Parents, caregivers and pregnant people can grieve alongside specialized doulas, engage in somatic healing and build community at The Beloved Early Education and Care (BEE) Collective’s events this weekend, which include a Nov. 3 Community Altar + Ofrenda followed by a Nov. 4 inaugural all-day summit.
BEE Collective works to socially and emotionally prepare children for kindergarten, provide tools to navigate maternal health and early care systems, reduce mental health stigma and build resilient families. Both events are free and open to the public. Pre-registration is required and can be found at justusindaba.com.
Friday’s gathering includes creative space, grief circle
Fresh Future Farm, a North Charleston collective working to end food apartheid and address basic needs with ancestral farming practices will host the Nov. 3 Community Altar + Ofrenda starting at noon.
Attendees can meditate at a semi-private garden, which BEE Co-Founder Adrienne Troy-Frazier said is “co-designed to heal and nurture and feed community,” or engage their creative side through art. Birthworker and healer Racquel Washington will lead a grief circle at 4:30 p.m. to provide community support and a mourning space for those who’ve lost an infant. Live musical performances begin at 6 p.m. along with another art-making opportunity and traditional Mexican cuisine.
Friday’s set list includes Ohm Radio host and spoken word poet Abby Duran, musical healer and Native American flute player Delia Chariker and singer-songwriter Harlem Farr, who is also a member of local funk band The Psycodelics.
BEE welcomes community members to bring an ofrenda — the Spanish word for offering. The ofrenda can be any sort of memento; drawing upon Día de los Muertos and other Indigenous traditions, it’s left on an altar as a symbol of love for someone who has passed away.
“We were never given a chance really to do any kind of collective grief,” especially surrounding the racialized injustices of the pandemic, Troy-Frazier said. So the event, she told the Charleston City Paper, is about holding the space for grief.
And it’s also about “celebrating through the arts — the fact that we can lean in on community for strength and for our healing,” she added.
Summit includes performances, education, advocacy
The Nov. 4 summit, called The Just-Us INDABA, will also include a host of speakers, including the co-founder of the Black Coalition for Safe Motherhood, members of a worker-owned social justice education cooperative and more. Local jazz musician Alva Anderson and Wona Womalan, a West African instrumental dance group, will perform during the event.
The summit will include several healing stations through somatic practices, like massage and community breathwork, Troy-Frazier said. “Traditional systems that harmed us are not going to heal us fully,” so it’s really about the power of showing up for each other, she added.
Troy-Frazier said the event also aims to build a coalition which will “collectively disrupt the systems that are harming young children and pregnant and birthing people, particularly Black and indigenous communities.”
An S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s 2023 Infant Mortality Report confirmed the scope of this impact: It found a nearly 40% increase in infant mortality rates since 2017 “for infants born to non-Hispanic Black mothers.”
But Troy-Frazier said the summit isn’t about listing alarming statistics — it’s about helping pregnant and birthing people access healthcare resources and tap into their intergenerational wisdom.
“The perinatal period…is what we bring into our lives. And that stays with us,” she said.
BEE Collective is fully grant supported and a grassroots perinatal safe spot in South Carolina. You can donate to the group and learn more about its work at beecollective.co.
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