted to get pregnant. So, weirdly, I had this sense that—I just wanted to start covering my hair literally before I took my pregnancy test that showed that I was pregnant. So, ever since that day, I’ve been covering my hair, to some extent or another. I felt like it had—it meant something to me, at the time. More than just a habit, it felt like it was something that I just needed to do spiritually.
Audio Clip from Ima Ari on Turquoise Ethiopian Magen David
Eventually, after my son was born, eventually finding my way to more Indigenous elders, and regalia, and stuff like that. But I wish I had had access to that back then. I think it would’ve been meaningful.
I definitely had jewelry, some of which was connected to my Jewish ancestry. I had a Hamsa necklace and a Magen David necklace, and in particular, I had one that was an Ethiopian Magen David. Even though I’m not Ethiopian, I felt very connected to that culture as, like, a mixed Jew, not just Ashkenazi Jew. And it was actually on a mala that I had made from a mala that fell apart that I’d gotten when I first learned to meditate when I was, like, 13 and had remade with some turquoise that I had gotten out at a reservation I had visited when I was 16. And then, the Ethiopian Magen David.
So it was sort of, like, this multi-faith necklace that I made that I wore all the time, all the way through pregnancy and childbirth–from when I was 16 to pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and beyond.
Postpartum Herbal Tincure Recipe, shared by Rose’s cousin Maribel
- 1L de Alcohol (1 liter of rubbing alcohol)
- 1/2 L De Éter (1/2 liter of ether)
- Romero (Rosemary)
- Ruda (Rue)
- Plátano macho verde – La cáscara del plátano lo dejas en el sereno y secar. (Green plantain – Leave the peel out to dry.)
- Cáscara de nuez (Walnut shell)
- Alcanfor (camphor)
- Piedra alumbre (Alum Stone)
Se mezclan todos los ingredientes y se deja reposar por algunos meses. Y se pone después del baño el los lugares a reafirmar y desinflamar, o sease🤗 vientre y espalda baja.
(All the ingredients are mixed together, and the tincture is left to process for a few months. You apply it after bathing in places you want to firm and reduce inflamation, in other words🤗 the womb and the lower back.)
This is not medical advice.
Hip Closing Ceremony
Ayeola’s Experience Creating the Art
A mitzvah of being a BBIMJ is holding space for many different ancestral practices, oftentimes simultaneously. The artwork for this series melds Jewish practices like havdalah and mikvah, with traditional Latin, Asian, and African rituals like hip closing ceremonies and spiritual baths.
While connecting with the participants, we related over a longing for a community where we can be ourselves fully, rather than shrink to fit in. As BBIMJ, we are often compelled to isolate or assimilate rather than draw attention to the ways our practices are different. This series of artworks exists under the umbrella of Afrofuturism by depicting a Jewish-futurist vision of BBIMJ pregnancy and postpartum experiences, where we can go through our journeys in a joyful community.
Rose’s Reflections
Right after giving birth, I wrapped myself in rebozos (long, handwoven cloths) in order to make myself sweat. I felt the need to sweat. Rebozos are deeply meaningful as indigenous Mexican textiles, and I wrapped myself in one rebozo gifted to me by my tía (aunt). Ivania Montero, a local birthworker, led me in three postpartum ceremonies using traditions from our indigenous Mesoamerican ancestors like hip closing using a rebozo and sobadas (womb & breast massage). During the ceremonies, I also used ritual from my Jewish ancestors by doing mikveh and lighting a havdalah candle.
On the Mexican side of my family, postpartum people have their hips wrapped with fabric daily by a family member, in order to facilitate physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. Given my particular interest in global hip closing traditions, I asked interviewees, “Did you receive any postpartum body work, for example massages or hip closing?”
Hip Closing Ceremony by Ayeola Omolara Kaplan
Process Video Showing Creation of the Artwork
Video Clip from Adi on Using Family Cloths & Jewish Songs During Hip Closing Ceremony
I did have an abdominal massage. Part of that was with also a bone closing ceremony, which weaves in different cultures. Actually this is more like Mexican tradition and South American, for sure. But I learned about it when I was also becoming a doula. I did this course called Curanderx Toolkit with a bunch of other folks of color, in Oakland. And, yeah, I knew about—the practice generally around birth is a way to close—like, we’re so open, when we give birth. All of our joints and our whole body is like very open, so it’s the idea to like close back up.
