Weekly Newsletter

The Black Urbanist Weekly #28–Being Nurtured and Natured into a New Normal

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly. I’m Kristen Jeffers and I’m making this weekly digital newsletter to share my Black, Spiritual, Diasporic North Carolinian, Working/Lower Middle-Class, Educated, Queer, CisFemme thoughts on how places and communities work. Think of this as my weekly column, sitting on your proverbial print paper’s editorial page or as so many other of your favorite newsletters do, in your inbox.

This is edition #28 and folks, you know. Sending my condolences out to anyone who’s lost a friend, family member or other loved and cared one. Sending healing energy to those of you who are battling and recovering.

Know that you’re not alone, even if you’re just going through stages of grief over lost opportunities or income. Or your already existing anxieties. In fact, you can grieve both the major losses of life and specific routines. And specifically for black women and anyone else who feels like they can’t stop or be angry, you can be and you don’t have to be strong to get through this. 

That’s something I’ve needed to tell myself for weeks. Months. Years. If anything, this pandemic has allowed me to not feel as rushed or feel as guilty when this newsletter or some other product of my business fails to meet a standard. (Like showing up in your inbox every week) When it fails to walk in lock-step with the “system”. That the “system” in so many ways doesn’t work.

And I’ve decided to highlight that and other ways I’m evolving into a new series that I’m going to call Essential + Quarantine Revolution. Think of this week’s note, as the prequel and over the next few weeks, join me as I shine a light into ways that I am…

Being Nurtured and Natured into a New Normal

As we go into our second month of battling the effects of this season’s novel coronavirus and the disease that’s developed COVID-19/Rona, I’ve been at a loss of words far too many times to count. But then, when I think about how many words I do have, I realize I have tons of them. But then my brain shoots back and taunts me with them being not good enough or too much or competitive or harmful or something else that doesn’t honor the idea and the fact, that this is an individual project and offering to people, much like any other individual project or offering.

I’ve been someone who sought to write words to a particular audience and who often feels the need to constantly explain those words or where they came from.

This was my normal for so long, a normal that governed this project from its beginnings almost a decade ago. I decided to put all my identities (at least all the ones I could honestly and truthfully claim at the time) on the proverbial table and pull up my chair and demand an audience to the planners, public administrators, architects, developers and placemakers who dared to listen.

However, the longer I await the passing of this season of our lives, I realize that the normal I want to return to, cannot resemble the normal I was living before.

Our lives will never be the same and neither should our urbanism. At the very least, my urbanism will not be the same and I want it to be better.

We have twin crises going on right now. First, is the public health one. The one where we should all be sheltering in place and resting to find healing and peace with this message that nature is teaching us, the nature that some of our work seeks to control and push back.

Yet, many of us don’t have a place and the place we do have is not a place of rest.

That’s not acceptable and that’s the second crisis. 

That so many folks rest on the back of those who are deemed essential and essential only for our specific pleasures and desires that we have that we can’t fulfill in our places. That so many people are in places that do not provide them rest, restoration and healing. 

As much as I love being a nomad, traveling around and meeting and sharing with new people, I also long for and relish having a place I can call home. A place that provides me rest, restoration and healing. I have it at the moment and it’s something I don’t take for granted. Everyone needs it, whether or not we are dealing with a dark outpouring of nature, much like we are seeing now with this virus and we’ve seen with natural disasters.

I got into politics much like many folks who are marginalized do, because it’s the only way we can thrive. Yet, I wish that I didn’t have to always speak up for myself or my communities, because we know people other than ourselves got us. 

That’s another form of work, having to do all this mutual aid, because our human-created systems have failed. 

Granted, it’s always good to be prepared and be ready to back each other up. 

And that’s to me the heart of planning in this state and time.

Over the next few weeks, pending I don’t get sick and I’ll let you know if I do, I’m going to challenge all of us to think about how we are being natured into a new normal.

And not just how we individually have been natured, but how others around us, especially those who prior to this, seemed to live very different lives. Or those who’ve already been battling crisis, for those whose worlds have been broken, for those who were born into a broken world.

Many of you reading this work in systems and structures creation. It’s most imperative for us to think about how that’s going to change.

In the meantime, I’ll be back sooner than two weeks, health-willing, to discuss my own naturing into my new normal and invite you into some of the conversations, craft projects and curations I make. 



I no longer fear my own words and the quality of those words and that those words have space, even in imperfect times. I look forward to sharing them with you and I hope, but don’t require, that you resonate with them as I spread them forward.

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Before You Go, A Few Other Things On My Mind

  • One piece of this new normal is to revise a lot of how I do business. So expect some changes to features you’ve come to get used to and how they operate. 
  • However, I’m still running my Black Women in Metro America survey. You can answer about your life before or during this crisis, as it will give me guidance going forward in how fellow sisters are interacting with the things I want to do and know. Here’s where to fill it out.
  • Meanwhile, I’m also working with esteemed Black architect Mel Mitchell, FAIA, NOMA, over the next few months to get the word out about his newest book of Black architectural history and commentary African-American Architects: Embracing Culture and Building Urban Communities. Follow the Instagram page we set up, order the book from Amazon and until we can get the book in more bookstores, we do have an ISBN number (978-1734496000) and you can and you can ask your local bookstore to order it and support them as well.
  • I’m using my Kristpattern label to grow my art practice. Check out its Instagram and follow along with me as I continue to explore and center my art and craft creation.
  • Book me— on your media platform, as a keynote/lecturer, for one of my workshops or as a panel participant. I can do virtual delivery of all of my programs and we can go ahead and start booking programming for late 2020 and 2021. Also, If you are a member of the press and you would love to get my expert commentary on deadline, you can reach me at (301) 578-6278.
  • Les, that wonderful life partner and sales advisor of mine, is great at hyping you up, making you laugh and helping you or your organization make radical changes in your life and health. Join the email list for her company Les’s Lighthouse for periodic motivational updates. Also, if you need some laughter and motivation right now, check out some of her prior performances and motivational talks on YouTube. (Heads up, there’s saucy language, but hearty messages). Or catch her on Instagram.

Take care of yourselves and your communities as best as you can and I look forward to seeing you in your inbox and on the socials and on the site next time.

Love, 

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