Black. Loved. Free. is an altar to Black spirituality and healing.

Black. Loved. Free. is a gratitude practice.

Black. Loved. Free. is a commitment to the process of Black liberation.

This podcast was seeded in an epiphany that the pain I had experienced, that cycled through my life again and again, required its own attention. I’ve spent the majority of my life walking through revolving doors where I would re-enter abusive and toxic relationships with institutions, intimate partners, and movement spaces. These experiences left me broken, unsure of how I would continue to work towards Black liberation while carrying so much pain—and while observing that those people and spaces remained unchanged. I had to study my pain—touch my heart when it hurts and whisper I’m still living, as poet and conjurer Destiny Hemphill writes. Eventually, my frustration, burnout, and hurt brought me to ancestral practices of healing.

Often healing is seen as separate from liberation work (or liberation is mistakenly seen as healing in and of itself). We walk around with our wounds, gaping open, while we try to build a new world. This is how we’re used to doing movement work.

But I ask you, if our blood is poured into the foundations of the new world we’re building, how is it different from the world built with the blood of our ancestors?

It’s time to bring healing to our freedom-making work by returning to our ancestral practices in our principled struggle. Black. Loved. Free. explores how our healing allows us to bring forth the worlds we want to see. Here we recognize that collective liberation begins with the self. We will get free, but that freedom-making must start within.

This work can only be done in community. Join me in exploring the connections between our ancestral spiritual and healing practices and our political work. Each episode brings together stories, texts, and collective wisdom to learn how to live in principled struggle with each other.

What will you do when you’re free?

Meet the Black. Loved. Free. Podcast Team

Brendane is pictured here with a Blue Yeti mic. She is wearing a yellow dress and over-the-ear headphones.

Dr. Brendane A. Tynes is the producer and host of Black. Loved. Free. podcast. She is an interpersonal violence survivor, queer Black feminist scholar and storyteller, and healer from Columbia, South Carolina. She is a certified reiki and healing arts practitioner who rests in the truth that her words & love & laugh & joy & peace heal generations.

Brendane passionately creates affirming, supportive spaces for Black women and girls, remaining steadfast in her commitment to anti-capitalist, Black feminist anti-oppression work. She facilitates sessions and workshops on a range of topics: gender-based violence interventions, poetry and healing, inclusion, and more. She is available to travel for speaking engagements throughout the United States and abroad.

Learn more about Brendane's work here.

Andrew Viñales (They, He) is a Bronx-Born Afro Puerto Rican and Dominican oral historian, Olorisa in the Lukumi tradition, new parent and PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Andrew is interested in how Black culture and spirituality inform Black politics in Latin American and Latinx spaces. He hopes to link his interests in storytelling, oral history and research with media. Andrew has worked with the Smithsonian museums, LatinoUSA and Radiolab.