My dear friend Amanda, who was our doula, and she’s also—there’s just a beautiful piece with Judaism, too—she’s also becoming a rabbi right now, and we have this unique connection, where we went to Oaxaca together, and studied in Mexico, and studied with a midwife, herbalist, together there, a few years ago. I don’t have lineage from Mexico, but I have a lot of personal felt connection, and I wanted to study that, as in birth and herbs. Amanda is also like me, a really strong Jewish person too. So she offered me this bone-closing ceremony and abdominal massage, where we wrapped me in these different cloths.
A lot of the cloths were actually ones that my mom got me from Poland, and one that my dad got me from Petra in Egypt. So there was ways that I brought in my own cloths that they wrapped me in, to basically close out the portal, the birthing portal, and also massaged my organs back into place.
I got that probably two or three weeks postpartum, maybe four? Yeah, it was an emotional part of the piece for me, because I—yeah, I was so excited to be pregnant, and so honored to give birth and experience it for myself. I don’t know how many times I’ll get to do that in my life, and it’s so beautiful. It was also really physically and emotionally challenging in so many ways. But I didn’t want it to be over. I think there was a way that I was like, “Wait! Every day I’m going further away from being raw, fresh, in that experience.”
So that ritual of the abdominal massage and bone closing ceremony—she did actually sing some Jewish prayers during that, and Jewish songs, for me, which felt more like—the authenticity for us, to really open up. But yeah, I felt like in a way, I got to cry, and grieve, and just say “thank you” for getting the chance to experience that. And that it’s always with me, and that I can always tap into it, and remember that—yeah, remember, being part of that portal. But it was important for me to like cry and—and moving forward. Like, I’m into the next phase. It’s always just a next step. Now I’m in postpartum, and I’m going to be connected with my baby, but the birth itself, it happened, and let’s honor what it was, and it’s time close it back up. Like, I wanted to stay open, but it actually would be really—it felt important on a deeper level to start closing it back up.
Mikveh
Ayeola’s Experience Creating the Art
Throughout the series, I wanted to explore the intersecting elements of BBIMJ pregnancy and postpartum journeys like disability, gender identity, and class. I illustrated the mikveh scene as emotionally charged but without sharing the transition that the person is using mikveh to mark. I did this so people could more easily project their own relationships with mikveh into the image. I included a mifepristone pill in the image as a way to hold space for the experiences of BBIMJ who have had miscarriages and abortions. I also wanted to include a river mikvah as well as a bathtub mikvah. This duality supports the divinity of both practices and the way Jewish ritual has been shaped by our modern world.
Through this project, I learned about mikveh as a ritual for abortion and other life transitions. When I first considered taking on this project, I worried I didn’t have a right to illustrate art on Jewish pregnancy and postpartum because I am a woman who has had an abortion and does not plan to ever have kids. Over time, my anxieties waned as I realized that I had a deep connection with Jewish pregnancy and postpartum through my relationships with the Black Jewish women in my life: my mother and Bubbie. I know that I am who I am, because of the strong Jewish women who have raised me and steeped me in the cultures of my black and indigenous ancestors.
Rose’s Reflections
People approach the mikveh with varying traditions and innovations. Rabbinic sources go into great detail about protocol, intent, and even the amount of water that should come from a natural water source. The Queer Mikveh Project works to queer the concept of mikveh itself and make it accessible more broadly, especially to those who hold marginalized identities. Inspired by the Queer Mikveh Project, I did mikveh in the Shenandoah River near my home while pregnant. Postpartum, I did mikveh in my bathtub with herbs.
Mikveh by Ayeola Omolara Kaplan
Process Video Showing Creation of the Artwork
Video Clip from Rabbi Mira Rivera on Support from an Elder Mikveh Lady
After I gave birth, I waited a certain point until, like I said, there were no more discharges. And then, it’s as if you sort of treated it like you had a period. And you waited for your period to be done and then you get to the mikvah. The mikvah physically was near me and so it was sort of a, kind of like secret society ritual that I would do. I would get there in the evenings. And, of course, the mikvah lady knew. You know, my body was changing. She had known me before and my body was changing. And there was just — I was searching for the elder women, for example, to be around me. There she was, you know? There she was!
