ODE to our Mothers

Our teachers, our leaders

A poem and a case for Trauma‐Informed Processes

Ivette Bayo and Ricky Moraguez, I am because you are. Other pictures are me across the years and my parents, Luis Enrique Bayo and Rosa Maria Rivero. I am, because they are.

We don’t have to be part of the problem to understand that trauma exists in a country whose beginnings were of stealing lands, epistemicide, and genocide.

We don’t need a prescription to offer respect and diginite to all peoples.

We do have a responsibility for our thoughts and actions.

We have a RESPONSIBILITY to learn, unlearn and relearn, SO WE NEVER FORGET the violence, rapes, slavery, and genocide that are the history of Turtle Island.

Don’t fret, there is a silver lining. Nover forget that it was not always this way. There is hope.

We know the way, it is inside.

We can unlearn and relearn so that indeed this great place,

which now some call the United State of America,

can indeed be free and have liberty and justice for all.

We can do better and we must do better.

— —

STOP and unlearn

Take a moment of silence,

Take some time to slow down

Ask yourselves, why?