Audio Clip from Alyssa on Mikveh as a Turning Point
I remember after five weeks—because she was born October 17th and I guess like five or so weeks later, it was the end of November, which is Thanksgiving or National Day of Mourning. We usually go to my husband’s family, because his mom’s birthday is around that time, so we celebrate her birthday. That was our first trip. We went to Belmont, Massachusetts, which is about an hour and a half away from there. And that really felt like a turning—like a milestone, in some way. That was the first trip that—that was as far as we had gone, that she had ever traveled in her five weeks of life.
I felt like some milestone of integration was happening. Also during that trip, I went to a mikveh at Mayyim Hayyim in Newton, which is this gorgeous mikveh space. And they’re so—they just have such a radical, accepting, inclusive way of running a mikveh, and inviting people into the mikveh. It was something that I knew I wanted to do at some point—to go there, specifically, and immerse, after giving birth. So I went with my mom and my baby. I just remember hearing—at some point, I give my mom to—Ida—I was probably having to nurse every like hour at that point, but I nursed Ida and then gave her to my mom.
And I remember getting ready in their dressing room that’s outside of the mikveh, and they have all these kinds of like soaps and hairbrushes and nail clippers. It’s really like—it’s like, “Oh, I haven’t really had like this”—it was warm in there, too. It was like, “Oh, I have such an invitation to really clean, and really take care of myself.” I just remember hearing Ida crying. I think at some point, my mom came over to the door and knocked, and she’s like, “Um, I think she’s hun…I don’t know what to do. I think she’s hungry. Something’s going on.” And I was just like, “She’ll be fine. Just let me have this time. It’s not a lot.” But I think probably that really felt like at that five weeks, it was a big turning point.
Kavanah: Postpartum as Mikveh from Rose
I wrote a kavanah (intention) for my postpartum as a mikveh. While reading Jay Michaelson’s G-d in Your Body during pregnancy, I felt called to the moment of submersion in a mikveh as a symbol, and to my own kavanah for the postpartum period I was building towards. I pieced together parts of Michaelson’s writing into this found poem, which I reread throughout my postpartum.
May my postpartum period be a mikveh, “bodies immersing in water, connecting with memories more ancient than memory”.
“Transitions are sacred”.
Moving “in between one state of being and another”, “the liminal space when one is neither what one was nor yet what one is to become”. “Before, there is identity, fixed in shape and meaning. Afterward, there will be a new identity, different in content but equally defined. But in between, in the moments of transition and change, there is a namelessness that recalls the ineffable.”
Thank you Chalchiuhtlicue, madre diosa, mother earth, divine, shekhinah for all your blessings. Thank you for this blessing of rest and recovery. Thank you for the blessing of creation.
Thank you for this moment of “possibility”, your building this “shrine to transition”, allowing me to be “naked” and “stripped of signifiers of identity or role”.
The cuarentena “shelters, nurtures”. We spend 40 days, a cuarentena, because “40 days Moses spent on Mount Sinai, the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert, the 40 days of the flood in the story of Noah, and the 40 days between conception and an embryo taking human form”.
During this time we are “in-between, neither ‘before’ nor ‘after’”, “healing and yielding [rather than looking towards] acquisition, activity or production”.
My focus is on the “water, the womb, rebirth” and this little one. May this little one be safe and strong, and confident. May they show me how to support them on their journey.
I’m “paying attention to the sensations of the body”: “[N]othing should be between you and the natural waters”.
I’m “taking [my] time”. I “find the practices at the edge of [my] comfort zone, because there they will teach [me] more than you expect.”
I’m asking “what you would like to let go of, or welcome in”? I take in all your blessings, and breath into earth my “expressing gratitude”.
I’m living a joyous, powerful moment in which I am in the mikveh, and I “let the mikveh do the work”.
Together we are “forging the bonds of community, friendship, and fellowship”.
Thank you Chalchiuhtlicue, madre diosa, mother earth, divine, shekhinah for all your blessings. I am grateful.
© 2025 Rose Espinola (text)
© 2025 Ayeola Omolara Kaplan (artwork)
Except where otherwise noted, the text of this exhibit is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Artwork Exception:
All artwork by Ayeola Omolara Kaplan is excluded from the above license. The artwork may be shared digitally for personal use only. Printing and distributing physical copies of the artwork, whether for personal use or profit, is not permitted. No derivatives or adaptations of the artwork are allowed.